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| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
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| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10801-0.txt b/10801-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5153206 --- /dev/null +++ b/10801-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13204 @@ +*** 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: GÃo 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: ThraeskeÃa.] (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 gà r dÃkais 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: eukaÃrôs akaÃrôs], _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 biblÃon 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 +epÃskopoi]--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 perÃthumos egô gà r mÃsei en Ãsô 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 mà e 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 phaÃnomena kaì +aÃsthaeta]) by bread and wine, does at the same time declare the flesh +and blood not to be the [Greek: phaÃnomena kaì aÃsthaeta] 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: mÃa 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: theatà es] 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 + gÃnetai agathou Bouláematos kÃnaesis 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 à e theataÃ] (according to Gregory Nyssen's +shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism: or [Greek: +hén ti gÃnetai 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: mÃa kÃnaesis + 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 + mà e déchesthai tà en katà physin diaphorà n, mÃxin 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 + ktÃseos], 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 patrÃ], + 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: monogenà es 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 eimÃ]. 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: ousÃa]? Why +[Greek: ousÃa] should not have been rendered by 'essentia', I cannot +conceive. 'Est' seems a contraction of 'esset', and 'ens' of 'essens': +[Greek: ôn, ousa, ousÃa] = '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: sà rx], the living body, could be or exist without a soul, or a +human living body without a human soul! [Greek: Sà rx] 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: aïdÃôs] 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 mà e 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: archaspistà es] 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 poiaetà es tôn hólôn éstai Theòs ho tô Môsei eipôn + autòn einai Theòn Abraà m, kaì Theòn Isaà k, 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' à n, hôs ho emòs lógos, ehis mèn Theòs, eis hèn + aÃtion 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 ahà está el Doctor Jorge Bull Profesor de TeologÃa, 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 chaÃrein],--(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 +sà rx],--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 tà en phthoropoiòn ousÃan aphanÃsas touto dè ouk + aen hetérôs genésthai ei máeper hae katà phúsin zôà e proseplákae tô + tà en phthorà n dexaménô, aphanizousa mèn tà en phthorà n, 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: hà e 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: ainÃttein tà en 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 +mà e 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 uhÃos], 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 uhÃos, ei mà e 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 huÃos], +conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou] +including the Son in the [Greek: patà er 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: Boulà e 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 mà e +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: Ãson heautòn poiôn tòn Theô] (18) refers,--not to the +[Greek: paterá Ãdion 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 paelÃkon eisenáenektai pónon, érgô pasi daelos kaì perì tà + philósopha dè kaì eleuthéria taes éxôthen paideÃas oiós tis aen, oudèn + dei légein hóti kaì málista tà en katà Plátôna kaì Pythagóran ezaelôkôs + agôgà en, 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 theologÃas]) 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 aeÃzôon]. 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: mÃsaetron] 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: thraeskeÃa]. 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: +thraeskeÃa]. 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: thraeskeÃa]). 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: Ãtae] +'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' exochà en] 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: psychikà e 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, à e +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: sophÃa] of the Greeks their disputatious [Greek: +sophistikà e] 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 *** diff --git a/10801-h/10801-h.htm b/10801-h/10801-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..358e431 --- /dev/null +++ b/10801-h/10801-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,13743 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>Coleridge's 'Literary Remains', vol. 4</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> + +<meta name="keywords" content="Coleridge, philosophy, theology, essay, essays, literature, English Literature, bibliography, e-book, Public Doman, free e-book"> + +<meta name="description" content="Coleridge's 'Literary Remains', vol. 4, the final volume, comprising previously unpublished philosophy, musings and fragments, now available as are vols. 1-3, in html form, as a free download from Project Gutenberg"> + +<style type="text/css"> +<!-- +body {background:#ffff99; margin:10%; text-align:justify} +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {color:#A82C28} +--> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10801 ***</div> + +<img src="images/CI1.gif" width="333" height="362" align="right" border="1" alt="frontispiece"> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h1>Coleridge's <i>Literary Remains</i></h1> + +<br> +<br><br> +<br> + +<h3>volume 4</h3> +<br> +<br><br> +<br> + +<br> + +collected and edited by<br> +<br> + +Henry Nelson Coleridge<br> +<br><br> +<br> +<br> + +1839<br> +<br> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + + +<p><b><a name="toc">Table of Contents</a></b></p> +<ul> +<li><a href="#introduction">Advertisement</a></li> +</ul><br> +<ul> +<li>Notes on:</li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section1">Luther's <i>Table Talk</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section2"><i>The Life of St. Theresa</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section3">Burnet's <i>Life of Bishop Bedell</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section4">Baxter's <i>Life</i> of himself</a></li> +<li><a href="#section5">Leighton</a></li> +<li><a href="#section6">Sherlock's <i>Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section7">Waterland's <i>Vindication of Christ's Divinity</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section7b">Waterland's <i>Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity</i></a></li> + +<li><a href="#section8">Skelton's <i>Works</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section9">Andrew Fuller's <i>Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section10">Whitaker's <i>Origin of Arianism Disclosed</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section11">Oxlee on <i>The Trinity and Incarnation</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section12"><i>A Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section13">Davison's <i>Discourses on Prophecy</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section14">Irving's <i>Ben-Ezra</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section15">Noble's <i>Appeal</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section16">Essay on Faith</a></li> +</ul> +</ul><br> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<p><b><a name="index">Extended Contents, or Index</a></b></p> +<ul> +<li><a href="#introduction">Advertisement</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Notes on:</li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section1">Luther's <i>Table Talk</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#1a">The Epistle Dedicatory</a></li> +<li><a href="#1b">Chap. I. p. 1, 2</a>, <a href="#1c">4</a>, <a href="#1d">9</a>, <a href="#1e">12</a>, <a href="#1f">21</a>, <a href="#1g">25</a>, <a href="#1h">32</a></li> +<li><a href="#1i">Chap. II. p. 37</a>, <a href="#1j">54</a>, <a href="#1k">54 cont.</a>, <a href="#1l">61</a>, <a href="#1m">62</a></li> +<li><a href="#1n">Chap. VI. p. 103.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1o">Chap. VII. p. 113.</a>, <a href="#1p">120</a></li> +<li><a href="#1q">Chap. VII. p. 120 cont.</a>, <a href="#1r">121</a></li> +<li><a href="#1s">Chap. VII. p. 121 cont.</a>, <a href="#1t">122</a></li> +<li><a href="#1u">Chap. VIII. p. 147.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1v">Chap. IX. p. 160.</a>, <a href="#1w">161</a>, <a href="#1x">163</a>, <a href="#1y">163 cont.</a>, <a href="#1z">p. 165.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1aa">Chap. X. p. 168, 9</a>, <a href="#1ab">174.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ac">Chap. XII. p. 187</a>, <a href="#1ad">189.</a>, <a href="#1ae">190</a>, <a href="#1af">190 cont.</a>, <a href="#1ag">197</a>, <a href="#1ah">197 cont.</a>, <a href="#1ai">200</a>, <a href="#1aj">203</a>, <a href="#1ak">205</a>, <a href="#1al">205 cont.</a>, <a href="#1am">205 cont. again.</a>, <a href="#1an">206</a>, <a href="#1ao">207.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ap">Chap. XIII. p. 208.</a>, <a href="#1aq">210-11</a>, <a href="#1ar">211</a>, <a href="#1as">213</a>, <a href="#1at"> 214.</a>, <a href="#1au">219-20</a>, <a href="#1av">226</a>, <a href="#1aw">227</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ax">Chap. XIV. p. 230</a>, <a href="#1ay">231-2</a></li> +<li><a href="#1az">Chap. XV. p. 233-4.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ba">Chap. XVI. p. 247.</a>, <a href="#1bb">247 cont.</a>, <a href="#1bc">248</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bd">Chap. XVII. p. 249</a>, <a href="#1be">249 cont.</a>, <a href="#1bf">250</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bg">Chap. XXI. p. 276.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bh">Chap. XXII. p. 290.</a>, <a href="#1bi">291</a>, <a href="#1bj">291 cont.</a>, <a href="#1bk">297</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bl">Chap. XXVII. p. 335.</a>, <a href="#1bm">337</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bn">Chap. XXVIII. p. 347.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bo">Chap. XXIX. p. 349</a>, <a href="#1bp">351</a>, <a href="#1bq">351 cont.</a>, <a href="#1br">352</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bs">Chap. XXXII. p. 362.</a>, <a href="#1bt">364</a>, <a href="#1bu">365</a>, <a href="#1bv">365 cont.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bw">Chap. XXXIII. p. 367.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bx">Chap. XXXIV. p. 369</a>, <a href="#1by">370</a>, <a href="#1bz">371</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ca">Chap. XXXV. p. 388.</a>, <a href="#1cb">389</a>, <a href="#1cc">389 cont.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cd">Chap. XXXVI. p. 389.</a>, <a href="#1ce">390</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cf">Chap. XXXVII. p. 398.</a>, <a href="#1cg">398 cont.</a>, <a href="#1ch">399</a>, <a href="#1ci">403</a>, <a href="#1cj">404</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ck">Chap. XLIV. p. 431.</a>, <a href="#1cl">432</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cm">Chap. XLVIII. p. 442.</a>, <a href="#1cn">442 cont.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1co">Chap. XLIX. p. 443.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cp">Chap. L. p. 446</a>, <a href="#1cq">447</a>, <a href="#1cr">450</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cs">Chap. LIX. p. 481.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ct">Chap. LX. p. 483.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ct">Chap. LXX. p. 503.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section2"><i>The Life of St. Theresa</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#2a">Pref. Part I. p. 51. Letter of Father Avila to Mother Teresa de Jesu.</a></li> +<li><a href="#2b">Life, Part I. Chap. IV. p. 15.</a></li> +<li><a href="#2c">Life, Part I. Chap. V. p. 24.</a>, <a href="#2d">43</a></li> +<li><a href="#2e">Life, Part I. Chap. VIII. p. 44.</a>, <a href="#2f">45</a></li> +<li><a href="#2g"><i>In fine</i></a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section3">Burnet's <i>Life of Bishop Bedell</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#3a">p. 12-14</a></li> +<li><a href="#3b">p. 26</a></li> +<li><a href="#3c">p. 158</a></li> +<li><a href="#3d">p. 161</a></li> +<li><a href="#3e">p. 164</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section4">Baxter's <i>Life</i> of himself</a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#4a">Book I. Part I. p. 2.</a>, <a href="#4b">5, 6</a>, <a href="#4c">22</a>, <a href="#4d">22 cont.</a>, <a href="#4e">23</a>, <a href="#4f">23 cont.</a>, <a href="#4g">24</a>, <a href="#4h">25</a>, <a href="#4i">27</a>, <a href="#4j">27 cont.</a>, <a href="#4k">27 cont. again</a>, <a href="#4l">34</a>, <a href="#4m">40</a>, <a href="#4n">41</a>, <a href="#4o">47</a>, <a href="#4p">59</a>, <a href="#4q">62</a>, <a href="#4r">66</a>, <a href="#4s">71</a>, <a href="#4t">75</a>, <a href="#4u">76</a>, <a href="#4v">77</a>, <a href="#4w">77 cont.</a>, <a href="#4x">77 cont. again</a>, <a href="#4y">79</a>, <a href="#4z">80</a>, <a href="#4aa">82</a>, <a href="#4ab">84</a>, <a href="#4ac">87</a>, <a href="#4ad">128</a>, <a href="#4ae">129</a>, <a href="#4af">131</a>, <a href="#4ag">135</a>, <a href="#4ah">136</a></li> +<li><a href="#4ai">Book I. Part II. p.139.</a>, <a href="#4aj">141</a>, <a href="#4ak">142</a>, <a href="#4al">143</a>, <a href="#4am">177</a>, <a href="#4an">179</a>, <a href="#4ao">185</a>, <a href="#4ap">188</a>, <a href="#4aq">189</a>, <a href="#4ar">194</a>, <a href="#4as">198</a>, <a href="#4at">201</a>, <a href="#4au">203</a>, <a href="#4av">222</a>, <a href="#4aw">222 cont.</a>, <a href="#4ax">224</a>, <a href="#4ay">225</a>, <a href="#4az">226</a>, <a href="#4ba">246</a>, <a href="#4bb">248</a>, <a href="#4bc">249</a>, <a href="#4bd">249 cont.</a>, <a href="#4be">250</a>, <a href="#4bf">254</a>, <a href="#4bg">254 cont.</a>, <a href="#4bh">257</a>, <a href="#4bi">269</a>, <a href="#4bj">272</a>, <a href="#4bk">273</a>, <a href="#4bl">308</a>, <a href="#4bm">337</a><a href="#4bn">341</a>, <a href="#4bo">343</a>, <a href="#4bp">368</a>, <a href="#4bq">368 cont.</a>, <a href="#4br">369</a>, <a href="#4bs">369 cont.</a>, <a href="#4bt">369 cont. again</a>, <a href="#4bu">370</a>, <a href="#4bv">373</a>, <a href="#4bw">374</a>, <a href="#4bx">375</a>, <a href="#4by">398</a>, <a href="#4bz">401</a>, <a href="#4ca">405</a>, <a href="#4cb">412</a>, <a href="#4cc">435</a></li> +<li><a href="#4cd">Part III. p. 59.</a>, <a href="#4ce">60</a>, <a href="#4cf">65</a>, <a href="#4cg">67</a>, <a href="#4ch">69</a>, <a href="#4ci">69 cont.</a>, <a href="#4cj">144</a>, <a href="#4ck">153</a>, <a href="#4cl">155</a>, <a href="#4cm">180</a>, <a href="#4cn">181</a>, <a href="#4co">186</a>, <a href="#4cp">191</a></li> +<li><a href="#4cq">Appendix II. p. 37</a>, <a href="#4cr">37 cont.</a>, <a href="#4cs">45</a></li> +<li><a href="#4ct">Appendix. III. p. 55.</a></li> +<li><a href="#4cu"><i>In fine.</i></a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section5">Leighton</a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#5a">Comment Vol. I. p. 2.</a>, <a href="#5b">13-15</a>, <a href="#5c">63-4</a>, <a href="#5d">68</a>, <a href="#5e">75</a>, <a href="#5f">76</a>, <a href="#5g">104-5</a>, <a href="#5h">121</a>, <a href="#5i">122</a>, <a href="#5j">124</a>, <a href="#5k">138</a>, <a href="#5l">158</a>, <a href="#5m">166</a>, <a href="#5n">170</a>, <a href="#5o">174-5</a>, <a href="#5p">194</a>, <a href="#5q">200</a>, <a href="#5r">211</a>, <a href="#5s">216</a>, <a href="#5t">229</a></li> +<li><a href="#5u">Vol. II. p. 242.</a>, <a href="#5v">293</a></li> +<li><a href="#5w">Vol. III. p. 20. Serm. I.</a>, <a href="#5x">p. 63. Serm. V.</a>, <a href="#5y">p. 68</a>, <a href="#5z">73</a>, <a href="#5aa">p. 77. Serm. VI.</a>, <a href="#5ab">p. 104. Serm. VII.</a>, <a href="#5ac">p. 107. Serm. VIII.</a>, <a href="#5ad">Serm. IX. p. 12.</a>, <a href="#5ae">p. 12 cont.</a>, <a href="#5af">p. 12 cont. again</a>, <a href="#5ag">Serm. XV. p. 196.</a>, <a href="#5ah">Serm. XVI. p. 204.</a></li> +<li><a href="#5ai">Lecture IX. vol. IV. p. 96.</a>, <a href="#5aj">105</a>, <a href="#5ak">Lect. XI. p. 113.</a>, <a href="#5al">Lect. XV. p. 152.</a>, <a href="#5am">Lect. XIX. p. 201</a>, <a href="#5an">Lect. XXI. p. 225.</a>, <a href="#5ao">Lect. XXIV. p. 245.</a>, <a href="#5ap">Exhortation to the Students, p. 252.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section6">Sherlock's <i>Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#6a">Sect. I. p. 3.</a>, <a href="#6b">4</a>, <a href="#6c">4 cont.</a>, <a href="#6d">6</a></li> +<li><a href="#6e">Sect. II. p. 13.</a>, <a href="#6f">14.</a>, <a href="#6g">18</a></li> +<li><a href="#6h">Sect. III. p. 23.</a>, <a href="#6i">26</a>, <a href="#6j">27</a>, <a href="#6k">28</a></li> +<li><a href="#6l">Sect. IV. p. 50.</a>, <a href="#6m">64</a>, <a href="#6n">68</a>, <a href="#6o">72</a>, <a href="#6p">72 cont.</a>, <a href="#6q">81</a>, <a href="#6r">88</a>, <a href="#6s">97</a>, <a href="#6t">98</a>, <a href="#6u">98-9</a></li> +<li><a href="#6v">Sect. V. p. 102.</a>, <a href="#6w">110-13</a>, <a href="#6x">115-16</a>, <a href="#6y">117</a>, <a href="#6z">120</a>, <a href="#6aa">120 cont.</a>, <a href="#6ab">121</a>, <a href="#6ac">121 cont.</a>, <a href="#6ad">124</a>, <a href="#6ae">126</a>, <a href="#6af">127</a>, <a href="#6ag">133</a></li> +<li><a href="#6ah">Sect. VI. pp. 147-8.</a>, <a href="#6ai">149</a>, <a href="#6aj">150</a>, <a href="#6ak">153</a>, <a href="#6al">154</a>, <a href="#6am">156</a>, <a href="#6an">159</a>, <a href="#6ao">160</a>, <a href="#6ap">161-3</a>, <a href="#6aq">164</a>, <a href="#6ar">168</a>, <a href="#6as">171</a>, <a href="#6at">177</a>, <a href="#6au">177 cont.</a>, <a href="#6av">177 cont. again</a>, <a href="#6aw">186</a>, <a href="#6ax">222</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section7">Waterland's <i>Vindication of Christ's Divinity</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#7a"><i>In Initio</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#7b">Query I. p. 1.</a>, <a href="#7c">2</a>, <a href="#7d">3</a></li> +<li><a href="#7e">Query II. p. 43.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7f">Query XV. p. 225-6.</a>, <a href="#7g">226</a>, <a href="#7h">226 cont.</a>, <a href="#7i">227-8</a></li> +<li><a href="#7j">Query XVI. p. 234.</a>, <a href="#7k">235</a>, <a href="#7l">237</a>, <a href="#7m">239</a>, <a href="#7n">251</a></li> +<li><a href="#7o">Query XVII.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7p">Query XVIII. p. 269</a>, <a href="#7q">274</a></li> +<li><a href="#7r">Query XIX. p. 279.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7s">Query XX. p. 302.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7t">Query XXI. p. 303.</a>, <a href="#7u">316-7</a></li> +<li><a href="#7v">Query XXIII. p. 351.</a>, <a href="#7w">354</a>, <a href="#7x">357</a>, <a href="#7y">359</a></li> +<li><a href="#7z">Query XXIV. p. 371.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7aa">Query XXVI. p. 412.</a>, <a href="#7ab">412 cont.</a>, <a href="#7ac">414</a>, <a href="#7ad">415</a>, <a href="#7ae">421</a></li> +<li><a href="#7af">Query XXVII. p. 427.</a>, <a href="#7ag">432</a>, <a href="#7ah">436</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section7">Waterland's <i>Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#77a">Chap. I. p. 18.</a></li> +<li><a href="#77b">Chap. IV. p. 111.</a>, <a href="#77c">114</a>, <a href="#77d">114 cont.</a>, <a href="#77e">123</a>, <a href="#77f">126</a>, <a href="#77g">127</a>, <a href="#77h">128</a>, <a href="#77i">129</a>, <a href="#77j">130</a></li> +<li><a href="#77k">Chap. V. p. 140.</a>, <a href="#77l">187</a></li> +<li><a href="#77m">Chap. VI. p. 230.</a>, <a href="#77n">233</a>, <a href="#77o">236</a>, <a href="#77p">238</a>, <a href="#77q">250</a>, <a href="#77r">257</a>, <a href="#77s">257 cont.</a>, <a href="#77t">259</a>, <a href="#77u">266</a>, <a href="#77v">268</a>, <a href="#77w">272</a>, <a href="#77x">286</a>, <a href="#77y">288</a>, <a href="#77z">292</a>, <a href="#77aa">338</a>, <a href="#77ab">340</a></li> +<li><a href="#77ac">Chap. VII. p. 389.</a>, <a href="#77ad">41-2 etc.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section8">Skelton's <i>Works</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#8a">Burdy's Life of Skelton, p. 22.</a>, <a href="#8b">67</a>, <a href="#8c">106</a></li> +<li><a href="#8d">Vol. I. p. 177-180.</a>, <a href="#8e">182</a>, <a href="#8f">185</a>, <a href="#8g">186</a>, <a href="#8h">214.; End of Discourse II.</a>, <a href="#8i">234</a>, <a href="#8j">251</a>, <a href="#8k">265</a>, <a href="#8l">267</a>, <a href="#8m">268</a>, <a href="#8n">276</a>, <a href="#8o">276 cont.</a>, <a href="#8p">279</a>, <a href="#8q">280</a>, <a href="#8r">281</a>, <a href="#8s">287</a>, <a href="#8t">318</a>, <a href="#8u">327</a>, <a href="#8v">Disc. VIII.</a>, <a href="#8w">374-8</a>, <a href="#8x">Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.</a></li> +<li><a href="#8y">Vol. III.</a>, <a href="#8z">393</a>, <a href="#8aa">394</a>, <a href="#8ab">446</a>, <a href="#8ac">478</a></li> +<li><a href="#8ad">Vol. IV. p. 28. Deism Revealed.</a>, <a href="#8ae">35</a>, <a href="#8af">37</a>, <a href="#8ag">243</a>, <a href="#8ah">249</a>, <a href="#8ai">268</a>, <a href="#8aj">281</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section9">Andrew Fuller's <i>Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#9a">Letter III. p. 38.</a></li> +<li><a href="#9b">Letter V. p. 72.</a>, <a href="#9c">77</a></li> +<li><a href="#9d">Letter VI. p. 90.</a>, <a href="#9e">95</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section10">Whitaker's <i>Origin of Arianism Disclosed</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#10a">Chap. I. 4. p. 30.</a></li> +<li><a href="#10b">Chap. II. 1. p. 34.</a>, <a href="#10c">35</a>, <a href="#10d">36</a>, <a href="#10e">2. p. 48.</a>, <a href="#10f">9. p. 107.</a></li> +<li><a href="#10g">Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.</a>, <a href="#10h">132 cont.</a>, <a href="#10i">2. p. 195.</a></li> +<li><a href="#10j">Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.</a>, <a href="#10k">267</a>, <a href="#10l">2. p. 270.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section11">Oxlee on <i>The Trinity and Incarnation</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#11a">Introduction, p. 4.</a></li> +<li><a href="#11b">Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.</a>, <a href="#11c">ch. iii. p. 26.</a>, <a href="#11d">26-7</a></li> +<li><a href="#11e">Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.</a>, <a href="#11f">39-40</a>, <a href="#11g">40-1</a>, <a href="#11h">ch. III. p. 58.</a>, <a href="#11i">61</a>, <a href="#11j">65</a>, <a href="#11k">66</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section12"><i>A Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#12a"><i>In Initio</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#12b">Part I. p. 49.</a>, <a href="#12c">51, </a>, <a href="#12d">56</a>, <a href="#12e">60</a>, <a href="#12f">60 cont.</a>, <a href="#12g">68</a>, <a href="#12h">68 cont.</a>, <a href="#12i">71</a>, <a href="#12j">72</a>, <a href="#12k">75-9</a>, <a href="#12l">84</a>, <a href="#12m">86</a>, <a href="#12n">94</a>, <a href="#12o">95</a>, <a href="#12p">97</a>, <a href="#12q">97 cont.</a>, <a href="#12r">102</a>, <a href="#12s">105</a>, <a href="#12t">114</a>, <a href="#12u">115-6</a>, <a href="#12v">118</a>, <a href="#12w">133</a></li> +<li><a href="#12x">Part II. p. 14.</a>, <a href="#12y">26</a>, <a href="#12z">29</a>, <a href="#12aa">30</a>, <a href="#12ab">30 cont.</a>, <a href="#12ac">31</a>, <a href="#12ad">32</a>, <a href="#12ae">33</a>, <a href="#12af">34</a>, <a href="#12g">37</a>, <a href="#12ah">39</a>, <a href="#12ai">40.</a>, <a href="#12aj">40 cont.</a>, <a href="#12ak">41</a>, <a href="#12al">42</a>, <a href="#12am">43</a>, <a href="#12an">46</a>, <a href="#12ao">47</a>, <a href="#12ap">50</a>, <a href="#12aq">52</a>, <a href="#12ar">53</a>, <a href="#12as">54</a></li> +<li><a href="#12at">Part III. p. 5.</a>, <a href="#12av">12</a>, <a href="#12aw">16</a>, <a href="#12ax">17</a>, <a href="#12ay">24</a>, <a href="#12az">27</a>, <a href="#12ba">30-1</a>, <a href="#12bb">35-6</a>, <a href="#12bc">45-6</a>, <a href="#12bd">55-6</a>, <a href="#12be">55-6</a>, <a href="#12bf">63-4</a>, <a href="#12bg">75</a>, <a href="#12bh">78</a>, <a href="#12bi">82</a>, <a href="#12bj">86</a>, <a href="#12bk">88</a>, <a href="#12bl">89</a>, <a href="#12bm">97</a>, <a href="#12bn">98</a>, <a href="#12bo">102-3</a>, <a href="#12bp">106</a>, <a href="#12bq">107</a>, <a href="#12br">108</a>, <a href="#12bs">110</a>, <a href="#12bt">113</a></li> +<li><a href="#12bu">Part IV. p. 1.