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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10801 ***
+
+THE LITERARY REMAINS
+
+OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+
+
+COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
+
+HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE FOURTH
+
+
+
+ALBI DISCIP ANGLVS
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+WILLIAM PICKERING
+
+1839
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+Notes on Luther
+
+Notes on St Theresa
+
+Notes on Bedell
+
+Notes on Baxter
+
+Notes on Leighton
+
+Notes on Sherlock
+
+Notes on Waterland
+
+Notes on Skelton
+
+Notes on Andrew Fuller
+
+Notes on Whitaker
+
+Notes on Oxlee
+
+Notes on A Barrister's Hints
+
+Notes on Davison
+
+Notes on Irving
+
+Notes on Noble
+
+Essay on Faith
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+For some remarks on the character of this publication, the Editor begs
+to refer the Reader to the Preface to the third volume of these Remains.
+That volume and the present are expressly connected together as one
+work.
+
+The various materials arranged in the following pages were preserved,
+and kindly placed in the Editor's hands, by Mr. Southey, Mr. Green, Mr.
+Gillman, Mr. Alfred Elwyn of Philadelphia, United States, Mr. Money, Mr.
+Hartley Coleridge, and the Rev. Edward Coleridge; and to those gentlemen
+the Editor's best acknowledgments are due.
+
+Lincoln's Inn,
+9th May, 1839.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+LITERARY REMAINS.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK [1]
+
+I cannot meditate too often, too deeply, or too devotionally on the
+personeity of God, and his personality in the Word, [Greek: Gío to
+monogenei], and thence on the individuity of the responsible
+creature;--that it is a perfection which, not indeed in my intellect,
+but yet in my habit of feeling, I have too much confounded with that
+'complexus' of visual images, cycles or customs of sensations, and
+fellow-travelling circumstances (as the ship to the mariner), which make
+up our empirical self: thence to bring myself to apprehend livelily the
+exceeding mercifulness and love of the act of the Son of God, in
+descending to seek after the prodigal children, and to house with them
+in the sty. Likewise by the relation of my own understanding to the
+light of reason, and (the most important of all the truths that have
+been vouchsafed to me!) to the will which is the reason,--will in the
+form of reason--I can form a sufficient gleam of the possibility of the
+subsistence of the human soul in Jesus to the Eternal Word, and how it
+might perfect itself so as to merit glorification and abiding union with
+the Divinity; and how this gave a humanity to our Lord's righteousness
+no less than to his sufferings. Doubtless, as God, as the absolute
+Alterity of the Absolute, he could not suffer; but that he could not lay
+aside the absolute, and by union with the creaturely become affectible,
+and a second, but spiritual Adam, and so as afterwards to be partaker of
+the absolute in the Absolute, even as the Absolute had partaken of
+passion ([Greek: tou páschein]) and infirmity in it, that is, the finite
+and fallen creature;--this can be asserted only by one who
+(unconsciously perhaps), has accustomed himself to think of God as a
+thing,--having a necessity of constitution, that wills, or rather tends
+and inclines to this or that, because it is this or that, not as being
+that, which is that which it wills to be. Such a necessity is truly
+compulsion; nor is it in the least altered in its nature by being
+assumed to be eternal, in virtue of an endless remotion or retrusion of
+the constituent cause, which being manifested by the understanding
+becomes a foreseen despair of a cause.
+
+Sunday 11th February, 1826.
+
+
+One argument strikes me in favour of the tenet of Apostolic succession,
+in the ordination of Bishops and Presbyters, as taught by the Church of
+Rome, and by the larger part of the earlier divines of the Church of
+England, which I have not seen in any of the books on this subject;
+namely, that in strict analogy with other parts of Christian history,
+the miracle itself contained a check upon the inconvenient consequences
+necessarily attached to all miracles, as miracles, narrowing the
+possible claims to any rights not proveable at the bar of universal
+reason and experience. Every man among the Sectaries, however ignorant,
+may justify himself in scattering stones and fire squibs by an alleged
+unction of the Spirit. The miracle becomes perpetual, still beginning,
+never ending. Now on the Church doctrine, the original miracle provides
+for the future recurrence to the ordinary and calculable laws of the
+human understanding and moral sense; instead of leaving every man a
+judge of his own gifts, and of his right to act publicly on that
+judgment. The initiative alone is supernatural; but all beginning is
+necessarily miraculous, that is, hath either no antecedent, or one
+[Greek: hetérou genous], which therefore is not its, but merely an,
+antecedent,--or an incausative alien co-incident in time; as if, for
+instance, Jack's shout were followed by a flash of lightning, which
+should strike and precipitate the ball on St. Paul's cathedral. This
+would be a miracle as long as no causative 'nexus' was conceivable
+between the antecedent, the noise of the shout, and the consequent, the
+atmospheric discharge.
+
+
+The Epistle Dedicatory.
+
+  But this will be your glory and inexpugnable, if you cleave in truth
+  and practice to God's holy service, worship and religion: that
+  religion and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is pure and
+  undefiled before God even the Father, which is to visit the fatherless
+  and widows in their affliction, and to keep yourselves unspotted from
+  the world.
+
+  James i. 27.
+
+Few mistranslations (unless indeed the word used by the translator of
+St. James meant differently from its present meaning), have led astray
+more than this rendering of [Greek: Thraeskeía.] (outward or ceremonial
+worship, 'cultus', divine service,) by the English 'religion'. St. James
+sublimely says: What the 'ceremonies' of the law were to morality,
+'that' morality itself is to the faith in Christ, that is, its outward
+symbol, not the substance itself.
+
+
+Chap. I. p. 1, 2.
+
+  That the Bible is the word of God (said Luther) the same I prove as
+  followeth: All things that have been and now are in the world; also
+  how it now goeth and standeth in the world, the same was written
+  altogether particularly at the beginning, in the first book of Moses
+  concerning the creation. And even as God made and created it, even so
+  it was, even so it is, and even so doth it stand to this present day.
+  And although King Alexander the Great, the kingdom of Egypt, the
+  Empire of Babel, the Persian, Grecian and Roman monarchs; the Emperors
+  Julius and Augustus most fiercely did rage and swell against this
+  Book, utterly to suppress and destroy the same; yet notwithstanding
+  they could prevail nothing, they are all gone and vanished; but this
+  Book from time to time hath remained, and will remain unremoved in
+  full and ample manner as it was written at the first.
+
+A proof worthy of the manly mind of Luther, and compared with which the
+Grotian pretended demonstrations, from Grotius himself to Paley, are
+mischievous underminings of the Faith, pleadings fitter for an Old
+Bailey thieves' counsellor than for a Christian divine. The true
+evidence of the Bible is the Bible,--of Christianity the living fact of
+Christianity itself, as the manifest 'archeus' or predominant of the
+life of the planet.
+
+
+Ib. p. 4.
+
+  The art of the School divines (said Luther) with their speculations in
+  the Holy Scriptures, are merely vain and human cogitations, spun out
+  of their own natural wit and understanding. They talk much of the
+  union of the will and understanding, but all is mere fantasy and
+  fondness. The right and true speculation (said Luther) is this,
+  Believe in Christ; do what thou oughtest to do in thy vocation, &c.
+  This is the only practice in divinity. Also, 'Mystica Theologia
+  Dionysii' is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's fables. 'Omnia
+  sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens'; all is something, and all is
+  nothing, and so he leaveth all hanging in frivolous and idle sort.
+
+Still, however, 'du theure Mann Gottes, mein verehrter Luther'! reason,
+will, understanding are words, to which real entities correspond; and we
+may in a sound and good sense say that reason is the ray, the projected
+disk or image, from the Sun of Righteousness, an echo from the Eternal
+Word--'the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world';
+and that when the will placeth itself in a right line with the reason,
+there ariseth the spirit, through which the will of God floweth into and
+actuates the will of man, so that it willeth the things of God, and the
+understanding is enlivened, and thenceforward useth the materials
+supplied to it by the senses symbolically; that is, with an insight into
+the true substance thereof.
+
+
+Ib. p. 9.
+
+  The Pope usurpeth and taketh to himself the power to expound and to
+  construe the Scriptures according to his pleasure. What he saith, must
+  stand and be spoken as from heaven. Therefore let us love and
+  preciously value the divine word, that thereby we may be able to
+  resist the Devil and his swarm.
+
+As often as I use in prayer the 16th verse of the 71st Psalm, (in our
+Prayer-book version), my thoughts especially revert to the subject of
+the right appreciation of the Scriptures, and in what sense the Bible
+may be called the word of God, and how and under what conditions the
+unity of the Spirit is translucent through the letter, which, read as
+the letter merely, is the word of this and that pious but fallible and
+imperfect man. Alas for the superstition, where the words themselves are
+made to be the Spirit! O might I live but to utter all my meditations on
+this most concerning point!
+
+
+Ib. p. 12.
+
+  Bullinger said once in my hearing (said Luther) that he was earnest
+  against the Anabaptists, as contemners of God's word, and also against
+  those which attributed too much to the literal word, for (said he)
+  such do sin against God and his almighty power; as the Jews did in
+  naming the ark, God. But, (said he) whoso holdeth a mean between both,
+  the same is taught what is the right use of the word and sacraments.
+
+  Whereupon (said Luther) I answered him and said; Bullinger, you err,
+  you know neither yourself, nor what you hold; I mark well your tricks
+  and fallacies: Zuinglius and OEcolampadius likewise proceeded too far
+  in the ungodly meaning: but when Brentius withstood them, they then
+  lessened their opinions, alleging, they did not reject the literal
+  word, but only condemned certain gross abuses. By this your error you
+  cut in sunder and separate the word and the spirit, &c.
+
+In my present state of mind, and with what light I now enjoy,--(may God
+increase it, and cleanse it from the dark mist into the 'lumen siccum'
+of sincere knowledge!)--I cannot persuade myself that this vehemence of
+our dear man of God against Bullinger, Zuinglius and OEcolampadius on
+this point could have had other origin, than his misconception of what
+they intended. But Luther spoke often (I like him and love him all the
+better therefor,) in his moods and according to the mood. Was not that a
+different mood, in which he called St. James's Epistle a 'Jack-Straw
+poppet'; and even in this work selects one verse as the best in the
+whole letter,--evidently meaning, the only verse of any great value?
+Besides he accustomed himself to use the term, 'the word,' in a very
+wide sense when the narrower would have cramped him. When he was on the
+point of rejecting the Apocalypse, then 'the word' meant the spirit of
+the Scriptures collectively.
+
+
+Ib. p. 21.
+
+  I, (said Luther), do not hold that children are without faith when
+  they are baptized; for inasmuch as they are brought to Christ by his
+  command, and that the Church prayeth for them; therefore, without all
+  doubt, faith is given unto them, although with our natural sense and
+  reason we neither see nor understand it.
+
+Nay, but dear honoured Luther! is this fair? If Christ or Scripture had
+said in one place, 'Believe, and thou mayest be baptized'; and in
+another place, 'Baptize infants'; then we might perhaps be allowed to
+reconcile the two seemingly jarring texts, by such words as "faith is
+given to them, although, &c." But when no such text, as the latter, is
+to be found, nor any one instance as a substitute, then your conclusion
+seems arbitrary.
+
+
+Ib. p. 25.
+
+  This argument (said Luther), concludeth so much as nothing; for,
+  although they had been angels from heaven, yet that troubleth me
+  nothing at all; we are now dealing about God's word, and with the
+  truth of the Gospel, that is a matter of far greater weight to have
+  the same kept and preserved pure and clear; therefore we (said
+  Luther), neither care nor trouble ourselves for, and about, the
+  greatness of Saint Peter and the other Apostles, or how many and great
+  miracles they wrought: the thing which we strive for is, that the
+  truth of the Holy Gospel may stand; for God regardeth not men's
+  reputations nor persons.
+
+Oh, that the dear man Luther had but told us here what he meant by the
+term, Gospel! That St. Paul had seen even St. Luke's, is but a
+conjecture, grounded on a conjectural interpretation of a single text,
+doubly equivocal; namely, that the Luke mentioned was the same with the
+Evangelist Luke; and that the 'evangelium' signified a book; the latter,
+of itself improbable, derives its probability from the undoubtedly very
+strong probability of the former. If then not any book, much less the
+four books, now called the four Gospels, were meant by Paul, but the
+contents of those books, as far as they are veracious, and whatever else
+was known on equal authority at that time, though not contained in those
+books; if, in short, the whole sum of Christ's acts and discourses be
+what Paul meant by the Gospel; then the argument is circuitous, and
+returns to the first point,--What 'is' the Gospel? Shall we believe you,
+and not rather the companions of Christ, the eye and ear witnesses of
+his doings and sayings? Now I should require strong inducements to make
+me believe that St. Paul had been guilty of such palpably false logic;
+and I therefore feel myself compelled to infer, that by the Gospel Paul
+intended the eternal truths known ideally from the beginning, and
+historically realized in the manifestation of the Word in Christ Jesus;
+and that he used the ideal immutable truth as the canon and criterion of
+the oral traditions. For example, a Greek mathematician, standing in the
+same relation of time and country to Euclid as that in which St. Paul
+stood to Jesus Christ, might have exclaimed in the same spirit: "What do
+you talk to me of this, that, and the other intimate acquaintance of
+Euclid's? My object is to convey the sublime system of geometry which he
+realized, and by that must I decide." "I," says St. Paul, "have been
+taught by the spirit of Christ, a teaching susceptible of no addition,
+and for which no personal anecdotes, however reverendly attested, can be
+a substitute." But dearest Luther was a translator; he could not, must
+not, see this.
+
+
+Ib. p. 32.
+
+  That God's word, and the Christian Church, is preserved against the
+  raging of the world.
+
+  The Papists have lost the cause; with God's word they are not able to
+  resist or withstand us. * * * 'The kings of the earth stand up, and
+  the rulers take counsel together, &c'. God will deal well enough with
+  these angry gentlemen, and will give them but small thanks for their
+  labor, in going about to suppress his word and servants; he hath sat
+  in counsel above these five thousand five hundred years, hath ruled
+  and made laws. Good Sirs! be not so choleric; go further from the
+  wall, lest you knock your pates against it. 'Kiss the Son lest he be
+  angry, &c'. That is, take hold on Christ, or the Devil will take hold
+  on you, &c.
+
+  The second Psalm (said Luther), is a proud Psalm against those
+  fellows. It begins mild and simply, but it endeth stately and
+  rattling. * * * I have now angered the Pope about his images of
+  idolatry. O! how the sow raiseth her bristles! * * The Lord saith:
+  'Ego suscitabo vos in novissimo die': and then he will call and say:
+  ho! Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, Justus Jonas, John Calvin, &c.
+  Arise, come up, * * * Well on, (said Luther), let us be of good
+  comfort.
+
+A delicious paragraph. How our fine preachers would turn up their
+Tom-tit beaks and flirt with their tails at it! But this is the way in
+which the man of life, the man of power, sets the dry bones in motion.
+
+
+Chap. II. p. 37.
+
+  This is the thanks that God hath for his grace, for creating, for
+  redeeming, sanctifying, nourishing, and for preserving us: such a
+  seed, fruit, and godly child is the world. O, woe be to it!
+
+Too true.
+
+
+Ib. p. 54.
+
+  That out of the best comes the worst.
+
+  Out of the Patriarchs and holy Fathers came the Jews that crucified
+  Christ; out of the Apostles came Judas the traitor; out of the city
+  Alexandria (where a fair illustrious and famous school was, and from
+  whence proceeded many upright and godly learned men), came Arius and
+  Origenes.
+
+Poor Origen! Surely Luther was put to it for an instance, and had never
+read the works of that very best of the old Fathers, and eminently
+upright and godly learned man.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The sparrows are the least birds, and yet they are very hurtful, and
+  have the best nourishment.
+
+'Ergo digni sunt omni persecutione'. Poor little Philip Sparrows! Luther
+did not know that they more than earn their good wages by destroying
+grubs and other small vermin.
+
+
+Ib. p. 61.
+
+  He that without danger will know God, and will speculate of him, let
+  him look first into the manger, that is, let him begin below, and let
+  him first learn to know the Son of the Virgin Mary, born at Bethlehem,
+  that lies and sucks in his mother's bosom; or let one look upon him
+  hanging on the Cross. ** But take good heed in any case of high
+  climbing cogitations, to clamber up to heaven without this ladder,
+  namely, the Lord Christ in his humanity.
+
+
+To know God as God ([Greek: tòn Zaena], the living God) we must assume
+his personality: otherwise what were it but an ether, a gravitation?
+--but to assume his personality, we must begin with his humanity, and
+this is impossible but in history; for man is an historical--not an
+eternal being. 'Ergo'. Christianity is of necessity historical and not
+philosophical only.
+
+
+Ib. p. 62.
+
+  'What is that to thee'? said Christ to Peter. 'Follow thou me'--me,
+  follow me, and not thy questions, or cogitations.
+
+Lord! keep us looking to, and humbly following, thee!
+
+
+Chap. VI. p. 103.
+
+  The philosophers and learned heathen (said Luther) have described God,
+  that he is as a circle, the point whereof in the midst is every where;
+  but the circumference, which on the outside goeth round about, is no
+  where: herewith they would shew that God is all, and yet is nothing.
+
+What a huge difference the absence of a blank space, which is nothing,
+or next to nothing, may make! The words here should have been printed,
+"God is all, and yet is no thing;" For what does 'thing' mean? Itself,
+that is, the 'ing', or inclosure, that which is contained within an
+outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to 'think' is to inclose, to
+determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradiction
+in terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German 'Ding, denken'; in
+Latin 'res, reor'.
+
+
+Chap. VII. p. 113.
+
+  Helvidius alleged the mother of Christ was not a virgin; so that
+  according to his wicked allegation, Christ was born in original sin.
+
+O, what a tangle of impure whimsies has this notion of an immaculate
+conception, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, brought into the
+Christian Church! I have sometimes suspected that the Apostle John had a
+particular view to this point, in the first half of the first chapter of
+his Gospel. Not that I suppose our present Matthew then in existence, or
+that, if John had seen the Gospel according to Luke, the 'Christopædia'
+had been already prefixed to it. But the rumor might have been whispered
+about, and as the purport was to give a psilanthropic explanation and
+solution of the phrases, Son of God and Son of Man,--so Saint John met
+it by the true solution, namely, the eternal Filiation of the Word.
+
+
+Ib. p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.
+
+  But I hold (said Luther) that Christ himself did not mention that
+  prophecy of Zechariah, but rather, that the Apostles and Evangelists
+  did use it for a witness.
+
+Worth remembering for the purpose of applying it to the text in which
+our Lord is represented in the first (or Matthew's) Gospel, and by that
+alone, as citing Daniel by name. It was this text that so sorely, but I
+think very unnecessarily, perplexed and gravelled Bentley, who was too
+profound a scholar and too acute a critic to admit the genuineness of
+the whole of that book.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The Prophets (said Luther) did set, speak, and preach of the second
+  coming of Christ in manner as we now do.
+
+I regret that Mr. Irving should have blended such extravagancies and
+presumptuous prophesyings with his support and vindication of the
+Millennium, and the return of Jesus in his corporeal individuality,
+--because these have furnished divines in general, both Churchmen and
+Dissenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent
+contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued
+temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the
+momentous question on our Clergy:--Are Christians bound to believe
+whatever an Apostle believed,--and in the same way and sense? I think
+Saint Paul himself lived to doubt the solidity of his own literal
+interpretation of our Lord's words.
+
+The whole passage in which our Lord describes his coming is so
+evidently, and so intentionally expressed in the diction and images of
+the Prophets, that nothing but the carnal literality common to the Jews
+at that time and most strongly marked in the disciples, who were among
+the least educated of their countrymen, could have prevented the
+symbolic import and character of the words from being seen. The whole
+Gospel and the Epistles of John, are a virtual confutation of this
+reigning error--and no less is the Apocalypse whether written by, or
+under the authority of, the Evangelist.
+
+The unhappy effect which St. Paul's (may I not say) incautious language
+respecting Christ's return produced on the Thessalonians, led him to
+reflect on the subject, and he instantly in the second epistle to them
+qualified the doctrine, and never afterwards resumed it; but on the
+contrary, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, c. 15, substitutes
+the doctrine of immortality in a celestial state and a spiritual body.
+On the nature of our Lord's future epiphany or phenomenal person, I am
+not ashamed to acknowledge, that my views approach very nearly to those
+of Emanuel Swedenborg.
+
+
+Ib. p. 121.
+
+  Doctor Jacob Schenck never preacheth out of his book, but I do, (said
+  Luther), though not of necessity, but I do it for example's sake to
+  others.
+
+As many notes, 'memoranda', cues of connection and transition as the
+preacher may find expedient or serviceable to him; well and good. But to
+read in a manuscript book, as our Clergy now do, is not to preach at
+all. Preach out of a book, if you must; but do not read in it, or even
+from it. A read sermon of twenty minutes will seem longer to the hearers
+than a free discourse of an hour.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  My simple opinion is (said Luther) and I do believe that Christ for us
+  descended into hell, to the end he might break and destroy the same,
+  as in Psalm xvi, and Acts ii, is shewed and proved.
+
+Could Luther have been ignorant, that this clause was not inserted into
+the Apostle's Creed till the sixth century after Christ? I believe the
+original intention of the clause was no more than 'vere mortuus est'--in
+contradiction to the hypothesis of a trance or state of suspended
+animation.
+
+
+Chap. VII. p. 122.
+
+  When Christ (said Luther) forbiddeth to spread abroad or to make known
+  his works of wonder; there he speaketh as being sent from the Father,
+  and doth well and right therein in forbidding them, to the end that
+  thereby he might leave us an example, not to seek our own praise and
+  honor in that wherein we do good; but we ought to seek only and alone
+  the honor of God.
+
+Not satisfactory. Doubtless, the command was in connection with the
+silence enjoined respecting his Messiahship.
+
+
+Chap. VIII. p. 147.
+
+  Doctor Hennage said to Luther, Sir, where you say that the Holy Spirit
+  is the certainty in the word towards God, that is, that a man is
+  certain of his own mind and opinion; then it must needs follow that
+  all sects have the Holy Ghost, for they will needs be most certain of
+  their doctrine and religion.
+
+Luther might have answered, "positive, you mean, not certain."
+
+
+Chap. IX. p. 160.
+
+  But who hath power to forgive or to detain sins? Answer; the Apostles
+  and all Church servants, and (in case of necessity) every Christian.
+  Christ giveth them not power over money, wealth, kingdoms, &c; but
+  over sins and the consciences of human creatures, over the power of
+  the Devil, and the throat of Hell.
+
+Few passages in the Sacred Writings have occasioned so much mischief,
+abject slavishness, bloated pride, tyrannous usurpation, bloody
+persecution, with kings even against their will the drudges, false
+soul-destroying quiet of conscience, as this text, 'John' xx. 23.
+misinterpreted. It is really a tremendous proof of what the
+misunderstanding of a few words can do. That even Luther partook of the
+delusion, this paragraph gives proof. But that a delusion it is; that
+the commission given to the Seventy whom Christ sent out to proclaim and
+offer the kingdom of God, and afterwards to the Apostles, refers either
+to the power of making rules and ordinances in the Church, or otherwise
+to the gifts of miraculous healing, which our Lord at that time
+conferred on them; and that 'per figuram causce pro effecto', 'sins'
+here mean diseases, seems to me more than probable. At all events, the
+text surely does not mean that the salvation of a repentant and
+believing Christian depends upon the will of a priest in absolution.
+
+
+Ib. p. 161.
+
+  And again, they are able to absolve and make a human creature free and
+  loose from all his sins, if in case he repenteth and believeth in
+  Christ; and on the contrary, they are able to detain all his sina, if
+  he doth not repent and believeth not in Christ.
+
+In like manner if he sincerely repent and believe, his sins are
+forgiven, whether the minister absolve him or not. Now if M + 5 =5, and
+5-M = 5, M = O. If he be impenitent and unbelieving, his sins are
+detained, no doubt, whether the minister do or do not detain them.
+
+
+Ib. p. 163.
+
+  Adam was created of God in such sort righteous, as that he became of a
+  righteous an unrighteous person; as Paul himself argueth, and withall
+  instructeth himself, where he saith, The law is not given for a
+  righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.
+
+This follows from the very definition or idea of righteousness;-it is
+itself the law;--[Greek: pas gàr díkais autonomos.]
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The Scripture saith, God maketh the ungodly righteous; there he
+  calleth us all, one with another, despairing and wicked wretches; for
+  what will an ungodly creature not dare to accomplish, if he may but
+  have occasion, place, and opportunity?
+
+That is with a lust within correspondent to the temptation from without.
+
+A Christian's conscience, methinks, ought to be a 'Janus bifrons',--a
+Gospel-face retrospective, and smiling through penitent tears on the
+sins of the past, and a Moses-face looking forward in frown and menace,
+frightening the harlot will into a holy abortion of sins conceived but
+not yet born, perchance not yet quickened. The fanatic Antinomian
+reverses this; for the past he requires all the horrors of remorse and
+despair, till the moment of assurance; thenceforward, he may do what he
+likes, for he cannot sin.
+
+
+Ib. p. 165.
+
+  All natural inclinations (said Luther) are either against or without
+  God; therefore none are good. We see that no man is so honest as to
+  marry a wife, only thereby to have children, to love and to bring them
+  up in the fear of God.
+
+This is a very weak instance. If a man had been commanded to marry by
+God, being so formed as that no sensual delight accompanied, and refused
+to do so, unless this appetite and gratification were added,--then
+indeed!
+
+
+Chap. X. p. 168, 9.
+
+  Ah Lord God (said Luther), why should we any way boast of our
+  free-will, as if it were able to do anything in divine and spiritual
+  matters were they never so small? * * * I confess that mankind hath a
+  free-will, but it is to milk kine, to build houses, &c., and no
+  further: for so long as a man sitteth well and in safety, and sticketh
+  in no want, so long he thinketh he hath a free-will which is able to
+  do something; but, when want and need appeareth, that there is neither
+  to eat nor to drink, neither money nor provision, where is then the
+  free will? It is utterly lost, and cannot stand when it cometh to the
+  pinch. But faith only standeth fast and sure, and seeketh Christ.
+
+Luther confounds free-will with efficient power, which neither does nor
+can exist save where the finite will is one with the absolute Will. That
+Luther was practically on the right side in this famous controversy, and
+that he was driving at the truth, I see abundant reason to believe. But
+it is no less evident that he saw it in a mist, or rather as a mist with
+dissolving outline; and as he saw the thing as a mist, so he ever and
+anon mistakes a mist for the thing. But Erasmus and Saavedra were
+equally indistinct; and shallow and unsubstantial to boot. In fact, till
+the appearance of Kant's 'Kritiques' of the pure and of the practical
+Reason the problem had never been accurately or adequately stated, much
+less solved.
+
+26 June, 1826.
+
+
+Ib. p. 174.
+
+  Loving friends, (said Luther) our doctrine that free-will is dead and
+  nothing at all is grounded powerfully in Holy Scripture.
+
+It is of vital importance for a theological student to understand
+clearly the utter diversity of the Lutheran, which is likewise the
+Calvinistic, denial of free-will in the unregenerate, and the doctrine
+of the modern Necessitarians and ('proh pudor!') of the later
+Calvinists, which denies the proper existence of will altogether. The
+former is sound, Scriptural, compatible with the divine justice, a new,
+yea, a mighty motive to morality, and, finally, the dictate of common
+sense grounded on common experience. The latter the very contrary of all
+these.
+
+
+Chap. xii. p. 187.
+
+  This is now (said Luther), the first instruction concerning the law;
+  namely, that the same must be used to hinder the ungodly from their
+  wicked and mischievous intentions. For the Devil, who is an Abbot and
+  a Prince of this world, driveth and allureth people to work all manner
+  of sin and wickedness; for which cause God hath ordained magistrates,
+  elders, schoolmasters, laws, and statutes, to the end, if they cannot
+  do more, yet at least that they may bind the claws of the Devil, and
+  to hinder him from raging and swelling so powerfully (in those which
+  are his) according to his will and pleasure.
+
+  And (said Luther), although thou hadst not committed this or that sin,
+  yet nevertheless, thou art an ungodly creature, &c. but what is done
+  cannot he undone, he that hath stolen, let him henceforward steal no
+  more.
+
+  Secondly, we use the law spiritually, which is done in this manner;
+  that it maketh the transgressions greater, as Saint Paul saith; that
+  is, that it may reveal and discover to people their sins, blindness,
+  misery, and ungodly doings wherein they were conceived and born;
+  namely, that they are ignorant of God, and are his enemies, and
+  therefore have justly deserved death, hell, God's judgments, his
+  everlasting wrath and indignation. Saint Paul, (said Luther),
+  expoundeth such spiritual offices and works of the law with many words.
+
+  Rom. vii.
+
+Nothing can be more sound or more philosophic than the contents of these
+two paragraphs. They afford a sufficient answer to the pretence of the
+Romanists and Arminians, that by the law St. Paul meant only the
+ceremonial law.
+
+
+Ib. p. 189.
+
+  And if Moses had not cashiered and put himself out of his office, and
+  had not taken it away with these words, (where he saith, 'The Lord thy
+  God will raise up unto thee another prophet out of thy brethren; Him
+  shall thou hear'. (Deut. xviii.)) who then at any time would or could
+  have believed the Gospel, and forsaken Moses?
+
+If I could be persuaded that this passage (Deut. xviii. 15-19.)
+primarily referred to Christ, and that Christ, not Joshua and his
+successors, was the prophet here promised; I must either become a
+Unitarian psilanthrophist, and join Priestley and Belsham,--or abandon
+to the Jews their own Messiah as yet to come, and cling to the religion
+of John and Paul, without further reference to Moses than to Lycurgus,
+Solon and Numa; all of whom in their different spheres no less prepared
+the way for the coming of the Lord, 'the desire of the nations'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 190.
+
+  It is therefore most evident (said Luther), that the law can but only
+  help us to know our sins, and to make us afraid of death. Now sins and
+  death are such things as belong to the world, and which are therein.
+
+Both in Paul and Luther, (names which I can never separate),--not indeed
+peculiar to these, for it is the same in the Psalms, Ezekiel, and
+throughout the Scriptures, but which I feel most in Paul and Luther,
+--there is one fearful blank, the wisdom or necessity of which I do not
+doubt, yet cannot help groping and straining after like one that stares
+in the dark; and this is Death. The law makes us afraid of death. What
+is death?--an unhappy life? Who does not feel the insufficiency of this
+answer? What analogy does immortal suffering bear to the only death
+which is known to us?
+
+Since I wrote the above, God has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer
+light as to the true nature of the 'death' so often mentioned in the
+Scriptures.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  It is (said Luther), a very hard matter: yea, an impossible thing for
+  thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance) that
+  (at such a time when Moses setteth upon thee with his law, and
+  fearfully affrighteth thee, accuseth and condemneth thee, threateneth
+  thee with God's wrath and death) thou shouldest as then be of such a
+  mind; namely, as if no law nor sin had ever been at any time:--I say,
+  it is in a manner a thing impossible, that a human creature should
+  carry himself in such a sort, when he is and feeleth himself assaulted
+  with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with
+  God, as then to think no otherwise, than that from everlasting nothing
+  hath been, but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance.
+
+Yea, verily, Amen and Amen! For this short heroic paragraph contains the
+sum and substance, the heighth and the depth of all true philosophy.
+Most assuredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the
+narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying
+looking-glass that covers the scant end-side of the blind passage from
+floor to ceiling,--right difficult for us, so wedged between its walls
+that we cannot turn round, nor have other escape possible but by walking
+backward, to understand that all we behold or have any memory of having
+ever beholden, yea, our very selves as seen by us, are but shadows, and
+when the forms that we loved vanish, impossible not to feel as if they
+were real.
+
+
+Ib. p. 197.
+
+  Nothing that is good proceedeth out of the works of the law, except
+  grace be present; for what we are forced to do, the same goeth not
+  from the heart, neither is acceptable.
+
+A law supposes a law-giver, and implies an actuator and executor, and
+consequently rewards and punishments publicly announced, and distinctly
+assigned to the deeds enjoined or forbidden; and correlatively in the
+subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, assurance of the being,
+the power, the veracity and seeingness of the law-giver, in whom I here
+comprise the legislative, judicial and executive functions; and
+secondly, self-interest, desire, hope and fear. Now from this view, it
+is evident that the deeds or works of the Law are themselves null and
+dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or
+alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped
+and ink colored paper has its value wholly from the words or meanings,
+which have been arbitrarily connected therewith; or as a ladder, or
+flight of stairs, of a provision-loft, or treasury. If the architect or
+master of the house had chosen to place the store-room or treasury on
+the ground floor, the ladder or steps would have been useless. The life
+is divided between the rewards and punishments on the one hand, and the
+hope and fear on the other: namely, the active life or excitancy belongs
+to the former, the passive life or excitability to the latter. Call the
+former the afficients, the latter the affections, the deeds being merely
+the signs or impresses of the former, as the seal, on the latter as the
+wax. Equally evident is it, that the affections are wholly formed by the
+deeds, which are themselves but the lifeless unsubstantial shapes of the
+actual forms ('formæ formantes'), namely, the rewards and punishments.
+Now contrast with this the process of the Gospel. There the affections
+are formed in the first instance, not by any reference to works or
+deeds, but by an unmerited rescue from death, liberation from slavish
+task-work; by faith, gratitude, love, and affectionate contemplation of
+the exceeding goodness and loveliness of the Saviour, Redeemer,
+Benefactor: from the affections flow the deeds, or rather the affections
+overflow in the deeds, and the rewards are but a continuance and
+continued increase of the free grace in the state of the soul and in the
+growth and gradual perfecting of that state, which are themselves gifts
+of the same free grace, and one with the rewards; for in the kingdom of
+Christ which is the realm of love and inter-community, the joy and grace
+of each regenerated spirit becomes double, and thereby augments the joys
+and the graces of the others, and the joys and graces of all unite in
+each;--Christ, the head, and by his Spirit the bond, or unitive 'copula'
+of all, being the spiritual sun whose entire image is reflected in every
+individual of the myriads of dew-drops. While under the Law, the all was
+but an aggregate of subjects, each striving after a reward for himself,
+--not as included in and resulting from the state,--but as the
+stipulated wages of the task-work, as a loaf of bread may be the pay or
+bounty promised for the hewing of wood or the breaking of stones!
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  He (said Luther), that will dispute with the Devil, &c.
+
+Queries.
+
+I. Abstractedly from, and independently of, all sensible substances, and
+    the bodies, wills, faculties, and affections of men, has the Devil,
+    or would the Devil have, a personal self-subsistence? Does he, or
+    can he, exist as a conscious individual agent or person? Should the
+    answer to this query be in the negative: then--
+
+II. Do there exist finite and personal beings, whether with composite
+    and decomponible bodies, that is, embodied, or with simple and
+    indecomponible bodies, (which is all that can be meant by
+    disembodied as applied to finite creatures), so eminently wicked, or
+    wicked and mischievous in so peculiar a kind, as to constitute a
+    distinct 'genus' of beings under the name of devils?
+
+III. Is this second 'hypothesis' compatible with the acts and functions
+    attributed to the Devil in Scripture? O! to have had these three
+    questions put by Melancthon to Luther, and to have heard his reply!
+
+
+Ib. p. 200.
+
+  If (said Luther) God should give unto us a strong and an unwavering
+  faith, then we should he proud, yea also, we should at last contemn
+  Him. Again, if he should give us the right knowledge of the law, then
+  we should be dismayed and fainthearted, we should not know which way
+  to wind ourselves.
+
+The main reason is, because in this instance, the change in the relation
+constitutes the difference of the things. A. considered as acting 'ab
+extra' on the selfish fears and desires of men is the Law: the same A:
+acting 'ab intra' as a new nature infused by grace, as the mind of
+Christ prompting to all obedience, is the Gospel. Yet what Luther says
+is likewise very true. Could we reduce the great spiritual truths or
+ideas of our faith to comprehensible conceptions, or (for the thing
+itself is impossible) fancy we had done so, we should inevitably be
+'proud vain asses.'
+
+
+Ib. p. 203.
+
+  And as to know his works and actions, is not yet rightly to know the
+  Gospel, (for thereby we know not as yet that he hath overcome sin
+  death and the Devil); even so likewise, it is not as yet to know the
+  Gospel, when we know such doctrine and commandments, but when the
+  voice soundeth, which saith, Christ is thine own with life, with
+  doctrine, with works, death, resurrection, and with all that he hath,
+  doth and may do.
+
+Most true.
+
+
+Ib. p. 205.
+
+  The ancient Fathers said: 'Distingue tempora et concordabis
+  Scripturas'; distinguish the times; then may we easily reconcile the
+  Scriptures together.
+
+Yea! and not only so, but we shall reconcile truths, that seem to repeal
+this or that passage of Scripture, with the Scriptures. For Christ is
+with his Church even to the end.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  I verily believe, (said Luther) it (the abolition of the Law) vexed to
+  the heart the beloved St. Paul himself before his conversion.
+
+How dearly Martin Luther loved St. Paul! How dearly would St. Paul have
+loved Martin Luther! And how impossible, that either should not have
+done so!
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  In this case, touching the distinguishing the Law from the Gospel, we
+  must utterly expel all human and natural wisdom, reason, and
+  understanding.
+
+All reason is above nature. Therefore by reason in Luther, or rather in
+his translator, you must understand the reasoning faculty:--that is,
+the logical intellect, or the intellectual understanding. For the
+understanding is in all respects a medial and mediate faculty, and has
+therefore two extremities or poles, the sensual, in which form it is St.
+Paul's [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]; and the intellectual pole, or the
+hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Now the reason ('lux
+idealis seu spiritualis') shines down into the understanding, which
+recognizes the light, 'id est, lumen a luce spirituali quasi alienigenum
+aliquid', which it can only comprehend or describe to itself by
+attributes opposite to its own essential properties. Now these latter
+being contingency, and (for though the immediate objects of the
+understanding are 'genera et species', still they are particular 'genera
+et species') particularity, it distinguishes the formal light ('lumen')
+(not the substantial light, 'lux') of reason by the attributes of the
+necessary and the universal; and by irradiation of this 'lumen' or
+'shine' the understanding becomes a conclusive or logical faculty. As
+such it is [Greek: Lógos anthrôpinos].
+
+
+Ib. 206.
+
+  When Satan saith in thy heart, God will not pardon thy sins, nor be
+  gracious unto thee, I pray (said Luther) how wilt thou then, as a poor
+  sinner, raise up and comfort thyself, especially when other signs of
+  God's wrath besides do beat upon thee, as sickness, poverty, &c. And
+  that thy heart beginneth to preach and say, Behold, here thou livest
+  in sickness, thou art poor and forsaken of every one, &c.
+
+Oh! how true, how affectingly true is this! And when too Satan, the
+tempter, becomes Satan the accuser, saying in thy heart:--"This sickness
+is the consequence of sin, or sinful infirmity, and thou hast brought
+thyself into a fearful dilemma; thou canst not hope for salvation as
+long as thou continuest in any sinful practice, and yet thou canst not
+abandon thy daily dose of this or that poison without suicide. For the
+sin of thy soul has become the necessity of thy body, daily tormenting
+thee, without yielding thee any the least pleasurable sensation, but
+goading thee on by terror without hope. Under such evidence of God's
+wrath how canst thou expect to be saved?" Well may the heart cry out,
+"Who shall deliver me from the 'body of this death',--from this death
+that lives and tyrannizes in my body?" But the Gospel answers--"There is
+a redemption from the body promised; only cling to Christ. Call on him
+continually with all thy heart, and all thy soul, to give thee strength,
+and be strong in thy weakness; and what Christ doth not see good to
+relieve thee from, suffer in hope. It may be better for thee to be kept
+humble and in self-abasement. The thorn in the flesh may remain and yet
+the grace of God through Christ prove sufficient for thee. Only cling to
+Christ, and do thy best. In all love and well-doing gird thyself up to
+improve and use aright what remains free in thee, and if thou doest
+ought aright, say and thankfully believe that Christ hath done it for
+thee." O what a miserable despairing wretch should I become, if I
+believed the doctrines of Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his Treatise on
+Repentance, or those I heard preached by Dr.----; if I gave up the
+faith, that the life of Christ would precipitate the remaining dregs of
+sin in the crisis of death, and that I shall rise in purer capacity of
+Christ; blind to be irradiated by his light, empty to be possessed by
+his fullness, naked of merit to be clothed with his righteousness!
+
+
+Ib. p. 207.
+
+  The nobility, the gentry, citizens, and farmers, &c. are now become so
+  haughty and ungodly, that they regard no ministers nor preachers; and
+  (said Luther) if we were not holpen somewhat by great princes and
+  persons, we could not long subsist: therefore Isaiah saith well,
+  'And kings shall be their nurses', &c.
+
+Corpulent nurses too often, that overlay the babe; distempered nurses,
+that convey poison in their milk!
+
+
+Chap. XIII. p. 208.
+
+  Philip Melancthon said to Luther, The opinion of St. Austin of
+  justification (as it seemeth) was more pertinent, fit and convenient
+  when he disputed not, than it was when he used to speak and dispute;
+  for thus he saith, We ought to censure and hold that we are justified
+  by faith, that is by our regeneration, or by being made new creatures.
+  Now if it be so, then we are not justified only by faith, but by all
+  the gifts and virtues of God given unto us. Now what is your opinion
+  Sir? Do you hold that a man is justified by this regeneration, as is
+  St. Austin's opinion?
+
+  Luther answered and said, I hold this, and am certain, that the true
+  meaning of the Gospel and of the Apostle is, that we are justified
+  before God 'gratis', for nothing, only by God's mere mercy, wherewith
+  and by reason whereof, he imputeth righteousness unto us in Christ.
+
+True; but is it more than a dispute about words? Is not the regeneration
+likewise 'gratis', only by God's mere mercy? We, according to the
+necessity of our imperfect understandings, must divide and distinguish.
+But surely justification and sanctification are one act of God, and only
+different perspectives of redemption by and through and for Christ. They
+are one and the same plant, justification the root, sanctification the
+flower; and (may I not venture to add?) transubstantiation into Christ
+the celestial fruit.
+
+
+Ib. p. 210-11. Melancthon's sixth reply.
+
+  Sir! you say Paul was justified, that is, was received to everlasting
+  life, only for mercy's sake. Against which, I say, if the piece-meal
+  or partial cause, namely our obedience, followeth not; then we are not
+  saved, according to these words, 'Woe is me if I preach not the
+  Gospel'. 1. Cor. ix.
+
+Luther's answer.
+
+  No piecing or partial cause (said Luther) approacheth thereupto: for
+  faith is powerful continually without ceasing; otherwise, it is no
+  faith. Therefore what the works are, or of what value, the same they
+  are through the honor and power of faith, which undeniably is the sun
+  or sun-beam of this shining.
+
+This is indeed a difficult question; and one, I am disposed to think,
+which can receive its solution only by the idea, or the act and fact of
+justification by faith self-reflected. But, humanly considered, this
+position of Luther's provokes the mind to ask, is there no receptivity
+of faith, considered as a free gift of God, prerequisite in the
+individual? Does faith commence by generating the receptivity of itself?
+If so, there is no difference either in kind or in degree between the
+receivers and the rejectors of the word, at the moment preceeding this
+reception or rejection; and a stone is a subject as capable of faith as
+a man. How can obedience exist, where disobedience was not possible?
+Surely two or three texts from St. Paul, detached from the total
+'organismus' of his reasoning, ought not to out-weigh the plain fact,
+that the contrary position is implied in, or is an immediate consequent
+of, our Lord's own invitations and assurances. Every where a something
+is attributed to the will. [2]
+
+
+Chap. XIII. p. 211.
+
+  To conclude, a faithful person is a new creature, a new tree.
+  Therefore all these speeches, which in the law are usual, belong not
+  to this case; as to say 'A faithful' person must do good works.
+  Neither were it rightly spoken, to say the sun shall shine: a good
+  tree shall bring forth good fruit, &c. For the sun 'shall' not shine,
+  but it doth shine by nature unbidden, it is thereunto created.
+
+This important paragraph is obscure by the translator's ignorance of the
+true import of the German 'soll', which does not answer to our 'shall;'
+but rather to our 'ought', that is, 'should' do this or that,--is under
+an obligation to do it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 213.
+
+  And I, my loving Brentius, to the end I may better understand this
+  case, do use to think in this manner, namely, as if in my heart were
+  no quality or virtue at all, which is called faith, and love, (as the
+  Sophists do speak and dream thereof), but I set all on Christ, and
+  say, my 'formalis justitia', that is, my sure, my constant and
+  complete righteousness (in which is no want nor failing, but is, as
+  before God it ought to be) is Christ my Lord and Saviour.
+
+Aye! this, this is indeed to the purpose. In this doctrine my soul can
+find rest. I hope to be saved by faith, not by my faith, but by the
+faith of Christ in me.
+
+
+Ib. p. 214.
+
+  The Scripture nameth the faithful a people of God's saints. But here
+  one may say; the sins which daily we commit, do offend and anger God;
+  how then can we be holy?
+
+  'Answer'. A mother's love to her child is much stronger than are the
+  excrements and scurf thereof. Even so God's love towards us is far
+  stronger than our filthiness and uncleanness.
+
+  Yea, one may say again, we sin without ceasing, and where sin is,
+  there the holy Spirit is not: therefore we are not holy, because the
+  holy Spirit is not in us, who maketh holy.
+
+  'Answer'. (John xvi. 14.) Now where Christ is, there is the holy
+  Spirit. The text saith plainly, 'The holy Ghost shall glorify me, &c.'
+  Now Christ is in the faithful (although they have and feel sins, do
+  confess the same, and with sorrow of heart do complain thereover);
+  therefore sins do not separate Christ from those that believe.
+
+All in this page is true, and necessary to be preached. But O! what need
+is there of holy prudence to preach it aright, that is, at right times
+to the right ears! Now this is when the doctrine is necessary and thence
+comfortable; but where it is not necessary, but only very comfortable,
+in such cases it would be a narcotic poison, killing the soul by
+infusing a stupor or counterfeit peace of conscience. Where there are no
+sinkings of self-abasement, no griping sense of sin and worthlessness,
+but perhaps the contrary, reckless confidence and self-valuing for good
+qualities supposed an overbalance for the sins,--there it is not
+necessary. In short, these are not the truths, that can be preached
+[Greek: eukaírôs akaírôs], _in season and out of season_. In declining
+life, or at any time in the hour of sincere humiliation, these truths
+may be applied in reference to past sins collectively; but a Christian
+must not, a true however infirm Christian will not, cannot, administer
+them to himself immediately after sinning; least of all immediately
+before. We ought fervently to pray thus:--"Most holy and most merciful
+God! by the grace of thy holy Spirit make these promises profitable to
+me, to preserve me from despairing of thy forgiveness through Christ my
+Saviour! But O! save me from presumptuously perverting them into a
+pillow for a stupified conscience! Give me grace so to contrast my sin
+with thy transcendant goodness and long-suffering love, as to hate it
+with an unfeigned hatred for its own exceeding sinfulness."
+
+
+Ib. p. 219-20.
+
+  Faith is, and consisteth in, a person's understanding, but hope
+  consisteth in the will. * * Faith inditeth, distinguisheth and
+  teacheth, and it is the knowledge and acknowledgment. * * Faith
+  fighteth against error and heresies, it proveth, censureth and judgeth
+  the spirits and doctrines. * * Faith in divinity is the wisdom and
+  providence, and belongeth to the doctrine. * * Faith is the
+  'dialectica', for it is altogether wit and wisdom.
+
+Luther in his Postills discourseth far better and more genially of faith
+than in these paragraphs. Unfortunately, the Germans have but one word
+for faith and belief--'Glaube', and what Luther here says, is spoken of
+belief. Of faith he speaks in the next article but one.
+
+
+Ib. p. 226.
+
+  "That regeneration only maketh God's children.
+
+  "The article of our justification before God (said Luther) is, as it
+  useth to be with a son which is born an heir of all his father's
+  goods, and cometh not thereunto by deserts."
+
+I will here record my experience. Ever when I meet with the doctrine of
+regeneration and faith and free grace simply announced--"So it
+is!"--then I believe; my heart leaps forth to welcome it. But as soon as
+an explanation nation or reason is added, such explanations, namely, and
+reasonings as I have any where met with, then my heart leaps back again,
+recoils, and I exclaim, Nay! Nay! but not so.
+
+25th of September, 1819.
+
+
+Ib. p. 227.
+
+  "Doctor Carlestad (said Luther) argueth thus: True it is that faith
+  justifieth, but faith is a work of the first commandment; therefore it
+  justifieth as a work. Moreover all that the Law commandeth, the same
+  is a work of the Law. Now faith is commanded, therefore faith is a
+  work of the Law. Again, what God will have the same is commanded: God
+  will have faith, therefore faith is commanded."
+
+  "St. Paul (said Luther) speaketh in such sort of the law, that he
+  separateth it from the promise, which is far another thing than the
+  law. The law is terrestrial, but the promise is celestial.
+
+  "God giveth the law to the end we may thereby be roused up and made
+  pliant; for the commandments do go and proceed against the proud and
+  haughty, which contemn God's gifts; now a gift or present cannot be a
+  commandment."
+
+  "Therefore we must answer according to this rule, 'Verba sunt
+  accipienda secundum subjectam materiam.' * * St. Paul calleth that the
+  work of the law, which is done and acted through the knowledge of the
+  law by a constrained will without the holy Spirit; so that the same is
+  a work of the law, which the law earnestly requireth and strictly will
+  have done; it is not a voluntary work, but a forced work of the rod."
+
+And wherein did Carlestad and Luther differ? Not at all, or essentially
+and irreconcilably, according as the feeling of Carlestad was. If he
+meant the particular deed, the latter; if the total act, the agent
+included, then the former.
+
+
+Chap. XIV. p. 230.
+
+  "The love towards the neighbour (said Luther) must be like a pure
+  chaste love between bride and bridegroom, where all faults are
+  connived at, covered and borne with, and only the virtues regarded."
+
+In how many little escapes and corner-holes does the sensibility, the
+fineness, (that of which refinement is but a counterfeit, at best but a
+reflex,) the geniality of nature appear in this 'son of thunder!' O for
+a Luther in the present age! Why, Charles! [3] with the very handcuffs
+of his prejudices he would knock out the brains (nay, that is
+impossible, but,) he would split the skulls of our 'Cristo-galli',
+translate the word as you like:--French Christians, or coxcombs!
+
+
+Ib. p. 231-2.
+
+  "Let Witzell know, (said Luther) that David's wars and battles, which
+  he fought, were more pleasing to God than the fastings and prayings of
+  the best, of the honestest, and of the holiest monks and friars; much
+  more than the works of our new ridiculous and superstitious friars."
+
+A cordial, rich and juicy speech, such as shaped itself into, and lived
+anew in, the Gustavus Adolphuses.
+
+
+Chap. XV. p. 233-4.
+
+  "God most certainly heareth them that pray in faith, and granteth when
+  and how he pleaseth, and knoweth most profitable for them. We must
+  also know, that when our prayers tend to the sanctifying of his name,
+  and to the increase and honor of his kingdom (also that we pray
+  according to his will) then most certainly he heareth. But when we
+  pray contrary to these points, then we are not heard; for God doth
+  nothing against his Name, his kingdom, and his will."
+
+Then (saith the understanding, [Greek: Tò phrónaema sarkòs]) what doth
+prayer effect? If A--prayer = B., and A + prayer = B, prayer = O. The
+attempt to answer this argument by admitting its invalidity relatively
+to God, but asserting the efficacy of prayer relatively to the pray-er
+or precant himself, is merely staving off the objection a single step.
+For this effect on the devout soul is produced by an act of God. The
+true answer is, prayer is an idea, and 'ens spirituale', out of the
+cognizance of the understanding.
+
+The spiritual mind receives the answer in the contemplation of the idea,
+life as 'deitas diffusa'. We can set the life in efficient motion, but
+not contrary to the form or type. The errors and false theories of great
+men sometimes, perhaps most often, arise out of true ideas falsified by
+degenerating into conceptions; or the mind excited to action by an
+inworking idea, the understanding works in the same direction according
+to its kind, and produces a counterfeit, in which the mind rests.
+
+This I believe to be the case with the scheme of emanation in Plotinus.
+God is made a first and consequently a comparative intensity, and matter
+the last; the whole thence finite; and thence its conceivability. But we
+must admit a gradation of intensities in reality.
+
+
+Chap. XVI. p. 247.
+
+  "When governors and rulers are enemies to God's word, then our duty is
+  to depart, to sell and forsake all we have, to fly from one place to
+  another, as Christ commandeth; we must make and prepare no uproars nor
+  tumults by reason of the Gospel, but we must suffer all things."
+
+Right. But then it must be the lawful rulers; those in whom the
+sovereign or supreme power is lodged by the known laws and constitution
+of the country. Where the laws and constitutional liberties of the
+nation are trampled on, the subjects do not lose, and are not in
+conscience bound to forego, their right of resistance, because they are
+Christians, or because it happens to be a matter of religion, in which
+their rights are violated. And this was Luther's opinion. Whether, if a
+Popish Czar shall act as our James II. acted, the Russian Greekists
+would be justified in doing with him what the English Protestants
+justifiably did with regard to James, is a knot which I shall not
+attempt to cut; though I guess the Russians would, by cutting their
+Czar's throat.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  'But no man will do this, except he be so sure of his doctrine and
+  religion, as that, although I myself should play the fool, and should
+  recant and deny this my doctrine and religion (which God forbid), he
+  notwithstanding therefore would not yield, but say, "If Luther, or an
+  angel from heaven, should teach otherwise, _Let him be accursed_."'
+
+Well and nobly said, thou rare black swan! This, this is the Church.
+Where this is found, there is the Church of Christ, though but twenty in
+the whole of the congregation; and were twenty such in two hundred
+different places, the Church would be entire in each. Without this no
+Church.
+
+
+Ib. p. 248.
+
+  "And he sent for one of his chiefest privy councillors, named Lord
+  John _Von Minkwitz_, and said unto him; 'You have heard my father say,
+  (running with him at tilt) that to sit upright on horseback maketh a
+  good tilter. If therefore it be good and laudable in temporal tilting
+  to sit upright; how much more is it now praiseworthy in God's cause to
+  sit, to stand, and to go uprightly and just!'"
+
+Princely. So Shakspeare would have made a Prince Elector talk. The
+metaphor is so grandly in character.
+
+
+Chap. XVII. p. 249.
+
+  "_Signa sunt subinde facta, minora; res autem et facta subinde
+  creverunt_."
+
+A valuable remark. As the substance waxed, that is, became more evident,
+the ceremonial sign waned, till at length in the Eucharist the 'signum'
+united itself with the 'significatum', and became consubstantial. The
+ceremonial sign, namely, the eating the bread and drinking the wine,
+became a symbol, that is, a solemn instance and exemplification of the
+class of mysterious acts, which we are, or as Christians should be,
+performing daily and hourly in every social duty and recreation. This is
+indeed to re-create the man in and by Christ. Sublimely did the Fathers
+call the Eucharist the extension of the Incarnation: only I should have
+preferred the perpetuation and application of the Incarnation.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  A bare writing without a seal is of no force.
+
+Metaphors are sorry logic, especially metaphors from human and those too
+conventional usages to the ordinances of eternal wisdom.
+
+
+Ib. p. 250.
+
+  Luther said, "No. A Christian is wholly and altogether sanctified. * *
+  We must take sure hold on Baptism by faith, as then we shall be, yea,
+  already are, sanctified. In this sort David nameth himself holy."
+
+A deep thought. Strong meat for men. It must not be offered for milk.
+
+
+Chap. XXI. p. 276.
+
+  Then I will declare him openly to the Church, and in this manner I
+  will say: "Loving friends, I declare unto you, how that N. N. hath
+  been admonished: first, by myself in private, afterwards also by two
+  chaplains, thirdly, by two aldermen and churchwardens, and those of
+  the assembly: yet notwithstanding he will not desist from his sinful
+  kind of life. Wherefore I earnestly desire you to assist and aid me,
+  to kneel down with me, and let us pray against him, and deliver him
+  over to the Devil."
+
+Luther did not mean that this should be done all at once; but that a day
+should be appointed for the congregation to meet for joint consultation,
+and according to the resolutions passed to choose and commission such
+and such persons to wait on the offender, and to exhort, persuade and
+threaten him in the name of the congregation: then, if after due time
+allowed, this proved fruitless, to kneel down with the minister, &c.
+Surely, were it only feasible, nothing could be more desirable. But
+alas! it is not compatible with a Church national, the congregations of
+which are therefore not gathered nor elected, or with a Church
+established by law; for law and discipline are mutually destructive of
+each other, being the same as involuntary and voluntary penance.
+
+
+Chap. xxii. p. 290.
+
+  Wicliffe and Huss opposed and assaulted the manner of life and
+  conversation in Popedom. But I chiefly do oppose and resist their
+  doctrine; I affirm roundly and plainly that they teach not aright.
+  Thereto am I called. I take the goose by the neck, and set the knife
+  to the throat. When I can maintain that the Pope's doctrine is false,
+  (which I have proved and maintained), then I will easily prove and
+  maintain that their manner of life is evil.
+
+This is a remark of deep insight: 'verum vere Lutheranum'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 291.
+
+  Ambition and pride (said Luther), are the rankest poison in the Church
+  when they are possessed by preachers. Zuinglius thereby was misled,
+  who did what pleased himself * * * He wrote, "Ye honorable and good
+  princes must pardon me, in that I give you not your titles; for the
+  glass windows are as well illustrious as ye."
+
+One might fancy, in the Vision-of-Mirza style, that all the angry,
+contemptuous, haughty expressions of good and zealous men, gallant
+staff-officers in the army of Christ, formed a rick of straw and
+stubble, which at the last day is to be divided into more or fewer
+haycocks, according to the number of kind and unfeignedly humble and
+charitable thoughts and speeches that had intervened, and that these
+were placed in a pile, leap-frog fashion, in the narrow road to the gate
+of Paradise; and burst into flame as the zeal of the individual
+approached,--so that he must leap over and through them. Now I cannot
+help thinking, that this dear man of God, heroic Luther, will find more
+opportunities of showing his agility, and reach the gate in a greater
+sweat and with more blisters 'a parte post' than his brother hero,
+Zuinglius. I guess that the comments of the latter on the Prophets will
+be found almost sterile in these tiger-lilies and brimstone flowers of
+polemic rhetoric, compared with the controversy of the former with our
+Henry VIII., his replies to the Pope's Bulls, and the like.
+
+By the by, the joke of the 'glass windows' is lost in the translation.
+The German for illustrious is 'durchlauchtig', that is, transparent or
+translucent.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  When we leave to God his name, his kingdom and will, then will he also
+  give unto us our daily bread, and will remit our sins, and deliver us
+  from the devil and all evil. Only his honor he will have to himself.
+
+A brief but most excellent comment on the Lord's Prayer.
+
+
+Ib. p. 297.
+
+  There was never any that understood the Old Testament so well as St.
+  Paul, except only John the Baptist.
+
+I cannot conjecture what Luther had in his mind when he made this
+exception.
+
+
+Chap. XXVII. p. 335.
+
+  I could wish (said Luther) that the Princes and States of the Empire
+  would make an assembly, and hold a council and a union both in
+  doctrine and ceremonies, so that every one might not break in and run
+  on with such insolency and presumption according to his own brains, as
+  already is begun, whereby many good hearts are offended.
+
+Strange heart of man! Would Luther have given up the doctrine of
+justification by faith alone, had the majority of the Council decided in
+favor of the Arminian scheme? If not, by what right could he expect
+OEcolampadius or Zuinglius to recant their convictions respecting the
+Eucharist, or the Baptists theirs on Infant Baptism, to the same
+authority? In fact, the wish expressed in this passage must be
+considered as a mere flying thought shot out by the mood and feeling of
+the moment, a sort of conversational flying-fish that dropped as soon as
+the moisture of the fins had evaporated. The paragraph in p. 336, of
+what Councils ought to order, should be considered Luther's genuine
+opinion.
+
+
+Ib. p. 337.
+
+  The council of Nice, held after the Apostles' time, (said Luther) was
+  the very best and purest; but soon after in the time of the Emperor
+  Constantine, it was weakened by the Arians.
+
+What Arius himself meant, I do not know: what the modern Arians teach, I
+utterly condemn; but that the great council of Ariminum was either Arian
+or heretical I could never discover, or descry any essential difference
+between its decisions and the Nicene; though I seem to find a serious
+difference of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed from both. If there be a
+difference between the Councils of Nicea and Ariminum, it perhaps
+consists in this;--that the Nicene was the more anxious to assert the
+equal Divinity in the Filial subordination; the Ariminian to maintain
+the Filial subordination in the equal Divinity. In both there are three
+self-subsistent and only one self-originated:--which is the substance
+of the idea of the Trinity, as faithfully worded as is compatible with
+the necessary inadequacy of words to the expression of ideas, that is,
+spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned. [4]
+
+18th August, 1826.
+
+
+Chap. XXVIII. p. 347.
+
+  God's word a Lord of all Lords.
+
+Luther every where identifies the living Word of God with the written
+word, and rages against Bullinger, who contended that the latter is the
+word of God only as far as and for whom it is the vehicle of the former.
+To this Luther replies: "My voice, the vehicle of my words, does not
+cease to be my voice, because it is ignorantly or maliciously
+misunderstood." Yea! (might Bullinger have rejoined) the instance were
+applicable and the argument valid, if we were previously assured that
+all and every part of the Old and New Testament is the voice of the
+divine Word. But, except by the Spirit, whence are we to ascertain this?
+Not from the books themselves; for not one of them makes the pretension
+for itself, and the two or three texts, which seem to assert it, refer
+only to the Law and the Prophets, and no where enumerate the books that
+were given by inspiration: and how obscure the history of the formation
+of the Canon, and how great the difference of opinion respecting its
+different parts, what scholar is ignorant?
+
+
+Chap. XXIX. p. 349.
+
+  'Patres, quamquam sæpe errant, tamen venerandi propter testimonium
+  fidei.'
+
+Although I learn from all this chapter, that Luther was no great
+Patrician, (indeed he was better employed), yet I am nearly, if not
+wholly of his mind respecting the works of the Fathers. Those which
+appear to me of any great value are valuable chiefly for those articles
+of Christian Faith which are, as it were, 'ante Christum' JESUM, namely,
+the Trinity, and the primal Incarnation spoken of by John i, 10. But in
+the main I should perhaps go even farther than Luther; for I cannot
+conceive any thing more likely than that a young man of strong and
+active intellect, who has no fears, or suffers no fears of worldly
+prudence to cry, Halt! to him in his career of consequential logic, and
+who has been 'innutritus et juratus' in the Grotio-Paleyan scheme of
+Christian evidence, and who has been taught by the men and books, which
+he has been bred up to regard as authority, to consider all inward
+experiences as fanatical delusions;--I say, I can scarcely conceive such
+a young man to make a serious study of the Fathers of the first four or
+five centuries without becoming either a Romanist or a Deist. Let him
+only read Petavius and the different Patristic and Ecclesiastico
+-historical tracts of Semler, and have no better philosophy than that of
+Locke, no better theology than that of Arminius and Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor, and I should tremble for his belief. Yet why tremble for a
+belief which is the very antipode of faith? Better for such a man to
+precipitate himself on to the utmost goal: for then perhaps he may in
+the repose of intellectual activity feel the nothingness of his prize,
+or the wretchedness of it; and then perhaps the inward yearning after a
+religion may make him ask;--"Have I not mistaken the road at the outset?
+Am I sure that the Reformers, Luther and the rest collectively, were
+fanatics?"
+
+
+Ib. p. 351.
+
+  'Take no care what ye shall eat'. As though that commandment did not
+  hinder the carping and caring for the daily bread.
+
+For 'caring,' read, 'anxiety!' 'Sit tibi curæ, non autem solicitudini,
+panis quotidianus'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 351.
+
+  Even so it was with Ambrose: he wrote indeed well and purely, was more
+  serious in writing than Austin, who was amiable and mild. * * *
+  Fulgentius is the best poet, and far above Horace both with sentences,
+  fair speeches and good actions; he is well worthy to be ranked and
+  numbered with and among the poets.
+
+'Der Teufel'! Surely the epithets should be reversed. Austin's
+mildness--the 'durus pater infantum'! And the 'super'-Horatian
+effulgence of Master Foolgentius! O Swan! thy critical cygnets are but
+goslings.
+
+N.B. I have, however, since I wrote the above, heard Mr. J. Hookham
+Frere speak highly of Fulgentius.
+
+
+Ib. p. 352.
+
+  For the Fathers were but men, and to speak the truth, their reputes
+  and authorities did undervalue and suppress the books and writings of
+  the sacred Apostles of Christ.
+
+We doubtless find in the writings of the Fathers of the second century,
+and still more strongly in those of the third, passages concerning the
+Scriptures that seem to say the same as we Protestants now do. But then
+we find the very same phrases used of writings not Apostolic, or with no
+other difference than what the greater name of the authors would
+naturally produce; just as a Platonist would speak of Speusippus's
+books, were they extant, compared with those of later teachers of
+Platonism;--'He was Plato's nephew-had seen Plato--was his appointed
+successor, &c.' But in inspiration the early Christians, as far as I can
+judge, made no generic difference, let Lardner say what he will. Can he
+disprove that it was declared heretical by the Church in the second
+century to believe the written words of a dead Apostle in opposition to
+the words of a living Bishop, seeing that the same spirit which guided
+the Apostles dwells in and guides the Bishops of the Church? This at
+least is certain, that the later the age of the writer, the stronger the
+expression of comparative superiority of the Scriptures; the earlier, on
+the other hand, the more we hear of the 'Symbolum', the 'Regula Fidei',
+the Creed.
+
+
+Chap. XXXII. p. 362.
+
+  The history of the Prophet Jonas is so great that it is almost
+  incredible; yea, it soundeth more strange than any of the poets'
+  fables, and (said Luther) if it stood not in the Bible, I should take
+  it for a lie.
+
+It is quite wonderful that Luther, who could see so plainly that the
+book of Judith was an allegoric poem, should have been blind to the book
+of Jonas being an apologue, in which Jonah means the Israelitish nation.
+
+
+Ib. p. 364.
+
+  For they entered into the garden about the hour at noon day, and
+  having appetites to eat, she took delight in the apple; then about two
+  of the clock, according to our account, was the fall.
+
+Milton has adopted this notion in the Paradise Lost--not improbably from
+this book.
+
+
+Ib. p. 365.
+
+  David made a Psalm of two and twenty parts, in each of which are eight
+  verses, and yet in all is but one kind of meaning, namely, he will
+  only say, Thy law or word is good.
+
+I have conjectured that the 119th Psalm might have been a form of
+ordination, in which a series of candidates made their prayers and
+profession in the open Temple before they went to the several synagogues
+in the country.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  But (said Luther) I say, he did well and right thereon: for the office
+  of a magistrate is to punish the guilty and wicked malefactors. He
+  made a vow, indeed, not to punish him, but that is to be understood,
+  so long as David lived.
+
+O Luther! Luther! ask your own heart if this is not Jesuit morality.
+
+
+Chap. XXXIII. v. 367.
+
+  I believe (said Luther) the words of our Christian belief were in such
+  sort ordained by the Apostles, who were together, and made this sweet
+  'Symbolum' so briefly and comfortable.
+
+It is difficult not to regret that Luther had so superficial a knowledge
+of Ecclesiastical antiquities: for example, his belief in this fable of
+the Creed having been a 'picnic' contribution of the twelve Apostles,
+each giving a sentence. Whereas nothing is more certain than that it was
+the gradual product of three or four centuries.
+
+
+Chap. XXXIV. p. 369.
+
+  An angel (said Luther) is a spiritual creature created by God without
+  a body for the service of Christendom, especially in the office of the
+  Church.
+
+What did Luther mean by a body? For to me the word seemeth capable of
+two senses, universal and special:--first, a form indicating to A. B. C.
+&c., the existence and finiteness of some one other being
+'demonstrative' as 'hic', and 'disjunctive' as 'hic et non ille'; and in
+this sense God alone can be without body: secondly, that which is not
+merely 'hic distinctive', but 'divisive'; yea, a product divisible from
+the producent as a snake from its skin, a precipitate and death of
+living power; and in this sense the body is proper to mortality, and to
+be denied of spirits made perfect as well as of the spirits that never
+fell from perfection, and perhaps of those who fell below mortality,
+namely, the devils.
+
+But I am inclined to hold that the Devil has no one body, nay, no body
+of his own; but ceaselessly usurps or counterfeits bodies; for he is an
+everlasting liar, yea, the lie which is the colored shadow of the
+substance that intercepts the truth.
+
+
+Ib. p. 370.
+
+  The devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly
+  places, ready to hurt and prejudice people, &c.
+
+  "The angel's like a flea,
+    The devil is a bore;--"
+  No matter for that! quoth S.T.C.
+    I love him the better therefore.
+
+Yes! heroic Swan, I love thee even when thou gabbiest like a goose; for
+thy geese helped to save the Capitol.
+
+
+Ib. p. 371.
+
+  I do verily believe (said Luther) that the day of judgment draweth
+  near, and that the angels prepare themselves for the fight and combat,
+  and that within the space of a few hundred years they will strike down
+  both Turk and Pope into the bottomless pit of hell.
+
+Yea! two or three more such angels as thyself, Martin Luther, and thy
+prediction would be, or perhaps would now have been, accomplished.
+
+
+Chap. XXXV. p. 388.
+
+  Cogitations of the understanding do produce no melancholy, but the
+  cogitations of the will cause sadness; as, when one is grieved at a
+  thing, or when one doth sigh and complain, there are melancholy and
+  sad cogitations, but the understanding is not melancholy.