</a>, <a href="#12bv">7</a>, <a href="#12bw">10</a>, <a href="#12bx">13-4</a>, <a href="#12by">15</a>, <a href="#12bz">29</a>, <a href="#12ca">56</a>, <a href="#12cb">60-1</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section13">Davison's <i>Discourses on Prophecy</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#13a">Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.</a>, <a href="#13b">160</a>, <a href="#13c">162</a>, <a href="#13d">164</a>, <a href="#13e">168</a></li> +<li><a href="#13f">Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.</a></li> +<li><a href="#13g">Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.</a></li> +<li><a href="#13h">Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.</a>, <a href="#13i">Pt. II. p. 289.</a>, <a href="#13j">Pt. IV. p. 325.</a>, <a href="#13k">336</a>, <a href="#13l">370</a>, <a href="#13m">373</a></li> +<li><a href="#13n">Disc. VII. p. 375.</a>, <a href="#13o">392</a></li> +<li><a href="#13p">Disc. VIII. p. 416.</a>, <a href="#13q">431</a></li> +<li><a href="#13r">Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.</a></li> +<li><a href="#13s">Disc. XII. p. 519.</a>, <a href="#13t">521</a>, <a href="#13u">522-3</a>, <a href="#13v">533</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section14">Irving's <i>Ben-Ezra</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#14a">Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.</a></li> +<li><a href="#14b">Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.</a>, <a href="#14c">73-4</a>, <a href="#14d">85</a>, <a href="#14e">c. vi. p. 108.</a>, <a href="#14f">110</a>, <a href="#14g">ch. vii. p. 118.</a>, <a href="#14h">ch. ix. p. 127.</a>, <a href="#14i">Part II. p. 145.</a>, <a href="#14j">153</a>, <a href="#14k">253</a>, <a href="#14l">254</a>, <a href="#14m">297</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section15">Noble's <i>Appeal</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#15a">Sect. IV. p. 210.</a></li> +<li><a href="#15b">Sect. V. p. 286.</a>, <a href="#15c">315</a>, <a href="#15d">321</a>, <a href="#15e">323</a>, <a href="#15f">346-7</a>, <a href="#15g">350</a></li> +<li><a href="#15h">Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.</a>, <a href="#15i">434</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section16">Essay on Faith</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<h2><a name="introduction">Advertisement</a></h2> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Lincoln's Inn,<br> +9th May, 1839. +<br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section1"></a>Notes on Luther's <i>Table Talk</i><a href="#f1"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +I cannot meditate too often, too deeply, or too devotionally on the +personeity of God, and his personality in the Word, <img src="images/CG3.gif" width="173" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: GÃo 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 +<i>complexus</i> 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 <img src="images/CG1.gif" width="131" height="29" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +Sunday 11th February, 1826.<br> + +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +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 +<img src="images/CG2.gif" width="126" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <i>nexus</i> was conceivable +between the antecedent, the noise of the shout, and the consequent, the +atmospheric discharge.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1a"></a><b>The Epistle Dedicatory</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.<br> +<br> + <i>James</i> i. 27.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG4.gif" width="81" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ThraeskeÃa"> (outward or ceremonial +worship, <i>cultus</i>, divine service,) by the English <i>religion</i>. +St. James sublimely says: What the <i>ceremonies</i> of the law were to +morality, <i>that</i> morality itself is to the faith in Christ, that +is, its outward symbol, not the substance itself.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1b"></a><b>Chap. I. p. 1, 2.</b><br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>archeus</i> or predominant of +the life of the planet.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 4.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>Mystica Theologia + Dionysii</i> is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's fables. + <i>Omnia sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens</i>; all is something, and + all is nothing, and so he leaveth all hanging in frivolous and idle + sort.</blockquote> + +Still, however, <i>du theure Mann Gottes, mein verehrter Luther</i>! +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—<i>the light that lighteth every man that cometh +into the world</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 9.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 12.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + 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 Œcolampadius 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>lumen +siccum</i> of sincere knowledge!)—I cannot persuade myself that this +vehemence of our dear man of God against Bullinger, Zuinglius and +Œcolampadius 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 21.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Nay, but dear honoured Luther! is this fair? If Christ or Scripture had +said in one place, <i>Believe, and thou mayest be baptized</i>; and in +another place, <i>Baptize infants</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 25.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>evangelium</i> 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 <i>is</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 32.</b><br> + +<blockquote> That God's word, and the Christian Church, is preserved against the + raging of the world.<br> +<br> + The Papists have lost the cause; with God's word they are not able to + resist or withstand us. * * * <i>The kings of the earth stand up, and + the rulers take counsel together, &c</i>. 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. <i>Kiss the Son lest + he be angry, &c</i>. That is, take hold on Christ, or the Devil will + take hold on you, &c.<br> +<br> + 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: + <i>Ego suscitabo vos in novissimo die</i>: 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1i"></a><b>Chap. II. p. 37.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +Too true.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 54.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> The sparrows are the least birds, and yet they are very hurtful, and + have the best nourishment.</blockquote> + +<i>Ergo digni sunt omni persecutione</i>. Poor little Philip Sparrows! +Luther did not know that they more than earn their good wages by +destroying grubs and other small vermin.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 61.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +To know God as God (<img src="images/CG5.gif" width="108" height="30" border="1" alt="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. <i>Ergo</i>. Christianity is of +necessity historical and not philosophical only.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 62.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>What is that to thee</i>? said Christ to Peter. <i>Follow thou + me</i>—me, follow me, and not thy questions, or cogitations.</blockquote> + +Lord! keep us looking to, and humbly following, thee!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1n"></a><b>Chap. VI. p. 103.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ing</i>, or inclosure, that which is contained within an +outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to <i>think</i> 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 <i>Ding, denken</i>; +in Latin <i>res, reor</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1o"></a><b>Chap. VII. p. 113.</b><br> + +<blockquote> Helvidius alleged the mother of Christ was not a virgin; so that + according to his wicked allegation, Christ was born in original sin.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>Christopædia</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> The Prophets (said Luther) did set, speak, and preach of the second + coming of Christ in manner as we now do.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 121.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +As many notes, <i>memoranda</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>vere mortuus +est</i>—in contradiction to the hypothesis of a trance or state of +suspended animation.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1t"></a><b>Chap. VII. p. 122.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Not satisfactory. Doubtless, the command was in connection with the +silence enjoined respecting his Messiahship.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1u"></a><b>Chap. VIII. p. 147.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Luther might have answered, "positive, you mean, not certain."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1v"></a><b>Chap. IX. p. 160.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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, <i>John</i> 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 <i>per figuram causce pro effecto</i>, +'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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 161.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 163.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This follows from the very definition or idea of righteousness;-it is +itself the law;—<img src="images/CG6.gif" width="76" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: pas gà r dÃkais autonomos."><img src="images/CG7.gif" width="175" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +That is with a lust within correspondent to the temptation from without.<br> +<br> +A Christian's conscience, methinks, ought to be a <i>Janus +bifrons</i>,—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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 165.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aa"></a><b>Chap. X. p. 168, 9.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Kritiques</i> of the pure and of the +practical Reason the problem had never been accurately or adequately +stated, much less solved.<br> +<br> +26 June, 1826.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 174.</b><br> + +<blockquote> Loving friends, (said Luther) our doctrine that free-will is dead and + nothing at all is grounded powerfully in Holy Scripture.</blockquote> + +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 (<i>proh pudor!</i>) 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ac"></a><b>Chap. XII. p. 187.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + <i>Rom</i>. vii.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 189.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>The Lord + thy God will raise up unto thee another prophet out of thy brethren; + Him shall thou hear</i>. (Deut. xviii.)) who then at any time would or + could have believed the Gospel, and forsaken Moses?</blockquote> + +If I could be persuaded that this passage (<i>Deut</i>. 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, <i>the desire of the nations</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 190.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +Since I wrote the above, God has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer +light as to the true nature of the <i>death</i> so often mentioned in +the Scriptures.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 197.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 (<i>formæ formantes</i>), 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 <i>copula</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>He (said Luther), that will dispute with the Devil, &c.</blockquote> + +Queries. +<br> +<ol start=1 type="I"><li> + 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—</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="I"><li> + + 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 + <i>genus</i> of beings under the name of devils?</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="I"><li> + + Is this second <i>hypothesis</i> 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!</li></ol><br><br> + +<a name="1ai"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 200.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +The main reason is, because in this instance, the change in the relation +constitutes the difference of the things. A. considered as acting <i>ab +extra</i> on the selfish fears and desires of men is the Law: the same +A: acting <i>ab intra</i> 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.'<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 203.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Most true.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 205.</b><br> + +<blockquote>The ancient Fathers said: <i>Distingue tempora et concordabis + Scripturas</i>; distinguish the times; then may we easily reconcile + the Scriptures together.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> I verily believe, (said Luther) it (the abolition of the Law) vexed to + the heart the beloved St. Paul himself before his conversion.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> In this case, touching the distinguishing the Law from the Gospel, we + must utterly expel all human and natural wisdom, reason, and + understanding.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs">; and the intellectual pole, or the +hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Now the reason +(<i>lux idealis seu spiritualis</i>) shines down into the understanding, +which recognizes the light, <i>id est, lumen a luce spirituali quasi +alienigenum aliquid</i>, 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 <i>genera et species</i>, still they are particular +<i>genera et species</i>) particularity, it distinguishes the formal +light (<i>lumen</i>) (not the substantial light, <i>lux</i>) of reason +by the attributes of the necessary and the universal; and by irradiation +of this <i>lumen</i> or <i>shine</i> the understanding becomes a +conclusive or logical faculty. As such it is <img src="images/CG10.gif" width="57" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: Lógos anthrôpinos."><img src="images/CG11.gif" width="113" height="28" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 206.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>body of this death</i>,—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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 207.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, + <i>And kings shall be their nurses</i>, &c. +</blockquote> + +Corpulent nurses too often, that overlay the babe; distempered nurses, +that convey poison in their milk!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ap"></a><b>Chap. XIII. p. 208.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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?<br> +<br> + 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 <i>gratis</i>, for nothing, only by God's mere mercy, + wherewith and by reason whereof, he imputeth righteousness unto us in + Christ.</blockquote> + +True; but is it more than a dispute about words? Is not the regeneration +likewise <i>gratis</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 210-11.</b> Melancthon's sixth reply.<br> + +<blockquote>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, <i>Woe is me if I preach not the + Gospel</i>. 1. Cor. ix.</blockquote> + +Luther's answer. + + <blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>organismus</i> 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. <a name="fr2">Every</a> where a +something is attributed to the will<a href="#f2"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ar"></a><b>Chap. XIII. p. 211.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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 <i>A faithful</i> 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 <i>shall</i> not + shine, but it doth shine by nature unbidden, it is thereunto created.</blockquote> + +This important paragraph is obscure by the translator's ignorance of the +true import of the German <i>soll</i>, which does not answer to our +<i>shall;</i> but rather to our <i>ought</i>, that is, <i>should</i> do +this or that,—is under an obligation to do it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 213.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 <i>formalis justitia</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1at"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 214.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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?<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. 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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. (John xvi. 14.) Now where Christ is, there is the holy + Spirit. The text saith plainly, <i>The holy Ghost shall glorify me, + &c.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<img src="images/CG12.gif" width="162" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: eukaÃrôs akaÃrôs"> <i>in season and out of season</i>. 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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1au"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 219-20.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 + <i>dialectica</i>, for it is altogether wit and wisdom. +</blockquote> + +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—<i>Glaube</i>, and what Luther here says, is +spoken of belief. Of faith he speaks in the next article but one.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 226.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "That regeneration only maketh God's children.<br> +<br> + 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."</blockquote> + +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. <br> +<br> +25th of September, 1819.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 227.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."<br> +<br> + "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.<br> +<br> + "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."<br> +<br> + "Therefore we must answer according to this rule, <i>Verba sunt + accipienda secundum subjectam materiam.</i> * * 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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ax"></a><b>Chap. XIV. p. 230.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +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 <i>son of thunder!</i> O +for a Luther in the present age! <a name="fr3">Why</a>, Charles<a href="#f3"><sup>3</sup></a>! 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 <i>Cristo-galli</i>, +translate the word as you like:—French Christians, or coxcombs!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ay"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 231-2.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +A cordial, rich and juicy speech, such as shaped itself into, and lived +anew in, the Gustavus Adolphuses.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1az"></a><b>Chap. XV. p. 233-4.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +Then (saith the understanding, <img src="images/CG13.gif" width="112" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Tò phrónaema sarkòs"><img src="images/CG9.gif" width="72" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image">) 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 <i>ens spirituale</i>, out of the +cognizance of the understanding.<br> +<br> +The spiritual mind receives the answer in the contemplation of the idea, +life as <i>deitas diffusa</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ba"></a><b>Chap. XVI. p. 247.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>'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, <i>Let him be + accursed</i>."'</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 248.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "And he sent for one of his chiefest privy councillors, named Lord + John <i>Von Minkwitz</i>, 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!'" </blockquote> + +Princely. So Shakspeare would have made a Prince Elector talk. The +metaphor is so grandly in character.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bd"></a><b>Chap. XVII. p. 249.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "<i>Signa sunt subinde facta, minora; res autem et facta subinde + creverunt</i>."</blockquote> + +A valuable remark. As the substance waxed, that is, became more evident, +the ceremonial sign waned, till at length in the Eucharist the +<i>signum</i> united itself with the <i>significatum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1be"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>A bare writing without a seal is of no force.</blockquote> + +Metaphors are sorry logic, especially metaphors from human and those too +conventional usages to the ordinances of eternal wisdom.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 250.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +A deep thought. Strong meat for men. It must not be offered for milk.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bg"></a><b>Chap. xxi. p. 276.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bh"></a><b>Chap. xxii. p. 290.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This is a remark of deep insight: <i>verum vere Lutheranum</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bi"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 291.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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 <i>a parte post</i> 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.<br> +<br> +By the by, the joke of the 'glass windows' is lost in the translation. +The German for illustrious is <i>durchlauchtig</i>, that is, transparent +or translucent.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +A brief but most excellent comment on the Lord's Prayer.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bk"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 297.</b><br> + +<blockquote> There was never any that understood the Old Testament so well as St. + Paul, except only John the Baptist.</blockquote> + +I cannot conjecture what Luther had in his mind when he made this +exception. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bl"></a><b>Chap. XXVII. p. 335.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +Œcolampadius 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 337.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr4">In</a> 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<a href="#f4"><sup>4</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +18th August, 1826.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bn"></a><b>Chap. XXVIII. p. 347.</b><br> + +<blockquote>God's word a Lord of all Lords.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bo"></a><b>Chap. XXIX. p. 349.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>Patres, quamquam sæpe errant, tamen venerandi propter testimonium + fidei.</i></blockquote> + +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, <i>ante Christum</i> 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 <i>innutritus et juratus</i> 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?"<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 351.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>Take no care what ye shall eat</i>. As though that commandment did + not hinder the carping and caring for the daily bread.</blockquote> + +For 'caring,' read, 'anxiety!' <i>Sit tibi curæ, non autem solicitudini, +panis quotidianus</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Der Teufel</i>! Surely the epithets should be reversed. Austin's +mildness—the <i>durus pater infantum</i>! And the <i>super</i>-Horatian +effulgence of Master Foolgentius! O Swan! thy critical cygnets are but +goslings.<br> +<br> +N.B. I have, however, since I wrote the above, heard Mr. J. Hookham +Frere speak highly of Fulgentius.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1br"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 352.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Symbolum</i>, the <i>Regula +Fidei</i>, the Creed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bs"></a><b>Chap. XXXII. p. 362.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bt"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 364.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Milton has adopted this notion in the Paradise Lost—not improbably from +this book.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bu"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 365.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bv"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +O Luther! Luther! ask your own heart if this is not Jesuit morality.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bw"></a><b>Chap. XXXIII. v. 367.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 + <i>Symbolum</i> so briefly and comfortable.</blockquote> + +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 <i>picnic</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bx"></a><b>Chap. XXXIV. p. 369.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>demonstrative</i> as <i>hic</i>, and <i>disjunctive</i> as <i>hic et +non ille</i>; and in this sense God alone can be without body: secondly, +that which is not merely <i>hic distinctive</i>, but <i>divisive</i>; +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1by"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</b><br> + +<blockquote>The devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly + places, ready to hurt and prejudice people, &c.<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> + "The angel's like a flea,<br> + The devil is a bore;—"<br> + No matter for that! quoth S.T.C.<br> + I love him the better therefore.</blockquote> + +Yes! heroic Swan, I love thee even when thou gabbiest like a goose; for +thy geese helped to save the Capitol.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bz"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 371.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Yea! two or three more such angels as thyself, Martin Luther, and thy +prediction would be, or perhaps would now have been, accomplished.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ca"></a><b>Chap. XXXV. p. 388.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 389.</b><br> + +<blockquote>Whoso prayeth a Psalm shall be made thoroughly warm.</blockquote> + +<i>Expertus credo</i>.<br> +<br> +19th Aug. 1826.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Sublime!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cd"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> In Job are two chapters concerning <i>Behemoth</i> 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.</blockquote> + +A slight mistake of brother Martin's. The <i>Behemoth</i> 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. +<i>Vindiciæ Behemoticæ</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ce"></a><b>Chap. XXXVI. p. 390.</b><br> + +<blockquote><i>Of Witchcraft</i>.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr5">That</a> the +<i>Ob</i> and <i>Oboth</i> of Moses are no authorities for this absurd +superstition, has been unanswerably shewn by Webster<a href="#f5"><sup>5</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cf"></a><b>Chap. XXXVII. p. 398.</b><br> + +<blockquote> To conclude, (said Luther), I never yet knew a troubled and perplexed + man, that was right in his own wits.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> It was not a thorn in the flesh touching the unchaste love he bore + towards Tecla, as the Papists dream.</blockquote> + +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 <i>thorn in the flesh</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ch"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 399.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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. +</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ci"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 403.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>Indignus sum, sed dignus fui—creari a Deo</i>, &c. Although I am + unworthy, yet nevertheless <i>I have been</i> worthy, <i>in that I + am</i> created of God, &c.</blockquote> + +The translation does not give the true sense of the Latin. It should be +<i>was</i> and <i>to be</i>. The <i>dignus fui</i> has here the sense of +<i>dignum me habuit Deus</i>. See Herbert's little poem in the Temple: + +<blockquote>Sweetest Saviour, if my soul<br> + Were but worth the having,<br> +Quickly should I then control<br> + Any thought of waving;<br> +But when all my care and pains<br> + Cannot give the name of gains<br> +To thy wretch so full of stains,<br> + What delight or hope remains?</blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 404.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +More and more I understand the immense difference between the +Faith-article of <i>the Devil</i> <img src="images/CG14.gif" width="133" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: tou Ponaeroù"> and the +superstitious fancy of devils: <i>animus objectivus dominationem in</i> +<img src="images/CG15.gif" width="35" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: tòn Eimì"><img src="images/CG16.gif" width="41" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image"> <i>affectans</i>; <img src="images/CG17.gif" width="340" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: oútos tò méga órganon +Diabólou hypárchei"><img src="images/CG18.gif" width="79" height="28" border="1" alt="see previous image">.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ck"></a><b>Chap. XLIV. p. 431.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 <i>De Peregrinatione</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 432.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Most true; but it is an excellent pioneer and an excellent <i>corps de +reserve</i>, 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 +<i>Rot her and Dam us</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cm"></a><b>Chap. XLVIII. p. 442.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<a name="fr6">Our</a> Lord alluded to the verse that immediately follows and completes his +quotations from Isaiah<a href="#f6"><sup>6</sup></a>. I, Jehovah, will come and do this. That he +implicitly declared himself the Jehovah, the Word,—this was the +offence.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1co"></a><b>Chap. XLIX. p. 443.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. This argument (said Luther) is Stoical, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cp"></a><b>Chap. L. p. 446.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.<br> +<br> + The state of matrimony (said Luther) is the chiefest state in the + world after religion, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>christened</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 447.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>It is + not good that the man should be alone</i>: 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.</blockquote> + +(Add) and in mutual reverence, our spirits in a state of love and +tenderness; and our imaginations pure and tranquil.<br> +<br> +In a word, matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the +same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cr"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 450.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cs"></a><b>Chap. LIX. p. 481.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + Who seeth not here (said Luther) that such significations are mere + juggling tricks? <i>Even so</i> and after the same manner are they + deceived that say, Children ought to be baptized again, because they + had not faith.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ct"></a><b>Chap. LX. p. 483.</b><br> + +<blockquote> George in the Greek tongue, is called a <i>builder</i>, that buildeth + countries and people with justice and righteousness, &c.</blockquote> + +A mistake for a tiller or boor, from <i>Bauer</i>, <i>bauen</i>. The +latter hath two senses, to build and to bring into cultivation.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cu"></a><b>Chap. LXX. p. 503.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>a fortiori</i>, or much more, may we be +expected to do so in a matter of faith.<br> +<br> +In my Noetic, or Doctrine and Discipline of Ideas = <i>logice, +Organon</i>—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 <i>body</i>, in connection with resurrection-men, +&c.—and the last instances, will (please God!) be the sad effects on +the whole system of Christian divinity. <a name="fr7">I</a> must remember Asgill's book<a href="#f7"><sup>7</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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 <i>his</i> faith—yes, in <i>his</i> own faith, instead of +the faith of Christ communicated to him.<br> +<br> +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: + +<blockquote>How we ought to carry ourselves towards the Law's accusations.</blockquote> + +<a name="fr8">Add</a> to these the last two sections of p. 201<a href="#f8"><sup>8</sup></a>. the last touching St. +<a name="fr9">Austin's</a> opinion<a href="#f9"><sup>9</sup></a> especially. <a name="fr10">Likewise</a>, the first half of p. 202<a href="#f10"><sup>10</sup></a>. 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.<br> +<br><br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f1"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> <i>Doctoris Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia:</i> 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. <i>Folio</i> London, 1652.<br> +<a href="#section1">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f2"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> <i>N. B.</i> 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.<br> +<a href="#fr2">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f3"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> Charles Lamb.—<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr3">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f4"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> + + <blockquote>"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." </blockquote> + +<i>Waterland, Vindication</i>, &c., c. vi.—<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr4">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f5"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 5:</span></a> The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, &c. London. +<i>folio</i>. 1677. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr5">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f6"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 6:</span></a> Isaiah xxxv. 4. lxi 1. <i>Ed</i>. Luke iv. 18, 19.<br> +<a href="#fr6">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f7"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 7:</span></a> + + <blockquote>"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." </blockquote> + +See <i>Table Talk. 2nd Edit</i>. p. 127. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr7">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f8"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 8:</span></a> We must preach the Law (said Luther) for the sakes of the +evil and wicked, &c.<br> +<a href="#fr8">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f9"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 9:</span></a> The opinion of St. Austin is (said Luther) that the Law +which through human strength, natural understanding and wisdom is +fulfilled, justifieth not, &c.<br> +<a href="#fr9">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f10"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 10:</span></a> 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."<br> +<a href="#fr10">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section2"></a>Notes on <i>The Life of St. Theresa</i><a href="#f11"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="2a"></a><b>Pref. Part I. p. 51. Letter of Father Avila to Mother Teresa de Jesu.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2b"></a><b>Life, Part I. Chap. IV. p. 15.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 <i>Ave Maria</i>; 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.<br> + +<br> + +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> + +Dreams, the soul herself forsaking;<br> +Fearful raptures; childlike mirth.<br> +Silent adorations, making<br> +A blessed shadow of this earth!</blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Chap. V. p. 24.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 43.</b><br> + +<blockquote> True it is, that I am both the most weak, and the most wicked of any + living.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Chap. VIII. p. 44.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +That relatively to the command <i>Be ye perfect even as your Father in +Heaven is perfect</i>, 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;—<i>ergo</i>, +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 45.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +A very pretty and sweet remark: truth in new feminine beauty!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2g"></a><i>In fine</i>.<br> +<br> +How incomparably educated was Teresa for a mystic saint, a mother of +transports and fusions of spirit!<br> + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + +A woman;</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> + +Of rank, and reared delicately;</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> + +A Spanish lady;</li></ol> + +<ol start=4 type="1"><li> + +With very pious parents and sisters;</li></ol> + +<ol start=5 type="1"><li> + +Accustomed in early childhood to read "with most believing heart" all +the legends of saints, martyrs, Spanish martyrs, who fought against the +Moors;</li></ol> + +<ol start=6 type="1"><li> + +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=7 type="1"><li> + +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;</li></ol> + +<ol start=8 type="1"><li> + +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 <i>deliquia</i>:</li></ol> + +<ol start=9 type="1"><li> + +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;</li></ol> + +<ol start=10 type="1"><li> + +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 <i>deliquium</i> 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?</li></ol> + +<ol start=11 type="1"><li> + +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 <img src="images/CG19.gif" width="267" height="25" border="1" alt="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. <a name="fr12">Thence</a> flows in upon and +fills the soul <i>that peace which passeth understanding</i>, 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<a href="#f12"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br></li></ol> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f11"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#section2">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f12"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> London 1685.<br> +<a href="#fr12">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section3"></a>Notes on Burnet's <i>Life of Bishop Bedell</i><a href="#f21"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1810.<br> +<br> +<a name="3a"></a><b>p. 12-14.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3b"></a><b>p. 26</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>anti-climax</i>) 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3c"></a><b>p. 158</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>who smote his breast, and said, God be merciful to me + a sinner</i>.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3d"></a><b>p. 161</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3e"></a><b>p.164</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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:—<i>whose sins ye + remit, they are remitted, whose sins ye retain, they are retained</i>.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3f"></a><b><i>In fine</i></b><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f21"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. + + <blockquote>"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."</blockquote> + +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.—<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#section3">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section4"></a>Notes on Baxter's <i>Life</i> of himself<a href="#f31"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1820.<br> +<br> +<br> +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: + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=4 type="1"><li> +In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that +in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the <i>medio +tutissimus ibis</i> is inapplicable. There is no <i>medium</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>de jure +magistratus</i>. 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=5 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=6 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +The saddest error of the theologians of this age is, <img src="images/CG20.gif" width="139" height="25" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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;—<i>Blessed are they +that have not seen and yet believe</i>. And dreadful it appears to me +especially, who in the impossibility of not looking forward to +consciousness after the dissolution of the body (<i>corpus +phoenomenon</i>,) 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4a"></a><b>Book I. Part I. p. 2.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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. + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + + I was much addicted when I feared correction to lie, that I might + scape.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> + + I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples + and pears, &c.</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> + + 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +There is a childlike simplicity in this account of his sins of his +childhood which is very pleasing.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 5, 6.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +What a picture of myself!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 22.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 23.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Excellent.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote>All these assistances were at hand before I came to the immediate + evidences of credibility in the sacred oracles themselves.</blockquote> + +This is as it should be; that is, the evidence <i>a priori</i>, securing +the rational probability; and then the historical proofs of its reality. +Pity that Baxter's chapters in <i>The Saints' Rest</i> should have been +one and the earliest occasion of the inversion of this process, the +fruit of which is the Grotio-Paleyan religion, or <i>minimum</i> of +faith; the maxim being, <i>quanto minus tanto melius</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 24.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>of such is the Kingdom of +Heaven</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 25.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 27.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +How so? If they admitted the King's right to deny, they must admit the +subject's right to entreat.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Did Baxter find it so himself—and when too he had the formal and +recorded promise of Charles II. for it?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> But when the same men (Ussher, Williams, Morton, &c.) saw that greater + things were aimed at, and episcopacy itself in danger, or <i>their + grandeur and riches at least</i>, most of them turned against the + Parliament.</blockquote> + +This, and in this place, is unworthy of Baxter. Even he, good man, could +not wholly escape the jaundice of party.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 34.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 40.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +But according to Grotius, a king waging war against the lawful +copartners of the <i>summa potestas</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 41.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 47.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 59.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 62.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 66.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>Magna Charta</i>. So he talks of the "fundamental constitutions," +just as if these had been aboriginal or rather <i>sans</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 71.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>jus divinum</i> personal and hereditary in the +individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the claim +rested.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 75.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 76.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 77.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Observe the <i>but</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote>The chiefest of these in England are Dr. Pordage and his family.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 79.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 80.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Strange that the common manuals of school logic should not have secured +Baxter from the repeated blunder of <i>Cum hoc, ergo, propter hoc</i>; +but still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against +degrading prayer into medical quackery.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>Subordinate, not exclude</i>. Nature in her ascent leaves nothing +behind, but at each step subordinates and glorifies:—mass, crystal, +organ, sensation, sentience, reflection.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 82.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<img src="images/CG21.gif" width="243" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: Méga biblÃon méga kakón.dokei"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 84.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 87.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 128.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 129.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And when I have studied hard to understand some abstruse admired book, + as <i>de Scientia Dei, de Providentia circa malum, de Decretis, de + Prædeterminatione, de Libertate creaturæ</i>, &c. I have but attained + the knowledge of human imperfection, and to see that the author is but + a man as well as I.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 131.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 135.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 136.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ai"></a><b>Book I. Part II. p.139.</b> +<br> +<br> +The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as +an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean <i>clinamen</i>, 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 <i>medium</i> +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.<br> +<br> +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; <i>et volenti nulla fit +injuria</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 141.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>imperium in + imperio</i>; 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 142.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<img src="images/CG22.gif" width="148" height="21" border="1" alt="Greek: koinoì +epÃskopoi"> —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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 143.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Is not this the case with the Houses of Legislature? The members taken +individually are subjects; collectively governors.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 177.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. * * * <i>Potestas + clavium</i> was committed to them only, not to the Seventy.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 179.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>It followeth not a mere Bishop may have a multitude of Churches, + because an Archbishop may, who hath many Bishops under him.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 185.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> I say again, No Church, no Christ; for no body, no head; and if no + Christ then, there is no Christ now.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 188.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Or if they would not yield to this at all, we might have communion + with them as Christians, without acknowledging them for Pastors.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 189.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ar"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 194.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 198.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4at"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 201.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr32">The</a> great question is: Was this +the Baptismal Symbol, the <i>Regula Fidei</i>, which it was forbidden to +put in writing;—or was it not the Christian A. B. C. of the +<i>Catechumeni</i> previously to their Baptismal initiation into the +higher mysteries, to the <i>strong meat</i> which was not for +<i>babes</i><a href="#f32"><sup>2</sup></a>?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4au"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 203.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 222.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>totidem verbis et +syllabis</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>subpoena</i>? 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>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.