+
+Even in Luther's lowest imbecilities what gleams of vigorous good sense!
+Had he understood the nature and symptoms of indigestion together with
+the detail of subjective seeing and hearing, and the existence of
+mid-states of the brain between sleeping and waking, Luther would have
+been a greater philosopher; but would he have been so great a hero? I
+doubt it. Praised be God whose mercy is over all his works; who bringeth
+good out of evil, and manifesteth his wisdom even in the follies of his
+servants, his strength in their weakness!
+
+
+Ib. p. 389.
+
+  Whoso prayeth a Psalm shall be made thoroughly warm.
+
+'Expertus credo'.
+
+19th Aug. 1826.
+
+I have learnt to interpret for myself the imprecating verses of the
+Psalms of my inward and spiritual enemies, the old Adam and all his
+corrupt menials; and thus I am no longer, as I used to be, stopped or
+scandalized by such passages as vindictive and anti-Christian.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The Devil (said Luther) oftentimes objected and argued against me the
+  whole cause which, through God's grace, I lead. He objecteth also
+  against Christ. But better it were that the Temple brake in pieces
+  than that Christ should therein remain obscure and hid.
+
+Sublime!
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  In Job are two chapters concerning 'Behemoth' the whale, that by
+  reason of him no man is in safety. * * These are colored words and
+  figures whereby the Devil is signified and showed.
+
+A slight mistake of brother Martin's. The 'Behemoth' of Job is beyond a
+doubt neither whale nor devil, but, I think, the hippopotamus; who is
+indeed as ugly as the devil, and will occasionally play the devil among
+the rice-grounds; but though in this respect a devil of a fellow, yet on
+the whole he is too honest a monster to be a fellow of devils. 'Vindiciæ
+Behemoticæ'.
+
+
+Chap. XXXVI. p. 390.
+
+  'Of Witchcraft'.
+
+It often presses on my mind as a weighty argument in proof of at least a
+negative inspiration, an especial restraining grace, in the composition
+of the Canonical books, that though the writers individually did (the
+greater number at least) most probably believe in the objective reality
+of witchcraft, yet no such direct assertions as these of Luther's, which
+would with the vast majority of Christians have raised it into an
+article of faith, are to be found in either Testament. That the 'Ob' and
+'Oboth' of Moses are no authorities for this absurd superstition, has
+been unanswerably shewn by Webster. [5]
+
+
+Chap. XXXVII. p. 398.
+
+  To conclude, (said Luther), I never yet knew a troubled and perplexed
+  man, that was right in his own wits.
+
+A sound observation of great practical utility. Edward Irving should be
+aware of this in dealing with conscience-troubled (but in fact
+fancy-vexed) women.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  It was not a thorn in the flesh touching the unchaste love he bore
+  towards Tecla, as the Papists dream.
+
+I should like to know how high this strange legend can be traced. The
+other tradition that St. Paul was subject to epileptic fits, has a less
+legendary character. The phrase 'thorn in the flesh' is scarcely
+reconcilable with Luther's hypothesis, otherwise than as doubts of the
+objectivity of his vision, and of his after revelations may have been
+consequences of the disease, whatever that might be.
+
+
+Ib. p. 399.
+
+  Our Lord God doth like a printer, who setteth the letters backwards;
+  we see and feel well his setting, but we shall see the print yonder in
+  the life to come.
+
+A beautiful simile. Add that even in this world the lives, especially
+the autobiographies, of eminent servants of Christ, are like the
+looking-glass or mirror, which, reversing the types, renders them
+legible to us.
+
+
+Ib. p. 403.
+
+  'Indignus sum, sed dignus fui--creari a Deo', &c. Although I am
+  unworthy, yet nevertheless 'I have been' worthy, 'in that I am'
+  created of God, &c.
+
+The translation does not give the true sense of the Latin. It should be
+'was' and 'to be'. The 'dignus fui' has here the sense of 'dignum me
+habuit Deus'. See Herbert's little poem in the Temple:
+
+  Sweetest Saviour, if my soul
+    Were but worth the having,
+  Quickly should I then control
+    Any thought of waving;
+  But when all my care and pains
+    Cannot give the name of gains
+  To thy wretch so full of stains,
+    What delight or hope remains?
+
+
+Ib. p. 404.
+
+  The chiefest physic for that disease (but very hard and difficult it
+  is to be done) is, that they firmly hold such cogitations not to be
+  theirs, but that most sure and certain they come of the Devil.
+
+More and more I understand the immense difference between the
+Faith-article of 'the Devil' ([Greek: tou Ponaeroù]) and the
+superstitious fancy of devils: 'animus objectivus dominationem in'
+[Greek: tòn Eimì] 'affectans'; [Greek: oútos tò méga órganon Diabólou
+hypárchei].
+
+
+Chap. XLIV. p. 431.
+
+  I truly advise all those (said Luther) who earnestly do affect the
+  honor of Christ and the Gospel, that they would be enemies to Erasmus
+  Roterodamus, for he is a devaster of religion. Do but read only his
+  dialogue 'De Peregrinatione', where you will see how he derideth and
+  flouteth the whole religion, and at last concludeth out of single
+  abominations, that he rejecteth religion, &c.
+
+Religion here means the vows and habits of the religious or those bound
+to a particular life;--the monks, friars, nuns, in short, the regulars
+in contradistinction from the laity and the secular Clergy.
+
+
+Ib. p. 432.
+
+  Erasmus can do nothing but cavil and flout, he cannot confute. If
+  (said Luther) I were a Papist, so could I easily overcome and beat
+  him. For although he flouteth the Pope with his ceremonies, yet he
+  neither hath confuted nor overcome him; no enemy is beaten nor
+  overcome with mocking, jeering, and flouting.
+
+Most true; but it is an excellent pioneer and an excellent 'corps de
+reserve', cavalry for pursuit, and for clearing the field of battle, and
+in the first use Luther was greatly obliged to Erasmus. But such utter
+unlikes cannot but end in dislikes, and so it proved between Erasmus and
+Luther. Erasmus, might the Protestants say, wished no good to the Church
+of Rome, and still less to our party: it was with him 'Rot her and Dam
+us'!
+
+
+Chap. XLVIII. p. 442.
+
+  David's example is full of offences, that so holy a man, chosen of
+  God, should fall into such great abominable sins and blasphemies;
+  when as before he was very fortunate and happy, of whom all the
+  bordering kingdoms were afraid, for God was with him.
+
+If any part of the Old Testament be typical, the whole life and
+character of David, from his birth to his death, are eminently so. And
+accordingly the history of David and his Psalms, which form a most
+interesting part of his history, occupies as large a portion of the Old
+Testament as all the others. The type is two-fold-now of the Messiah,
+now of the Church, and of the Church in all its relations, persecuted,
+victorious, backsliding, penitent. N.B. I do not find David charged with
+any vices, though with heavy crimes. So it is with the Church. Vices
+destroy its essence.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The same was a strange kind of offence (said Luther) that the world
+  was offended at him who raised the dead, who made the blind to see,
+  and the deaf to hear, &c.
+
+Our Lord alluded to the verse that immediately follows and completes his
+quotations from Isaiah. [6] I, Jehovah, will come and do this. That he
+implicitly declared himself the Jehovah, the Word,--this was the
+offence.
+
+
+Chap. XLIX. p. 443.
+
+  God wills, may one say, that we should serve him freewillingly, but he
+  that serveth God out of fear of punishment of hell, or out of a hope
+  and love of recompence, the same serveth and honoreth God not freely;
+  therefore such a one serveth God not uprightly nor truly.
+
+  _Answer_. This argument (said Luther) is Stoical, &c.
+
+A truly wise paragraph. Pity it was not expounded. God will accept our
+imperfections, where their face is turned toward him, on the road to the
+glorious liberty of the Gospel.
+
+
+Chap. L. p. 446.
+
+  It is the highest grace and gift of God to have an honest, a
+  God-fearing, housewifely consort, &c. But God thrusteth many into the
+  state of matrimony before they be aware and rightly bethink
+  themselves.
+
+  The state of matrimony (said Luther) is the chiefest state in the
+  world after religion, &c.
+
+Alas! alas! this is the misery of it, that so many wed and so few are
+Christianly married! But even in this the analogy of matrimony to the
+religion of Christ holds good: for even such is the proportion of
+nominal to actual Christians;--all _christened_, how few baptized! But
+in true matrimony it is beautiful to consider, how peculiarly the
+marriage state harmonizes with the doctrine of justification by free
+grace through faith alone. The little quarrels, the imperfections on
+both sides, the occasional frailties, yield to the one thought,--there
+is love at the bottom. If sickness or other sorer calamity visit me, how
+would the love then blaze forth! The faults are there, but they are not
+imprinted. The prickles, the acrid rind, the bitterness or sourness, are
+transformed into the ripe fruit, and the foreknowledge of this gives the
+name and virtue of the ripe fruit to the fruit yet green on the bough.
+
+
+Ib. p. 447.
+
+  The causers and founders of matrimony are chiefly God's commandments,
+  &c. It is a state instituted by God himself, visited by Christ in
+  person, and presented with a glorious present; for God said, 'It is
+  not good that the man should be alone': therefore the wife should be a
+  help to the husband, to the end that human generations may be
+  increased, and children nurtured to God's honour, and to the profit of
+  people and countries; also to keep our bodies in sanctification.
+
+(Add) and in mutual reverence, our spirits in a state of love and
+tenderness; and our imaginations pure and tranquil.
+
+In a word, matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the
+same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human.
+
+
+Ib. p. 450.
+
+  In the synod at Leipzig the lawyers concluded that secret contractors
+  should be punished with banishment and be disinherited. Whereupon
+  (said Luther) I sent them word that I would not allow thereof, it were
+  too gross a proceeding, &c. But nevertheless I hold it fitting, that
+  those which in such sort do secretly contract themselves, ought
+  sharply to be reproved, yea, also in some measure severely punished.
+
+What a sweet union of prudence and kind nature! Scold them sharply, and
+perhaps let them smart a while for their indiscretion and disobedience;
+and then kiss and make it up, remembering that young folks will be young
+folks, and that love has its own law and logic.
+
+
+Chap. LIX. p. 481.
+
+  The presumption and boldness of the sophists and School-divines is a
+  very ungodly thing, which some of the Fathers also approved of and
+  extolled; namely of spiritual significations in the Holy Scripture,
+  whereby she is pitifully tattered and torn in pieces. It is an apish
+  work in such sort to juggle with Holy Scripture: it is no otherwise
+  than if I should discourse of physic in this manner: the fever is a
+  sickness, rhubarb is the physic. The fever signified! the sins
+ --rhubarb is Jesus Christ, &c.
+
+  Who seeth not here (said Luther) that such significations are mere
+  juggling tricks? _Even so_ and after the same manner are they deceived
+  that say, Children ought to be baptized again, because they had not
+  faith.
+
+For the life of me, I cannot find the 'even so' in this sentence. The
+watchman cries, 'half-past three o'clock.' Even so, and after the same
+manner, the great Cham of Tartary has a carbuncle on his nose.
+
+
+Chap. LX. p. 483.
+
+  George in the Greek tongue, is called a 'builder', that buildeth
+  countries and people with justice and righteousness, &c.
+
+A mistake for a tiller or boor, from 'Bauer', 'bauen'. The latter hath
+two senses, to build and to bring into cultivation.
+
+
+Chap. LXX. p. 503.
+
+  I am now advertised (said Luther) that a new astrologer is risen, who
+  presumeth to prove that the earth moveth and goeth about, not the
+  firmament, the sun and moon, nor the stars; like as when one who
+  sitteth in a coach or in a ship and is moved, thinketh he sitteth
+  still and resteth, but the earth and the trees go, run, and move
+  themselves. Therefore thus it goeth, when we give up ourselves to our
+  own foolish fancies and conceits. This fool will turn the whole art of
+  astronomy upside-down, but the Scripture sheweth and teacheth him
+  another lesson, when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not
+  the earth.
+
+There is a similar, but still more intolerant and contemptuous anathema
+of the Copernican system in Sir Thomas Brown, almost two centuries later
+than Luther.
+
+Though the problem is of no difficult solution for reflecting minds, yet
+for the reading many it would be a serviceable work, to bring together
+and exemplify the causes of the extreme and universal credulity that
+characterizes sundry periods of history (for example, from A.D. 1400 to
+A.D. 1650): and credulity involves lying and delusion--for by a seeming
+paradox liars are always credulous, though credulous persons are not
+always liars; although they most often are.
+
+It would be worth while to make a collection of the judgments of eminent
+men in their generation respecting the Copernican or Pythagorean scheme.
+One writer (I forget the name) inveighs against it as Popery, and a
+Popish stratagem to reconcile the minds of men to Transubstantiation and
+the Mass. For if we may contradict the evidence of our senses in a
+matter of natural philosophy, 'a fortiori', or much more, may we be
+expected to do so in a matter of faith.
+
+In my Noetic, or Doctrine and Discipline of Ideas = 'logice, Organon'--I
+purpose to select some four, five or more instances of the sad effects
+of the absence of ideas in the use of words and in the understanding of
+truths, in the different departments of life; for example, the word
+'body', in connection with resurrection-men, &c.--and the last
+instances, will (please God!) be the sad effects on the whole system of
+Christian divinity. I must remember Asgill's book. [7]
+
+Religion necessarily, as to its main and proper doctrines, consists of
+ideas, that is, spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned,
+and to the expression of which words are necessarily inadequate, and
+must be used by accommodation. Hence the absolute indispensability of a
+Christian life, with its conflicts and inward experiences, which alone
+can make a man to answer to an opponent, who charges one doctrine as
+contradictory to another,--"Yes! it is a contradiction in terms; but
+nevertheless so it is, and both are true, nay, parts of the same
+truth."--But alas! besides other evils there is this,--that the Gospel
+is preached in fragments, and what the hearer can recollect of the sum
+total of these is to be his Christian knowledge and belief. This is a
+grievous error. First, labour to enlighten the hearer as to the essence
+of the Christian dispensation, the grounding and pervading idea, and
+then set it forth in its manifold perspective, its various stages and
+modes of manifestation. In this as in almost all other qualities of a
+preacher of Christ, Luther after Paul and John is the great master. None
+saw more clearly than he, that the same proposition, which, addressed to
+a Christian in his first awakening out of the death of sin was a most
+wholesome, nay, a necessary, truth, would be a most condemnable
+Antinomian falsehood, if addressed to a secure Christian boasting and
+trusting in 'his' faith--yes, in 'his' own faith, instead of the faith
+of Christ communicated to him.
+
+I cannot utter how dear and precious to me are the contents of pages
+197-199, to line 17, of this work, more particularly the section headed:
+
+  How we ought to carry ourselves towards the Law's accusations.
+
+Add to these the last two sections of p. 201. [8] the last touching St.
+Austin's opinion [9] especially. Likewise, the first half of p. 202.
+[10] But indeed the whole of the 12th chapter 'Of the Law and the
+Gospel' is of inestimable value to a serious and earnest minister of the
+Gospel. Here he may learn both the orthodox faith, and a holy prudence
+in the time and manner of preaching the same.
+
+July, 1829.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Doctoris Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia:' or Dr.
+Martin Luther's Divine Discourses at his Table, &c. Collected first
+together by Dr. Antonius Lauterbach, and afterwards disposed into
+certain common-places by John Aurifaber, Doctor in Divinity. Translated
+by Capt. Henry Bell. 'Folio' London, 1652.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2:  N. B. I should not have written the above note in my
+present state of light;--not that I find it false, but that it may have
+the effect of falsehood by not going deep enough. July, 1829.]
+
+
+[Footnote 3: Charles Lamb.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "Out of the number of 400, there were but 80 Arians at the utmost. The
+  other 320 and more were really orthodox men, induced by artifices to
+  subscribe a Creed which they understood in a good sense, but which,
+  being worded in general terms, was capable of being perverted to a bad
+  one."
+
+'Waterland, Vindication', &c., c. vi.--'Ed'.]
+
+
+[Footnote 5: The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, &c. London. 'folio'.
+1677. 'Ed'.]
+
+
+[Footnote 6: Isaiah xxxv. 4. lxi 1. Ed. Luke iv. 18, 19.]
+
+
+[Footnote 7:
+
+  "An argument proving that, according to the covenant of eternal life,
+  revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without
+  passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself
+  could not be thus translated, till he had passed through death."
+
+See 'Table Talk. 2nd Edit'. p. 127. 'Ed'.]
+
+
+[Footnote 8: We must preach the Law (said Luther) for the sakes of the
+evil and wicked, &c.]
+
+
+[Footnote 9: The opinion of St. Austin is (said Luther) that the Law
+which through human strength, natural understanding and wisdom is
+fulfilled, justifieth not, &c.]
+
+
+[Footnote 10: Whether we should preach only of God's grace and mercy or
+not. From "Philip Melancthon demanded of Luther"--to "yet we must press
+through, and not suffer ourselves to recoil."]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON THE LIFE OF ST. TERESA. 1812. [1]
+
+Pref. Part I. p. 51. Letter of Father Avila to Mother Teresa de Jesu.
+
+  Persons ought to beseech our Lord not to conduct them by the way of
+  seeing; but that the happy sight of him and of his saints be reserved
+  for heaven; and that, here he would conduct them in the plain, beaten
+  road, &c. * * But if, doing all this, the visions continue, and the
+  soul reaps profit thereby, &c.
+
+In what other language could a young woman check while she soothed her
+espoused lover, in his too eager demonstrations of his passion? And yet
+the art of the Roman priests,--to keep up the delusion as serviceable,
+yet keep off those forms of it most liable to detection, by medical
+commentary!
+
+
+Life, Part I. Chap. IV. p. 15.
+
+  But our Lord began to regale me so much by this way, that he
+  vouchsafed me the favor to give me quiet prayer; and sometimes it came
+  so far as to arrive at union; though I understood neither the one nor
+  the other, nor how much they both deserve to be prized. But I believe
+  it would have been a great deal of happiness for me to have understood
+  them. True it is, that this union rested with me for so short a time,
+  that perhaps it might arrive to be but as of an 'Ave Maria'; yet I
+  remained with so very great effects thereof, that with not being then
+  so much as twenty years old, methought I found the whole world under
+  my feet.
+
+  Dreams, the soul herself forsaking;
+  Fearful raptures; childlike mirth.
+  Silent adorations, making
+  A blessed shadow of this earth!
+
+
+Ib. Chap. V. p. 24.
+
+  I received also the blessed Sacrament with many tears; though yet, in
+  my opinion, they were not shed with that sense and grief, for only my
+  having offended God, which might have served to save my soul; if the
+  error into which I was brought by them who told me that some things
+  were not mortal sins, (which afterward I saw plainly that they were)
+  might not somewhat bestead me. *** Methinks, that without doubt my
+  soul might have run a hazard of not being saved, if I had died then.
+
+Can we wonder that some poor hypochondriasts and epileptics have
+believed themselves possessed by, or rather to be the Devil himself, and
+so spoke in this imagined character, when this poor afflicted spotless
+innocent could be so pierced through with fanatic pre-conceptions, as to
+talk in this manner of her mortal sins, and their probable eternal
+punishment;--and this too, under the most fervent sense of God's love
+and mercy!
+
+
+Ib. p. 43.
+
+  True it is, that I am both the most weak, and the most wicked of any
+  living.
+
+
+What is the meaning of these words, that occur so often in the works of
+great saints? Do they believe them literally? Or is it a specific
+suspension of the comparing power and the memory, vouchsafed them as a
+gift of grace?--a gift of telling a lie without breach of veracity--a
+gift of humility indemnifying pride.
+
+
+Ib. Chap. VIII. p. 44.
+
+  I have not without cause been considering and reflecting upon this
+  life of mine so long, for I discern well enough that nobody will have
+  gust to look upon a thing so very wicked.
+
+Again! Can this first sentence be other than madness or a lie? For
+observe, the question is not, whether Teresa was or was not positively
+very wicked; but whether according to her own scale of virtue she was
+most and very wicked comparatively. See post Chap. X. p. 57-8.
+
+That relatively to the command 'Be ye perfect even as your Father in
+Heaven is perfect', and before the eye of his own pure reason, the best
+of men may deem himself mere folly and imperfection, I can easily
+conceive; but this is not the case in question. It is here a comparison
+of one man with all others of whom he has known or heard;--'ergo', a
+matter of experience; and in this sense it is impossible, without loss
+of memory and judgment on the one hand, or of veracity and simplicity on
+the other. Besides, of what use is it? To draw off our conscience from
+the relation between ourselves and the perfect ideal appointed for our
+imitation, to the vain comparison of one individual self with other men!
+Will their sins lessen mine, though they were greater? Does not every
+man stand or fall to his own Maker according to his own being?
+
+
+Ib. p. 45.
+
+  I see not what one thing there is of so many as are to be found in the
+  whole world, wherein there is need of a greater courage than to treat
+  of committing treason against a king, and to know that he knows it
+  well, and yet never to go out of his presence. For howsoever it be
+  very true that we are always in the presence of God; yet methinks that
+  they who converse with him in prayer are in his presence after a more
+  particular manner; for they are seeing then that he sees them; whereas
+  others may, perhaps, remain some days in his presence, yet without
+  remembering that he looks upon them.
+
+A very pretty and sweet remark: truth in new feminine beauty!
+
+'In fine'.
+
+How incomparably educated was Teresa for a mystic saint, a mother of
+transports and fusions of spirit!
+
+1. A woman;
+
+2. Of rank, and reared delicately;
+
+3. A Spanish lady;
+
+4. With very pious parents and sisters;
+
+5. Accustomed in early childhood to read "with most believing heart" all
+the legends of saints, martyrs, Spanish martyrs, who fought against the
+Moors;
+
+6. In the habit of privately (without the knowledge of the superstitious
+Father) reading books of chivalry to her mother, and then all night to
+herself.
+
+7. Then her Spanish sweet-hearting, doubtless in the true Oroondates
+style--and with perfect innocence, as far as appears; and this giving of
+audience to a dying swain through a grated window, on having received a
+lover's messages of flames and despair, with her aversion at fifteen or
+sixteen years of age to shut herself up for ever in a strict nunnery,
+appear to have been those mortal sins, of which she accuses herself,
+added, perhaps to a few warm fancies of earthly love;
+
+8. A frame of exquisite sensibility by nature, rendered more so by a
+burning fever, which no doubt had some effect upon her brain, as she was
+from that time subject to frequent fainting fits and 'deliquia':
+
+9. Frightened at her Uncle's, by reading to him Dante's books of Hell
+and Judgment, she confesses that she at length resolved on nunhood
+because she thought it could not be much worse than Purgatory--and that
+purgatory here was a cheap expiation for Hell for ever;
+
+10. Combine these (and I have proceeded no further than the eleventh
+page of her life) and think, how impossible it was, but that such a
+creature, so innocent, and of an imagination so heated, and so well
+peopled should often mistake the first not painful, and in such a frame,
+often pleasurable approaches to 'deliquium' for divine raptures; and
+join the instincts of nature acting in the body of a mind unconscious of
+them, in the keenly sensitive body of a mind so loving and so innocent,
+and what remains to be solved which the stupidity of most and the
+roguery of a few would not simply explain?
+
+11. One source it is almost criminal to have forgotten, and which p. 12.
+of the first Part brought back to my recollection; I mean, the
+effects--so super-sensual that they may easily and most venially pass
+for supernatural, so very glorious to human nature that, though in truth
+they are humanity itself in the contradistinguishing sense of that awful
+word, it is yet no wonder that, conscious of the sore weaknesses united
+in one person with this one nobler nature we attribute them to a
+divinity out of us, (a mistake of the sensuous imagination in its
+misapplication of space and place, rather than a misnomer of the thing
+itself, for it is verily [Greek: ho theòs en haemin ho oikeios theós],)
+the effects, I mean, of the moral force after conquest, the state of the
+whole being after the victorious struggle, in which the will has
+preserved its perfect freedom by a vehement energy of perfect obedience
+to the pure or practical reason, or conscience. Thence flows in upon and
+fills the soul 'that peace which passeth understanding', a state
+affronted and degraded by the name of pleasure, injured and
+mis-represented even by that of happiness, the very corner stone of that
+morality which cannot even in thought be distinguished from religion,
+and which seems to mean religion as long as the instinctive craving, dim
+and dark though it may be, of the moral sense after this unknown state
+(known only by the bitterness where it is not) shall remain in human
+nature! Under all forms of positive or philosophic religion, it has
+developed itself, too glorious an attribute of man to be confined to any
+name or sect; but which, it is but truth and historical fact to say, is
+more especially fostered and favoured by Christianity; and its frequent
+appearance even under the most selfish and unchristian forms of
+Christianity is a stronger evidence of the divinity of that religion,
+than all the miracles of Brahma and Veeshnou could afford, even though
+they were supported with tenfold the judicial evidence of the Gospel
+miracles. [2]
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The works of the Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus Foundress
+of the Reformation of the Discalced Carmelites. Divided into two parts.
+Translated into English. MDCLXXV. Ed.]
+
+
+
+[Footnote 2: London 1685.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON BURNET'S LIFE OF BISHOP BEDELL. [1]
+
+1810.
+
+
+P. 12.-14.
+
+  Here I must add a passage, concerning which I am in doubt whether it
+  reflected more on the sincerity, or on the understanding of the
+  English Ambassador. The breach between the Pope and the Republic was
+  brought very near a crisis, &c.
+
+These pages contain a weak and unhandsome attack on Wotton, who
+doubtless had discovered that the presentation of the Premonition
+previously to the reconciliation as publicly completed, but after it had
+been privately agreed on, between the Court of Rome and the Senate of
+Venice, would embarrass the latter: whereas, delivered as it was, it
+shewed the King's and his minister's zeal for Protestantism, and yet
+supplied the Venetians with an answer not disrespectful to the king.
+Besides, what is there in Wotton's whole life (a man so disinterested,
+and who retired from all his embassies so poor) to justify the remotest
+suspicion of his insincerity? What can this word mean less or other than
+that Sir H. W. was either a crypt-Papist, or had received a bribe from
+the Romish party? Horrid accusations!--Burnet was notoriously rash and
+credulous; but I remember no other instance in which his zeal for the
+Reformation joined with his credulity has misled him into so gross a
+calumny. It is not to be believed, that Bedell gave any authority to
+such an aspersion of his old and faithful friend and patron, further
+than that he had related the fact, and that he and the minister differed
+in opinion as to the prudence of the measure recommended. How laxly too
+the story is narrated! The exact date of the recommendation by Father
+Paul and the divines should have been given;--then the date of the
+public annunciation of the reconciliation between the Pope and Venetian
+Republic; and lastly the day on which Wotton did present the book;--for
+even this Burnet leaves uncertain.
+
+
+P. 26.
+
+  It is true he never returned and changed his religion himself, but his
+  son came from Spain into Ireland, when Bedell was promoted to the
+  Bishopric of Kilmore there, and told him, that his father commanded
+  him to thank him for the pains he was at in writing it. He said, it
+  was almost always lying open before him, and that he had heard him
+  say, "He was resolved to save one." And it seems he instructed his son
+  in the true religion, for he declared himself a Protestant on his
+  coming over.
+
+Southey has given me a bad character of this son of the unhappy convert
+to the Romish Church. He became, it seems, a spy on the Roman Catholics,
+availing himself of his father's character among them, a crime which
+would indeed render his testimony null and more than null; it would be a
+presumption of the contrary. It is clear from his letters to Bedell that
+the convert was a very weak man. I owe to him, however, a complete
+confirmation of my old persuasion concerning Bishop Hall, whom from my
+first perusal of his works I have always considered as one of the blots
+(alas! there are too many) of the biography of the Church of England; a
+self-conceited, coarse-minded, persecuting, vulgar priest, and (by way
+of 'anti-climax') one of the first corrupters of and epigrammatizers of
+our English prose style. It is not true, that Sir Thomas Brown was the
+prototype of Dr. Johnson, who imitated him only as far as Sir T. B.
+resembles the majority of his predecessors; that is, in the pedantic
+preference of Latin derivations to Saxon words of the very same force.
+In the balance and construction of his periods Dr. Johnson has followed
+Hall, as any intelligent reader will discover by an attentive comparison.
+
+
+P. 158.
+
+  Yea, will some man say, "But that which marreth all is the opinion of
+  merit and satisfaction." Indeed that is the School doctrine, but the
+  conscience enlightened to know itself, will easily act that part of
+  the Publican, 'who smote his breast, and said, God be merciful to me a
+  sinner'.
+
+Alas! so far from this being the case with ninety nine out of one
+hundred in Spain, Italy, Sicily, and Roman Catholic Germany, it is the
+Gospel tenets that are the true School doctrine, that is confined to
+books and closets of the learned among them.
+
+
+P. 161.
+
+  And the like may be conceived here, since, especially, the idolatry
+  practised under the obedience of mystical Babylon is rather in false
+  and will-worship of the true God, and rather commended as profitable
+  than enjoined as absolutely necessary, and the corruptions there
+  maintained are rather in a superfluous addition than retraction in any
+  thing necessary to salvation.
+
+This good man's charity jarring with his love and tender recollections
+of Father Paul, Fulgentio, and the Venetian divines, has led him to a
+far, far too palliative statement of Roman idolatry. Not what the Pope
+has yet ventured to thunder forth from his Anti-Sinai, but what he and
+his satellites, the Regulars, enforce to the preclusion of all true
+worship, in the actual practice, life-long, of an immense majority in
+Spain, Italy, Bavaria, Austria, &c. &c.--this must determine the point.
+What they are themselves,--not what they would persuade Protestants is
+their essentials or Faith,--this is the main thing.
+
+
+P. 164.
+
+  I answer, under correction of better judgments, they have the ministry
+  of reconciliation by the communion which is given at their Ordination,
+  being the same which our Saviour left in his Church:--'whose sins ye
+  remit, they are remitted, whose sins ye retain, they are retained'.
+
+Could Bishop Bedell believe that the mere will of a priest could have
+any effect on the everlasting weal or woe of a Christian! Even to the
+immediate disciples and Apostles could the text (if indeed it have
+reference to sins in our sense at all,) mean more than this,--Whenever
+you discover, by the spirit of knowledge which I will send unto you,
+repentance and faith, you shall declare remission of sins; and the sins
+shall be remitted;-and where the contrary exists, your declaration of
+exclusion from bliss shall be fulfilled? Did Christ say, that true
+repentance and actual faith would not save a soul, unless the priest's
+verbal remission was superadded?
+
+
+'In fine.'
+
+If it were in my power I would have this book printed in a convenient
+form, and distributed through every house, at least, through every
+village and parish throughout the kingdom. A volume of thought and of
+moral feelings, the offspring of thought, crowd upon me, as I review the
+different parts of this admirable man's life and creed. Only compare his
+conduct to James Wadsworth (probably some ancestral relative of my
+honoured friend, William Wordsworth: for the same name in Yorkshire,
+from whence his father came, is pronounced Wadsworth) with that of the
+far, far too highly rated, Bishop Hall; his letter to Hall tenderly
+blaming his (Hall's) bitterness to an old friend mistaken, and then his
+letter to that friend defending Hall! What a picture of goodness! I
+confess, in all Ecclesiastical History I have read of no man so
+spotless, though of hundreds in which the biographers have painted them
+as masters of perfection: but the moral tact soon feels the truth.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: In one of the volumes of this work used by the Editor for
+ascertaining the references, the following note is written by a former
+owner.
+
+  "October 12, 1788. Begged of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to take my
+  salvation on herself, and obtain it for Saint Hyacinthe's sake; to
+  whom she has promised to grant any thing, or never to refuse any thing
+  begged for his sake."
+
+It would be very interesting to know how far the feeling expressed in
+this artless effusion coexisted with a faith in the atonement and
+mediation of the one Lord Jesus Christ.--Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON BAXTER'S LIFE OF HIMSELF.
+
+1820. [1]
+
+Among the grounds for recommending the perusal of our elder writers,
+Hooker--Taylor--Baxter--in short almost any of the folios composed from
+Edward VI. to Charles II. I note:
+
+1. The overcoming the habit of deriving your whole pleasure passively
+from the book itself, which can only be effected by excitement of
+curiosity or of some passion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read
+paragraph by paragraph, and in a short time you will derive your
+pleasure, an ample portion of it, at least, from the activity of your
+own mind. All else is picture sunshine.
+
+2. The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when you have on the
+same table before you the works of a Hammond and a Baxter, and reflect
+how many and momentous their points of agreement, how few and almost
+childish the differences, which estranged and irritated these good men.
+Let us but imagine what their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect
+of their earthly frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as
+they now feel, not as they once felt? So will it be with the disputes
+between good men of the present day; and if you have no other reason to
+doubt your opponent's goodness than the point in dispute, think of
+Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at
+all.
+
+3. It will secure you from the idolatry of the present times and
+fashions, and create the noblest kind of imaginative power in your soul,
+that of living in past ages; wholly devoid of which power, a man can
+neither anticipate the future, nor even live a truly human life, a life
+of reason in the present.
+
+4. In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that
+in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the 'medio
+tutissimus ibis' is inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and all
+the attempts, as those of Baxter, though no more required than "I
+believe in God through Christ," prove only the mildness of the
+proposer's temper, but as a rule would be equal to nothing, at least
+exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter of
+religion to declare themselves Atheists, or else be just as fruitful a
+rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of articles that could be
+framed by a Spanish Inquisition.
+
+For to 'believe,' must mean to believe aright--and 'God' must mean the
+true God--and 'Christ' the Christ in the sense and with the attributes
+understood by Christians who are truly Christians. An established Church
+with a Liturgy is a sufficient solution of the problem 'de jure
+magistratus'. Articles of faith are in this point of view superfluous;
+for is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name
+to doctrines which yet in the more awful duty of prayer and profession
+he dares affirm before his Maker! They are therefore in this sense
+merely superfluous;--not worth re-enacting, had they ever been done away
+with;--not worth removing now that they exist.
+
+5. The characteristic contradistinction between the speculative
+reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is this:
+--the former cultivated metaphysics, without, or neglecting, empirical
+psychology the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect
+and contempt of metaphysics. Both therefore are almost equi-distant from
+pure philosophy. Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies
+to prayer, and the like, in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also
+Luther's Table Talk.
+
+6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for
+medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I.
+was almost incredibly low.
+
+The saddest error of the theologians of this age is, [Greek: hos émoige
+dokei], the disposition to urge the histories of the miraculous actions
+and incidents, in and by which Christ attested his Messiahship to the
+Jewish eye-witnesses, in fulfilment of prophecies, which the Jewish
+Church had previously understood and interpreted as marks of the
+Messiah, before they have shewn what and how excellent the religion
+itself is including the miracles as for us an harmonious part of the
+internal or self-evidence of the religion. Alas! and even when our
+divines do proceed to the religion itself as to a something which no man
+could be expected to receive except by a compulsion of the senses, which
+by force of logic only is propagated from the eye witnesses to the
+readers of the narratives in 1820--(which logic, namely, that the
+evidence of a miracle is not diminished by lapse of ages, though this
+includes loss of documents and the like; which logic, I say, whether it
+be legitimate or not, God forbid that the truth of Christianity should
+depend on the decision!)--even when our divines do proceed to the
+religion itself, on what do they chiefly dwell? On the doctrines
+peculiar to the religion? No! these on the contrary are either evaded or
+explained away into metaphors, or resigned in despair to the next world
+where faith is to be swallowed up in certainty.
+
+But the worst product of this epidemic error is, the fashion of either
+denying or undervaluing the evidence of a future state and the survival
+of individual consciousness, derived from the conscience, and the holy
+instinct of the whole human race. Dreadful is this:--for the main force
+of the reasoning by which this scepticism is vindicated consists in
+reducing all legitimate conviction to objective proof: whereas in the
+very essence of religion and even of morality the evidence, and the
+preparation for its reception, must be subjective;--'Blessed are they
+that have not seen and yet believe'. And dreadful it appears to me
+especially, who in the impossibility of not looking forward to
+consciousness after the dissolution of the body ('corpus phoenomenon',)
+have through life found it (next to divine grace.) the strongest and
+indeed only efficient support against the still recurring temptation of
+adopting, nay, wishing the truth of Spinoza's notion, that the survival
+of consciousness is the highest prize and consequence of the highest
+virtue, and that of all below this mark the lot after death is
+self-oblivion and the cessation of individual being. Indeed, how a
+Separatist or one of any other sect of Calvinists, who confines
+Redemption to the comparatively small number of the elect, can reject
+this opinion, and yet not run mad at the horrid thought of an
+innumerable multitude of imperishable self-conscious spirits
+everlastingly excluded from God, is to me inconceivable.
+
+Deeply am I persuaded of Luther's position, that no man can worthily
+estimate, or feel in the depth of his being, the Incarnation and
+Crucifixion of the Son of God who is a stranger to the terror of
+immortality as ingenerate in man, while it is yet unquelled by the faith
+in God as the Almighty Father.
+
+
+Book I. Part I. p. 2.
+
+  But though my conscience would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers
+  sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience; which
+  for the warning of others I will confess here to my shame.
+
+  1. I was much addicted when I feared correction to lie, that I might
+  scape.
+
+  2. I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples
+  and pears, &c.
+
+  3. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil,
+  I have oft gone into other men's orchards, and stolen their fruit,
+  when I had enough at home, &c.
+
+There is a childlike simplicity in this account of his sins of his
+childhood which is very pleasing.
+
+
+Ib. p. 5, 6.
+
+  And the use that God made of books, above ministers, to the benefit of
+  my soul made me somewhat excessively in love with good books; so that
+  I thought I had never enough, but scraped up as great a treasure of
+  them as I could. * * * It made the world seem to me as a carcase that
+  had neither life nor loveliness; and it destroyed those ambitious
+  desires after literate fame which were the sin of my childhood. * * *
+  And for the mathematics, I was an utter stranger to them, and never
+  could find in my heart to divert any studies that way. But in order to
+  the knowledge of divinity, my inclination was most to logic and
+  metaphysics, with that part of physics which treateth of the soul,
+  contenting myself at first with a slighter study of the rest: and
+  there had my labour and delight.
+
+What a picture of myself!
+
+
+Ib. p. 22.
+
+  In the storm of this temptation I questioned awhile whether I were
+  indeed a Christian or an Infidel, and whether faith could consist with
+  such doubts as I was conscious of.
+
+One of the instances of the evils arising from the equivoque between
+faith and intellectual satisfaction or insight. The root of faith is in
+the will. Faith is an oak that may be a pollard, and yet live.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The being and attributes of God were so clear to me, that he was to my
+  intellect what the sun is to my eye, by which I see itself and all
+  things.
+
+Even so with me;--but, whether God was existentially as well as
+essentially intelligent, this was for a long time a sore combat between
+the speculative and the moral man.
+
+
+Ib. p. 23.
+
+  Mere Deism, which is the most plausible competitor with Christianity,
+  is so turned out of almost all the whole world, as if Nature made its
+  own confession, that without a Mediator it cannot come to God.
+
+Excellent.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  All these assistances were at hand before I came to the immediate
+  evidences of credibility in the sacred oracles themselves.
+
+This is as it should be; that is, the evidence 'a priori', securing the
+rational probability; and then the historical proofs of its reality.
+Pity that Baxter's chapters in 'The Saints' Rest' should have been one
+and the earliest occasion of the inversion of this process, the fruit of
+which is the Grotio-Paleyan religion, or 'minimum' of faith; the maxim
+being, 'quanto minus tanto melius'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 24.
+
+  And once all the ignorant rout were raging mad against me for
+  preaching the doctrine of Original Sin to them, and telling them that
+  infants, before regeneration, had so much guilt and corruption as made
+  them loathsome in the eyes of God.
+
+No wonder;--because the babe would perish without the mother's milk, is
+it therefore loathsome to the mother? Surely the little ones that Christ
+embraced had not been baptized. And yet 'of such is the Kingdom of
+Heaven'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 25.
+
+  Some thought that the King should not at all be displeased and
+  provoked, and that they were not bound to do any other justice, or
+  attempt any other reformation but what they could procure the King to
+  be willing to. And these said, when you have displeased and provoked
+  him to the utmost, he will be your King still. * * * The more you
+  offend him, the less you can trust him; and when mutual confidence is
+  gone, a war is beginning. * * * And if you conquer him, what the
+  better are you? He will still be King. You can but force him to an
+  agreement; and how quickly will he have power and advantage to violate
+  that which he is forced to, and to be avenged on you all for the
+  displeasure you have done him! He is ignorant of the advantages of a
+  King that cannot foresee this.
+
+This paragraph goes to make out a case in justification of the Regicides
+which Baxter would have found it difficult to answer. Certainly a more
+complete exposure of the inconsistency of Baxter's own party cannot be.
+For observe, that in case of an agreement with Charles all those
+classes, which afterwards formed the main strength of the Parliament and
+ultimately decided the contest in its favour, would have been
+politically inert, with little influence and no actual power,--I mean
+the Yeomanry, and the Citizens of London: while a vast majority of the
+Nobles and landed Gentry, who sooner or later must have become the
+majority in Parliament, went over to the King at once. Add to these the
+whole systematized force of the High Church Clergy and all the rude
+ignorant vulgar in high and low life, who detested every attempt at
+moral reform,--and it is obvious that the King could not want
+opportunities to retract and undo all that he had conceded under
+compulsion. But that neither the will was wanting, nor his conscience at
+all in the way, his own advocate Clarendon and others have supplied
+damning proofs.
+
+
+Ib. p. 27.
+
+  And though Parliaments may draw up Bills for repealing laws, yet hath
+  the King his negative voice, and without his consent they cannot do
+  it; which though they acknowledge, yet did they too easily admit of
+  petitions against the Episcopacy and Liturgy, and connived at all the
+  clamors and papers which were against them.
+
+How so? If they admitted the King's right to deny, they must admit the
+subject's right to entreat.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Had they endeavoured the ejection of lay-chancellors, and the reducing
+  of the dioceses to a narrower compass, or the setting up of a
+  subordinate discipline, and only the correcting and reforming of the
+  Liturgy, perhaps it might have been borne more patiently.
+
+Did Baxter find it so himself--and when too he had the formal and
+recorded promise of Charles II. for it?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  But when the same men (Ussher, Williams, Morton, &c.) saw that greater
+  things were aimed at, and episcopacy itself in danger, or _their
+  grandeur and riches at least_, most of them turned against the
+  Parliament.
+
+This, and in this place, is unworthy of Baxter. Even he, good man, could
+not wholly escape the jaundice of party.
+
+
+Ib. p. 34.
+
+  They said to this;--that as all the courts of justice do execute their
+  sentences in the King's name, and this by his own law, and therefore
+  by his authority, so much more might his Parliament do.
+
+A very sound argument is here disguised in a false analogy, an
+inapplicable precedent, and a sophistical form. Courts of justice
+administer the total of the supreme power retrospectively, involved in
+the name of the most dignified part. But here a part, as a part, acts as
+the whole, where the whole is absolutely requisite,--that is, in passing
+laws; and again as B. and C. usurp a power belonging to A. by the
+determination of A. B. and C. The only valid argument is, that Charles
+had by acts of his own ceased to be a lawful King.
+
+
+Ib. p. 40.
+
+  And that the authority and person of the King were inviolable, out of
+  the reach of just accusation, judgment, or execution by law; as having
+  no superior, and so no judge.
+
+But according to Grotius, a king waging war against the lawful
+copartners of the 'summa potestas' ceases to be their king, and if
+conquered forfeits to them his former share. And surely if Charles had
+been victor, he would have taken the Parliament's share to himself. If
+it had been the Parliament, and not a mere faction with the army, that
+tried and beheaded Charles, I do not see how any one could doubt the
+lawfulness of the act, except upon very technical grounds.
+
+
+Ib. p. 41.
+
+  For if once legislation, the chief act of government, be denied to any
+  part of government at all, and affirmed to belong to the people as
+  such, who are no governors, all government will hereby be overthrown.
+
+Here Baxter falls short of the subject, and does not see the full
+consequents of his own prior, most judicious, positions. Legislation in
+its high and most proper sense belongs to God only. A people declares
+that such and such they hold to be laws, that is, God's will.
+
+
+Ib. p. 47.
+
+  In Cornwall Sir Richard Grenvill, having taken many soldiers of the
+  Earl of Essex's army, sentenced about a dozen to be hanged. When they
+  had hanged two or three, the rope broke which should have hanged the
+  next. And they sent for new ropes so oft to hang him, and all of them
+  still broke, that they durst go no further, but saved all the rest.
+
+The soldiers, doubtless, contrived this from the aversion natural to
+Englishmen of killing an enemy in cold blood; and because they foresaw
+that there would be Tit for Tat.
+
+
+Ib. p. 59.
+
+It is easy to see from Baxter's own account, that his party ruined their
+own cause and that of the kingdom by their tenets concerning the right
+and duty of the civil magistrate to use the sword against such as were
+not of the same religion with themselves.
+
+
+Ib. p. 62.
+
+  They seem not to me to have answered satisfactorily to the main
+  argument fetched from the Apostle's own government, with which Saravia
+  had inclined me to some Episcopacy before: though miracles and
+  infallibility were Apostolical temporary privileges, yet Church
+  government is an ordinary thing to be continued. And therefore as the
+  Apostles had successors as they were preachers, I see not but that
+  they must have successors as Church governors.
+
+Was not Peter's sentence against Ananias an act of Church government?
+Therefore though Church government is an ordinary thing in some form or
+other, it does not follow that one particular form is an ordinary thing.
+For the time being the Apostles, as heads of the Church, did what they
+thought best; but whatever was binding on the Church universal and in
+all times they delivered as commands from Christ. Now no other command
+was delivered but that all things should conduce to order and
+edification.
+
+
+Ib. p. 66.
+
+  And therefore how they could refuse to receive the King, till he
+  consented to take the Covenant, I know not, unless the taking of the
+  Covenant had been a condition on which he was to receive his crown by
+  the laws or fundamental constitutions of the kingdom, which none
+  pretendeth. Nor know I by what power they can add anything to the
+  Coronation Oath or Covenant, which by his ancestors was to be taken,
+  without his own consent.
+
+And pray, how and by whom were the Coronation Oaths first imposed? The
+Scottish nation in 1650 had the same right to make a bargain with the
+claimant of their throne as their ancestors had. It is strange that
+Baxter should not have seen that his objections would apply to our
+'Magna Charta'. So he talks of the "fundamental constitutions," just as
+if these had been aboriginal or rather 'sans' origin, and not as indeed
+they were extorted and bargained for by the people. But throughout it is
+plain that Baxter repeated, but never appropriated, the distinction
+between the King as the executive power, and as the individual
+functionary. What obligation lay on the Scottish Parliament and Church
+to consult the man Charles Stuart's personal likes and dislikes? The
+Oath was to be taken by him as their King. Doubtless, he equally
+disliked the whole Protestant interest; and if the Tories and Church of
+England Jacobites of a later day had recalled James II., would Baxter
+have thought them culpable for imposing on him an Oath to preserve the
+Protestant Church of England and to inflict severe penalties on his own
+Church-fellows?
+
+
+Ib. p. 71.
+
+  And some men thought it a very hard question, whether they should
+  rather wish the continuance of a usurper that will do good, or the
+  restoration of a rightful governor whose followers will do hurt.
+
+And who shall dare unconditionally condemn those who judged the former
+to be the better alternative? Especially those who did not adopt
+Baxter's notion of a 'jus divinum' personal and hereditary in the
+individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the claim
+rested.
+
+
+Ib. p. 75.
+
+  One Mrs. Dyer, a chief person of the Sect, did first bring forth a
+  monster, which had the parts of almost all sorts of living creatures,
+  some parts like man, but most ugly and misplaced, and some like
+  beasts, birds and fishes, having horns, fins and claws; and at the
+  birth of it the bed shook, and the women present fell a vomiting, and
+  were fain to go forth of the room.
+
+This babe of Mrs. Dyer's is no bad emblem of Richard Baxter's own
+credulity. It is almost an argument on his side, that nothing he
+believed is more strange and inexplicable than his own belief of them.
+
+
+Ib. p. 76.
+
+  The third sect were the Ranters. These also made it their business, as
+  the former, to set up the light of nature under the name of Christ in
+  men, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, &c.
+
+But why does Baxter every where assert the identity of the new light
+with the light of nature? Or what does he mean exclusively by the
+latter? The source must be the same in all lights as far as it is light.
+
+
+Ib. p. 77.
+
+  And that was the fourth sect, the Quakers; who were but the Ranters
+  turned from horrid profaneness and blasphemy to a life of extreme
+  austerity on the other side.
+
+Observe the _but_.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Their doctrine is to be seen in Jacob Behmen's books by him that hath
+  nothing else to do, than to bestow a great deal of time to understand
+  him that was not willing to be easily understood, and to know that his
+  bombasted words do signify nothing more than before was easily known
+  by common familiar terms.
+
+This is not in all its parts true. It is true that the first principles
+of Behmen are to be found in the writings of the Neo-Platonists after
+Plotinus, and (but mixed with gross impieties) in Paracelsus;--but it is
+not true that they are easily known, and still less so that they are
+communicable in common familiar terms. But least of all is it true that
+there is nothing original in Behmen.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The chiefest of these in England are Dr. Pordage and his family.
+
+It is curious that Lessing in the Review, which he, Nicolai, and
+Mendelssohn conducted under the form of Letters to a wounded Officer,
+joins the name of Pordage with that of Behmen. Was Pordage's work
+translated into German?
+
+
+Ib. p. 79.
+
+  Also the Socinians made some increase by the ministry of one Mr.
+  Biddle, sometimes schoolmaster in Gloucester; who wrote against the
+  Godhead of the Holy Ghost, and afterwards of Christ; whose followers
+  inclined much to mere Deism.
+
+For the Socinians till Biddle retained much of the Christian religion,
+for example, Redemption by the Cross, and the omnipresence of Christ as
+to this planet even as the Romanists with their Saints. Luther's
+obstinate adherence to the ubiquity of the Body of Christ and his or
+rather its real presence in and with the bread was a sad furtherance to
+the advocates of Popish idolatry and hierolatry.
+
+
+Ib. p. 80.
+
+  Many a time have I been brought very low, and received the sentence of
+  death in myself, when my poor, honest, praying neighbours have met,
+  and upon their fasting and earnest prayers I have been recovered. Once
+  when I had continued weak three weeks, and was unable to go abroad,
+  the very day that they prayed for me, being Good Friday, I recovered,
+  and was able to preach, and administer the Sacrament the next Lord's
+  Day, and was better after it, &c.
+
+Strange that the common manuals of school logic should not have secured
+Baxter from the repeated blunder of 'Cum hoc, ergo, propter hoc'; but
+still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against
+degrading prayer into medical quackery.
+
+Before the Revolution of 1688, metaphysics ruled without experimental
+psychology, and in these curious paragraphs of Baxter we see the effect:
+since the Revolution experimental psychology without metaphysics has in
+like manner prevailed, and we now feel the result. In like manner from
+Plotinus to Proclus, that is, from A. D. 250 to A. D. 450, philosophy
+was set up as a substitute for religion: during the dark ages religion
+superseded philosophy, and the consequences are equally instructive. The
+great maxim of legislation, intellectual or political, is 'Subordinate,
+not exclude'. Nature in her ascent leaves nothing behind, but at each
+step subordinates and glorifies:--mass, crystal, organ, sensation,
+sentience, reflection.
+
+
+Ib. p. 82.
+
+  Another time, as I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio
+  books brake down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat
+  close under them, and they fell down every side me, and not one of
+  them hit me, save one upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight, the
+  greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it
+  was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, &c.
+
+[Greek: Méga biblíon méga kakón.]
+
+
+Ib. p. 84.
+
+
+For all the pains that my infirmities ever brought upon me were never
+half so grievous an affliction to me, as the unavoidable loss of my
+time, which they occasioned. I could not bear, through the weakness of
+my stomach, to rise before seven o'clock in the morning, &c.
+
+Alas! in how many respects does my lot resemble Baxter's; but how much
+less have my bodily evils been; and yet how very much greater an
+impediment have I suffered them to be! But verily Baxter's labours seem
+miracles of supporting grace. Ought I not therefore to retract the note
+p. 80? I waver.
+
+
+Ib. p. 87.
+
+  For my part, I bless God, who gave me even under a Usurper, whom I
+  opposed, such liberty and advantage to preach his Gospel with success,
+  which I cannot have under a King to whom I have sworn and performed
+  true subjection and obedience; yea, which no age since the Gospel came
+  into this land did before possess, as far as I can learn from history.
+  Sure I am that when it became a matter of reputation and honour to be
+  godly, it abundantly furthered the successes of the ministry. Yea, and
+  I shall add this much more for the sake of posterity, that as much as
+  I have said and written against licentiousness in religion, and for
+  the magistrate's power in it, and though I think that land most happy,
+  whose rulers use their authority for Christ as well as for the civil
+  peace; yet in comparison of the rest of the world, I shall think that
+  land happy that hath but bare liberty to be as good as they are
+  willing to be; and if countenance and maintenance be but added to
+  liberty, and tolerated errors and sects be but forced to keep the
+  peace, and not to oppose the substantials of Christianity, I shall not
+  hereafter much fear such toleration, nor despair that truth will bear
+  down adversaries.
+
+What a valuable and citable paragraph! Likewise it is a happy instance
+of the force of a cherished prejudice in an honest mind--practically
+yielding to the truth, but yet with a speculative, "Though I still
+think, &c."
+
+
+Ib. p. 128.
+
+  Among truths certain in themselves, all are not equally certain unto
+  me; and even of the mysteries of the Gospel I must needs say, with Mr.
+  Richard Hooker, that whatever some may pretend, the subjective
+  certainty cannot go beyond the objective evidence. * * * Therefore I
+  do more of late than ever discern the necessity of a methodical
+  procedure in maintaining the doctrine of Christianity. * * * My
+  certainty that I am a man is before my certainty that there is a God.
+  * * * My certainty that there is a God is greater than my certainty
+  that he requireth love and holiness of his creature, &c.
+
+There is a confusion in this paragraph, which asks more than a marginal
+note to disentangle. Briefly, the process of acquirement is confounded
+with the order of the truths when acquired. A tinder spark gives light
+to an Argand's lamp: is it therefore more luminous?
+
+
+Ib. p. 129.
+
+  And when I have studied hard to understand some abstruse admired book,
+  as 'de Scientia Dei, de Providentia circa malum, de Decretis, de
+  Prædeterminatione, de Libertate creaturæ', &c. I have but attained the
+  knowledge of human imperfection, and to see that the author is but a
+  man as well as I.
+
+On these points I have come to a resting place. Let such articles, as
+are either to be recognized as facts, for example, sin or evil having
+its origination in a will; and the reality of a responsible and (in
+whatever sense freedom is presupposed in responsibility,) of a free will
+in man;--or acknowledged as laws, for example, the unconditional
+bindingness of the practical reason;--or to be freely affirmed as
+necessary through their moral interest, their indispensableness to our
+spiritual humanity, for example, the personeity, holiness, and moral
+government and providence of God;--let these be vindicated from
+absurdity, from self-contradiction, and contradiction to the pure
+reason, and restored to simple incomprehensibility. He who seeks for
+more, knows not what he is talking of; he who will not seek even this is
+either indifferent to the truth of what he professes to believe, or he
+mistakes a general determination not to disbelieve for a positive and
+especial faith, which is only our faith as far as we can assign a reason
+for it. O! how impossible it is to move an inch to the right or the left
+in any point of spiritual and moral concernment, without seeing the
+damage caused by the confusion of reason with the understanding.
+
+
+Ib. p. 181.
+
+  My soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of the miserable
+  world, and more drawn out in desire of their conversion than
+  heretofore. I was wont to look but little further than England in my
+  prayers, as not considering the state of the rest of the world;--or if
+  I prayed for the conversion of the Jews, that was almost all. But now
+  as I better understand the care of the world, and the method of the
+  Lord's Prayer, so there is nothing in the world that lieth so heavy
+  upon my heart, as the thought of the miserable nations of the earth.
+
+I dare not not condemn myself for the languid or dormant state of my
+feelings respecting the Mohammedan and Heathen nations; yet know not in
+what degree to condemn. The less culpable grounds of this languor are,
+first, my utter ignorance of God's purposes with respect to the
+Heathens; and second, the strong conviction, I have that the conversion
+of a single province of Christendom to true practical Christianity would
+do more toward the conversion of Heathendom than an army of
+Missionaries. Romanism and despotic government in the larger part of
+Christendom, and the prevalence of Epicurean principles in the
+remainder;--these do indeed lie heavy on my heart.
+
+
+Ib. p. 135.
+
+  Therefore I confess I give but halting credit to most histories that
+  are written, not only against the Albigenses and Waldenses, but
+  against most of the ancient heretics, who have left us none of their
+  own writings, in which they speak for themselves; and I heartily
+  lament that the historical writings of the ancient schismatics and
+  heretics, as they were called, perished, and that partiality suffered
+  them not to survive, that we might have had more light in the Church
+  affairs of those times, and been better able to judge between the
+  Fathers and them.
+
+It is greatly to the credit of Baxter that he has here anticipated those
+merits which so long after gave deserved celebrity to the name and
+writings of Beausobre and Lardner, and still more recently in this
+respect of Eichhorn, Paulus and other Neologists.
+
+
+Ib. p. 136.
+
+  And therefore having myself now written this history of myself,
+  notwithstanding my protestation that I have not in anything wilfully
+  gone against the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader than
+  the self-evidencing light of the matter, with concurrent rational
+  advantages from persons, and things, and other witnesses, shall
+  constrain him to.
+
+I may not unfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in
+consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as
+soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity.
+
+
+Book I. Part II. p.139.
+
+The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as
+an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean 'clinamen', even when it
+has been undertaken from the purest and most laudable motives, and from
+impulses the most Christian, and yet its utter failure in its object,
+that of tending to a common centre. The experience of eighteen centuries
+seems to prove that there is no practicable 'medium' between a Church
+comprehensive (which is the only meaning of a Catholic Church visible)
+in which A. in the North or East is allowed to advance officially no
+doctrine different from what is allowed to B. in the South or West;--and
+a co-existence of independent Churches, in none of which any further
+unity is required but that between the minister and his congregation,
+while this again is secured by the election and continuance of the
+former depending wholly on the will of the latter.
+
+Perhaps the best state possible, though not the best possible state, is
+where both are found, the one established by maintenance, the other by
+permission; in short that which we now enjoy. In such a state no
+minister of the former can have a right to complain, for it was at his
+own option to have taken the latter; 'et volenti nulla fit injuria'. For
+an individual to demand the freedom of the independent single Church
+when he receives £500 a year for submitting to the necessary
+restrictions of the Church General, is impudence and Mammonolatry to
+boot.
+
+
+Ib. p. 141.
+
+  They (the Erastians) misunderstood and injured their brethren,
+  supposing and affirming them to claim as from God a coercive power
+  over the bodies or purses of men, and so setting up 'imperium in
+  imperio'; whereas all temperate Christians (at least except Papists)
+  confess that the Church hath no power of force, but only to manage
+  God's word unto men's consciences.
+
+But are not the receivers as bad as the thief? Is it not a poor evasion
+to say:--"It is true I send you to a dungeon there to rot, because you
+do not think as I do concerning some point of faith;--but this only as a
+civil officer. As a divine I only tenderly entreat and persuade you!"
+Can there be fouler hypocrisy in the Spanish Inquisition than this?
+
+
+Ib. p. 142.
+
+  That hereby they (the Diocesan party) altered the ancient species of
+  Presbyters, to whose office the spiritual government of their proper
+  folks as truly belonged, as the power of preaching and worshiping God
+  did.
+
+I could never rightly understand this objection of Richard Baxter's.
+What power not possessed by the Rector of a parish, would he have wished
+a parochial Bishop to have exerted? What could have been given by the
+Legislature to the latter which might not be given to the former? In
+short Baxter's plan seems to do away Archbishops--[Greek: koinoì
+epískopoi]--but for the rest to name our present Rectors and Vicars
+Bishops. I cannot see what is gained by his plan. The true difficulty is
+that Church discipline is attached to an Establishment by this world's
+law, not to the form itself established: and his objections from
+paragraph 5 to paragraph 10 relate to particular abuses, not to
+Episcopacy itself.
+
+
+Ib. p. 143.
+
+  But above all I disliked that most of them (the Independents) made the
+  people by majority of votes to be Church governors in
+  excommunications, absolutions, &c., which Christ hath made an act of
+  office; and so they governed their governors and themselves.
+
+Is not this the case with the Houses of Legislature? The members taken
+individually are subjects; collectively governors.
+
+
+Ib. p. 177.
+
+  The extraordinary gifts of the Apostles, and the privilege of being
+  eye and ear witnesses to Christ, were abilities which they had for the
+  infallible discharge of their function, but they were not the ground
+  of their power and authority to govern the Church. * * * 'Potestas
+  clavium' was committed to them only, not to the Seventy.
+
+I wish for a proof, that all the Apostles had any extraordinary gifts
+which none of the LXX. had. Nay as an Episcopalian of the Church of
+England, I hold it an unsafe and imprudent concession, tending to weaken
+the governing right of the Bishops. But I fear that as the law and right
+of patronage in England now are, the question had better not be stirred;
+lest it should be found that the true power of the keys is not, as with
+the Papists, in hands to which it is doubtful whether Christ committed
+them exclusively; but in hands to which it is certain that Christ did
+not commit them at all.
+
+
+Ib. p. 179.
+
+  It followeth not a mere Bishop may have a multitude of Churches,
+  because an Archbishop may, who hath many Bishops under him.
+
+What then does Baxter quarrel about? That our Bishops take a humbler
+title than they have a right to claim;--that being in fact Archbishops,
+they are for the most part content to be styled as one of the brethren!
+
+
+Ib. p. 185.
+
+  I say again, No Church, no Christ; for no body, no head; and if no
+  Christ then, there is no Christ now.
+
+Baxter here forgets his own mystical regenerated Church. If he mean
+this, it is nothing to the argument in question; if not, then he must
+assert the monstrous absurdity of, No unregenerate Church, no Christ.
+
+
+Ib. p. 188.
+
+  Or if they would not yield to this at all, we might have communion
+  with them as Christians, without acknowledging them for Pastors.
+
+Observe the inconsistency of Baxter. No Pastor, no Church; no Church, no
+Christ; and yet he will receive them as Christians: much to his honor as
+a Christian, but not much to his credit as a logician.
+
+
+Ib. p. 189.
+
+  We are agreed that as some discovery of consent on both parts (the
+  pastors and people) is necessary to the being of the members of a
+  political particular Church: so that the most express declaration of
+  that consent is the most plain and satisfactory dealing, and most
+  obliging, and likest to attain the ends.
+
+In our Churches, especially in good livings, there is such an
+overflowing fullness of consent on the part of the Pastor as supplies
+that of the people altogether; nay, to nullify their declared dissent.
+
+
+Ib. p. 194.
+
+  By the establishment of what is contained in these twelve propositions
+  or articles following, the Churches in these nations may have a holy
+  communion, peace and concord, without any wrong to the consciences or
+  liberties of Presbyterians, Congregational, Episcopal, or any other
+  Christians.
+
+Painfully instructive are these proposals from so wise and peaceable a
+divine as Baxter. How mighty must be the force of an old prejudice when
+so generally acute a logician was blinded by it to such palpable
+inconsistencies! On what ground of right could a magistrate inflict a
+penalty, whereby to compel a man to hear what he might believe dangerous
+to his soul, on which the right of burning the refractory individual
+might not be defended as well?
+
+
+Ib. p. 198.
+
+  To which ends * * I think that this is all that should be required of
+  any Church or member ordinarily to be professed: In general I do
+  believe all that is contained in the sacred canonical Scriptures, and
+  particularly I believe all explicitly contained in the ancient Creed,
+  &c.
+
+To a man of sense, but unstudied in the context of human nature, and
+from having confined his reading to the writers of the present and the
+last generation unused to live in former ages, it must seem strange that
+Baxter should not have seen that this test is either all or nothing. And
+the Creed! Is it certain that the so called Apostles' Creed was more
+than the mere catechism of the Catechumens? Was it the Baptismal Creed
+of the Eastern or Western Church, especially the former? The only test
+really necessary, in my opinion, is an established Liturgy.
+
+
+Ib. p. 201.
+
+  As reverend Bishop Ussher hath manifested that the Western Creed, now
+  called the Apostles' (wanting two or three clauses that now are in it)
+  was not only before the Nicene Creed, but of much further antiquity,
+  that no beginning of it below the Apostles' days can be found.
+
+Remove these two or three clauses, and doubtless the substance of the
+remainder must have been little short of the Apostolic age. But so is
+one at least of the writings of Clement. The great question is: Was this
+the Baptismal Symbol, the 'Regula Fidei', which it was forbidden to put
+in writing;--or was it not the Christian A. B. C. of the 'Catechumeni'
+previously to their Baptismal initiation into the higher mysteries, to
+the 'strong meat' which was not for babes'? [2]
+
+
+Ib. p. 203.
+
+  Not so much for my own sake as others; lest it should offend the
+  Parliament, and open the mouths of our adversaries, that we cannot
+  ourselves agree in fundamentals; and lest it prove an occasion for
+  others to sue for a universal toleration.
+
+That this apprehension so constantly haunted, so powerfully actuated,
+even the mild and really tolerant Baxter, is a strong proof of my old
+opinion,--that the dogma of the right and duty of the civil magistrate
+to restrain and punish religious avowals by him deemed heretical,
+universal among the Presbyterians and Parliamentary Churchmen, joined
+with the persecuting spirit of the Presbyterians,--was the main cause of
+Cromwell's despair and consequent unfaithfulness concerning a
+Parliamentary Commonwealth.
+
+
+Ib. p. 222.
+
+  I tried, when I was last with you, to revive your reason by proposing
+  to you the infallibility of the common senses of all the world; and I
+  could not prevail though you had nothing to answer that was not
+  against common sense. And it is impossible any thing controverted can
+  be brought nearer you, or made plainer than to be brought to your eyes
+  and taste and feeling; and not yours only, but all men's else. Sense
+  goes before faith. Faith is no faith but upon supposition of sense and
+  understanding: if therefore common sense be fallible, faith must needs
+  be so.
+
+This is one of those two-edged arguments, which not indeed began, but
+began to be fashionable, just before and after the Restoration. I was
+half converted to Transubstantiation by Tillotson's common senses
+against it; seeing clearly that the same grounds 'totidem verbis et
+syllabis' would serve the Socinian against all the mysteries of
+Christianity. If the Roman Catholics had pretended that the phenomenal
+bread and wine were changed into the phenomenal flesh and blood, this
+objection would have been legitimate and irresistible; but as it is, it
+is mere sensual babble. The whole of Popery lies in the assumption of a
+Church, as a numerical unit, infallible in the highest degree, inasmuch
+as both which is Scripture, and what Scripture teaches, is infallible by
+derivation only from an infallible decision of the Church. Fairly
+undermine or blow up this: and all the remaining peculiar tenets of
+Romanism fall with it, or stand by their own right as opinions of
+individual Doctors.
+
+An antagonist of a complex bad system,--a system, however,
+notwithstanding--and such is Popery,--should take heed above all things
+not to disperse himself. Let him keep to the sticking place. But the
+majority of our Protestant polemics seem to have taken for granted that
+they could not attack Romanism in too many places, or on too many
+points;--forgetting that in some they will be less strong than in
+others, and that if in any one or two they are repelled from the
+assault, the feeling of this will extend itself over the whole. Besides,
+what is the use of alleging thirteen reasons for a witness's not
+appearing in Court, when the first is that the man had died since his
+'subpoena'? It is as if a party employed to root up a tree were to set
+one or two at that work, while others were hacking the branches, and
+others sawing the trunk at different heights from the ground.
+
+N. B. The point of attack suggested above in disputes with the Romanists
+is of special expediency in the present day: because a number of pious
+and reasonable Roman Catholics are not aware of the dependency of their
+other tenets on this of the infallibility of their Church decisions, as
+they call them, but are themselves shaken and disposed to explain it
+away. This once fixed, the Scriptures rise uppermost, and the man is
+already a Protestant, rather a genuine Catholic, though his opinions
+should remain nearer to the Roman than the Reformed Church.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  _But methinks yet I should have hope of reviving your charity. You
+  cannot be a Papist indeed, but you must believe that out of their
+  Church (that is out of the Pope's dominions) there is no salvation;
+  and consequently no justification and charity, or saving grace. And is
+  it possible you can so easily believe your religious father to be in
+  hell; your prudent, pious mother to be void of the love of God, and in
+  a state of damnation, &c._
+
+This argument 'ad affectum' is beautifully and forcibly stated; but yet
+defective by the omission of the point;--not for unbelief or misbelief
+of any article of faith, but simply for not being a member of this
+particular part of the Church of Christ. For it is possible that a
+Christian might agree in all the articles of faith with the Roman
+doctors against those of the Reformation, and yet if he did not
+acknowledge the Pope as Christ's vicar, and held salvation possible in
+any other Church, he is himself excluded from salvation! Without this
+great distinction Lady Ann Lindsey might have replied to Baxter:--"So
+might a Pagan orator have said to a convert from Paganism in the first
+ages of Christianity; so indeed the advocates of the old religion did
+argue. What! can you bear to believe that Numa, Camillus, Fabricius, the
+Scipios, the Catos, that Cicero, Seneca, that Titus and the Antonini,
+are in the flames of Hell, the accursed objects of the divine hatred?
+Now whatever you dare hope of these as heathens, we dare hope of you as
+heretics."
+
+
+Ib. p. 224.
+
+  _But this is not the worst. You consequently anathematize_ all Papists
+  by your sentence: for heresies by your own sentence cut off men from
+  heaven: but Popery is a bundle of heresies: therefore it cuts off men
+  from heaven. The minor I prove, &c.
+
+This introduction of syllogistic form in a letter to a young Lady is
+whimsically characteristic.
+
+
+Ib. p. 225.
+
+  You say, the Scripture admits of no private interpretation. But you
+  abuse yourself and the text with a false interpretation of it in these
+  words. An interpretation is called private either as to the subject
+  person, or as to the interpreter. You take the text to speak of the
+  latter, when the context plainly sheweth you that it speaks of the
+  former. The Apostle directing them to understand the prophecies of the
+  Old Testament, gives them this caution;--that none of these Scriptures
+  that are spoken of Christ the public person must be interpreted as
+  spoken of David or other private person only, of whom they were
+  mentioned but as types of Christ, &c.
+
+It is strange that this sound and irrefragable argument has not been
+enforced by the Church divines in their controversies with the modern
+Unitarians, as Capp, Belsham and others, who refer all the prophetic
+texts of the Old Testament to historical personages of their time,
+exclusively of all double sense.
+
+
+Ib. p. 226.
+
+  As to what you say of Apostles still placed in the Church:--when any
+  shew us an immediate mission by their communion, and by miracles,
+  'tongues', and a spirit of revelation and infallibility prove
+  themselves Apostles, we shall believe them.
+
+This is another of those two-edged arguments which Baxter and Jeremy
+Taylor imported from Grotius, and which have since become the universal
+fashion among Protestants. I fear, however, that it will do us more hurt
+by exposing a weak part to the learned Infidels than service in our
+combat with the Romanists. I venture to assert most unequivocally that
+the New Testament contains not the least proof of the 'linguipotence' of
+the Apostles, but the clearest proofs of the contrary: and I doubt
+whether we have even as decisive a victory over the Romanists in our
+Middletonian, Farmerian, and Douglasian dispute concerning the miracles
+of the first two centuries and their assumed contrast 'in genere' with
+those of the Apostles and the Apostolic age, as we have in most other of
+our Protestant controversies.
+
+N.B. These opinions of Middleton and his more cautious followers are no
+part of our real Church doctrine. This passion for law Court evidence
+began with Grotius.
+
+
+Ib. p. 246.
+
+  We conceived there needs no more to be said for justifying the
+  imposition of the ceremonies by law established than what is contained
+  in the beginning--of this Section.... Inasmuch as lawful authority
+  hath already determined the ceremonies in question to be decent and
+  orderly, and to serve to edification: and consequently to be agreeable
+  to the general rules of the Word.
+
+To a self-convinced and disinterested lover of the Church of England, it
+gives an indescribable horror to observe the frequency, with which the
+Prelatic party after the Restoration appeal to the laws as of equal
+authority with the express words of Scripture;--as if the laws, by them
+appealed to, were other than the vindictive determinations of their own
+furious partizans;--as if the same appeals might not have been made by
+Bonner and Gardiner under Philip and Mary! Why should I speak of the
+inhuman sophism that, because it is silly in my neighbour to break his
+egg at the broad end when the Squire and the Vicar have declared their
+predilection for the narrow end, therefore it is right for the Squire
+and the Vicar to hang and quarter him for his silliness:--for it comes
+to that.
+
+
+Ib. p. 248.
+
+  To you it is indifferent before your imposition: and therefore you may
+  without any regret of your own consciences forbear the imposition, or
+  persuade the law makers to forbear it. But to many of those that
+  dissent from you, they are sinful, &c.
+
+But what is all this, good worthy Baxter, but saying and unsaying? If
+they are not indifferent, why did you previously concede them to be
+such? In short nothing can be more pitiably weak than the conduct of the
+Presbyterian party from the first capture of Charles I. Common sense
+required, either a bold denial that the Church had power in ceremonies
+more than in doctrines, or that the Parliament was the Church, since it
+is the Parliament that enacts all these things;--or if they admitted the
+authority lawful and the ceremonies only, in their mind, inexpedient,
+good God! can self-will more plainly put on the cracked mask of tender
+conscience than by refusal of obedience? What intolerable presumption,
+to disqualify as ungodly and reduce to null the majority of the country,
+who preferred the Liturgy, in order to force the long winded vanities of
+bustling God-orators on those who would fain hear prayers, not spouting!
+
+
+Ib. p. 249.
+
+  The great controversies between the hypocrite and the true Christian,
+  whether we should be serious in the practice of the religion which we
+  commonly profess, hath troubled England more than any other;--none
+  being more hated and divided as Puritans than those that will make
+  religion their business, &c.
+
+Had not the Governors had bitter proofs that there are other and more
+cruel vices than swearing and careless living;--and that these were
+predominant chiefly among such as made their religion their business?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  And whereas you speak of opening a gap to Sectaries for private
+  conventicles, and the evil consequents to the state, we only desire
+  you to avoid also the cherishing of ignorance and profaneness, and
+  _suppress all Sectaries_, and spare not, in a way that will not
+  suppress the means of knowledge and godliness.
+
+The present company, that is, our own dear selves, always excepted.
+
+
+Ib. p. 250.
+
+  Otherwise the poor undone Churches of Christ will no more believe you
+  in such professions than we believed that those men intended the
+  King's just power and greatness, who took away his life.
+
+Or who, like Baxter, joined the armies that were showering cannon balls
+and bullets around his inviolable person! Whenever by reading the
+Prelatical writings and histories, I have had an over dose of
+anti-Prelatism in my feelings, I then correct it by dipping into the
+works of the Presbyterians, and their fellows, and so bring myself to
+more charitable thoughts respecting the Prelatists, and fully subscribe
+to Milton's assertion, that "Presbyter was but Old Priest writ large."
+
+
+Ib. p. 254.
+
+  The apocryphal matter of your lessons in Tobit, Judith, Bel and the
+  Dragon, &c., is scarce agreeable to the word of God.
+
+Does not Jude refer to an apocryphal book?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Our experience unresistibly convinceth us that a continued prayer doth
+  more to help most of the people, and carry on their desires, than
+  turning almost every petition into a distinct prayer; and making
+  prefaces and conclusions to be near half the prayers.
+
+This now is the very point I most admire in our excellent Liturgy. To
+any particular petition offered to the Omniscient, there may be a
+sinking of faith, a sense of its superfluity; but to the lifting up of
+the soul to the Invisible and there fixing it on his attributes, there
+can be no scruple.
+
+
+Ib. p. 257.
+
+  The not abating of the impositions is the carting off of many hundreds
+  of your brethren out of the ministry, and of many thousand Christians
+  out of your communion; but the abating of the impositions will so
+  offend you as to silence or excommunicate none of you at all. For
+  example, we think it a sin to subscribe, or swear canonical obedience,
+  or use the transient image of the Cross in Baptism, and therefore
+  these must cast us out, &c.
+
+As long as independent single Churches, or voluntarily synodical were
+forbidden and punishable by penal law, this argument remained
+irrefragable. The imposition of such trifles under such fearful threats
+was the very bitterness of spiritual pride and vindictiveness;--after
+the law passed by which things became as they now are, it was a mere
+question of expediency for the National Church to determine in relation
+to its own comparative interests. If the Church chose unluckily, the
+injury has been to itself alone.
+
+It seems strange that such men as Baxter should not see that the use of
+the ring, the surplice and the like, are indifferent according to his
+own confession, yea, mere trifles, in comparison with the peace of the
+Church; but that it is no trifle, that men should refuse obedience to
+lawful authority in matters indifferent, and prefer the sin of schism to
+offending their taste and fancy. The Church did not, upon the whole,
+contend for a trifle, nor for an indifferent matter, but for a principle
+on which all order in society must depend. Still this is true only,
+provided the Church enacts no ordinances that are not necessary or at
+least plainly conducive to order or (generally) to the ends for which it
+is a Church. Besides, the point which the King had required them to
+consider was not what ordinances it was right to obey, but what it was
+expedient to enact or not to enact.
+
+
+Ib. p. 269.
+
+  That the Pastors of the respective parishes may be allowed not only
+  publicly to preach, but personally to catechize or otherwise instruct
+  the several families, admitting none to the Lord's Table that have not
+  personally owned their Baptismal covenant by a credible profession of
+  faith and obedience; and to admonish and exhort the scandalous, in
+  order to their repentance: to hear the witnesses and the accused
+  party, and to appoint fit times and places for these things, and to
+  deny such persons the communion of the Church in the holy Eucharist,
+  that remain impenitent, or that wilfully refuse to come to their
+  Pastors to be instructed, or to answer such probable accusations; and
+  to continue such exclusion of them till they have made a credible
+  profession of repentance, and then to receive them again to the
+  communion of the Church;--provided there be place for due appeals to
+  superior power.
+
+Suppose only such men Pastors as are now most improperly, whether as
+boast or as sneer, called Evangelical, what an insufferable tyranny
+would this introduce! Who would not rather live in Algiers? This alone
+would make this minute history of the ecclesiastic factions invaluable,
+that it must convince all sober lovers of independence and moral
+self-government, how dearly we ought to prize our present Church
+Establishment with all its faults.
+
+
+Ib. p. 272.
+
+  Therefore we humbly crave that your Majesty will here declare, that it
+  is your Majesty's pleasure that none be punished or troubled for not
+  using the Book of Common Prayer, till it be effectually reformed by
+  divines of both persuasions equally deputed thereunto.
+
+The dispensing power of the Crown not only acknowledged, but earnestly
+invoked! Cruel as the conduct of Laud and that of Sheldon to the
+Dissentients was, yet God's justice stands clear towards them; for they
+demanded that from others, which they themselves would not grant. They
+were to be allowed at their own fancies to denounce the ring in
+marriage, and yet impowered to endungeon, through the magistrate, the
+honest and peaceable Quaker for rejecting the outward ceremony of water
+in Baptism, as seducing men to take it as a substitute for the spiritual
+reality;--though the Quakers, no less than themselves, appealed to
+Scripture authority--the Baptist's own contrast of Christ's with the
+water Baptism.
+
+
+Ib. p. 273.
+
+  We are sure that kneeling in any adoration at all, in any worship, on
+  any Lord's Day in the year, or any week day between Easter and
+  Pentecost, was not only disused, but forbidden by General Councils,
+  &c.--and therefore that kneeling in the act of receiving is a novelty
+  contrary to the decrees and practice of the Church for many hundred
+  years after the Apostles.
+
+Was not this because kneeling was the agreed sign of sorrow and personal
+contrition, which was not to be introduced into the public worship on
+the great day and the solemn seasons of the Church's joy and
+thanksgiving? If so, Baxter's appeal to this usage is a gross sophism, a
+mere pun.
+
+
+Ib. p. 308.
+
+  Baxter's Exceptions to the Common Prayer Book.
+
+  1. Order requireth that we begin with reverent prayer to God for his
+     acceptance and assistance, which is not done.
+
+Enunciation of God's invitations, and promises in God's own words, as in
+the Common Prayer Book, much better.
+
+  2. That the Creed and Decalogue containing the faith, in which we
+     profess to assemble for God's worship, and the law which we have
+     broken by our sins, should go before the confession and Absolution;
+     or at least before the praises of the Church; which they do not.
+
+Might have deserved consideration, if the people or the larger number
+consisted of uninstructed 'catechumeni', or mere candidates for
+Church-membership. But the object being, not the first teaching of the
+Creed and Decalogue, but the lively reimpressing of the same, it is much
+better as it is.
+
+  3. The Confession omitteth not only original sin, but all actual sin
+     as specified by the particular commandments violated, and almost
+     all the aggravations of those sins.... Whereas confession, being
+     the expression of repentance, should be more particular, as
+     repentance itself should be.
+
+Grounded, on one of the grand errors of the whole Dissenting party,
+namely, the confusion of public common prayer, praise, and instruction,
+with domestic and even with private devotion. Our Confession is a
+perfect model for Christian communities.
+
+  4. When we have craved help for God's prayers, before we come to them,
+     we abruptly put in the petition for speedy deliverance--('O God,
+     make speed to save us: O Lord make haste to help us',) without any
+     intimation of the danger that we desire deliverance from, and
+     without any other petition conjoined.
+
+  5. It is disorderly in the manner, to sing the Scripture in a plain
+     tune after the manner of reading.
+
+  6. ('The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit',) being petitions
+     for divine assistance, come in abruptly in the midst or near the
+     end of morning prayer: And ('Let us pray'.) is adjoined when we
+     were before in prayer.
+
+Mouse-like squeak and nibble.
+
+  7. ('Lord have mercy upon us: Christ have mercy upon us: Lord have
+     mercy upon us'.) seemeth an affected tautology without any special
+     cause or order here; and the Lord's Prayer is annexed that was
+     before recited, and yet the next words are again but a repetition
+     of the aforesaid oft repeated general ('O Lord, shew thy mercy upon
+     us'.)
+
+Still worse. The spirit in which this and similar complaints originated
+has turned the prayers of Dissenting ministers into irreverent
+preachments, forgetting that tautology in words and thoughts implies no
+tautology in the music of the heart to which the words are, as it were,
+set, and that it is the heart that lifts itself up to God. Our words and
+thoughts are but parts of the enginery which remains with ourselves; and
+logic, the rustling dry leaves of the lifeless reflex faculty, does not
+merit even the name of a pulley or lever of devotion.
+
+  8. The prayer for the King ('O Lord, save the King'.) is without any
+     order put between the foresaid petition and another general request
+     only for audience. ('And mercifully hear us when we call upon
+     thee').
+
+A trifle, but just.
+
+  9. The second Collect is intituled ('For Peace'.) and hath not a word
+     in it of petition for peace, but only 'for defence in assaults of
+     enemies', and that we 'may not fear their power'. And the prefaces
+     ('in knowledge of whom standeth', &c. and 'whose service', &c.)
+     have no more evident respect to a petition for peace than to any
+     other. And the prayer itself comes in disorderly, while many
+     prayers or petitions are omitted, which according both to the
+     method of the Lord's Prayer, and the nature of the things, should
+     go before.
+
+  10. The third Collect intituled ('For Grace'.) is disorderly, &c....
+      And thus the main parts of prayer, according to the rule of the
+      Lord's Prayer and our common necessities, are omitted.
+
+Not wholly unfounded: but the objection proceeds on an arbitrary and (I
+think) false assumption, that the Lord's Prayer was universally
+prescriptive in form and arrangement.
+
+  12. The Litany ... omitteth very many particulars, ... and it is
+      exceeding disorderly, following no just rules of method. Having
+      begged pardon of our sins, and deprecated vengeance, it proceedeth
+      to evil in general, and some few sins in particular, and thence to
+      a more particular enumeration of judgments; and thence to a
+      recitation of the parts of that work of our redemption, and thence
+      to the deprecation of judgments again, and thence to prayers for
+      the King and magistrates, and then for all nations, and then for
+      love and obedience, &c.
+
+The very points here objected to as faults I should have selected as
+excellencies. For do not the duties and temptations occur in real life
+even so intermingled? The imperfection of thought much more of language,
+so singly successive, allows no better representation of the close
+neighbourhood, nay the co-inherence of duty in duty, desire in desire.
+Every want of the heart pointing Godward is a chili agon that touches at
+a thousand points. From these remarks I except the last paragraph of s.
+12:
+
+  (As to the prayer for Bishops and Curates and the position of the
+  General Thanksgiving, &c.)
+
+which are defects so palpable and so easily removed, that nothing but
+antipathy to the objectors could have retained them.
+
+  13. The like defectiveness and disorder is in the Communion Collects
+  for the day.... There is no more reason why it should be appropriate
+  to that day than another, or rather be a common petition for all days,
+  &c.
+
+I do not see how these supposed improprieties, for want of
+appropriateness to the day, could be avoided without risk of the far
+greater evil of too great appropriation to particular Saints and days as
+in Popery. I am so far a Puritan that I think nothing would have been
+lost, if Christmas day and Good Friday had been the only week days made
+holy days, and Easter the only Lord's day especially distinguished. I
+should also have added Whitsunday; but that it has become unmeaning
+since our Clergy have, as I grieve to think, become generally Arminian,
+and interpreting the descent of the Spirit as the gift of miracles and
+of miraculous infallibility by inspiration have rendered it of course of
+little or no application to Christians at present. Yet how can Arminians
+pray our Church prayers collectively on any day? Answer. See a 'boa
+constrictor' with an ox or deer. What they do swallow, proves so
+astounding a dilatability of gullet, that it would be unconscionable
+strictness to complain of the horns, antlers, or other indigestible
+non-essentials being suffered to rot off at the confines, [Greek: hérkos
+hodóntôn]. But to write seriously on so serious a subject, it is
+mournful to reflect that the influence of the systematic theology then
+in fashion with the anti-Prelatic divines, whether Episcopalians or
+Presbyterians, had quenched all fineness of mind, all flow of heart, all
+grandeur of imagination in them; while the victorious party, the
+Prelatic Arminians, enriched as they were with all learning and highly
+gifted with taste and judgment, had emptied revelation of all the
+doctrines that can properly be said to have been revealed, and thus
+equally caused the extinction of the imagination, and quenched the life
+in the light by withholding the appropriate fuel and the supporters of
+the sacred flame. So that, between both parties, our transcendant
+Liturgy remains like an ancient Greek temple, a monumental proof of the
+architectural genius of an age long departed, when there were giants in
+the land.
+
+
+Ib. p. 337.
+
+  As I was proceeding, Bishop Morley interrupted me according to his
+  manner, with vehemency crying out * * The Bishop interrupted me again
+  * * I attempted to speak, and still he interrupted me * * Bishop
+  Morley went on, talking louder than I, &c.
+
+The Bishops appear to have behaved insolently enough. Safe in their
+knowledge of Charles's inclinations, they laughed in their sleeves at
+his commission. Their best answer would have been to have pressed the
+anti-impositionists with their utter forgetfulness of the possible, nay,
+very probable differences of opinion between the ministers and their
+congregations. A vain minister might disgust a sober congregation with
+his 'extempore' prayers, or his open contempt of their kneeling at the
+Sacrament, and the like. Yet by what right if he acts only as an
+individual? And then what an endless source of disputes and preferences
+of this minister or of that!
+
+
+Ib. p. 341.
+
+  The paper offered by Bishop Cosins.
+
+  1. That the question may be put to the managers of the division,
+     Whether there be anything in the doctrine, or discipline, or the
+     Common Prayer, or ceremonies, contrary to the word of God; and if
+     they can make any such appear; let them be satisfied.
+
+  2. If not, let them propose what they desire in point of expediency,
+     and acknowledge it to be no more.
+
+This was proposed, doubtless, by one of your sensible men; it is so
+plain, so plausible, shallow, 'nihili, nauci, pili, flocci-cal'. Why,
+the very phrase "contrary to the word of God" would take a month to
+define, and neither party agree at last. One party says:
+
+The Church has power from God's word to order all matters of order so as
+shall appear to them to conduce to decency and edification: but
+ceremonies respect the orderly performance of divine service: ergo, the
+Church has power to ordain ceremonies: but the Cross in baptizing is a
+ceremony; ergo, the Church has power to prescribe the crossing in
+Baptism. What is rightfully ordered cannot be rightfully withstood:--but
+the crossing, &c., is rightfully ordered:--'ergo', the crossing cannot
+be rightfully omitted.
+
+To this, how easily would the other party reply;
+
+1. That a small number of Bishops could not be called the Church:
+
+2. That no one Church had power or pretence from God's word to prescribe
+   concerning mere matters of outward decency and convenience to other
+   Churches or assemblies of Christian people:
+
+3. That the blending an unnecessary and suspicious, if not
+   superstitious, motion of the hand with a necessary and essential act
+   doth in no wise respect order or propriety:
+
+Lastly, that to forbid a man to obey a direct command of God because he
+will not join with it an admitted mere tradition of men, is contrary to
+common sense, no less than to God's word, expressly and by breach of
+charity, which is the great end and purpose of God's word. Besides;
+might not the Pope and his shavelings have made the same proposition to
+the Reformers in the reign of Edward VI., in respect to the greater part
+of the idle superfluities which were rejected by the Reformers, only as
+idle and superfluous, and for that reason contrary to the spirit of the
+Gospel, though few, if any, were in the direct teeth of a positive
+prohibition? Above all, an honest policy dictates that the end in view
+being fully determined, as here for instance, the preclusion of
+disturbance and indecorum in Christian assemblies, every addition to
+means, already adequate to the securing of that end, tends to frustrate
+the end, and is therefore evidently excluded from the prerogatives of
+the Church, (however that word may be interpreted) inasmuch as its power
+is confined to such ceremonies and regulations as conduce to order and
+general edification. In short it grieves me to think that the Heads of
+the most Apostolical Church in Christendom should have insisted on three
+or four trifles, the abolition of which could have given offence to none
+but such as from the baleful superstition that alone could attach
+importance to them effectually, it was charity to offend;-when all the
+rest of Baxter's objections might have been answered so triumphantly.
+
+
+Ib. p. 343.
+
+  Answer to the foresaid paper.
+
+  8. That none may be a preacher, that dare not subscribe that there is
+  nothing in the Common Prayer Book, the Book of Ordination, and the 39
+  Articles, that is contrary to the word of God.
+
+I think this might have been left out as well as the other two articles
+mentioned by Baxter. For as by the words "contrary to the word of God"
+in Cosins's paper, it was not meant to declare the Common Prayer Book
+free from all error, the sense must have been, that there is not
+anything in it in such a way or degree contrary to God's word, as to
+oblige us to assign sin to those who have overlooked it, or who think
+the same compatible with God's word, or who, though individually
+disapproving the particular thing, yet regard that acquiescence as an
+allowed sacrifice of individual opinion to modesty, charity, and zeal
+for the peace of the Church. For observe that this eighth instance is
+additional to, and therefore not inclusive of, the preceding seven:
+otherwise it must have been placed as the first, or rather as the whole,
+the seven following being motives and instances in support and
+explanation of the point.
+
+
+Ib. p. 368.
+
+Let me mediate here between Baxter and the Bishops: Baxter had taken for
+granted that the King had a right to promise a revision of the Liturgy,
+Canons and regiment of the Church, and that the Bishops ought to have
+met him and his friends as diplomatists on even ground. The Bishops
+could not with discretion openly avow all they meant; and it would be
+bigotry to deny that the spirit of compromise had no indwelling in their
+feelings or intents. But nevertheless it is true that they thought more
+in the spirit of the English Constitution than Baxter and his
+friends.--"This," thought they, "is the law of the land, 'quam nolumus
+mutari'; and it must be the King with and by the advice of his
+Parliament, that can authorize any part of his subjects to take the
+question of its repeal into consideration. Under other circumstances a
+King might bring the Bishops and the Heads of the Romish party together
+to plot against the law of the land. No! we would have no other secret
+Committees but of Parliamentary appointment. We are but so many
+individuals. It is in the Legislature that the congregations, the party
+most interested in this cause, meet collectively by their
+representatives."--Lastly, let it not be overlooked, that the root of
+the bitterness was common to both parties,--namely, the conviction of
+the vital importance of uniformity;--and this admitted, surely an
+undoubted majority in favor of what is already law must decide whose
+uniformity it is to be.
+
+
+Ib. p. 368.
+
+  We must needs believe that when your Majesty took our consent to a
+  Liturgy to be a foundation that would infer our concord, you meant not
+  that we should have no concord but by consenting to this Liturgy
+  without any considerable alteration.
+
+This is forcible reasoning, but which the Bishops could fairly leave for
+the King to answer;--the contract tacit or expressed, being between him
+and the anti-Prelatic Presbytero-Episcopalian party, to which neither
+the Bishops nor the Legislature had acceded or assented. If Baxter and
+Calamy were so little imbued with the spirit of the Constitution as to
+consider Charles II. as the breath of their nostrils, and this dread
+sovereign Breath in its passage gave a snort or a snuffle, or having led
+them to expect a snuffle surprised them with a snort, let the reproach
+be shared between the Breath's fetid conscience and the nostrils'
+nasoductility. The traitors to the liberty of their country who were
+swarming and intriguing for favor at Breda when they should have been at
+their post in Parliament or in the Lobby preparing terms and
+conditions!--Had all the ministers that were afterwards ejected and the
+Presbyterian party generally exerted themselves, heart and soul, with
+Monk's soldiers, and in collecting those whom Monk had displaced, and,
+instead of carrying on treasons against the Government 'de facto' by
+mendicant negociations with Charles, had taken open measures to confer
+the sceptre on him as the Scotch did,--whose stern and truly loyal
+conduct has been most unjustly condemned,--the schism in the Church
+might have been prevented and the Revolution of 1688 superseded.
+
+N.B. In the above I speak of the Bishops as men interested in a
+litigated estate. God forbid, I should seek to justify them as
+Christians.
+
+
+Ib. p. 369.
+
+  'Quære'. Whether in the 20th Article these words are not
+  inserted;--'Habet Ecclesia auctoritatem in controversiis fidei'.
+
+Strange, that the evident antithesis between power in respect of
+ceremonies, and authority in points of faith, should have been
+overlooked!
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Some have published, That there is a proper sacrifice in the Lord's
+  Supper, to exhibit Christ's death in the 'post-fact', as there was a
+  sacrifice to prefigure it in the Old Law in the 'ante-fact', and
+  therefore that we have a true altar, and not only metaphorically so
+  called.
+
+Doubtless a gross error, yet pardonable, for to errors nearly as gross
+it was opposed.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Some have maintained that the Lord's Day is kept merely by
+  ecclesiastical constitution, and that the day is changeable.
+
+Where shall we find the proof of the contrary?--at least, if the
+position had been worded thus: The moral and spiritual obligation of
+keeping the Lord's Day is grounded on its manifest necessity, and the
+evidence of its benignant effects in connection with those conditions of
+the world of which even in Christianized countries there is no reason to
+expect a change, and is therefore commanded by implication in the New
+Testament, so clearly and by so immediate a consequence, as to be no
+less binding on the conscience than an explicit command. A., having
+lawful authority, expressly commands me to go to London from Bristol.
+There is at present but one safe road: this therefore is commanded by
+A.; and would be so, even though A. had spoken of another road which at
+that time was open.
+
+
+Ib. p. 370.
+
+  Some have broached out of Socinus a most uncomfortable and desperate
+  doctrine, that late repentance, that is, upon the last bed of
+  sickness, is unfruitful, at least to reconcile the penitent to God.
+
+This no doubt refers to Jeremy Taylor's work on Repentance, and is but
+too faithful a description of its character.
+
+
+Ib. p. 373.
+
+  A little after the King was beheaded, Mr. Atkins met this priest in
+  London, and going into a tavern with him, said to him in his familiar
+  way, "What business have you here? I warrant you come about some
+  roguery or other." Whereupon the priest told it him as a great secret,
+  that there were thirty of them here in London, who by instructions
+  from Cardinal Mazarine, did take care of such affairs, and had sat in
+  council, and debated the question, whether the King should be put to
+  death or not;--and that it was carried in the affirmative, and there
+  were but two voices for the negative, which was his own and another's;
+  and that for his part, he could not concur with them, as foreseeing
+  what misery this would bring upon his country. Mr. Atkins stood to
+  the truth of this, but thought it a violation of the laws of
+  friendship to name the man.
+
+Richard Baxter was too thoroughly good for any experience to make him
+worldly wise; else, how could he have been simple enough to suppose,
+that Mazarine would leave such a question to be voted 'pro' and 'con',
+and decided by thirty emissaries in London! And, how could he have
+reconciled Mazarine's having any share in Charles's death with his own
+masterly account, pp. 98, 99, 100? Even Cromwell, though he might have
+prevented, could not have effected, the sentence. The regicidal judges
+were not his creatures. Consult the Life of Colonel Hutchinson upon this.
+
+
+Ib. p. 374.
+
+  Since this, Dr. Peter Moulin hath, in his Answer to 'Philanax
+  Anglicus', declared that he is ready to prove, when authority will
+  Call him to it, that the King's death, and the change of the
+  government, was first proposed both to the Sorbonne, and to the Pope
+  with his Conclave, and consented to and concluded for by both.
+
+The Pope in his Conclave had about the same influence in Charles's fate
+as the Pope's eye in a leg of mutton. The letter intercepted by Cromwell
+was Charles's death-warrant. Charles knew his power; and Cromwell and
+Ireton knew it likewise, and knew that it was the power of a man who was
+within a yard's length of a talisman, only not within an arm's length,
+but which in that state of the public mind, could he but have once
+grasped it, would have enabled him to blow up Presbyterian and
+Independent both. If ever a lawless act was defensible on the principle
+of self-preservation, the murder of Charles might be defended. I suspect
+that the fatal delay in the publication of the 'Icon Basilike' is
+susceptible of no other satisfactory explanation. In short it is absurd
+to burthen this act on Cromwell and his party, in any special sense. The
+guilt, if guilt it was, was consummated at the gates of Hull; that is,
+the first moment that Charles was treated as an individual, man against
+man. Whatever right Hampden had to defend his life against the King in
+battle, Cromwell and Ireton had in yet more imminent danger against the
+King's plotting. Milton's reasoning on this point is unanswerable: and
+what a wretched hand does Baxter make of it!
+
+
+Ib. p. 375.
+
+  But if the laws of the land appoint the nobles, as next the King, to
+  assist him in doing right, and withhold him from doing wrong, then be
+  they licensed by man's law, and so not prohibited by God's, to
+  interpose themselves for the safety of equity and innocency, and by
+  all lawful and needful means to procure the Prince to be reformed, but
+  in no case deprived, where the sceptre is inherited! So far Bishop
+  Bilson.
+
+Excellent! O, by all means preserve for him the benefit of his rightful
+heir-loom, the regal sceptre; only lay it about his shoulders, till he
+promises to handle it, as he ought! But what if he breaks his promise
+and your head? or what if he will not promise? How much honester would
+it be to say, that extreme cases are 'ipso nomine' not generalizable,
+--therefore not the subjects of a law, which is the conclusion 'per
+genus singuli in genere inclusi'. Every extreme case must be judged by
+and for itself under all the peculiar circumstances. Now as these are
+not foreknowable, the case itself cannot be predeterminable. Harmodius
+and Aristogiton did not justify Brutus and Cassius: but neither do
+Brutus and Cassius criminate Harmodius and Aristogiton. The rule applies
+till an extreme case occurs; and how can this be proved? I answer, the
+only proof is success and good event; for these afford the best
+presumption, first, of the extremity, and secondly, of its remediable
+nature--the two elements of its justification. To every individual it is
+forbidden. He who attempts it, therefore, must do so on the presumption
+that the will of the nation is in his will: whether he is mad or in his
+senses, the event can alone determine.
+
+
+Ib. p. 398.
+
+  The governing power and obligation over the flock is essential to the
+  office of a Pastor or Presbyter as instituted by Christ.
+
+There is, [Greek: hôs émoige dokei], one flaw in Baxter's plea for his
+Presbyterian form of Church government, that he uses a metaphor, which,
+inasmuch as it is but a metaphor, agrees with the thing meant in some
+points only, as if it were commensurate 'in toto', and virtually
+identical. Thus, the Presbyter is a shepherd as far as the watchfulness,
+tenderness, and care, are to be the same in both; but it does not follow
+that the Presbyter has the same sole power and exclusive right of
+guidance; and for this reason,--that his flock are not sheep, but men;
+not of a natural, generic, or even constant inferiority of judgment; but
+Christians, co-heirs of the promises, and therein of the gifts of the
+Holy Spirit, and of the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. How then
+can they be excluded from a share in Church Government? The words of
+Christ, if they may be transferred from their immediate application to
+the Jewish Synagogue, suppose the contrary;--and that highest act of
+government, the election of the officers and ministers of the Church,
+was confessedly exercised by the congregations including the Presbyters
+and Arch-presbyter or Bishop, in the primitive Church. The question,
+therefore, is:--Is a national Church, established by law, compatible
+with Christianity? If so, as Baxter held, the representatives (King,
+Lords, and Commons,) are or may be representatives of the whole people
+as Christians as well as civil subjects;--and their voice will then be
+the voice of the Church, which every individual, as an individual,
+themselves as individuals, and, 'a fortiori', the officers and
+administrators appointed by them, are bound to obey at the risk of
+excommunication, against which there would be no appeal, but to the
+heavenly Cæsar, the Lord and Head of the universal Church. But whether
+as the accredited representatives and plenipotentiaries of the national
+Church, they can avail themselves of their conjoint but distinct
+character, as temporal legislators, to superadd corporal or civil
+penalties to the spiritual sentence in points peculiar to Christianity,
+as heretical opinions, Church ceremonies, and the like, thus destroying
+'discipline', even as wood is destroyed by combination with fire;--this
+is a new and difficult question, which yet Baxter and the Presbyterian
+divines, and the Puritans of that age in general, not only answered
+affirmatively, but most zealously, not to say furiously, affirmed with
+anathemas to the assertors of the negative, and spiritual threats to the
+magistrates neglecting to interpose the temporal sword. In this respect
+the present Dissenters have the advantage over their earlier
+predecessors; but on the other hand they utterly evacuate the Scriptural
+commands against schism; take away all sense and significance from the
+article respecting the Catholic Church; and in consequence degrade the
+discipline itself into mere club-regulations or the by-laws of different
+lodges;--that very discipline, the capability of exercising which in its
+own specific nature without superinduction of a destructive and
+transmutual opposite, is the fairest and firmest support of their cause.
+
+20th October, 1829.
+
+
+Ib. p. 401.
+
+  That sententially it must be done by the Pastor or Governor of that
+  particular Church, which the person is to be admitted into, or cast
+  out of.
+
+This most arbitrary appropriation of the words of Christ, and of the
+apostles, John and Paul, by the Clergy to themselves exclusively, is the
+[Greek: prôton pseudos], the fatal error which has practically excluded
+Church discipline from among Protestants in all free countries. That it
+is retained, and an efficient power, among the Quakers, and only in that
+Sect, who act collectively as a Church,--who not only have no proper
+Clergy, but will not allow a division of majority and minority, nor a
+temporary president,--seems to supply an unanswerable confirmation of
+this my assertion, and a strong presumption for the validity of my
+argument. The Wesleyan Methodists have, I know, a discipline, and the
+power is in their consistory,--a general conclave of priests cardinal
+since the death of Pope Wesley. But what divisions and secessions this
+has given rise to; what discontents and heart-burnings it still
+occasions in their labouring inferior ministers, and in the classes, is
+no less notorious, and may authorize a belief that as the Sect
+increases, it will be less and less effective; nay, that it has
+decreased; and after all, what is it compared with the discipline of the
+Quakers?--Baxter's inconsistency on this subject would be inexplicable,
+did we not know his zealotry against Harrington, the Deists and the
+Mystics;--so that, like an electrified pith-ball, he is for ever
+attracted towards their tenets concerning the pretended perfecting of
+spiritual sentences by the civil magistrate, but he touches only to fly
+off again. "Toleration! dainty word for soul-murder! God grant that my
+eye may never see a toleration!" he exclaims in his book against
+Harrington's Oceana.
+
+
+Ib. p. 405.
+
+  As for the democratical conceit of them that say that the Parliament
+  hath their governing power, as they are the people's representatives,
+  and so have the members of the convocation, though those represented
+  have no governing power themselves, it is so palpably
+  self-contradicting, that I need not confute it.
+
+Self-contradicting according to Baxter's sense of the words "represent"
+and "govern." But every rational adult has a governing power: namely,
+that of governing himself.
+
+
+Ib. p. 412.
+
+  That though a subject ought to take an oath in the sense of his rulers
+  who impose it, as far as he can understand it; yet a man that taketh
+  an oath from a robber to save his life is not always bound to take it
+  in the imposer's sense, if he take it not against the proper sense of
+  the words.
+
+This is a point, on which I have never been able to satisfy myself.--The
+only safe conclusion I have been able to draw, being the folly,
+mischief, and immorality of all oaths but judicial ones,--and those no
+farther excepted than as they are means of securing a deliberate
+consciousness of the presence of the Omniscient Judge. The inclination
+of my mind is at this moment, to the principle that an oath may deepen
+the guilt of an act sinful in itself, but cannot be detached from the
+act; it being understood that a perfectly voluntary and self-imposed
+oath is itself a sin. The man who compels me to take an oath by putting
+a pistol to my ear has in my mind clearly forfeited all his right to be
+treated as a moral agent. Nay, it seems to be a sin to act so as to
+induce him to suppose himself such. Contingent consequences must be
+excluded; but would, I am persuaded, weigh in favour of annulling on
+principle an oath sinfully extorted. But I hate casuistry so utterly,
+that I could not without great violence to my feelings put the case in
+all its bearings. For example:--it is sinful to enlarge the power of
+wicked agents; but to allow them to have the power of binding the
+conscience of those, whom they have injured, is to enlarge the power,
+&c. Again: no oath can bind to the perpetration of a sin; but to
+transfer a sum of money from its rightful owner to a villain is a sin,
+&c. and twenty other such. But the robber may kill the next man!
+Possibly: but still more probably, many, who would be robbers if they
+could obtain their ends without murder, would resist the temptation if
+no extenuations of guilt were contemplated;--and one murder is more
+effective in rousing the public mind to preventive measures, and by the
+horror it strikes, is made more directly preventive of the tendency,
+than fifty civil robberies by contract.
+
+
+Ib. p. 435.
+
+  That the minister be not bound to read the Liturgy himself, if
+  another, by whomsoever, be procured to do it; so be it he preach not
+  against it.
+
+Wonderful, that so good and wise a man as Baxter should not have seen
+that in this the Church would have given up the best, perhaps the only
+efficient, preservative of her Faith. But for our blessed and truly
+Apostolic and Scriptural Liturgy, our churches' pews would long ago have
+been filled by Arians and Socinians, as too many of their desks and
+pulpits already are.
+
+
+Part III. p. 59.
+
+  As also to make us take such a poor suffering as this for a sign of
+  true grace, instead of faith, hope, love, mortification, and a
+  heavenly mind; and that the loss of one grain of love was worse than a
+  long imprisonment.
+
+Here Baxter confounds his own particular case, which very many would
+have coveted, with the sufferings of other prisoners on the same
+score;--sufferings nominally the same, but with few, if any, of Baxter's
+almost flattering supports.
+
+
+Ib. p. 60.
+
+  It would trouble the reader for me to reckon up the many diseases and
+  dangers for these ten years past, in or from which God hath delivered
+  me; though it be my duty not to forget to be thankful. Seven months
+  together I was lame with a strange pain in one foot, twice delivered
+  from a bloody flux; a spurious cataract in my eye, with incessant webs
+  and networks before it, hath continued these eight years, * * * so
+  that I have rarely one hour's or quarter of an hour's ease. Yet
+  through God's mercy I was never one hour melancholy, &c.
+
+The power of the soul, by its own act of will, is, I admit, great for
+any one occasion or for a definite time, yea, it is marvellous. But of
+such exertions and such an even frame of spirit, as Baxter's were, under
+such unremitting and almost unheard-of bodily derangements and pains as
+his, and during so long a life, 1 do not believe a human soul capable,
+unless substantiated and successively potentiated by an especial divine
+grace.
+
+
+Ib. p. 65.
+
+  The reasons why I make no larger a profession necessary than the Creed
+  and Scriptures, are, because if we depart from this old sufficient
+  Catholic rule, we narrow the Church, and depart from the old
+  Catholicism.
+
+Why then any Creed? This is the difficulty. If you put the Creed as in
+fact, and not by courtesy, Apostolic, and on a parity with Scripture,
+having, namely, its authority in itself, and a direct inspiration of the
+framers, inspired 'ad id tempus et ad eam rem', on what ground is this
+to be done, without admitting the binding power of tradition in the very
+sense of the term in which the Church of Rome uses it, and the
+Protestant Churches reject it? That it is the sum total made by
+Apostolic contributions, each Apostle casting, as into a helmet, a
+several article as his [Greek: symbolon], is the tradition; and this is
+holden as a mere legendary tale by the great majority of learned
+divines. That it is simply the Creed of the Western Church is affirmed
+by many Protestant divines, and some of these divines of our Church. Its
+comparative simplicity these divines explain by the freedom from
+heresies enjoyed by the Western Church, when the Eastern Church had been
+long troubled therewith. Others, again, and not unplausibly, contend
+that it was the Creed of the Catechumens preparatory to the Baptismal
+profession of faith, which other was a fuller comment on the union of
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, into whose name (or power) they
+were baptised. That the Apostles' Creed received additions after the
+Apostolic age, seems almost certain; not to mention the perplexing
+circumstance that so many of the Latin Fathers, who give almost the
+words of the Apostolic Creed, declare it forbidden absolutely to write
+or by any material form to transmit the 'Canon Fidei', or 'Symbolum' or
+'Regula Fidei', the Creed [Greek: kat' hexocháen], by analogy of which
+the question whether such a book was Scripture or not, was to be tried.
+With such doubts how can the Apostles' Creed be preferred to the Nicene
+by a consistent member of the Reformed Catholic Church?
+
+
+Ib. p. 67.
+
+  They think while you (the Independents) seem to be for a stricter
+  discipline than others, that your way or usual practice tendeth to
+  extirpate godliness out of the land, by taking a very few that can
+  talk more than the rest, and making them the Church, &c.
+
+Had Baxter had as judicious advisers among his theological, as he had
+among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with
+him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too
+egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who
+had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists
+would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in
+England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become,
+first, Arian, then Socinian, and finally Unitarian: that is, the
+'demi-semi-quaver' of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for the
+'semi-breve'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 69.
+
+  After this I waited on him (Dr. John Owen) at London again, and he
+  came once to me to my lodgings, when I was in town near him. And he
+  told me that he received my chiding letter and perceived that I
+  suspected his reality in the business; but he was so hearty in it that
+  I should see that he really meant as he spoke, concluding in these
+  words, "You shall see it, and my practice shall reproach your
+  diffidence" * * *. About a month after I went to him again, and he had
+  done nothing, but was still hearty for the work. And to be short, I
+  thus waited on him time after time, till my papers had been near a
+  year and a quarter in his hand, and then I advised him to return them
+  to me, which he did, with these words, "I am still a well-wisher to
+  those mathematics;"--without any other words about them, or ever
+  giving me any more exception against them. And this was the issue of
+  my third attempt for union with the Independents.
+
+Dr. Owen was a man of no ordinary intellect. It would be interesting to
+have his conduct in this point, seemingly so strange, in some measure
+explained: The words "those mathematics" look like an innuendo, that
+Baxter's scheme of union, by which all the parties opposed to the
+Prelatic Church were to form a rival Church, was, like the mathematics,
+true indeed, but true only in the idea, that is, abstracted from the
+subject matter. Still there appears a very chilling want of
+open-heartedness on the part of Owen, produced perhaps by the somewhat
+overly and certainly most ungracious resentments of Baxter. It was odd
+at least to propose concord in the tone and on the alleged ground of an
+old grudge.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  I have been twenty-six years convinced that dichotomizing will not do
+  it, but that the divine Trinity in Unity hath expressed itself in the
+  whole frame of nature and morality * * *. But he, Mr. George Lawson,
+  had not hit on the true method of the 'vestigia Trinitatis', &c.
+
+Among Baxter's philosophical merits, we ought not to overlook, that the
+substitution of Trichotomy for the old and still general plan of
+Dichotomy in the method and disposition of Logic, which forms so
+prominent and substantial an excellence in Kant's Critique of the Pure
+Reason, of the Judgment, and the rest of his works, belongs originally
+to Richard Baxter, a century before Kant;--and this not as a hint, but
+as a fully evolved and systematically applied principle. Nay, more than
+this:--Baxter grounded it on an absolute idea presupposed in all
+intelligential acts: whereas Kant takes it only as a fact in which he
+seems to anticipate or suspect some yet deeper truth latent, and
+hereafter to be discovered.
+
+On recollection, however, I am disposed to consider 'this' alone as
+Baxter's peculiar claim, I have not indeed any distinct memory of
+Giordano Bruno's 'Logice Venatrix Veritatis'; but doubtless the
+principle of Trichotomy is necessarily involved in the Polar Logic,
+which again is the same with the Pythagorean 'Tetractys', that is, the
+eternal fountain or source of nature; and this being sacred to
+contemplations of identity, and prior in order of thought to all
+division, is so far from interfering with Trichotomy as the universal
+form of division (more correctly of distinctive distribution in logic)
+that it implies it. 'Prothesis' being by the very term anterior to
+'Thesis' can be no part of it. Thus in
+
+                         'Prothesis'
+               'Thesis'              'Antithesis'
+                         'Synthesis'
+
+we have the Tetrad indeed in the intellectual and intuitive
+contemplation, but a Triad in discursive arrangement, and a Tri-unity in
+result. [3]
+
+
+Ib. p. 144.
+
+Seeing the great difficulties that lie in the way of increasing
+charities so as to meet the increase of population, or even so as to
+follow it, and the manifold desirableness of parish Churches, with the
+material dignity that in a right state of Christian order would attach
+to them, as compared with meeting-houses, chapels, and the like--all
+more or less 'privati juris', I have often felt disposed to wish that
+the large majestic Church, central to each given parish, might have been
+appropriated to Public Prayer, to the mysteries of Baptism and the
+Lord's Supper, and to the 'quasi sacramenta', Marriage, Penance,
+Confirmation, Ordination, and to the continued reading aloud, or
+occasional chanting, of the Scriptures during the intervals of the
+different Services, which ought to be so often performed as to suffice
+successively for the whole population; and that on the other hand the
+chapels and the like should be entirely devoted to teaching and
+expounding.
+
+
+Ib. p. 153.
+
+  And I proved to him that Christianity was proved true many years
+  before any of the New Testament was written, and that so it may be
+  still proved by one that doubted of some words of the Scripture; and
+  therefore the true order is, to try the truth of the Christian
+  religion first, and the perfect verity of the Scriptures afterwards.
+
+With more than Dominican virulence did Goeze, Head Pastor of the
+Lutheran Church at Hamburg, assail the celebrated Lessing for making and
+supporting the same position as the pious Baxter here advances.
+
+This controversy with Goeze was in 1778, nearly a hundred years after
+Baxter's writing this.
+
+
+Ib. p. 155.
+
+  And within a few days Mr. Barnett riding the circuit was cast by his
+  horse, and died in the very fall. And Sir John Medlicote and his
+  brother, a few weeks after, lay both dead in his house together.
+
+This interpreting of accidents and coincidences into judgments is a
+breach of charity and humility, only not universal among all sects and
+parties of this period, and common to the best and gentlest men in all;
+we should not therefore bring it in charge against any one in
+particular. But what excuse shall be made for the revival of this
+presumptuous encroachment on the divine prerogative in our days?
+
+
+Ib. p. 180.
+
+  Near this time my book called A Key for Catholics, was to be
+  reprinted. In the preface to the first impression I had mentioned with
+  praise the Earl of Lauderdale. * * * I thought best to prefix an
+  epistle to the Duke, in which I said not a word of him but truth. * *
+  * But the indignation that men had against the Duke made some blame
+  me, as keeping up the reputation of one whom multitudes thought very
+  ill of; whereas I owned none of his faults, and did nothing that I
+  could well avoid for the aforesaid reasons. Long after this he
+  professed his kindness to me, and told me I should never want while he
+  was able, and humbly entreated me to accept twenty guineas from him,
+  which I did.
+
+This would be a curious proof of the slow and imperfect intercourse of
+communication between Scotland and London, if Baxter had not been
+particularly informed of Lauderdale's horrible cruelties to the Scotch
+Covenanters:--and if Baxter did know them, he surely ran into a greater
+inconsistency to avoid the appearance of a less. And the twenty guineas!
+they must have smelt, I should think, of more than the earthly brimstone
+that might naturally enough have been expected in gold or silver, from
+his palm. I would as soon have plucked an ingot from the cleft of the
+Devil's hoof.
+
+  [Greek: Taut' élegon períthumos egô gàr mísei en ísô Laudérdalon échô
+  kaì kerkokerônucha Satan.]
+
+
+Ib. p. 181.
+
+  About that time I had finished a book called Catholic Thoughts; in
+  which I undertake to prove that besides things unrevealed, known to
+  none, and ambiguous words, there is no considerable difference between
+  the Arminians and Calvinists, except some very tolerable difference in
+  the point of perseverance.
+
+What Arminians? what Calvinists?--It is possible that the guarded
+language and positions of Arminius himself may be interpreted into a
+"very tolerable" compatibility with the principles of the milder
+Calvinists, such as Archbishop Leighton, that true Father of the Church
+of Christ. But I more than doubt the possibility of even approximating
+the principles of Bishop Jeremy Taylor to the fundamental doctrines of
+Leighton, much more to those of Cartwright, Twiss, or Owen.
+
+
+Ib. p. 186.
+
+  Bishop Barlow told my friend that got my papers for him, that he could
+  hear of nothing that we judged to be sin, but mere inconveniences.
+  When as above seventeen years ago, we publicly endeavoured to prove
+  the sinfulness even of many of the old impositions.
+
+Clearly an undeterminable controversy; inasmuch as there is no
+centra-definition possible of sin and inconvenience in religion: while
+the exact point, at which an inconvenience, becoming intolerable, passes
+into sin, must depend on the state and the degree of light, of the
+individual consciences to which it appears or becomes intolerable.
+Besides, a thing may not be only indifferent in itself, but may be
+declared such by Scripture, and on this indifference the Scripture may
+have rested a prohibition to Christians to judge each other on the
+point. If yet a Pope or Archbishop should force this on the consciences
+of others, for example, to eat or not to eat animal food, would he not
+sin in so doing? And does Scripture permit me to subscribe to an
+ordinance made in direct contempt of a command of Scripture?
+
+If it were said,--In all matters indifferent and so not sinful you must
+comply with lawful authority:--must I not reply, But you have yourself
+removed the indifferency by your injunction? Look in Popish countries
+for the hideous consequences of the unnatural doctrine--that the Priest
+may go to Hell for sinfully commanding, and his parishioners go with him
+for not obeying that command.
+
+
+Ib. p. 191.
+
+  About this time died my dear friend Mr. Thomas Gouge, of whose life
+  you may see a little in Mr. Clark's last book of Lives:--a wonder of
+  sincere industry in works of charity. It would make a volume to recite
+  at large the charity he used to his poor parishioners at Sepulchre's,
+  before he was ejected and silenced for non-conformity, &c.
+
+I cannot express how much it grieves me, that our Clergy should still
+think it fit and expedient to defend the measures of the High Churchmen
+from Laud to Sheldon, and to speak of the ejected ministers, Calamy,
+Baxter, Gouge, Howe, and others, as schismatics, factionists, fanatics,
+or Pharisees:--thus to flatter some half-dozen dead Bishops, wantonly
+depriving our present Church of the authority of perhaps the largest
+collective number of learned and zealous, discreet and holy, ministers
+that one age and one Church was ever blest with; and whose authority in
+every considerable point is in favor of our Church, and against the
+present Dissenters from it. And this seems the more impolitic, when it
+must be clear to every student of the history of these times, that the
+unmanly cruelties inflicted on Baxter and others were, as Bishops Ward,
+Stillingfleet, and others saw at the time, part of the Popish scheme of
+the Cabal, to trick the Bishops and dignified Clergy into rendering
+themselves and the established Church odious to the public by laws, the
+execution of which the King, the Duke, Arlington, and the Popish priests
+directed towards the very last man that the Bishops themselves (the
+great majority at least) would have molested.
+
+
+Appendix II. p. 37.
+
+  If I can prove that it hath been the universal practice of the Church
+  'in nudum apertum caput manus imponere', doth it follow that this is
+  essential, and the contrary null?
+
+How likewise can it be proved that the imposition of hands in Ordination
+did not stand on the same ground as the imposition of hands in sickness;
+that is, the miraculous gifts of the first preachers of the Gospel? All
+Protestants admit that the Church retained several forms so originated,
+after the cessation of the originating powers, which were the substance
+of these forms.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  If you think not only imposition to be essential, but also that
+  nothing else is essential, or that all are true ministers that are
+  ordained by a lawful Bishop per 'manuum impositionem', then do you
+  egregiously 'tibi ipsi imponere'.
+
+Baxter, like most scholastic logicians, had a sneaking affection for
+puns. The cause is,--the necessity of attending to the primary sense of
+words, that is, the visual image or general relation expressed, and
+which remains common to all the after senses, however widely or even
+incongruously differing from each other in other respects. For the same
+reason, schoolmasters are commonly punsters. "I have indorsed your Bill,
+Sir," said a pedagogue to a merchant, meaning he had flogged his son
+William.--My old master the Rev. James Bowyer, the 'Hercules furens' of
+the phlogistic sect, but else an incomparable teacher,--used to
+translate, 'Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu',--first
+reciting the Latin words, and observing that they were the fundamental
+article of the Peripatetic school,--"You must flog a boy, before you can
+make him understand;"--or, "You must lay it in at the tail before you
+can get it into the head."
+
+
+Ib. p. 45.
+
+  Then, that the will must follow the practical intellect whether right
+  or wrong,--that is no precept, but the nature of the soul in its
+  acting, because that the will is 'potentia cæca, non nata ad
+  intelligendum, sed ad volendum vel nolendum intellectum'.
+
+This is the main fault in Baxter's metaphysics, that he so often
+substantiates distinctions into dividuous self-subsistents. As
+here;--for a will not intelligent is no will.
+
+
+Appendix. III. p. 55.
+
+  And for many ages no other ordinarily baptised but infants. If Christ
+  had no Church then, where was his wisdom, his love, and his power?
+  What was become of the glory of his redemption, and his Catholic
+  Church, that was to continue to the end?
+
+But the Antipoedo-Baptists would deny any such consequences as
+applicable to them, who are to act according to the circumstances, in
+which God, who ordains his successive manifestations in due
+correspondence with other lights and states of things, has placed them.
+He does not exclude from the Church of Christ (say they) those whom we
+do not accept into the communion of our particular Society, any more
+than the House of Lords excludes Commoners from being Members of
+Parliament. And we do this because--we think that such promiscuous
+admission would prolong an error which would be deadly to us, though not
+to you who interpret the Scriptures otherwise.
+
+
+'In fine.'
+
+There are two senses in which the words, 'Church of England,' may be
+used;--first, with reference to the idea of the Church as an estate of
+this Christian Realm, protesting against the Papal usurpation,
+comprising, first, the interests of a permanent learned class, that is,
+the Clergy;--secondly, those of the proper, that is, the infirm poor,
+from age or sickness;--and thirdly, the adequate proportional
+instruction of all in all classes by public prayer, recitation of the
+Scriptures, by expounding, preaching, catechizing, and schooling, and
+last, not least, by the example and influence of a pastor and a
+schoolmaster placed as a germ of civilization and cultivation in every
+parish throughout the land. To this idea, the Reformed Church of England
+with its marriable and married Clergy would have approximated, if the
+revenues of the Church, as they existed at the death of Henry VII., had
+been rightly transferred by his successor;--transferred, I mean, from
+reservoirs, which had by degeneracy on the one hand, and progressive
+improvement on the other, fallen into ruin, and in which those revenues
+had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,--transferred from what had
+become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public
+benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to
+private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true;
+but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability,
+arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt
+principles of a great majority in all classes during the dynasty of the
+Tudors,) does not prevent this wholesale sacrilege, from deserving the
+character of the "first and deadliest wound inflicted on the
+Constitution of the kingdom; which term, in the body politic, as in
+bodies natural, expresses not only what is and has been evolved, but
+likewise whatever is potentially contained in the seminal principle of
+the particular body, and which would in its due time have appeared but
+for emasculation in its infancy. This, however, is the first sense of
+the words, Church of England. [4]
+
+The second is the Church of England as now by law established, and by
+practice of the law actually existing. That in the first sense it is the
+object of my admiration and the earthly 'ne plus ultra' of my religious
+aspirations, it were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed to express
+my conviction, that on our recurring to the same ends and objects, (the
+restoration of a national and circulating property in counterpoise of
+individual possession, disposable and heritable) though in other forms
+and by other means perhaps, the decline or progress of this country
+depends. In the second sense of the words I can sincerely profess, that
+I love and honour the Church of England, comparatively, beyond any other
+Church established or unestablished now existing in Christendom; and it
+is wholly in consequence of this deliberate and most affectionate filial
+preference, that I have read this work, and Calamy's historical
+writings, with so deep and so melancholy an interest. And I dare avow
+that I cannot but regard as an ignorant bigot every man who (especially
+since the publicity and authentication of the contents of the Stuart
+Papers, Memoirs and Life of James II. &c.) can place the far later
+furious High Church compilations and stories of Walker and others in
+competition with the veracity and general verity of Baxter and Calamy;
+or can forget that the great body of Non-conformists to whom these great
+and good men belonged, were not dissenters from the established Church
+willingly, but an orthodox and numerous portion of the Church. Omitting
+then the wound received by religion generally under Henry VIII., and the
+shameless secularizations clandestinely effected during the reigns of
+Elizabeth and the first James, I am disposed to consider the three
+following as the grand evil epochs of our present Church. First, The
+introduction and after-predominance of Latitudinarianism under the name
+of Arminianism, and the spirit of a conjoint Romanism and Socinianism at
+the latter half or towards the close of the reign of James I. in the
+persons of Montague, Laud, and their confederates. Second, The ejection
+of the two thousand ministers after the Restoration, with the other
+violences in which the Churchmen made themselves the dupes of Charles,
+James, the Jesuits, and the French Court. (See the Stuart Papers
+'passim'). It was this that gave consistence and enduring strength to
+Schism in this country, prevented the pacation of Ireland, and prepared
+for the separation of America at a far too early period for the true
+interest of either country. Third, The surrender by the Clergy of the
+right of taxing themselves, and the Jacobitical follies that combined
+with the former to put it in the power of the Whig party to deprive the
+Church of her Convocation,--a bitter disgrace and wrong, to which most
+unhappily the people were rendered indifferent by the increasing
+contrast of the sermons of the Clergy with the Articles and Homilies of
+the Church itself,--but a wrong nevertheless which already has avenged,
+and will sooner or later be seen to avenge, itself on the State and the
+governing classes that continue this boast of a short-sighted policy;
+the same policy which in our own days would have funded the property of
+the Church, and, by converting the Clergy into salaried dependents on
+the Government 'pro tempore', have deprived the Establishment of its
+fairest honor, that of being neither enslaved to the court, nor to the
+congregations; the same policy, alas! which even now pays and patronizes
+a Board of Agriculture to undermine all landed property by a succession
+of false, shallow, and inflammatory libels against tithes.
+
+These are my weighed sentiments: and fervently desiring, as I do, the
+perpetuity and prosperity of the established Church, zealous for its
+rights and dignity, preferring its forms, believing its Articles of
+Faith, and holding its Book of Common Prayer and its translation of the
+Scriptures among my highest privileges as a Christian and an Englishman,
+I trust that I may both entertain and avow these sentiments without
+forfeiting any part of my claim to the name of a faithful member of the
+Church of England.
+
+June 1820.
+
+
+N. B. As to Warburton's Alliance of the Church and State, I object to
+the title (Alliance), and to the matter and mode of the reasoning. But
+the inter-dependence of the Church and the State appears to me a truth
+of the highest practical importance. Let but the temporal powers protect
+the subjects in their just rights as subjects merely: and I do not know
+of any one point in which the Church has the right or the necessity to
+call in the temporal power as its ally for any purpose exclusively
+ecclesiastic. The right of a firm to dissolve its partnership with any
+one partner, breach of contract having been proved, and publicly to
+announce the same, is common to all men as social beings.
+
+I spoke above of "Romanism." But call it, if you like, Laudism, or
+Lambethism in temporalities and ceremonials, and of Socinianism in
+doctrine, that is, a retaining of the word but a rejecting or
+interpreting away of the sense and substance of the Scriptural
+Mysteries. This spirit has not indeed manifested itself in the article
+of the Trinity, since Waterland gave the deathblow to Arianism, and so
+left no alternative to the Clergy, but the actual divinity or mere
+humanity of our Lord; and the latter would be too impudent an avowal for
+a public reader of our Church Liturgy: but in the articles of original
+sin, the necessity of regeneration, the necessity of redemption in order
+to the possibility of regeneration, of justification by faith, and of
+prevenient and auxiliary grace,--all I can say with sincerity is, that
+our orthodoxy seems so far in an improving state, that I can hope for
+the time when Churchmen will use the term Arminianism to express a habit
+of belief opposed not to Calvinism, or the works of Calvin, but to the
+Articles of our own Church, and to the doctrine in which all the first
+Reformers agreed.
+
+Note--that by Latitudinarianism, I do not mean the particular tenets of
+the divines so called, such as Dr. H. More, Cudworth and their compeers,
+relative to toleration, comprehension, and the general belief that in
+the greater number of points then most controverted, the pious of all
+parties were far more nearly of the same mind than their own
+imperfections, and the imperfection of language allowed them to see: I
+mean the disposition to explain away the articles of the Church on the
+pretext of their inconsistency with right reason;--when in fact it was
+only an incongruity with a wrong understanding, the faculty which St.
+Paul calls [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs], the rules of which having been all
+abstracted from objects of sense, (finite in time and space,) are
+logically applicable to objects of the sense alone. This I have
+elsewhere called the spirit of Socinianism, which may work in many whose
+tenets are anti-Socinian.
+
+Law is--'conclusio per regulam generis singulorum in genere isto
+inclusorum'. Now the extremes 'et inclusa' are contradictory terms.
+Therefore extreme cases are not capable subjects of law 'a priori', but
+must proceed on knowledge of the past, and anticipation of the future,
+and the fulfilment of the anticipation is the proof, because the only
+possible determination, of the accuracy of the knowledge. In other words
+the agents may be condemned or honored according to their intentions,
+and the apparent source of their motives; so we honor Brutus, but the
+extreme case itself is tried by the event.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: 'Relliquiæ Baxterianæ': or Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative
+of the most memorable passages of his life and times. Published from his
+manuscript, by Matthew Sylvester.--London, 'folio'. 1699.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2: See Hooker E. P. V. xviii. 3. Vol. II. p. 80. Keble. Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 3: See Table Talk, p. 162. 2nd edit. Ed.]
+
+
+
+[Footnote 4: See the Church and State, p. 73, 3rd edit.--Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON LEIGHTON. [1]
+
+Surely if ever work not in the sacred Canon might suggest a belief of
+inspiration,--of something more than human,--this it is. When Mr. Elwyn
+made this assertion, I took it as the hyperbole of affection: but now I
+subscribe to it seriously, and bless the hour that introduced me to the
+knowledge of the evangelical, apostolical Archbishop Leighton.
+
+April 1814.
+
+
+Next to the inspired Scriptures--yea, and as the vibration of that once
+struck hour remaining on the air, stands Leighton's Commentary on the
+1st Epistle of St. Peter.
+
+
+Comment Vol. I. p. 2.
+
+ --their redemption and salvation by Christ Jesus; that inheritance of
+  immortality bought by his blood for them, and the evidence and
+  stability of their right and title to it.
+
+By the blood of Christ I mean this. I contemplate the Christ,
+
+1;--As 'Christus agens', the Jehovah Christ, the Word:
+
+2;--As 'Christus patiens', The God Incarnate.
+
+In the former he is 'relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, sol
+intelligibilis: relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, calor
+fovens'. In the latter he is 'vita vivificans, principium spiritualis,
+id est, veræ reproductionis in vitam veram'. Now this principle, or 'vis
+vitæ vitam vivificans', considered in 'forma passiva, assimilationem
+patiens', at the same time that it excites the soul to the vital act of
+assimilating--this is the Blood of Christ, really present through faith
+to, and actually partaken by, the faithful. Of this the body is the
+continual product, that is, a good life-the merits of Christ acting on
+the soul, redemptive.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 13-15.
+
+  Of their sanctification: 'elect unto obedience', &c.
+
+That the doctrines asserted in this and the two or three following pages
+cannot be denied or explained away, without removing (as the modern
+Unitarians), or (as the Arminians) unsettling and undermining, the
+foundations of the Faith, I am fully convinced; and equally so, that
+nothing is gained by the change, the very same logical consequences
+being deducible from the tenets of the Church Arminians;--scarcely more
+so, indeed, from those which they still hold in common with Luther,
+Zuinglius, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer and the other Fathers of the
+Reformation in England, and which are therefore most unfairly entitled
+Calvinism--than from those which they have attempted to substitute in
+their place. Nay, the shock given to the moral sense by these
+consequences is, to my feelings, aggravated in the Arminian doctrine by
+the thin yet dishonest disguise. Meantime the consequences appear to me,
+in point of logic, legitimately concluded from the terms of the
+premisses. What shall we say then? Where lies the fault? In the original
+doctrines expressed in the premisses? God forbid. In the particular
+deductions, logically considered? But these we have found legitimate.
+Where then? I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and
+according to such rules. The rules are alien and inapplicable; the
+process presumptuous, yea, preposterous. The error, [Greek: to prôton
+pseudos], lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all,
+in this instance.
+
+First:--because the terms from which the conclusion must be
+drawn-('termini in majore præmissi, a quibus scientialiter et
+scientifice demonstrandum erat') are accommodations and not
+scientific--that is, proper and adequate, not 'per idem', but 'per quam
+maxime simile', or rather 'quam maxime dissimile':
+
+Secondly;--because the truths in question are transcendant, and have
+their evidence, if any, in the ideas themselves, and for the reason; and
+do not and cannot derive it from the conceptions of the understanding,
+which cannot comprehend the truths, but is to be comprehended in and by
+them, ('John' i. 5.):
+
+Lastly, and chiefly;--because these truths, as they do not originate in
+the intellective faculty of man, so neither are they addressed primarily
+to our intellect; but are substantiated for us by their correspondence
+to the wants, cravings, and interests of the moral being, for which they
+were given, and without which they would be devoid of all meaning,--'vox
+et præterea nihil'. The only conclusions, therefore, that can be drawn
+from them, must be such as are implied in the origin and purpose of
+their revelation; and the legitimacy of all conclusions must be tried by
+their consistency with those moral interests, those spiritual
+necessities, which are the proper final cause of the truths and of our
+faith therein. For some of the faithful these truths have, I doubt not,
+an evidence of reason; but for the whole household of faith their
+certainty is in their working. Now it is this, by which, in all cases,
+we know and determine existence in the first instance. That which works
+in us or on us exists for us. The shapes and forms that follow the
+working as its results or products, whether the shapes cognizable by
+sense or the forms distinguished by the intellect, are after all but the
+particularizations of this working; its proper names, as it were, as
+John, James, Peter, in respect of human nature. They are all derived
+from the relations in which finite beings stand to each other; and are
+therefore heterogeneous and, except by accommodation, devoid of meaning
+and purpose when applied to the working in and by which God makes his
+existence known to us, and (we may presume to say) especially exists for
+the soul in whom he thus works. On these grounds, therefore, I hold the
+doctrines of original sin, the redemption therefrom by the Cross of
+Christ, and change of heart as the consequent; without adopting the
+additions to the doctrines inferred by one set of divines, the modern
+Calvinists, or acknowledging the consequences burdened on the doctrines
+by their antagonists. Nor is this my faith fairly liable to any
+inconvenience, if only it be remembered that it is a spiritual working,
+of which I speak, and a spiritual knowledge,--not through the 'medium'
+of image, the seeking after which is superstition; nor yet by any
+sensation, the watching for which is enthusiasm, and the conceit of its
+presence fanatical distemperature. "Do the will of the Father, and ye
+shall 'know' it."
+
+We must distinguish the life and the soul; though there is a certain
+sense in which the life may be called the soul; that is, the life is the
+soul of the body. But the soul is the life of the man, and Christ is the
+life of the soul. Now the spirit of man, the spirit subsistent, is
+deeper than both, not only deeper than the body and its life, but deeper
+than the soul; and the Spirit descendent and supersistent is higher than
+both. In the regenerated man the height and the depth become one--the
+Spirit communeth with the spirit--and the soul is the 'inter-ens', or
+'ens inter-medium' between the life and the spirit;--the 'participium',
+not as a compound, however, but as a 'medium indifferens'--in the same
+sense in which heat may be designated as the indifference between light
+and gravity. And what is the Reason?--The spirit in its presence to the
+understanding abstractedly from its presence in the will,--nay, in many,
+during the negation of the latter. The spirit present to man, but not
+appropriated by him, is the reason of man:--the reason in the process of
+its identification with the will is the spirit.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 63-4.
+
+  Can we deny that it is unbelief of those things that causeth this
+  neglect and forgetting of them? The discourse, the tongue of men and
+  angels cannot beget divine belief of the happiness to come; only He
+  that gives it, gives faith likewise to apprehend it, and lay hold upon
+  it, and upon our believing to be filled with joy in the hopes of it.
+
+
+Most true, most true!
+
+
+Ib. p. 68.
+
+  In spiritual trials that are the sharpest and most fiery of all, when
+  the furnace is within a man, when God doth not only shut up his
+  loving-kindness from its feeling, but seems to shut it up in hot
+  displeasure, when he writes bitter things against it; yet then to
+  depend upon him, and wait for his salvation, this is not only a true,
+  but a strong and very refined faith indeed, and the more he smites,
+  the more to cleave to him. * * * Though I saw, as it were, his hand
+  lifted up to destroy me, yet from that same hand would I expect
+  salvation.
+
+Bless God, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter! It is the
+honey in the lion.
+
+
+Ib. p. 75.
+
+  This natural men may discourse of, and that very knowingly, and give a
+  kind of natural credit to it as to a history that may be true; but
+  firmly to believe that there is divine truth in all these things, and
+  to have a persuasion of it stronger than of the very things we see
+  with our eyes; such an assent as this is the peculiar work of the
+  Spirit of God, and is certainly saving faith.
+
+'Lord I believe: help thou my unbelief!' My reason acquiesces, and I
+believe enough to fear. O, grant me the belief that brings sweet hope!