</i></blockquote> + +This argument <i>ad affectum</i> 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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ax"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 224.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>But this is not the worst. You consequently anathematize</i> 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.</blockquote> + +This introduction of syllogistic form in a letter to a young Lady is +whimsically characteristic.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ay"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 225.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4az"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 226.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, + <i>tongues</i>, and a spirit of revelation and infallibility prove + themselves Apostles, we shall believe them.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>linguipotence</i> 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 <i>in genere</i> with those of the Apostles and the Apostolic +age, as we have in most other of our Protestant controversies.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ba"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 246.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 248.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 249.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bd"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>suppress all Sectaries</i>, and spare not, in a way that will not + suppress the means of knowledge and godliness.</blockquote> + +The present company, that is, our own dear selves, always excepted.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4be"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 250.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 254.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>The apocryphal matter of your lessons in Tobit, Judith, Bel and the + Dragon, &c., is scarce agreeable to the word of God.</blockquote> + +Does not Jude refer to an apocryphal book?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. </blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bh"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 257.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bi"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 269.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 272.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bk"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 273.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 308.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Baxter's Exceptions to the Common Prayer Book. +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + Order requireth that we begin with reverent prayer to God for his + acceptance and assistance, which is not done.</li></ol></blockquote> + +Enunciation of God's invitations, and promises in God's own words, as in +the Common Prayer Book, much better. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=2 type="1"><li>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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +Might have deserved consideration, if the people or the larger number +consisted of uninstructed <i>catechumeni</i>, 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. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=4 type="1"><li>When we have craved help for God's prayers, before we come to them, + we abruptly put in the petition for speedy deliverance—(<i>O God, + make speed to save us: O Lord make haste to help us</i>,) without any + intimation of the danger that we desire deliverance from, and without + any other petition conjoined.</li></ol> + +<ol start=5 type="1"><li> + + It is disorderly in the manner, to sing the Scripture in a plain + tune after the manner of reading.</li></ol> + +<ol start=6 type="1"><li> + + (<i>The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit</i>,) being petitions + for divine assistance, come in abruptly in the midst or near the end + of morning prayer: And (<i>Let us pray</i>.) is adjoined when we were + before in prayer.</li></ol></blockquote> + +Mouse-like squeak and nibble. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=7 type="1"><li>(<i>Lord have mercy upon us: Christ have mercy upon us: Lord have + mercy upon us</i>.) 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 (<i>O Lord, shew thy mercy upon us</i>.)</li></ol></blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=8 type="1"><li>The prayer for the King (<i>O Lord, save the King</i>.) is without + any order put between the foresaid petition and another general + request only for audience. (<i>And mercifully hear us when we call + upon thee</i>).</li></ol></blockquote> + +A trifle, but just. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=9 type="1"><li>The second Collect is intituled (<i>For Peace</i>.) and hath not a + word in it of petition for peace, but only <i>for defence in assaults + of enemies</i>, and that we <i>may not fear their power</i>. And the + prefaces (<i>in knowledge of whom standeth</i>, &c. and <i>whose + service</i>, &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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=10 type="1"><li> + + The third Collect intituled {<i>For Grace</i>.) 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=12 type="1"><li>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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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: + +<blockquote> (As to the prayer for Bishops and Curates and the position of the + General Thanksgiving, &c.)</blockquote> + +which are defects so palpable and so easily removed, that nothing but +antipathy to the objectors could have retained them. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=13 type="1"><li>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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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 <i>boa +constrictor</i> 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, <img src="images/CG23.gif" width="134" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 337.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>extempore</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 341.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The paper offered by Bishop Cosins. + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +If not, let them propose what they desire in point of expediency, + and acknowledge it to be no more.</li></ol></blockquote> + +This was proposed, doubtless, by one of your sensible men; it is so +plain, so plausible, shallow, <i>nihili, nauci, pili, flocci-cal</i>. +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:<br> +<br> +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:—<i>ergo</i>, the crossing +cannot be rightfully omitted.<br> +<br> +To this, how easily would the other party reply; + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li>That a small number of Bishops could not be called the Church:</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +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:</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +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:</li></ol> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bo"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 343.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Answer to the foresaid paper. +<ol start=8 type="1"><li> + 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 368.</b> +<br> +<br> +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, <i>quam nolumus +mutari</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 368.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>de facto</i> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4br"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 369.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Quære</i>. Whether in the 20th Article these words are not + inserted;—<i>Habet Ecclesia auctoritatem in controversiis fidei</i>. +</blockquote> + +Strange, that the evident antithesis between power in respect of +ceremonies, and authority in points of faith, should have been +overlooked!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bs"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> Some have published, That there is a proper sacrifice in the Lord's + Supper, to exhibit Christ's death in the <i>post-fact</i>, as there + was a sacrifice to prefigure it in the Old Law in the + <i>ante-fact</i>, and therefore that we have a true altar, and not + only metaphorically so called.</blockquote> + +Doubtless a gross error, yet pardonable, for to errors nearly as gross +it was opposed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bt"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> Some have maintained that the Lord's Day is kept merely by + ecclesiastical constitution, and that the day is changeable.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bu"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This no doubt refers to Jeremy Taylor's work on Repentance, and is but +too faithful a description of its character.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bv"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 373.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>pro</i> and +<i>con</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 374.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Since this, Dr. Peter Moulin hath, in his Answer to <i>Philanax + Anglicus</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Icon Basilike</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bx"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 375.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ipso nomine</i> not +generalizable,—therefore not the subjects of a law, which is the +conclusion <i>per genus singuli in genere inclusi</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4by"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 398.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The governing power and obligation over the flock is essential to the + office of a Pastor or Presbyter as instituted by Christ.</blockquote> + +There is, <img src="images/CG24.gif" width="150" height="27" border="1" alt="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 <i>in toto</i>, 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, <i>a fortiori</i>, 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 +<i>discipline</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +20th October, 1829.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bz"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 401.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This most arbitrary appropriation of the words of Christ, and of the +apostles, John and Paul, by the Clergy to themselves exclusively, is the +<img src="images/CG25.gif" width="138" height="24" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ca"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 405.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 412.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 435.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cd"></a><b>Part III. p. 59.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ce"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 60.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 65.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ad id tempus et ad eam rem</i>, 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 <img src="images/CG26.gif" width="92" height="25" border="1" alt="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 <i>Canon Fidei</i>, or +<i>Symbolum</i> or <i>Regula Fidei</i>, the Creed <img src="images/CG27.gif" width="39" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: kat' +hexocháen"><img src="images/CG28.gif" width="65" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image">, 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 67.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>demi-semi-quaver</i> of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for the +<i>semi-breve</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ch"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 69.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ci"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>vestigia Trinitatis</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +On recollection, however, I am disposed to consider <i>this</i> alone as +Baxter's peculiar claim, I have not indeed any distinct memory of +Giordano Bruno's <i>Logice Venatrix Veritatis</i>; but doubtless the +principle of Trichotomy is necessarily involved in the Polar Logic, +which again is the same with the Pythagorean <i>Tetractys</i>, 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. <i>Prothesis</i> being by the very term anterior to +<i>Thesis</i> can be no part of it. Thus in<br> +<br> +<table summary="logic structure" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"> +<tr align="center" valign="middle"> + <td></td> + <td><i>Prothesis</i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="middle"> + <td><i>Thesis</i></td> + <td></td> + <td><i>Antithesis</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="middle"> + <td></td> + <td><i>Synthesis</i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +<a name="fr33">we</a> have the Tetrad indeed in the intellectual and intuitive +contemplation, but a Triad in discursive arrangement, and a Tri-unity in +result<a href="#f33"><sup>3</sup></a>. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 144.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>privati juris</i>, 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 <i>quasi sacramenta</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ck"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 153.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +This controversy with Goeze was in 1778, nearly a hundred years after +Baxter's writing this.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 155.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 180.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote><img src="images/CG29.gif" width="359" height="49" border="1" alt="Greek: Taut' élegon perÃthumos egô gà r mÃsei en Ãsô Laudérdalon échô + kaì kerkokerônucha Satan."></blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 181.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4co"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 186.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 191.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cq"></a><b>Appendix II. p. 37.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If I can prove that it hath been the universal practice of the Church + <i>in nudum apertum caput manus imponere</i>, doth it follow that this + is essential, and the contrary null?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cr"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>manuum impositionem</i>, then do + you egregiously <i>tibi ipsi imponere</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Hercules +furens</i> of the phlogistic sect, but else an incomparable +teacher,—used to translate, <i>Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in +sensu</i>,—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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cs"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 45.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>potentia cæca, non nata ad + intelligendum, sed ad volendum vel nolendum intellectum</i>.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ct"></a><b>Appendix. III. p. 55.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +But the Antipœdo-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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cu"></a><b><i>In fine.</i></b> +<br> +<br> +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. <a name="fr34">This</a>, however, is the first sense of +the words, Church of England<a href="#f34"><sup>4</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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 <i>ne plus ultra</i> of my +religious aspirations, it were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed +to express iny 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 <i>passim</i>). 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 <i>pro tempore</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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. <br> +<br> +June 1820.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +Law is—<i>conclusio per regulam generis singulorum in genere isto +inclusorum</i>. Now the extremes <i>et inclusa</i> are contradictory +terms. Therefore extreme cases are not capable subjects of law <i>a +priori</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f31"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> <i>Relliquiæ Baxterianæ</i>: or Mr. Richard Baxter's +Narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times. +Published from his manuscript, by Matthew Sylvester.—London, +<i>folio</i>. 1699.<br> +<a href="#section4">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f32"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See Hooker E. P. V. xviii. 3. Vol. II. p. 80. Keble. +<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr32">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f33"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> See <i>Table Talk</i>, p. 162. 2nd edit. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr33">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f34"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> See the <i>Church and State</i>, p. 73, 3rd edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr34">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section5"></a>Notes on Leighton<a href="#f51"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +April 1814.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5a"></a><b>Comment Vol. I. p. 2.</b><br> + +<blockquote> —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.</blockquote> + +By the blood of Christ I mean this. I contemplate the Christ, + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + + As <i>Christus agens</i>, the Jehovah Christ, the Word:</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> + + As <i>Christus patiens</i>, The God Incarnate. </li></ol> + +In the former he is <i>relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, +sol intelligibilis: relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, +calor fovens</i>. In the latter he is <i>vita vivificans, principium +spiritualis, id est, veræ reproductionis in vitam veram</i>. Now this +principle, or <i>vis vitæ vitam vivificans</i>, considered in <i>forma +passiva, assimilationem patiens</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 13-15.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>Of their sanctification: <i>elect unto obedience</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG31.gif" width="163" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: to prôton +pseudos">, lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all, +in this instance.<br> +<br> +First:—because the terms from which the conclusion must be +drawn-(<i>termini in majore præmissi, a quibus scientialiter et +scientifice demonstrandum erat</i>) are accommodations and not +scientific—that is, proper and adequate, not <i>per idem</i>, but +<i>per quam maxime simile</i>, or rather <i>quam maxime dissimile</i>:<br> +<br> +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, (<i>John</i> i. 5.):<br> +<br> +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,—<i>vox et præterea nihil</i>. 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 +<i>medium</i> 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 <i>know</i> it."<br> +<br> +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 <i>inter-ens</i>, +or <i>ens inter-medium</i> between the life and the spirit;—the +<i>participium</i>, not as a compound, however, but as a <i>medium +indifferens</i>—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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 63-4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Most true, most true!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Bless God, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter! It is the +honey in the lion.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 75.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Lord I believe: help thou my unbelief!</i> My reason acquiesces, and +I believe enough to fear. O, grant me the belief that brings sweet hope!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 76.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Either this is true, or religion is not religion; that is, it adds +nothing to our human reason; <i>non religat</i>. Grant it, grant it me, +O Lord!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 104-5.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 121.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 122.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> He calls those times wherein Christ was unknown to them, <i>the times + of their ignorance</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +How beautiful, and yet how simple, and as it were unconscious of its own +beauty!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 124.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 138.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 158.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The chief point of obedience is believing; the proper obedience to + truth is to give credit to it.</blockquote> + +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. <i>The devils believe.</i><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 166.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>a new creation. Though it + be but a change in qualities</i>, yet it is such a one, and the + qualities so far distant from what they before were, &c.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 170.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. * * * <i>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</i> xiv. 1, 2. Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.</blockquote> + +It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless +subtleties, or mere phantoms—<i>entia logica, vel etiam verbalia +solum</i>. 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 <i>man</i> 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 (<img src="images/CG32.gif" width="30" height="19" border="1" alt="Greek: tò"> <i>videri et tangi</i>) 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,<img src="images/CG33.gif" width="294" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: tà mà e 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, <i>psyche</i> 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. <i>Cor</i>. 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 <i>a new earth</i> and <i>a new heaven</i> 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. <i>Rev</i>. xx.-xxi.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 174-5.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.</i><br> +<br> + And with respect to those learned men that apply the text to God, I + remember not that this <i>abiding for ever</i> is used to express + God's eternity in himself.</blockquote> + +No; nor is it here used for that purpose; but yet I cannot doubt but +that either the Word, <img src="images/CG34.gif" width="172" height="30" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG35.gif" width="67" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek:rháemata"> or Scriptures.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 194.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 200.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +To the regenerate;—but to the conscious sinner a source of terrors +insupportable.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 211.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>precious</i>, and accounted precious by him that hath made them so.</blockquote> + +Though this is not only true, but a most important truth, it would yet +have been well to have obviated the apparent carnal consequences.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 216.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 229.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +"Here I <i>will</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5u"></a><b>Vol. II. p. 242.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 (<i>Heb</i>. xii. 2,) the <i>shame</i> + of the Cross, though he was above it, and despised it, yet that shame + added much to the burden of it.</blockquote> + +I understand Leighton thus: that though our Lord felt it not as +<i>shame</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 293.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5w"></a><b>Vol. III. p. 20. Serm. I.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>They shall see God</i>. 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: <i>for you shall know him as he + is</i>.</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG36.gif" width="108" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: ho ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós"><img src="images/CG37.gif" width="178" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image">—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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 63. Serm. V.