+
+
+Ib. p. 76.
+
+  Faith * * causes the soul to find all that is spoken of him in the
+  word, and his beauty there represented, to be abundantly true, makes
+  it really taste of his sweetness, and by that possesses the heart more
+  strongly with his love, persuading it of the truth of those things,
+  not by reasons and arguments, but by an inexpressible kind of
+  evidence, that they only know that have it.
+
+Either this is true, or religion is not religion; that is, it adds
+nothing to our human reason; 'non religat'. Grant it, grant it me, O
+Lord!
+
+
+Ib. pp. 104-5.
+
+  This sweet stream of their doctrine did, as the rivers, make its own
+  banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to
+  after ages, and by the confluence of more such prophecies grew greater
+  as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the Gospel in the
+  New Testament, both acted and preached by the great Prophet himself,
+  whom they foretold to come, and recorded by his Apostles and
+  Evangelists, and thus united into one river, clear as crystal. This
+  doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath still refreshed the city
+  of God, his Church under the Gospel, and still shall do so, till it
+  empty itself into the ocean of eternity.
+
+In the whole course of my studies I do not remember to have read so
+beautiful an allegory as this; so various and detailed, and yet so just
+and natural.
+
+
+Ib. p. 121.
+
+  There is a truth in it, that all sin arises from some kind of
+  ignorance * * *. For were the true visage of sin seen at a full light,
+  undressed and unpainted, it were impossible, while it so appeared,
+  that any one soul could be in love with it, but would rather flee from
+  it as hideous and abominable.
+
+This is the only (defect, shall I say? No, but the only) omission I have
+felt in this divine Writer--for him we understand by feeling,
+experimentally--that he doth not notice the horrible tyranny of habit.
+What the Archbishop says, is most true of beginners in sin; but this is
+the foretaste of hell, to see and loathe the deformity of the wedded
+vice, and yet still to embrace and nourish it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 122.
+
+  He calls those times wherein Christ was unknown to them, 'the times of
+  their ignorance'. Though the stars shine never so bright, and the moon
+  with them in its full, yet they do not, altogether, make it day: still
+  it is night till the sun appear.
+
+How beautiful, and yet how simple, and as it were unconscious of its own
+beauty!
+
+
+Ib. p. 124.
+
+  You were running to destruction in the way of sin, and there was a
+  voice, together with the Gospel preaching to your ear, that spake into
+  your heart, and called you back from that path of death to the way of
+  holiness, which is the only way of life. He hath severed you from the
+  mass of the profane world, and picked you out to be jewels for
+  himself.
+
+O, how divine! Surely, nothing less than the Spirit of Christ could have
+inspired such thoughts in such language. Other divines,--Donne and
+Jeremy Taylor for instance,--have converted their worldly gifts, and
+applied them to holy ends; but here the gifts themselves seem unearthly.
+
+
+Ib. p. 138.
+
+  As in religion, so in the course and practice of men's lives, the
+  stream of sin runs from one age to another, and every age makes it
+  greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their
+  course by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man
+  when he is born, falls like a drop into this main current of
+  corruption, and so is carried down it, and this by reason of its
+  strength, and his own nature, which willingly dissolves into it, and
+  runs along with it.
+
+In this single period we have religion, the spirit,--philosophy, the
+soul,--and poetry, the body and drapery united;--Plato glorified by St.
+Paul; and yet coming as unostentatiously as any speech from an innocent
+girl of fifteen.
+
+
+Ib. p. 158.
+
+  The chief point of obedience is believing; the proper obedience to
+  truth is to give credit to it.
+
+This is not quite so perspicuous and single-sensed as Archbishop
+Leighton's sentences in general are. This effect is occasioned by the
+omission of the word "this," or "divine," or the truth "in Christ." For
+truth in the ordinary and scientific sense is received by a spontaneous,
+rather than chosen by a voluntary, act; and the apprehension of the same
+(belief) supposes a position of congruity rather than an act of
+obedience. Far otherwise is it with the truth that is the object of
+Christian faith: and it is this truth of which Leighton is speaking.
+Belief indeed is a living part of this faith; but only as long as it is
+a living part. In other words, belief is implied in faith; but faith is
+not necessarily implied in belief. 'The devils believe.'
+
+
+Ib. p. 166.
+
+  Hence learn that true conversion is not so slight a work as we
+  commonly account it. It is not the outward change of some bad customs,
+  which gains the name of a reformed man in the ordinary dialect; it is
+  new birth and being, and elsewhere called 'a new creation. Though it
+  be but a change in qualities', yet it is such a one, and the qualities
+  so far distant from what they before were, &c.
+
+I dare not affirm that this is erroneously said; but it is one of the
+comparatively few passages that are of service as reminding me that it
+is not the Scripture that I am reading. Not the qualities merely, but
+the root of the qualities is trans-created. How else could it be a
+birth,--a creation?
+
+
+Ib. p. 170.
+
+  This natural life is compared, even by natural men, to the vainest
+  things, and scarce find they things light enough to express it vain;
+  and as it is here called grass, so they compare the generations of men
+  to the leaves of trees. * * * 'Man that is born of a woman is of few
+  days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut
+  down. Job' xiv. 1, 2. Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.
+
+It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless
+subtleties, or mere phantoms--'entia logica, vel etiam verbalia solum'.
+And yet in order to secure a safe and Christian interpretation to these
+and numerous other passages of like phrase and import in the Old
+Testament, it is of highest concernment that we should distinguish the
+personeity or spirit, as the source and principle of personality, from
+the person itself as the particular product at any one period, and as
+that which cannot be evolved or sustained but by the co-agency of the
+system and circumstances in which the individuals are placed. In this
+latter sense it is that 'man' is used in the Psalms, in Job, and
+elsewhere--and the term made synonymous with flesh. That which
+constitutes the spirit in man, both for others and itself, is the real
+man; and to this the elements and elementary powers contribute its bulk
+([Greek: tò] 'videri et tangi') wholly, and its phenomenal form in part,
+both as co-efficients, and as conditions. Now as these are under a law
+of vanity and incessant change,--[Greek: tà màe ónta, all' aèi
+ginómena],--so must all be, to the production and continuance of which
+they are indispensable. On this hangs the doctrine of the resurrection
+of the body, as an essential part of the doctrine of immortality;--on
+this the Scriptural (and only true and philosophical) sense of the soul,
+'psyche' or life, as resulting from the continual assurgency of the
+spirit through the body;--and on this the begetting of a new life, a
+regenerate soul, by the descent of the divine Spirit on the spirit of
+man. When the spirit by sanctification is fitted for an incorruptible
+body, then shall it be raised into a world of incorruption, and a
+celestial body shall burgeon forth thereto, the germ of which had been
+implanted by the redeeming and creative Word in this world. Truly hath
+it been said of the elect:--They fall asleep in earth, but awake in
+heaven. So St. Paul expressly teaches: and as the passage (1. 'Cor'. xv.
+35--54,) was written for the express purpose of rectifying the notions
+of the converts concerning the Resurrection, all other passages in the
+New Testament must be interpreted in harmony with it. But John,
+likewise,--describing the same great event, as subsequent to, and
+contra-distinguished from, the partial or millennary Resurrection--which
+(whether we are to understand the Apostle symbolically or literally) is
+to take place in the present world,--beholds 'a new earth' and 'a new
+heaven' as antecedent to, or coincident with, the appearance of the New
+Jerusalem,--that is, the state of glory, and the resurrection to life
+everlasting. The old earth and its heaven had passed away from the face
+of Him on the throne, at the moment that it gave up the dead. 'Rev'.
+xx.-xxi.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 174-5.
+
+  'But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.'
+
+  And with respect to those learned men that apply the text to God, I
+  remember not that this 'abiding for ever' is used to express God's
+  eternity in himself.
+
+No; nor is it here used for that purpose; but yet I cannot doubt but
+that either the Word, [Greek: Ho Lógos en archae], or the Divine
+promises in and through the incarnate Word, with the gracious influences
+proceeding from him, are here meant--and not the written [Greek:
+rháemata] or Scriptures.
+
+
+Ib. p. 194.
+
+  If any one's head or tongue should grow apace, and all the rest stand
+  at a stay, it would certainly make him a monster; and they are no
+  other that are knowing and discovering Christians, and grow daily in
+  that, but not at all in holiness of heart and life, which is the
+  proper growth of the children of God.
+
+Father in heaven, have mercy on me! Christ, Lamb of God, have mercy on
+me! Save me, Lord, or I perish! Alas! I am perishing.
+
+
+Ib. p. 200.
+
+  A well-furnished table may please a man, while he hath health and
+  appetite; but offer it to him in the height of a fever, how unpleasant
+  it would be then! Though never so richly decked, it is then not only
+  useless, but hateful to him. But the kindness and love of God is then
+  as seasonable and refreshing to him, as in health, and possibly more.
+
+To the regenerate;--but to the conscious sinner a source of terrors
+insupportable.
+
+
+Ib. p. 211.
+
+  These things hold likewise in the other stones of this building,
+  chosen before time: all that should be of this building are
+  fore-ordained in God's purpose, all written in that book beforehand,
+  and then in due time they are chosen, by actual calling, according to
+  that purpose, hewed out and severed by God's own hand from the quarry
+  of corrupt nature;--dead stones in themselves, as the rest, but made
+  living by his bringing them to Christ, and so made truly precious',
+  and accounted precious by him that hath made them so.
+
+Though this is not only true, but a most important truth, it would yet
+have been well to have obviated the apparent carnal consequences.
+
+
+Ib. p. 216.
+
+  All sacrifice is not taken away; but it is changed from the offering
+  of those things formerly in use, to spiritual sacrifices. Now these
+  are every way preferable; they are easier and cheaper to us, and yet
+  more precious and acceptable to God.
+
+Still understand,--to the regenerate. To others, they are not only not
+easy and cheap, but unpurchaseable and impossible too. O God have mercy
+upon me!
+
+
+Ib. p. 229.
+
+  Though I be beset on all hands, be accused by the Law, and mine own
+  conscience, and by Satan, and have nothing to answer for myself; yet
+  here I will stay, for I am sure in him there is salvation, and no
+  where else.
+
+"Here I _will_ stay." But alas! the poor sinner has forfeited the powers
+of willing; miserable wishing is all he can command. O, the dreadful
+injury of an irreligious education! To be taught our prayers, and the
+awful truths of religion, in the same tone in which we are taught the
+Latin Grammar,--and too often inspiring the same sensations of weariness
+and disgust!
+
+
+Vol. II. p. 242.
+
+  And thus are reproaches mentioned amongst the sufferings of Christ in
+  the Gospel, and not as the least; the railings and mockings that were
+  darted at him, and fixed to the Cross, are mentioned more than the
+  very nails that fixed him. And ('Heb'. xii. 2,) the 'shame' of the
+  Cross, though he was above it, and despised it, yet that shame added
+  much to the burden of it.
+
+I understand Leighton thus: that though our Lord felt it not as 'shame',
+nor was wounded by the revilings of the people in the way of any
+correspondent resentment or sting, which yet we may be without blame,
+yet he suffered from the same as sin, and as an addition to the guilt of
+his persecutors, which could not but aggravate the burden which he had
+taken on himself, as being sin in its most devilish form.
+
+
+Ib. p. 293.
+
+  This therefore is mainly to be studied, that the seat of humility be
+  the heart. Although it will be seen in the carriage yet as little as
+  it can * * *. And this I would recommend as a safe way: ever let thy
+  thoughts concerning thyself be below what thou utterest; and what thou
+  seest needful or fitting to say to thy own abasement, be not only
+  content (which most are not) to be taken at thy word, and believed to
+  be such by them that hear thee, but be desirous of it; and let that be
+  the end of thy speech, to persuade them, and gain it of them, that
+  they really take thee for as worthless a man as thou dost express
+  thyself.
+
+Alas! this is a most delicate and difficult subject: and the safest way,
+and the only safe general rule is the silence that accompanies the
+inward act of looking at the contrast in all that is of our own doing
+and impulse! So may praises be made their own antidote.
+
+
+Vol. III. p. 20. Serm. I.
+
+  'They shall see God'. What this is we cannot tell you, nor can you
+  conceive it: but walk heavenwards in purity, and long to be there,
+  where you shall know what it means: 'for you shall know him as he is'.
+
+We say; "Now I see the full meaning, force and beauty of a passage,--we
+see them through the words." Is not Christ the Word--the substantial,
+consubstantial Word, [Greek: ho ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós],--not as
+our words, arbitrary; nor even as the words of Nature phenomenal merely?
+If even through the words a powerful and perspicuous author--(as in the
+next to inspired Commentary of Archbishop Leighton,--for whom God be
+praised!)--I identify myself with the excellent writer, and his thoughts
+become my thoughts: what must not the blessing be to be thus identified
+first with the Filial Word, and then with the Father in and through Him?
+
+
+Ib. p. 63. Serm. V.
+
+  In this elementary world, light being (as we hear,) the first visible,
+  all things are seen by it, and it by itself. Thus is Christ, among
+  spiritual things, in the elect world of his Church; all things are
+  'made manifest by the light', says the Apostle, 'Eph'. v. 13, speaking
+  of Christ as the following verse doth evidently testify. It is in his
+  word that he shines, and makes it a directing and convincing light, to
+  discover all things that concern his Church and himself, to be known
+  by its own brightness. How impertinent then is that question so much
+  tossed by the Romish Church, "How know you the Scriptures (say they)
+  to be the word of God, without the testimony of the Church?" I would
+  ask one of them again, How they can know that it is daylight, except
+  some light a candle to let them see it? They are little versed in
+  Scripture that know not that it is frequently called light; and they
+  are senseless that know not that light is seen and known by itself.
+  'If our Gospel be hid', says the Apostle, 'it is hid to them that
+  perish': the god of this world having blinded their minds against the
+  light of the glorious Gospel, no wonder if such stand in need of a
+  testimony. A blind man knows not that it is light at noon-day, but by
+  report: but to those that have eyes, light is seen by itself.
+
+On the true test of the Scriptures. Oh! were it not for my manifold
+infirmities, whereby I am so all unlike the white-robed Leighton, I
+could almost conceit that my soul had been an emanation from his! So
+many and so remarkable are the coincidences, and these in parts of his
+works that I could not have seen--and so uniform the congruity of the
+whole. As I read, I seem to myself to be only thinking my own thoughts
+over again, now in the same and now in a different order.
+
+
+Ib. p. 68.
+
+  The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him (Christ) [Greek:
+  apaúgasma], 'the brightness of his Father's glory, and the character
+  of his person', (i. 3.) And under these expressions lies that
+  remarkable mystery of the Son's eternal relation to the Father, which
+  is rather humbly to be adored, than boldly to be explained, either by
+  God's perfect understanding of his own essence, or by any other
+  notion.
+
+Certainly not by a transfer of a notion, and this too a notion of a
+faculty itself but notional and limitary, to the Supreme Reality. But
+there are ideas which are of higher origin than the notions of the
+understanding, and by the irradiation of which the understanding itself
+becomes a human understanding. Of such 'veritates verificæ' Leighton
+himself in other words speaks often. Surely, there must have been an
+intelligible propriety in the terms, 'Logos', Word, 'Begotten before all
+creation',--an adequate idea or 'icon', or the Evangelists and Apostolic
+penmen would not have adopted them. They did not invent the terms; but
+took them and used them as they were taken and applied by Philo and both
+the Greek and Oriental sages. Nay, the precise and orthodox, yet
+frequent, use of these terms by Philo, and by the Jewish authors of that
+traditionalæ wisdom,--degraded in after times, but which in its purest
+parts existed long before the Christian æra,--is the strongest extrinsic
+argument against the Arians, Socinians, and Unitarians, in proof that
+St. John must have meant to deceive his readers, if he did not use them
+in the known and received sense. To a Materialist indeed, or to those
+who deny all knowledges not resolvable into notices from the five
+senses, these terms as applied to spiritual beings must appear
+inexplicable or senseless. But so must spirit. To me, (why do I say to
+me?) to Bull, to Waterland, to Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Athanasius,
+Augustine, the terms, Word and generation, have appeared admirably, yea,
+most awfully pregnant and appropriate;--but still as the language of
+those who know that they are placed with their backs to substances--and
+which therefore they can name only from the correspondent shadows--yet
+not (God forbid!) as if the substances were the same as the
+shadows;--which yet Leighton supposed in this his censure,--for if he
+did not, he then censures himself and a number of his most beautiful
+passages. These, and two or three other sentences,--slips of human
+infirmity,--are useful in reminding me that Leighton's works are not
+inspired Scripture.
+
+
+'Postscript'.
+
+On a second consideration of this passage, and a revisal of my marginal
+animadversion--yet how dare I apply such a word to a passage written by
+a minister of Christ so clearly under the especial light of the divine
+grace as was Archbishop Leighton?--I am inclined to think that Leighton
+confined his censure to the attempts to "explain" the Trinity,--and this
+by "notions,"--and not to the assertion of the adorable acts implied in
+the terms both of the Evangelists and Apostles, and of the Church before
+as well as after Christ's ascension; nor to the assent of the pure
+reason to the truths, and more than assent to, the affirmation of the
+ideas.
+
+
+Ib. p. 73.
+
+This fifth Sermon, excellent in parts, is yet on the whole the least
+excellent of Leighton's works,--and breathes less of either his own
+character as a man, or the character of his religious philosophy. The
+style too is in many places below Leighton's ordinary style--in some
+places even turbid, operose, and catechrestic;--for example,--"to
+trample on smilings with one foot and on frownings with the other."
+
+
+Ib. p. 77. Serm. VI.
+
+Leighton, I presume, was acquainted with the Hebrew Language, but he
+does not appear to have studied it much. His observation on the 'heart',
+as used in the Old Testament, shews that he did not know that the
+ancient Hebrews supposed the heart to be the seat of intellect, and
+therefore used it exactly as we use the head.
+
+
+Ib. p. 104. Serm. VII.
+
+This seventh Sermon is admirable throughout, Leighton throughout. O what
+a contrast might be presented by publishing some discourse of some Court
+divine, (South for instance,) preached under the same state of affairs,
+and printing the two in columns!
+
+
+Ib. p. 107. Serm. VIII.
+
+  In all love three things are necessary; some goodness in the object,
+  either true and real, or apparent and seeming to be so; for the soul,
+  be it ever so evil, can affect nothing but which it takes in some way
+  to be good.
+
+This assertion in these words has been so often made, from Plato's times
+to ours, that even wise men repeat it without perhaps much examination
+whether it be not equivocal--or rather (I suspect) true only in that
+sense in which it would amount to nothing--nothing to the purpose at
+least. This is to be regretted--for it is a mischievous equivoque, to
+make 'good' a synonyme of 'pleasant,' or even the 'genus' of which
+pleasure is a 'species'. It is a grievous mistake to say, that bad men
+seek pleasure because it is good. No! like children they call it good
+because it is pleasant. Even the useful must derive its meaning from the
+good, not 'vice versa'.
+
+
+Postscript.
+
+The lines in p. 107, noted by me, are one of a myriad instances to prove
+how rash it is to quote single sentences or assertions from the
+correctest writers, without collating them with the known system or
+express convictions of the author. It would be easy to cite fifty
+passages from Archbishop Leighton's works in direct contradiction to the
+sentence in question--which he had learnt in the schools when a lad, and
+afterwards had heard and met with so often that he was not aware that he
+had never sifted its real purport. This eighth Sermon is another most
+admirable discourse.
+
+
+Ib. Serm. IX. p. 12.
+
+  The reasonable creature, it is true, hath more liberty in its actions,
+  freely choosing one thing and rejecting another; yet it cannot be
+  denied, that in acting of that liberty, their choice and refusal
+  [A] follow the sway of their nature and condition.
+
+[A] I would fain substitute for 'follow,' the words, 'are most often
+determined, and always affected, by.' I do not deny that the will
+follows the nature; but then the nature itself is a will.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  As the angels and glorified souls, (their nature being perfectly holy
+  and unalterably such,) they cannot sin; they can delight in nothing
+  but obeying and praising that God, in the enjoyment of whom their
+  happiness consisteth.
+
+If angels be other than spirits made perfect, or, as Leighton writes,
+"glorified souls,"--the "unalterable by nature" seems to me rashly
+asserted.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The mind, [Greek: phrónaema]. Some render it the prudence or wisdom of
+  the flesh. Here you have it, the carnal mind; but the word signifies,
+  indeed, an act of the mind, rather than either the faculty itself, or
+  the habit of prudence in it, so as it discovers what is the frame of
+  both those.
+
+I doubt. [Greek: Phrónaema] signifies an act: and so far I agree with
+Leighton. But [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs] is 'the flesh' (that is, the
+natural man,) in the act or habitude of minding--but those acts, taken
+collectively, are the faculty--the understanding.
+
+How often have I found reason to regret, that Leighton had not clearly
+made out to himself the diversity of reason and the understanding!
+
+
+Ib. Serm. XV. p. 196.
+
+  A narrow enthralled heart, fettered with the love of lower things, and
+  cleaving to some particular sins, or but some one, and that secret,
+  may keep foot a while in the way of God's commandments, in some steps
+  of them; but it must give up quickly, is not able to run on to the end
+  of the goal.
+
+One of the blessed privileges of the spiritual man (and such Leighton
+was,) is a piercing insight into the diseases of which he himself is
+clear. [Greek: Eléaeson Kyrie!]
+
+
+Ib. Serm. XVI. p. 204.
+
+  Know you not that the redeemed of Christ and He are one? They live one
+  life, Christ lives in them, and if 'any man hath not the Spirit of
+  Christ, he is none of his', as the Apostle declares in this chapter.
+  So then this we are plainly to tell you, and consider it; you that
+  will not let go your sins to lay hold on Christ, have as yet no share
+  in him.
+
+  But on the other side: the truth is, that when souls are once set upon
+  this search, they commonly wind the notion too high, and subtilize too
+  much in the dispute, and so entangle and perplex themselves, and drive
+  themselves further off from that comfort that they are seeking after;
+  such measures and marks they set to themselves for their rule and
+  standard; and unless they find those without all controversy in
+  themselves, they will not believe that they have an interest in
+  Christ, and this blessed and safe estate in him.
+
+  To such I would only say, Are you in a willing league with any known
+  sin? &c.
+
+An admirable antidote for such as, too sober and sincere to pass off
+feverous sensations for spiritualities, have been perplexed by Wesley's
+assertions--that a certainty of having been elected is an indispensable
+mark of election. Whitfield's ultra-Calvinism is Gospel gentleness and
+Pauline sobriety compared with Wesley's Arminianism in the outset of his
+career. But the main and most noticeable difference between Leighton and
+the modern Methodists is to be found in the uniform selfishness of the
+latter. Not "Do you wish to love God?" "Do you love your neighbour?" "Do
+you think, 'O how dear and lovely must Christ be!'"--but--"Are you
+certain that Christ has saved 'you'; that he died for 'you--you--you
+--yourself'?" on to the end of the chapter. This is Wesley's doctrine.
+
+
+Lecture IX. vol. IV. p. 96.
+
+  For that this was his fixed purpose, Lucretius not only vows, but also
+  boasts of it, and loads him (Epicurus) with ill-advised praises, for
+  endeavouring through the whole course of his philosophy to free the
+  minds of men from all the bonds and ties of religion.
+
+But surely in this passage 'religio' must be rendered superstition, the
+most effectual means for the removal of which Epicurus supposed himself
+to have found in the exclusion of the 'gods many and lords many', from
+their imagined agency in all the 'phænomena' of nature and the events
+of history, substituting for these the belief in fixed laws, having in
+themselves their evidence and necessity. On this account, in this
+passage at least, Lucretius praises his master.
+
+
+Ib. p. 105.
+
+  They always seemed to me to act a very ridiculous part, who contend,
+  that the effect of the divine decree is absolutely irreconcilable with
+  human liberty; because the natural and necessary liberty of a rational
+  creature is to act or choose from a rational motive, or spontaneously,
+  and of purpose: but who sees not, that, on the supposition of the most
+  absolute decree, this liberty is not taken away, but rather
+  established and confirmed? For the decree is, 'that such an one shall
+  make choice of, or do some particular thing freely. And whoever
+  pretends to deny, that whatever is done or chosen, whether good or
+  indifferent, is so done or chosen, or, at least, may be so, espouses
+  an absurdity.'
+
+I fear, I fear, that this is a sophism not worthy of Archbishop
+Leighton. It seems to me tantamount to saying--"I force that man to do
+so or so without my forcing him." But however that may be, the following
+sentences are more precious than diamonds. They are divine.
+
+
+Ib. Lect. XI. p. 113.
+
+  For that this world, compounded of so many and such heterogeneous
+  parts, should proceed, by way of natural and necessary emanation, from
+  that one first, present, and most simple nature, nobody, I imagine,
+  could believe, or in the least suspect * * *. But if he produced all
+  these things freely, * * how much more consistent is it to believe,
+  that this was done in time, than to imagine it was from eternity!
+
+It is inconceivable how any thing can be created in time; and production
+is incompatible with interspace.
+
+
+Ib. Lect. XV. p. 152.
+
+  The Platonists divide the world into two, the sensible and
+  intellectual world * * *. According to this hypothesis, those parables
+  and metaphors, which are often taken from natural things to illustrate
+  such as are divine, will not be similitudes taken entirely at
+  pleasure; but are often, in a great measure, founded in nature, and
+  the things themselves.
+
+I have asserted the same thing, and more fully shown wherein the
+difference consists of symbolic and metaphorical, in my first Lay
+Sermon; and the substantial correspondence of the genuine Platonic
+doctrine and logic with those of Lord Bacon, in my Essays on Method, in
+the Friend. [2]
+
+
+Ib. Lect. XIX. p. 201.
+
+  Even the philosophers give their testimony to this truth, and their
+  sentiments on the subject are not altogether to be rejected; for they
+  almost unanimously are agreed, that felicity, so far as it can be
+  enjoyed in this life, consists solely, or at least principally, in
+  virtue: but as to their assertion, that this virtue is perfect in a
+  perfect life, it is rather expressing what were to be wished, than
+  describing things as they are.
+
+And why are the philosophers to be judged according to a different rule?
+On what ground can it be asserted that the Stoics believed in the actual
+existence of their God-like perfection in any individual? or that they
+meant more than this--"To no man can the name of the Wise be given in
+its absolute sense, who is not perfect even as his Father in heaven is
+perfect!"
+
+
+Ib. Lect. XXI. p. 225.
+
+  In like manner, if we suppose God to be the first of all beings, we
+  must, unavoidably, therefrom conclude his unity. As to the ineffable
+  Trinity subsisting in this Unity, a mystery discovered only by the
+  Sacred Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, where it is more
+  clearly revealed than in the Old, let others boldly pry into it, if
+  they please, while we receive it with our humble faith, and think it
+  sufficient for us to admire and adore.
+
+But surely it having been revealed to us, we may venture to say,--that a
+positive unity, so far from excluding, implies plurality, and that the
+Godhead is a fulness, [Greek: plaeroma].
+
+
+Ib. Lect. XXIV. p. 245.
+
+  Ask yourselves, therefore, 'what you would be at', and with what
+  dispositions you come to this most sacred table?
+
+In an age of colloquial idioms, when to write in a loose slang had
+become a mark of loyalty, this is the only L'Estrange vulgarism I have
+met with in Leighton.
+
+
+Ib. Exhortation to the Students, p. 252.
+
+  Study to acquire such a philosophy as is not barren and babbling, but
+  solid and true; not such a one as floats upon the surface of endless
+  verbal controversies, but one that enters into the nature of things;
+  for he spoke good sense that said, "The philosophy of the Greeks was a
+  mere jargon, and noise of words."
+
+If so, then so is all philosophy: for what system is there, the elements
+and outlines of which are not to be found in the Greek schools? Here
+Leighton followed too incautiously the Fathers.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Works of Leighton, 4 vols. 8vo. London 1819. Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2: 'Statesman's Manual', p. 230. 2nd edit. Friend, III. 3d
+edit. Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON SHERLOCK'S VINDICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. [1]
+
+
+Sect. I. p. 3.
+
+  Some new philosophers will tell you that the notion of a spirit or an
+  immaterial substance is a contradiction; for by substance they
+  understand nothing but matter, and then an immaterial substance is
+  immaterial matter, that is, matter and no matter, which is a
+  contradiction; but yet this does not prove an immaterial substance to
+  be a contradiction, unless they could first prove that there is no
+  substance but matter; and that they cannot conceive any other
+  substance but matter, does not prove that there is no other.
+
+Certainly not: but if not only they, but Dr. Sherlock himself and all
+mankind, are incapable of attaching any sense to the term substance, but
+that of matter,--then for us it would be a contradiction, or a
+groundless assertion. Thus: By 'substance' I do not mean the only notion
+we can attach to the word; but a somewhat, I know not what, may, for
+aught I know, not be contradictory to spirit! Why should we use the
+equivocal word, 'substance' (after all but an 'ens logicum'), instead of
+the definite term 'self-subsistent?' We are equally conscious of mind,
+and of that which we call 'body;' and the only possible philosophical
+questions are these three:
+
+1. Are they co-ordinate as agent and re-agent;
+
+2. Or is the one subordinate to the other, as effect to cause, and which
+is the cause or ground, which the effect or product;
+
+3. Or are they co-ordinate, but not inter-dependent, that is, 'per
+harmonium præstabilitam'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 4.
+
+  Now so far as we understand the nature of any being, we can certainly
+  tell what is contrary and contradictious to its nature; as that
+  accidents should subsist without 'their subject', &c.
+
+That accidents should subsist (rather, exist) without a subject, may be
+a contradiction, but not that they exist without this or that subject.
+The words 'their subject' are 'a petitio principii'.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  These and such like are the manifest absurdities and contradictions of
+  Transubstantiation; and we know that they are so, because we know the
+  nature of a body, &c.
+
+Indeed! Were I either Romanist or Unitarian, I should desire no better
+than the admission of body having an 'esse' not in the 'percipi', and
+really subsisting, ([Greek: autò tò chraema]) as the supporter of its
+accidents. At all events, the Romanist, declaring the accidents to be
+those ordinarily impressed on the senses ([Greek: tà phaínomena kaì
+aísthaeta]) by bread and wine, does at the same time declare the flesh
+and blood not to be the [Greek: phaínomena kaì aísthaeta] so called, but
+the [Greek: noúmena kaì autà tà chráemata]. There is therefore no
+contradiction in the terms, however reasonless the doctrine may be, and
+however unnecessary the interpretation on which it is pretended. I
+confess, had I been in Luther's place, I would not have rested so much
+of my quarrel with the Papists on this point; nor can I agree with our
+Arminian divines in their ridicule of Transubstantiation. The most
+rational doctrine is perhaps, for some purposes, at least, the 'rem
+credimus, modum nescimus'; next to that, the doctrine of the
+Sacramentaries, that it is 'signum sub rei nomine', as when we call a
+portrait of Caius, Caius. But of all the remainder, Impanation,
+Consubstantiation, and the like, I confess that I should prefer the
+Transubstantiation of the Pontifical doctors.
+
+
+Ib. p. 6.
+
+  The proof of this comes to this one point, that we may have sufficient
+  evidence of the being of a thing whose nature we cannot conceive and
+  comprehend: he who will not own this, contradicts the sense and
+  experience of mankind; and he who confesses this, and yet rejects the
+  belief of that which he has good evidence for, merely because he
+  cannot conceive it, is a very absurd and senseless infidel.
+
+Here again, though a zealous believer of the truth asserted, I must
+object to the Bishop's logic. None but the weakest men have objected to
+the Tri-unity merely because the 'modus' is above their comprehension:
+for so is the influence of thought on muscular motion; so is life
+itself; so in short is every first truth of necessity; for to comprehend
+a thing, is to know its antecedent and consequent. But they affirm that
+it is against their reason. Besides, there seems an equivocation in the
+use of 'comprehend' and 'conceive' in the same meaning. When a man tells
+me, that his will can lift his arm, I conceive his meaning; though I do
+not comprehend the fact, I understand 'him'. But the Socinians say;--We
+do not understand 'you'. We cannot attach to the word 'God,' more than
+three possible meanings; either,
+
+1. A person, or self-conscious being;
+
+2. Or a thing;
+
+3. Or a quality, property, or attribute.
+
+If you take the first, then you admit the contradiction; if either of
+the latter two, you have not three Persons and one God, but three
+Persons having equal shares in one thing, or three with the same
+attributes, that is, three Gods. Sherlock does not meet this.
+
+Let me repeat the difficulty, if possible, more clearly. The argument of
+the philosophic Unitarians, as Wissowatius, who, mistaken as they were,
+are not to be confounded with their degenerate successors, the
+Priestleyans and Belshamites, may be thus expressed. By the term, God,
+we can only conceive you to suppose one or other of three meanings.
+
+1. Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an
+intelligent or self-conscious being;--or,
+
+2. a thing with its qualities and properties;--or,
+
+3. certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature.
+
+If we suppose the first, the contradiction is manifest, and you
+yourselves admit it, and therefore forbid us so to interpret your words.
+For if by God you mean Person, then three Persons and one God, would be
+the same as three Persons and one Person. If we take the second as your
+meaning, as an infinite thing is an absurdity, we have three finite
+Gods, like Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who shared the universe between
+them. If the latter, we have three Persons with the same attributes;
+--and if a Person with infinite attributes be what we mean by God, then
+we have either three Gods, or involve the contradiction above mentioned.
+It is unphilosophic, by admission of all philosophers, they add, to
+multiply causes beyond the necessity. Now if there are three Persons of
+infinite and the same attributes, dismiss two, and you lose nothing but
+a numerical phantom."
+
+The answer to this must commence by a denial of the premisses 'in toto':
+and this both Bull and Waterland have done most successfully. But I very
+much doubt, whether Sherlock on his principles could have evaded the
+Unitarian logic. In fact it is scarcely possible to acquit him
+altogether of a 'quasi-Tritheism'.
+
+
+Sect. II. p. 13.
+
+  'For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge
+  every Person by himself to be God and Lord';--
+
+(That is, by especial revelation.)
+
+  'So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are three
+  Gods, or three Lords.'
+
+That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with,
+the universal reason, 'the light that lighteth every man that cometh
+into the world'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 14.
+
+  This Creed (Athanasian) does not pretend to explain how there are
+  three Persons, each of which is God, and yet but One God, (of which
+  more hereafter,) but only asserts the thing, that thus it is, and thus
+  it must be if we believe a Trinity in Unity; which should make all
+  men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious
+  how they express the least dislike of the Athanasian Creed, which must
+  either argue, that they condemn it, before they understand it, or that
+  they have some secret dislike to the doctrine of the Trinity.
+
+The dislike commonly felt is not of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of
+the positive anathematic assertion of the everlasting perdition of all
+and of each who doubt the same;--an assertion deduced from Scripture
+only by a train of captious consequences, and equivocations. Thus, A.:
+"I honour and admire Caius for his great learning." B.: "The knowledge
+of the Sanscrit is an important article in Caius's learning." A.: "I
+have been often in his company, and have found no reason for believing
+this." B.: "O! then you deny his learning, are envious, and Caius's
+enemy." A.: "God forbid! I love and admire him. I know him for a
+transcendant linguist in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern European
+languages;--and with or without the Sanscrit, I look up to him, and rely
+on his erudition in all cases, in which I am concerned. And it is this
+perfect trust, this unfeigned respect, that is the appointed criterion
+of Caius's friends and disciples, and not their full acquaintance with
+each and all particulars of his superiority." Thus without Christ, or in
+any other power but that of Christ, and (subjectively) of faith in
+Christ, no man can be saved; but does it follow, that no man can have
+Christian faith who is ignorant or erroneous as to any one point of
+Christian theology? Will a soul be condemned to everlasting perdition
+for want of logical 'acumen' in the perception of consequences?--If he
+verily embrace Christ as his Redeemer, and unfeignedly feel in himself
+the necessity of Redemption, he implicitly holds the Divinity of Christ,
+whatever from want or defect of logic may be his notion 'explicite'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 18.
+
+  'But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal'. And yet
+  this we must acknowledge to be true, if we acknowledge all three
+  Persons to be eternal, for in eternity there can be no 'afore, or
+  after other'.
+
+It must, however, be considered as a serious defect in a Creed, if
+excluding subordination, without mentioning any particular form, it
+gives no hint of any other form in which it admits it. The only 'minus'
+admitted by the Athanasian Creed is the inferiority of Christ's Humanity
+to the Divinity generally; but both Scripture and the Nicene Creed teach
+a subordination of the Son to the Father, independent of the Incarnation
+of the Son. Now this is not inserted, and therefore the denial in the
+assertion 'none is greater or less than another', is universal, and a
+plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as the co-eternal Son;
+'My Father is greater than I'. Speaking of himself as the co-eternal
+Son, I say;--for how superfluous would it have been, a truism how
+unworthy of our Lord, to have said in effect, that "a creature is less
+than God!" And after all, Creeds assuredly are not to be imposed 'ad
+libitum'--a new Creed, or at least a new form and choice of articles and
+expressions, at the pleasure of individuals. Now where is the authority
+of the Athanasian Creed? In what consists its necessity? If it be the
+same as the Nicene, why not be content with the Nicene? If it differs,
+how dare we retain both? [2] If the Athanasian does not say more or
+different, but only differs by omission of a necessary article, then to
+impose it, is as absurd as to force a mutilated copy on one who has
+already the perfect original. Lastly, it is not enough that an abstract
+contains nothing which may not by a chain of consequences be deduced
+from the books of the Evangelists and Apostles, in order for it to be a
+Creed for the whole Christian Church. For a Creed is or ought to be a
+'syllepsis' of those primary fundamental truths that are, as it were,
+the starting-post, from which the Christian must commence his
+progression. The full-grown Christian needs no other Creed than the
+Scriptures themselves. Highly valuable is the Nicene Creed; but it has
+its chief value as an historical document, proving that the same texts
+in Scripture received the same interpretation, while the Greek was a
+living language, as now.
+
+
+Sect. III. p. 23.
+
+  If what he says is true: 'He that errs in a question of faith, after
+  having used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed, is in no
+  fault at all'; how comes an atheist, or an infidel, a Turk, or a Jew,
+  to be in any fault? Does our author think that no atheist or infidel,
+  no unbelieving Jew or heathen, ever used reasonable diligence to be
+  rightly informed? * * * If you say, he confines this to such points as
+  have always been controverted in the churches of God, I desire to know
+  a reason why he thus confines it? For does not his reason equally
+  extend to the Christian Faith itself, as to those points which have
+  been controverted in Christian Churches?
+
+And the Notary might ask in his turn: "Do you believe that the
+Christians either of the Greek or of the Western Church will be damned,
+according as the truth may be respecting the procession of the Holy
+Ghost? or that either the Sacramentary or the Lutheran? or again, the
+Consubstantiationist, or the Transubstantiationist? If not, why do you
+stop here? Whence this sudden palsy in the limbs of your charity? Again,
+does this eternal damnation of the individual depend on the supposed
+importance of the article denied? Or on the moral state of the
+individual, on the inward source of this denial? And lastly, who
+authorized either you, or the pseudo-Athanasius, to interpret Catholic
+faith by belief, arising out of the apparent predominance of the grounds
+for, over those against, the truth of the positions asserted; much more,
+by belief as a mere passive acquiescence of the understanding? Were all
+damned who died during the period when 'totus fere mundus factus est
+Arianus', as one of the Fathers admits? Alas! alas! how long will it be
+ere Christians take the plain middle road between intolerance and
+indifference, by adopting the literal sense and Scriptural import of
+heresy, that is, wilful error, or belief originating in some perversion
+of the will; and of heretics, (for such there are, nay, even orthodox
+heretics), that is, men wilfully unconscious of their own wilfulness, in
+their limpet-like adhesion to a favourite tenet?"
+
+
+Ib. p. 26.
+
+  All Christians must confess, that there is no other name given under
+  heaven whereby men can be saved, but only the name of Christ.
+
+Now this is a most awful question, on which depends whether Christ was
+more than Socrates; for to bring God from heaven to reproclaim the Ten
+Commandments, is 'too too' ridiculous. Need I say I incline to Sherlock?
+But yet I cannot give to faith the meaning he does, though I give it
+all, and more than all, the power. But if that Name, as power, saved the
+Jewish Church before they knew the Name, as name, how much more now, if
+only the will be not guiltily averse? Any miracle does in kind as truly
+bring God from heaven as the Incarnation, which the Socinians wholly
+forget, as in other points. They receive without scruple what they have
+learned without examination, and then transfer to the first article
+which they do look into, all the difficulties that belong equally to the
+former: as the Simonidean doubts concerning God to the Trinity, and the
+like.
+
+
+Ib. p. 27.
+
+The Eclectic Neo-Platonists (Sallustius and others,) justified their
+Polytheism on much the same pretext as is in fact involved in the
+language of this page; [Greek: polloì mèn en dè mia theótaeti]. This
+indeed seems to me decisive in favour of Waterland's scheme against this
+of Sherlock's;--namely, that in the latter we find no sufficient reason
+why in the nature of things this intermutual consciousness might not be
+possessed by thirty instead of three. It seems a strange confounding
+[Greek: hetéron genéôn] to answer, "True; but the latter only happens to
+be the fact!"--just as if we were speaking of the number of persons in
+the Privy Council.
+
+
+Ib. p. 28.
+
+  'Notes'. By keeping this faith 'whole and undefiled', must be meant
+  that a man should believe and profess it without adding to it or
+  taking from it. * * * First, for adding. What if an honest plain man,
+  because he is a Christian and a Protestant, should think it necessary
+  to add this article to the Athanasian Creed;--'I believe the Holy
+  Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be a divine, infallible and
+  complete rule both for faith and manners'. I hope no Protestant would
+  think a man damned for such addition; and if so, then this Creed of
+  Athanasius is at least an unnecessary rule of faith.
+
+  'Answer'. That is to say, it is an addition to the Catholic Faith to
+  own the Scriptures to be the rule of faith; as if it were an addition
+  to the laws of England to own the original records of them in the
+  Tower.
+
+This Notary manages his cause most weakly, and Sherlock 'fibs' him like
+a scientific pugilist. But he himself exposes weak parts, as in p. 27.
+The objection to the Athanasian Creed urged by better men than the
+Notary, yea, by divines not less orthodox than Sherlock himself, is
+this: not that this Creed adds to the Scriptures, but that it adds to
+the original 'Symbolum Fidei', the 'Regula', the 'Canon', by which,
+according to the greater number of the 'ante'-Nicene Fathers, the books
+of the New Testament were themselves tried and determined to be
+Scripture. Now this 'Symbolum' was to bring together all that must be
+believed, even by the babes in faith, or to what purpose was it made?
+Now, say they, the Nicene Creed is really nothing more than a verbal
+explication of the common Creed, but the clause in the Athanasian
+('which faith', &c.), however fairly deduced from Scripture, is not
+contained in the Creed, or selection of certain articles of Faith from
+the Scriptures, or not at least from those preachings and narrations, of
+which the New Testament Scriptures are the repository. Might not a
+Papist plead equally in support of the Creed of Pope Pius: "The new
+articles are deduced from Scripture; that is, in our opinion, and that
+most expressly in our Lord's several and solemn addresses to St. Peter."
+So again Sherlock's answer to this paragraph from the Notes is
+evasive,--for it is very possible, nay, it is, and has been the case,
+that a man may believe in the facts and doctrines contained in the New
+Testament, and yet not believe the Holy Scripture to be either divine,
+infallible, or complete.
+
+
+Sect. IV. p. 50.
+
+  We know not what the substance of an infinite mind is, nor how such
+  substances as have no parts or extension can touch each other, or be
+  thus externally united; but we know the unity of a mind or spirit
+  reaches as far as its self-consciousness does, for that is one spirit,
+  which knows and feels itself, and its own thoughts and motions, and if
+  we mean this by 'circum-incession', three persons thus intimate to
+  each other are numerically one.
+
+The question still returns; have these three infinite minds, at once
+self-conscious and conscious of each other's consciousness, always the
+very same thoughts? If so, this mutual consciousness is unmeaning, or
+derivative; and the three do not cease to be three because they are
+three sames. If not, then there is Tritheism evidently.
+
+
+Ib. p. 64.
+
+  St. Paul tells us, 1 Cor. ii. 10. 'That the Spirit searcheth all
+  things, yea the deep things of God'. So that the Holy Spirit knows all
+  that is in God, even his most deep and secret counsels, which is an
+  argument that he is very intimate with him; but this is not all: it is
+  the manner of knowing, which must prove this consciousness of which I
+  speak: and that the Apostle adds in the next verse, that the Spirit of
+  God knows all that is in God, just as the spirit of a man knows all
+  that is in man: that is, not by external revelation or communication
+  of this knowledge, but by self-consciousness, by an internal
+  sensation, which is owing to an essential unity. 'For what man knoweth
+  the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him; even so
+  the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.'
+
+It would be interesting, if it were feasible, to point out the epoch at
+which the text mode of arguing in polemic controversy became
+predominant; I mean by single texts without any modification by the
+context. I suspect that it commenced, or rather that it first became the
+fashion, under the Dort or systematic theologians, and during the so
+called Quinquarticular Controversy. This quotation from St. Paul is a
+striking instance:--for St. Paul is speaking of the holy spirit of which
+true spiritual Christians are partakers, and by which or in which those
+Christians are enabled to search all things, even the deep things of
+God. No person is here spoken of, but reference is made to the
+philosophic principle, that can only act immediately, that is,
+interpenetratively, as two globules of quicksilver, and co-adunatively.
+Now, perceiving and knowing were considered as immediate acts relatively
+to the objects perceived and known:--'ergo', the 'principium sciendi'
+must be one (that is, homogeneous or consubstantial) with the
+'principium essendi quoad objectum cognitum'. In order therefore for a
+man to understand, or even to know of, God, he must have a god-like
+spirit communicated to him, wherewith, as with an inward eye, which is
+both eye and light, he sees the spiritual truths. Now I have no
+objection to his calling this spirit a 'person,' if only the term
+'person' be so understood as to permit of its being partaken of by all
+spiritual creatures, as light and the power of vision are partaken of by
+all seeing ones. But it is too evident that Sherlock supposes the
+Father, as Father, to possess a spirit, that is, an intellective
+faculty, by which he knows the Spirit, that is, the third co-equal
+Person; and that this Spirit, the Person, has a spirit, that is, an
+intellective faculty, by which he knows the Father; and the 'Logos' in
+like manner relatively to both. So too, the Father has a 'logos' with
+which he distinguishes the 'Logos';--and the 'Logos' has a 'logos', and
+so on: that is to say, there are three several though not severed triune
+Gods, each being the same position three times 'realiter positum', as
+three guineas from the same mint, supposing them to differ no more than
+they appear to us to differ;--but whether a difference wholly and
+exclusively numerical is a conceivable notion, except under the
+predicament of space and time; whether it be not absurd to affirm it,
+where interspace and interval cannot be affirmed without absurdity--this
+is the question; or rather it is no question.
+
+
+Ib. p. 68.
+
+  Nor do we divide the substance, but unite these three Persons in one
+  numerical essence: for we know nothing of the unity of the mind, but
+  self-consciousness, as I showed before; and therefore as the
+  self-consciousness of every Person to itself makes them distinct
+  Persons, so the mutual consciousness of all three divine Persons to
+  each other makes them all but one infinite God: as far as
+  consciousness reaches, so far the unity of a spirit extends, for we
+  know no other unity of a mind or spirit, but consciousness.
+
+But this contradicts the preceding paragraph, in which the Father is
+self-conscious that he is the Father and not the Son, and the Son that
+he is not the Father, and that the Father is not he. Now how can the
+Son's being conscious that the Father is conscious that he is not the
+Son, constitute a numerical unity? And wherein can such a consciousness
+as that attributed to the Son differ from absolute certainty? Is not God
+conscious of every thought of man;--and would Sherlock allow me to
+deduce the unity of the divine consciousness with the human? Sherlock's
+is doubtless a very plain and intelligible account of three Gods in the
+most absolute intimacy with each other, so that they are all as one; but
+by no means of three persons that are one God. I do not wonder that
+Waterland and the other followers of Bull were alarmed.
+
+
+Ib. p. 72.
+
+  Even among men it is only knowledge that is power. Human power, and
+  human knowledge, as that signifies a knowledge how to do anything, are
+  commensurate; whatever human skill extends to, human power can effect:
+  nay, every man can do what he knows how to do, if he has proper
+  instruments and materials to do it with.
+
+This proves that perfect knowledge supposes perfect power: and that they
+are one and the same. "If he have proper instruments:"--does not this
+show that the means are supposed co-present with the knowledge, not the
+same with it?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  For it is nothing but thought which moves our bodies, and all the
+  members of them, which are the immediate instruments of all human
+  force and power: excepting mechanical motions which do not depend upon
+  our wills, such as the motion of the heart, the circulation of the
+  blood, the concoction of our meat and the like. All voluntary motions
+  are not only directed but caused by thought: and so indeed it must be,
+  or there could be no motion in the world; for matter cannot move
+  itself, and therefore some mind must be the first mover, which makes
+  it very plain, that infinite truth and wisdom is infinite and almighty
+  power.
+
+Even this, though not ill-conceived, is inaccurately expressed.
+
+
+Ib. p. 81.
+
+  There is no contradiction that three infinite minds should be
+  absolutely perfect in wisdom, goodness, justice and power; for these
+  are perfections which may be in more than one, as three men may all
+  know the same things, and be equally just and good: but three such
+  minds cannot be absolutely perfect without being mutually conscious to
+  each other, as they are to themselves.
+
+Will any man in his senses affirm, that my knowledge is increased by
+saying "all" three times following? Is it not mere repetition in time?
+If the Son has thoughts which the Father, as the Father, could not have
+but for his interpenetration of the Son's consciousness, then I can
+understand it; but then these are not three Absolutes, but three modes
+of perfection constituting one Absolute; and by what right Sherlock
+could call the one Father, more than the other, I cannot see.
+
+
+Ib. p. 88.
+
+  And yet if we consider these three divine Persons as containing each
+  other in themselves, and essentially one by a mutual consciousness,
+  this pretended contradiction vanishes: for then the Father is the one
+  true God, because the Father has the Son and the Holy Spirit in
+  himself: and the Son may he called the one true God, because the Son
+  has the Father and the Holy Ghost in himself, &c.
+
+Nay, this is to my understanding three Gods, and Sherlock seems to have
+brought in the material phantom of a thing or substance.
+
+
+Ib. p. 97.
+
+  But if these three distinct Persons are not separated, but essentially
+  united unto one, each of them may be God, and all three but one God:
+  for if these three Persons,--each of whom [Greek: monadikôs], as it is
+  in the Creed, singly by himself, not separately from the other divine
+  Persons, is God and Lord, are essentially united into one, there can
+  be but one God and one Lord; and how each of these persons is God, and
+  all of them but one God, by their mutual consciousness, I have already
+  explained.
+
+--"That is,--if the three Persons are not three;"--so might the Arian
+answer, unless Sherlock had shown the difference of separate and
+distinct relatively to mind. "For what other separation can be conceived
+in mind but distinction? Distinction may be joined with imperfection, as
+ignorance, or forgetfulness; and so it is in men:--and if this be called
+separation by a metaphor from bodies, then the conclusion would be that
+in the Supreme Mind there is distinction without imperfection; and then
+the question is, whence comes plurality of Persons? Can it be conceived
+other than as the result of imperfection, that is, finiteness?
+
+
+Ib. p. 98.
+
+  Thus each Divine Person is God, and all of them but the same one God;
+  as I explained it before.
+
+O no! asserted it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 98-9.
+
+  This one supreme God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a Trinity in
+  Unity, three Persons and one God. Now Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
+  with all their divine attributes and perfections (excepting their
+  personal properties, which the Schools call the 'modi subsistendi',
+  that one is the Father, the other the Son, and the other the Holy
+  Ghost, which cannot be communicated to each other) are whole and
+  entire in each Person by a mutual consciousness; each feels the other
+  Persons in himself, all their essential wisdom, power, goodness,
+  justice, as he feels himself, and this makes them essentially one, as
+  I have proved at large.
+
+
+Will not the Arian object, "You admit the 'modus subsistendi' to be a
+divine perfection, and you affirm that it is incommunicable. Does it not
+follow therefore, that there are perfections which the All-perfect does
+not possess?" This would not apply to Bishop Bull or Waterland.
+
+
+Sect. V. p. 102.
+
+  St. Austin in his sixth book of the Trinity takes notice of a common
+  argument used by the orthodox fathers against the Arians, to prove the
+  co-eternity of the Son with the Father, that if the Son be the Wisdom
+  and Power of God, as St. Paul teaches (1 'Cor'. i.) and God was never
+  without his Wisdom and Power, the Son must he co-eternal with the
+  Father. * * * But this acute Father discovers a great inconvenience in
+  this argument, for it forces us to say that the Father is not wise,
+  but by that Wisdom which he begot, not being himself Wisdom as the
+  Father: and then we must consider whether the Son himself, as he is
+  God of God, and Light of Light, may be said to be Wisdom of Wisdom, if
+  God the Father be not Wisdom, but only begets Wisdom.
+
+The proper answer to Augustine is, that the Son and Holy Ghost are
+necessary and essential, not contingent: and that 'his' argument has a
+still greater inconvenience, as shewn in note p. 98.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 110-113.
+
+  But what makes St. Gregory dispute thus nicely, and oppose the common
+  and ordinary forms of speech? Did he in good earnest believe that
+  there is but one man in the world? No, no! he acknowledged as many men
+  as we do; a great multitude who had the same human nature, and that
+  every one who had a human nature was an individual man, distinguished
+  and divided from all other individuals of the same nature. What makes
+  him so zealous then against saying, that Peter, James and John are
+  three men? Only this; that he says man is the name of nature, and
+  therefore to say there are three men is the same as to say, there are
+  three human natures of a different kind; for if there are three human
+  natures, they must differ from each other, or they cannot be three;
+  and so you deny Peter, James, and John to be [Greek: homooúsioi], or
+  of the same nature; and for the same reason we must say that though
+  the Father be God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, yet there are
+  not three Gods, but [Greek: mía theótaes], one Godhead and Divinity.
+
+Sherlock struggles in vain, in my opinion at least, to clear these
+Fathers of egregious logomachy, whatever may have been the soundness of
+their faith, spite of the quibbles by which they endeavoured to evince
+its rationality. The very change of the terms is suspicious. "Yes! we
+might say three Gods" (it would be answered,) "as we say and ought to
+say three men: for man and humanity, [Greek: ánthropôs] and [Greek:
+ánthrôpótaes] are not the same terms;--so if the Father be God, the Son
+God, and the Holy Ghost God, there would be three Gods, though not
+[Greek: treis theótaetes],--that is, three Godheads."
+
+
+Ib. p. 115-16.
+
+  Gregory Nyssen tells us that [Greek: theòs] is [Greek: theatàes] and
+  [Greek: éphoros], the inspector and governor of the world, that is, it
+  is a name of energy, operation and power; and if this virtue, energy,
+  and operation be the very same in all the Persons of the Trinity,
+  Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then they are but one God, but one power
+  and energy. * * * The Father does nothing by himself, nor the Son by
+  himself, nor the Holy Ghost by himself; but the whole energy and
+  operation of the Deity relating to creatures begins with the Father,
+  passes to the Son, and from Father and Son to the Holy Spirit; the
+  Holy Spirit does not act anything separately; there are not three
+  distinct operations, as there are three Persons, [Greek: allà mìa tìs
+  gínetai agathou Bouláematos kínaesis kaì diakósmaesis];--but one
+  motion and disposition of the good will, which passes through the
+  whole Trinity from Father to Son, and to the Holy Ghost, and this is
+  done [Greek: achrónos kaì adiarétôs], without any distance of time, or
+  propagating the motion from one to the other, but by one thought, as
+  it is in one numerical mind and spirit, and therefore, though they are
+  three Persons, they are but one numerical power and energy.
+
+But this is either Tritheism or Sabellianism; it is hard to say which.
+Either the [Greek: Boúlaema] subsists in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost,
+and not merely passes through them, and then there would be three
+numerical [Greek: Bouláemata], as well as three numerical Persons:
+'ergo', [Greek: treis theoì àe theataí] (according to Gregory Nyssen's
+shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism: or [Greek:
+hén ti gínetai Boúlaema], and then the Son and Holy Ghost are but terms
+of relation, which is Sabellianism. But in fact this Gregory and the
+others were Tritheists in the mode of their conception, though they did
+not wish to be so, and refused even to believe themselves such.
+
+Gregory Nyssen, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus and Damascen were charged
+with "a kind of Tritheism" by Petavius and Dr. Cudworth, who, according
+to Sherlock, have "mistaken their meaning." See pp. 106-9, of this
+"Vindication."
+
+
+Ib. p. 117.
+
+  For I leave any man to judge, whether this [Greek: mía kínaesis
+  Bouláematos], this one single motion of will, which is in the same
+  instant in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, can signify anything else but
+  a mutual consciousness, which makes them numerically one, and as
+  intimate to each other, as every man is to himself, as I have already
+  explained it.
+
+Is not God conscious to all my thoughts, though I am not conscious of
+God's? Would Sherlock endure that I should infer: 'ergo', God is
+numerically one with me, though I am not numerically one with God? I
+have never seen, but greatly wish to see, Waterland's controversial
+tracts against Sherlock. Again: according to Sherlock's conception, it
+would seem to follow that we ought to make a triad of triads, or an
+ennead.
+
+1. Father--Son--Holy Ghost.
+2. Son--Father--Holy Ghost.
+3. Holy Ghost--Son--Father.
+
+Else there is an 'x' in the Father which is not in the Son, a 'y' in the
+Son which is not in the Father, and a 'z' in the Holy Ghost which is in
+neither: that is, each by himself is not total God.
+
+
+Ib. p. 120.
+
+  But however he might be mistaken in his philosophy, he was not in his
+  divinity; for he asserts a numerical unity of the divine nature, not a
+  mere specific unity, which is nothing but a logical notion, nor a
+  collective unity, which is nothing but a company who are naturally
+  many: but a true subsisting numerical unity of nature; and if the
+  difficulty of explaining this, and his zeal to defend it, forced him
+  upon some unintelligible niceties, to prove that the same numerical
+  human nature too is but one in all men, it is hard to charge him with
+  teaching, that there are three independent and co-ordinate Gods,
+  because we think he has not proved that Peter, James, and John, are
+  but one man. This will make very foul work with the Fathers, if we
+  charge them with all those erroneous conceits about the Trinity, which
+  we can fancy in their inconvenient ways of explaining that venerable
+  mystery, especially when they compare that mysterious unity with any
+  natural unions.
+
+So that after all this obscuration of the obscure, Sherlock ends by
+fairly throwing up his briefs, and yet calls out, "Not guilty!
+'Victoria'!" And what is this but to say: These Fathers did indeed
+involve Tritheism in their mode of defending the Tri-personality; but
+they were not Tritheists:--though it would be far more accurate to say,
+that they were Tritheists, but not so as to make any practical breach of
+the Unity;--as if, for instance, Peter, James, and John had three silver
+tickets, by shewing one of which either or all three would have the same
+thing as if they had shewn all three tickets, and 'vice versa', all
+three tickets could produce no more than each one; each corresponding to
+the whole.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  I am sure St. Gregory was so far from suspecting that he should be
+  charged with Tritheism upon this account, that he fences against
+  another charge of mixing and confounding the 'Hypostases' or Persons,
+  by denying any difference or diversity of nature, [Greek: hôs ek tou
+  màe déchesthai tàen katà physin diaphoràn, míxin tina tôn hypostáseôn
+  kaì anakúklaesin kataskeúzonta], which argues that he thought he had
+  so fully asserted the unity of the divine essence, that some might
+  suspect he had left but one Person, as well as one nature in God.
+
+This is just what I have said, p. 116. Whether Sabellianism or
+Tritheism, I observed is hard to determine. Extremes meet.
+
+
+Ib. p. 121.
+
+  Secondly, to this 'homo-ousiotes' the Fathers added a numerical unity
+  of the divine essence. This Petavius has proved at large by numerous
+  testimonies, even from those very Fathers, whom he before accused for
+  making God only collectively one, as three men are one man; such as
+  Gregory Nyssen, St. Cyril, Maximus, Damascen; which is a
+  demonstration, that however 'he might mistake' their explication of
+  it, from the unity of human nature, they were far enough from
+  Tritheism, or one collective God.
+
+This is most uncandid. Sherlock, even to be consistent with his own
+confession, § 1. p. 120, ought to have said, "However he might mistake
+their 'intention', in consequence of their inconvenient and
+unphilosophical explication;" which mistake, in fact, consisted in
+taking them at their word.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Petavius greatly commends Boethius's explication of this mystery,
+  which is the very same he had before condemned in Gregory Nyssen, and
+  those other Fathers.--That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God,
+  not three Gods: 'hujus conjunctionis ratio est indifferentia': that
+  is, such a sameness of nature as admits of no difference or variety,
+  or an exact 'homo-ousiotes', as he explains it. * * Those make a
+  difference, who augment and diminish, as the Arians do; who
+  distinguish the Trinity into different natures, as well as Persons, of
+  different worth and excellency, and thus divide and multiply the
+  Trinity into a plurality of Gods. 'Principium enim pluralitatis
+  alteritas est. Præter alteritatem enim nec pluralitas quid sit
+  intelligi potest'.
+
+Then if so, what becomes of the Persons? Have the Persons attributes
+distinct from their nature;--or does not their common nature constitute
+their common attributes? 'Principium enim, &c.'
+
+
+Ib. p. 124.
+
+  That the Fathers universally acknowledged that the operation of the
+  whole Trinity, 'ad extra', is but one, Petavius has proved beyond all
+  contradiction; and hence they conclude the unity of the divine nature
+  and essence; for every nature has a virtue and energy of its own; for
+  nature is a principle of action, and if the energy and operation be
+  but one, there can be but one nature; and if there be two distinct and
+  divided operations, if either of them can act alone without the other,
+  there must be two divided natures.
+
+Then it was not the Son but the whole Trinity that was crucified: for
+surely this was an operation 'ad extra'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 126.
+
+  But to do St. Austin right, though he do not name this consciousness,
+  yet he explains this Trinity in Unity by examples of mutual
+  consciousness. I named one of his similitudes before, of the unity of
+  our understanding, memory, and will, 'which' are all conscious to each
+  other; that we remember what we understand and will; we understand
+  what we remember and will; and what we will we remember and
+  understand; and therefore all these three faculties do penetrate and
+  comprehend each other.
+
+'Which'! The 'man' is self-conscious alike when he remembers, wills, and
+understands; but in what sense is the generic term "memory" conscious to
+the generic word "will?" This is mere nonsense. Are memory,
+understanding, and volition persons,--self-subsistents? If not, what are
+they to the purpose? Who doubts that Jehovah is consciously powerful,
+consciously wise, consciously good; and that it is the same Jehovah, who
+in being omnipotent, is good and wise; in being wise, omnipotent and
+good; in being good, is wise and omnipotent? But what has all this to do
+with a distinction of Persons? Instead of one Tri-unity we might have a
+mille-unity. The fact is, that Sherlock, and (for aught I know) Gregory
+Nyssen, had not the clear idea of the Trinity, positively; but only a
+negative Arianism.
+
+
+Ib. p. 127.
+
+  He proceeds to shew that this unity is without all manner of confusion
+  and mixture, * * for the mind that loves, is in the love. * * * And
+  the knowledge of the mind which knows and loves itself, is in the
+  mind, and in its love, because it loves itself, knowing, and knows
+  itself loving: and thus also two are in each, for the mind which knows
+  and loves itself, with its knowledge is in love, and with its love is
+  in knowledge.
+
+Then why do we make tri-personality in unity peculiar to God?
+
+The doctrine of the Trinity (the foundation of all rational theology, no
+less than the precondition and ground of the rational possibility of the
+Christian Faith, that is, the Incarnation and Redemption), rests
+securely on the position,--that in man 'omni actioni præit sua propria
+passio; Deus autem est actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate'. As
+the tune produced between the breeze and Eolian harp is not a
+self-subsistent, so neither memory, nor understanding, nor even love in
+man: for he is a passive as well as active being: he is a patible agent.
+But in God this is not so. Whatever is necessarily of him, (God of God,
+Light of Light), is necessarily all act; therefore necessarily
+self-subsistent, though not necessarily self-originated. This then is
+the true mystery, because the true unique; that the Son of God has
+origination without passion, that is, without ceasing to be a pure act:
+while a created entity is, as far as it is merely creaturely and
+distinguishable from the Creator, a mere 'passio' or recipient. This
+unicity we strive, not to 'express', for that is impossible; but to
+designate, by the nearest, though inadequate, analogy,--'Begotten'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 133.
+
+  As for the Holy Ghost, whose nature is represented to be love, I do
+  not indeed find in Scripture that it is any where said, that the Holy
+  Ghost is that mutual love, wherewith Father and Son love each other:
+  but this we know, that there is a mutual love between Father and Son:
+  'the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his
+  hands'.--John iii. 35. 'And the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him
+  all things that himself doeth'.-John v. 20; and our Saviour himself
+  tells us, 'I love the Father'.--John xiv. 31. And I shewed before,
+  that love is a distinct act, 'and therefore in God must be a person:
+  for there are no accidents nor faculties in God.'
+
+This most important, nay, fundamental truth, so familiar to the elder
+philosophy, and so strongly and distinctly enunciated by Philo Judæus,
+the senior and contemporary of the Evangelists, is to our modern divines
+darkness and a sound.
+
+
+Sect. VI. pp. 147-8.
+
+  Yes; you'll say, that there should be three Persons, each of which is
+  God, and yet but one God, is a contradiction: but what principle of
+  natural reason does it contradict?
+
+Surely never did argument vertiginate more! I had just acceded to
+Sherlock's exposition of the Trinity, as the Supreme Being, his reflex
+act of self-consciousness and his love, all forming one supreme mind;
+and now he tells me, that each is the whole Supreme Mind, and denies
+that three, each 'per se' the whole God, are not the same as three Gods!
+I grant that division and separation are terms inapplicable, yet surely
+three distinct though undivided Gods, are three Gods. That the Father,
+Son, and Holy Ghost, are the one true God, I fully believe; but not
+Sherlock's exposition of the doctrine. Nay, I think it would have been
+far better to have worded the mystery thus:--The Father together with
+his Son and Spirit, is the one true God.
+
+"Each 'per se' God." This is the [Greek: prôton méga pseudos] of
+Sherlock's scheme. Each of the three is whole God, because neither is,
+or can be 'per se'; the Father himself being 'a se', but not 'per se'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 149.
+
+  For it is demonstrable that if there be three Persons and one God,
+  each Person must be God, and yet there cannot be three distinct Gods,
+  but one. For if each Person be not God, all three cannot be God,
+  unless the Godhead have Persons in it which are not God.
+
+Three persons having the same nature are three persons;--and if to
+possess without limitation the divine nature, as opposed to the human,
+is what we mean by God, why then three such persons are three Gods, and
+will bethought so, till Gregory Nyssen can persuade us that John, James,
+and Peter, each possessing the human nature, are not three men. John is
+a man, James is a man, and Peter is a man: but they are not three men,
+but one man!
+
+
+Ib. p. 150.
+
+  I affirm, that natural reason is not the rule and measure of
+  expounding Scripture, no more than it is of expounding any other
+  writing. The true and only way to interpret any writing, even the
+  Scriptures themselves, is to examine the use and propriety of words
+  and phrases, the connexion, scope, and design of the text, its
+  allusion to ancient customs and usages, or disputes. For there is no
+  other good reason to be given for any exposition, but that the words
+  signify so, and the circumstances of the place, and the apparent scope
+  of the writer require it.
+
+This and the following paragraph are excellent. 'O si sic omnia'!
+
+
+Ib. p. 153.
+
+  Reconcile men to the doctrine (of the Trinity), and the Scripture is
+  plain without any farther comment. This I have now endeavoured; and I
+  believe our adversaries will talk more sparingly of absurdities and
+  contradictions for the future, and they will lose the best argument
+  they have against the orthodox expositions of Scripture.
+
+Good doctor! you sadly over-rated both your own powers, and the docility
+of your adversaries. If so clear a head and so zealous a Trinitarian as
+Dr. Waterland could not digest your exposition, or acquit it of
+Tritheism, little hope is there of finding the Unitarians more
+persuadable.
+
+
+Ib. p. 154.
+
+  Though Christ be God himself, yet if there be three Persons in the
+  Godhead, the equality and sameness of nature does not destroy the
+  subordination of Persons: a Son is equal to his Father by nature, but
+  inferior to him as his Son: if the Father, as I have explained it, be
+  original mind and wisdom, the Son a personal, subsisting, but reflex
+  image of his Father's wisdom, though their eternal wisdom be equal and
+  the same, yet the original is superior to the image, the Father to the
+  Son.
+
+But why? We men deem it so, because the image is but a shadow, and not
+equal to the original; but if it were the same in all perfections, how
+could that, which is exactly the same, be less? Again, God is all
+Being:--consequently there can nothing be added to the idea, except what
+implies a negation or diminution of it. If one and the same Being is
+equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead, but inferior as man; then
+it is + 'm-x', which is not = + 'm'. But of two men I may say, that they
+are equal to each other. A. = + courage-wisdom. B. = + wisdom-courage.
+Both wise and courageous; but A. inferior in wisdom, B. in courage. But
+God is all-perfect.
+
+
+Ib. p. 156.
+
+  So born before all creatures, as [Greek: prôtótokos] also signifies,
+  'that by him were all things created'.
+
+  'All things were created by him, and for him, and he is before all
+  things', (which is the explication of [Greek: pôrtótokos pásaes
+  ktíseos], begotten before the whole creation', and therefore no part
+  of the creation himself.)