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>made manifest by the light</i>, says the Apostle, <i>Eph</i>. 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. <i>If our Gospel be hid</i>, says the Apostle, <i>it + is hid to them that perish</i>: 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him (Christ) <img src="images/CG38.gif" width="92" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: apaúgasma">, <i>the brightness of his Father's glory, and the character + of his person</i>, (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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>veritates verificæ</i> +Leighton himself in other words speaks often. Surely, there must have +been an intelligible propriety in the terms, <i>Logos</i>, Word, +<i>Begotten before all creation</i>,—an adequate idea or <i>icon</i>, +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>Postscript</i><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 73.</b> +<br> +<br> +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 77. Serm. VI.</b> +<br> +<br> +Leighton, I presume, was acquainted with the Hebrew Language, but he +does not appear to have studied it much. His observation on the +<i>heart</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 104. Serm. VII.</b> +<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 107. Serm. VIII.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>genus</i> of which +pleasure is a <i>species</i>. 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 <i>vice versa</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>Postscript.</i><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Serm. IX. p. 12.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + follow<a href="#f41"><sup>A</sup></a> the sway of their nature and condition. +</blockquote> + +<a name="f41"></a><span style="color: #0000FF;">A</span>: 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +If angels be other than spirits made perfect, or, as Leighton writes, +"glorified souls,"—the "unalterable by nature" seems to me rashly +asserted.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> The mind, <img src="images/CG8.gif" width="84" height="27" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +I doubt. <img src="images/CG8.gif" width="84" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema">. signifies an act: and so far I agree with +Leighton. But <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs"> is <i>the flesh</i> (that is, the +natural man,) in the act or habitude of minding—but those acts, taken +collectively, are the faculty—the understanding.<br> +<br> +How often have I found reason to regret, that Leighton had not clearly +made out to himself the diversity of reason and the understanding!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Serm. XV. p. 196.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. <img src="images/CG39.gif" width="153" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: Eléaeson Kyrie!"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Serm. XVI. p. 204.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Know you not that the redeemed of Christ and He are one? They live one + life, Christ lives in them, and if <i>any man hath not the Spirit of + Christ, he is none of his</i>, 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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + To such I would only say, Are you in a willing league with any known + sin? &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>you</i>; that he died for +<i>you—you—you—yourself</i>?" on to the end of the chapter. This is +Wesley's doctrine.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ai"></a><b>Lecture IX. vol. IV. p. 96.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +But surely in this passage <i>religio</i> must be rendered superstition, +the most effectual means for the removal of which Epicurus supposed +himself to have found in the exclusion of the <i>gods many and lords +many</i>, from their imagined agency in all the <i>phœnomena</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 105.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>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></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XI. p. 113.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +It is inconceivable how any thing can be created in time; and production +is incompatible with interspace.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XV. p. 152.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<a name="fr52">I</a> 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<a href="#f52"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XIX. p. 201.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!"<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XXI. p. 225.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG40.gif" width="91" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: plaeroma"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XXIV. p. 245.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Ask yourselves, therefore, <i>what you would be at</i>, and with what + dispositions you come to this most sacred table?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Exhortation to the Students, p. 252.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f51"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> Works of Leighton, 4 vols. 8vo. London 1819. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#section5">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f52"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> <i>Statesman's Manual</i>, p. 230. 2nd edit. <i>Friend</i>, III. +3d edit. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr52">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section6"></a>Notes on Sherlock's <i>Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity</i><a href="#f61"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="6a"></a><b>Sect. I. p. 3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ens logicum</i>), +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: + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +Are they co-ordinate as agent and re-agent;</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +Or is the one subordinate to the other, as effect to cause, and which +is the cause or ground, which the effect or product;</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +Or are they co-ordinate, but not inter-dependent, that is, <i>per +harmonium præstabilitam</i>.</li></ol> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>their subject</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>a petitio principii</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Indeed! Were I either Romanist or Unitarian, I should desire no better +than the admission of body having an <i>esse</i> not in the +<i>percipi</i>, and really subsisting, <img src="images/CG41.gif" width="163" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: autò tò chraema"> as tne +supporter of its accidents. At all events, the Romanist, declaring the +accidents to be those ordinarily impressed on the senses <img src="images/CG42.gif" width="129" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: tà +phaÃnomena kaì aÃsthaeta"><img src="images/CG43.gif" width="114" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: see previous image"> by bread and wine, does at the same time +declare the flesh and blood not to be the <img src="images/CG44.gif" width="202" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phaÃnomena kaì aÃsthaeta"> so called, but the <img src="images/CG45.gif" width="114" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: noúmena kaì autà tà chráemata"><img src="images/CG46.gif" width="163" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image">. +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 +<i>rem credimus, modum nescimus</i>; next to that, the doctrine of the +Sacramentaries, that it is <i>signum sub rei nomine</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 6.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>modus</i> 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 +<i>him</i>. But the Socinians say;—"We do not understand <i>you</i>. We +cannot attach to the word 'God,' more than three possible meanings; +either, + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +A person, or self-conscious being;</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +Or a thing;</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +Or a quality, property, or attribute.</li></ol> + +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.<br> +<br> +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. + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an +intelligent or self-conscious being; —or,</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +a thing with its qualities and properties; —or,</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature. </li></ol> + +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."<br> +<br> +The answer to this must commence by a denial of the premisses <i>in +toto</i>: 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 <i>quasi-Tritheism</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6e"></a><b>Sect. II. p. 13.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge + every Person by himself to be God and Lord</i>;—</blockquote> + +(That is, by especial revelation.) + +<blockquote><i>So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are + three Gods, or three Lords.</i></blockquote> + +That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with, +the universal reason, <i>the light that lighteth every man that cometh +into the world</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 14.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>acumen</i> 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 +<i>explicite</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 18.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal</i>. 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 <i>afore, or + after other</i>.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>minus</i> 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 <i>none is greater or less than another</i>, +is universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as +the co-eternal Son; <i>My Father is greater than I</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 <i>ad libitum</i>—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? <a name="fr62">If</a> it differs, how dare we retain both<a href="#f62"><sup>2</sup></a>? 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 <i>syllepsis</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6h"></a><b>Sect. III. p. 23.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If what he says is true: <i>He that errs in a question of faith, after + having used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed, is in no + fault at all</i>; 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?</blockquote> + +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 <i>totus fere mundus factus est +Arianus</i>, 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?"<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 26.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> All Christians must confess, that there is no other name given under + heaven whereby men can be saved, but only the name of Christ.</blockquote> + +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 <i>too too</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 27.</b> +<br> +<br> +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; <img src="images/CG47.gif" width="279" height="25" border="1" alt="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 +<img src="images/CG48.gif" width="136" height="30" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 28.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Notes</i>. By keeping this faith <i>whole and undefiled</i>, 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>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>. 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.<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +This Notary manages his cause most weakly, and Sherlock <i>fibs</i> 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 <i>Symbolum Fidei</i>, the <i>Regula</i>, the <i>Canon</i>, +by which, according to the greater number of the <i>ante</i>-Nicene +Fathers, the books of the New Testament were themselves tried and +determined to be Scripture. Now this <i>Symbolum</i> 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 (<i>which faith</i>, &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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6l"></a><b>Sect. IV. p. 50.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>circum-incession</i>, three persons thus intimate + to each other are numerically one.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 64.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> St. Paul tells us, 1 Cor. ii. 10. <i>That the Spirit searcheth all + things, yea the deep things of God</i>. 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. <i>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.</i></blockquote> + +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:—<i>ergo</i>, the <i>principium +sciendi</i> must be one (that is, homogeneous or consubstantial) with +the <i>principium essendi quoad objectum cognitum</i>. 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 <i>Logos</i> +in like manner relatively to both. So too, the Father has a <i>logos</i> +with which he distinguishes the <i>Logos</i>;—and the <i>Logos</i> has +a <i>logos</i>, and so on: that is to say, there are three several +though not severed triune Gods, each being the same position three times +<i>realiter positum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + + 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 72.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Even this, though not ill-conceived, is inaccurately expressed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 81.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 88.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Nay, this is to my understanding three Gods, and Sherlock seems to have +brought in the material phantom of a thing or substance.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 97.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <img src="images/CG49.gif" width="83" height="21" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +—"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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 98.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Thus each Divine Person is God, and all of them but the same one God; + as I explained it before.</blockquote> + +O no! asserted it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 98-9.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>modi + subsistendi</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +Will not the Arian object, "You admit the <i>modus subsistendi</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6v"></a><b>Sect. V. p. 102.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>Cor</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +The proper answer to Augustine is, that the Son and Holy Ghost are +necessary and essential, not contingent: and that <i>his</i> argument +has a still greater inconvenience, as shewn in note p. 98.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 110-113.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <img src="images/CG50.gif" width="80" height="22" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG51.gif" width="92" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: mÃa theótaes"> one Godhead and Divinity. +</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG52.gif" width="68" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: ánthropôs"><img src="images/CG53.gif" width="35" height="23" border="1" alt="see previous image"> and <img src="images/CG54.gif" width="108" height="26" border="1" alt="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 +<img src="images/CG55.gif" width="133" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: treis theótaetes">—that is, three Godheads."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 115-16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Gregory Nyssen tells us that <img src="images/CG56.gif" width="36" height="21" border="1" alt="Greek: theòs"> is <img src="images/CG57.gif" width="53" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: theatà es"> and + <img src="images/CG58.gif" width="53" height="22" border="1" alt="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, <img src="images/CG59.gif" width="189" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: allà mìa tìs + gÃnetai agathou Bouláematos kÃnaesis kaì diakósmaesis"><img src="images/CG60.gif" width="355" height="22" border="1" alt="see previous image">—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 <img src="images/CG61.gif" width="190" height="22" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +But this is either Tritheism or Sabellianism; it is hard to say which. +Either the <img src="images/CG62.gif" width="85" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Boúlaema"> subsists in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, +and not merely passes through them, and then there would be three +numerical <img src="images/CG63.gif" width="102" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Boúlaema">, as well as three numerical Persons: +<i>ergo</i>, <img src="images/CG64.gif" width="91" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: treis theoì à e theataÃ"><img src="images/CG65.gif" width="83" height="24" border="1" alt="see previous image"> (according to Gregory +Nyssen's shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism: +or <img src="images/CG66.gif" width="180" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: hén ti gÃnetai 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.<br> +<br> +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 117.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> For I leave any man to judge, whether this <img src="images/CG67.gif" width="127" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: mÃa kÃnaesis + Bouláematos"><img src="images/CG68.gif" width="66" height="23" border="1" alt="see previous image">, 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.</blockquote> + +Is not God conscious to all my thoughts, though I am not conscious of +God's? Would Sherlock endure that I should infer: <i>ergo</i>, 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. +<ol type="1"> +<li>Father—Son—Holy Ghost.</li> +<li>Son—Father—Holy Ghost.</li> +<li>Holy Ghost—Son—Father.</li> +</ol> + +Else there is an <i>x</i> in the Father which is not in the Son, a +<i>y</i> in the Son which is not in the Father, and a <i>z</i> in the +Holy Ghost which is in neither: that is, each by himself is not total +God.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 120.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +So that after all this obscuration of the obscure, Sherlock ends by +fairly throwing up his briefs, and yet calls out, "Not guilty! +<i>Victoria</i>!" 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 <i>vice versa</i>, all +three tickets could produce no more than each one; each corresponding to +the whole.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>Hypostases</i> or + Persons, by denying any difference or diversity of nature,<br> + <img src="images/CG69.gif" width="508" height="47" border="1" alt="Greek: hôs + ek tou mà e déchesthai tà en katà physin diaphorà n, mÃxin 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. +</blockquote> + +This is just what I have said, p. 116. Whether Sabellianism or +Tritheism, I observed is hard to determine. Extremes meet.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 121.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Secondly, to this <i>homo-ousiotes</i> 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 <i>he might mistake</i> their explication + of it, from the unity of human nature, they were far enough from + Tritheism, or one collective God.</blockquote> + +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 <i>intention</i>, in consequence of their inconvenient and +unphilosophical explication;" which mistake, in fact, consisted in +taking them at their word.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: <i>hujus conjunctionis ratio est indifferentia</i>: + that is, such a sameness of nature as admits of no difference or + variety, or an exact <i>homo-ousiotes</i>, 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. <i>Principium enim + pluralitatis alteritas est. Præter alteritatem enim nec pluralitas + quid sit intelligi potest</i>.</blockquote> + +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? <i>Principium enim, &c.</i><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 124.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> That the Fathers universally acknowledged that the operation of the + whole Trinity, <i>ad extra</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +Then it was not the Son but the whole Trinity that was crucified: for +surely this was an operation <i>ad extra</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 126.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>which</i> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Which</i>! The <i>man</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 127.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Then why do we make tri-personality in unity peculiar to God? +<br> +<br> +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 <i>omni actioni præit sua propria +passio; Deus autem est actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate</i>. 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 <i>passio</i> or recipient. +This unicity we strive, not to <i>express</i>, for that is impossible; +but to designate, by the nearest, though inadequate, analogy,— +<i>Begotten</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 133.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: + <i>the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his + hands</i>.—John iii. 35. <i>And the Father loveth the Son, and + sheweth him all things that himself doeth</i>.-John v. 20; and our + Saviour himself tells us, <i>I love the Father</i>.—John xiv. 31. And + I shewed before, that love is a distinct act, <i>and therefore in God + must be a person: for there are no accidents nor faculties in God.</i></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ah"></a><b>Sect. VI. pp. 147-8.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +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 <i>per se</i> 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.<br> +<br> +"Each <i>per se</i> God." This is the <img src="images/CG70.gif" width="124" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: prôton méga pseudos"><img src="images/CG71.gif" width="62" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image"> of +Sherlock's scheme. Each of the three is whole God, because neither is, +or can be <i>per se</i>; the Father himself being <i>a se</i>, but not +<i>per se</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ai"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 149.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 150.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This and the following paragraph are excellent. <i>O si sic omnia</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 153.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 154.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 + <i>m-x</i>, which is not = + <i>m</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 156.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> So born before all creatures, as <img src="images/CG72.gif" width="88" height="20" border="1" alt="Greek: prôtótokos"> also signifies, + <i>that by him were all things created</i>. + + <i>All things were created by him, and for him, and he is before all + things</i>, (which is the explication of <img src="images/CG73.gif" width="143" height="21" border="1" alt="Greek: pôrtótokos pásaes + ktÃseos"><img src="images/CG74.gif" width="68" height="20" border="1" alt="see previous image"> <i>begotten before the whole creation</i>, and therefore no + part of the creation himself.)</blockquote> + +This is quite right. Our version should here be corrected. <img src="images/CG75.gif" width="66" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: +Prôto"> or <img src="images/CG76.gif" width="88" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: prótaton"> is here an intense +comparative,—<i>infinitely before</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 159.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> That he <i>being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be + equal with God</i>, &c.—Phil. ii. 8, 9.</blockquote> + +I should be inclined to adopt an interpretation of the unusual phrase +<img src="images/CG77.gif" width="95" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: hárpagmon"> somewhat different both from the Socinian and the +Church version:—"who being in the form of God did not <i>think equality +with God a thing to be seized with violence</i>, but made, &c."