+
+This is quite right. Our version should here be corrected. [Greek:
+Prôto] or [Greek: prótaton] is here an intense comparative,--'infinitely
+before'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 159.
+
+  That he 'being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal
+  with God', &c.--Phil. ii. 8, 9.
+
+I should be inclined to adopt an interpretation of the unusual phrase
+[Greek: hárpagmon] somewhat different both from the Socinian and the
+Church version:--"who being in the form of God did not 'think equality
+with God a thing to be seized with violence', but made, &c."
+
+
+Ib. p. 160.
+
+  Is a mere creature a fit lieutenant or representative of God in
+  personal or prerogative acts of government and power? Must not every
+  being be represented by one of his own kind, a man by a man, an angel
+  by an angel, in such acts as are proper to their natures? and must not
+  God then be represented by one who is God? Is any creature capable of
+  the government of the world? Does not this require infinite wisdom and
+  infinite power? And can God communicate infinite wisdom and infinite
+  power to a creature or a finite nature? That is, can a creature be
+  made a true and essential God?
+
+This is sound reasoning. It is to be regretted that Sherlock had not
+confined himself to logical comments on the Scripture, instead of
+attempting metaphysical solutions.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 161-3.
+
+I find little or nothing to 'object to' in this exposition, from pp.
+161-163 inclusively, of 'Phil'. ii. 8, 9. And yet I seem to feel, as if
+a something that should have been prefixed, and to which all these
+considerations would have been excellent seconds, were missing. To
+explain the Cross by the necessity of sacrificial blood, and the
+sacrificial blood as a type and 'ante'-delegate or pre-substitute of the
+Cross, is too like an 'argumentum in circulo'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 164.
+
+  And though Christ be the eternal Son of God, and the natural Lord and
+  heir of all things, yet 'God hath' in this 'highly exalted him' and
+  given 'him a name which is above every name, that at' (or in [Greek:
+  en]) 'the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven',
+  &c.--Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11.
+
+Never was a sublime passage more debased than by this rendering of
+[Greek: en] by 'at', instead of 'in';--'at' the 'phenomenon', instead of
+'in' the 'noumenon'. For such is the force of 'nomen', name, in this and
+similar passages, namely, 'in vera et substantiali potestate Jesu': that
+is, [Greek: en lógô kaì dià lógou], the true 'noumenon' or 'ens
+intelligibile' of Christ. To bow at hearing the 'cognomen' may become a
+universal, but it is still only a non-essential, consequence of the
+former. But the debasement of the idea is not the worst evil of this
+false rendering;--it has afforded the pretext and authority for
+un-Christian intolerance.
+
+
+Ib. p. 168.
+
+  'The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the
+  Son'.--John v. 22. Should the Father judge the world he 'must' judge
+  as the maker and sovereign of the world, by the strict rules of
+  righteousness and justice, and then how could any sinner be saved?
+
+(Why? Is mercy incompatible with righteousness? How then can the Son be
+righteous?)
+
+  But he has committed judgment to the Son, as a mediatory king, who
+  judges by the equity and chancery of the Gospel.
+
+This article required exposition incomparably more than the simple
+doctrine of the Trinity, plain and evident 'simplici intuitu', and
+rendered obscure only by diverting the mental vision by terms drawn from
+matter and multitude. In the Trinity all the 'Hows'? may and should be
+answered by 'Look'! just as a wise tutor would do in stating the fact of
+a double or treble motion, as of a ball rolling north ward on the deck
+of a ship sailing south, while the earth is turning from west to east.
+And in like manner, that is, 'per intuitum intellectualem', must all the
+mysteries of faith be contemplated;--they are intelligible 'per se',
+not discursively and 'per analogiam'. For the truths are unique, and may
+have shadows and types, but no analogies. At this moment I have no
+intuition, no intellectual diagram, of this article of the commission of
+all judgment to the Son, and therefore a multitude of plausible
+objections present themselves, which I cannot solve--nor do I expect to
+solve them till by faith I see the thing itself.--Is not mercy an
+attribute of the Deity, as Deity, and not exclusively of the Person of
+the Son? And is not the authorizing another to judge by equity and mercy
+the same as judging so ourselves? If the Father can do the former, why
+not the latter?
+
+
+Ib. p. 171.
+
+  And therefore now it is given him to have life in himself, as the
+  Father hath life in himself, as the original fountain of all life, by
+  whom the Son himself lives: all life is derived from God, either by
+  eternal generation, or procession, or creation; and thus Christ hath
+  life in himself also; to the new creation he is the fountain of life:
+  'he quickeneth whom he will'.
+
+The truths which hitherto had been metaphysical, then began to be
+historical. The Eternal was to be manifested in time. Hence Christ came
+with signs and wonders; that is, the absolute, or the anterior to cause
+and effect, manifested itself as a 'phenomenon' in time, but with the
+predicates of eternity;--and this is the only possible definition of a
+miracle 'in re ipsa', and not merely 'ad hominem', or 'ad ignorantiam'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 177.
+
+  His next argument consists in applying such things to the divinity of
+  our Saviour as belong to his humanity; 'that he increased in wisdom,
+  &c.:--that he knows not the day of judgment';--which he evidently
+  speaks of himself as man: as all the ancient Fathers confess. In St.
+  Mark it is said, 'But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no,
+  not the angels that are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father'.
+  St. Matthew does not mention the Son: 'Of that day and hour knoweth no
+  man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only'.
+
+How much more politic, as well as ingenuous, it had been to have
+acknowledged the difficulty of this text. So far from its being evident,
+the evidence would be on the Arian side, were it not that so many
+express texts determine us to the contrary.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Which shows that the Son in St. Matthew is included in the [Greek:
+  oudeìs] none, or no man, and therefore concerns him only as a man: for
+  the Father 'includes the whole Trinity', and therefore includes the
+  Son, who seeth whatever his Father doth.
+
+This is an 'argumentum in circulo', and 'petitio rei sub lite'. Why is
+he called the Son in 'antithesis' to the Father, if it meant, "no not
+the Christ, except in his character of the co-eternal Son, included in
+the Father?" If it "concerned him only as a man," why is he placed after
+the angels? Why called the 'Son' simply, instead of the Son of Man, or
+the Messiah?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  [Greek: Oudeìs] is not [Greek: oudeìs anthrôpôn], but, 'no one': as in
+  John i. 18. 'No one hath seen God at any time'; that is, he is by
+  essence invisible.
+
+This most difficult text I have not seen explained satisfactorily. I
+have thought that the [Greek: ággeloi] must here be taken in the primary
+sense of the word, namely, as messengers, or missionary Prophets: Of
+this day knoweth no one, not the messengers or revealers of God's
+purposes now in heaven, no, not the Son, the greatest of Prophets,--that
+is, he in that character promised to declare all that in that character
+it was given to him to know.
+
+
+Ib. p. 186.
+
+  When St. Paul calls the Father the One God, he expressly opposes it to
+  the many gods of the heathens. 'For though there be that are called
+  gods, &c. but to us, there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all
+  things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by
+  him': where the 'one God' and 'one Lord and Mediator' is opposed to
+  the many gods and many lords or mediators which were worshipped by the
+  heathens.
+
+But surely the 'one Lord' is as much distinguished from the 'one God',
+as both are contradistinguished from the 'gods many and lords many' of
+the heathens. Besides 'the Father' is not the term used in that age in
+distinction from the gods that are no gods; but [Greek: Ho epì pántôn
+theós].
+
+
+Ib. p. 222.
+
+  'The Word was with God'; that is, it was not yet in the world, or not
+  yet made flesh; but with God.--'John' i. 1. So that to be 'with God',
+  signifies nothing but not to be in the world.
+
+
+_'The Word was with God.'_
+
+  Grotius does say, that this was opposed to the Word's being made
+  flesh, and appearing in the world: but he was far enough from thinking
+  that these words have only a negative sense: * * * for he tells us
+  what the positive sense is, that with God is [Greek: parà tô patrí],
+  with the Father, * * and explains it by what Wisdom says, 'Prov'. vii.
+  30. 'Then I was by him, &c.' which he does not think a 'prosopopoeia',
+  but spoken of a subsisting person.
+
+But even this is scarcely tenable even as Greek. Had this been St.
+John's meaning, surely he would have said, [Greek: en theô], not [Greek:
+pròs tòn theón], in the nearest proximity that is not confusion. But it
+is strange, that Sherlock should not have seen that Grotius had a
+hankering toward Socinianism, but, like a 'shy cock', and a man of the
+world, was always ready to unsay what he had said.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and ever Blessed
+Trinity and the Incarnation of the Son of God, occasioned by the Brief
+Notes on the Creed of St Athanasius, and the Brief History of the
+Unitarians, or Socinians. and containing an answer to both. By Wm.
+Sherlock, London. 8vo. 1690.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2: The third General Council, that at Ephesus in 431, decreed
+
+  "that it should not be lawful for any man to publish or compose
+  another Faith or Creed than that which was defined by the Nicene
+  Council."
+
+Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON WATERLAND'S VINDICATION OF CHRIST'S DIVINITY. [1]
+
+
+'In initio'.
+
+It would be no easy matter to find a tolerably competent individual who
+more venerates the writings of Waterland than I do, and long have done.
+But still in how many pages do I not see reason to regret, that the
+total idea of the 4=3=1,--of the adorable Tetractys, eternally
+self-manifested in the Triad, Father, Son, and Spirit,--was never in its
+cloudless unity present to him. Hence both he and Bishop Bull too often
+treat it as a peculiarity of positive religion, which is to be cleared
+of all contradiction to reason, and then, thus negatively qualified, to
+be actually received by an act of the mere will; 'sit pro ratione
+voluntas'. Now, on the other hand, I affirm, that the article of the
+Trinity is religion, is reason, and its universal 'formula'; and that
+there neither is, nor can be, any religion, any reason, but what is, or
+is an expansion of the truth of the Trinity; in short, that all other
+pretended religions, pagan or 'pseudo'-Christian (for example,
+Sabellian, Arian, Socinian), are in themselves Atheism; though God
+forbid, that I should call or even think the men so denominated
+Atheists. I affirm a heresy often, but never dare denounce the holder a
+heretic.
+
+On this ground only can it be made comprehensible, how any honest and
+commonly intelligent man can withstand the proofs and sound logic of
+Bull and Waterland, that they failed in the first place to present the
+idea itself of the great doctrine which they so ably advocated. Take my
+self, S.T.C. as a humble instance. I was never so befooled as to think
+that the author of the fourth Gospel, or that St. Paul, ever taught the
+Priestleyan Psilanthropism, or that Unitarianisn (presumptuously, nay,
+absurdly so called), was the doctrine of the New Testament generally.
+But during the sixteen months of my aberration from the Catholic Faith,
+I presumed that the tenets of the divinity of Christ, the Redemption,
+and the like, were irrational, and that what was contradictory to reason
+could not have been revealed by the Supreme Reason. As soon as I
+discovered that these doctrines were not only consistent with reason,
+but themselves very reason, I returned at once to the literal
+interpretation of the Scriptures, and to the Faith.
+
+As to Dr. Samuel Clarke, the fact is, every generation has its one or
+more over-rated men. Clarke was such in the reign of George I.; Dr.
+Johnson eminently so in that of George III.; Lord Byron being the star
+now in the ascendant.
+
+In every religious and moral use of the word, God, taken absolutely,
+that is, not as a God, or the God, but as God, a relativity, a
+distinction in kind 'ab omni quod non est Deus', is so essentially
+implied, that it is a matter of perfect indifference, whether we assert
+a world without God, or make God the world. The one is as truly Atheism
+as the other. In fact, for all moral and practical purposes they are the
+same position differently expressed; for whether I say, God is the
+world, or the world is God, the inevitable conclusion, the sense and
+import is, that there is no other God than the world, that is, there is
+no other meaning to the term God. Whatever you may mean by, or choose to
+believe of, the world, that and that alone you mean by, and believe of,
+God. Now I very much question whether in any other sense Atheism, that
+is, speculative Atheism, is possible. For even in the Lucretian, the
+coarsest and crudest scheme of the Epicurean doctrine, a hylozism, a
+potential life, is clearly implied, as also in the celebrated 'lene
+clinamen' becoming actual. Desperadoes articulating breath into a
+blasphemy of nonsense, to which they themselves attach no connected
+meaning, and the wickedness of which is alone intelligible, there may
+be; but a La Place, or a La Grand, would, and with justice, resent and
+repel the imputation of a belief in chance, or of a denial of law,
+order, and self-balancing life and power in the world. Their error is,
+that they make them the proper and underived attributes of the world. It
+follows then, that Pantheism is equivalent to Atheism, and that there is
+no other Atheism actually existing, or speculatively conceivable, but
+Pantheism. Now I hold it demonstrable that a consistent Socinianism,
+following its own consequences, must come to Pantheism, and in ungodding
+the Saviour must deify cats and dogs, fleas and frogs. There is, there
+can be, no 'medium' between the Catholic Faith of Trinal Unity, and
+Atheism disguised in the self-contradicting term, Pantheism;--for every
+thing God, and no God, are identical positions.
+
+
+Query I. p. 1.
+
+  'The Word was God'.--John i. 1. 'I am the Lord, and there is none
+  else; there is no God besides me'.--Is. xiv. 5, &c.
+
+In all these texts the 'was', or 'is', ought to be rendered positively,
+or objectively, and not as a mere connective: 'The Word Is God', and
+saith, 'I Am the Lord; there is no God besides me', the Supreme Being,
+'Deitas objectiva'. The Father saith, 'I Am in that I am,--Deitas
+subjectiva'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 2.
+
+  Whether all other beings, besides the one Supreme God, be not excluded
+  by the texts of Isaiah (to which many more might be added), and
+  consequently, whether Christ can be God at all, unless He be the same
+  with the Supreme God?
+
+  The sum of your answer to this query is, that the texts cited from
+  Isaiah, are spoken of one Person only, the Person of the Father, &c.
+
+O most unhappy mistranslation of 'Hypostasis' by Person! The Word is
+properly the only Person.
+
+
+Ib. p. 3.
+
+  Now, upon your hypothesis, we must add; that even the Son of God
+  himself, however divine he may be thought, is really no God at all in
+  any just and proper sense. He is no more than a nominal God, and
+  stands excluded with the rest. All worship of him, and reliance upon
+  him, will be idolatry, as much as the worship of angels, or men, or of
+  the gods of the heathen would be. God the Father he is God, and he
+  only, and 'him only shall thou serve'. This I take to be a clear
+  consequence from your principles, and unavoidable.
+
+Waterland's argument is absolutely unanswerable by a worshipper of
+Christ. The modern 'ultra'-Socinian cuts the knot.
+
+
+Query II. p. 43.
+
+  And therefore he might as justly bear the style and title of 'Lord
+  God, God of Abraham', &c. while he acted in that capacity, as he did
+  that of 'Mediator, Messiah, Son of the Father', &c. after that he
+  condescended to act in another, and to discover his personal relation.
+
+And why, then, did not Dr. Waterland,--why did not his great
+predecessor in this glorious controversy, Bishop Bull,--contend for a
+revisal of our established version of the Bible, but especially of the
+New Testament? Either the unanimous belief and testimony of the first
+five or six centuries, grounded on the reiterated declarations of John
+and Paul, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, were erroneous,
+or at best doubtful;--and then why not wipe them off; why these
+references to them?--or else they were, as I believe, and both Bull and
+Waterland believed, the very truth; and then why continue the
+translation of the Hebrew into English at second-hand through the
+'medium' of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word,
+Jehovah,? Is not the [Greek: Kyrios], or Lord, of the LXX. a Greek
+substitute, in countless instances, for the Hebrew Jehovah? Why not then
+restore the original word, and in the Old Testament religiously render
+Jehovah by Jehovah, and every text of the New Testament, referring to
+the Old, by the Hebrew word in the text referred to? Had this been done,
+Socinianism would have been scarcely possible in England.
+
+Why was not this done?--I will tell you why. Because that great truth,
+in which are contained all treasures of all possible knowledge, was
+still opaque even to Bull and Waterland;--because the Idea itself--that
+'Idea Idearum', the one substrative truth which is the form, manner, and
+involvent of all truths,--was never present to either of them in its
+entireness, unity, and transparency. They most ably vindicated the
+doctrine of the Trinity, negatively, against the charge of positive
+irrationality. With equal ability they shewed the contradictions, nay,
+the absurdities, involved in the rejection of the same by a professed
+Christian. They demonstrated the utterly un-Scriptural and
+contra-Scriptural nature of Arianism, and Sabellianism, and Socinianism.
+But the self-evidence of the great Truth, as a universal of the
+reason,--as the reason itself--as a light which revealed itself by its
+own essence as light--this they had not had vouchsafed to them.
+
+
+Query XV. p. 225-6.
+
+  The pretence is, that we equivocate in talking of eternal generation.
+
+All generation is necessarily [Greek: ánarchón ti], without dividuous
+beginning, and herein contradistinguished from creation.
+
+
+Ib. p. 226.
+
+  True, it is not the same with human generation.
+
+Not the same 'eodem modo', certainly; but it is so essentially the same
+that the generation of the Son of God is the transcendent, which gives
+to human generation its right to be so called. It is in the most proper,
+that is, the fontal, sense of the term, generation.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  You have not proved that all generation implies beginning; and what is
+  more, cannot.
+
+It would be difficult to disprove the contrary. Generation with a
+beginning is not generation, but creation. Hence we may see how
+necessary it is that in all important controversies we should predefine
+the terms negatively, that is, exclude and preclude all that is not
+meant by them; and then the positive meaning, that is, what is meant by
+them, will be the easy result,--the post-definition, which is at once
+the real definition and impletion, the circumference and the area.
+
+
+Ib. p. 227-8.
+
+  It is a usual thing with many, (moralists may account for it), when
+  they meet with a difficulty which they cannot readily answer,
+  immediately to conclude that the doctrine is false, and to run
+  directly into the opposite persuasion;--not considering that they may
+  meet with much more weighty objections there than before; or that they
+  may have reason sufficient to maintain and believe many things in
+  philosophy and divinity, though they cannot answer every question
+  which may be started, or every difficulty which may be raised against
+  them.
+
+O, if Bull and Waterland had been first philosophers, and then divines,
+instead of being first, manacled, or say articled clerks of a guild;--if
+the clear free intuition of the truth had led them to the Article, and
+not the Article to the defence of it as not having been proved to be
+false,--how different would have been the result! Now we feel only the
+inconsistency of Arianism, not the truth of the doctrine attacked.
+Arianism is confuted, and in such a manner, that I will not reject the
+Catholic Faith upon the Arian's grounds. It may, I allow, be still true.
+But that it is true, because the Arians have hitherto failed to prove
+its falsehood, is no logical conclusion. The Unitarian may have better
+luck; or if he fail, the Deist.
+
+
+Query XVI. p. 234.
+
+  But God's 'thoughts are not our thoughts'.
+
+That is, as I would interpret the text;--the ideas in and by which God
+reveals himself to man are not the same with, and are not to be judged
+by, the conceptions which the human understanding generalizes from the
+notices of the senses, common to man and to irrational animals, dogs,
+elephants, beavers, and the like, endowed with the same senses.
+Therefore I regard this paragraph, p. 223-4, as a specimen of admirable
+special pleading 'ad hominem' in the Court of eristic Logic; but I
+condemn it as a wilful resignation or temporary self-deposition of the
+reason. I will not suppose what my reason declares to be no position at
+all, and therefore an impossible sub-position.
+
+
+Ib. p. 235.
+
+  Let us keep to the terms we began with; lest by the changing of words
+  we make a change of ideas, and alter the very state of the question.
+
+This misuse, or rather this 'omnium-gatherum' expansion and consequent
+extenuation of the word, Idea and Ideas, may be regarded as a calamity
+inflicted by Mr. Locke on the reigns of William III. Queen Anne, and the
+first two Georges.
+
+
+Ib. p. 237.
+
+  Sacrifice was one instance of worship required under the Law; and it
+  is said;--'He that sacrificeth unto any God, save unto the Lord only,
+  he shall be utterly destroyed' (Exod. xxii. 20.) Now suppose any
+  person, considering with himself that only absolute and sovereign
+  sacrifice was appropriated to God by this law, should have gone and
+  sacrificed to other Gods, and have been convicted of it before the
+  judges. The apology he must have made for it, I suppose, must have run
+  thus: "Gentlemen, though I have sacrificed to other Gods, yet I hope
+  you'll observe, that I did it not absolutely: I meant not any absolute
+  or supreme sacrifice (which is all that the Law forbids), but relative
+  and inferior only. I regulated my intentions with all imaginable care,
+  and my esteem with the most critical exactness. I considered the other
+  Gods, whom I sacrificed to, as inferior only and infinitely so;
+  reserving all sovereign sacrifice to the supreme God of Israel." This,
+  or the like apology must, I presume, have brought off the criminal
+  with some applause for his acuteness, if your principles be true.
+  Either you must allow this, or you must be content to say, that not
+  only absolute supreme sacrifice (if there be any sense in that
+  phrase), but all sacrifice was by the Law appropriate to God only, &c.
+  &c.
+
+How was it possible for an Arian to answer this? But it was impossible;
+and Arianism was extinguished by Waterland, but in order to the increase
+of Socinianism; and this, I doubt not, Waterland foresaw. He was too
+wise a man to suppose that the exposure of the folly and falsehood of
+one form of Infidelism would cure or prevent Infidelity. Enough, that he
+made it more bare-faced--I might say, bare-breeched; for modern
+Unitarianism is verily the 'sans-culotterie' of religion.
+
+
+Ib. p. 239.
+
+  You imagine that acts of religious worship are to derive their
+  signification and quality from the intention and meaning of the
+  worshippers: whereas the very reverse of it is the truth.
+
+Truly excellent. Let the Church of England praise God for her Saints--a
+more glorious Kalendar than Rome can show!
+
+
+Ib. p. 251.
+
+  The sum then of the case is this: If the Son could be included as
+  being uncreated, and very God; as Creator, Sustainer, Preserver of all
+  things, and one with the Father; then he might be worshipped upon
+  their (the Ante-Nicene Fathers') principles, but otherwise could not.
+
+Every where in this invaluable writer I have to regret the absence of
+all distinct idea of the I Am as the proper attribute of the Father; and
+hence, the ignorance of the proper Jehovaism of the Son; and hence, that
+while we worship the Son together with the Father, we nevertheless pray
+to the Father only through the Son.
+
+
+Query XVII.
+
+  And we may never be able perfectly to comprehend the relations of the
+  three persons, 'ad intra', amongst themselves; the ineffable order and
+  economy of the ever-blessed co-eternal Trinity.
+
+"Comprehend!" No. For how can any spiritual truth be comprehended? Who
+can comprehend his own will; or his own personeity, that is, his I-ship
+(Ichheit'); or his own mind, that is, his person; or his own life? But
+we can distinctly apprehend them. In strictness, the Idea, God, like all
+other ideas rightly so called, and as contradistinguished from
+conception, is not so properly above, as alien from, comprehension. It
+is like smelling a sound.
+
+
+Query XVIII. p. 269.
+
+  From what hath been observed, it may appear sufficiently that the
+  divine [Greek: Lógos] was our King and our God long before; that he
+  had the same claim and title to religious worship that the Father
+  himself had--'only not so distinctly revealed'.
+
+Here I differ 'toto orbe' from Waterland, and say with Luther and
+Zinzendorf, that before the Baptism of John the 'Logos' alone had been
+distinctly revealed, and that first in Christ he declared himself a Son,
+namely, the co-eternal only-begotten Son, and thus revealed the Father.
+Indeed the want of the Idea of the 1=3 could alone have prevented
+Waterland from inferring this from his own query II. and the texts cited
+by him pp. 28-38. The Father cannot be revealed except in and through
+the Son, his eternal 'exegesis'. The contrary position is an absurdity.
+The Supreme Will, indeed, the Absolute Good, knoweth himself as the
+Father: but the act of self-affirmation, the I Am in that I Am, is not a
+manifestation 'ad extra', not an 'exegesis'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 274.
+
+  This point being settled, I might allow you that, in some sense,
+  distinct worship commenced with the distinct title of Son or Redeemer:
+  that is, our blessed Lord was then first worshipped, or commanded to
+  be worshipped by us, under that distinct title or character; having
+  before had no other title or character peculiar and proper to himself,
+  but only what was common to the Father and him too.
+
+Rather shall I say that the Son and the Spirit, the Word and the Wisdom,
+were alone worshipped, because alone revealed under the Law. See
+Proverbs, i. ii.
+
+The passage quoted from Bishop Bull is very plausible and very eloquent;
+but only 'cum multis granis salis sumend'.
+
+
+Query XIX. p. 279.
+
+  That the Father, whose honour had been sufficiently secured under the
+  Jewish dispensation, and could not but be so under the Christian also,
+  &c.
+
+Here again! This contradiction of Waterland to his own principles is
+continually recurring;--yea, and in one place he involves the very
+Tritheism, of which he was so victorious an antagonist, namely, that the
+Father is Jehovah, the Son Jehovah, and the Spirit Jehovah;--thus making
+Jehovah either a mere synonyme of God--whereas he himself rightly
+renders it  [Greek: Ho Ôn], which St. John every where, and St. Paul no
+less, makes the peculiar name of the Son, [Greek: monogenàes uhiòs, ho
+ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós]--; or he affirms the same absurdity, as if
+had said: The Father is the Son, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy
+Ghost is the Son, and yet there are not three Sons but one Son. N. B.
+[Greek: Ho òn] is the verbal noun of [Greek: hos esti], not of [Greek:
+egô eimí]. It is strange how little use has been made of that profound
+and most pregnant text, 'John' i. 18!
+
+
+Query XX. p. 302.
+
+  The [Greek: homooúsion] itself might have been spared, at least out of
+  the Creeds, had not a fraudulent abuse of good words brought matters
+  to that pass, that the Catholic Faith was in danger of being lost even
+  under Catholic language.
+
+Most assuredly the very 'disputable' rendering of [Greek: homoousion] by
+consubstantial, or of one substance with, not only might have been
+spared, but should have been superseded. Why not--as is felt to be for
+the interest of science in all the physical sciences--retain the same
+term in all languages? Why not 'usia' and homoüsial, as well as
+'hypostasis', hypostatic, homogeneous, heterogeneous, and the like;--or
+as Baptism, Eucharist, Liturgy, Epiphany and the rest?
+
+
+Query XXI. p. 303.
+
+  The Doctor's insinuating from the 300 texts, which style the Father
+  God absolutely, or the one God, that the Son is not strictly and
+  essentially God, not one God with the Father, is a strained and remote
+  inference of his own.
+
+Waterland has weakened his argument by seeming to admit that in all
+these 300 texts the Father, 'distinctive', is meant.
+
+
+Ib. p. 316-17.
+
+  The simplicity of God is another mystery. * * When we come to inquire
+  whether all extension, or all plurality, diversity, composition of
+  substance and accident, and the like, be consistent with it, then it
+  is we discover how confused and inadequate our ideas are. * * To this
+  head belongs that perplexing question (beset with difficulties on all
+  sides), whether the divine substance be extended or no.
+
+Surely, the far larger part of these assumed difficulties rests on a
+misapplication either of the senses to the sense, or of the sense to the
+understanding, or of the understanding to the reason;--in short, on an
+asking for images where only theorems can be, or requiring theorems for
+thoughts, that is, conceptions or notions, or lastly, conceptions for
+ideas.
+
+
+Query XXIII. p. 351.
+
+  But taking advantage of the ambiguity of the word 'hypostasis',
+  sometimes used to signify substance, and sometimes person, you
+  contrive a fallacy.
+
+And why did not Waterland lift up his voice against this mischievous
+abuse of the term 'hypostasis', and the perversion of its Latin
+rendering, 'substantia' as being equivalent to [Greek: ousía]? Why
+[Greek: ousía] should not have been rendered by 'essentia', I cannot
+conceive. 'Est' seems a contraction of 'esset', and 'ens' of 'essens':
+[Greek: ôn, ousa, ousía] = 'essens, essentis, essentia'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 354.
+
+  Let me desire you not to give so great a loose to your fancy in divine
+  things: you seem to consider every thing under the notion of extension
+  and sensible images.
+
+Very true. The whole delusion of the Anti-Trinitarians arises out of
+this, that they apply the property of imaginable matter--in which A. is,
+that is, can only be imagined, by exclusion of B. as the universal
+predicate of all substantial being.
+
+
+Ib. p. 357.
+
+  And our English Unitarians * * have been still refining upon the
+  Socinian scheme, * * and have brought it still nearer to Sabellianism.
+
+The Sabellian and the Unitarian seem to differ only in this;--that what
+the Sabellian calls union with, the Unitarian calls full inspiration by,
+the Divinity.
+
+
+Ib. p. 359.
+
+  It is obvious, at first sight, that the true Arian or Semi-Arian
+  scheme (which you would be thought to come up to at least) can never
+  tolerably support itself without taking in the Catholic principle of a
+  human soul to join with the Word.
+
+Here comes one of the consequences of the Cartesian Dualism: as if
+[Greek: sàrx], the living body, could be or exist without a soul, or a
+human living body without a human soul! [Greek: Sàrx] is not Greek for
+carrion, nor [Greek: sôma] for carcase.
+
+
+Query XXIV. p. 371.
+
+  Necessary existence is an essential character, and belongs equally to
+  Father and Son.
+
+Subsistent in themselves are Father, Son and Spirit: the Father only has
+origin in himself.
+
+
+Query XXVI. p. 412.
+
+  The words [Greek: ouch hôs genómenon] he construes thus: "not as
+  eternally generated," as if he had read [Greek: gennômenon], supplying
+  [Greek: aïdíôs] by imagination. The sense and meaning of the word
+  [Greek: genómenon], signifying made, or created, is so fixed and
+  certain in this author, &c.
+
+This is but one of fifty instances in which the true Englishing of
+[Greek: genómenos, egéneto], &c. would have prevented all mistake. It is
+not 'made', but 'became'. Thus here:--begotten eternally, and not as one
+that became; that is, as not having been before. The only-begotten Son
+never 'became'; but all things 'became' through him.
+
+
+Ib. 412.
+
+  'Et nos etiam Sermoni atque Rationi, itemque Virtuti, per quæ omnia
+  molitum Deum ediximus, propriam substantiam Spiritum inscribimus; cui
+  et Sermo insit prænuntianti, et Ratio adsit disponenti, et Virtus
+  perficienti. Hunc ex Deo prolatum didicimus, et prolatione generatum,
+  et idcirco Filium Dei et Deum dictum ex unitate substantiæ'.--Tertull.
+  Apol. c. 21.
+
+How strange and crude the realism of the Christian Faith appears in
+Tertullian's rugged Latin!
+
+
+Ib. p. 414.
+
+  He represents Tertullian as making the Son, in his highest capacity,
+  ignorant of the day of judgment.
+
+Of the true sense of the text, Mark xiii. 32., I still remain in doubt;
+but, though as zealous and stedfast a Homoüsian as Bull and Waterland
+themselves, I am inclined to understand it of the Son in his highest
+capacity; but I would avoid the inferiorizing consequences by a stricter
+rendering of the [Greek: ei màe ho Patáer]. The [Greek: monon] of St.
+Matthew xxiv. 36. is here omitted. I think Waterland's a very
+unsatisfying solution of this text.
+
+
+Ib. p. 415.
+
+  'Exclamans quod se Deus reliquisset, &c. Habes ipsum exclamantem in
+  passione, Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti? Sed hæc vox
+  carnis et animæ, id est, hominis; nec Sermonis, nec Spiritus',
+  &c.--Tertull. Adv. Prax. c. 26. c. 30.
+
+The ignorance of the Fathers, and, Origen excepted, of the Ante-Nicene
+Fathers in particular, in all that respects Hebrew learning and the New
+Testament references to the Old Testament, is shown in this so early
+fantastic misinterpretation grounded on the fact of our Lord's
+reminding, and as it were giving out aloud to John and Mary the
+twenty-second Psalm, the prediction of his present sufferings and after
+glory. But the entire passage in Tertullian, though no proof of his
+Arianism, is full of proofs of his want of insight into the true sense
+of the Scripture texts. Indeed without detracting from the inestimable
+services of the Fathers from Tertullian to Augustine respecting the
+fundamental article of the Christian Faith, yet commencing from the
+fifth century, I dare claim for the Reformed Church of England the
+honorable name of [Greek: archaspistàes] of Trinitarianism, and the
+foremost rank among the Churches, Roman or Protestant: the learned
+Romanist divines themselves admit this, and make a merit of the
+reluctance with which they nevertheless admit it, in respect of Bishop
+Bull. [2]
+
+
+Ib. p. 421.
+
+  It seems to me that if there be not reasons of conscience obliging a
+  good man to speak out, there are always reasons of prudence which
+  should make a wise man hold his tongue.
+
+True, and as happily expressed. To this, however, the honest
+Anti-Trinitarian must come at last: "Well, well, I admit that John and
+Paul thought differently; but this remains my opinion."
+
+
+Query XXVII. p. 427.
+
+  [Greek: Ton alaethinòn kaì óntôs ónta Theòn, tòn tou Christou patéra].
+ --Athanas. Cont. Gent.
+
+  The just and literal rendering of the passage is this: 'The true God
+  who in reality is such, namely, the Father of Christ.'
+
+The passage admits of a somewhat different interpretation from this of
+Waterland's, and of equal, if not greater, force against the Arian
+notion: namely, taking [Greek: tòn óntôs ónta] distinctively from
+[Greek: ho ôn]--the 'Ens omnis entitatis, etiam suæ', that is, the I Am
+the Father, in distinction from the 'Ens Supremum', the Son. It cannot,
+however, be denied that in changing the 'formula' of the 'Tetractys'
+into the 'Trias', by merging the 'Prothesis' in the 'Thesis', the
+Identity in the Ipseity, the Christian Fathers subjected their
+exposition to many inconveniences.
+
+
+Ib. p. 432.
+
+  [Greek: Ouch ho poiaetàes tôn hólôn éstai Theòs ho tô Môsei eipôn
+  autòn einai Theòn Abraàm, kaì Theòn Isaàk, kaì Theòn Iakôb].--Justin
+  Mart. Dial. p. 180.
+
+  The meaning is, that that divine Person, who called himself God, and
+  was God, was not the Person of the Father, whose ordinary character is
+  that of maker of all things, but another divine Person, namely, God
+  the Son. * * It was Justin's business to shew that there was a divine
+  Person, one who was God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was not the
+  Father; and therefore there were two divine Persons.
+
+At all events, it was a very incautious expression on the part of
+Justin, though his meaning was, doubtless, that which Waterland gives.
+The same most improper, or at best, most inconvenient because equivocal
+phrase, has been, as I think, interpolated into our Apostles' Creed.
+
+
+Ib. p. 436.
+
+  [Greek: Taeroito d' àn, hôs ho emòs lógos, ehis mèn Theòs, eis hèn
+  aítion kaì Ghiou kaì Pneúmatos anapheroménôn. k.t.l.]--Greg. Naz.
+  Orat. 29.
+
+  We may, as I conceive, preserve (the doctrine of) one God, by
+  referring both the Son and Holy Ghost to one cause, &c.
+
+Another instance of the inconvenience of the Trias compared with the
+Tetractys.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A Vindication of Christ's Divinity: being a defence of some
+queries relating to Dr. Clarke's scheme of the Holy Trinity, &c. By
+Daniel Waterland. 2nd edit. Cambridge, 1719. Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2:
+
+  'Y sino ahí está el Doctor Jorge Bull Profesor de Teología, y
+  Presbitero de la Iglesia Anglicana, que murió Obispo de San David el
+  año de 1716, cuyas obras teologico--escolasticas, en folio, nada deben
+  á las mas alambicadas que se han estampado en Salamanca y en Coimbra;
+  y como los puntos que por la mayor parte trató en ellas son sobre los
+  misterios capitales de nuestra Santa Fé, conviene á saber, sobre el
+  misterio de la Trinidad, y sobre el de la Divinidad de Cristo, en los
+  cuales su Pseudaiglesia Anglicana no se desvia de la Catolica, en
+  verdad, que los manejó con tanto nervio y con tanta delicadeza, que
+  los teologos ortodojos mas escolastizados, como si dijéramos
+  electrizados, hacen grande estimacion de dichas obras. Y aun en los
+  dos Tratados que escribió acerca de la Justification, que es punto mas
+  resvaladizo, en los principios que abrazó, no se separó de los
+  teologos Catolicos; pero en algunas consecuencias que infirio, ya dió
+  bastantemente á entender la mala leche que habia mamado.'
+
+Fray. Gerundio. ii. 7. Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON WATERLAND'S IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY.[1]
+
+
+Chap. I. p. 18.
+
+  It is the property of the Divine Being to be unsearchable; and if he
+  were not so, he would not be divine. Must we therefore reject the most
+  certain truths concerning the Deity, only because they are
+  incomprehensible, &c.?
+
+It is strange that so sound, so admirable a logician as Waterland,
+should have thought 'unsearchable' and 'incomprehensible' synonymous, or
+at least equivalent terms:--and this, though St. Paul hath made it the
+privilege of the full-grown Christian, 'to search out the deep things of
+God himself'.
+
+
+Chap. IV. p. 111.
+
+  'The delivering over unto Satan' seems to have been a form of
+  excommunication, declaring the person reduced to the state of a
+  heathen; and in the Apostolical age it was accompanied with
+  supernatural or miraculous effects upon the bodies of the persons so
+  delivered.
+
+Unless the passage, ('Acts' v. 1-11.) be an authority, I must doubt the
+truth of this assertion, as tending to destroy the essential
+spirituality of Christian motives, and, in my judgment, as
+irreconcilable with our Lord's declaration, that his kingdom was 'not of
+this world'. Let me be once convinced that St. Paul, with the elders of
+an Apostolic Church, knowingly and intentionally appended a palsy or a
+consumption to the sentence of excommunication, and I shall be obliged
+to reconsider my old opinion as to the anti-Christian principle of the
+Romish Inquisition.
+
+
+Ib. p. 114.
+
+  'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition,
+  reject; knowing that he that is such, is subverted, and sinneth, being
+  condemned of himself'.--Tit. iii. 10, 11.
+
+This text would be among my minor arguments for doubting the Paulinity
+of the Epistle to Titus. It seems to me to breathe the spirit of a later
+age, and a more established Church power.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  Not every one that mistakes in judgment, though in matters of great
+  importance, in points fundamental, but he that openly espouses such
+  fundamental error. * * Dr. Whitby adds to the definition, the
+  espousing it out of disgust, pride, envy, or some worldly principle,
+  and against his conscience.
+
+Whitby went too far; Waterland not far enough. Every schismatic is not
+necessarily a heretic; but every heretic is virtually a schismatic. As
+to the meaning of [Greek: autokatákritos], Waterland surely makes too
+much of a very plain matter. What was the sentence passed on a heretic?
+A public declaration that he was no longer a member of--that is, of one
+faith with--the Church. This the man himself, after two public notices,
+admits and involves in the very act of persisting. However confident as
+to the truth of the doctrine he has set up, he cannot, after two public
+admonitions, be ignorant that it is a doctrine contrary to the articles
+of his communion with the Church that has admitted him; and in regard of
+his alienation from that communion, he is necessarily [Greek:
+autokatákritos],--though in his pride of heart he might say with the man
+of old, "And I banish you."
+
+
+Ib. p. 123.
+
+ --as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits,
+  ceased.
+
+No one point in the New Testament perplexes me so much as these (so
+called) miraculous gifts. I feel a moral repugnance to the reduction of
+them to natural and acquired talents, ennobled and made energic by the
+life and convergency of faith;--and yet on no other scheme can I
+reconcile them with the idea of Christianity, or the particular
+supposed, with the general known, facts. But, thank God! it is a
+question which does not in the least degree affect our faith or
+practice. I mean, if God permit, to go through the Middletonian
+controversy, as soon as I can procure the loan of the books, or have
+health enough to become a reader in the British Museum.
+
+
+Ib. p. 126.
+
+  And what if, after all, spiritual censures (for of such only I am
+  speaking,) should happen to fall upon such a person, he may be in some
+  measure hurt in his reputation by it, and that is all. And possibly
+  hereupon his errors, before invincible through ignorance, may be
+  removed by wholesome instruction and admonition, and so he is
+  befriended in it, &c.
+
+Waterland is quite in the right so far;--but the penal laws, the
+temporal inflictions--would he have called for the repeal of these?
+Milton saw this subject with a mastering eye,--saw that the awful power
+of excommunication was degraded and weakened even to impotence by any
+the least connection with the law of the State.
+
+
+Ib. p. 127.
+
+  --who are hereby forbidden to receive such heretics into their houses,
+  or to pay them so much as common civilities. This precept of the
+  Apostle may he further illustrated by his own practice, recorded by
+  Irenaeus, who had the information at second-hand from Polycarp, a
+  disciple of St. John's, that St. John, once meeting with Cerinthus at
+  the bath, retired instantly without bathing, for fear lest the bath
+  should fall by reason of Cerinthus being there, the enemy to truth.
+
+Psha! The 'bidding him God speed',--[Greek: légôn autô chaírein],--(2
+'John', 11,) is a spirituality, not a mere civility. If St. John knew or
+suspected that Cerinthus had a cutaneous disease, there would have been
+some sense in the refusal, or rather, as I correct myself, some
+probability of truth in this gossip of Irenaeus.
+
+
+Ib. p. 128.
+
+  They corrupted the faith of Christ, and in effect subverted the
+  Gospel. That was enough to render them detestable in the eyes of all
+  men who sincerely loved and valued sound faith.
+
+O, no, no, not 'them!' 'Error quidem, non tamen homo errans,
+abominandus': or, to pun a little, 'abhominandus'. Be bold in denouncing
+the heresy, but slow and timorous in denouncing the erring brother as a
+heretic. The unmistakable passions of a factionary and a schismatic, the
+ostentatious display, the ambition and dishonest arts of a sect-founder,
+must be superinduced on the false doctrine, before the heresy makes the
+man a heretic.
+
+
+Ib. p. 129.
+
+  --the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.
+
+Were the Nicolaitans a sect, properly so called? The word is the Greek
+rendering of 'the children of Balaam;' that is, men of grossly immoral
+and disorderly lives.
+
+
+Ib. p. 130.
+
+  For if he who 'shall break one of the least moral commandments, and
+  shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven',
+  (Mat. v. 19,) it must be a very dangerous experiment, &c.
+
+A sad misinterpretation of our Lord's words, which from the context most
+evidently had no reference to any moral, that is, universal commandment
+as such, but to the national institutions of the Jewish state, as long
+as that state should be in existence; that is to say, until 'the Heaven'
+or the Government, and 'the Earth' or the People or the Governed, as one
+'corpus politicum', or nation, had 'passed away'. Till that time,--which
+was fulfilled under Titus, and more thoroughly under Hadrian,--no Jew
+was relieved from his duties as a citizen and subject by his having
+become a Christian. The text, together with the command implied in the
+miracle of the tribute-money in the fish's mouth, might be fairly and
+powerfully adduced against the Quakers, in respect of their refusal to
+pay their tithes, or whatever tax they please to consider as having an
+un-Christian destination. But are they excluded from the kingdom of
+heaven, that is, the Christian Church? No;--but they must be regarded
+as weak and injudicious members of it.
+
+
+Chap. V. p. 140.
+
+  Accordingly it may be observed, how the unbelievers caress and
+  compliment those complying gentlemen who meet them half way, while
+  they are perpetually inveighing against the stiff divines, as they
+  call them, whom they can make no advantage of.
+
+Lessing, an honest and frank-hearted Infidel, expresses the same
+sentiment. As long as a German Protestant divine keeps himself stiff and
+stedfast to the Augsburg Confession, to the full Creed of Melancthon, he
+is impregnable, and may bid defiance to sceptic and philosopher. But let
+him quit the citadel, and the Cossacs are upon him.
+
+
+Ib. p. 187.
+
+  And therefore it is infallibly certain, as Mr. Chillingworth well
+  argues with respect to Christianity in general, that we ought firmly
+  to believe it; because wisdom and reason require that we should
+  believe those things which are by many degrees more credible and
+  probable than the contrary.
+
+Yes, where there are but two positions, one of which must be true. When
+A. is presented to my mind with probability=5, and B. with
+probability=15, I must think that B. is three times more probable than
+A. And yet it is very possible that a C. may be found which will
+supersede both.
+
+
+Chap. VI. p. 230.
+
+  The Creed of Jerusalem, preserved by Cyril, (the most ancient perhaps
+  of any now extant,) is very express for the divinity of God the Son,
+  in these words: "And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son
+  of God; true God, begotten of the Father before all ages, by whom all
+  things were made" * *. [Greek: Kaì eis henà Kyrion Iaesoun Christòn,
+  tòn uhiòn tou Theou monogenae, tòn ek tou patròs gennaethénta, Theòn
+  alaethinòn, prò pántôn tôn aiônôn, di' ohu tà pánta egéneto].
+
+I regard this, both from its antiquity and from the peculiar character
+of the Church of Jerusalem, so far removed from the influence of the
+Pythagoreo-Platonic sects of Paganism, as the most important and
+convincing mere fact of evidence in the Trinitarian controversy.
+
+
+Ib. p. 233.
+
+  --true Son of the Father, 'invisible' of invisible, &c.
+
+How is this reconcilable with 'John' i. 18--('no one hath seen God at
+any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he
+hath declared him',--) or with the 'express image', asserted above.
+'Invisible,' I suppose, must be taken in the narrowest sense, that is,
+to bodily eyes. But then the one 'invisible' would not mean the same as
+the other.
+
+
+Ib. p. 236.
+
+  'Symbola certe Ecclesiæ ex ipso Ecclesiæ sensu, non ex hæreticorum
+  cerebello, exponenda sunt'.--Bull. Judic. Eccl. v.
+
+The truth of a Creed must be tried by the Holy Scriptures; but the sense
+of the Creed by the known sentiments and inferred intention of its
+compilers.
+
+
+Ib. p. 238.
+
+  The very name of Father, applied in the Creed to the first Person,
+  intimates the relation he bears to a Son, &c.
+
+No doubt: but the most probable solution of the apparent want of
+distinctness of explication on this article, in my humble judgment,
+is--that the so-called Apostles' Creed was at first the preparatory
+confession of the catechumens, the admission-ticket, as it were
+('symbolum ad Baptismum'), at the gate of the Church, and gradually
+augmented as heresies started up. The latest of these seems to have
+consisted in the doubt respecting the entire death of Jesus on the
+Cross, as distinguished from suspended animation. Hence in the fifth or
+sixth century the clause--"and he descended into Hades," was
+inserted;--that is, the indissoluble principle of the man Jesus, was
+separated from, and left, the dissoluble, and subsisted apart in
+'Scheol', or the abode of separated souls;--but really meaning no more
+than 'vere mortuus est'. Jesus was taken from the Cross dead in the very
+same sense in which the Baptist was dead after his beheading.
+
+Nevertheless, well adapted as this Creed was to its purposes, I cannot
+but regret the high place and precedence which by means of its title,
+and the fable to which that title gave rise, it has usurped. It has, as
+it appears to me, indirectly favoured Arianism and Socinianism.
+
+
+Ib. p. 250.
+
+  That St. John wrote his Gospel with a view to confute Cerinthus, among
+  other false teachers, is attested first by Irenæus, who was a
+  disciple of Polycarp, and who flourished within less than a century of
+  St. John's time.
+
+I have little trust and no faith in the gossip and hearsay-anecdotes of
+the early Fathers, Irenæus not excepted. "Within less than a century of
+St. John's time." Alas! a century in the paucity of writers and of men
+of education in the age succeeding the Apostolic, must be reckoned more
+than equal to five centuries since the use of printing. Suppose,
+however, the truth of the Irenæan tradition;--that the Creed of
+Cerinthus was what Irenæus states it to have been; and that John, at the
+instance of the Asiatic Bishops, wrote his Gospel as an antidote to the
+Cerinthian heresy;--does there not thence arise, in his utter silence,
+an almost overwhelming argument against the Apostolicity of the
+'Christopædia', both that prefixed to Luke, and that concorporated with
+Matthew?
+
+
+Ib. p. 257.
+
+  'In him was life, and the life was the light of men'. The same Word
+  was life, the [Greek: logos and zôáe], both one. There was no occasion
+  therefore for subtilly distinguishing the Word and Life into two Sons,
+  as some did.
+
+I will not deny the possibility of this interpretation. It may be,--nay,
+it is,--fairly deducible from the words of the great Evangelist: but I
+cannot help thinking that, taken as the primary intention, it degrades
+this most divine chapter, which unites in itself the three characters of
+sublime, profound, and pregnant, and alloys its universality by a
+mixture of time and accident.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  'And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness cometh not upon
+  it.' So I render the verse, conformable to the rendering of the same
+  Greek verb, [Greek: katalambánô], by our translators in another place
+  of this same Gospel. The Apostle, as I conceive, in this 5th verse of
+  his 1st chapter, alludes to the prevailing error of the Gentiles, &c.
+
+O sad, sad! How must the philosopher have been eclipsed by the shadow of
+antiquarian erudition, in order that a mind like Waterland's could have
+sacrificed the profound universal import of 'comprehend' to an allusion
+to a worthless dream of heretical nonsense, the mushroom of the day! Had
+Waterland ever thought of the relation of his own understanding to his
+reason? But alas! the identification of these two diversities--of how
+many errors has it been ground and occasion!
+
+
+Ib. p. 259.
+
+  'And the Word was made flesh'--became personally united with the man
+  Jesus; 'and dwelt among us',--resided constantly in the human nature
+  so assumed.
+
+Waterland himself did but dimly see the awful import of [Greek: egéneto
+sàrx],--the mystery of the alien ground--and the truth, that as the
+ground such must be the life. He caused himself to 'become flesh', and
+therein assumed a mortal life into his own person and unity, in order
+himself to transubstantiate the corruptible into the incorruptible.
+
+Waterland's anxiety to show the anti-heretical force of St. John's
+Gospel and Epistles, has caused him to overlook their Catholicity--their
+applicability to all countries and all times--their truth, independently
+of all temporary accidents and errors;--which Catholicity alone it is
+that constitutes their claim to Canonicity, that is, to be Canonical
+inspired writings.
+
+
+Ib. p. 266.
+
+  Hereupon therefore the Apostle, in defence of Christ's real humanity,
+  says, 'This is he that came by water and blood'.
+
+'Water and blood,' that is 'serum' and 'crassamentum', mean simply
+'blood,' the blood of the animal or carnal life, which, saith Moses, 'is
+the life'. Hence 'flesh' is often taken as, and indeed is a form of, the
+blood,--blood formed or organized. Thus 'blood' often includes 'flesh,'
+and 'flesh' includes 'blood.' 'Flesh and blood' is equivalent to blood
+in its twofold form, or rather as formed and formless. 'Water and blood'
+has, therefore, two meanings in St. John, but which 'in idem
+coincidunt':
+
+1. true animal human blood, and no celestial ichor or phantom:
+
+2. the whole sentiently vital body, fixed or flowing, the pipe and the
+stream.
+
+For the ancients, and especially the Jews, had no distinct apprehension
+of the use or action of the nerves: in the Old Testament 'heart' is used
+as we use 'head.' 'The fool hath said in his heart'--is in English: "the
+worthless fellow ('vaurien') hath taken it into his head," &c.
+
+
+Ib. p. 268.
+
+  The Apostle having said that the Spirit is truth, or essential truth,
+  (which was giving him a title common to God the Father and to Christ,)
+  &c.
+
+Is it clear that the distinct 'hypostasis' of the Holy Spirit, in the
+same sense as the only-begotten Son is hypostatically distinguished from
+the Father, was a truth that formed an immediate object or intention of
+St. John? That it is a truth implied in, and fairly deducible from, many
+texts, both in his Gospel and Epistles, I do not, indeed I cannot,
+doubt;--but only whether this article of our faith he was commissioned
+to declare explicitly?
+
+It grieves me to think that such giant 'archaspistæ' of the Catholic
+Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1
+'John' v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as
+displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it
+not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless in itself, and
+interruptive of the profound sense of the Apostle.
+
+
+Ib. p. 272.
+
+  He is come, come in the flesh, and not merely to reside for a time, or
+  occasionally, and to fly off again, but to abide and dwell with man,
+  clothed with humanity.
+
+Incautiously worded at best. Compare our Lord's own declaration to his
+disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while 'with' or 'among' them, in
+order to dwell 'in' them permanently.
+
+
+Ib. p. 286.
+
+  It is very observable, that the Ebionites rejected three of the
+  Gospels, receiving only St. Matthew's (or what they called so), and
+  that curtailed. They rejected likewise all St. Paul's writings,
+  reproaching him as an apostate. How unlikely is it that Justin should
+  own such reprobates as those were for fellow-Christians!
+
+I dare avow my belief--or rather I dare not withhold my avowal--that
+both Bull and Waterland are here hunting on the trail of an old blunder
+or figment, concocted by the gross ignorance of the Gentile Christians
+and their Fathers in all that respected Hebrew literature and the
+Palestine Christians. I persist in the belief that, though a refuse of
+the persecuted and from neglect degenerating Jew-Christians may have
+sunk into the mean and carnal notions of their unconverted brethren
+respecting the Messiah, no proper sect of Ebionites ever existed, but
+those to whom St. Paul travelled with the contributions of the churches,
+nor any such man as Ebion; unless indeed it was St. Barnabas, who in his
+humility may have so named himself, while soliciting relief for the
+distressed Palestine Christians;--"I am Barnabas the beggar." But I will
+go further, and confess my belief that the (so-called) Ebionites of the
+first and second centuries, who rejected the 'Christopædia', and whose
+Gospel commenced with the baptism by John, were orthodox Apostolic
+Christians, who received Christ as the Lord, that is, as Jehovah
+'manifested in the flesh'. As to their rejection of the other Gospels
+and of Paul's writings, I might ask:--"Could they read them?" But the
+whole notion seems to rest on an anachronical misconception of the
+'Evangelia'. Every great mother Church, at first, had its own Gospel.
+
+
+Ib. p. 288.
+
+  To say nothing here of the truer reading ("men of your nation"), there
+  is no consequence in the argument. The Ebionites were Christians in a
+  large sense, men of Christian profession, nominal Christians, as
+  Justin allowed the worst of heretics to be. And this is all he could
+  mean by allowing the Ebionites to be Christians.
+
+I agree with Bull in holding [Greek: apò tou hymetérou génous] the most
+probable reading in the passage cited from Justin, and am by no means
+convinced that the celebrated passage in Josephus is an interpolation.
+But I do not believe that such men, as are here described, ever
+professed themselves Christians, or were, or could have been, baptized.
+
+
+Ib. p. 292.
+
+  Le Clerc would appear to doubt, whether the persons pointed to in
+  Justin really denied Christ's divine nature or no. It is as plain as
+  possible that they did.
+
+Le Clerc is no favourite of mine, and Waterland is a prime favourite.
+Nevertheless, in this instance, I too doubt with Le Clerc, and more than
+doubt.
+
+
+Ib. p. 338.
+
+  [Greek: Phúsei dè taes phthoras prosgenoménaes, anagkaion aen hóti
+  sôsai Boulómenos áe tàen phthoropoiòn ousían aphanísas touto dè ouk
+  aen hetérôs genésthai ei máeper hae katà phúsin zôàe proseplákae tô
+  tàen phthoràn dexaménô, aphanizousa mèn tàen phthoràn, athanatòn dè
+  tou loipou tò dexamenon diataerousa. k.t.l.]--Just. M.
+
+  Here Justin asserts that it was necessary for essential life, or life
+  by nature, to be united with human nature, in order to save it.
+
+Waterland has not mastered the full force of [Greek: hàe katà phúsin
+zôáe]. If indeed he had taken in the full force of the whole of this
+invaluable fragment, he would never have complimented the following
+extract from Irenæus, as saying the same thing "in fuller and stronger
+words." Compared with the fragment from Justin, it is but the flat
+common-place logic of analogy, so common in the early Fathers.
+
+
+Ib. p. 340.
+
+  'Qui nude tantum hominem eum dicunt ex Joseph generatum * * moriuntur.'
+
+'Non nude hominem'--not a mere man do I hold Jesus to have been and to
+be; but a perfect man and, by personal union with the Logos, perfect
+God. That his having an earthly father might be requisite to his being a
+perfect man I can readily suppose; but why the having an earthly father
+should be more incompatible with his perfect divinity, than his having
+an earthly mother, I cannot comprehend. All that John and Paul believed,
+God forbid that I should not!
+
+
+Chap. VII. p. 389.
+
+  It is a sufficient reason for not receiving either them ('Arian
+  doctrines'), or the interpretations brought to support them, that the
+  ancients, in the best and purest times, either knew nothing of them,
+  or if they did, condemned them.
+
+As excellent means of raising a presumption in the mind of the falsehood
+of Arianism and Socinianism, and thus of preparing the mind for a docile
+reception of the great idea itself--I admit and value the testimonies
+from the writings of the early Fathers. But alas! the increasing
+dimness, ending in the final want of the idea of this all-truths-
+including truth of the Tetractys eternally manifested in the Triad;
+--this, this is the ground and cause of all the main heresies from
+Semi-Arianism, recalled by Dr. Samuel Clarke, to the last setting ray of
+departing faith in the necessitarian Psilanthropism of Dr. Priestley.
+
+
+Ib. p. 41-2, &c.
+
+I cannot but think that Waterland's defence of the Fathers in these
+pages against Barbeyrac, is below his great powers and characteristic
+vigour of judgment. It is enough that they, the Fathers of the first
+three centuries, were the lights of their age, and worthy of all
+reverence for their good gifts. But it appears to me impossible to deny
+their credulity; their ignorance, with one or two exceptions, in the
+interpretation of the Old Testament; or their hardihood in asserting the
+truth of whatever they thought it for the interest of the Church, and
+for the good of souls, to have believed as true. A whale swallowed
+Jonah; but a believer in all the assertions and narrations of Tertullian
+and Irenæus would be more wonder-working than Jonah; for such a one must
+have swallowed whales.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity
+asserted, in reply to some late pamphlets. 2nd edit. Lond. 1734.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON SKELTON.[1]
+
+1825.
+
+
+Burdy's Life of Skelton, p. 22.
+
+  She lived until she was a hundred and five. The omission of his
+  prayers on the morning it happened, he supposed ever after to be the
+  cause of this unhappy accident. So early was his mind impressed with a
+  lively sense of religious duty.
+
+In anecdotes of this kind, and in the instances of eminently good men,
+it is that my head and heart have their most obstinate falls out. The
+question is:--To what extent the undoubted subjective truth may
+legitimately influence our judgment as to the possibility of the
+objective.
+
+
+Ib. p. 67.
+
+  The Bishop then gave him the living of Pettigo in a wild part of the
+  county of Donegal, having made many removals on purpose to put him in
+  that savage place, among mountains, rocks, and heath, * * *. When he
+  got this living he had been eighteen years curate of Monaghan, and two
+  of Newtown-Butler, during which time he saw, as he told me, many
+  illiterate boys put over his head, and highly preferred in the Church
+  without having served a cure.
+
+Though I have heard of one or two exceptions stated in proof that
+nepotism is not yet extinct among our Prelates, yet it is impossible to
+compare the present condition of the Church, and the disposal of its
+dignities and emoluments with the facts recorded in this Life, without
+an honest exultation.
+
+
+Ib. p. 106.
+
+  He once declared to me that he would resign his living, if the
+  Athanasian Creed were removed from the Prayer Book; and I am sure he
+  would have done so.
+
+Surely there was more zeal than wisdom in this declaration. Does the
+Athanasian or rather the 'pseudo'-Athanasian Creed differ from the
+Nicene, or not? If not, it must be dispensable at least, if not
+superfluous. If it does differ, which of the two am I to follow;--the
+profession of an anonymous individual, or the solemn decision of upwards
+of three hundred Bishops convened from all parts of the Christian world?
+
+
+Vol. I. p. 177-180.
+
+No problem more difficult or of more delicate treatment than the
+'criteria' of miracles; yet none on which young divines are fonder of
+displaying their gifts. Nor is this the worst. Their charity too often
+goes to wreck from the error of identifying the faith in Christ with the
+arguments by which they think it is to be supported. But surely if two
+believers meet at the same goal of faith, it is a very secondary
+question whether they travelled thither by the same road of argument. In
+this and other passages of Skelton, I recognize and reverence a vigorous
+and robust intellect; but I complain of a turbidness in his reasoning, a
+huddle in his sequence, and here and there a semblance of arguing in a
+circle--from the miracle to the doctrine, and from the doctrine to the
+miracle. Add to this a too little advertency to the distinction between
+the evidence of a miracle for A, an eye-witness, and for B, for whom it
+is the relation of a miracle by an asserted eye-witness; and again
+between B, and X, Y, Z, for whom it is a fact of history. The result of
+my own meditations is, that the evidence of the Gospel, taken as a
+total, is as great for the Christians of the nineteenth century, as for
+those of the Apostolic age. I should not be startled if I were told it
+was greater. But it does not follow, that this equally holds good of
+each component part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown
+to the primitive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some
+evidence, which they enjoyed. Evidences comparatively dim have waxed
+into noon-day splendour; and the comparative wane of others, once
+effulgent, is more than indemnified by the 'synopsis' [Greek: tou
+pántos], which we enjoy, and by the standing miracle of a Christendom
+commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world. I make this
+remark for the purpose of warning the divinity student against the
+disposition to overstrain particular proofs, or rest the credibility of
+the Gospel too exclusively on some one favourite point. I confess, that
+I cannot peruse page 179 without fancying that I am reading some Romish
+Doctor's work, dated from a community where miracles are the ordinary
+news of the day.
+
+P. S. By the by, the Rev. Philip Skelton is of the true Irish breed;
+that is, a brave fellow, but a bit of a bully. "Arrah, by St. Pathrick!
+but I shall make cold mutton of you, Misther Arian."
+
+
+Ib. p. 182.
+
+  If in this he appears to deal fairly by us, proving such things as
+  admit of it, by reason; and such as do not, by the authority of his
+  miracles, &c.
+
+Are 'we' likely to have miracles performed or pretended before our eyes?
+If not, what may all this mean? If Skelton takes for granted the
+veracity of the Evangelists, and the precise verity of the Gospels, the
+truth and genuineness of the miracles is included:--and if not, what
+does he prove? The exact accordance of the miracles related with the
+ideal of a true miracle in the reason, does indeed furnish an argument
+for the probable truth of the relation. But this does not seem to be
+Skelton's intention.
+
+
+Ib. p. 185.
+
+  But to remedy this evil, as far as the nature of the thing will
+  permit, a genuine record of the true religion must be kept up, that
+  its articles may not be in danger of total corruption in such a sink
+  of opinions.
+
+Anything rather than seek a remedy in that which Scripture itself
+declares the only one. Alas! these bewilderments (the Romanists urge)
+have taken place especially through and by the misuse of the Scriptures.
+Whatever God has given, we ought to think necessary;--the Scriptures,
+the Church, the Spirit. Why disjoin them?
+
+
+Ib. p. 186.
+
+  Now a perpetual miracle, considered as the evidence of any thing, is
+  nonsense; because were it at first ever so apparently contrary to the
+  known course of nature, it must in time be taken for the natural
+  effect of some unknown cause, as all physical 'phænomena', if far
+  enough traced, always are; and consequently must fall into a level, as
+  to a capacity of proving any thing, with the most ordinary appearances
+  of nature, which, though all of them miracles, as to the primary cause
+  of their production, can never be applied to the proof of an
+  inspiration, because ordinary and common.
+
+I doubt this, though I have no doubt that it would be pernicious. The
+yearly blossoming of Aaron's rod is against Skelton, who confounds
+single facts with classes of 'phænomena', and he draws his conclusion
+from an arbitrary and, as seems to me, senseless definition of a
+miracle.
+
+
+Ib. p. 214. End of Discourse II.
+
+Skelton appears to have confounded two errors very different in kind and
+in magnitude;--that of the Infidel, against whom his arguments are with
+few exceptions irrefragable; and that of the Christian, who, sincerely
+believing the Law, the Prophecies, the miracles and the doctrines, all
+in short which in the Scriptures themselves is declared to have been
+revealed, does not attribute the same immediate divinity to all and
+every part of the remainder. It would doubtless be more Christian-like
+to substitute the views expressed in the next Discourse (III.); but
+still the latter error is not as the former.
+
+
+Ib. p. 234.
+
+  But why should not the conclusion be given up, since it is possible
+  Christ may have had two natures in him, so as to have been less than
+  the Father in respect to the one, and equal to him in respect to the
+  other.
+
+I understand these words ('My Father is greater than I') of the
+divinity--and of the Filial subordination, which does not in the least
+encroach on the equality necessary to the unity of Father, Son, and
+Spirit. Bishop Bull does the same. See too Skelton's own remarks in
+Discourse V. p. 265.
+
+
+Ib. p. 251.
+
+  This was necessary, because their Law was ordained by angels.
+
+Now this is an instance of what I cannot help regarding as a
+superstitious excess of reverence for single texts. We know that long
+before the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, the Alexandrian Church,
+which by its intercourse with Greek philosophers, chiefly Platonists,
+had become ashamed of the humanities of the Hebrew Scriptures, in
+defiance of those Scriptures had pretended, that it was not the Supreme
+Being who gave the Law in person to Moses, but some of his angels. The
+author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, arguing 'ad homines', avails
+himself of this, in order to prove that on their own grounds the Mosaic
+was of dignity inferior to the Christian dispensation. To get rid of
+this no-difficulty in a single verse or two in the Epistles, Skelton
+throws an insurmountable difficulty on the whole Mosaic history.
+
+
+Ib. p. 265.
+
+  Therefore, he saith, 'I' (as a man) 'can of myself do nothing'.
+
+Even of this text I do not see the necessity of Skelton's parenthesis
+(as a man). Nay it appears to me (I confess) to turn a sublime and most
+instructive truth into a truism. "But if not as the Son of God,
+therefore 'a fortiori' not as the Son of man, and more especially, as
+such, in all that refers to the redemption of mankind."
+
+
+Ib. p. 267.
+
+  To this glory Christ, as God, was entitled from all eternity; but did
+  not acquire a right to it as man, till he had paid the purchase by his
+  blood.
+
+I too hold this for a most important truth; but yet could wish it to
+have been somewhat differently expressed; as thus:--"but did not acquire
+it as man till the means had been provided and perfected by his blood."
+
+
+Ib. p. 268.
+
+  If Christ in one place, ('John' xiv. 28,) says, 'My Father is greater
+  than I'; he must be understood of his relation to the Father as his
+  Son, born of a woman.
+
+I do not see the necessity of this: does not Christ say, 'My Father and
+I will come and we will dwell in you?' Nay, I dare confidently affirm
+that in no one passage of St. John's Gospel is our Lord declared in any
+special sense the Son of the First Person of the Trinity in reference to
+his birth from a woman. And remember it is from St. John's Gospel that
+the words are cited. So too the answer to Philip ought to be interpreted
+by ch. i. 18. of the same Gospel.
+
+
+Ib. p. 276.
+
+I confess I do not agree with Skelton's interpretation of any of these
+texts entirely. Because I hold the Nicene Faith, and revere the doctrine
+of the Trinity as the fundamental article of Christianity, I apply to
+Christ as the Second Person, almost all the texts which Skelton explains
+of his humanity. At all events 1 consider 'the first-born of every
+creature' as a false version of the words, which (as the argument and
+following verse prove) should be rendered 'begotten before', (or rather
+'superlatively before'), 'all that was created or made; for by him' they
+were made.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  'Of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which
+  are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'
+
+I cannot explain myself here; but I have long thought that our Saviour
+meant in these words [Greek: ainíttein tàen théotaeta ahutou]--and that
+like the problem proposed by him to the Scribes, they were intended to
+prepare the minds of the disciples for this awful mystery--[Greek: ei
+màe ho patáer]--"unless, or if not, as the Father knows it;" while in
+St. Matthew the equivalent sense is given by the omission of the [Greek:
+oud' ho uhíos], and its inclusion in the Father. 'As the Father knoweth
+me, so know I the Father'.
+
+It would have been against the general rule of Scripture prophecies, and
+the intention of the revelation in Christ, that the first Christians
+should have been so influenced in their measures and particular actions,
+as they could not but have been by a particular foreknowledge of the
+express and precise time at which Jerusalem was to be destroyed. To
+reconcile them to this uncertainty, our Lord first teaches them to
+consider this destruction the close of one great epoch, or [Greek:
+aiôn], as the type of the final close of the whole world of time, that
+is, of all temporal things; and then reasons with them thus:--"Wonder
+not that I should leave you ignorant of the former, when even the
+highest order of heavenly intelligences know not the latter, [Greek:
+oud' ho uhíos, ei màe ho patáer]; nor should I myself, but that the
+Father knows it, all whose will is essentially known to me as the
+Eternal Son. But even to me it is not revealably communicated." Such
+seems to me the true sense of this controverted passage in Mark, and
+that it is borne out by many parallel texts in St. John, and that the
+correspondent text in Matthew, which omits the [Greek: oud' ho huíos],
+conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou]
+including the Son in the [Greek: patàer mónos]. For to his only-begotten
+Son before all time the Father showeth all things.
+
+
+Ib. p. 279.
+
+  But whether we can reconcile these words to our belief of Christ's
+  prescience and divinity, or not, matters little to the debate about
+  his divinity itself; since we can so fully prove it by innumerable
+  passages of Scripture, too direct, express, and positive, to be
+  balanced by one obscure passage, from 'whence the Arian is to draw the
+  consequence himself, which may possibly be wrong'.
+
+Very good.
+
+
+Ib. p. 280.
+
+  'We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an
+  understanding that we may know him that is true; and we are in him
+  that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and
+  eternal life.'--l John v. 20. The whole connection evidently shows the
+  words to be spoken of Christ.
+
+That the words comprehend Christ is most evident. All that can be fairly
+concluded from 1 Cor. viii. 6, is this:--that the Apostles, Paul and
+John, speak of the Father as including and comprehending the Son and the
+Holy Ghost, as his Word and his Spirit; but of these as inferring or
+supposing the Father, not comprehending him. Whenever, therefore,
+respecting the Godhead itself, containing both deity and dominion, the
+term God is distinctively used, it is applied to the Father, and Lord to
+the Son.
+
+
+Ib. p. 281.
+
+  But, farther, it is objected that Christ cannot be God, since God
+  calls him 'his servant' more than once, particularly 'Isaiah' xlii. 1.
+
+The Prophets often speak of the anti-type, or person typified, in
+language appropriate to, and suggested by, the type itself. So, perhaps,
+in this passage, if, as I suppose, Hezekiah was the type immediately
+present to Isaiah's imagination. However, Skelton's answer is quite
+sufficient.
+
+
+Ib. p. 287.
+
+  Hence it appears, that in the passage objected, (1 'Cor'. xv. 24, &c.)
+  Christ is spoken of purely as that Man whom 'God had highly exalted,
+  and to whom he had given a name which is above every name, that at the
+  name of Jesus every knee should bow.' (Phil. ii. 9, 10.)
+
+I must confess that this exposition does not quite satisfy me. I cannot
+help thinking that something more and deeper was meant by the Apostle;
+and this must be sought for in the mystery of the Trinity itself, 'in
+which' (mystery) 'all treasures of knowledge are hidden'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 318.
+
+  Hence, perhaps, may be best explained what St. Peter says in the
+  second Epistle, after pleading a miracle. 'We have also a more sure
+  word of prophecy, whereunto you do well that you take heed.'
+
+I believe that St. Peter neither said it, nor meant this; but that
+[Greek: Bebaióteron] follows 'the prophetic word'. We have also the word
+of prophecy more firm;--that is; we have, in addition to the evidence of
+the miracles themselves, this further confirmation, that they are the
+fulfilment of known prophecies.
+
+
+Ib. p. 327.
+
+  Agreeable to these passages of the Prophet, St. Peter tells us ('Acts'
+  x. 38), 'God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and
+  power'.
+
+I have often to complain that too little attention is paid by
+commentators to the history and particular period in which certain
+speeches were delivered, or words written. Could St. Peter with
+propriety have introduced the truth to a prejudiced audience with its
+deepest mysteries? Must he not have begun with the most evident facts?
+
+
+Ib. Disc. VIII.
+
+  The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity vindicated.
+
+Were I a Clergyman, the paragraphs from p. 366 to p. 370, both
+inclusive, of this Discourse should form the conclusion of my Sermon on
+Trinity Sunday,--whether I preached at St. James's, or in a country
+village.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 374-378.
+
+As a reason why we should doubt our own judgment, it is quite fair to
+remind the objector, that the same difficulty occurs in the scheme of
+God's ordinary providence. But that a difficulty in a supposed article
+of revealed truth is solved by the occurrence of the same or of an
+equivalent difficulty in the common course of human affairs--this I find
+it hard to conceive. How was the religious, as distinguished from the
+moral, sense first awakened? What made the human soul feel the necessity
+of a faith in God, but the apparent incongruity of certain dispensations
+in this world with the idea of God, with the law written in the heart?
+Is not the reconciling of these facts or 'phænomena' with the divine
+attributes, one of the purposes of a revealed religion? But even this is
+not a full statement of the defect complained of in this solution. A
+difficulty which may be only apparent (like that other of the prosperity
+of the wicked) is solved by the declaration of its reality! A difficulty
+grounded on the fact of temporal and outward privations and sufferings,
+is solved by being infinitely increased, that is, by the assertion of
+the same principle on the determination of our inward and everlasting
+weal and woe. That there is nothing in the Christian Faith or in the
+Canonical Scriptures, when rightly interpreted, that requires such an
+argument, or sanctions the recourse to it, I believe myself to have
+proved in the Aids to Reflection. For observe that "to solve" has a
+scientific, and again a religious sense, and that in the latter, a
+difficulty is satisfactorily solved, as soon as its insolvibility for
+the human mind is proved and accounted for.
+
+
+Ib. (Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.)
+
+  Christianity proved by Miracles.
+
+I cannot see and never could, the purpose, or 'cui bono', of this
+reasoning. To whom is it addressed? To a man who denies a God, or that
+God can reveal his will to mankind? If such a man be not below talking
+to, he must first be convinced of his miserable blindness respecting
+these truths; for these are clearly presupposed in every proof of
+miracles generally.
+
+Again, does he admit the authenticity of the Gospels, and the veracity
+of the Evangelists? Does he credit the facts there related, and as
+related? If not, these points must be proved; for these are clearly
+presupposed in all reasoning on the particular miracles of the Christian
+dispensation. If he does, can he deny that many acts of Christ were
+wonderful;--that reanimating a dead body in which putrefaction had
+already commenced,--and feeding four thousand men with a few loaves and
+fishes, so that the fragments left greatly exceeded the original total
+quantity,--were wonderful events? Should such a man, 'compos mentis',
+exist, (which I more than doubt,) what could a wise man do but
+stare--and leave him? Christ wrought many wonderful works, implying
+admirable power, and directed to the most merciful and beneficent ends;
+and these acts were such signs of his divine mission, as rendered
+inattention or obstinate averseness to the truths and doctrines which he
+promulgated, inexcusable, and indeed on any hypothesis but that of
+immoral dispositions and prejudices, utterly inconceivable. In what
+respect, I pray, can this statement be strengthened by any reasoning
+about the nature and distinctive essence of miracles 'in abstracto'?
+What purpose can be answered by any pretended definition of a miracle?
+If I met with a disputatious word-catcher, or logomachist, who sought to
+justify his unbelief on this ground, I should not hesitate to
+say--"Never mind whether it is a miracle or no. Call it what you
+will;--but do you believe the fact? Do you believe that Christ did by
+force of his will and word multiply instantaneously twelve loaves and a
+few small fishes, into sufficient food for a hungering multitude of four
+thousand men and women?" When I meet with, or from credible authority
+hear of, a man who believes this fact, and yet thinks it no sign of
+Christ's mission; when I can even conceive of a man in his right senses
+who, believing all the facts and events related in the New Testament,
+and as there related, does yet remain a Deist, I may think it time to
+enter into a disquisition respecting the right definition of a miracle;
+and meantime, I humbly trust that believing with my whole heart and soul
+in the wonderful works of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I shall not
+forfeit my title of Christian, though I should not subscribe to this or
+that divine's right definition of his 'idea' of a miracle; which word is
+with me no 'idea' at all, but a general term; the common surname, as it
+were, of the wonderful works wrought by the messengers of God to man in
+the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations.
+
+It is to these notions and general definitions, far more than to the
+facts themselves, that the arguments of Infidels apply; and from which
+they derive their plausibility. Nor is this all. The Infidel imitates
+the divine, and adopts the same mode of arguing, namely, by this
+substantiation of mere general or collective terms. For instance, Hume's
+argument (stated, by the by, before he was born, and far more forcibly,
+by Dr. South, who places it in the mouth of Thomas,) [2]--reduce it to
+the particular facts in question, and its whole speciousness vanishes. I
+am speaking of the particular facts and actions of the Gospel; of those,
+and those only. Now that I should be deceived, or the eye-witnesses have
+been deceived, under all the circumstances of those miracles, with all
+antecedents, accompaniments, and consequents, is quite as contrary to,
+that is, unparalleled in my experience, as the return to life of a dead
+man.
+
+So again in the second paragraph of page 502, [3] the position is true
+or false according to the definition of a miracle. In the narrower sense
+of the term, miracle,--that is, a consequent presented to the outward
+senses without an adequate antecedent, ejusdem generis,--it is not only
+false but detractory from the Christian religion. It is a main, nay, an
+indispensable evidence; but it is not the only, no, nor if comparison be
+at all allowable, the highest and most efficient; unless, indeed, the
+term evidence is itself confined to grounds of conviction offered to the
+senses, but then the position is a mere truism.
+
+There is yet another way of reasoning, which I utterly dislike; namely,
+by putting imaginary cases of imaginary miracles, as Paley has done. "If
+a dozen different individuals, all men of known sense and integrity,
+should each independently of the other pledge their everlasting weal on
+the truth, that they saw a man beheaded and quartered, and that on a
+certain person's prayer or bidding, the quarters reunited, and then a
+new head grew on and from out of the stump of the neck: and should the
+man himself assure you of the same, shew you the junctures, and identify
+himself to you by some indelible mark, with which you had been
+previously acquainted,--could you withstand this evidence?" What could a
+judicious man reply but--"When such an event takes place, I will tell
+you; but what has this to do with the reasons for our belief in the
+truth of the written records of the Old and New Testament? Why do you
+fly off from the facts to a gigantic fiction,--when the possibility of
+the 'If' with respect to a much less startling narration is the point in
+dispute between us?"
+
+Such and so peculiar, and to an honest mind so unmistakeable, is the
+character of veracity and simplicity on the very countenance, as it
+were, of the Gospel, that every remove of the inquirer's attention from
+the facts themselves is a remove of his conversion. It is your business
+to keep him from wandering, not to set him the example.
+
+Never, surely, was there a more unequal writer than Skelton;--in the
+discourses on the Trinity, the compeer of Bull and Waterland; and yet
+the writer of these pages, 500-501! Natural magic! a stroke of art! for
+example, converting the Nile into blood! And then his definition of a
+miracle. Suspension of the laws of nature! suspension--laws--nature!
+Bless me! a chapter would be required for the explanation of each
+several word of this definition, and little less than omniscience for
+its application in any one instance. An effect presented to the senses
+without any adequate antecedent, 'ejusdem generis', is a miracle in the
+philosophic sense. Thus: the corporeal ponderable hand and arm raised
+with no other known causative antecedent, but a thought, a pure act of
+an immaterial essentially invisible imponderable will, is a miracle for
+a reflecting mind. Add the words, 'præter experientiam': and we have the
+definition of a miracle in the popular, practical, and appropriated
+sense.
+
+
+Vol. III.
+
+That all our thoughts and views respecting our Faith should be
+consistent with each other, and with the attributes of God, is most
+highly desirable: but when the great diversities of men's
+understandings, and the unavoidable influence of circumstances on the
+mind, are considered, we may hope from the Divine mercy, that the
+agreement in the result will suffice; and that he who sincerely and
+efficiently believes that Christ left the glory which he had with the
+Father before all worlds, to become man and die for our salvation,--that
+by him we may, and by him alone we can, be saved,--will be held a true
+believer,--whether he interprets the words 'sacrifice,' 'purchase,'
+'bargain,' 'satisfaction,' of the creditor by full payment of the
+'debt,' and the like as proper and literal expressions of the redeeming
+act and the cause of our salvation, as Skelton seems to have done;--or
+(as I do) as figurative language truly designating the effects and
+consequences of this adorable act and process.
+
+
+Ib. p. 393.
+
+  But were the prospect of a better parish, in case of greater
+  diligence, set before him by his Bishop, on the music of such a
+  promise, like one bit by a 'tarantula', we should probably soon see
+  him in motion, and serving God, (O shameful!) for the sake of Mammon,
+  as if his torpid body had been animated anew by a returning soul.
+
+Without any high-flying in Christian morality, I cannot keep shrinking
+from the wish here expressed; at all events, I cannot sympathize with,
+or participate in, the expectation of "an infinite advancement" from men
+so motived.
+
+
+Ib. p. 394.
+
+  Yet excommunication, the inherent discipline of the Church, which it
+  exercised under persecution, which it is still permitted to exercise
+  under the present establishment.
+
+Rarely I suspect, without exposing the Clergyman to the risk of an
+action for damages, or some abuse. There are few subjects that more need
+investigation, yet require more vigour and soundness of judgment to be
+rightly handled, than this of Christian discipline in a Church
+established by law. It is indeed a most difficult and delicate problem,
+and supplied Baxter with a most plausible and to me the only perplexing
+of his numerous objections to our Ecclesiastical Constitution. On the
+other hand, I saw clearly that he was requiring an impossibility; and
+that his argument carried on to its proper consequences concluded
+against all Church Establishment, not more against the National Church
+of which he complained, than the one of his own clipping and shaping
+which he would have substituted; consequently, every proof (and I saw
+many and satisfactory proofs) of the moral and political necessity of an
+Established Church, was at the same time a pledge that a deeper insight
+would detect some flaw in the reasoning of the Disciplinarians. For if
+A. be right and requisite, B., which is incompatible with A., cannot be
+rightly required. And this it was, that first led me to the distinction
+between the 'Ecclesia' and an 'Enclesia', concerning which see my Essay
+on Establishment and Dissent, in which I have met the objection to my
+position, that Christian discipline is incompatible with a Church
+established by law, from the fact of the discipline of the Church of
+Scotland. [4] Who denies that it is in the power of a legislature to
+punish certain offences by ignominy, and to make the clergy magistrates
+in reference to these? The question is, whether it is wise or expedient,
+which it may be, or rather may have been, in Scotland, and the contrary
+in England? Wise or unwise, this is not discipline, not Christian
+discipline, enforced only by spiritual motives, enacted by spiritual
+authority, and submitted to for conscience' sake.
+
+
+Ib. p. 446.
+
+  Be this as it may, the foreknowledge and the decree were both eternal.
+  Here now it is a clear point that the moral actions of all accountable
+  agents were, with certainty, fore-known, and their doom unalterably
+  fixed, long before any one of them existed.
+
+Strange that so great a man as Skelton should first affirm eternity of
+both, yet in the next sentence talk of "long before." These Reflections
+[5] are excellent, but here Skelton offends against his own canons. I
+should feel no reluctance, moral or speculative, in accepting the
+apparent necessity of both propositions, as a sufficient reason for
+believing both; and the transcendancy of the subject as a sufficient
+solution of their apparent incompatibility. But yet I think that another
+view of the subject, not less congruous with universal reason and more
+agreeable to the light of reason in the human understanding, might be
+defended, without detracting from any perfection of the Divine Being.
+Nay, I think that Skelton needed but one step more to have seen it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 478.
+
+
+'In fine.'
+
+To what purpose were these Reflections, taken as a whole, written? I
+cannot answer. To dissuade men from reasoning on a subject beyond our
+faculties? Then why all this reasoning?
+
+
+Vol. IV. p. 28. Deism Revealed.
+
+
+  'Shepherd'. Were you ever at Constantinople, Sir?
+
+  'Dechaine'. Never.
+
+  'Shep.' Yet I believe you have no more doubt there is such a city,
+          than that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two
+          right ones.
+
+  'Temp.' I am sure 1 have not.
+
+  'Dech.' Nor I; but what then?
+
+  'Shep.' Pray, Mr. Dechaine, did you see Julius Cæsar assassinated in
+          the   Capitol?
+
+  'Dech.' A pretty question! No indeed, Sir.
+
+  'Shep.' Have you any doubts about the truth of what is told us by the
+          historians concerning that memorable transaction?
+
+  'Dech.' Not the least.
+
+  'Shep.' Pray, is it either self-evident or demonstrable to you, at
+          this time and place, that there is any such city as
+          Constantinople, or that there ever was such a man as Cæsar?
+
+  'Dech.' By no means.
+
+  'Shep.' And you have all you know concerning the being of either the
+          city, or the man, merely from the report of others, who had it
+          from others, and so on, through many links of tradition?
+
+  'Dech.' I have.
+
+  'Shep.' You see then, that there are certain cases, in which the
+          evidence of things not seen nor either sensibly or
+          demonstrably perceived, can justly challenge so entire an
+          assent, that he who should pretend to refuse it in the fullest
+          measure of acquiescence, would be deservedly esteemed the most
+          stupid or perverse of mankind.
+
+That there is a sophism here, every one must feel in the very fact of
+being 'non-plus'd' without being convinced. The sophism consists in the
+instance being 'haud ejusdem generis' ([Greek: élegchos metabáseôs eis
+állo génos]); and what the allogeneity is between the assurance of the
+being of Madrid or Constantinople, and the belief of the fact of the
+resurrection of Christ, I have shown elsewhere. The universal belief of
+the 'tyrannicidium' of Julius Cæsar is doubtless a fairer instance, but
+the whole mode of argument is unsound and unsatisfying. Why run off from
+the fact in question, or the class at least to which it belongs? The
+victory can be but accidental--a victory obtained by the unguarded
+logic, or want of logical foresight of the antagonist, who needs only
+narrow his positions to narrations of facts and events, in our judgment
+of which we are not aided by the analogy of previous and succeeding
+experience, to deprive you of the opportunity of skirmishing thus on No
+Man's land. But this is Skelton's ruling passion, sometimes his
+strength--too often his weakness. He must force the reader to believe:
+or rather he has an antagonist, a wilful infidel or heretic always and
+exclusively before his imagination; or if he thinks of the reader at
+all, it is as of a partizan enjoying every hard thump, and smashing
+'fister' he gives the adversary, whom Skelton hates too cordially to
+endure to obtain any thing from him with his own liking. No! It must be
+against his will, and in spite of it. No thanks to him--the dog could
+not help himself! How much more effectual would he have found it to have
+commenced by placing himself in a state of sympathy with the supposed
+sceptic or unbeliever;--to have stated to him his own feelings, and the
+real grounds on which they rested;--to have shown himself the difference
+between the historical facts which the sceptic takes for granted and
+believes spontaneously, as it were,--and those, which are to be the
+subject of discussion; and this brings the question at once to the
+proof. And here, after all, lies the strength of Skelton's reasoning,
+which would have worked far more powerfully, had it come first and
+single, and with the whole attention directed towards it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 35.
+
+  'Templeton.' Surely the resurrection of Christ, or any other man,
+               cannot be a thing impossible with God. It is neither
+               above his power, nor, when employed for a sufficient
+               purpose, inconsistent with his majesty, wisdom, and
+               goodness.
+
+This is the ever open and vulnerable part of Deism. The Deist, as a
+Deist, believes, 'implicite' at least, so many and stupendous miracles
+as to render his disbelief of lesser miracles, simply because they are
+miraculous, gross inconsistencies. To have the battle fairly fought out,
+Spinoza, or a Bhuddist, or a Burmese Gymnosoph, should be challenged.
+Then, I am deeply persuaded, would the truth appear in full evidence,
+that no Christ, no God,--and, conversely, if the Father, then the Son. I
+can never too often repeat, that revealed religion is a pleonasm.
+--Religion is revelation, and revelation the only religion.
+
+
+Ib. p. 37.
+
+  'Shep.' Those believers, whose faith is to rely on the truth of the
+          Christian history, rest their assent on a written report made
+          by eye-witnesses; which report the various Churches and sects,
+          jealous of one another, took care to preserve genuine and
+          uncorrupted, at least in all material points, and all the
+          religious writers in every age since have amply attested.
+
+A divine of the present day who shall undertake the demonstration of the
+truth of Christianity by external evidences, or historically, must not
+content himself with assuming or asserting this. He must either prove
+it; or prove that such proof is not necessary. I myself should be quite
+satisfied if I proved the former position in respect to the fourth
+Gospel, and showed that the evidence of the other three was equivalent
+to a record by an eye-witness: which would not be at all inconsistent
+with my contending at the same time for the authenticity of the first
+Gospel, or rather for the Catholic interpretation of the title-words
+[Greek: Katà Matthaion], as the more probable opinion, which a sound
+divine will neither abandon nor overload, neither place it in the
+foundation, nor on the other hand suffer it to be extruded from the
+wall. Believe me, there is great, very great, danger in these broad
+unqualified assertions that Skelton deals in. Even though the balance of
+evidence should be on his side, yet the inquirer will be unfavourably
+affected by the numerous doubts and difficulties which an acquaintance
+with the more modern works of Biblical criticism will pour upon him, and
+for which his mind is wholly unprepared. To meet with a far weaker
+evidence than we had taken it for granted we were to find, gives the
+same shake to the mind, that missing a stair gives to the body.
+
+
+Ib. p. 243.
+
+  'Temp.' You, Mr. Dechaine, seem to forget that God is just; and you,
+          Mr. Shepherd, that he is merciful
+
+  'Dech.' I insist, that, as God is merciful, he will forgive.
+
+  'Shep.' And I insist, that, as he is just, he will punish.
+
+  'Temp.' Pray Mr. Dechaine, are you able, upon the Deistical scheme to
+          rid yourself of this difficulty?
+
+  'Dech.' I see no difficulty in it at all. God gives us laws only for
+          our good, and will never suffer those laws to become a snare
+          to us, and the occasion of our eternal misery.
+
+Here is the 'cardo'! The man of sense asserts that it is necessary for
+the good of all, that a code of laws should exist, while yet it is
+impossible that all should at all times be obeyed by each person: but
+what is impossible cannot be required. Nevertheless, it may be required
+that no 'iota' of any one of these laws should be wilfully and
+deliberately transgressed, nor is there any one for the transgression of
+which the transgressor must not hold himself punishable. "And yet" (says
+our man of sense,) "what may not be said of any one point, or any one
+moment, cannot be denied of the collective agency of a whole life, or
+any considerable section of it. Here we find ourselves constrained by
+our best feelings to praise or condemn, to reward or punish, according
+as a great predominance of acts of obedience or disobedience, and a
+continued love of the better, or the lusting after the worst, manifests
+the maxim ('regula maxima'), the radical will and proper character of
+the individual. So parents judge of their children; so schoolmasters of
+their scholars; so friends of friends, and even so will God judge his
+creatures, if we are to trust in our common sense, or believe the
+repeated declarations in the Old Testament." And now I should be glad to
+hear any satisfactory 'sensible' reply to this, or any answer that does
+not fly higher than 'sense' can follow, and pierce into "the thick
+clouds" of decried metaphysics! For no fair reply can be imagined, but
+one which would find the root of the moral evil, the true [Greek:
+ponaerón], in this very impossibility.
+
+
+Ib. p. 249.
+
+  'Cunningham.' But how does all this discourse about sacrifices and the
+                natural light show that your faith does not ascribe
+                injustice to God in putting an innocent person to death
+                for the transgressions of the guilty?
+
+  'Shep.' Was Christ innocent?
+
+  'Cunn.' 'He was without sin.'
+
+  'Shep.' And he was put to death by the appointment and
+          predetermination of God?
+
+  'Cunn.' The Jews put him to death.
+
+  'Shep.' Do not evade the question. Was he not 'the Lamb slain from the
+          foundation of the world'? Was he not 'so delivered by the
+          determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that the Jews,
+          having taken him, by wicked hands crucified and slew him?'
+
+  'Cunn'. And what then?
+
+  'Shep'. Nothing; but that you are to answer, as well as I, for saying
+          that God predetermined the death of this only innocent person.
+
+I am less pleased with this volume than with any of the preceding. Ask
+your own heart and conscience whether (for instance,) they are satisfied
+with this defence 'duri per durius': or whether frightening a modest
+query into silence by perverting it into an accusation of the Almighty,
+by virtue of a conclusion borrowed from the Calvinistic theory of
+Predestination, is not more in the spirit of Job's comforters, than
+becomes a minister of the Apostolic Church of England and Ireland? Such
+arguments are but edge-tools at the safest, but more often they may
+rather be likened to the two-edged blade of Parysatis's knife, the one
+of which was poisoned. Leave them to Calvin, or those who dare
+appropriate Calvin's words, that "God's absolute will is the only rule
+of his justice;"--thus dividing the divine attributes. Yet Calvin
+himself distinguishes the hidden from the revealed God, even as the
+Greek Fathers distinguished the [Greek: thélaema Theou], the absolute
+ground of all being, from the [Greek: Boulàe tou Theou], as the cause
+and disposing providence of all existence.
+
+But I disapprove of the plan and spirit of this work, (Deism Revealed.)
+The cold-hearted, worldly-minded, cunning Deist, or the coarse sensual
+Infidel, is of all men the least likely to be converted; and the
+conscientious, inquiring, though misled and perplexed, Sceptic will
+throw aside a book at once, as not applicable to his case, which treats
+every doubt as a crime, and supposes that there is no doubt at all
+possible but in a bad heart and from wicked wishes. Compare this with
+St. Paul's language concerning the Jews.
+
+So again, pp. 225, &c. of this volume. Do not the plainest intuitions of
+our moral and rational being confirm the positions here attributed to
+the Deist, Dechaine? Are they not the same by which Melancthon
+de-Calvinized, at least de-Augustinized, the heroic Luther;--those
+which constitute one of the only two essential differences between the
+Augsburg Confession and the Calvinistic Articles of Faith? And can
+anything be more flittery and special-pleading than Skelton's
+objections? And again, p. 507, "and that prayer which he (Tindal) is
+reported to have used a little before his death, 'If there is a God, I
+desire he may have mercy on me;'"--was it Christian-like to publish and
+circulate a blind report--so improbable and disgusting, as to demand the
+strongest and most unsuspicious testimony for its reception?
+
+
+Ib. p. 268.
+
+  'Shep'. Pray, Mr. Dechaine, if a person, whom you knew to be an honest
+          and clear-sighted man, should solemnly assure you he saw a
+          dead man restored to life, what would you think of his
+          testimony?
+
+  'Dech'. As I could not possibly have as strong an assurance of his
+          honesty, clear-sightedness, and penetration, as of the great
+          improbability of the fact, I should not believe him.
+
+  'Shep'. Well; it is true he might be deceived himself, or intend to
+          impose on you. But in case ten such persons should all, at
+          different times, confirm the same report, how would this
+          affect you?
+
+There is one inconvenience, not to say danger, in this argument of Mr.
+Shepherd's; namely, that of its not standing in the same force, when it
+comes to be repeated in the particular miraculous facts in support of
+which it is adduced.
+
+
+Ib. p. 281.
+
+  No other ancient book can be so well proved to have been the work of
+  the author it is now ascribed to, as every book of the New Testament
+  can be proved to have been written by him whose name it hath all along
+  borne.
+
+This is true to the full extent that the defence of the divinity of our
+religion needs, or perhaps permits, and I see no advantage gained by
+asserting more. I must lose all power of distinction, before I can
+affirm that the genuineness of the first Gospel,--that in its present
+form it was written by Matthew, or is a literal translation of a Gospel
+written by him,--rests on as strong external evidence as Luke's, or on
+as strong internal evidence as St. John's. Sufficient that the evidence
+greatly preponderates in its favor.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The complete Works of the late Rev. Philip Skelton, Rector
+of Fintona. 6. vols. 8vo. London, 1824. 'Ed.']
+
+
+[Footnote 2: See South's Works, vol. iii. p. 500. Clarendon edit. 1823
+--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 3: But it will be proper to observe, that it strikes directly
+at the very root of Revelation, which cannot possibly give any other
+evidence of itself, as the dictate of God, but what must be drawn from
+miracles, wrought to prove the divine mission of those who publish it to
+the world.]
+
+
+[Footnote 4: The Editor is not aware of the existence of the Essay here
+mentioned. But see for the distinction of the 'Ecclesia' and 'Enclesia',
+the Church and State, 3rd edit.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 5: On Predestination, as far as p. 445.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON ANDREW FULLER'S CALVINISTIC AND SOCINIAN SYSTEMS EXAMINED AND
+COMPARED. [1] 1807.
+
+
+Letter III. p. 38.
+
+  They (the Jews) did not deny that to be God's own Son was to be equal
+  with the Father, nor did they allege that such an equality would
+  destroy the divine unity: a thought of this kind never seems to have
+  occurred to their minds.
+
+In so truly excellent a book as this is, I regret that this position
+should rest on an assertion. The equality of Christ would not, indeed,
+destroy the unity of God the Father, considered as one Person: but,
+unless we presume the Jews in question acquainted with the great truth
+of the Tri-unity, we must admit that it would be considered as implying
+Ditheism. Now that some among the Jews had made very near approaches,
+though blended with errors, to the doctrine taught in John, c. i., we
+can prove from the writings of Philo;--and the Socinians can never prove
+that these Jews did not know at least of the doctrine of their schools
+concerning the only-begotten Word--[Greek: Lógos monogenáes],--not as
+an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification--but as a
+distinct 'Hypostasis' [Greek: symphysikáe]:-and hence it might be shown
+that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should
+call himself the [Greek: Theòs phanerós]. This might have been rendered
+more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ's answer to the
+disciples of John;--'and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended
+in me' (Luke vii. 23.); which appears to have no adequate or even
+tolerable meaning, unless in reference to the passage in Isaiah, (lxi.
+1, 2.) prophesying that Jehovah himself would come among them, and do
+the things which our Saviour states himself to have done. Thus, too, I
+regret that the answer of our Lord, (John x. 34-36.) being one of the
+imagined strong-holds of the Socinians, should not have been more fully
+cleared up. I doubt not that Fuller's is a true interpretation; and that
+no other is consistent with our Lord's various other declarations. But
+the words in and by themselves admit a more plausible misinterpretation
+than is elsewhere the case of Socinian displanations. In short, I think
+both passages would have been better deferred to a further part of the
+work.
+
+Let me add that a mighty and comparatively new argument against the
+Socinians may be most unanswerably deduced from this reply of our
+Lord's, even were it considered as a mere 'argumentum ad homines':
+--namely, that it was not his Messiahship that so offended the Jews, but
+his Sonship; otherwise, our Saviour's language would have neither force,
+motive, or object. "Even were I no more than the Messiah, in your
+meanest conceptions of that character, yet after what I have done before
+your eyes, nothing but malignant hearts could have prevented you from
+adopting a milder interpretation of my words, when in your own
+Scriptures there exists a precedent that so much more than merely
+justifies me." And this I believe to be the meaning of the words as
+intended to be understood by the Jews in question; though, doubtless,
+Fuller's sense exists 'implicite'. No candid person would ever call it
+an evasion, to prove the injustice and malignity of an accuser even from
+his own grounds:--"You charge me falsely; but even were your charge
+true, namely, that I am a mere man, and yet call myself the Son of God,
+still it would not follow that I have been guilty of blasphemy." But as
+understood by the modern Unicists, it would verily, verily, be an
+evasive ambiguity, most unworthy of Christian belief concerning his
+Saviour. Common charity would have demanded of him to have said:--"I am
+a mere man: I do not pretend to be more; but I used the words in analogy
+to the words, 'Ye are as Gods'; and I have a right to do so: for though
+a mere man, I am the great Prophet and Messenger which Moses promised
+you."
+
+
+Letter V. p. 72.
+
+  If Dr. Priestley had formed his estimate of human virtue by that great
+  standard which requires love to God with all the heart, soul, mind,
+  and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves,--instead of representing
+  men by nature as having "more virtue than vice,"--he must have
+  acknowledged with the Scripture, that 'the whole world lieth in
+  wickedness--that every thought and imagination of their heart is only
+  evil continually'--and that 'there is none of them that doeth good, no
+  not one'.
+
+To this the Unicists would answer, that by 'the whole world' is meant
+all the worldly-minded;--no matter in how direct opposition to half a
+score other texts! "One text at a time!" sufficient for the day is the
+evil thereof!--and in this way they go on pulling out hair by hair from
+the horse's tail, (say rather, dreaming that they do so,) and then
+conclude with a shout that the horse never had a tail! For why? This
+hair is not a tail, nor that, nor the third, and so on to the very last;
+and how can all do what none of all does?--Ridiculous as this is, it is
+a fair image of Socinian logic. Thank God, their plucking out is a mere
+fancy;--and the sole miserable reality is the bare rump which they call
+their religion;--but that is the ape's own growth.
+
+
+Ib. p. 77.
+
+  First, that all punishments are designed for the good of the whole,
+  and less or corrective punishments for the good of the offender, is
+  admitted. * * God never inflicts punishment for the sake of punishing.
+
+This is not, [Greek: hôs émoige dokei], sufficiently guarded. That all
+punishments work for the good of the whole, and that the good of the
+whole is included in God's design, I admit: but that this is the sole
+cause, and the sole justification of divine punishment, I cannot, I dare
+not, concede;--because I should thus deny the essential evil of guilt,
+and its inherent incompatibility with the presence of a Being of
+infinite holiness. Now, exclusion from God implies the sum and utmost of
+punishment; and this would follow from the very essence of guilt and
+holiness, independently of example, consequence, or circumstance.
+
+
+Letter VI. p. 90.
+
+  (The systems compared as to their tendency to promote morality in
+  general.)
+
+I have hitherto made no objection to, no remark on, any one part of this
+Letter; for I object to the whole--not as Calvinism, but--as what Calvin
+would have recoiled from. How was it that so good and shrewd a man as
+Andrew Fuller should not have seen, that the difference between a
+Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian consists in
+this:--The former not only believes a will, but that it is equivalent to
+the 'ego ipse', to the actual self, in every moral agent; though he
+believes that in human nature it is an enslaved, because a corrupt,
+will. In denying free will to the unregenerated he no more denies will,
+than in asserting the poor negroes in the West Indies to be slaves I
+deny them to be men. Now the latter, the Priestleyan, uses the word
+will,--not for any real, distinct, correspondent power, but,--for the
+mere result and aggregate of fibres, motions, and sensations; in short,
+it is a mere generic term with him, just as when we say, the main
+current in a river.
+
+Now by not adverting to this, and alas! misled by Jonathan Edwards's
+book, Fuller has hidden from himself and his readers the damnable nature
+of the doctrine--not of necessity (for that in its highest sense is
+identical with perfect freedom; they are definitions each of the other);
+but--of extraneous compulsion. O! even this is not adequate to the
+monstrosity of the thought. A denial of all agency;--or an assertion of
+a world of agents that never act, but are always acted upon, and yet
+without any one being that acts;--this is the hybrid of Death and Sin,
+which throughout this letter is treated so amicably! Another fearful
+mistake, and which is the ground of the former, lies in conceding to the
+Materialist, 'explicite et implicite', that the [Greek: noúmenon], the
+'intelligibile', the 'ipseitas super sensibilis', of guilt is in time,
+and of time, and, consequently, a mechanism of cause and effect;--in
+other words, in confounding the [Greek: phainómena, tà rhéonta, tà màe
+óntôs ónta],--all which belong to time, and cannot be even thought of
+except as effects necessarily predetermined by the precedent causes,
+(themselves in their turn effects of other causes),--with the
+transsensual ground or actual power.
+
+After such admissions, no other possible defence can be made for
+Calvinism or any other 'ism' than the wretched recrimination: "Why,
+yours, Dr. Priestley, is just as bad!"--Yea, and no wonder:--for in
+essentials both are the same. But there was no reason for Fuller's
+meddling with the subject at all,--metaphysically, I mean.
+
+
+Ib. p. 95.
+
+  If the unconditionality of election render it unfriendly to virtue, it
+  must be upon the supposition of that view of things, "which attributes
+  more to God, and less to man," having such ascendancy; which is the
+  very reverse of what Dr. Priestley elsewhere teaches, and that in the
+  same performance.
+
+But in both systems, as Fuller has erroneously stated his own, man is
+annihilated. There is neither more nor less; it is all God; all, all are
+but 'Deus infinite modificatus':--in brief, both systems are not
+Spinosism, for no other reason than that the logic and logical
+consequency of 10 Fullers + 10 X 10 Dr. Priestleys, piled on each other,
+would not reach the calf of Spinoza's leg. Both systems of necessity
+lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to
+it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage
+ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express
+Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a
+spot, on which he had no business to have wall, tent, temple, or even
+standing-ground!
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems examined and compared,
+as to their moral tendency; in a series of Letters addressed to the
+friends of vital and practical religion; especially those amongst
+Protestant Dissenters. By Andrew Fuller. Market Harborough. 1793.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON WHITAKER'S ORIGIN OF ARIANISM DISCLOSED. [1] 1810.
+
+
+Chap. I. 4. p. 30.
+
+  'Making himself equal with God'.
+
+Whoever reads the four verses (John v. 16-19,) attentively, judging of
+the meaning of each part by the context, must needs, I think, see that
+the [Greek: íson heautòn poiôn tòn Theô] (18) refers,--not to the
+[Greek: paterá ídion élege tòn Theòn], (18) or the [Greek: ho patáer
+mou] (17), but--to the [Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai] (17). The 19th
+verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever
+of the [Greek: ho patáer mou] (17), but consists wholly of a
+justification of the [Greek: kagô ergázomai].
+
+1803.
+
+
+The above was written many years ago. I still think the remark
+plausible, though I should not now express myself so positively. I
+imagined the Jews to mean: "he has evidently used the words [Greek: ho
+patáer mou]--not in the sense in which all good men may use them,
+but--in a literal sense, because by the words that followed, [Greek:
+ergázetai, kagô ergázomai], he makes himself equal to God." To justify
+these words seemed to me to be the purport of Christ's reply.
+
+
+Chap. II. 1. p. 34.
+
+  [Greek: (Philôn)--perì mèn oun tà theia kaì pátria matháemata, póson
+  te kaì paelíkon eisenáenektai pónon, érgô pasi daelos kaì perì tà
+  philósopha dè kaì eleuthéria taes éxôthen paideías oiós tis aen, oudèn
+  dei légein hóti kaì málista tàen katà Plátôna kaì Pythagóran ezaelôkôs
+  agôgàen, diénegken ápantas toùs kath' heautòn, historeitai].
+
+  Euseb. Hist. II. 4.
+
+  Philo's acquaintance with the doctrines of the heathens was known only
+  by historical report to Eusebius; while the writings of Philo
+  displayed his knowledge in the religion of the Jews.
+
+Strange comment. Might I not, after having spoken of Dun Scotus's works,
+say;--"he is reported to have surpassed all his contemporaries in
+subtlety of logic:"--yet still mean no other works than those before
+mentioned? Are not Philo's works full of, crowded with, Platonic and
+Pythagorean philosophy? Eusebius knew from his works that he was a great
+Platonic scholar; but that he was greater than any other man of his age,
+he could only learn from report or history. That Virgil is a great poet
+I know from his poems; but that he was the greatest of the Augustan age,
+I must learn from Quinctilian and others.
+
+
+Ib. p. 35.
+
+Philo and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon,--(or rather, perhaps,
+authors; for the first ten chapters form a complete work of
+themselves,)--were both Cabalistico-Platonizing Jews of Alexandria. As
+far as, being such, they must agree, so far they do agree; and as widely
+as such men could differ, do they differ. Not only the style of the
+Wisdom of Solomon is generically different from Philo's,--so much so
+that I should deem it a free translation from a Hebrew original,--but
+also in all the 'minutiæ' of traditional history and dogma it
+contradicts Philo. Philo attributes the creation of man to angels; and
+they infused the evil principle through their own imperfections. In the
+Book of Wisdom, God created man spotless, and the Devil tempting him
+occasioned the Fall. So the whole account of the plagues of Egypt
+differs as widely as possible, even to absolute contradiction. The
+origin of idolatry is explained altogether differently by Philo, and by
+the Book of Wisdom. In short, so unsupported is the tradition that many
+have supposed an elder Philo as the author. That the second and third
+chapters allude to Christ is a groundless hypothesis. The 'just man' is
+called 'the son of God', Jehovah, [Greek: pais Kyrión];--but Christ's
+specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was 'Ben
+Elohim', [Greek: uhiòs tou Theou];--and the fancy that Philo was a
+Christian in heart, but dared not openly profess himself such, is too
+absurd. Why no traces in his latest work, or those of his middle age?
+Why not the least variation in his religious or philosophical creeds in
+his latter works, written long after the resurrection, from those
+composed by him before, or a few years after, Christ's birth? Some of
+Philo's earlier works must have been written when our Lord was in his
+infancy, or at least boyhood.
+
+In short, just take all those passages of Philo which most closely
+resemble others in the Wisdom of Solomon, and contain the same or nearly
+the same thoughts, and write them in opposite columns, and no doubt will
+remain that Philo was not the composer of the Book of Wisdom. Philo
+subtle, and with long involved periods knit together by logical
+connectives: the Book of Wisdom sententious, full of parallelisms,
+assertory and Hebraistic throughout. It was either composed by a man who
+tried to Hebraize the Greek, or, if a translator, by one who tried to
+Greecise the Hebraisms of his original--not to disguise or hide
+them--but only so as to prevent them from repelling or misleading the
+Greek reader. The different use of the Greek particles in the Wisdom of
+Solomon, and in the works of Philo, is sufficient to confute the
+hypothesis of Philo being the author. As little could it have been
+written by a Christian. For it could not have been a Christian of
+Palestine, from the overflowing Alexandrine Platonism;--nor a Christian
+at all; for it contradicts the doctrine of the resurrection of the body,
+and in no wise connects any redemptory or sacrificial virtue with the
+death of his 'just man';--denies original sin in the Christian sense,
+and explains the vice and virtue of mankind by the actions of the souls
+of men in a state of pre-existence. No signs or miracles are referred to
+in the account of 'the just man'; and that it was intended as a
+generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the
+plural number in the third chapter.
+
+The result is, in my judgment, that this Book was composed by an unknown
+Jew of Alexandria, either sometime before, or at the same time with,
+Christ. I do not think St. Paul's parallel passages amount to any proof
+of quotation or allusion;--they contain the common doctrine of the
+spiritualized Judaism in the Cabala;--and yet the work could scarcely
+have been written long before Christ, or it would certainly have been
+quoted or mentioned by Philo, and most probably by Josephus. And this,
+too, is an answer to the splendid and well-supported hypothesis of its
+being a translation from a Chaldaic original, composed by Jerubbabel.
+The variations of the Syriac translation,--which are so easily
+explained by translating the passage into the Chaldaic, when the cause
+of the mistake in the Greek or of the variation in the Syriac, is seen
+at once,--are certainly startling; but they are too free; and how could
+the Fathers, Jerome for example, remain ignorant of the existence of
+this Chaldaic original? My own opinion is, as I said before, that the
+Book was written in Greek by an Alexandrian Jew, who had formed his
+style on that of the LXX., and was led still further to an imitation of
+the Old Testament manner by the nature of his fiction, and as a dramatic
+propriety, and yet deviated from it partly on account of the very
+remoteness of his Platonic conceptions from the simplicity and poverty
+of the Hebrew; and partly because of the wordy rhetoric epidemic in
+Alexandria: and that it was written before the death, if not the birth,
+of Christ, I am induced to believe, because I do not think it probable
+that a book composed by a Jew, who had confessed Christ after the
+resurrection, would so soon have been received by the Christians, and so
+early placed in the very next rank to works of full inspiration.
+
+Taken, therefore, as a work 'ante', or at least 'extra, Christum', it is
+most valuable as ascertaining the opinions of the learned Jews on many
+subjects, and the general belief concerning immortality, and a day of
+judgment. On this ground Whitaker might have erected a most formidable
+battery, that would have played on the very camp and battle-array of the
+Socinians, that is, of those who consider Christ only as a teacher of
+important truths.
+
+In referring to the Cabala, I am not ignorant of the date of the oldest
+Rabbinical writings which contain or refer to this philosophy, but I
+coincide with Eichorn, and very many before Eichorn, that the
+foundations of the Cabala were laid and well known long before Christ,
+though not all the fanciful superstructure. I am persuaded that new
+light might be thrown on the Apocalypse by a careful study of the Book
+Sohar, and of whatever else there may be of that kind. The introduction
+(i. 4,) is clearly Cabala:--the [Greek: ho ôn, kaì ho aen, kaì ho
+erchómenos]= 3, and the 'seven spirits' = 10 'Sephiroth', constituting
+together the 'Adam Kadmon', the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate
+one in the Messiah.
+
+Were it not for the silence of Philo and Josephus, which I am unable to
+explain if the Wisdom of Solomon was written so long before Christ, I
+might perhaps incline to believe it composed shortly after, if not
+during, the persecution of the Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator.
+This hypothesis would give a particular point to the bitter exposure of
+idolatry, to the comparison between the sufferings of the Jews, and
+those of idolatrous nations, to the long rehearsal and rhetorical
+declaration of the plagues of Egypt, and to the reward of 'the just man'
+after a death of martyrdom; and would besides help to explain the
+putting together of the first ten chapters, and the fragment contained
+in the remaining chapters. They were works written at the same time, and
+by the same author: nay, I do not think it absurd to suppose, that the
+chapters after the tenth were annexed by the writer himself, as a long
+explanatory appendix; or, possibly, if they were once a separate work,
+these nine concluding chapters were parts of a book composed during the
+persecution in Egypt, the introduction and termination of which, being
+personal and of local application, were afterwards omitted or expunged
+in order not to give offence to the other Egyptians,--perhaps, to spare
+the shame of such Jews as had apostatized through fear, and in general
+not to revive heart-burnings. In modern language I should call these
+chapters in their present state a Note on c. x. 15-19.
+
+On a reperusal of this Book, I rather believe that these latter chapters
+never formed part of any other work, but were composed as a sort of long
+explanatory Postscript, with particular bearing on certain existing
+circumstances, to which this part of the Jewish history was especially
+applicable. Nay, I begin to find the silence of Philo and Josephus less
+inexplicable, and to imagine that I discover the solution of this
+problem in the very title of the Book. No one expects to find any but
+works of authenticity enumerated in these writers; but to this a work,
+calling itself the Wisdom of Solomon, both being a fiction and never
+meant to pass for anything else, could make no pretensions. To have
+approximated it to the Holy Books of the nation would have injured the
+dignity of the Jewish Canon, and brought suspicion on the genuine works
+of Solomon, while it would have exposed to a charge of forgery a
+composition which was in itself only an innocent dramatic monologue. N.
+B. This hypothesis possesses all the advantages, and involves none of
+the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the
+infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one commentator, I find, has
+suspected that the Wisdom of Solomon and the second book of Maccabees
+were by the same author. I think this nothing.
+
+
+Ib. p. 36.
+
+  Philo throws out a number of declarations, that shew his own and the
+  Jewish belief in a secondary sort of God, a God subordinate in origin
+  to the Father of all, yet most intimately united with him, and sharing
+  his most unquestionable honours.
+
+The belief of the Alexandrian Jews who had acquired Greek philosophy, no
+doubt;--but of the Palestine Jews?
+
+
+Ib. 2. p. 48.
+
+  St. John also is witnessed by a heathen (Amelius,) and by one who put
+  him down for a barbarian, to have represented the Logos as "the Maker
+  of all things," as "with 'God'," and as "God." And St. John is
+  attested to have declared this, "not even as shaded over, but on the
+  contrary as placed in full view."
+
+Stranger still. Whitaker could scarcely have read the Greek. Amelius
+says, that these truths, if stripped of their allegorical dress,
+([Greek: metapephrasména ek taes tou Barbárou theologías]) would be
+plain;--that is, that John in an allegory, as of one particular man, had
+shadowed out the creation of all things by the Logos, and the after
+union of the Logos with human nature,--that is, with all men. That this
+is his meaning, consult Plotinus.
+
+
+Ib. 9. p. 107.
+
+  "Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being
+  into power, and dividing the Logos into two.
+
+Who that had even rested but in the porch of the Alexandrian philosophy,
+would not rather say, 'of substantiating powers and attributes into
+being?' What is the whole system from Philo to Plotinus, and thence to
+Proclus inclusively, but one fanciful process of hypostasizing logical
+conceptions and generic terms? In Proclus it is Logolatry run mad.
+
+
+Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.
+
+  Such would be the evidence for that divinity, to accompany the Book of
+  Wisdom, if we considered it to be as old as Solomon, or only as the
+  Son of Sirach. But I consider it to be much later than either, and
+  actually a work of Philo's. * * The language is very similar to
+  Philo's; flowing, lively and happy.
+
+How is it possible to have read the short Hebraistic sentences of the
+Book of Wisdom, and the long involved periods that characterize the
+style of all Philo's known writings, and yet attribute both to one
+writer? But indeed I know no instance of assertions made so audaciously,
+or of passages misrepresented and even mistranslated so grossly, as in
+this work of Whitaker. His system is absolute naked Tritheism.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The righteous man is shadowed out by the author with a plain reference
+  to our Saviour himself. "'Let us lie in wait for the righteous'," &c.
+
+How then could Philo have remained a Jew?
+
+
+Ib. 2. p. 195.
+
+  In all effects that are voluntary, the cause must be prior to the
+  effect, as the father is to the son in human generation. But in all
+  that are necessary, the effect must be coeval with the cause; as the
+  stream is with the fountain, and light with the sun. Had the sun been
+  eternal in its duration, light would have been co-eternal with it.
+
+A just remark; but it cuts two ways. For these necessary effects are not
+really but only logically different or distinct from the cause:--the
+rays of the sun are only the sun diffused, and the whole rests on the
+sensitive form of material space. Take away the notion of material
+space, and the whole distinction perishes.
+
+
+Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.
+
+  Justin accordingly sets himself to shew, that in the beginning, before
+  all creatures, God generated a certain rational power out of himself.
+
+Is it not monstrous that the Jews having, according to Whitaker, fully
+believed a Trinity, one and all, but half a century or less before
+Trypho, Justin should never refer to this general faith, never reproach
+Trypho with the present opposition to it as a heresy from their own
+forefathers, even those who rejected Christ, or rather Jesus as
+Christ?--But no!--not a single objection ever strikes Mr. Whitaker, or
+appears worthy of an answer. The stupidest become authentic--the most
+fantastic abstractions of the Alexandrine dreamers substantial
+realities! I confess this book has satisfied me how little erudition
+will gain a man now-a-days the reputation of vast learning, if it be
+only accompanied with dash and insolence. It seems to me impossible,
+that Whitaker can have written well on the subject of Mary, Queen of
+Scots, his powers of judgment being apparently so abject. For instance,
+he says that the grossest moral improbability is swept away by positive
+evidence:--as if positive evidence (that is, the belief I am to yield to
+A. or B.) were not itself grounded on moral probabilities. Upon my word
+Whitaker would have been a choice judge for Charles II. and Titus Oates.
+
+
+Ib. p. 267.
+
+  Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of
+  Christ,) asserting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance
+  to the Jews, &c.
+
+A precious beginning of a precious demonstration! It is well for me that
+my faith in the Trinity is already well grounded by the Scriptures, by
+Bishop Bull, and the best parts of Plotinus, or this man would certainly
+have made me either a Socinian or a Deist.
+
+
+Ib. 2. p. 270.
+
+  The general mode of commencing and concluding the Epistles of St.
+  Paul, is a prayer of supplication for the parties, to whom they were
+  addressed; in which he says, 'Grace to you and peace from God our
+  Father, and'--from whom besides?--'the Lord Jesus Christ'; in which
+  our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as 'the Grace of our Lord Jesus
+  Christ be with you all'; and is even 'invoked' the first at times as,
+  'the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
+  communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all'; shews us plainly, &c.
+
+Invoked! Surely a pious wish is not an invocation. "May good angels
+attend you!" is no invocation or worship of angels. The essence of
+religions adoration consists in the attributing, by an act of prayer or
+praise, a necessary presence to an object--which not being
+distinguishable, if the object be sensuously present, we may safely
+define adoration as an acknowledgement of the actual and necessary
+presence of an intelligent being not present to our senses. "May lucky
+stars shoot influence on you!" would be a very foolish superstition,
+--but to say in earnest! "O ye stars, I pray to you, shoot influences on
+me," would be idolatry. Christ was visually present to Stephen; his
+invocation therefore was not perforce an act of religious adoration, an
+acknowledgment of Christ's deity.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The Origin of Arianism Disclosed. By John Whitaker, B.D.
+London, 1791.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON OXLEE ON THE TRINITY AND INCARNATION. [1] 1827
+
+Strange--yet from the date of the book of the Celestial Hierarchies of
+the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite to that of its translation by
+Joannes Scotus Erigena, the contemporary of Alfred, and from Scotus to
+the Rev. John Oxlee in 1815, not unfrequent--delusion of mistaking
+Pantheism, disguised in a fancy dress of pious phrases, for a more
+spiritual and philosophic form of Christian Faith! Nay, stranger
+still:--to imagine with Scotus and Mr. Oxlee that in a scheme which more
+directly than even the grosser species of Atheism, precludes all moral
+responsibility and subverts all essential difference of right and wrong,
+they have found the means of proving and explaining, "the Christian
+doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation," that is, the great and only
+sufficient antidotes of the right faith against this insidious poison.
+For Pantheism--trick it up as you will--is but a painted Atheism. A mask
+of perverted Scriptures may hide its ugly face, but cannot change a
+single feature.
+
+
+Introduction, p. 4.
+
+  In the infancy of the Christian Church, and immediately after the
+  general dispersion which necessarily followed the sacking of Jerusalem
+  and Bither, the Greek and Latin Fathers had the fairest opportunity of
+  disputing with the Jews, and of evincing the truth of the Gospel
+  dispensation; but unfortunately for the success of so noble a design,
+  they were totally ignorant of the Hebrew Scriptures, and so wanted in
+  every argument that stamp of authority, which was equally necessary to
+  sanction the principles of Christianity, and to command the respect of
+  their Jewish antagonists. For the confirmation of this remark I may
+  appeal to the Fathers themselves, but especially to Barnabas, Justin,
+  and Irenæus, who in their several attempts at Hebrew learning betray
+  such portentous signs of ignorance and stupidity, that we are covered
+  with shame at the sight of their criticisms.
+
+Mr. Oxlee would be delighted in reading Jacob Rhenferd's Disquisition on
+the Ebionites and other supposed heretics among the Jewish Christians.
+And I cannot help thinking that Rhenferd, who has so ably anticipated
+Mr. Oxlee on this point, and in Jortin's best manner displayed the gross
+ignorance of the Gentile Fathers in all matters relating to Hebrew
+learning, and the ludicrous yet mischievous results thereof, has formed
+a juster though very much lower opinion of these Fathers, with a few
+exceptions, than Mr. Oxlee. I confess that till the light of the
+twofoldness of the Christian Church dawned on my mind, the study of the
+history and literature of the Church during the first three or four
+centuries infected me with a spirit of doubt and disgust which required
+a frequent recurrence to the writings of John and Paul to preserve me
+whole in the Faith.
+
+
+Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.
+
+  The truth of the doctrine is vehemently insisted on, in a variety of
+  places, by the great R. Moses ben Maimon; who founds upon it the unity
+  of the Godhead, and ranks it among the fundamental articles of the
+  Jewish religion. Thus in his celebrated Letter to the Jews of
+  Marseilles he observes, &c.
+
+But what is obtained by quotations from Maimonides more than from
+Alexander Hales, or any other Schoolman of the same age? The metaphysics
+of the learned Jew are derived from the same source, namely, Aristotle;
+and his object was the same, as that of the Christian Schoolmen, namely,
+to systematize the religion he professed on the form and in the
+principles of the Aristotelian philosophy.
+
+By the by, it is a serious defect in Mr. Oxlee's work, that he does not
+give the age of the writers whom he cites. He cannot have expected all
+his readers to be as learned as himself.
+
+
+Ib. ch. iii. p. 26.
+
+Mr. Oxlee seems too much inclined to identify the Rabbinical
+interpretations of Scripture texts with their true sense; when in
+reality the Rabbis themselves not seldom used those interpretations as a
+convenient and popular mode of conveying their own philosophic opinions.
+Neither have I been able to admire the logic so general among the
+divines of both Churches, according to which if one, two, or perhaps
+three sentences in any one of the Canonical books appear to declare a
+given doctrine, all assertions of a different character must have been
+meant to be taken metaphorically.
+
+
+Ib. p. 26-7.
+
+  The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the
+  Godhead in the following declaration: 'But Egypt is man, and not God:
+  and their horses flesh, and not spirit'. (c. xxxi. 3.) * * *. In the
+  former member the Prophet declares that Egypt was man, and not God;
+  and then in terms of strict opposition enforces the sentiment by
+  adding, that their cavalry was flesh, and not spirit; which is just as
+  if he had said: 'But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man,
+  that is, flesh, and not God, who is spirit'.
+
+Assuredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is
+even doubtful whether [Hebrew: unable to transliterate. txt Ed.]
+('ruach') in this place means 'spirit' in contradistinction to 'matter'
+at all, and not rather air or wind. At all events, the poetic decorum,
+the proportion, and the antithetic parallelism, demand a somewhat as
+much below God, as the horse is below man. The opposition of 'flesh' and
+'spirit' in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he
+wrote in Greek, favours our common version,--'flesh and not spirit':
+but the place in which this passage stands, namely, in one of the first
+forty chapters of Isaiah, and therefore written long before the
+Captivity, together with the majestic simplicity characteristic of
+Isaiah's name gives perhaps a greater probability to the other: 'Egypt
+is man, and not God; and her horses flesh, and not wind'. If Mr. Oxlee
+renders the fourth verse of Psalm civ.--'He maketh spirits his
+messengers', (for our version--'He maketh his angels spirits'--is
+without a violent inversion senseless), this is a case in point for the
+use of the word, 'spirits', in the sense of incorporeal beings. (Mr.
+Oxlee will hardly, I apprehend, attribute the opinion of some later
+Rabbis, that God alone and exclusively is a Spirit, to the Sacred
+Writers, easy as it would be to quote a score of texts in proof of the
+contrary.) I, however, cannot doubt that the true rendering of the
+above-mentioned verse in the Psalms is;--'He maketh the winds his angels
+or messengers, and the lightnings his ministrant servants'.
+
+As to Mr. Oxlee's 'abstract intelligences,' I cannot but think
+'abstract' for 'pure,' and even pure intelligences for incorporeal, a
+lax use of terms. With regard to the point in question, the truth seems
+to be this. The ancient Hebrews certainly distinguished the principle or
+ground of life, understanding, and will from ponderable, visible,
+matter. The former they considered and called 'spirit', and believed it
+to be an emission from the Almighty Father of Spirits: the latter they
+called 'body'; and in this sense they doubtless believed in the
+existence of incorporeal beings. But that they had any notion of
+immaterial beings in the sense of Des Cartes, is contrary to all we know
+of them, and of every other people in the same degree of cultivation.
+Air, fire, light, express the degrees of ascending refinement. In the
+infancy of thought the life, soul, mind, are supposed to be air--'anima,
+animus', that is, [Greek: ánemos], spiritus, [Greek: pneuma]. In the
+childhood, they are fire, 'mens ignea, ignicula', and God himself
+[Greek: pur noeròn, pur aeízôon]. Lastly, in the youth of thought, they
+are refined into light; and that light is capable of subsisting in a
+latent state, the experience of the stricken flint, of lightning from
+the clouds, and the like, served to prove, or at least, it supplied a
+popular answer to the objection;--"If the soul be light, why is it not
+visible?" That the purest light is invisible to our gross sense, and
+that visible light is a compound of light and shadow, were answers of a
+later and more refined period. Observe, however, that the Hebrew
+Legislator precluded all unfit applications of the materializing fancy
+by forbidding the people to 'imagine' at all concerning God. For the ear
+alone, to the exclusion of all other bodily sense, was he to be
+designated, that is, by the Name. All else was for the mind--by power,
+truth, wisdom, holiness, mercy.
+
+
+Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.
+
+I fear I must surrender my hope that Mr. Oxlee was an exception to the
+rule, that the study of Rabbinical literature either finds a man
+'whimmy', or makes him so. If neither the demands of poetic taste, nor
+the peculiar character of oracles, were of avail, yet morality and piety
+might seem enough to convince any one that this vision of Micaiah, (2
+'Chron'. c. xviii. 18, &c.) was the poetic form, the veil, of the
+Prophet's meaning. And a most sublime meaning it was. Mr. Oxlee should
+recollect that the forms and personages of visions are all and always
+symbolical.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 39-40.
+
+  It will not avail us much, however, to have established their
+  incorporeity or spirituality, if what R. Moses affirms be true * * *.
+  This impious paradox * *. Swayed, however, by the authority of so
+  great a man, even R. David Kimchi has dilapsed into the same error,
+  &c.
+
+To what purpose then are the crude metaphysics of these later Rabbis
+brought forward, differing as they do in no other respect from the
+theological 'dicta' of the Schoolmen, but that they are written in a
+sort of Hebrew. I am far from denying that an interpreter of the
+Scriptures may derive important aids from the Jewish commentators: Aben
+Ezra, (about 1150) especially, was a truly great man. But of this I am
+certain, that he only will be benefited who can look down upon their
+works, whilst studying them;--that is, he must thoroughly understand
+their weaknesses, superstitions, and rabid appetite for the marvellous
+and the monstrous; and then read them as an enlightened chemist of the
+present day would read the writings of the old alchemists, or as a
+Linnæus might peruse the works of Pliny and Aldrovandus. If he can do
+this, well;--if not, he will line his skull with cobwebs.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 40, 41.
+
+  But how, I would ask, is this position to be defended? Surely not by
+  contradicting almost every part of the inspired volumes, in which such
+  frequent mention occurs of different and distinct angels appearing to
+  the Patriarchs and Prophets, sometimes in groups, and sometimes in
+  limited numbers * *. It is, indeed, so wholly repugnant to the general
+  tenor of the Sacred Writings, and so abhorrent from the piety of both
+  Jew and Christian, that the learned author himself, either forgetting
+  what he had before advanced, or else postponing his philosophy to his
+  religion, has absolutely maintained the contrary in his explication of
+  the Cherubim, &c.
+
+I am so far from agreeing with Mr. Oxlee on these points, that I not
+only doubt whether before the Captivity any fair proof of the existence
+of Angels, in the present sense, can be produced from the inspired
+Scriptures,--but think also that a strong argument for the divinity of
+Christ, and for his presence to the Patriarchs and under the Law, rests
+on the contrary, namely, that the Seraphim were images no less
+symbolical than the Cherubim. Surely it is not presuming too much of a
+Clergyman of the Church of England to expect that he would measure the
+importance of a theological tenet by its bearings on our moral and
+spiritual duties, by its practical tendencies. What is it to us whether
+Angels are the spirits of just men made perfect, or a distinct class of
+moral and rational creatures? Augustine has well and wisely observed
+that reason recognizes only three essential kinds;--God, man, beast. Try
+as long as you will, you can never make an Angel anything but a man with
+wings on his shoulders.
+
+
+Ib. ch. III. p. 58.
+
+  But this deficiency in the Mosaic account of the creation is amply
+  supplied by early tradition, which inculcates not only that the angels
+  were created, but that they were created, either on the second day,
+  according to R. Jochanan, or on the fifth, according to R. Chanania.
+
+Inspired Scripture amply supplied by the Talmudic and Rabbinical
+traditions!--This from a Clergyman of the Church of England!
+
+I am, I confess, greatly disappointed. I had expected, I scarce know
+why, to have had some light thrown on the existence of the Cabala in its
+present form, from Ezekiel to Paul and John. But Mr. Oxlee takes it as
+he finds it, and gravely ascribes this patch-work of corrupt Platonism
+or Plotinism, with Chaldean, Persian, and Judaic fables and fancies, to
+the Jewish Doctors, as an original, profound, and pious philosophy in
+its fountain-head! The indispensable requisite not only to a profitable
+but even to a safe study of the Cabala is a familiar knowledge of the
+docimastic philosophy, that is, a philosophy, which has for its object
+the trial and testing of the weights and measures themselves, the first
+principles, definitions, postulates, axioms of logic and metaphysics.
+But this is in no other way possible but by our enumeration of the
+mental faculties, and an investigation of the constitution, function,
+limits, and applicability 'ad quas res', of each. The application to
+this subject of the rules and forms of the understanding, or discursive
+logic, or even of the intuitions of the reason itself, if reason be
+assumed as the first and highest, has Pantheism for its necessary
+result. But this the Cabalists did: and consequently the Cabalistic
+theosophy is Pantheistic, and Pantheism, in whatever drapery of pious
+phrases disguised, is (where it forms the whole of a system) Atheism,
+and precludes moral responsibility, and the essential difference of
+right and wrong. One of the two contra-distinctions of the Hebrew
+Revelation is the doctrine of positive creation. This, if not the only,
+is the easiest and surest criterion between the idea of God and the
+notion of a 'mens agitans molem'. But this the Cabalists evaded by their
+double meaning of the term, 'nothing', namely as nought = 0, and as no
+'thing'; and by their use of the term, as designating God. Thus in words
+and to the ear they taught that the world was made out of nothing; but
+in fact they meant and inculcated, that the world was God himself
+expanded. It is not, therefore, half a dozen passages respecting the
+first three 'proprietates'[2] in the Sephiroth, that will lead a wise
+man to expect the true doctrine of the Trinity in the Cabalistic scheme:
+for he knows that the scholastic value, the theological necessity, of
+this doctrine consists in its exhibiting an idea of God, which rescues
+our faith from both extremes, Cabalo-Pantheism, and Anthropomorphism. It
+is, I say, to prevent the necessity of the Cabalistic inferences that
+the full and distinct developement of the doctrine of the Trinity
+becomes necessary in every scheme of dogmatic theology. If the first
+three 'proprietates' are God, so are the next seven, and so are all ten.
+God according to the Cabalists is all in each and one in all. I do not
+say that there is not a great deal of truth in this; but I say that it
+is not, as the Cabalists represent it, the whole truth. Spinoza himself
+describes his own philosophy as in substance the same with that of the
+ancient Hebrew Doctors, the Cabalists--only unswathed from the Biblical
+dress.
+
+
+Ib. p. 61.
+
+  Similar to this is the declaration of R. Moses ben Maimon. "For that
+  influence, which flows from the Deity to the actual production of
+  abstract intelligences flows also from the intelligences to their
+  production from each other in succession," &c.
+
+How much trouble would Mr. Oxlee have saved himself, had he in sober
+earnest asked his own mind, what he meant by emanation; and whether he
+could attach any intelligible meaning to the term at all as applied to
+spirit.
+
+
+Ib. p. 65.
+
+  Thus having, by variety of proofs, demonstrated the fecundity of the
+  Godhead, in that all spiritualities, of whatever gradation, have
+  originated essentially and substantially from it, like streams from
+  their fountain; I avail myself of this as another sound argument, that
+  in the sameness of the divine essence subsists a plurality of Persons.
+
+A plurality with a vengeance! Why, this is the very scoff of a late
+Unitarian writer,--only that he inverts the order. Mr. Oxlee proves ten
+trillions of trillions in the Deity, in order to deduce 'a fortiori' the
+rationality of three: the Unitarian from the Three pretends to deduce
+the equal rationality of as many thousands.
+
+
+Ib. p. 66.
+
+  So, if without detriment to piety great things may be compared with
+  small, I would contend, that every intelligency, descending by way of
+  emanation or impartition from the Godhead, must needs be a personality
+  of that Godhead, from which it has descended, only so vastly unequal
+  to it in personal perfection, that it can form no part of its proper
+  existency.
+
+Is not this to all intents and purposes ascribing partibility to God?
+Indeed it is the necessary consequence of the emanation
+scheme?--Unequal!--Aye, various 'wicked' personalities of the
+Godhead?--How does this rhyme?--Even as a metaphor, emanation is an
+ill-chosen term; for it applies only to fluids. 'Ramenta', unravellings,
+threads, would be more germane.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The Christian Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation
+considered and maintained on the principles of Judaism. By the Rev. John
+Oxlee. London, 1815.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2: That is, Intelligence or the Crown, Knowledge, Wisdom. Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON A BARRISTER'S HINTS ON EVANGELICAL PREACHING. 1810. [1]
+
+
+  For only that man understands in deed
+    Who well remembers what he well can do;
+  The faith lives only where the faith doth breed
+    Obedience to the works it binds us to.
+  And as the Life of Wisdom hath exprest--
+  'If this ye know, then do it and be blest'.
+
+  LORD BROOK.
+
+
+'In initio'.
+
+There is one misconception running through the whole of this Pamphlet,
+the rock on which, and the quarry out of which, the whole reasoning, is
+built;--an error therefore which will not indeed destroy its efficacy as
+a [Greek: mísaetron] or anti-philtre to inflame the scorn of the enemies
+of Methodism, but which must utterly incapacitate it for the better
+purpose of convincing the consciences or allaying the fanaticism of the
+Methodists themselves; this is the uniform and gross mis-statement of
+the one great point in dispute, by which the Methodists are represented
+as holding the compatibility of an impure life with a saving faith:
+whereas they only assert that the works of righteousness are the
+consequence, not the price, of Redemption, a gift included in the great
+gift of salvation;--and therefore not of merit but of imputation through
+the free love of the Saviour.
+
+
+Part I. p. 49.
+
+  It is enough, it seems, that all the disorderly classes of mankind,
+  prompted as they are by their worst passions to trample on the public
+  welfare, should 'know' that they are, what every one else is convinced
+  they are, the pests of society, and the evil is remedied. They are not
+  to be exhorted to honesty, sobriety, or the observance of any laws,
+  human or divine--they must not even be entreated to do their best.
+  "Just as 'absurd' would it be," we are told, "in a physician to send
+  away his patient, when labouring under some desperate disease, with a
+  recommendation to do his utmost towards his own cure, and then to come
+  to him to finish it, as it is in the minister of the 'Gospel' to
+  propose to the sinner 'to do his best', by way of healing the disease
+  of the soul--and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his
+  recovery. The 'only' previous qualification is to 'know' our misery,
+  and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.
+
+For "know," let the Barrister substitute "feel;" that is, we know it as
+we know our life; and then ask himself whether the production of such a
+state of mind in a sinner would or would not be of greater promise as to
+his reformation than the repetition of the Ten Commandments with
+paraphrases on the same.--But why not both? The Barrister is at least as
+wrong in the undervaluing of the one as the pseudo-Evangelists in the
+exclusion of the other.
+
+
+Ib. p. 51.
+
+  Whatever these new Evangelists may teach to the contrary, the present
+  state of public morals and of public happiness would assume a very
+  different appearance if the thieves, swindlers, and highway robbers,
+  would 'do their best' towards maintaining themselves by honest labour,
+  instead of perpetually planning new systems of fraud, and new schemes
+  of depredation.