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 160.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 161-3.</b> +<br> +<br> +I find little or nothing to <i>object to</i> in this exposition, from +pp. 161-163 inclusively, of <i>Phil</i>. 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 <i>ante</i>-delegate or pre-substitute +of the Cross, is too like an <i>argumentum in circulo</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 164.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And though Christ be the eternal Son of God, and the natural Lord and + heir of all things, yet <i>God hath</i> in this <i>highly exalted + him</i> and given <i>him a name which is above every name, that at</i> + (or in <img src="images/CG78.gif" width="23" height="19" border="1" alt="Greek: en">) <i>the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of + things in heaven</i>, &c.—Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11.</blockquote> + +Never was a sublime passage more debased than by this rendering of +<img src="images/CG78.gif" width="23" height="19" border="1" alt="Greek: en"> by <i>at</i>, instead of <i>in</i>;—<i>at</i> the +<i>phenomenon</i>, instead of <i>in</i> the <i>noumenon</i>. For such is +the force of <i>nomen</i>, name, in this and similar passages, namely, +<i>in vera et substantiali potestate Jesu</i>: that is, <img src="images/CG79.gif" width="123" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: en lógô +kaì dià lógou"><img src="images/CG80.gif" width="103" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image"> the true <i>noumenon</i> or <i>ens intelligibile</i> of +Christ. To bow at hearing the <i>cognomen</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ar"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 168.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the + Son</i>.—John v. 22. Should the Father judge the world he <i>must</i> + 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?</blockquote> + +(Why? Is mercy incompatible with righteousness? How then can the Son be +righteous?) + +<blockquote> But he has committed judgment to the Son, as a mediatory king, who + judges by the equity and chancery of the Gospel.</blockquote> + +This article required exposition incomparably more than the simple +doctrine of the Trinity, plain and evident <i>simplici intuitu</i>, and +rendered obscure only by diverting the mental vision by terms drawn from +matter and multitude. In the Trinity all the <i>Hows</i>? may and should +be answered by <i>Look</i>! 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, <i>per intuitum +intellectualem</i>, must all the mysteries of faith be contemplated; +—they are intelligible <i>per se</i>, not discursively and <i>per +analogiam</i>. 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 171.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: + <i>he quickeneth whom he will</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>phenomenon</i> in time, but with +the predicates of eternity;—and this is the only possible definition of +a miracle <i>in re ipsa</i>, and not merely <i>ad hominem</i>, or <i>ad +ignorantiam</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6at"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 177.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> His next argument consists in applying such things to the divinity of + our Saviour as belong to his humanity; <i>that he increased in wisdom, + &c.:—that he knows not the day of judgment</i>;—which he evidently + speaks of himself as man: as all the ancient Fathers confess. In St. + Mark it is said, <i>But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, + not the angels that are in heaven, neither the Son, but the + Father</i>. St. Matthew does not mention the Son: <i>Of that day and + hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only</i>.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6au"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> Which shows that the Son in St. Matthew is included in the <img src="images/CG81.gif" width="51" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: oudeìs"> none, or no man, and therefore concerns him only as a man: for + the Father <i>includes the whole Trinity</i>, and therefore includes + the Son, who seeth whatever his Father doth.</blockquote> + +This is an <i>argumentum in circulo</i>, and <i>petitio rei sub +lite</i>. Why is he called the Son in <i>antithesis</i> 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 <i>Son</i> +simply, instead of the Son of Man, or the Messiah?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG82.gif" width="58" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: Oudeìs"> is not <img src="images/CG83.gif" width="129" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: oudeìs anthrôpôn">, but, <i>no one</i>: + as in John i. 18. <i>No one hath seen God at any time</i>; that is, he + is by essence invisible.</blockquote> + +This most difficult text I have not seen explained satisfactorily. I +have thought that the <img src="images/CG84.gif" width="79" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 186.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> When St. Paul calls the Father the One God, he expressly opposes it to + the many gods of the heathens. <i>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</i>: where the <i>one God</i> and <i>one Lord and Mediator</i> is + opposed to the many gods and many lords or mediators which were + worshipped by the heathens.</blockquote> + +But surely the <i>one Lord</i> is as much distinguished from the <i>one +God</i>, as both are contradistinguished from the <i>gods many and lords +many</i> of the heathens. Besides <i>the Father</i> is not the term used +in that age in distinction from the gods that are no gods; but <img src="images/CG85.gif" width="71" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: +Ho epì pántôn theós"><img src="images/CG86.gif" width="127" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ax"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 222.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The Word was with God</i>; that is, it was not yet in the world, or + not yet made flesh; but with God.—<i>John</i> i. 1. So that to be + <i>with God</i>, signifies nothing but not to be in the world.</blockquote> + +<b><i>The Word was with God.</i></b> + +<blockquote> 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 <img src="images/CG87.gif" width="135" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: parà tô patrÃ">, + with the Father, * * and explains it by what Wisdom says, <i>Prov</i>. + vii. 30. <i>Then I was by him, &c.</i> which he does not think a + <i>prosopopoeia</i>, but spoken of a subsisting person.</blockquote> + +But even this is scarcely tenable even as Greek. Had this been St. +John's meaning, surely he would have said, <img src="images/CG88.gif" width="68" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: en theô"> not <img src="images/CG89.gif" width="91" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: +pròs tòn theón"><img src="images/CG90.gif" width="48" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image"> 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 <i>shy cock</i>, and a man of +the world, was always ready to unsay what he had said.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f61"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section6">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f62"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> The third General Council, that at Ephesus in 431, decreed + + <blockquote>"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."</blockquote> + +<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr62">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section7"></a>Notes on Waterland's <i>Vindication of Christ's Divinity</i><a href="#f71"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="7a"></a><i>In initio</i>.<br> +<br> +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; <i>sit pro ratione +voluntas</i>. Now, on the other hand, I affirm, that the article of the +Trinity is religion, is reason, and its universal <i>formula</i>; 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 <i>pseudo</i>-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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>ab omni quod non est Deus</i>, 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 <i>lene +clinamen</i> 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 <i>medium</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7b"></a><b>Query I. p. 1.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The Word was God</i>.—John i. 1. <i>I am the Lord, and there is + none else; there is no God besides me</i>.—Is. xiv. 5, &c.</blockquote> + +In all these texts the <i>was</i>, or <i>is</i>, ought to be rendered +positively, or objectively, and not as a mere connective: <i>The Word Is +God</i>, and saith, <i>I Am the Lord; there is no God besides me</i>, +the Supreme Being, <i>Deitas objectiva</i>. The Father saith, <i>I Am in +that I am,—Deitas subjectiva</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 2.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?<br> +<br> + 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.</blockquote> + +O most unhappy mistranslation of <i>Hypostasis</i> by Person! The Word +is properly the only Person.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>him only shall thou serve</i>. This I take to be a clear + consequence from your principles, and unavoidable.</blockquote> + +Waterland's argument is absolutely unanswerable by a worshipper of +Christ. The modern <i>ultra</i>-Socinian cuts the knot.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7e"></a><b>Query II. p. 43.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And therefore he might as justly bear the style and title of <i>Lord + God, God of Abraham</i>, &c. while he acted in that capacity, as he + did that of <i>Mediator, Messiah, Son of the Father</i>, &c. after + that he condescended to act in another, and to discover his personal + relation.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>medium</i> of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word, +Jehovah,? Is not the <img src="images/CG91.gif" width="73" height="31" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>Idea Idearum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7f"></a><b>Query XV. p. 225-6.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The pretence is, that we equivocate in talking of eternal generation.</blockquote> + +All generation is necessarily <img src="images/CG92.gif" width="108" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: ánarchón ti"> without dividuous +beginning, and herein contradistinguished from creation.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 226.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> True, it is not the same with human generation.</blockquote> + +Not the same <i>eodem modo</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> You have not proved that all generation implies beginning; and what is + more, cannot.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 227-8.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7j"></a><b>Query XVI. p. 234.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> But God's <i>thoughts are not our thoughts</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ad hominem</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 235.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This misuse, or rather this <i>omnium-gatherum</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 237.</b> +<br> + +<blockquote>Sacrifice was one instance of worship required under the Law; and it is +said;—<i>He that sacrificeth unto any God, save unto the Lord only, he +shall be utterly destroyed</i> (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.</blockquote> + + +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 <i>sans-culotterie</i> of religion.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 239.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Truly excellent. Let the Church of England praise God for her Saints—a +more glorious Kalendar than Rome can show!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 251.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7o"></a><b>Query XVII.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And we may never be able perfectly to comprehend the relations of the + three persons, <i>ad intra</i>, amongst themselves; the ineffable + order and economy of the ever-blessed co-eternal Trinity.</blockquote> + +"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 +(<i>Ichheit</i>); 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7p"></a><b>Query XVIII. p. 269.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> From what hath been observed, it may appear sufficiently that the + divine <img src="images/CG10.gif" width="57" height="28" border="1" alt="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—<i>only not so distinctly revealed</i>. +</blockquote> + +Here I differ <i>toto orbe</i> from Waterland, and say with Luther and +Zinzendorf, that before the Baptism of John the <i>Logos</i> 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 <i>exegesis</i>. 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 <i>ad extra</i>, not an <i>exegesis</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 274.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +The passage quoted from Bishop Bull is very plausible and very eloquent; +but only <i>cum multis granis salis sumend</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7r"></a><b>Query XIX. p. 279.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> That the Father, whose honour had been sufficiently secured under the + Jewish dispensation, and could not but be so under the Christian also, + &c.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG93.gif" width="68" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: Ho Ôn"> which St. John every where, and St. Paul no +less, makes the peculiar name of the Son, <img src="images/CG94.gif" width="390" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: monogenà es uhiòs, ho +ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós"><img src="images/CG95.gif" width="69" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image">—; 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. +<img src="images/CG96.gif" width="69" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: Ho òn"> is the verbal noun of <img src="images/CG97.gif" width="30" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: hos esti"><img src="images/CG98.gif" width="48" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image"> not of <img src="images/CG99.gif" width="81" height="32" border="1" alt="Greek: +egô eimÃ"> It is strange how little use has been made of that profound +and most pregnant text, <i>John</i> i. 18!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7s"></a><b>Query XX. p. 302.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The <img src="images/CG100.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +Most assuredly the very 'disputable' rendering of <img src="images/CG100.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: homooúsion"> 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 <i>usia</i> and homoüsial, as well as +<i>hypostasis</i>, hypostatic, homogeneous, heterogeneous, and the +like;—or as Baptism, Eucharist, Liturgy, Epiphany and the rest?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7t"></a><b>Query XXI. p. 303.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Waterland has weakened his argument by seeming to admit that in all +these 300 texts the Father, <i>distinctive</i>, is meant.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 316-17.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7v"></a><b>Query XXIII. p. 351.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> But taking advantage of the ambiguity of the word <i>hypostasis</i>, + sometimes used to signify substance, and sometimes person, you + contrive a fallacy.</blockquote> + +And why did not Waterland lift up his voice against this mischievous +abuse of the term <i>hypostasis</i>, and the perversion of its Latin +rendering, <i>substantia</i> as being equivalent to <img src="images/CG101.gif" width="52" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ousÃa">? Why +<img src="images/CG101.gif" width="52" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ousÃa"> should not have been rendered by <i>essentia</i>, I +cannot conceive. <i>Est</i> seems a contraction of <i>esset</i>, and +<i>ens</i> of <i>essens</i>: <img src="images/CG102.gif" width="103" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: ôn, ousa, ousÃa"><img src="images/CG101.gif" width="52" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: see previous image"> = <i>essens, +essentis, essentia</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 354.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 357.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And our English Unitarians * * have been still refining upon the + Socinian scheme, * * and have brought it still nearer to Sabellianism.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 359.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Here comes one of the consequences of the Cartesian Dualism: as if +<img src="images/CG103.gif" width="52" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: sà rx"> the living body, could be or exist without a soul, or a +human living body without a human soul! <img src="images/CG104.gif" width="52" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: Sà rx"> is not Greek for +carrion, nor <img src="images/CG105.gif" width="51" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: sôma"> for carcase.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7z"></a><b>Query XXIV. p. 371.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Necessary existence is an essential character, and belongs equally to + Father and Son.</blockquote> + +Subsistent in themselves are Father, Son and Spirit: the Father only has +origin in himself.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7aa"></a><b>Query XXVI. p. 412.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The words <img src="images/CG106.gif" width="151" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: ouch hôs genómenon"> he construes thus: "not as + eternally generated," as if he had read <img src="images/CG107.gif" width="92" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: gennômenon">, supplying + <img src="images/CG108.gif" width="54" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: aïdÃôs"> by imagination. The sense and meaning of the word + <img src="images/CG109.gif" width="83" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: genómenon">, signifying made, or created, is so fixed and + certain in this author, &c.</blockquote> + +This is but one of fifty instances in which the true Englishing of +<img src="images/CG110.gif" width="181" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: genómenos, egéneto"> &c. would have prevented all mistake. It is +not <i>made</i>, but <i>became</i>. Thus here:—begotten eternally, and +not as one that became; that is, as not having been before. The +only-begotten Son never <i>became</i>; but all things <i>became</i> +through him.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 412.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>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</i>.<br> +<br> +Tertull. Apol. c. 21.</blockquote> + +How strange and crude the realism of the Christian Faith appears in +Tertullian's rugged Latin!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 414.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> He represents Tertullian as making the Son, in his highest capacity, + ignorant of the day of judgment.</blockquote> + +Of the true sense of the text, <i>Mark</i> 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 <img src="images/CG111.gif" width="139" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ei mà e ho Patáer">. The <img src="images/CG112.gif" width="62" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: monon"> +of St. Matthew xxiv. 36. is here omitted. I think Waterland's a very +unsatisfying solution of this text.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 415.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>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</i>, + &c.—Tertull. Adv. Prax. c. 26. c. 30.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr72">But</a> 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 <img src="images/CG113.gif" width="116" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: archaspistà es"> 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<a href="#f72"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 421.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7af"></a><b>Query XXVII. p. 427.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG114.gif" width="488" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: Ton alaethinòn kaì óntôs ónta Theòn, tòn tou Christou patéra."> + —Athanas. Cont. Gent.<br> +<br> + The just and literal rendering of the passage is this: 'The true God + who in reality is such, namely, the Father of Christ.'</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG115.gif" width="147" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: tòn óntôs ónta"> distinctively from +<img src="images/CG116.gif" width="47" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: ho ôn">—the <i>Ens omnis entitatis, etiam suæ</i>, that is, the +I Am the Father, in distinction from the <i>Ens Supremum</i>, the Son. +It cannot, however, be denied that in changing the <i>formula</i> of the +<i>Tetractys</i> into the <i>Trias</i>, by merging the <i>Prothesis</i> +in the <i>Thesis</i>, the Identity in the Ipseity, the Christian Fathers +subjected their exposition to many inconveniences.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 432.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG117.gif" width="514" height="48" border="1" alt="Greek: Ouch ho poiaetà es tôn hólôn éstai Theòs ho tô Môsei eipôn + autòn einai Theòn Abraà m, kaì Theòn Isaà k, kaì Theòn Iakôb.">—Justin + Mart. Dial. p. 180.<br> +<br> + 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. +</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 436.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG118.gif" width="510" height="45" border="1" alt="Greek: Taeroito d' à n, hôs ho emòs lógos, ehis mèn Theòs, eis hèn + aÃtion kaì Ghiou kaì Pneúmatos anapheroménôn. k.t.l.">—Greg. Naz. + Orat. 29.<br> +<br> + We may, as I conceive, preserve (the doctrine of) one God, by + referring both the Son and Holy Ghost to one cause, &c.</blockquote> + +Another instance of the inconvenience of the Trias compared with the +Tetractys.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f71"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#section7">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f72"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> <blockquote><i>Y sino ahà está el Doctor Jorge Bull Profesor de +TeologÃa, 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.</i></blockquote> Fray. Gerundio. ii. 7. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr72">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section7b"></a>Notes on Waterland's <i>Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity</i><a href="#f771"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="77a"></a><b>Chap. I. p. 18.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.?</blockquote> + +It is strange that so sound, so admirable a logician as Waterland, +should have thought <i>unsearchable</i> and <i>incomprehensible</i> synonymous, or +at least equivalent terms:—and this, though St. Paul hath made it the +privilege of the full-grown Christian, <i>to search out the deep things +of God himself</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77b"></a><b>Chap. IV. p. 111.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The delivering over unto Satan</i> 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.</blockquote> + +Unless the passage, (<i>Acts</i> 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 <i>not +of this world</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 114.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> '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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG119.gif" width="144" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG119.gif" width="144" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: autokatákritos">—though in his pride of heart he might say with the man +of old, "And I banish you."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 123.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits, + ceased.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 126.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 127.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—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.</blockquote> + +Psha! The 'bidding him God speed',—<img src="images/CG120.gif" width="65" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: légôn autô chaÃrein"><img src="images/CG121.gif" width="129" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image">—(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 Irenæus.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 128.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +O, no, no, not <i>them</i>! <i>Error quidem, non tamen homo errans, +abominandus</i>: or, to pun a little, <i>abhominandus</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 129.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 130.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> For if he who <i>shall break one of the least moral commandments, and + shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven</i>, + (Mat. v. 19,) it must be a very dangerous experiment, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>the Heaven</i> +or the Government, and <i>the Earth</i> or the People or the Governed, as one +<i>corpus politicum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77k"></a><b>Chap. V. p. 140.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + + 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 187.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77m"></a><b>Chap. VI. p. 230.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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" * *. <br> +<img src="images/CG122.gif" width="512" height="71" border="1" alt="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."></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 233.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—true Son of the Father, 'invisible' of invisible, &c.</blockquote> + +How is this reconcilable with <i>John</i> i. 18—(<i>no one hath seen God at +any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he +hath declared him</i>,—) or with the <i>express image</i>, asserted above. +<i>Invisible</i>, I suppose, must be taken in the narrowest sense, that is, +to bodily eyes. But then the one <i>invisible</i> would not mean the same as +the other.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 236.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Symbola certe Ecclesiæ ex ipso Ecclesiæ sensu, non ex hæreticorum + cerebello, exponenda sunt</i>.—Bull. Judic. Eccl. v.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 238.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The very name of Father, applied in the Creed to the first Person, + intimates the relation he bears to a Son, &c.</blockquote> + +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 +(<i>symbolum ad Baptismum</i>), 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 +<i>Scheol</i> or the abode of separated souls;—but really meaning no more +than <i>vere mortuus est</i>.. Jesus was taken from the Cross dead in the very +same sense in which the Baptist was dead after his beheading.<br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 250.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 257.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>In him was life, and the life was the light of men</i>. The same Word + was life, the <img src="images/CG10.gif" width="67" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: logos"> and <img src="images/CG123.gif" width="39" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: zôáe,"> both one. There was no occasion + therefore for subtilly distinguishing the Word and Life into two Sons, + as some did.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness cometh not upon + it.</i> So I render the verse, conformable to the rendering of the same + Greek verb, <img src="images/CG124.gif" width="115" height="23" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>comprehend</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 259.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>And the Word was made flesh</i>—became personally united with the man + Jesus; <i>and dwelt among us</i>,—resided constantly in the human nature + so assumed.</blockquote> + +Waterland himself did but dimly see the awful import of <img src="images/CG125.gif" width="118" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: egéneto +sà rx">—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.<br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 266.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Hereupon therefore the Apostle, in defence of Christ's real humanity, + says, <i>This is he that came by water and blood</i>.</blockquote> + +<i>Water and blood,</i> that is <i>serum</i> and <i>crassamentum</i>, mean simply +<i>blood</i>, the blood of the animal or carnal life, which, saith Moses, <i>is +the life</i>. Hence <i>flesh</i> is often taken as, and indeed is a form of, the +blood,—blood formed or organized. Thus <i>blood</i> often includes <i>flesh</i>, +and <i>flesh</i> includes <i>blood</i>. <i>Flesh and blood</i> is equivalent to blood +in its twofold form, or rather as formed and formless. <i>Water and blood</i> +has, therefore, two meanings in St. John, but which <i>in idem +coincidunt</i>: +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + true animal human blood, and no celestial ichor or phantom:</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +the whole sentiently vital body, fixed or flowing, the pipe and the +stream.</li></ol> + +For the ancients, and especially the Jews, had no distinct apprehension +of the use or action of the nerves: in the Old Testament <i>heart</i> is used +as we use <i>head</i>. <i>The fool hath said in his heart</i>—is in English: "the +worthless fellow (<i>vaurien</i>) hath taken it into his head," &c.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 268.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Is it clear that the distinct <i>hypostasis</i> 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?<br> +<br> +It grieves me to think that such giant <i>archaspistæ</i> of the Catholic +Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 +<i>John</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 272.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Incautiously worded at best. Compare our Lord's own declaration to his +disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while <i>with</i> or <i>among</i> them, in +order to dwell <i>in</i> them permanently.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 286.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 288.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +I agree with Bull in holding <img src="images/CG126.gif" width="169" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: apò tou hymetérou génous"><img src="images/CG127.gif" width="65" height="28" border="1" alt="see previous image"> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 292.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 338.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG128.gif" width="517" height="116" border="1" alt="Greek: Phúsei dè taes phthoras prosgenoménaes, anagkaion aen hóti + sôsai Boulómenos áe tà en phthoropoiòn ousÃan aphanÃsas touto dè ouk + aen hetérôs genésthai ei máeper hae katà phúsin zôà e proseplákae tô + tà en phthorà n dexaménô, aphanizousa mèn tà en phthorà n, athanatòn dè + tou loipou tò dexamenon diataerousa. k.t.l.">—Just. M.<br> +<br> + 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.</blockquote> + +Waterland has not mastered the full force of <img src="images/CG129.gif" width="167" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: hà e 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 340.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Qui nude tantum hominem eum dicunt ex Joseph generatum * * moriuntur.</i></blockquote> + +<i>Non nude hominem</i>—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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77ac"></a><b>Chap. VII. p. 389.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It is a sufficient reason for not receiving either them (<i>Arian + doctrines</i>), 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 41-2, &c.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f771"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity +asserted, in reply to some late pamphlets. 2nd edit. Lond. 1734.<br> +<a href="#section7b">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section8"></a>Notes on Skelton's <i>Works</i><a href="#f81"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1825.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8a"></a><b>Burdy's Life of Skelton, p. 22.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 67.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 106.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Surely there was more zeal than wisdom in this declaration. Does the +Athanasian or rather the <i>pseudo</i>-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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8d"></a><b>Vol. I. p. 177-180.</b> +<br> +<br> +No problem more difficult or of more delicate treatment than the +<i>criteria</i> 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 <i>synopsis</i> <img src="images/CG130.gif" width="111" height="25" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<i>P. S.</i> 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." +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 182.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Are <i>we</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 185.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 186.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>phænomena</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>phænomena</i>, and he draws his conclusion +from an arbitrary and, as seems to me, senseless definition of a +miracle.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 214. End of Discourse II.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 234.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +I understand these words (<i>My Father is greater than I</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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 251.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> This was necessary, because their Law was ordained by angels.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ad homines</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 265.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>Therefore, he saith, <i>I</i> (as a man) <i>can of myself do nothing</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>a fortiori</i> not as the Son of man, and more especially, as +such, in all that refers to the redemption of mankind."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 267.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 268.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If Christ in one place, (<i>John</i> xiv. 28,) says, <i>My Father is greater + than I</i>; he must be understood of his relation to the Father as his + Son, born of a woman.</blockquote> + +I do not see the necessity of this: does not Christ say, <i>My Father and +I will come and we will dwell in you?</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 276.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>the first-born of every +creature</i> as a false version of the words, which (as the argument and +following verse prove) should be rendered <i>begotten before</i>, (or rather +<i>superlatively before</i>), <i>all that was created or made; for by him</i> they +were made.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>Of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which + are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.</i></blockquote> + +I cannot explain myself here; but I have long thought that our Saviour +meant in these words <img src="images/CG131.gif" width="262" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: ainÃttein tà en 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—<img src="images/CG132.gif" width="121" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: ei +mà e 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 <img src="images/CG134.gif" width="97" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: +oud' ho uhÃos"> and its inclusion in the Father. <i>As the Father knoweth +me, so know I the Father</i>.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG135.gif" width="56" height="28" border="1" alt="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, <img src="images/CG133.gif" width="221" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: +oud' ho uhÃos, ei mà e 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 <img src="images/CG134.gif" width="97" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: oud' ho huÃos"> +conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word <img src="images/CG136.gif" width="46" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: emou"> +including the Son in the <img src="images/CG137.gif" width="124" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: patà er mónos">. For to his only-begotten +Son before all time the Father showeth all things. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 279.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>whence the Arian is to draw the + consequence himself, which may possibly be wrong</i>.</blockquote> + +Very good.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 280.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>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.</i>—l John v. 20. The whole connection evidently shows the + words to be spoken of Christ.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 281.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> But, farther, it is objected that Christ cannot be God, since God + calls him <i>his servant</i> more than once, particularly 'Isaiah' xlii. 1.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 287.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Hence it appears, that in the passage objected, (1 'Cor'. xv. 24, &c.) + Christ is spoken of purely as that Man whom <i>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.</i> (Phil. ii. 9, 10.)</blockquote> + +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, <i>in +which</i> (mystery) <i>all treasures of knowledge are hidden</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 318.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Hence, perhaps, may be best explained what St. Peter says in the + second Epistle, after pleading a miracle. <i>We have also a more sure + word of prophecy, whereunto you do well that you take heed.</i></blockquote> + +I believe that St. Peter neither said it, nor meant this; but that +<img src="images/CG138.gif" width="114" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: Bebaióteron"> follows <i>the prophetic word</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 327.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Agreeable to these passages of the Prophet, St. Peter tells us (<i>Acts</i> x. 38), <i>God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and + power</i>.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Disc. VIII.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity vindicated.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 374-378.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>phænomena</i> 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 <i>Aids to Reflection</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> (Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.)</b> +<br> +<blockquote>Christianity proved by Miracles.</blockquote> + +I cannot see and never could, the purpose, or <i>cui bono</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>idea</i> of a miracle; which word is +with me no <i>idea</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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. <a name="fr82">For</a> 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,)<a href="#f82"><sup>2</sup></a>—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.<br> +<br> +<a name="fr83">So</a> again in the second paragraph of page 502<a href="#f83"><sup>3</sup></a>, 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, <i>ejusdem generis</i>,—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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>If</i> with respect to a much less startling narration is the point in +dispute between us?"<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>ejusdem generis</i>, 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, <i>præter experientiam</i>: and we have the +definition of a miracle in the popular, practical, and appropriated +sense.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8y"></a><b>Vol. III.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>sacrifice, purchase, +bargain, satisfaction</i>, of the creditor by full payment of the <i>debt</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 393.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>tarantula</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 394.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Yet excommunication, the inherent discipline of the Church, which it + exercised under persecution, which it is still permitted to exercise + under the present establishment.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr84">And</a> this it was, that first led me to the distinction +between the <i>Ecclesia</i> and an <i>Enclesia</i>, 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<a href="#f84"><sup>4</sup></a>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 446.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Strange that so great a man as Skelton should first affirm eternity of +both, yet in the next sentence talk of "long before." <a name="fr85">These</a> Reflections<a href="#f85"><sup>5</sup></a> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 478.</b><br> +<br> +<i>In fine.</i> +<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ad"></a><b>Vol. IV. p. 28. Deism Revealed.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="Deism Revealed" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Were you ever at Constantinople, Sir?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>Never.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Temp.</i></td> + <td>I am sure 1 have not.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>Nor I; but what then?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Pray, Mr. Dechaine, did you see Julius Cæsar assassinated in + the Capitol?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>A pretty question! No indeed, Sir.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Have you any doubts about the truth of what is told + us by the historians concerning that memorable transaction?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>Not the least.</td> +</tr><tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>By no means.</td> +</tr><tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>I have.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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' <img src="images/CG139.gif" width="97" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: élegchos metabáseôs eis +állo génos"><img src="images/CG140.gif" width="273" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image">; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 35.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont." cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Templeton</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +This is the ever open and vulnerable part of Deism. The Deist, as a +Deist, believes, <i>implicite</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 37.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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 +<img src="images/CG141.gif" width="62" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Katà Matthaion"><img src="images/CG142.gif" width="97" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image"> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 243.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 3" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Temp.</i></td> + <td>ou, Mr. Dechaine, seem to forget that God is just; and you, + Mr. Shepherd, that he is merciful</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>I insist, that, as God is merciful, he will forgive.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>And I insist, that, as he is just, he will punish.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Temp.</i></td> + <td>Pray Mr. Dechaine, are you able, upon the Deistical scheme to + rid yourself of this difficulty?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +Here is the <i>cardo</i>! 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 <i>iota</i> 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 (<i>regula maxima</i>), 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 <i>sensible</i> 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 <img src="images/CG143.gif" width="84" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: +ponaerón"> in this very impossibility.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 249.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 4" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Was Christ innocent?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td><i>He was without sin.</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>And he was put to death by the appointment and + predetermination of God?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td>The Jews put him to death.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Do not evade the question. Was he not <i>the Lamb slain from the + foundation of the world?</i> Was he not <i>so delivered by the + determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that the Jews, having + taken him, by wicked hands crucified and slew him?</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td>And what then?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Nothing; but that you are to answer, as well as I, for saying + that God predetermined the death of this only innocent person.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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 <i>duri per durius</i>: 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 <img src="images/CG144.gif" width="130" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: thélaema Theou"> the absolute +ground of all being, from the <img src="images/CG145.gif" width="68" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: Boulà e tou Theou"><img src="images/CG146.gif" width="91" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image"> as the cause +and disposing providence of all existence.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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? + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ai"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 268.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 5" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 281.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f81"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The complete Works of the late Rev. Philip Skelton, Rector +of Fintona. 6. vols. 8vo. London, 1824. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#section8">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f82"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See South's Works, vol. iii. p. 500. Clarendon edit. 1823 +—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr82">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f83"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#fr83">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f84"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> The Editor is not aware of the existence of the Essay here +mentioned. But see for the distinction of the <i>Ecclesia</i> and <i>Enclesia</i>, +the Church and State, 3rd edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr84">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f85"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 5:</span></a> On Predestination, as far as p. 445.<br> +<a href="#fr85">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section9"></a>Notes on Andrew Fuller's <i>Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared</i><a href="#f91"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1807.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9a"></a><b>Letter III. p. 38.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<img src="images/CG149.gif" width="100" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Lógos monogenáes"><img src="images/CG150.gif" width="78" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image">— not as +an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification—but as a +distinct <i>Hypostasis</i> <img src="images/CG147.gif" width="96" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: symphysikáe">:-and hence it might be shown +that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should +call himself the <img src="images/CG148.gif" width="139" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: Theòs phanerós."> This might have been rendered +more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ's answer to the +disciples of John;—<i>and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended +in me</i> (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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>argumentum ad +homines</i>:—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 <i>implicite</i>. 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, <i>Ye are as Gods</i>; and I have a right to do so: for though +a mere man, I am the great Prophet and Messenger which Moses promised +you."