+
+That is, if these thieves had a different will--not a mere wish, however
+anxious:--for this wish "the libertine" doubtless has, as described in
+p. 50,--but an effective will. Well, and who doubts this? The point in
+dispute is, as to the means of producing this reformation in the will;
+which, whatever the Barrister may think, Christ at least thought so
+difficult as to speak of it, not once or twice, but uniformly, as little
+less than miraculous, as tantamount to a re-creation. This Barrister may
+be likened to an ignorant but well-meaning Galenist, who writing against
+some infamous quack, who lived by puffing and vending pills of mercurial
+sublimate for all cases of a certain description, should have no
+stronger argument than to extol 'sarsaparilla', and 'lignum vitæ', or
+'senna' in contempt of all mercurial preparations.
+
+
+Ib. p. 56.
+
+  Not for the revenues of an Archbishop would he exhort them to a duty
+  'unknown in Scripture', of adding their five talents to the five they
+  have received, &c.
+
+All this is mere calumny and wilful misstatement of the tenets of
+Wesley, who never doubted that we are bound to improve our 'talents',
+or, on the other hand, that we are equally bound, having done so, to be
+equally thankful to the Giver of all things for the power and the will
+by which we improved the talents, as for the original capital which is
+the object of the improvement. The question is not whether Christ will
+say, 'Well done thou good and faithful servant', &c.;--but whether the
+servant is to say it of himself. Now Christ has delivered as positive a
+precept against our doing this as the promise can be that he will impute
+it to us, if we do not impute it to our own merits.
+
+
+Ib. p. 60.
+
+  The complaints of the profligacy of servants of every class, and of
+  the depravity of the times are in every body's hearing:--and these
+  Evangelical tutors--the dear Mr. Lovegoods of the day--deserve the
+  best attention of the public for thus instructing the ignorant
+  multitude, who are always ready enough to neglect their moral duties,
+  to despise and insult those by whom they are taught.
+
+All this is no better than infamous slander, unless the Barrister can
+prove that these depraved servants and thieves are Methodists, or have
+been wicked in proportion as they were proselyted to Methodism. O folly!
+This is indeed to secure the triumph of these enthusiasts.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  It must afford him (Rowland Hill) great consolation, amidst the
+  increasing immorality * * * that when their village Curate exhorts
+  them, if they have 'faith' in the doctrine of a world to come, to add
+  to it those 'good works' in which the sum and substance of religion
+  consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as 'chopping a
+  new-fashioned' logic.
+
+That this is either false or nugatory, see proved in The Friend.
+
+
+Ib. p. 68.
+
+  Tom Payne himself never laboured harder to root all virtue out of
+  society.--Mandeville nor Voltaire never even laboured so much.
+
+Indeed!
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  They were content with declaring their disbelief of a future state.
+
+In what part of their works? Can any wise man read Mandeville's Fable of
+the Bees, and not see that it is a keen satire on the inconsistency of
+Christians, and so intended.
+
+
+Ib. p. 71.
+
+  When the populace shall be once brought to a conviction that the
+  Gospel, as they are told, has neither terms nor conditions * * *, that
+  no sins can be too great, no life too impure, 'no offences too many or
+  too aggravated', to disqualify the perpetrators of them for
+  --salvation, &c.
+
+Merely insert the words "sincere repentance and amendment of heart and
+life, and therefore for" salvation,--and is not this truth, and Gospel
+truth? And is it not the meaning of the preacher? Did any Methodist ever
+teach that salvation may be attained without sanctification? This
+Barrister for ever forgets that the whole point in dispute is not
+concerning the possibility of an immoral Christian being saved, which
+the Methodist would deny as strenuously as himself, and perhaps give an
+austerer sense to the word immoral; but whether morality, or as the
+Methodists would call it, sanctification, be the price which we pay for
+the purchase of our salvation with our own money, or a part of the same
+free gift. God knows, I am no advocate for Methodism; but for fair
+statement I am, and most zealously--even for the love of logic, putting
+honesty out of sight.
+
+
+Ib. p. 72.
+
+  "In every age," says the moral divine (Blair), "the practice has
+  prevailed of substituting certain appearances of piety in the place of
+  the great 'duties' of humanity and mercy," &c.
+
+Will the Barrister rest the decision of the controversy on a comparison
+of the lives of the Methodists and non-Methodists? Unless he knows that
+their "morality has declined, as their piety has become more ardent," is
+not his quotation mere labouring--nay, absolute pioneering--for the
+triumphal chariot of his enemies?
+
+
+Ib. pp. 75-79.
+
+  It is but fair to select a specimen of Evangelical preaching
+from one of its most celebrated and popular champions * *.
+
+  He will preface it with the solemn and woful communication of the
+  Evangelist John, in order to show how exactly they accord, how clearly
+  the doctrines of the one are deduced from the Revelation of the other,
+  and how justly, therefore, it assumes the exclusive title of
+  evangelical. 'And I saw the dead * * * and the dead were judged out of
+  those things which were written in the books, according to their
+  works. And the sea gave up the dead * * and they were judged every man
+  according to his works'. Rev. xx. 12, 13. Let us recall to mind the
+  urgent caution conveyed in the writings of Paul * * 'Be not deceived;
+  God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
+  reap'. And let us further add * * the confirmation * * of the Saviour
+  himself:--'When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, * * * but the
+  righteous into life eternal'. Matt. xxv. 31, 'ad finem'. Let us now
+  attend to the Evangelical preacher, (Toplady). "The Religion of Jesus
+  Christ stands eminently distinguished, and essentially differenced,
+  from every other religion that was ever proposed to human reception,
+  by this remarkable peculiarity; that, look abroad in the world, and
+  you will find that every religion, 'except one', puts you upon 'doing
+  something', in order to recommend yourself to God. A Mahometan * * A
+  Papist * * * It is only the religion of Jesus Christ that runs counter
+  to all the rest, by affirming--that we are 'saved' and called with a
+  holy calling, 'not' according to our works, but according to the
+  Father's own purpose and grace, which was 'not' sold to us 'on certain
+  conditions to be fulfilled by ourselves', but was given us in Christ
+  before the world began." Toplady's Works: Sermon on James ii. 18.
+
+'Si sic omnia'! All this is just and forcible; and surely nothing can be
+easier than to confute the Methodist by shewing that his very
+'no-doing', when he comes to explain it, is not only an act, a work, but
+even a very severe and perseverant energy of the will. He is therefore
+to be arraigned of nonsense and abuse of words rather than of immoral
+doctrines.
+
+
+Ib. p. 84.
+
+  The sacred volume of Holy Writ declares that 'true' (pure?) 'religion
+  and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the
+  fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to keep himself
+  unspotted from the world'. James i. 27
+
+This is now at least, whatever might have been the meaning of the word
+'religion' in the time of the Translators, a false version. St. James is
+speaking of persons eminently zealous in those public or private acts of
+worship, which we call divine service, [Greek: thraeskeía]. It should be
+rendered, 'True worship', &c. The passage is a fine burst of rhetoric,
+and not a mere truism; just as when we say;--"A cheerful heart is a
+perpetual thanksgiving, and a state of love and resignation the truest
+utterance of the Lord's Prayer." St. James opposes Christianity to the
+outward signs and ceremonial observances of the Jewish and Pagan
+religions. But these are the only sure signs, these are the most
+significant ceremonial observances by which your Christianity is to be
+made known,--'to visit the fatherless', &c. True religion does not
+consist 'quoad essentiam' in these acts, but in that habitual state of
+the whole moral being, which manifests itself by these acts--and which
+acts are to the religion of Christ that which ablutions, sacrifices and
+Temple-going were to the Mosaic religion, namely, its genuine [Greek:
+thraeskeía]. That which was the religion of Moses is the ceremonial or
+cult of the religion of Christ. Moses commanded all good works, even
+those stated by St. James, as the means of temporal felicity; and this
+was the Mosaic religion; and to these he added a multitude of symbolical
+observances; and these formed the Mosaic cult, ('cultus religionis',
+[Greek: thraeskeía]). Christ commands holiness out of perfect love, that
+is, Christian religion; and adds to this no other ceremony or symbol
+than a pure life and active beneficence; which (says St. James) are the
+'true cult'. [2]
+
+
+Ib. p. 86.
+
+  There is no one whose writings are better calculated to do good, (than
+  those of Paley) by inculcating the essential duties of common life,
+  and the sound truths of practical Christianity.
+
+Indeed! Paley's whole system is reducible to this one precept:--"Obey
+God, and benefit your neighbour, because you love yourself above all."
+Christ has himself comprised his system in--"Love your neighbour as
+yourself, and God above all." These "sound truths of practical
+Christianity" consist in a total subversion, not only of Christianity,
+but of all morality;--the very words virtue and vice being but lazy
+synonymes of prudence and miscalculation,--and which ought to be
+expunged from our vocabularies, together with Abraxas and Abracadabra,
+as charms abused by superstitious or mystic enthusiasts.
+
+
+Ib. p. 94.
+
+  Eventually the whole direction of the popular mind, in the affairs of
+  religion, will be gained into the hands of a set of ignorant fanatics
+  of such low origin and vulgar habits as can only serve to degrade
+  religion in the eyes of those to whom its influence is most wanted.
+  Will such persons venerate or respect it in the hands of a sect
+  composed in the far greater part of bigotted, coarse, illiterate, and
+  low-bred enthusiasts? Men who have abandoned their lawful callings, in
+  which by industry they might have been useful members of society, to
+  take upon themselves concerns the most sacred, with which nothing but
+  their vanity and their ignorance could have excited them to meddle.
+
+It is not the buffoonery of the reverend joker of the Edinburgh Review;
+not the convulsed grin of mortification which, sprawling prostrate in
+the dirt from "the whiff and wind" of the masterly disquisition in the
+Quarterly Review, the itinerant preacher would pass oft' for the broad
+grin of triumph; no, nor even the over-valued distinction of miracles,
+--which will prevent him from seeing and shewing the equal applicability
+of all this to the Apostles and primitive Christians. We know that
+Trajan, Pliny, Tacitus, the Antonines, Celsus, Lucian and the
+like,--much more the ten thousand philosophers and joke-smiths of
+Rome,--did both feel and apply all this to the Galilean Sect; and
+yet--'Vicisti, O Galilæe'!
+
+
+Ib. p. 95.
+
+  They never fail to refer to the proud Pharisee, whom they term
+  self-'righteous'; and thus, having greatly misrepresented his
+  character, they proceed to declaim on the arrogance of founding any
+  expectation of reward from the performance of our 'moral
+  duties':--whereas the plain truth is that the Pharisee was 'not
+  righteous', but merely arrogated to himself that character; he had
+  neglected all the 'moral duties' of life.
+
+Who told the Barrister this? Not the Gospel, I am sure.
+
+The Evangelical has only to translate these sentences into the true
+statement of his opinions, in order to baffle this angry and impotent
+attack; the self-righteousness of all who expect to claim salvation on
+the plea of their own personal merit. "Pay to A. B. at sight--value
+received by me."--To Messrs. Stone and Co. Bankers, Heaven-Gate. It is a
+short step from this to the Popish. "Pay to A. B. 'or order'." Once
+assume merits, and I defy you to keep out supererogation and the old
+'Monte di Pietà'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 97.
+
+  --and from thence occasion is taken to defame all those who strive to
+  prepare themselves, during this their state of trial, for that
+  judgment which they must undergo at that day, when they will receive
+  either reward or punishment, according as they shall be found to have
+  'merited' the one, or 'deserved' the other.
+
+Can the Barrister have read the New Testament? Or does he know it only
+by quotations?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  --a swarm of new Evangelists who are every where teaching the people
+  that no reliance is to be placed on holiness of life as a ground of
+  future acceptance.
+
+I am weary of repeating that this is false. It is only denied that mere
+acts, not proceeding from faith, are or can be holiness. As surely
+(would the Methodist say) as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, so
+surely does sanctification from redemption, and not vice versa,--much
+less from self-sanctifiedness, that ostrich with its head in the sand,
+and the plucked rump of its merits staring on the divine [Greek: Átae]
+'venatrix'!
+
+
+Ib. p. 102.
+
+  'He that doeth righteousness is righteous'. Since then it is plain
+  that each must 'himself' be righteous, if he be so at all, what do
+  they mean who thus inveigh against 'self'-righteousness, since Christ
+  himself declares there is no other?
+
+Here again the whole dispute lies in the word "himself." In the outward
+and visible sense both parties agree; but the Methodist calls it "the
+will in us," given by grace; the Barrister calls it "our own will," or
+"we ourselves." But why does not the Barrister reserve a part of his
+wrath for Dr. Priestley, according to whom a villain has superior claims
+on the divine justice as an innocent martyr to the grand machinery of
+Providence;--for Dr. Priestley, who turns the whole dictionary of human
+nature into verbs impersonal with a perpetual 'subauditur' of 'Deus' for
+their common nominative case;--which said 'Deus', however, is but
+another 'automaton', self-worked indeed, but yet worked, not properly
+working, for he admits no more freedom or will to God than to man? The
+Lutheran leaves the free will whining with a broken back in the ditch;
+and Dr. Priestley puts the poor animal out of his misery!--But
+seriously, is it fair or even decent to appeal to the Legislature
+against the Methodists for holding the doctrine of the Atonement? Do we
+not pray by Act of Parliament twenty times every Sunday 'through the
+only merits of Jesus Christ'? Is it not the very nose which (of flesh or
+wax) this very Legislature insists on as an indispensable qualification
+for every Christian face? Is not the lack thereof a felonious deformity,
+yea, the grimmest feature of the 'lues confirmata' of statute heresy?
+What says the reverend critic to this? Will he not rise in wrath against
+the Barrister,--he the Pamphagus of Homilitic, Liturgic, and Articular
+orthodoxy,--the Garagantua, whose ravenous maw leaves not a single word,
+syllable, letter, no, not one 'iota' unswallowed, if we are to believe
+his own recent and voluntary manifesto? [3] What says he to this
+Barrister, and his Hints to the Legislature?
+
+
+Ib. p. 105.
+
+  If the new faith be the only true one, let us embrace it; but let not
+  those who vend these 'new articles' expect that we should choose them
+  with our eyes shut.
+
+Let any man read the Homilies of the Church of England, and if he does
+not call this either blunt impudence or blank ignorance, I will plead
+guilty to both! New articles!! Would to Heaven some of them at least
+were! Why, Wesley himself was scandalized at Luther's Commentary on the
+Epistle to the Galatians, and cried off from the Moravians (the
+strictest Lutherans) on that account.
+
+
+Ib. p. 114.
+
+  The catalogue of authors, which this Rev. Gentleman has pleased to
+  specify and recommend, begins with Homer, Hesiod, the Argonautics,
+  Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Theognis, Herodotus,
+  Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus. * * *. 'This
+  catalogue,' says he, 'might be considerably extended, but I study
+  brevity. It is only necessary for me to add that the recommendation of
+  these books is not to be considered as expressive of my approbation of
+  every particular sentiment they contain.' It would indeed be grievous
+  injustice if this writer's reputation should be injured by the
+  occasional unsoundness of opinion in writers whom it is more than
+  probable he may never have read, and for whose sentiments he ought no
+  more to be made answerable than the compiler of Lackington's
+  Catalogue, from which it is not unlikely that his own was abridged.
+
+Very good.
+
+
+Ib. p. 115-16.
+
+  These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the
+  sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his 'saving
+  change' to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or
+  other of 'their' Evangelical fraternity. They always hold 'themselves'
+  up to the multitude as the instruments producing all those marvellous
+  conversions which they relate. No instance is recorded in their
+  Saints' Calendar of any sinner resolving, in consequence of a
+  reflective and serious perusal of the Scriptures, to lead a new life.
+  No instance of a daily perusal of the Bible producing a daily progress
+  in virtuous habits. No, the 'Gospel' has no such effect.--It is
+  always the 'Gospel Preacher' who works the miracle, &c.
+
+Excellent and just. In this way are the Methodists to be attacked:--even
+as the Papists were by Baxter, not from their doctrines, but from their
+practices, and the spirit of their Sect. There is a fine passage in Lord
+Bacon concerning a heresy of manner being not less pernicious than
+heresy of matter.
+
+
+Ib. p. 118.
+
+  But their Saints, who would stop their ears if you should mention with
+  admiration the name of a Garrick or a Siddons;--who think it a sin to
+  support such an 'infamous profession' as that through the medium of
+  which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to
+  mend the heart, &c.
+
+Whoo! See Milton's Preface to the Samson Agonistes.
+
+
+Ib. p. 133.
+
+  In the Evangelical Magazine is the following article: "At----in
+  Yorkshire, after a handsome collection (for the Missionary Society) a
+  poor man, whose wages are about 28s. per week, brought a donation of
+  20 guineas. Our friends hesitated to receive it * * when he answered *
+  *--'Before I knew the grace of our Lord I was a poor drunkard: I never
+  could save a shilling. My family were in beggary and rags; but since
+  it has pleased God to renew me by his grace, we have been industrious
+  and frugal: we have not spent many idle shillings; and we have been
+  enabled to put something into the Bank; and this I freely offer to the
+  blessed cause of our Lord and Saviour.' This is the second donation of
+  this same poor man to the same amount!" Whatever these Evangelists may
+  think of such conduct, they ought to be ashamed of thus basely taking
+  advantage of this poor ignorant enthusiast, &c.
+
+Is it possible to read this affecting story without finding in it a
+complete answer to the charge of demoralizing the lower classes? Does
+the Barrister really think, that this generous and grateful enthusiast
+is as likely to be unprovided and poverty-stricken in his old age, as he
+was prior to his conversion? Except indeed that at that time his old age
+was as improbable as his distresses were certain if he did live so long.
+This is singing 'Io Pæan'! for the enemy with a vengeance.
+
+
+Part II. p. 14.
+
+  It behoved him (Dr. Hawker in his Letter to the Barrister) to show in
+  what manner a covenant can exist without terms or conditions.
+
+According to the Methodists there is a condition,--that of faith in the
+power and promise of Christ, and the virtue of the Cross. And were it
+otherwise, the objection is scarcely appropriate except at the Old
+Bailey, or in the Court of King's Bench. The Barrister might have framed
+a second law-syllogism, as acute as his former. The laws of England
+allow no binding covenant in a transfer of goods or chattels without
+value received. But there can be no value received by God:--'Ergo',
+there can be no covenant between God and man. And if Jehovah should be
+as courteous as the House of Commons, and acknowledge the jurisdiction
+of the Courts at Westminster, the pleading might hold perhaps, and the
+Pentateuch be quashed after an argument before the judges. Besides, how
+childish to puff up the empty bladder of an old metaphysical foot-ball
+on the 'modus operandi interior' of Justification into a shew of
+practical substance; as if it were no less solid than a cannon ball!
+Why, drive it with all the vehemence that five toes can exert, it would
+not kill a louse on the head of Methodism. Repentance, godly sorrow,
+abhorrence of sin as sin, and not merely dread from forecast of the
+consequences, these the Arminian would call means of obtaining
+salvation, while the Methodist (more philosophically perhaps) names them
+signs of the work of free grace commencing and the dawning of the sun of
+redemption. And pray where is the practical difference?
+
+
+Ib. p. 26.
+
+  Jesus answered him thus--'Verily, I say unto you, unless a man be born
+  of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
+  God'.--The true sense of which is obviously this:--Except a man be
+  initiated into my religion by Baptism, (which 'at that time' was
+  always 'preceded by a confession of faith') and unless he manifest his
+  sincere reception of it, by leading that upright and 'spiritual' life
+  which it enjoins, 'he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven', or be a
+  partaker of that happiness which it belongs to me to confer on those
+  who believe in my name and keep my sayings.
+
+Upon my faith as a Christian, if no more is meant by being born again
+than this, the speaker must have had the strongest taste in metaphors of
+any teacher in verse or prose on record, Jacob Behmen himself not
+excepted. The very Alchemists lag behind. Pity, however, that our
+Barrister has not shown us how this plain and obvious business of
+Baptism agrees with ver. 8. of the same chapter: 'The wind bloweth where
+it listeth', &c. Now if this does not express a visitation of the mind
+by a somewhat not in the own power or fore-thought of the mind itself,
+what are words meant for?
+
+
+Ib. p. 29.
+
+  The true meaning of being 'born again', in the sense in which our
+  Saviour uses the phrase, implies nothing more or less, in plain terms,
+  than this:--to repent; to lead for the future a religious life instead
+  of a life of disobedience; to believe the Holy Scriptures, and to pray
+  for grace and assistance to persevere in our obedience to the end. All
+  this any man of common sense might explain in a few words.
+
+Pray, then, (for I will take the Barrister's own commentary,) what does
+the man of common sense mean by grace? If he will explain grace in any
+other way than as the circumstances 'ab extra' (which would be mere
+mockery and in direct contradiction to a score of texts), and yet
+without mystery, I will undertake for Dr. Hawker and Co. to make the new
+birth itself as plain as a pikestaff, or a whale's foal, or Sarah
+Robarts's rabbits.
+
+
+Ib. p. 30.
+
+  So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.
+
+"So that they go on in their sin!"--Who would not suppose it notorious
+that every Methodist meeting-house was a cage of Newgate larks making up
+their minds to die game?
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for
+  1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, by 'setting
+  her at liberty, while employed' in the necessary business of 'washing'
+  for her family, &c.
+
+N. B. Not the famous rabbit-woman.--She was Robarts.
+
+
+Ib. p. 31.
+
+  A washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in the twinkling of an
+  eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the
+  Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of
+  all that is serious, &c.
+
+And where pray is the absurdity of this? Has Christ declared any
+antipathy to washerwomen, or the Holy Ghost to warm suds? Why does not
+the Barrister try his hand at the "abominable profanation," in a story
+of a certain woman with an issue of blood who was made free by touching
+the hem of a garment, without the previous knowledge of the wearer?
+
+  'Rode, caper, vitem: tamen hinc cum stabis ad aras, In tua quod fundi
+  cornua possit, erit'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 32.
+
+  The leading design of John the Baptist * * was * this:--to prepare the
+  minds of men for the reception of that pure system of moral truth
+  which the Saviour, by divine authority, was speedily to inculcate, and
+  of those sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future judgment,
+  which, as powerful motives to the practice of holiness, he was soon to
+  reveal.
+
+What then? Did not John the Baptist himself teach a pure system of moral
+truth? Was John so much more ignorant than Paul before his conversion,
+and the whole Jewish nation, except a few rich freethinkers, as to be
+ignorant of the "sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future
+judgment?" This, I well know, is the strong-hold of Socinianism; but
+surely one single unprejudiced perusal of the New Testament,--not to
+suppose an acquaintance with Kidder or Lightfoot--would blow it down,
+like a house of cards!
+
+
+Ib. p. 33.
+
+ --their faiths in the efficacy of their own rites, and creeds, and
+  ceremonies, and their whole train of 'substitutions' for 'moral duty',
+  was so entire, and in their opinion was such a 'saving faith', that
+  they could not at all interpret any language that seemed to dispute
+  their value, or deny their importance.
+
+Poor strange Jews! They had, doubtless, what Darwin would call a
+specific 'paralysis' of the auditory nerves to the writings of their own
+Prophets, which yet were read Sabbath after Sabbath in their public
+Synagogues. For neither John nor Christ himself ever did, or indeed
+could, speak in language more contemptuous of the folly of considering
+rites as substitutions for moral duty, or in severer words denounce the
+blasphemy of such an opinion. Why need I refer to Isaiah or Micah?
+
+
+Ib. p. 34.
+
+  Thus it was that this moral preacher explained and enforced the duty
+  of repentance, and thus it was that he prepared the way for the
+  greatest and best of teachers, &c.
+
+Well then, if all this was but a preparation for the doctrines of
+Christ, those doctrines themselves must surely have been something
+different, and more difficult? Oh no! John's preparation consisted in a
+complete rehearsal of the 'Drama didacticum', which Christ and the
+Apostles were to exhibit to a full audience!--Nay, prithee, good
+Barrister! do not be too rash in charging the Methodists with a
+monstrous burlesque of the Gospel!
+
+
+Ib. p. 37.
+
+  --the logic of the new Evangelists will convince him that it is a
+  contradiction in terms even to 'suppose' himself 'capable of doing any
+  thing' to help 'or bringing any thing to recommend himself to the
+  Divine favour'.
+
+Now, suppose the wisdom of these endless attacks on an old abstruse
+metaphysical notion to be allowed, yet why in the name of common candour
+does not the Barrister ring the same 'tocsin' against his friend Dr.
+Priestley's scheme of Necessity;--or against his idolized Paley, who
+explained the will as a sensation, produced by the action of the
+intellect on the muscles, and the intellect itself as a catenation of
+ideas, and ideas as configurations of the organized brain? Would not
+every syllable apply, yea, and more strongly, more indisputably? And
+would his fellow-sectaries thank him, or admit the consequences? Or has
+any late Socinian divine discovered, that Do as ye would be done unto,
+is an interpolated precept?
+
+
+Ib. p. 39.
+
+  "Even repentance and faith," (says Dr. Hawker,) "those most essential
+  qualifications of the mind, for the participation and enjoyment of the
+  blessings of the Gospel, (and which all real disciples of the Lord
+  Jesus cannot but possess,) are 'never supposed as a condition which
+  the sinner performs to entitle him to mercy', but merely as evidences
+  that he is brought and has obtained mercy. 'They cannot be the
+  conditions' of obtaining salvation."
+
+Ought not this single quotation to have satisfied the Barrister, that no
+practical difference is deducible from these doctrines? "Essential
+qualifications," says the Methodist:--"terms and conditions," says the
+spiritual higgler. But if a man begins to reflect on his past life, is
+he to withstand the inclination? God forbid! exclaim both. If he feels a
+commencing shame and sorrow, is he to check the feeling? God forbid! cry
+both in one breath! But should not remembrancers be thrown in the way of
+sinners, and the voice of warning sound through every street and every
+wilderness? Doubtless, quoth the Rationalist. We do it, we do it, shout
+the Methodists. In every corner of every lane, in the high road, and in
+the waste, we send forth the voice--Come to Christ, and repent, and be
+cleansed! Aye, quoth the Rationalist, but I say Repent, and become
+clean, and go to Christ--Now is not Mr. Rationalist as great a bigot as
+the Methodists, as he is, 'me judice', a worse psychologist?
+
+
+Part II. p. 40.
+
+  The former authorities on this subject I had quoted from the Gospel
+  according to St. Luke: that Gospel most positively and most solemnly
+  declares the 'repentance' of sinners to be the 'condition' on which
+  'alone' salvation can be obtained. But the doctors of the new divinity
+  'deny' this: they tell us distinctly 'it cannot' be. For the future,
+  the Gospel according to Calvin must be received as the truth. Sinners
+  will certainly prefer it as the more comfortable of the two beyond all
+  comparison.
+
+Mercy! but only to read Calvin's account of that repentance, without
+which there is no sign of election, and to call it "the more comfortable
+of the two?" The very term by which the German New-Birthites express it
+is enough to give one goose-flesh--'das Herzknirschen'--the very heart
+crashed between the teeth of a lock-jaw'd agony!
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  What is 'faith'? Is it not a conviction produced in the mind by
+  adequate testimony?
+
+No! that is not the meaning of faith in the Gospel, nor indeed anywhere
+else. Were it so, the stronger the testimony, the more adequate the
+faith. Yet who says, I have faith in the existence of George II., as his
+present Majesty's antecessor and grandfather?--If testimony, then
+evidence too;--and who has faith that the two sides of all triangles are
+greater than the third? In truth, faith, even in common language, always
+implies some effort, something of evidence which is not universally
+adequate or communicable at will to others. "Well! to be sure he has
+behaved badly hitherto, but I have faith in him." If it were otherwise,
+how could it be imputed as righteousness? Can morality exist without
+choice;--nay, strengthen in proportion as it becomes more independent of
+the will? "A very meritorious man! he has faith in every proposition of
+Euclid, which he understands."
+
+
+Ib. p. 41.
+
+  "I could as easily create a world (says Dr. Hawker) as create either
+  faith or repentance in my own heart." Surely this is a most monstrous
+  confession. What! is not the Christian religion a 'revealed' religion,
+  and have we not the most miraculous attestation of its truth?
+
+Just look at the answer of Christ himself to Nicodemus, 'John' iii. 2,
+3. Nicodemus professed a full belief in Christ's divine mission. Why? It
+was attested by his miracles. What answered Christ? "Well said, O
+believer?" No, not a word of this; but the proof of the folly of such a
+supposition. 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee; except a man be born
+again, he cannot see the kingdom of God',--that is, he cannot have faith
+in me.
+
+
+Ib. p. 42.
+
+  How can this evangelical preacher declaim on the necessity of
+  seriously searching into the truth of revelation, for the purpose
+  either of producing or confirming our belief of it, when he has
+  already pronounced it to be just as possible to arrive at conviction
+  as to create a world?
+
+Did Dr. Hawker say that it was impossible to produce an assent to the
+historic credibility of the facts related in the Gospel? Did he say that
+it was impossible to become a Socinian by the weighing of outward
+evidences? No! but Dr. Hawker says,--and I say,--that this is not,
+cannot be, what Christ means by faith, which, to the misfortune of the
+Socinians, he always demands as the condition of a miracle, instead of
+looking forward to it as the natural effect of a miracle. How came it
+that Peter saw miracles countless, and yet was without faith till the
+Holy Ghost descended on him? Besides, miracles may or may not be
+adequate evidence for Socinianism; but how could miracles prove the
+doctrine of Redemption, or the divinity of Christ? But this is the creed
+of the Church of England.
+
+It is wearisome to be under the necessity, or at least the constant
+temptation, of attacking Socinianism, in reviewing a work professedly
+written against Methodism. Surely such a work ought to treat of those
+points of doctrine and practice, which are peculiar to Methodism. But to
+publish a 'diatribe' against the substance of the Articles and Catechism
+of the English Church, nay, of the whole Christian world, excepting the
+Socinians, and to call it "Hints concerning the dangerous and abominable
+absurdities of Methodism," is too bad.
+
+
+Ib. p. 43.
+
+  But this Calvinistic Evangelist tells us, by way of accounting for the
+  utter impossibility of producing in himself either faith or
+  repentance, that both are of divine origin, and like the light, and
+  the rain, and the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for man, neither
+  waiteth for the sons of men, are from above, and come down from the
+  Father of lights, from whom alone cometh every good and perfect gift!
+
+Is the Barrister--are the Socinian divines--inspired, or infallibly sure
+that it is a crime for a Christian to understand the words of Christ in
+their plain and literal sense, when a Socinian chooses to give his
+paraphrase,--often, too, as strongly remote from the words, as the old
+spiritual paraphrases on the Song of Solomon?
+
+
+Ib. p. 46.
+
+  According to that Gospel which hath hitherto been the pillar of the
+  Christian world, we are taught that whosoever endeavours to the best
+  of his ability to reform his manners, and amend his life, will have
+  pardon and acceptance.
+
+As interpreted by whom? By the Socini, or the Barrister?--Or by Origen,
+Chrysostom, Jerome, the Gregories, Eusebius, Athanasius?--By Thomas
+Aquinas, Bernard, Thomas-a-Kempis?--By Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius,
+Calvin?--By the Reformers and martyrs of the English Church?--By
+Cartwright and the learned Puritans?--By Knox?--By George Fox?--With
+regard to this point, that mere external evidence is inadequate to the
+production of a saving faith, and in the majority of other opinions, all
+these agree with Wesley. So they all understood the Gospel. But it is
+not so! 'Ergo', the Barrister is infallible.
+
+
+Ib. p. 47.
+
+  'When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness which he hath
+  committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his
+  soul alive'. This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our
+  Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.
+
+In the name of patience, over and over again, who has ever denied this?
+The question is, by what power, his own, or by the free grace of God
+through Christ, the wicked man is enabled to turn from his wickedness.
+And again and again I ask:--Were not these "old moral divines" the
+authors and compilers of the Homilies? If the Barrister does not know
+this, he is an ignorant man; if knowing it, he has yet never examined
+the Homilies, he is an unjust man; but if he have, he is a slanderer and
+a sycophant.
+
+Is it not intolerable to take up three bulky pamphlets against a recent
+Sect, denounced as most dangerous, and which we all know to be most
+powerful and of rapid increase, and to find little more than a weak
+declamatory abuse of certain metaphysical dogmas concerning free will,
+or free will forfeited, 'de libero vel servo arbitrio'--of grace,
+predestination, and the like;--dogmas on which, according to Milton, God
+and the Logos conversed, as soon as man was in existence, they in
+heaven, and Adam in paradise, and the devils in hell;--dogmas common to
+all religions, and to all ages and sects of the Christian
+religion;--concerning which Brahmin disputes with Brahmin, Mahometan
+with Mahometan, and Priestley with Price;--and all this to be laid on
+the shoulders of the Methodists collectively: though it is a notorious
+fact, that a radical difference on this abstruse subject is the ground
+of the schism between the Whitfieldite and Wesleyan Methodists; and that
+the latter coincide in opinion with Erasmus and Arminius, by which
+latter name they distinguish themselves; and the former with Luther,
+Calvin, and their great guide, St. Augustine? This I say is
+intolerable,--yea, a crime against sense, candour, and white paper.
+
+
+Ib. p. 50.
+
+  "For so very peculiarly directed to the sinner, and to him only (says
+  the evangelical preacher) is the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus,
+  that unless you are a sinner, you are not interested in its saving
+  truths."
+
+Does not Christ himself say the same in the plainest and most
+unmistakable words? 'I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to
+repentance. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are
+sick'. Can he, who has no share in the danger, be interested in the
+saving? Pleased from benevolence he may be; but interested he cannot be.
+'Estne aliquid inter salvum et salutem; inter liberum et libertatem?
+Salus est pereuntis, vel saltem periditantis: redemptio, quasi pons
+divinus, inter servum et libertatem,--amissam, ideoque optatam'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 52.
+
+  It was reserved for these days of 'new discovery' to announce to
+  mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the
+  promised blessings of the Gospel.
+
+Merely read 'that unless they are sick they are precluded from the
+offered remedies of the Gospel;' and is not this the dictate of common
+sense, as well as of Methodism? But does not Methodism cry aloud that
+all men are sick--sick to the very heart? 'If we say we are without sin,
+we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us'. This shallow-pated
+Barrister makes me downright piggish, and without the stratagem of that
+famed philosopher in pig-nature almost drives me into the Charon's hoy
+of Methodism by his rude and stupid tail-hauling me back from it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 53.
+
+  I can assure these gentlemen that I regard with a reverence as pure
+  and awful as can enter into the human mind, that blood which was shed
+  upon the Cross.
+
+That is, in the Barrister's creed, that mysterious flint, which with the
+subordinate aids of mutton, barley, salt, turnips, and potherbs, makes
+most wonderful fine flint broth. Suppose Christ had never shed his
+blood, yet if he had worked his miracles, raised Lazarus, and taught the
+same doctrines, would not the result have been the same?--Or if Christ
+had never appeared on earth, yet did not Daniel work miracles as
+stupendous, which surely must give all the authority to his doctrines
+that miracles can give? And did he not announce by the Holy Spirit the
+resurrection to judgment, of glory or of punishment?
+
+
+Ib. p. 54.
+
+  Let them not attempt to escape it by quoting a few disconnected
+  phrases in the Epistles, but let them adhere solely and steadfastly to
+  that Gospel of which they affect to be the exclusive preachers.
+
+And whence has the Barrister learnt that the Epistles are not equally
+binding on Christians as the four Gospels? Surely, of St. Paul's at
+least, the authenticity is incomparably clearer than that of the first
+three Gospels; and if he give up, as doubtless he does, the plenary
+inspiration of the Gospels, the personal authority of the writers of all
+the Epistles is greater than two at least of the four Evangelists.
+Secondly, the Gospel of John and all the Epistles were purposely written
+to teach the Christian Faith; whereas the first three Gospels are as
+evidently intended only as 'memorabilia' of the history of the Christian
+Revelation, as far as the process of Redemption was carried on in the
+life, death, and resurrection of the divine Founder. This is the blank,
+brazen, blushless, or only brass-blushing, impudence of an Old Bailey
+Barrister, attempting to browbeat out of Court the better and more
+authentic half of the witnesses against him. If I wished to understand
+the laws of England, shall I consult Hume or Blackstone--him who has
+written his volumes expressly as comments on those laws, or the
+historian who mentions them only as far as the laws were connected with
+the events and characters which he relates or describes? Nay, it is far
+worse than this; far Christ himself repeatedly defers the publication of
+his doctrines till after his death, and gives the reason too, that till
+he had sent the Holy Ghost, his disciples were not capable of
+comprehending them. Does he not attribute to an immediate influence of
+especial inspiration even Peter's acknowledgment of his Filiation to
+God, or Messiahship?--Was it from the Gospels that Paul learned to know
+Christ?--Was the Church sixty years without the awful truths taught
+exclusively in John's Gospel?
+
+
+Part III. p. 5.
+
+  The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription
+  of the regular practitioner. Why is this? Because there is something
+  in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is
+  overawed.
+
+This is something; and true as far as it goes; that is, however, but a
+very little way. The great power of both spiritual and physical
+mountebanks rests on that irremovable property of human nature, in force
+of which indefinite instincts and sufferings find no echo, no
+resting-place, in the definite and comprehensible. Ignorance
+unnecessarily enlarges the sphere of these: but a sphere there
+is,--facts of mind and cravings of the soul there are,--in which the
+wisest man seeks help from the indefinite, because it is nearer and more
+like the infinite, of which he is made the image:--for even we are
+infinite, even in our finiteness infinite, as the Father in his
+infinity. In many caterpillars there is a large empty space in the head,
+the destined room for the pushing forth of the 'antennæ' of its next
+state of being.
+
+
+Ib. p. 12.
+
+  But the anti-moralists aver * * that they are quoted unfairly;--that
+  although they disavow, it is true, the necessity, and deny the value,
+  of practical morality and personal holiness, and declare them to be
+  totally irrelevant to our future salvation, yet that * * I might have
+  found occasional recommendations of moral duty which I have neglected
+  to notice.
+
+The same 'crambe bis decies cocta' of one self-same charge grounded on
+one gross and stupid misconception and mis-statement: and to which there
+needs no other answer than this simple fact. Let the Barrister name any
+one gross offence against the moral law, for which he would shun a man's
+acquaintance, and for that same vice the Methodist would inevitably be
+excluded publicly from their society; and I am inclined to think that a
+fair list of the Barrister's friends and acquaintances would prove that
+the Calvinistic Methodists are the austerer and more watchful censors of
+the two. If this be the truth, as it notoriously is, what but the
+cataract of stupidity uncouched, or the thickest film of bigot-slime,
+can prevent a man from seeing that this tenet of justification by faith
+alone is exclusively a matter between the Calvinist's own heart and his
+Maker, who alone knows the true source of his words and actions; but
+that to his neighbours and fellow-creedsmen, his spotless life and good
+works are demanded, not, indeed, as the prime efficient causes of his
+salvation, but as the necessary and only possible signs of that faith,
+which is the means of that salvation of which Christ's free grace is the
+cause, and the sanctifying Spirit the perfecter. But I fall into the
+same fault I am arraigning, by so often exposing and confuting the same
+blunder, which has no claim even at its first enunciation to the
+compliment of a philosophical answer. But why, in the name of common
+sense, all this endless whoop and hubbub against the Calvinistic
+Methodists? I had understood that the Arminian Methodists, or Wesleyans,
+are the more numerous body by far. Has there been any union lately? Have
+the followers of Wesley abjured the doctrines of their founder on this
+head?
+
+
+Ib. p. 16.
+
+  We are told by our new spiritual teachers, that reason is not to be
+  applied to the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of their doctrines;
+  they are spiritually discerned, and carnal reason has no concern with
+  them.
+
+Even under this aversion to reason, as applied to religious grounds, a
+very important truth lurks: and the mistake (a very dangerous one I
+admit,) lies in the confounding two very different faculties of the mind
+under one and the same name;--the pure reason or 'vis scientifica'; and
+the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the
+'phænomena' of sensuous experience. The greatest loss which modern
+philosophy has through wilful scorn sustained, is the grand distinction
+of the ancient philosophers between the [Greek: noúmena], and [Greek:
+phainómena]. This gives the true sense of Pliny--'venerare Deos' (that
+is, their statues, and the like,) 'et numina Deorum', that is, those
+spiritual influences which are represented by the images and persons of
+Apollo, Minerva, and the rest.
+
+
+Ib. p. 17.
+
+  Religion has for its object the moral care and the moral cultivation
+  of man. Its beauty is not to be sought in the regions of mystery, or
+  in the flights of abstraction.
+
+What ignorance! Is there a single moral precept of the Gospels not to be
+found in the Old Testament? Not one. A new edition of White's
+'Diatessaron', with a running comment the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman
+writers before Christ, and those after him who, it is morally certain,
+drew no aids from the New Testament, is a grand 'desideratum'; and if
+anything could open the eyes of Socinians, this would do it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 24.
+
+  The masculine strength and moral firmness which once distinguished the
+  great mass of the British people is daily fading away. Methodism with
+  all its cant, &c.
+
+Well! but in God's name can Methodism be at once the effect and the
+cause of this loss of masculine strength and moral firmness?--Did
+Whitfield and Wesley blow them out at the first puff--these grand
+virtues of masculine strength and moral firmness? Admire, I pray you,
+the happy antithesis. Yet "feminine" would be an improvement, as then
+the sense too would be antithetic. However, the sound is sufficient, and
+modern rhetoric possesses the virtue of economy.
+
+
+Ib. p. 27.
+
+  So with the Tinker; I would give him the care of kettles, but I would
+  not give him 'the cure of souls'. So long as he attended to the
+  management and mending of his pots and pans, I would wish success to
+  his ministry: but when he came to declare 'himself' a "chosen vessel,"
+  and demand permission to take the souls of the people into his holy
+  keeping, I should think that, instead of a 'licence', it would be more
+  humane and more prudent to give him a passport to St. Luke's. Depend
+  upon it, such men were never sent by Providence to rule or to regulate
+  mankind.
+
+Whoo! Bounteous Providence that always looks at the body clothes and the
+parents' equipage before it picks out the proper soul for the baby! Ho!
+the Duchess of Manchester is in labour:--quick, Raphael, or Uriel, bring
+a soul out of the Numa bin, a young Lycurgus. Or the Archbishop's
+lady:--ho! a soul from the Chrysostom or Athanasian locker.--But poor
+Moll Crispin is in the throes with twins:--well! there are plenty of
+cobblers' and tinkers' souls in the hold--John Bunyan!! Why, thou
+miserable Barrister, it would take an angel an eternity to tinker thee
+into a skull of half his capacity!
+
+
+Ib. p. 30, 31.
+
+  "A 'truly' awakened conscience," (these anti-moral editors of the
+  Pilgrim's Progress assure us,) "can never find relief from the law:
+  (that is, the 'moral law'.) The more he looks for peace 'this way, his
+  guilt', like a heavy burden, becomes more intolerable; when he becomes
+  'dead' to the 'law',--as to 'any dependence upon it for
+  salvation',--by the body of Christ, and married to him, who was raised
+  from the dead, then, and not till then, his heart is set at liberty,
+  to run the way of God's commandments."
+
+  Here we are taught that the 'conscience' can never find relief from
+  obedience to the law of the Gospel.
+
+False. We are told by Bunyan and his editors that the conscience can
+never find relief for its disobedience to the Law in the Law
+itself;--and this is as true of the moral as of the Mosaic Law. I am not
+defending Calvinism or Bunyan's theology; but if victory, not truth,
+were my object, I could desire no easier task than to defend it against
+our doughty Barrister. Well, but I repent--that is, regret it!--Yes! and
+so you doubtless regret the loss of an eye or arm:--will that make it
+grow again?--Think you this nonsense as applied to morality? Be it so!
+But yet nonsense most tremendously suited to human nature it is, as the
+Barrister may find in the arguments of the Pagan philosophers against
+Christianity, who attributed a large portion of its success to its
+holding out an expiation, which no other religion did. Read but that
+most affecting and instructive anecdote selected from the Hindostan
+Missionary Account by the Quarterly Review. [4] Again let me say I am
+not giving my own opinion on this very difficult point; but of one thing
+I am convinced, that the 'I am sorry for it, that's enough'--men mean
+nothing but regret when they talk of repentance, and have consciences
+either so pure or so callous, as not to know what a direful and strange
+thing remorse is, and how absolutely a fact 'sui generis'! I have often
+remarked, and it cannot be too often remarked (vain as this may sound),
+that this essential heterogeneity of regret and remorse is of itself a
+sufficient and the best proof of free will and reason, the co-existence
+of which in man we call conscience, and on this rests the whole
+superstructure of human religion--God, immortality, guilt, judgment,
+redemption. Whether another and different superstructure may be raised
+on the same foundation, or whether the same edifice is susceptible of
+important alteration, is another question. But such is the edifice at
+present, and this its foundation: and the Barrister might as rationally
+expect to blow up Windsor Castle by discharging a popgun in one of its
+cellars, as hope to demolish Calvinism by such arguments as his.
+
+
+Ib. p. 35, 36.
+
+  "And behold a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master,
+  what shall I do 'to inherit eternal life'?"
+
+  "He said unto him, 'What is written in the law? How readest thou?'"
+
+  "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
+  heart, with all thy soul, and with 'all thy strength', and with all
+  thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."
+
+  "And he said unto him, Thou 'hast answered right. This do, and thou
+  shall live.'"
+
+  Luke x. 25-28.
+
+So would Bunyan, and so would Calvin have preached;--would both of them
+in the name of Christ have made this assurance to the Barrister--'This
+do, and thou shalt live.' But what if he has not done it, but the very
+contrary? And what if the Querist should be a staunch disciple of Dr.
+Paley: and hold himself "morally obliged" not to hate or injure his
+fellow-man, not because he is compelled by conscience to see the
+exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to abhor sin as sin, even as he eschews
+pain as pain,--no, not even because God has forbidden it;--but
+ultimately because the great Legislator is able and has threatened to
+put him to unspeakable torture if he disobeys, and to give him all kind
+of pleasure if he does not? [5] Why, verily, in this case, I do foresee
+that both the Tinker and the Divine would wax warm, and rebuke the said
+Querist for vile hypocrisy, and a most nefarious abuse of God's good
+gift, intelligible language. What! do you call this 'loving the Lord
+your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
+strength, and all your mind,--and your neighbour as yourself'? Whereas
+in truth you love nothing, not even your own soul; but only set a
+superlative value on whatever will gratify your selfish lust of
+enjoyment, and insure you from hell-fire at a thousand times the true
+value of the dirty property. If you have the impudence to persevere in
+mis-naming this "love," supply any one instance in which you use the
+word in this sense? If your son did not spit in your face, because he
+believed that you would disinherit him if he did, and this were his main
+moral obligation, would you allow that your son loved you--and with all
+his heart, and mind, and strength, and soul?--Shame! Shame!
+
+Now the power of loving God, of willing good as good, (not of desiring
+the agreeable, and of preferring a larger though distant delight to an
+infinitely smaller immediate qualification, which is mere selfish
+prudence,) Bunyan considers supernatural, and seeks its source in the
+free grace of the Creator through Christ the Redeemer:--this the Kantean
+also avers to be supersensual indeed, but not supernatural, but in the
+original and essence of human nature, and forming its grand and awful
+characteristic. Hence he calls it 'die Menschheit'--the principle of
+humanity;--but yet no less than Calvin or the Tinker declares it a
+principle most mysterious, the undoubted object of religious awe, a
+perpetual witness of that God, whose image ([Greek: eikôn]) it is; a
+principle utterly incomprehensible by the discursive intellect;--and
+moreover teaches us, that the surest plan for stifling and paralyzing
+this divine birth in the soul (a phrase of Plato's as well as of the
+Tinker's) is by attempting to evoke it by, or to substitute for it, the
+hopes and fears, the motives and calculations, of prudence; which is an
+excellent and in truth indispensable servant, but considered as master
+and primate of the moral diocese precludes the possibility of virtue (in
+Bunyan's phrase, holiness of spirit) by introducing legality; which is
+no cant phrase of Methodism, but of authenticated standing in the ethics
+of the profoundest philosophers--even those who rejected Christianity,
+as a miraculous event, and revelation itself as far as anything
+supernatural is implied in it. I must not mention Plato, I suppose,--he
+was a mystic; nor Zeno,--he and his were visionaries:--but Aristotle,
+the cold and dry Aristotle, has in a very remarkable passage in his
+lesser tract of Ethics asserted the same thing; and called it "a divine
+principle, lying deeper than those things which can be explained or
+enunciated discursively."
+
+
+Ib. p. 45, 46.
+
+  Sure I am that no father of a family that can at all estimate the
+  importance of keeping from the infant mind whatever might raise impure
+  ideas or excite improper inquiries will ever commend the Pilgrim's
+  Progress to their perusal.
+
+And in the same spirit and for the same cogent reasons that the holy
+monk Lewis prohibited the Bible in all decent families;--or if they must
+have something of that kind, would propose in preference Tirante the
+White! O how I abhor this abominable heart-haunting impurity in the
+envelope of modesty! Merciful Heaven! is it not a direct consequence
+from this system, that we all purchase our existence at the price of our
+mother's purity of mind? See what Milton has written on this subject in
+the passage quoted in the Friend in the essays on the communication of
+truth. [6]
+
+
+Ib. p. 47.
+
+  Let us ask whether the female mind is likely to be trained to purity
+  by studying this manual of piety, and by expressing its devotional
+  desires after the following example. "Mercy being a _young_ and
+  _breeding_ woman _longed_ for something," &c.
+
+Out upon the fellow! I could find it in my heart to suspect him of any
+vice that the worst of men could commit!
+
+
+Ib. pp. 55, 56.
+
+  'As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the
+  obedience of one shall many be made righteous'. The interpretation of
+  this text is simply this:--As by following the fatal example of one
+  man's disobedience many were made sinners; so by that pattern of
+  perfect obedience which Christ has set before us shall many be made
+  righteous.
+
+What may not be explained thus? And into what may not any thing be thus
+explained? It comes out little better than nonsense in any other than
+the literal sense. For let any man of sincere mind and without any
+system to support look round on all his Christian neighbours, and will
+he say or will they say that the origin of their well-doing was an
+attempt to imitate what they all believe to be inimitable, Christ's
+perfection in virtue, his absolute sinlessness? No--but yet perhaps some
+particular virtues; for instance, his patriotism in weeping over
+Jerusalem, his active benevolence in curing the sick and preaching to
+the poor, his divine forgiveness in praying for his enemies?--I grant
+all this. But then how is this peculiar to Christ? Is it not the effect
+of all illustrious examples, of those probably most which we last read
+of, or which made the deepest impression on our feelings? Were there no
+good men before Christ, as there were no bad men before Adam? Is it not
+a notorious fact that those who most frequently refer to Christ's
+conduct for their own actions, are those who believe him the incarnate
+Deity--consequently, the best possible guide, but in no strict sense an
+example;--while those who regard him as a mere man, the chief of the
+Jewish Prophets, both in the pulpit and from the press ground their
+moral persuasions chiefly on arguments drawn from the propriety and
+seemliness--or the contrary--of the action itself, or from the will of
+God known by the light of reason? To make St. Paul prophesy that all
+Christians will owe their holiness to their exclusive and conscious
+imitation of Christ's actions, is to make St. Paul a false prophet;--and
+what in such case becomes of the boasted influence of miracles? Even as
+false would it be to ascribe the vices of the Chinese, or even our own,
+to the influence of Adam's bad example. As well might we say of a poor
+scrofulous innocent: "See the effect of the bad example of his father on
+him!" I blame no man for disbelieving, or for opposing with might and
+main, the dogma of Original Sin; but I confess that I neither respect
+the understanding nor have confidence in the sincerity of him, who
+declares that he has carefully read the writings of St. Paul, and finds
+in them no consequence attributed to the fall of Adam but that of his
+bad example, and none to the Cross of Christ but the good example of
+dying a martyr to a good cause. I would undertake from the writings of
+the later English Socinians to collect paraphrases on the New Testament
+texts that could only be paralleled by the spiritual paraphrase on
+Solomon's Song to be found in the recent volume of "A Dictionary of the
+Holy Bible, by John Brown, Minister of the Gospel at Haddington:" third
+edition, in the Article, Song.
+
+
+Ib. p. 63, 64.
+
+  Call forth the robber from his cavern, and the midnight murderer from
+  his den; summon the seducer from his couch, and beckon the adulterer
+  from his embrace; cite the swindler to appear; assemble from every
+  quarter all the various miscreants whose vices deprave, and whose
+  villainies distress, mankind; and when they are thus thronged round in
+  a circle, assure them--not that there is a God that judgeth the
+  earth--not that punishment in the great day of retribution will await
+  their crimes, &c. &c.--Let every sinner in the throng be told that
+  they will stand 'justified' before God; that the 'righteousness' of
+  'Christ' will be imputed to 'them', &c.
+
+Well, do so.--Nay, nay! it has been done; the effect has been tried; and
+slander itself cannot deny that the effect has been the conversion of
+thousands of those very sinners whom the Barrister's fancy thus
+convokes. O shallow man! not to see that here lies the main strength of
+the cause he is attacking; that, to repeat my former illustration, he
+draws the attention to patients in that worst state of disease which
+perhaps alone requires and justifies the use of the white pill, as a
+mode of exposing the frantic quack who vends it promiscuously! He fixes
+on the empiric's cures to prove his murders!--not to forget what ought
+to conclude every paragraph in answer to the Barrister's Hints; "and
+were the case as alleged, what does this prove against the present
+Methodists as Methodists?" Is not the tenet of imputed righteousness the
+faith of all the Scotch Clergy, who are not false to their declarations
+at their public assumption of the ministry? Till within the last sixty
+or seventy years, was not the tenet preached Sunday after Sunday in
+every nook of Scotland; and has the Barrister heard that the morals of
+the Scotch peasants and artizans have been improved within the last
+thirty or forty years, since the exceptions have become more and more
+common?--Was it by want of strict morals that the Puritans were
+distinguished to their disadvantage from the rest of Englishmen during
+the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. Charles I. and II.? And that very
+period, which the Barrister affirms to have been distinguished by the
+moral vigor of the great mass of Britons,--was it not likewise the
+period when this very doctrine was preached by the Clergy fifty times
+for once that it is heard from the same pulpits in the present and
+preceding generation? Never, never can the Methodists be successfully
+assailed, if not honestly, and never honestly or with any chance of
+success, except as Methodists;--for their practices, their alarming
+theocracy, their stupid, mad, and mad-driving superstitions. These are
+their property 'in peculio'; their doctrines are those of the Church of
+England, with no other difference than that in the Church Liturgy, and
+Articles, and Homilies, Calvinism and Lutheranism are joined like the
+two hands of the Union Fire Office:-the Methodists have unclasped them,
+and one is Whitfield and the other Wesley.
+
+
+Ib. p. 75.
+
+  "For the same reason that a book written in bad language should never
+  be put into the hands of a child that speaks correctly, a book
+  exhibiting instances of vice should never be given to a child that
+  thinks and acts properly." (Practical Education. By Maria and R.L.
+  Edgeworth.)
+
+How mortifying that one is never lucky enough to meet with any of these
+'virtuosissimos', fifteen or twenty years of age. But perhaps they are
+such rare jewels, that they are always kept in cotton! The Kilcrops! I
+would not exchange the heart, which I myself had when a boy, while
+reading the life of Colonel Jack, or the Newgate Calendar, for a
+waggon-load of these brilliants.
+
+
+Ib. p. 78.
+
+  "When a man turns his back on this world, and is in good earnest
+  resolved for everlasting life, his carnal friends, and ungodly
+  neighbours, will pursue him with hue and cry; but death is at his
+  heels, and he cannot stop short of the city of Refuge." (Notes to the
+  Pilgrim's Progress by Hawker, Burder, &c.) This representation of the
+  state of real Christians is as mischievous as it is false.
+
+Yet Christ's assertion on this head is positive, and universal; and I
+believe it from my inmost soul, and am convinced that it is just as true
+A.D. 1810, as A.D. 33.
+
+
+Ib. p. 82.
+
+  The spirit with which all their merciless treatment is to be borne is
+  next pointed out. * * "'Patient bearing of injuries' is true Christian
+  fortitude, and will always be more effectual to 'disarm our enemies',
+  and to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, than all
+  'arguments' whatever."
+
+Is this Barrister a Christian of any sort or sect, and is he not
+ashamed, if not afraid, to ridicule such passages as these? If they are
+not true, the four Gospels are false.
+
+
+Ib. p. 86.
+
+  It is impossible to give them credit for integrity when we behold the
+  obstinacy and the artifice with which they defend their system against
+  the strongest argument, and against the clearest evidence.
+
+Modest gentleman! I wonder he finds time to write bulky pamphlets: for
+surely modesty, like his, must secure success and clientage at the bar.
+Doubtless he means his own arguments, the evidence he himself has
+adduced:--I say doubtless, for what are these pamphlets but a long
+series of attacks on the doctrines of the strict Lutherans and
+Calvinists, (for the doctrines he attacks are common to both,) and if he
+knew stronger arguments, clearer evidence, he would certainly have given
+them;--and then what obstinate rogues must our Bishops be, to have
+suffered these Hints to pass into a third edition, and yet not have
+brought a bill into Parliament for a new set of Articles? I have not
+heard that they have even the grace to intend it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 88.
+
+  On this subject I will quote the just and striking observations of an
+  excellent modern writer. "In whatever village," says he, "the fanatics
+  get a footing, drunkenness and swearing,--sins which, being more
+  exposed to the eye of the world, would be ruinous to their great
+  pretensions to superior sanctity--will, perhaps, be found to decline;
+  but I am convinced, from personal observation, that every species of
+  fraud and falsehood--sins which are not so readily detected, but which
+  seem more closely connected with worldly advantage--will be found
+  invariably to increase." (Religion without Cant; by R. Fellowes, A.M.
+  of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford.)
+
+In answer to this let me make a "very just observation," by some other
+man of my opinion, to be hereafter quoted "from an excellent modern
+writer;"--and it is this, that from the birth of Christ to the present
+hour, no sect or body of men were zealous in the reformation of manners
+in society, without having been charged with the same vices in the same
+words. When I hate a man, and see nothing bad in him, what remains
+possible but to accuse him of crimes which I cannot see, and which
+cannot be disproved, because they cannot be proved? Surely, if Christian
+charity did not preclude these charges, the shame of convicted parrotry
+ought to prevent a man from repeating and republishing them. The very
+same thoughts, almost the words, are to be found of the early
+Christians; of the poor Quakers; of the Republicans; of the first
+Reformers.--Why need I say this? Does not every one know, that a jovial
+pot-companion can never believe a water-drinker not to be a sneaking
+cheating knave who is afraid of his thoughts; that every libertine
+swears that those who pretend to be chaste, either have their mistress
+in secret, or far worse, and so on?
+
+
+Ib. p. 89.
+
+  The same religious abstinence from all appearance of recreation on the
+  Lord's day; and the same neglect of the weightier matters of the moral
+  law, in the course of the week, &c.
+
+This sentence thus smuggled in at the bottom of the chest ought not to
+pass unnoticed; for the whole force of the former depends on it. It is a
+true trick, and deserves reprobation.
+
+
+Ib. p. 97.
+
+  Note. It was procured, Mr. Collyer informs us, by the merit of his
+  "Lectures on Scripture facts." It should have been "Lectures on
+  'Scriptural' Facts." What should we think of the grammarian, who,
+  instead of 'Historical', should present us with "Lectures on 'History'
+  Facts?"
+
+But Law Tracts? And is not 'Scripture' as often used semi-adjectively?
+
+
+Ib. p. 98.
+
+  "Do you really believe," says Dr. Hawker, "that, because man by his
+  apostacy hath lost his power and ability to obey, God hath lost his
+  right to command? Put the case that you were called upon, as a
+  barrister, to recover a debt due from one man to another, and you knew
+  the debtor had not the ability to pay the 'creditor', would you tell
+  your client that his debtor was under no legal or moral obligation to
+  pay what he had no power to do? And would you tell him that the very
+  expectation of his just right 'was as foolish as it was tyrannical'?"
+  * * * I will give my reply to these questions distinctly and without
+  hesitation. * * * Suppose A. to have lent B. a thousand pounds, as a
+  capital to commence trade, and that, when he purchased his stock to
+  this amount, and lodged it in his warehouse, a fire were to break out
+  in the next dwelling, and, extending itself to 'his' warehouse, were
+  to consume the whole of his property, and reduce him to a state of
+  utter ruin. If A., my client, were to ask my opinion as to his right
+  to recover from B., I should tell him that this his right would exist
+  should B. ever be in a condition to repay the sum borrowed; * * * but
+  that to attempt to recover a thousand pounds from a man thus reduced
+  by accident to utter ruin, and who had not a shilling left in the
+  world, would be 'as foolish as it was tyrannical'.
+
+  But this is rank sophistry. The question is:--Does a thief (and a
+  fraudulent debtor is no better) acquire a claim to impunity by not
+  possessing the power of restoring the goods? Every moral act derives
+  its character (says a Schoolman with an unusual combination of
+  profundity with quaintness) 'aut voluntate originis aut origine
+  voluntatis'. Now the very essence of guilt, its dire and
+  incommunicable character, consists in its tendency to destroy the free
+  will;--but when thus destroyed, are the habits of vice thenceforward
+  innocent? Does the law excuse the murder because the perpetrator was
+  drunk? Dr. Hawker put his objection laxly and weakly enough; but a
+  manly opponent would have been ashamed to seize an hour's victory from
+  what a move of the pen would render impregnable.
+
+
+Ib. p. 102, 3.
+
+  When at this solemn tribunal the sinner shall be called upon to answer
+  for the transgression of those 'moral' laws, on obedience to which
+  salvation was made to depend, will it be sufficient that he declares
+  himself to have been taught to believe that the Gospel 'had neither
+  terms nor conditions', and that his salvation was secured by a
+  covenant which procured him pardon and peace, 'from all eternity': a
+  covenant, the effects of which no folly or 'after-act whatever' could
+  possibly destroy?--Who could anticipate the sentence of condemnation,
+  and not weep in agony over the deluded victim of ignorance and
+  misfortune who was thus taught a doctrine so fatally false?
+
+What then! God is represented as a tyrant when he claims the penalty of
+disobedience from the servant, who has wilfully incapacitated himself
+for obeying,--and yet just and merciful in condemning to indefinite
+misery a poor "deluded victim of ignorance and imposture," even though
+the Barrister, spite of his antipathy to Methodists, would "weep in
+agony" over him! But before the Barrister draws bills of imagination on
+his tender feelings, would it not have been as well to adduce some last
+dying speech and confession, in which the culprit attributed his
+crimes--not to Sabbath-breaking and loose company,--but to
+sermon-hearing on the 'modus operandi' of the divine goodness in the
+work of redemption? How the Ebenezerites would stare to find the
+Socinians and themselves in one flock on the sheep-side of the
+judgment-seat,--and their cousins, and fellow Methodists, the
+Tabernaclers, all caprifled--goats every man:--and why? They held, that
+repentance is in the power of every man, with the aid of grace; while
+the goats held that without grace no man is able even to repent. A.
+makes grace the cause, and B. makes it only a necessary auxiliary. And
+does the Socinian extricate himself a whit more clearly? Without a due
+concurrence of circumstances no mind can improve itself into a state
+susceptible of spiritual happiness: and is not the disposition and
+pre-arrangement of circumstances as dependent on the divine will as
+those spiritual influences which the Methodist holds to be meant by the
+word grace? Will not the Socinian find it as difficult to reconcile with
+mercy and justice the condemnation to hell-fire of poor wretches born
+and bred in the thieves' nests of St. Giles, as the Methodists the
+condemnation of those who have been less favoured by grace? I have one
+other question to ask, though it should have been asked before. Suppose
+Christ taught nothing more than a future state of retribution and the
+necessity and sufficiency of good morals, how are we to explain his
+forbidding these truths to be taught to any but Jews till after his
+resurrection? Did the Jews reject those doctrines? Except perhaps a
+handful of rich men, called Sadducees, they all believed them, and would
+have died a thousand deaths rather than have renounced their faith.
+Besides, what is there in doctrines common to the creed of all
+religions, and enforced by all the schools of philosophy, except the
+Epicurean, which should have prevented their being taught to all at the
+same time? I perceive, that this difficulty does not press on Socinians
+exclusively: but yet it presses on them with far greater force than on
+others. For they make Christianity a mere philosophy, the same in
+substance with the Stoical, only purer from errors and accompanied with
+clearer evidence:--while others think of it as part of a covenant made
+up with Abraham, the fulfilment of which was in good faith to be first
+offered to his posterity. I ask this only because the Barrister
+professes to find every thing in the four Gospels so plain and easy.
+
+
+Ib. p. 106.
+
+  The Reformers by whom those articles were framed were educated in the
+  Church of Rome, and opposed themselves rather to the perversion of its
+  power than the errors of its doctrine.
+
+An outrageous blunder.
+
+
+Ib. p. 107.
+
+  Lord Bacon was the first who dedicated his profound and penetrating
+  genius to the cultivation of sound philosophy, &c.
+
+This very same Lord Bacon has given us his 'Confessio Fidei' at great
+length, with full particularity. Now I will answer for the Methodists'
+unhesitating assent and consent to it; but would the Barrister subscribe
+it?
+
+
+Ib. p. 108.
+
+  We look back to that era of our history when superstition threw her
+  victim on the pile, and bigotry tied the martyr to his stake:--but we
+  take our eyes from the retrospect and turn them in thankful admiration
+  to that Being who has opened the minds of many, and is daily opening
+  the minds of more amongst us to the reception of these most important
+  of all truths, that there is no true faith but in practical goodness,
+  and that the worst of errors is the error of the 'life'.
+
+  Such is the conviction of the most enlightened of our Clergy: the
+  conviction, I trust, of the far greater part * * *. They deem it
+  better to inculcate the moral duties of Christianity in the pure
+  simplicity and clearness with which they are revealed, than to go
+  aside in search of 'doctrinal mysteries'. For as mysteries cannot be
+  made manifest, they, of course, cannot be understood; and that which
+  cannot be understood cannot be believed, and can, consequently, make
+  no part of any system of faith: since no one, till he understands a
+  doctrine, can tell whether it be true or false; till then, therefore,
+  he can have no faith in it, for no one can rationally affirm that he
+  believes that doctrine to be true which he does not know to be so; and
+  he cannot know it to be true if he does not understand it. In the
+  religion of a true Christian, therefore, there can be nothing
+  unintelligible; and if the preachers of that religion do not make
+  mysteries, they will never find any.
+
+Who? the Bishops, or the dignified Clergy? Have they at length exploded
+all "doctrinal mysteries?" Was Horsley "the one red leaf, the last of
+its clan," that held the doctrines of the Trinity, the corruption of the
+human Will, and the Redemption by the Cross of Christ? Verily, this is
+the most impudent attempt to impose a naked Socinianism on the public,
+as the general religion of the nation, admitted by all but a dunghill of
+mushroom fanatics, that ever insulted common sense or common modesty!
+And will "the far greater part" of the English Clergy remain silent
+under so atrocious a libel as is contained in this page? Do they indeed
+solemnly pray to their Maker weekly, before God and man, in the words of
+a Liturgy, which, they know, "cannot be believed?" For heaven's sake, my
+dear Southey, do quote this page and compare it with the introduction to
+and petitions of the Liturgy, and with the Collects on the Advent, &c.
+
+
+Ib. p. 110.
+
+  We shall discover upon an attentive examination of the subject, that
+  all those laws which lay the basis of our constitutional liberties,
+  are no other than the rules of religion transcribed into the judicial
+  system, and enforced by the sanction of civil authority.
+
+What! Compare these laws, first, with Tacitus's account of the
+constitutional laws of our German ancestors, Pagans; and then with the
+Pandects and 'Novellæ' of the most Christian Justinian, aided by all his
+Bishops. Observe, the Barrister is asserting a fact of the historical
+origination of our laws,--and not what no man would deny, that as far as
+they are humane and just, they coincide with the precepts of the Gospel.
+No, they were "transcribed."
+
+
+Ib. p. 113.
+
+  Where a man holds a certain system of doctrines, the State is bound to
+  tolerate, though it may not approve, them; but when he demands a
+  'license to teach' this system to the rest of the community, he
+  demands that which ought not to be granted incautiously and without
+  grave consideration. This discretionary power is delegated in trust
+  for the common good, &c.
+
+All this, dear Southey, I leave to the lash of your indignation. It
+would be oppression to do--what the Legislature could not do if it
+would--prevent a man's thoughts; but if he speaks them aloud, and asks
+either for instruction and confutation, if he be in error, or assent and
+honor, if he be in the right, then it is no oppression to throw him into
+a dungeon! But the Barrister would only withhold a license! Nonsense.
+What if he preaches and publishes without it, will the Legislature
+dungeon him or not? If not, what use is either the granting or the
+withholding? And this too from a Socinian, who by this very book has, I
+believe, made himself obnoxious to imprisonment and the pillory--and
+against men, whose opinions are authorized by the most solemn acts of
+Parliament, and recorded in a Book, of which there must be one, by law,
+in every parish, and of which there is in fact one in almost every house
+and hovel!
+
+
+Part IV. p. 1.
+
+  The religion of genuine Christianity is a revelation so distinct and
+  specific in its design, and so clear and intelligible in its rules,
+  that a man of philosophic and retired thought is apt to wonder by what
+  means the endless systems of error and hostility which divide the
+  world were ever introduced into it.
+
+What means this hollow cant--this fifty times warmed-up bubble and
+squeak? That such parts are intelligible as the Barrister understands?
+That such parts as it possesses in common with all systems of religion
+and morality are plain and obvious? In other words that ABC are so
+legible that they are legible to every one that has learnt to read? If
+the Barrister mean other or more than this, if he really mean the whole
+religion and revelation of Christ, even as it is found in the original
+records, the Gospels and Epistles, he escapes from the silliness of a
+truism by throwing himself into the arms of a broad brazenfaced untruth.
+What! Is the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel so distinct and specific
+in its design, that any modest man can wonder that the best and most
+learned men of every age since Christ have deemed it mysterious? Are the
+many passages concerning the Devil and demoniacs so very easy? Has this
+writer himself thrown the least light on, or himself received one ray of
+light from, the meaning of the word Faith;--or the reason of Christ's
+paramount declarations respecting its omnific power, its absolutely
+indispensable necessity? If the word mean only what the Barrister
+supposes, a persuasion that in the present state of our knowledge the
+evidences for the historical truth of the miracles of the Gospel
+outweigh the arguments of the Sceptics, will he condescend to give us
+such a comment on the assertion, that had we but a grain of mustard seed
+of it, we might control all material nature, without making Christ
+himself the most extravagant hyperbolist that ever mis-used language?
+But it is impossible to make that man blush, who can seriously call the
+words of Christ as recorded by St. John, plain, easy, common sense, out
+of which prejudice, artifice, and selfish interest alone can compose any
+difficulty. The Barrister has just as much right to call his religion
+Christianity, as to call flour and water plum pudding:--yet we all admit
+that in plum pudding both flour and water do exist.
+
+
+Ib. p. 7.
+
+  Socinus can have no claim upon my veneration: I have never concerned
+  myself with what he believed nor with what he taught &c.
+
+  The Scripture is my authority, and on no other authority will I ever,
+  knowingly, lay the foundation of my faith.
+
+Utterly untrue. It is not the Scripture, but such passages of Scripture
+as appear to him to accord with his Procrustean bed of so called reason,
+and a forcing of the blankest contradictions into the same meaning, by
+explanations to which I defy him to furnish one single analogy as
+allowed by mankind with regard to any other writings but the Old and New
+Testament. It is a gross and impudent delusion to call a Book his
+authority, which he receives only so far as it is an echo of his own
+convictions. I defy him to adduce one single article of his whole faith,
+(creed rather) which he really derives from the Scripture. Even the
+arguments for the Resurrection are and must be extraneous: for the very
+proofs of the facts are (as every 'tyro' in theology must know) the
+proofs of the authenticity of the Books in which they are contained.
+This question I would press upon him:--Suppose we possessed the Fathers
+only with the Ecclesiastical and Pagan historians, and that not a page
+remained of the New Testament,--what article of his creed would it
+alter?
+
+
+Ib. p. 10.
+
+  If the creed of Calvinistic Methodism is really more productive of
+  conversions than the religion of Christianity, let them openly and at
+  once say so.
+
+But Calvinistic Methodism? Why Calvinistic Methodism? Not one in a
+hundred of the Methodists are Calvinists. Not to mention the impudence
+of this crow in his abuse of black feathers! Is it worse in a Methodist
+to oppose Socinianism to Christianity, that is, to the doctrines of
+Wesley or even Whitfield, which are the same as those of all the
+Reformed Churches of Christendom, and differ only wherein the most
+celebrated divines of the same churches have differed with each
+other,--than for the Barrister to oppose Methodism to Christianity (his
+Christianity)--that is, to Socinianism, which in every peculiar doctrine
+of Christianity differs from all divines of all Churches of all ages?
+For the one tenet in which the Calvinist differs from the majority of
+Christians, are there not ten in which the Socinian differs from all? To
+what purpose then this windy declamation about John Calvin? How many
+Methodists, does the Barrister think, ever saw, much less read, a work
+of Calvin's? If he scorns the name of Socinus as his authority, and
+appeals to Scripture, do not the Methodists the same? When do they refer
+to Calvin? In what work do they quote him? This page is therefore mere
+dust in the eyes of the public. And his abuse of Calvin displays only
+his own vulgar ignorance both of the man, and of his writings. For he
+seems not to know that the humane Melancthon, and not only he, but
+almost every Church, Lutheran or Reformed, throughout Europe, sent
+letters to Geneva, extolling the execution of Servetus, and returning
+their thanks. Yet it was a murder not the less: Yes! a damned murder:
+but the guilt of it is not peculiar to Calvin, but common to all the
+theologians of that age; and, 'Nota bene,' Mr. Barrister, the Socini not
+excepted, who were prepared to inflict the very same punishment on F.
+Davidi for denying the adorability of Christ. If to wish, will, resolve,
+and attempt to realize, be morally to commit, an action, then must
+Socinus and Calvin hunt in the same collar. But, O mercy! if every human
+being were to be held up to detestation, who in that age would have
+thought it his duty to have passed sentence 'de comburendo heretico' on
+a man, who had publicly styled the Trinity "a Cerberus," and "a
+three-headed monster of hell," what would the history of the Reformation
+be but a list of criminals? With what face indeed can we congratulate
+ourselves on being born in a more enlightened age, if we so bitterly
+abuse not the practice but the agents? Do we not admit by this very
+phrase "enlightened," that we owe our exemption to our intellectual
+advantages, not primarily to our moral superiority? It will be time
+enough to boast, when to our own tolerance we have added their zeal,
+learning, and indefatigable industry. [7]
+
+
+Ib. p. 13, 14.
+
+  If religion consists in listening to long prayers, and attending long
+  sermons, in keeping up an outside appearance of devotion, and
+  interlarding the most common discourse with phrases of Gospel
+  usage:--if this is religion, then are the disciples of Methodism pious
+  beyond compare. But in real humility of heart, in mildness of temper,
+  in liberality of mind, in purity of thought, in openness and
+  uprightness of conduct in private life, in those practical virtues
+  which are the vital substance of Christianity,--in these are they
+  superior? No. Public observation is against the fact, and the
+  conclusion to which such observation leads is rarely incorrect. * *
+  The very name of the sect carries with it an impression of meanness
+  and hypocrisy. Scarce an individual that has had any dealings with
+  those belonging to it, but has good cause to remember it from some
+  circumstance of low deception or of shuffling fraud. Its very members
+  trust each other with caution and reluctance. The more wealthy among
+  them are drained and dried by the leeches that perpetually fasten upon
+  them. The leaders, ignorant and bigoted--I speak of them collectively
+  --present us with no counter-qualities that can conciliate respect.
+  They have all the craft of monks without their courtesy, and all the
+  subtlety of Jesuits without their learning.
+
+In the whole 'Bibliotlieca theologica' I remember no instance of calumny
+so gross, so impudent, so unchristian. Even as a single robber, I mean
+he who robs one man, gets hanged, while the robber of a million is a
+great man, so it seems to be with calumny. This worthy Barrister will be
+extolled for this audacious slander of thousands, for which, if applied
+to any one individual, he would be in danger of the pillory. This
+paragraph should be quoted: for were the charge true, it is nevertheless
+impossible that the Barrister should know it to be true. He positively
+asserts as a truth known to him what it is impossible he should
+know:--he is therefore doubly a slanderer; for first, the charge is a
+gross calumny; and were it otherwise, he would still be a slanderer, for
+he could have no proof, no ground for such a charge.
+
+
+Ib. p. 15.
+
+Amidst all this spirit of research we find nothing--comparatively
+nothing--of improvement in that science of all others the most important
+in its influence * * *. Religion, except from the emancipating energy of
+a few superior minds, which have dared to snap asunder the cords which
+bound them to the rock of error * * * has been suffered to remain in its
+principles and in its doctrines, just what it was when the craft of
+Catholic superstition first corrupted its simplicity. So, so. Here it
+comes out at last! It is not the Methodists; no; it is all and each of
+all Europe, Infidels and Socinians excepted! O impudence! And then the
+exquisite self-conceit of the blunderer!
+
+
+Ib. p. 29.
+
+  --If of 'different denominations', how were they thus conciliated to a
+  society of this ominous nature, from which they must themselves of
+  necessity be excluded by that indispensable condition of admittance,
+  "'a union' of religious sentiment in the 'great doctrines':" which
+  very want of union it is that creates these 'different denominations'?
+
+No, Barrister! they mean that men of different denominations may yet all
+believe in the corruption of the human will, the redemption by Christ,
+the divinity of Christ as consubstantial with the Father, the necessity
+of the Holy Spirit, or grace (meaning more than the disposition of
+circumstances), and the necessity of faith in Christ superadded to a
+belief of his actions and doctrines,--and yet differ in many other
+points. The points enumerated are called the great points, because all
+Christians agree in them excepting the Arians and Socinians, who for
+that reason are not deemed Christians by the rest. The Roman Catholic,
+the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Arminian, the Greek, with all their
+sub-divisions, do yet all accord in these articles:--the booksellers
+might have said, all who repeat the Nicene Creed. N. B. I do not
+approve, or defend, nay, I dislike, these "United Theological
+Booksellers": but this utter Barrister is their best friend by attacking
+them so as to secure to them victory, and all the advantages of being
+known to have been wickedly slandered;--the best shield a faulty cause
+can protend against the javelin of fair opposition.
+
+
+Ib. p. 56.
+
+  Our Saviour never in any single instance reprobated the exercise of
+  reason: on the contrary, he reprehends severely those who did not
+  exercise it. Carnal reason is not a phrase to be found in his Gospel;
+  he appealed to the understanding in all he said, and in all he taught.
+  He never required 'faith' in his disciples, without first furnishing
+  sufficient 'evidence' to justify it. He reasoned thus: If I have done
+  what no 'human power' could do, you must admit that my power is 'from
+  above', &c.
+
+Good heavens! did he not uniformly require faith as the condition of
+obtaining the "evidence," as this Barrister calls it--that is, the
+miracle? What a shameless perversion of the fact! He never did reason
+thus. In one instance only, and then upbraiding the base sensuality of
+the Jews, he said: "If ye are so base as not to believe what I say from
+the moral evidence in your own consciences, yet pay some attention to it
+even for my works' sake." And this, an 'argumentum ad hominem,' a bitter
+reproach (just as if a great chemist should say;--Though you do not care
+for my science, or the important truths it presents, yet, even as an
+amusement superior to that of your jugglers to whom you willingly crowd,
+pay some attention to me)--this is to be set up against twenty plain
+texts and the whole spirit of the whole Gospel! Besides, Christ could
+not reason so; for he knew that the Jews admitted both natural and
+demoniacal miracles, and their faith in the latter he never attacked;
+though by an 'argumentum ad hominem' (for it is no argument in itself)
+he denied its applicability to his own works. If Christ had reasoned so,
+why did not the Barrister quote his words, instead of putting imaginary
+words in his mouth?
+
+
+Ib. 60, 61.
+
+  Religion is a system of 'revealed' truth; and to affirm of any
+  revealed truth, that we 'cannot understand' it, is, in effect, either
+  to deny that it has been revealed, or--which is the same thing--to
+  admit that it has been revealed in vain.
+
+It is too worthless! I cannot go on. Merciful God! hast thou not
+revealed to us the being of a conscience, and of reason, and of
+will;--and does this Barrister tell us, that he "understands" them? Let
+him know that he does not even understand the very word understanding.
+He does not seem to be aware of the school-boy distinction between the
+[Greek: hóti esti] and the [Greek: dióti]? But to all these silly
+objections religion must for ever remain exposed as long as the word
+Revelation is applied to any thing that can be 'bona fide' given to the
+mind 'ab extra', through the senses of eye, ear, or touch. No! all
+revelation is and must be 'ab intra'; the external 'phænomena' can only
+awake, recall evidence, but never reveal. This is capable of strict
+demonstration.
+
+Afterwards the Barrister quotes from Thomas Watson respecting things
+above comprehension in the study of nature: "in these cases, the 'fact'
+is evident, the cause lies in obscurity, deeply removed from all the
+knowledge and penetration of man." Then what can we believe respecting
+these causes? And if we can believe nothing respecting them, what
+becomes of them as arguments in support of the proposition that we
+ought, in religion, to believe what we cannot understand?
+
+Are there not facts in religion, the causes and constitution of which
+are mysteries?
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the nature and
+effect of Evangelical Preaching. By a Barrister. Fourth Edition, 1808.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2: See Aids to Reflection, p. 14, 4th edition.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 3: Quart. Review, vol. ii. p. 187.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 4: See vol. i., p. 217.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+  "And from this account of obligation it follows, that we can he
+  obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something
+  by; for nothing else can be a violent motive to us. As we should not
+  be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless rewards or
+  punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other depended upon our
+  obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged
+  to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of
+  God."
+
+'Paley's Moral and Polit. Philosophy', B. II. c. 2.
+
+  "The difference, and the only difference, ('between prudence and
+  duty',) is this; that in the one case we consider what we shall gain
+  or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what
+  we shall gain or lose in the world to come."
+
+Ib. c. 3.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 6: Friend, Vol. I. Essays X. and XI. 3rd edition--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 7: See Table Talk, pp. 282 and 304. 2d edit.--Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON DAVISON'S DISCOURSES ON PROPHECY. 1825. [1]
+
+
+Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.
+
+  As to systems of religion alien from Christianity, if any of them have
+  taught the doctrine of eternal life, the reward of obedience, as a
+  dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden
+  and difficulty; inasmuch as they could never defend it. They could
+  never justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce
+  their warrant and authority to teach it. In such precarious and
+  unauthenticated principles it may pass for a conjecture, or pious
+  fraud, or a splendid phantom: it cannot wear the dignity of truth.
+
+Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of
+thinking from p. 134 ('Since Prophecy', &c.) to p. 139. ('that mercy')
+of this discourse? A fact is no subject of scientific demonstration
+speculatively: we can only bring analogies, and these Heraclitus,
+Socrates, Plato, and others did bring; but their main argument remains
+to this day the main argument--namely, that none but a wicked man dares
+doubt it. When it is not in the light of promise, it is in the law of
+fear, at all times a part of the conscience, and presupposed in all
+spiritual conviction.
+
+
+Ib. p. 160.
+
+  Some indeed have sought the 'star' and the 'sceptre' of Balaam's
+  prophecy, where they cannot well be found, in the reign of David; for
+  though a sceptre might be there, the star properly is not.
+
+Surely this is a very weak reason. A far better is, I think, suggested
+by the words, 'I shall see him--I shall behold him';--which in no
+intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.
+
+
+Ib. p. 162.
+
+  The Israelites could not endure the voice and fire of Mount Sinai.
+  They asked an intermediate messenger between God and them, who should
+  temper the awfulness of his voice, and impart to them his will in a
+  milder way.
+
+'Deut'. xviii. 15. Is the following argument worthy our consideration?
+If, as the learned Eichhorn, Paulus of Jena, and others of their school,
+have asserted, Moses waited forty days for a tempest, and then, by the
+assistance of the natural magic he had learned in the temple of Isis,
+'initiated' the law, all our experience and knowledge of the way in
+which large bodies of men are affected would lead us to suppose that the
+Hebrew people would have been keenly excited, interested, and elevated
+by a spectacle so grand and so flattering to their national pride. But
+if the voices and appearances were indeed divine and supernatural, well
+must we assume that there was a distinctive, though verbally
+inexpressible, terror and disproportion to the mind, the senses, the
+whole 'organismus' of the human beholders and hearers, which might both
+account for, and even in the sight of God justify, the trembling prayer
+which deprecated a repetition.
+
+
+Ib. p. 164.
+
+  To justify its application to Christ, the resemblance between him and
+  Moses has often been deduced at large, and drawn into a variety of
+  particulars, among which several points have been taken minute and
+  precarious, or having so little of dignity or clearness of
+  representation in them, that it would be wise to discard them from the
+  prophetic evidence.
+
+With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to
+evolve the full contents of the word 'like'; but I cannot help thinking
+that the contemporaries of Moses (if not otherwise orally instructed,)
+must have understood it in the first and historical sense, at least, of
+Joshua.
+
+
+Ib. p. 168.
+
+  A distinguished commentator on the laws of Moses, Michaelis,
+  vindicates their temporal sanctions on the ground of the Mosaic Code
+  being of the nature of a civil system, to the statutes of which the
+  rewards of a future state would be incongruous and unsuitable.
+
+I never read either of Michaelis's Works, but the same view came before
+me whenever I reflected on the Mosaic Code. Who expects in realities of
+any kind the sharp outline and exclusive character of scientific
+classification? It is the predominance of the characterizing constituent
+that gives the name and class. Do not even our own statute laws, though
+co-existing with a separate religious Code, contain many 'formulæ' of
+words which have no sense but for the conscience? Davison's stress on
+the word 'covet', in the tenth commandment, is, I think, beyond what so
+ancient a Code warrants;--and for the other instances, Michaelis would
+remind him that the Mosaic constitution was a strict theocracy, and that
+Jehovah, the God of all, was their 'king'. I do not know the particular
+mode in which Michaelis propounds and supports this position; but the
+position itself, as I have presented it to my own mind, seems to me
+among the strongest proofs of the divine origin of the Law, and an
+essential in the harmony of the total scheme of Revelation.
+
+
+Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.
+
+  But the first law meets him on his own terms; it stood upon a present
+  retribution; the execution of its sentence is matter of history, and
+  the argument resulting from it is to be answered, before the question
+  is carried to another world.
+
+This is rendered a very powerful argument by the consideration, that
+though so vast a mind as that of Moses, though perhaps even a Lycurgus,
+might have distinctly foreseen the ruin and captivity of the Hebrew
+people as a necessary result of the loss of nationality, and the
+abandonment of the law and religion which were their only point of
+union, their centre of gravity,--yet no human intellect could have
+foreseen the perpetuity of such a people as a distinct race under all
+the aggravated curses of the law weighing on them; or that the obstinacy
+of their adherence to their dividuating institutes in persecution,
+dispersion, and shame, should be in direct proportion to the wantonness
+of their apostasy from the same in union and prosperity.
+
+
+Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.
+
+  Except under the dictate of a constraining inspiration, it is not easy
+  to conceive how the master of such a work, at the time when he had
+  brought it to perfection, and beheld it in its lustre, the labour of
+  so much opulent magnificence and curious art, and designed to be
+  'exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all
+  countries', should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and
+  dilapidation, and that too under the 'opprobrium' of God's vindictive
+  judgment upon it, nor to imagine how that strain of sinister prophecy,
+  that forebodes of malediction, should be ascribed to him, if he had no
+  such vision revealed.
+
+Here I think Mr. Davison should have crushed the objection of the
+Infidel grounded on Solomon's subsequent idolatrous impieties. The
+Infidel argues, that these are not conceivable of a man distinctly
+conscious of a prior and supernatural inspiration, accompanied with
+supernatural manifestations of the divine presence.
+
+
+Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.
+
+  In order to evade this conclusion, nothing is left but to deny that
+  Isaiah, or any person of his age, wrote the book ascribed to him.
+
+This too is my conclusion, but (if I do not delude myself) from more
+evident, though not perhaps more certain, premisses. The age of the
+Cyrus prophecies is the great object of attack by Eichhorn and his
+compilers; and I dare not say, that in a controversy with these men
+Davison's arguments would appear sufficient. But this was not the
+intended subject of these Discourses.
+
+
+Disc. VI. Pt. II. p. 289.
+
+  But how does he express that promise? In the images of the
+  resurrection and an immortal state. Consequently, there is implied in
+  the delineation of the lower subject the truth of the greater.
+
+This reminds me of a remark, I have elsewhere made respecting the
+expediency of separating the arguments addressed to, and valid for, a
+believer, from the proofs and vindications of Scripture intended to form
+the belief, or to convict the Infidel.
+
+
+Disc. VI. Pt. IV. p. 325.
+
+  When Cyrus became master of Babylon, the prophecies of Isaiah were
+  shewn or communicated to him, wherein were described his victory, and
+  the use he was appointed to make of it in the restoration of the
+  Hebrew people. ('Ezra' i. 1, 2.)
+
+This I had been taught to regard as one of Josephus's legends; but upon
+this passage who would not infer that it had Ezra for its
+authority,--who yet does not expressly say that even the prophecy of the
+far later Jeremiah was known or made known to Cyrus, who (Ezra tells us)
+fulfilled it? If Ezra had meant the prediction of Isaiah by the words,
+'he hath charged me', &c., why should he not have referred to it
+together with, or even instead of, Jeremiah? Is it not more probable
+that a living prophet had delivered the charge to Cyrus? See 'Ezra' vi.
+14.--Again, Davison makes Cyrus speak like a Christian, by omitting the
+affix 'of Heaven to the Lord God' in the original. Cyrus speaks as a
+Cyrus might be supposed to do,--namely, of a most powerful but yet
+national deity, of a God, not of God. I have seen in so many instances
+the injurious effect of weak or overstrained arguments in defence of
+religion, that I am perhaps more jealous than I need be in the choice of
+evidences. I can never think myself the worse Christian for any opinion
+I may have formed, respecting the price of this or that argument, of
+this or that divine, in support of the truth. For every one that I
+reject, I could supply two, and these [Greek: anékdota].
+
+
+Ib. p. 336.
+
+  Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel's family, and
+  of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the
+  Gospel, was one of the preparations made whereby to manifest more
+  distinctly the proper glory of it, in the birth of the Messiah.
+
+In whichever way I take this, whether addressed to a believer for the
+purpose of enlightening, or to an inquirer for the purpose of
+establishing, his faith in prophecy, this argument appears to me equally
+perplexing and obscure. It seems, 'prima facie', almost tantamount to a
+right of inferring the fulfilment of a prophecy in B., which it does not
+mention, from its entire failure and falsification in A., which, and
+which alone, it does mention.
+
+
+Ib. p. 370.
+
+  'Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and
+  dreadful day of the Lord.'
+
+Almost every page of this volume makes me feel my own ignorance
+respecting the interpretation of the language of the Hebrew Prophets,
+and the want of the one idea which would supply the key. Suppose an
+Infidel to ask me, how the Jews were to ascertain that John the Baptist
+was Elijah the Prophet;--am I to assert the pre-existence of John's
+personal identity as Elijah? If not, why Elijah rather than any other
+Prophet? One answer is obvious enough, that the contemporaries of John
+held Elijah as the common representative of the Prophets; but did
+Malachi do so?
+
+
+Ib. p. 373.
+
+I cannot conceive a more beautiful synopsis of a work on the Prophecies
+of the Old Testament, than is given in this Recapitulation. Would that
+its truth had been equally well substantiated! That it can be, that it
+will be, I have the liveliest faith;--and that Mr. Davison has
+contributed as much as we ought to expect, and more than any
+contemporary divine, I acknowledge, and honor him accordingly. But much,
+very much, remains to be done, before these three pages merit the name
+of a Recapitulation.
+
+
+Disc. VII. p. 375.
+
+If I needed proof of the immense importance of the doctrine of Ideas,
+and how little it is understood, the following discourse would supply
+it.
+
+The whole discussion on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the
+page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the
+deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the
+particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the
+steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses. I
+neither do nor ever could see any other difficulty on the subject, than
+what is contained and anticipated in the idea of eternity.
+
+By Ideas I mean intuitions not sensuous, which can be expressed only by
+contradictory conceptions, or, to speak more accurately, are in
+themselves necessarily both inexpressible and inconceivable, but are
+suggested by two contradictory positions. This is the essential
+character of all ideas, consequently of eternity, in which the
+attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are included. Now prescience
+and freewill are in fact nothing more than the two contradictory
+positions by which the human understanding struggles to express
+successively the idea of eternity. Not eternity in the negative sense as
+the mere absence of succession, much less eternity in the senseless
+sense of an infinite time; but eternity,--the Eternal; as Deity, as God.
+Our theologians forget that the objection applies equally to the
+possibility of the divine will; but if they reply that prescience
+applied to an eternal, 'Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio', is
+but an anthropomorphism, or term of accommodation, the same answer
+serves in respect of the human will; for the epithet human does not
+enter into the syllogism. As to contingency, whence did Mr. Davison
+learn that it is a necessary accompaniment of freedom, or of free
+action? My philosophy teaches me the very contrary.
+
+
+Ib. p. 392.
+
+  He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not
+  within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the
+  assumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in
+  Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and
+  responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are
+  in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.
+
+I utterly deny contingency except in relation to the limited and
+imperfect knowledge of man. But the misery is, that men write about
+freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea
+[Greek: katt' exochàen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in
+the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they
+overlay their reason.
+
+
+Disc. VIII. p. 416.
+
+It would not be easy to calculate the good which a man like Mr. Davison
+might effect, under God, by a work on the Messianic Prophecies,
+specially intended for and addressed to the present race of Jews,--if
+only he would make himself acquainted with their objections and ways of
+understanding Scripture. For instance, a learned Jew would perhaps
+contend that this prophecy of Isaiah (c. ii. 2-4,) cannot fairly be
+interpreted of a mere local origination of a religion historically; as
+the drama might be described as going forth from Athens, and philosophy
+from Academus and the Painted Porch, but must refer to an established
+and continuing seat of worship, 'a house of the God of Jacob'. The
+answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, 'in the top of the
+mountains'; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the
+whole prediction.
+
+
+Ib. p. 431.
+
+  One point, however, is certain and equally important, namely, that the
+  Christian Church, when it comes to recognize more truly the obligation
+  imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, 'Go teach all
+  nations', &c.
+
+That the duty here recommended is deducible from this text is quite
+clear to my mind; but whether it is the direct sense and primary
+intention of the words; whether the first meaning is not
+negative,--('Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to
+all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing',)--this is
+not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is
+this narrower sense without its practical advantages.
+
+
+Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.
+
+The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point
+of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes
+me. It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional 'infausta
+tempora scribendi', can account for. I question whether from any modern
+work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter
+or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and
+awkward sentences could be extracted. The paragraph in page 453 and 454,
+is not a specimen of the worst. In a volume which ought to be, and which
+probably will be, in every young Clergyman's library, these 'maculæ' are
+subjects of just regret. The utility of the work, no less than its great
+comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the
+author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.
+
+
+Disc. XII. p. 519.
+
+  Four such ruling kingdoms did arise. The first, the Babylonian, was in
+  being when the prophecy is represented to have been given. It was
+  followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the
+  Roman closed the series.
+
+This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or
+Medo-Persian is the second--if I recollect aright. But it always struck
+me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own
+snares. For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and
+actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire
+should not have been predicted;--for superhuman predictions, the last
+two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a
+political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Cassandra, and later than
+Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman
+should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last and
+most important Empire is inexplicable.
+
+
+Ib. p. 521.
+
+  Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel's prophecies were
+  read publicly among the Jews in their worship, as well as their other
+  received Scriptures.
+
+It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the
+book of Daniel in the third class only, among the Hagiographic
+--passionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of our Saviour
+were attached to it.
+
+
+Ib. p. 522-3.
+
+  But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view
+  in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit
+  that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy,
+  this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so
+  plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.
+
+'Quære'. See Polybius.
+
+
+Ib.
+
+  We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this
+  fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.
+
+This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I
+confess, strike me as being. On the contrary, the admission that by a
+writer of the Maccabaic æra the Roman power could scarcely have been
+overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally
+suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires,
+rather than the idea of a last. In the age of Augustus this might
+possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus
+was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late
+enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source
+of succession.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Discourses on Prophecy, in which are considered its
+structure, use and inspiration, being the substance of twelve Sermons
+preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn in the Lecture founded by the
+Right Rev. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison,
+B.D. 2nd edit. London, 1825.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON IRVING'S BEN-EZRA. [1] 1827.
+
+
+
+                Christ the WORD.
+                       |
+  The Scriptures--The Spirit--The Church.
+                       |
+                  The Preacher.
+
+
+Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ. The written
+Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable
+conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued
+re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal
+Word, Christ from everlasting, is the 'prothesis' or identity;--the
+Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the 'thesis' and
+'antithesis'; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise
+the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the
+'synthesis'. And here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me
+asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a 'tetractys', or
+a triad equal to a 'tetractys': 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a
+pentad--God's hand in the world. [2]
+
+It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how
+far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend,
+Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.
+
+I. How far? First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the
+positive assurance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I--even in those points
+in which my judgment most coincides with his,--profess only to regard
+them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with
+orthodoxy. They may be believed, and they may be doubted, 'salva
+Catholica fide'. Further, from these points I exclude all
+prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places,
+of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr.
+Irving's and of Lacunza's scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the
+Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza,
+understands them. Again, I protest against all identification of the
+coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under
+Constantine.
+
+II. In what sense? In this and no other, that the objects of the
+Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;--that the kingdom
+of God and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine
+will shall 'be done on earth as it is in heaven', will 'come';--and that
+the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of
+Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final cause of
+the world. Life begins in detachment from Nature, and ends in union with
+God.
+
+III. Under what conditions? That I retain my former convictions
+respecting St. Michael, and the ex-saint Lucifer, and the Genie Prince
+of Persia, and the re-institution of bestial sacrifices in the Temple at
+Jerusalem, and the rest of this class. All these appear to me so many
+pimples on the face of my friend's faith from inward heats, leaving it
+indeed a fine handsome intelligent face, but certainly not adding to its
+comeliness.
+
+Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.
+
+P.S. I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all
+the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. ('Deuteron.'
+xxv. 1-8.)
+
+It may be long before Edward Irving sees what I seem at least to see so
+clearly,--and yet, I doubt not, the time will come when he too will see
+with the same evidentness,--how much grander a front his system would
+have presented to judicious beholders; on how much more defensible a
+position he would have placed it,--and the remark applies equally to Ben
+Ezra (that is, Emanuel Lacunza)--had he trusted the proof to Scriptures
+of undisputed catholicity, to the spirit of the whole Bible, to the
+consonance of the doctrine with the reason, its fitness to the needs and
+capacities of mankind, and its harmony with the general plan of the
+divine dealings with the world,--and had left the Apocalypse in the back
+ground. But alas! instead of this he has given it such prominence, such
+prosiliency of relief, that he has made the main strength of his hope
+appear to rest on a vision, so obscure that his own author and
+faith's-mate claims a meaning for its contents only on the supposition
+that the meaning is yet to come!
+
+
+Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.
+
+  Now of these three, the office of Christ, as our prophet, is the means
+  used by the Holy Spirit for working the redemption of the
+  understanding of men; that faculty by which we acquire the knowledge
+  on which proceed both our inward principles of conduct and our outward
+  acts of power.
+
+I cannot forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to
+the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding, 'genere et
+gradu', given in the Aids to Reflection. [3]
+
+What can be plainer than to say: the understanding is the medial faculty
+or faculty of means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas
+or ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end: by the
+understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means
+for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to
+circumstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that
+is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire
+correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there
+can be neither a first nor a last:--all that we can see, smell, taste,
+touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of
+our language, entitled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of
+motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like
+manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which
+we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their
+several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and
+judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective
+power, is the source and faculty of words;--and on this account the
+understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by
+Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense.
+However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same
+understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its
+true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point,
+because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding
+and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness,
+'materiam objectivam',) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the
+comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural
+mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs],
+as likewise [Greek: psychikàe synesis], the intellectual power of the
+living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the
+spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of
+the will and the reason;--and this spirit both the Christian and elder
+Jewish Church named, 'sophia', or wisdom.
+
+
+Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.
+
+  Eusebius and St. Epiphanius name Cerinthusas the inventor of many
+  corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the
+  palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his
+  disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most
+  important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a Sultan,
+  &c.
+
+I find very great difficulty in crediting these black charges on
+Cerinthus, and know not how to reconcile them with the fact that the
+Apocalypse itself was by many attributed to Cerinthus. But Mr. Hunt is
+not more famous for blacking than some of the Fathers.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 73, 4.
+
+  Against whom a very eloquent man, Dionysius Alexandrinus, a Father of
+  the Church, wrote an elegant work, to ridicule the Millennarian fable,
+  the golden and gemmed Jerusalem on the earth, the renewal of the
+  Temple, the blood of victims. If the book of St. Dionysius had
+  contained nothing but the derision and confutation of all we have just
+  read, it is certain that he doth in no way concern himself with the
+  harmless Millennarians, but with the Jews and Judaizers. It is to be
+  clearly seen that Dionysius had nothing in his eye, but the ridiculous
+  excesses of Nepos, and his peculiar tenets upon circumcision, &c.
+
+Lacunza, I suspect, was ignorant of Greek: and seems not to have known
+that the object of Dionysius was to demonstrate that the Apocalypse was
+neither authentic nor a canonical book.
+
+
+Ib. p. 85.
+
+  The ruin of Antichrist, with all that is comprehended under that name,
+  being entirely consummated, and the King of kings remaining master of
+  the field, St. John immediately continues in the 20th chapter, which
+  thus commenceth: 'And I saw an angel come down from heaven, &c. And I
+  saw thrones, &c. And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be
+  loosed out of his prison.'
+
+It is only necessary to know that the whole book from the first verse to
+the last is written in symbols, to be satisfied that the true meaning of
+this passage is simply, that only the great Confessors and Martyrs will
+be had in remembrance and honour in the Church after the establishment
+of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. And observe, it is the
+souls that the Seer beholds:--there is not a word of the resurrection of
+the body;--for this would indeed have been the appropriate symbol of a
+resurrection in a real and personal sense.
+
+
+Ib. c. vi. p. 108.
+
+  Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, 'that they
+  who have been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of
+  God, and they who have not worshipped the beast', these shall live,
+  'or be raised' at the coming of the Lord, 'which is the first
+  resurrection.'
+
+Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" asserted? The Seer
+not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word [Greek:
+psychás], souls, expressly asserts the contrary. In no sense of the word
+can souls, which descended in Christ's train ('chorus sacer animarum et
+Christi comitatus') from Heaven, be said 'resurgere'. Resurrection is
+always and exclusively resurrection in the body;--not indeed a rising of
+the 'corpus' [Greek: phantastikón], that is, the few ounces of carbon,
+nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the 'copula' of which
+that gave the form no longer exists,--and of which Paul exclaims;--'Thou
+fool! not this', &c.--but the 'corpus' [Greek: hypostatikòn, àe
+noúmenon].
+
+But there is yet another and worse wresting of the text. Who that reads
+Lacunza, p. 108, last line but twelve, would not understand that the
+Apocalypt had asserted this enthronement of the souls of the Gentile and
+Judæo-Christian Martyrs which he beheld in the train or suite of the
+descending Messiah; and that he had first seen them in the descent, and
+afterward saw thrones assigned to them? Whereas the sentence precedes,
+and has positively no connection with these souls. The literal
+interpretation of the symbols c. xx. v. 4, is, "I then beheld the
+Christian religion the established religion of the state throughout the
+Roman empire;--emperors, kings, magistrates, and the like, all
+Christians, and administering laws in the name of Christ, that is,
+receiving the Scriptures as the supreme and paramount law. Then in all
+the temples the name of Jesus was invoked as the King of glory, and
+together with him the old afflicted and tormented fellow-laborers with
+Christ were revived in high and reverential commemoration," &c. But that
+the whole Vision from first to last, in every sentence, yea, every word,
+is symbolical, and in the boldest, largest style of symbolic language;
+and secondly, that it is a work of disputed canonicity, and at no known
+period of the Church could truly lay claim to catholicity;--but for
+this, I think this verse would be worth a cartload of the texts which
+the Romanist divines and catechists ordinarily cite as sanctioning the
+invocation of Saints.
+
+
+Ib. p. 110.
+
+  You will say nevertheless, that even the wicked will be raised
+  incorruptible to inherit incorruption, because being once raised,
+  their bodies will no more change or be dissolved, but must continue
+  entire, for ever united with their sad and miserable souls. Well, and
+  would you call this corruption or incorruptibility? Certainly this is
+  not the sense of the Apostle, when he formally assures us, yea, even
+  threatens us, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption. 'Neither
+  doth corruption inherit incorruption'. What then may this singular
+  expression mean? This is what it manifestly means;--that no person,
+  whoever he may be, without any exception, who possesseth a corrupt
+  heart and corrupt actions, and therein persevereth unto death, shall
+  have reason to expect in the resurrection a pure, subtile, active and
+  impassible body.
+
+This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.
+
+Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated
+chapter (1 'Cor'. xv.) speaks of a partial or of the general
+resurrection, or even conceding to Lacunza that the former opinion is
+the more probable; I must still vehemently object to this Jesuitical
+interpretation of corruption, as used in a moral sense, and distinctive
+of the wicked souls. St. Paul nowhere speaks dogmatically or
+preceptively (not popularly and incidentally,) of a soul as the proper
+'I'. It is always 'we', or the man. How could a regenerate saint put off
+corruption at the sound of the trump, if up to that hour it did not in
+some sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It
+flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied,
+unrefracting, 'medium' to the Apostolic assertion, that corruption in
+this passage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism
+common to saint and sinner,--standing in precisely the same relation to
+the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the
+crab and tortoise. These slightly combined and easily decomponible
+stuffs are as incapable of subsisting under the altered conditions of
+the earth as an hydatid in the blaze of a tropical sun. They would be no
+longer 'media' of communion between the man and his circumstances.
+
+A heavy difficulty presses, as it appears to me, on Lacunza's system, as
+soon as we come to consider the general resurrection. Our Lord (in books
+of indubitable and never doubted catholicity) speaks of some who rise to
+bliss and glory, others who at the same time rise to shame and
+condemnation. Now if the former class live not during the whole interval
+from their death to the general resurrection, including the Millennium,
+or 'Dies Messiæ',--how should they, whose imperfect or insufficient
+merits excluded them from the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, be all at
+once fitted for the kingdom of heaven?
+
+
+Ib. ch. vii. p. 118.
+
+  It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively,
+  means in good language this only, that the word 'quick', which the
+  Apostles, full of the Holy Spirit, set down, is a word altogether
+  useless, which might without loss have been omitted, and that it were
+  enough to have set down the word 'dead': for by that word alone is the
+  whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.
+
+The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological
+reading of their 'alumni' is strongly marked in this (in so many
+respects) excellent work: for example, the "most believing mind," with
+which Lacunza takes for granted the exploded fable of the Catechumens'
+('vulgo' Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic
+'pic-nic', to which each of the twelve contributed his several
+'symbolum'.
+
+
+Ib. ch. ix. p. 127.
+
+  The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that
+  that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)
+
+There are serious difficulties besetting the authenticity of the
+Catholic Epistles under the name of Peter; though there exist no grounds
+for doubting that they are of the Apostolic age. A large portion too of
+the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable
+supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated
+the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his
+'amanuensis', who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which
+connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and
+biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this
+hypothesis. But what is of much greater importance, especially for the
+point in discussion, is the character of these and other similar
+descriptions of the 'Dies Messiæ', the 'Dies ultima', and the like. Are
+we bound to receive them as articles of faith? Is there sufficient
+reason to assert them to have been direct revelations immediately
+vouchsafed to the sacred writers? I cannot satisfy my judgment that
+there is;--first, because I find no account of any such events having
+been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and
+because I do find these events asserted, and (for aught I have been able
+to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired
+Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles,
+and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these anticipations had
+become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they
+were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several
+other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their
+ancient and national religious belief. Now I know of no revealed truth
+that did not originate in Revelation, and find it hard to reconcile my
+mind to the belief that any Christian truth, any essential article of
+faith, should have been first made known by the father of lies, or the
+guess-work of the human understanding blinded by Paganism, or at best
+without the knowledge of the true God. Of course I would not apply this
+to any assertion of any New Testament writer, which was the final aim
+and primary intention of the whole passage; but only to sentences 'in
+ordine ad' some other doctrine or precept, 'illustrandi causa', or 'ad
+hominem', or 'more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice'.
+
+
+Ib. Part II. p. 145.
+
+  Second characteristic. 'The kingdom shall be divided.'--Third
+  characteristic. 'The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly
+  brittle.'--Fourth characteristic. 'They shall mingle themselves with
+  the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another.'
+
+How exactly do these characters apply to the Greek Empire under the
+successors of Alexander,--when the Greeks were dispersed over the
+civilized world, as artists, rhetoricians, 'grammatici', secretaries,
+private tutors, parasites, physicians, and the like!
+
+
+Ib. p. 153.
+
+  'For to them he thus speaketh in the Gospel: And then shall they see
+  the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when
+  these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your
+  heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.'
+
+I cannot deny that there is great force and an imposing verisimilitude
+in this and the preceding chapter, and much that demands silent thought
+and respectful attention. But still the great question presses on
+me:--'coming in a cloud'! What is the true import of this phrase? Has
+not God himself expounded it? To the Son of Man, the great Apostle
+assures us, all power is given in heaven and on earth. He became
+Providence,--that is, a Divine Power behind the cloudy veil of human
+agency and worldly events and incidents, controlling, disposing, and
+directing acts and events to the gradual unfolding and final
+consummation of the great scheme of Redemption; the casting forth of the
+evil and alien nature from man, and thus effecting the union of the
+creature with the Creator, of man with God, in and through the Son of
+Man, even the Son of God made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the
+attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son
+of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the
+Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian,
+both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the
+teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly
+character, that his Apostles, who disclaim all certain knowledge of the
+awful event, had understood his words otherwise, and in a sense more
+commensurate with their previous notions and the prejudices of their
+education? They communicated their conjectures, but as conjectures, and
+these too guarded by the avowal, that they had no revelation, no
+revealed commentary on their Master's words, upon this occasion, the
+great apocalypse of Jesus Christ while yet in the flesh. For by this
+title was this great prophecy known among the Christians of the
+Apostolic age.
+
+
+Ib. p. 253.
+
+  Never, Oh! our Lady! never, Oh! our Mother! shalt thou fall again into
+  the crime of idolatry.
+
+Was ever blindness like unto this blindness? I can imagine but one way
+of making it seem possible, namely, that this round square or
+rectilineal curve--this honest Jesuit, I mean--had confined his
+conception of idolatry to the worship of false gods;--whereas his saints
+are genuine godlings, and his 'Magna Mater' a goddess in her own
+right;--and that thus he overlooked the meaning of the word.
+
+
+Ib. p. 254.
+
+  The entire text of the Apostle is as follows:--'Now we beseech you,
+  brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering
+  together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind', &c. (2 Thess.
+  ii. 1-10.)
+
+O Edward Irving! Edward Irving! by what fascination could your spirit be
+drawn away from passages like this, to guess and dream over the
+rhapsodies of the Apocalypse? For rhapsody, according to your
+interpretation, the Poem undeniably is;--though, rightly expounded, it
+is a well knit and highly poetical evolution of a part of this and our
+Lord's more comprehensive prediction, 'Luke' xvii.
+
+
+Ib. p. 297.
+
+  On the ordinary ideas of the coming of Christ in glory and majesty, it
+  will doubtless appear an extravagance to name the Jews, or to take
+  them into consideration; for, according to those ideas, they should
+  hardly have the least particle of our attention.
+
+In comparing this with the preceding chapter I could not help
+exclaiming; What an excellent book would this Jesuit have written, if
+Daniel and the Apocalypse had not existed, or had been unknown to, or
+rejected by, him!
+
+You may divide Lacunza's points of belief into two parallel
+columns;--the first would be found to contain much that is demanded by,
+much that is consonant to, and nothing that is not compatible with,
+reason, the harmony of Holy Writ, and the idea of Christian faith. The
+second would consist of puerilities and anilities, some impossible, most
+incredible; and all so silly, so sensual, as to befit a dreaming
+Talmudist, not a Scriptural Christian. And this latter column would be
+found grounded on Daniel and the Apocalypse!
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. By Juan Josafat
+Ben-Ezra, a converted Jew. Translated from the Spanish, with a
+preliminary Discourse. By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. London, 1827.]
+
+
+[Footnote 2:  See 'supra', vol. iii. p. 93.--Ed.]
+
+
+[Footnote 3: P. 157, 4th edit.--Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON NOBLE'S APPEAL. 1827. [1]
+
+How natural it is to mistake the weakness of an adversary's arguments
+for the strength of our own cause! This is especially applicable to Mr.
+Noble's Appeal. Assuredly as far as Mr. Beaumont's Notes are concerned,
+his victory is complete.
+
+
+Sect. IV. p. 210.
+
+  The intellectual spirit is moving upon the chaos of minds, which
+  ignorance and necessity have thrown into collision and confusion; and
+  the result will be a new creation. "Nature" (to use the nervous
+  language of an-old writer,) "will be melted down and recoined; and all
+  will be bright and beautiful."
+
+Alas! if this be possible now, or at any time henceforward, whence came
+the dross? If nature be bullion that can be melted and thus purified by
+the conjoint action of heat and elective attraction, I pray Mr. Noble to
+tell me to what name or 'genus' he refers the dross? Will he tell me, to
+the Devil? Whence came the Devil? And how was the pure bullion so
+thoughtlessly made as to have an elective affinity for this Devil?
+
+
+Sect. V. p. 286.
+
+  The next anecdote that I shall adduce is similar in its nature to the
+  last * * *. The relater is Dr. Stilling, Counsellor at the Court of
+  the Duke of Baden, in a work entitled 'Die Theorie der Geister-Kunde',
+  printed in 1808.
+
+Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on
+Sung's ('alias' Dr. Stilling's) testimony, had he ever read the work in
+which this passage is found. I happen to possess the work; and a more
+anile, credulous, solemn fop never existed since the days of old Audley.
+It is strange that Mr. Noble should not have heard, that these three
+anecdotes were first related by Immanuel Kant, and still exist in his
+miscellaneous writings.
+
+
+Ib. p. 315.
+
+  "Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of
+  fact? The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to
+  him in the midst of a strong shining light, and said, 'I am God the
+  Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men
+  the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings: I will
+  dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write?' From this period, the
+  Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest
+  manner, what passed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse
+  with angels and spirits as with men," &c.
+
+I remember no such passage as this in Swedenborg's works. Indeed it is
+virtually contradicted by their whole tenor. Swedenborg asserts himself
+to relate 'visa et audita',--his own experience, as a traveller and
+visitor of the spiritual world,--not the words of another as a mere
+'amanuensis'. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.
+
+
+Ib. p. 321.
+
+  The Apostolic canon in such cases is, 'Believe not every spirit, but
+  try the spirits whether they be of God'. (1 John iv. 1.) And the
+  touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the
+  Prophet: 'To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according
+  to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.' (Is. viii.
+  20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *. It is simply
+  this: Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is
+  insane. To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you
+  quote, as if from his own works, a passage which is nowhere to be
+  found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical
+  dictionary or cyclopædia; few or none of which give anything like a
+  fair account of the matter.
+
+Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense
+intended by Gulielmus, namely, as 'mania',--I should as little think of
+charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured
+under an 'acyanoblepsia'.
+
+
+Ib. p. 323.
+
+  Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of
+  the Baron's reverie: 'It came to pass, that, as I took my journey, and
+  was come nigh unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from
+  heaven a great light round about me: and I fell on the ground, and
+  heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?'
+
+In the short space of four years the newspapers contained three several
+cases, two of which I cut out, and still have among my ocean of papers,
+and which, as stated, were as nearly parallel, in external
+accompaniments, to St. Paul's as cases can well be:--struck with
+lightning,--heard the thunder as an articulate voice,--blind for a few
+days, and suddenly recovered their sight. But then there was no Ananias,
+no confirming revelation to another. This it was that justified St. Paul
+as a wise man in regarding the incident as supernatural, or as more than
+a providential omen. N. B. Not every revelation requires a sensible
+miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of
+'credenda'. The prophets appealed to records of acknowledged authority,
+and to their obvious sense literally interpreted. The Baptist needed no
+miracle to attest his right of calling sinners to repentance. See
+'Exodus' iv. 10.
+
+
+Ib. pp. 346, 7.
+
+  This sentiment, that miracles are not the proper evidences of
+  doctrinal truth, is, assuredly, the decision of the Truth itself; as
+  is obvious from many passages in Scripture. We have seen that the
+  design of the miracles of Moses, as external performances, was not to
+  instruct the Israelites in spiritual subjects, but to make them
+  obedient subjects of a peculiar species of political state. And though
+  the miracles of Jesus Christ collaterally served as testimonies to his
+  character, he repeatedly intimates that this was not their main
+  design. * * * At another time more plainly still, he says, that it is
+  'a wicked and adulterous generation' (that) 'seeketh after a sign'; on
+  which occasion, according to Mark, 'he sighed deeply in his spirit'.
+  How characteristic is that touch of the Apostle, 'The Jews require a
+  sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom!' (where by wisdom he means the
+  elegance and refinement of Grecian literature.)
+
+Agreeing, as in the main I do, with the sentiments here expressed by
+this eloquent writer, I must notice that he has, however, mistaken the
+sense of the [Greek: saemeion], which the Jews would have tempted our
+Saviour to shew,--namely, the signal for revolt by openly declaring
+himself their king, and leading them against the Romans. The
+foreknowledge that this superstition would shortly hurry them into utter
+ruin caused the deep sigh,--as on another occasion, the bitter tears.
+Again, by the [Greek: sophía] of the Greeks their disputatious [Greek:
+sophistikàe] is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art:
+and 'sophistæ' may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say,
+iron-mongers.
+
+
+Ib. p. 350.
+
+  Some probably will say, "What argument can induce us to believe a man
+  in a concern of this nature who gives no visible credentials to his
+  authority?" * * * But let us ask in return, "Is it worthy of a being
+  wearing the figure of a man to require such proofs as these to
+  determine his judgment?" * * * "The beasts act from the impulse of
+  their bodily senses, but are utterly incapable of seeing from reason
+  why they should so act: and it might easily be shewn, that while a man
+  thinks and acts under the influence of a miracle, he is as much
+  incapable of perceiving from any rational ground why he should thus
+  think and act, as a beast is." "What!" our opponents will perhaps
+  reply, * * * "Was it not by miracles that the prophets (some of them)
+  testified their authority? Do you not believe these facts?" Yes, my
+  friends, I do most entirely believe them, &c.
+
+There is so much of truth in all this reasoning on miracles, that I feel
+pain in the thought that the result is false,--because it was not the
+whole truth. But this is the grounding, and at the same time pervading,
+error of the Swedenborgians;--that they overlook the distinction between
+congruity with reason, truth of consistency, or internal possibility of
+this or that being objectively real, and the objective reality as fact.
+Miracles, 'quoad' miracles, can never supply the place of subjective
+evidence, that is, of insight. But neither can subjective insight supply
+the place of objective sight. The certainty of the truth of a
+mathematical arch can never prove the fact of its existence. I
+anticipate the answers; but know that they likewise proceed from the
+want of distinguishing between ideas, such as God, Eternity, the
+responsible Will, the Good, and the like,--the actuality of which is
+absolutely subjective, and includes both the relatively subjective and
+the relatively objective as higher or transcendant realities, which
+alone are the proper objects of faith, the great postulates of reason in
+order to its own admission of its own being,--the not distinguishing, I
+say, between these, and those positions which must be either matters of
+fact or fictions. For such latter positions it is that miracles are
+required in lieu of experience. A.'s testimony of experience supplies
+the want of the same experience for B. C. D., &c. For example, how many
+thousands believe the existence of red snow on the testimony of Captain
+Parry! But who can expect more than hints in a marginal note?
+
+
+Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.
+
+  In the general views, then, which are presented in the writings of
+  Swedenborg on the subject of Heaven and Hell, as the abodes,
+  respectively, of happiness and of misery, while there certainly is not
+  anything which is not in the highest degree agreeable both to reason
+  and Scripture, there also seems nothing which could be deemed
+  inconsistent with the usual conceptions of the Christian world.
+
+What tends to render thinking readers a little sceptical, is the want of
+a distinct boundary between the deductions from reason, and the
+articles, the truth of which is to rest on the Baron's personal
+testimony, his 'visa et audita'. Nor is the Baron himself (as it appears
+to me) quite consistent on this point.
+
+
+Ib. p. 434.
+
+  Witness, again, the poet Milton, who introduces active sports among
+  the recreations which he deemed worthy of angels, and (strange indeed
+  for a Puritan!) included even dancing among the number.
+
+How could a man of Noble's sense and sensibility bring himself thus to
+profane the awful name of Milton, by associating it with the epithet
+"Puritan?"
+
+I have often thought of writing a work to be entitled 'Vindiciæ
+Heterodoxæ, sive celebrium virorum [Greek: paradogmatizóntôn] defensio';
+that is, Vindication of Great Men unjustly branded; and at such times
+the names prominent to my mind's eye have been Giordano Bruno, Jacob
+Behmen, Benedict Spinoza, and Emanuel Swedenborg. Grant, that the origin
+of the Swedenborgian theology is a problem; yet on which ever of the
+three possible hypotheses--(possible I mean for gentlemen, scholars and
+Christians)--it may be solved---namely:
+
+1. Swedenborg's own assertion
+and constant belief in the hypothesis of a supernatural illumination;
+or,
+
+2. that the great and excellent man was led into this belief by
+becoming the subject of a very rare, but not (it is said) altogether
+unique, conjunction of the somniative faculty (by which the products of
+the understanding, that is to say, words, conceptions and the like, are
+rendered instantaneously into forms of sense) with the voluntary and
+other powers of the waking state; or,
+
+3. the modest suggestion that the first and second may not be so
+incompatible as they appear--still it ought never to be forgotten that
+the merit and value of Swedenborg's system do only in a very secondary
+degree depend on any one of the three. For even though the first were
+adopted, the conviction and conversion of such a believer must,
+according to a fundamental principle of the New Church, have been
+wrought by an insight into the intrinsic truth and goodness of the
+doctrines, severally and collectively, and their entire consonance with
+the light of the written and of the eternal word, that is, with the
+Scriptures and with the sciential and the practical reason. Or say that
+the second hypothesis were preferred, and that by some hitherto
+unexplained affections of Swedenborg's brain and nervous system, he from
+the year 1743, thought and reasoned through the 'medium' and
+instrumentality of a series of appropriate and symbolic visual and
+auditual images, spontaneously rising before him, and these so clear and
+so distinct, as at length to overpower perhaps his first suspicions of
+their subjective nature, and to become objective for him, that is, in
+his own belief of their kind and origin,--still the thoughts, the
+reasonings, the grounds, the deductions, the facts illustrative, or in
+proof, and the conclusions, remain the same; and the reader might derive
+the same benefit from them as from the sublime and impressive truths
+conveyed in the Vision of Mirza or the Tablet of Cebes. So much even
+from a very partial acquaintance with the works of Swedenborg, I can
+venture to assert; that as a moralist Swedenborg is above all praise;
+and that as a naturalist, psychologist, and theologian, he has strong
+and varied claims on the gratitude and admiration of the professional
+and philosophical student.--April 1827.
+
+P. S. Notwithstanding all that Mr. Noble says in justification of his
+arrangement, it is greatly to be regretted that the contents of this
+work are so confusedly tossed together. It is, however, a work of great
+merit.
+
+
+
+[Footnote 1: An Appeal in behalf of the views of the eternal world and
+state, and the doctrines of faith and life, held by the body of
+Christians who believe that a New Church is signified (in the
+Revelation, c. xxi.) by the New Jerusalem, including Answers to
+objections, particularly those of the Rev. G. Beaumont, in his work
+entitled "The Anti-Swedenborg." Addressed to the reflecting of all
+denominations. By Samuel Noble, Minister of Hanover Street Chapel,
+London. London, 1826. Ed.]
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+ESSAY ON FAITH.
+
+Faith may be defined, as fidelity to our own being--so far as such being
+is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear
+inference or implication, to being generally, as far as the same is not
+the object of the senses: and again to whatever is affirmed or
+understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same.
+This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am
+conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto
+others as I would they should do unto me;--in other words, a categorical
+(that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;--that the maxim
+('regula maxima' or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and
+outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising
+therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings;--this, I
+say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different
+way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my
+outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act of being conscious
+of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact of which all men
+either are or ought to be conscious;--a fact, the ignorance of which
+constitutes either the non-personality of the ignorant, or the guilt, in
+which latter case the ignorance is equivalent to knowledge wilfully
+darkened. I know that I possess this consciousness as a man, and not as
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge; hence knowing that consciousness of this fact
+is the root of all other consciousness, and the only practical
+contradistinction of man from the brutes, we name it the conscience; by
+the natural absence or presumed presence of which, the law, both divine
+and human, determines whether X Y Z be a thing or a person:--the
+conscience being that which never to have had places the objects in the
+same order of things as the brutes, for example, idiots; and to have
+lost which implies either insanity or apostasy. Well--this we have
+affirmed is a fact of which every honest man is as fully assured as of
+his seeing, hearing or smelling. But though the former assurance does
+not differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in
+the kind; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is
+essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in
+any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will,
+dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses
+impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses
+we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned,
+we are passive;--but in the fact of the conscience we are not only
+agents, but it is by this alone, that we know ourselves to be such; nay,
+that our very passiveness in this latter is an act of passiveness, and
+that we are patient ('patientes')--not, as in the other case, 'simply'
+passive. The result is, the consciousness of responsibility; and the
+proof is afforded by the inward experience of the diversity between
+regret and remorse.
+
+If I have sound ears, and my companion speaks to me with a due
+proportion of voice, I may persuade him that I did not hear, but cannot
+deceive myself. But when my conscience speaks to me, I can, by repeated
+efforts, render myself finally insensible; to which add this other
+difference in the case of conscience, namely, that to make myself deaf
+is one and the same thing with making my conscience dumb, till at length
+I become unconscious of my conscience. Frequent are the instances in
+which it is suspended, and as it were drowned, in the inundation of the
+appetites, passions and imaginations, to which I have resigned myself,
+making use of my will in order to abandon my free-will; and there are
+not, I fear, examples wanting of the conscience being utterly destroyed,
+or of the passage of wickedness into madness;--that species of madness,
+namely, in which the reason is lost. For so long as the reason
+continues, so long must the conscience exist either as a good
+conscience, or as a bad conscience.
+
+It appears then, that even the very first step, that the initiation of
+the process, the becoming conscious of a conscience, partakes of the
+nature of an act. It is an act, in and by which we take upon ourselves
+an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty; and this
+fealty or fidelity implying the power of being unfaithful, it is the
+first and fundamental sense of Faith. It is likewise the commencement of
+experience, and the result of all other experience. In other words,
+conscience, in this its simplest form, must be supposed in order to
+consciousness, that is, to human consciousness. Brutes may be, and are
+scions, but those beings only, who have an I, 'scire possunt hoc vel
+illud una cum seipsis'; that is, 'conscire vel scire aliquid mecum', or
+to know a thing in relation to myself, and in the act of knowing myself
+as acted upon by that something.
+
+Now the third person could never have been distinguished from the first
+but by means of the second. There can be no He without a previous Thou.
+Much less could an I exist for us, except as it exists during the
+suspension of the will, as in dreams; and the nature of brutes may be
+best understood, by conceiving them as somnambulists. This is a deep
+meditation, though the position is capable of the strictest
+proof,--namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and that a Thou
+is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as equal to Thou,
+and yet not the same. And this again is only possible by putting them in
+opposition as correspondent opposites, or correlatives. In order to
+this, a something must be affirmed in the one, which is rejected in the
+other, and this something is the will. I do not will to consider myself
+as equal to myself, for in the very act of constituting myself 'I', I
+take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is,
+of any application of the will. If then, I 'minus' the will be the
+'thesis'; [2] Thou 'plus' will must be the 'antithesis', but the
+equation of Thou with I, by means of a free act, negativing the sameness
+in order to establish the equality, is the true definition of
+conscience. But as without a Thou there can be no You, so without a You
+no They, These or Those; and as all these conjointly form the materials
+and subjects of consciousness, and the conditions of experience, it is
+evident that the con-science is the root of all consciousness,--'a
+fortiori', the precondition of all experience,--and that the conscience
+cannot have been in its first revelation deduced from experience. Soon,
+however, experience comes into play. We learn that there are other
+impulses beside the dictates of conscience; that there are powers within
+us and without us ready to usurp the throne of conscience, and busy in
+tempting us to transfer our allegiance. We learn that there are many
+things contrary to conscience, and therefore to be rejected, and utterly
+excluded, and many that can coexist with its supremacy only by being
+subjugated, as beasts of burthen; and others again, as, for instance,
+the social tendernesses and affections, and the faculties and
+excitations of the intellect, which must be at least subordinated. The
+preservation of our loyalty and fealty under these trials and against
+these rivals constitutes the second sense of Faith; and we shall need
+but one more point of view to complete its full import. This is the
+consideration of what is presupposed in the human conscience. The answer
+is ready. As in the equation of the correlative I and Thou, one of the
+twin constituents is to be taken as 'plus' will, the other as 'minus'
+will, so is it here: and it is obvious that the reason or
+'super'-individual of each man, whereby he is man, is the factor we are
+to take as 'minus' will; and that the individual will or personalizing
+principle of free agency (arbitrement is Milton's word) is the factor
+marked 'plus' will;--and again, that as the identity or coinherence of
+the absolute will and the reason, is the peculiar character of God; so
+is the 'synthesis' of the individual will and the common reason, by the
+subordination of the former to the latter, the only possible likeness or
+image of the 'prothesis', or identity, and therefore the required proper
+character of man. Conscience, then, is a witness respecting the identity
+of the will and the reason effected by the self-subordination of the
+will, or self, to the reason, as equal to, or representing, the will of
+God. But the personal will is a factor in other moral 'syntheses'; for
+example, appetite 'plus' personal will=sensuality; lust of power, 'plus'
+personal will,=ambition, and so on, equally as in the 'synthesis', on
+which the conscience is grounded. Not this therefore, but the other
+'synthesis', must supply the specific character of the conscience; and
+we must enter into an analysis of reason. Such as the nature and objects
+of the reason are, such must be the functions and objects of the
+conscience. And the former we shall best learn by recapitulating those
+constituents of the total man which are either contrary to, or disparate
+from, the reason.
+
+  I.   Reason, and the proper objects of reason, are wholly alien from
+       sensation. Reason is supersensual, and its antagonist is
+       appetite, and the objects of appetite the lust of the flesh.
+
+  II.  Reason and its objects do not appertain to the world of the
+       senses inward or outward; that is, they partake not of sense or
+       fancy. Reason is super-sensuous, and here its antagonist is the
+       lust of the eye.
+
+  III. Reason and its objects are not things of reflection, association,
+       discursion, discourse in the old sense of the word as opposed to
+       intuition; "discursive or intuitive," as Milton has it. Reason
+       does not indeed necessarily exclude the finite, either in time or
+       in space, but it includes them 'eminenter'. Thus the prime mover
+       of the material universe is affirmed to contain all motion as its
+       cause, but not to be, or to suffer, motion in itself.
+
+Reason is not the faculty of the finite. But here I must premise the
+following. The faculty of the finite is that which reduces the confused
+impressions of sense to their essential forms,--quantity, quality,
+relation, and in these action and reaction, cause and effect, and the
+like; thus raises the materials furnished by the senses and sensations
+into objects of reflection, and so makes experience possible. Without
+it, man's representative powers would be a delirium, a chaos, a scudding
+cloudage of shapes; and it is therefore most appropriately called the
+understanding, or substantiative faculty. Our elder metaphysicians, down
+to Hobbes inclusively, called this likewise discourse, 'discursus,
+discursio,' from its mode of action as not staying at any one object,
+but running as it were to and fro to abstract, generalize, and classify.
+Now when this faculty is employed in the service of the pure reason, it
+brings out the necessary and universal truths contained in the infinite
+into distinct contemplation by the pure act of the sensuous imagination,
+that is, in the production of the forms of space and time abstracted
+from all corporeity, and likewise of the inherent forms of the
+understanding itself abstractedly from the consideration of particulars,
+as in the case of geometry, numeral mathematics, universal logic, and
+pure metaphysics. The discursive faculty then becomes what our
+Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason."
+
+We will now take up our reasoning again from the words "motion in
+itself."
+
+It is evident then, that the reason, as the irradiative power, and the
+representative of the infinite, judges the understanding as the faculty
+of the finite, and cannot without error be judged by it. When this is
+attempted, or when the understanding in its 'synthesis' with the
+personal will, usurps the supremacy of the reason, or affects to
+supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the
+flesh ([Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]) or the wisdom of this world. The
+result is, that the reason is super-finite; and in this relation, its
+antagonist is the insubordinate understanding, or mind of the flesh.
+
+IV. Reason, as one with the absolute will, ('In the beginning was the
+    Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God',) and
+    therefore for man the certain representative of the will of God, is
+    above the will of man as an individual will. We have seen in III.
+    that it stands in antagonism to all mere particulars; but here it
+    stands in antagonism to all mere individual interests as so many
+    selves, to the personal will as seeking its objects in the
+    manifestation of itself for itself--'sit pro ratione
+    voluntas';--whether this be realized with adjuncts, as in the lust
+    of the flesh, and in the lust of the eye; or without adjuncts, as in
+    the thirst and pride of power, despotism, egoistic ambition. The
+    fourth antagonist, then, of reason is the lust of the will.
+
+Corollary. Unlike a million of tigers, a million of men is very
+different from a million times one man. Each man in a numerous society
+is not only coexistent with, but virtually organized into, the multitude
+of which he is an integral part. His 'idem' is modified by the 'alter'.
+And there arise impulses and objects from this 'synthesis' of the 'alter
+et idem', myself and my neighbour. This, again, is strictly analogous to
+what takes place in the vital organization of the individual man. The
+cerebral system of nerves has its correspondent 'antithesis' in the
+abdominal system: but hence arises a 'synthesis' of the two in the
+pectoral system as the intermediate, and, like a drawbridge, at once
+conductor and boundary. In the latter as objectized by the former arise
+the emotions, affections, and in one word, the passions, as
+distinguished from the cognitions and appetites. Now the reason has been
+shown to be super-individual, generally, and therefore not less so when
+the form of an individualization subsists in the 'alter', than when it
+is confined to the 'idem'; not less when the emotions have their
+conscious or believed object in another, than when their subject is the
+individual personal self. For though these emotions, affections,
+attachments, and the like, are the prepared ladder by which the lower
+nature is taken up into, and made to partake of, the highest room,--as
+we are taught to give a feeling of reality to the higher 'per medium
+commune' with the lower, and thus gradually to see the reality of the
+higher (namely, the objects of reason) and finally to know that the
+latter are indeed and pre-eminently real, as if you love your earthly
+parents whom you see, by these means you will learn to love your
+Heavenly Father who is invisible;--yet this holds good only so far as
+the reason is the president, and its objects the ultimate aim; and cases
+may arise in which the Christ as the Logos or Redemptive Reason
+declares, 'He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of
+me'; nay, he that can permit his emotions to rise to an equality with
+the universal reason, is in enmity with that reason. Here then reason
+appears as the love of God; and its antagonist is the attachment to
+individuals wherever it exists in diminution of, or in competition with,
+the love which is reason.
+
+In these five paragraphs I have enumerated and explained the several
+powers or forces belonging or incidental to human nature, which in all
+matters of reason the man is bound either to subjugate or subordinate to
+reason. The application to Faith follows of its own accord. The first or
+most indefinite sense of faith is fidelity: then fidelity under previous
+contract or particular moral obligation. In this sense faith is fealty
+to a rightful superior: faith is the duty of a faithful subject to a
+rightful governor. Then it is allegiance in active service; fidelity to
+the liege lord under circumstances, and amid the temptations, of
+usurpation, rebellion, and intestine discord. Next we seek for that
+rightful superior on our duties to whom all our duties to all other
+superiors, on our faithfulness to whom all our bounden relations to all
+other objects of fidelity, are founded. We must inquire after that duty
+in which all others find their several degrees and dignities, and from
+which they derive their obligative force. We are to find a superior,
+whose rights, including our duties, are presented to the mind in the
+very idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are
+predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a
+circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle, consequently
+underived, unconditional, and as rationally insusceptible, so probably
+prohibitive, of all further question. In this sense then faith is
+fidelity, fealty, allegiance of the moral nature to God, in opposition
+to all usurpation, and in resistance to all temptation to the placing
+any other claim above or equal with our fidelity to God.
+
+The will of God is the last ground and final aim of all our duties, and
+to that the whole man is to be harmonized by subordination, subjugation,
+or suppression alike in commission and omission. But the will of God,
+which is one with the supreme intelligence, is revealed to man through
+the conscience. But the conscience, which consists in an inappellable
+bearing-witness to the truth and reality of our reason, may legitimately
+be construed with the term reason, so far as the conscience is
+prescriptive; while as approving or condemning, it is the consciousness
+of the subordination or insubordination, the harmony or discord, of the
+personal will of man to and with the representative of the will of God.
+This brings me to the last and fullest sense of Faith, that is, as the
+obedience of the individual will to the reason, in the lust of the flesh
+as opposed to the supersensual; in the lust of the eye as opposed to the
+supersensuous; in the pride of the understanding as opposed to the
+infinite, in the [Greek: phronaema sarkos] in contrariety to the
+spiritual truth; in the lust of the personal will as opposed to the
+absolute and universal; and in the love of the creature, as far as it is
+opposed to the love which is one with the reason, namely, the love of
+God.
+
+Thus then to conclude. Faith subsists in the 'synthesis' of the reason
+and the individual will. By virtue of the latter therefore it must be an
+energy, and inasmuch as it relates to the whole moral man, it must be
+exerted in each and all of his constituents or incidents, faculties and
+tendencies;--it must be a total, not a partial; a continuous, not a
+desultory or occasional energy. And by virtue of the former, that is,
+reason, faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of truth.
+In the incomparable words of the Evangelist, therefore--'faith must be a
+light originating in the Logos, or the substantial reason, which is
+coeternal and one with the Holy Will, and which light is at the same
+time the life of men'. Now as life is here the sum or collective of all
+moral and spiritual acts, in suffering, doing, and being, so is faith
+the source and the sum, the energy and the principle of the fidelity of
+man to God, by the subordination of his human will, in all provinces of
+his nature to his reason, as the sum of spiritual truth, representing
+and manifesting the will Divine.
+
+
+END OF VOL. IV. (The Final Volume in this series.)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4.
+by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10801 ***