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9b"></a><b>Letter V. p. 72.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>the whole world lieth in + wickedness—that every thought and imagination of their heart is only + evil continually</i>—and that <i>there is none of them that doeth good, no + not one</i>.</blockquote> + +To this the Unicists would answer, that by <i>the whole world</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 77.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This is not, <img src="images/CG151.gif" width="140" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9d"></a><b>Letter VI. p. 90.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> (The systems compared as to their tendency to promote morality in + general.)</blockquote> + +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 <i>ego ipse</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>explicite et implicite</i>, that the <img src="images/CG152.gif" width="90" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: noúmenon"> the +<i>intelligibile</i>, the <i>ipseitas super sensibilis</i>, of guilt is in time, +and of time, and, consequently, a mechanism of cause and effect;—in +other words, in confounding the <img src="images/CG153.gif" width="364" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: phainómena, tà rhéonta, tà mà e +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.<br> +<br> +After such admissions, no other possible defence can be made for +Calvinism or any other <i>ism</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 95.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Deus infinite modificatus</i>:—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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f91"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section9">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section10"></a>Notes on Whitaker's <i>Origin of Arianism Disclosed</i><a href="#f101"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1810.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10a"></a><b>Chap. I. 4. p. 30.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>Making himself equal with God</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG154.gif" width="251" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Ãson heautòn poiôn tòn Theô"> (18) refers,—not to the +<img src="images/CG155.gif" width="255" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: paterá Ãdion élege tòn Theòn"> (18) or the <img src="images/CG156.gif" width="124" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: ho patáer +mou"> (17), but—to the <img src="images/CG157.gif" width="250" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai"> (17). The 19th +verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever +of the <img src="images/CG156.gif" width="124" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: ho patáer +mou"> (17), but consists wholly of a +justification of the <img src="images/CG158.gif" width="152" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: kagô ergázomai">.<br> +<br> +1803.<br> +<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG156.gif" width="124" height="31" border="1" alt="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, <img src="images/CG157.gif" width="250" height="29" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10b"></a><b>Chap. II. 1. p. 34.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG159.gif" width="494" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: (Philôn)—perì mèn oun tà theia kaì pátria matháemata, póson + te kaì paelÃkon eisenáenektai pónon, érgô pasi daelos kaì perì tà + philósopha dè kaì eleuthéria taes éxôthen paideÃas oiós tis aen, oudèn + dei légein hóti kaì málista tà en katà Plátôna kaì Pythagóran ezaelôkôs + agôgà en, diénegken ápantas toùs kath' heautòn, historeitai."><img src="images/CG160.gif" width="514" height="116" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> + 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 35.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>minutiæ</i> 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 <i>just man</i> is +called <i>the son of God</i>, Jehovah, <img src="images/CG161.gif" width="113" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: pais Kyrión">;—but Christ's +specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was <i>Ben +Elohim</i>, <img src="images/CG162.gif" width="129" height="28" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>just man</i>;—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 <i>the just man</i>; and that it was intended as a +generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the +plural number in the third chapter.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Taken, therefore, as a work <i>ante</i>, or at least <i>extra, Christum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG163.gif" width="279" height="33" border="1" alt="Greek: ho ôn, kaì ho aen, kaì ho +erchómenos">= 3, and the <i>seven spirits</i>= 10 <i>Sephiroth</i>, constituting +together the <i>Adam Kadmon</i>, the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate +one in the Messiah.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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. <i>N. +B.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 36.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +The belief of the Alexandrian Jews who had acquired Greek philosophy, no +doubt;—but of the Palestine Jews?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 2. p. 48.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +Stranger still. Whitaker could scarcely have read the Greek. Amelius +says, that these truths, if stripped of their allegorical dress, +<img src="images/CG164.gif" width="503" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: (metapephrasména ek taes tou Barbárou theologÃas)"> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 9. p. 107.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being + into power, and dividing the Logos into two.</blockquote> + +Who that had even rested but in the porch of the Alexandrian philosophy, +would not rather say, <i>of substantiating powers and attributes into +being?</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10g"></a><b>Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +How then could Philo have remained a Jew?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 2. p. 195.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10j"></a><b>Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Justin accordingly sets himself to shew, that in the beginning, before + all creatures, God generated a certain rational power out of himself.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 267.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of + Christ,) asserting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance + to the Jews, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 2. p. 270.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>Grace to you and peace from God our + Father, and</i>—from whom besides?—<i>the Lord Jesus Christ</i>; in which + our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as <i>the Grace of our Lord Jesus + Christ be with you all</i>; and is even <i>invoked</i> the first at times as, + <i>the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the + communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all</i>; shews us plainly, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f101"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The Origin of Arianism Disclosed. By John Whitaker, B.D. +London, 1791.<br> +<a href="#section10">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section11"></a>Notes on Oxlee on <i>The Trinity and Incarnation</i><a href="#f111"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1827.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11a"></a><b>Introduction, p. 4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11b"></a><b>Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. iii. p. 26.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 26-7.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the + Godhead in the following declaration: <i>But Egypt is man, and not God: + and their horses flesh, and not spirit</i>. (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: <i>But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man, + that is, flesh, and not God, who is spirit</i>.</blockquote> + +Assuredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is +even doubtful whether <img src="images/CH1.gif" width="53" height="30" border="1" alt="Hebrew: unable to transliterate. html Ed."> +(<i>ruach</i>) in this place means <i>spirit</i> in contradistinction to <i>matter</i> +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 <i>flesh</i> and +<i>spirit</i> in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he +wrote in Greek, favours our common version,— <i>flesh and not spirit</i>: +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: <i>Egypt +is man, and not God; and her horses flesh, and not wind</i>. If Mr. Oxlee +renders the fourth verse of Psalm civ.—<i>He maketh spirits his +messengers</i>, (for our version—<i>He maketh his angels spirits</i>—is +without a violent inversion senseless), this is a case in point for the +use of the word, <i>spirits</i>, 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;—<i>He maketh the winds his angels +or messengers, and the lightnings his ministrant servants</i>.<br> +<br> +As to Mr. Oxlee's <i>abstract intelligences,</i> I cannot but think +<i>abstract</i> for <i>pure</i>, 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 <i>spirit</i>, and believed it +to be an emission from the Almighty Father of Spirits: the latter they +called <i>body</i>; 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—<i>anima, +animus</i>, that is, <img src="images/CG165.gif" width="79" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: ánemos"> spiritus, <img src="images/CG166.gif" width="74" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: pneuma"> In the +childhood, they are fire, <i>mens ignea, ignicula</i>, and God himself +<img src="images/CG167.gif" width="237" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: pur noeròn, pur aeÃzôon"> 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 <i>imagine</i> 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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11e"></a><b>Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 +<i>whimmy</i>, 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 +<i>Chron</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 39-40.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>dicta</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 40, 41.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. III. p. 58.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Inspired Scripture amply supplied by the Talmudic and Rabbinical +traditions!—This from a Clergyman of the Church of England!<br> +<br> +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 <i>ad quas res</i>, 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 <i>mens agitans molem</i>. But this the Cabalists evaded by their +double meaning of the term, 'nothing', namely as nought = 0, and as no +<i>thing</i>; 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. <a name="fr112">It</a> is not, therefore, half a dozen passages respecting the +first three <i>proprietates</i><a href="#f112"><sup>2</sup></a> 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 <i>proprietates</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 61.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 65.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>a fortiori</i> the +rationality of three: the Unitarian from the Three pretends to deduce +the equal rationality of as many thousands.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 66.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>wicked</i> personalities of the +Godhead?—How does this rhyme?— Even as a metaphor, emanation is an +ill-chosen term; for it applies only to fluids. <i>Ramenta</i>, unravellings, +threads, would be more germane.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f111"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The Christian Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation +considered and maintained on the principles of Judaism. By the Rev. John +Oxlee. London, 1815.<br> +<a href="#section11">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f112"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> That is, Intelligence or the Crown, Knowledge, Wisdom.<i> Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr112">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section12"></a>Notes on <i>A Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching</i><a href="#f121"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1810.<br> +<br> +<blockquote>For only that man understands in deed<br> + Who well remembers what he well can do;<br> +The faith lives only where the faith doth breed<br> + Obedience to the works it binds us to.<br> +And as the Life of Wisdom hath exprest—<br> +'If this ye know, then do it and be blest'.<br> + <br> +LORD BROOK.</blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12a"></a><b><i>In Initio</i></b> +<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG168.gif" width="87" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: mÃsaetron"> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12b"></a><b>Part I. p. 49.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>know</i> 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 <i>absurd</i> 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 <i>Gospel</i> to + propose to the sinner <i>to do his best</i>, by way of healing the disease + of the soul—and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his + recovery. The <i>only</i> previous qualification is to <i>know</i> our misery, + and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 51.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>do their best</i> towards maintaining themselves by honest labour, + instead of perpetually planning new systems of fraud, and new schemes + of depredation.</blockquote> + +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 <i>sarsaparilla</i>, and <i>lignum vitæ</i>, or +<i>senna</i> in contempt of all mercurial preparations.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 56.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Not for the revenues of an Archbishop would he exhort them to a duty + <i>unknown in Scripture</i>, of adding their five talents to the five they + have received, &c.</blockquote> + +All this is mere calumny and wilful misstatement of the tenets of +Wesley, who never doubted that we are bound to improve our <i>talents</i>, +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, <i>Well done thou good and faithful servant</i>, &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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 60.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> It must afford him (Rowland Hill) great consolation, amidst the + increasing immorality * * * that when their village Curate exhorts + them, if they have <i>faith</i> in the doctrine of a world to come, to add + to it those <i>good works</i> in which the sum and substance of religion + consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as <i>chopping a + new-fashioned</i> logic.</blockquote> + +That this is either false or nugatory, see proved in <i>The Friend</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Tom Payne himself never laboured harder to root all virtue out of + society.—Mandeville nor Voltaire never even laboured so much.</blockquote> + +Indeed!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> They were content with declaring their disbelief of a future state.</blockquote> + +In what part of their works? Can any wise man read Mandeville's <i>Fable of +the Bees</i>, and not see that it is a keen satire on the inconsistency of +Christians, and so intended.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 71.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>no offences too many or + too aggravated</i>, to disqualify the perpetrators of them + for—salvation, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 72.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "In every age," says the moral divine (Blair), "the practice has + prevailed of substituting certain appearances of piety in the place of + the great <i>duties</i> of humanity and mercy," &c.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 75-79.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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. <i>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</i>. Rev. xx. 12, 13. Let us recall to mind the +urgent caution conveyed in the writings of Paul * * <i>Be not deceived; +God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also +reap</i>. And let us further add * * the confirmation * * of the Saviour +himself:—<i>When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, * * * but the +righteous into life eternal</i>. Matt. xxv. 31, <i>ad finem</i>. 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, <i>except one</i>, puts you upon <i>doing something</i>, +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, <i>not</i> +according to our works, but according to the Father's own purpose and +grace, which was <i>not</i> sold to us <i>on certain conditions to be fulfilled +by ourselves</i>, but was given us in Christ before the world began." +Toplady's Works: Sermon on James ii. 18.</blockquote> + +<i>Si sic omnia!</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 84.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The sacred volume of Holy Writ declares that <i>true</i> (pure?) <i>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</i>. James i. 27</blockquote> + +This is now at least, whatever might have been the meaning of the word +<i>religion</i> 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, <img src="images/CG169.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: thraeskeÃa"> It should be +rendered, <i>True worship</i>, &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,—<i>to visit the fatherless</i>, &c. True religion does not +consist <i>quoad essentiam</i> 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 <img src="images/CG169.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: thraeskeÃa"> 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, (<i>cultus religionis</i>, +<img src="images/CG169.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: thraeskeÃa">) <a name="fr122">Christ</a> 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 +<i>true cult</i><a href="#f122"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 86.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 94.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<i>Vicisti, O Galilæe!</i><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 95.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> They never fail to refer to the proud Pharisee, whom they term + self-<i>righteous</i>; 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 <i>moral + duties</i>:—whereas the plain truth is that the Pharisee was <i>not + righteous</i>, but merely arrogated to himself that character; he had + neglected all the <i>moral duties</i> of life.</blockquote> + +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. <i>or order</i>." Once +assume merits, and I defy you to keep out supererogation and the old +<i>Monte di Pietà </i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 97.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> —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 + <i>merited</i> the one, or <i>deserved</i> the other.</blockquote> + +Can the Barrister have read the New Testament? Or does he know it only +by quotations?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> —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.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG170.gif" width="48" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Ãtae"> +<i>venatrix</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 102.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>He that doeth righteousness is righteous</i>. Since then it is plain + that each must <i>himself</i> be righteous, if he be so at all, what do + they mean who thus inveigh against <i>self</i>-righteousness, since Christ + himself declares there is no other?</blockquote> + +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 <i>subauditur</i> of <i>Deus</i> for +their common nominative case;—which said <i>Deus</i>, however, is but +another <i>automaton</i>, 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 <i>through the +only merits of Jesus Christ</i>? 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 <i>lues confirmata</i> of statute heresy? +What says the reverend critic to this? <a name="fr123">Will</a> 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 <i>iota</i> unswallowed, if we are to believe +his own recent and voluntary manifesto<a href="#f123"><sup>3</sup></a>? What says he to this +Barrister, and his Hints to the Legislature?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 105.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If the new faith be the only true one, let us embrace it; but let not + those who vend these <i>new articles</i> expect that we should choose them + with our eyes shut.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 114.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. * * *. <i>This + catalogue,</i> says he, <i>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.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +Very good.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 115-16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the + sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his <i>saving + change</i> to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or + other of <i>their</i> Evangelical fraternity. They always hold <i>themselves</i> + 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 <i>Gospel</i> has no such effect. —It is + always the <i>Gospel Preacher</i> who works the miracle, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 118.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>infamous profession</i> as that through the medium of + which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to + mend the heart, &c.</blockquote> + +Whoo! See Milton's Preface to the <i>Samson Agonistes</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 133.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 * + *—<i>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.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Io Pæan!</i> for the enemy with a vengeance.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12x"></a><b>Part II. p. 14.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It behoved him (Dr. Hawker in his Letter to the Barrister) to show in + what manner a covenant can exist without terms or conditions.</blockquote> + +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:—<i>Ergo</i>, +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 26.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Jesus answered him thus—<i>Verily, I say unto you, unless a man be born + of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of + God</i>.—The true sense of which is obviously this:—Except a man be + initiated into my religion by Baptism, (which <i>at that time</i> was + always <i>preceded by a confession of faith</i>) and unless he manifest his + sincere reception of it, by leading that upright and <i>spiritual</i> life + which it enjoins, <i>he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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: <i>The wind bloweth where +it listeth</i>, &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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 29.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The true meaning of being <i>born again</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ab extra</i> (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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 30.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.</blockquote> + +"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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for + 1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, by <i>setting + her at liberty, while employed</i> in the necessary business of <i>washing</i> + for her family, &c.</blockquote> + +<i>N. B.</i> Not the famous rabbit-woman.—She was Robarts.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 31.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> A washerwoman has <i>all her sins blotted out</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> + <i>Rode, caper, vitem: tamen hinc cum stabis ad aras, In tua quod fundi + cornua possit, erit.</i> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 32.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 33.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—their faiths in the efficacy of their own rites, and creeds, and + ceremonies, and their whole train of <i>substitutions</i> for <i>moral duty</i>, + was so entire, and in their opinion was such a <i>saving faith</i>, that + they could not at all interpret any language that seemed to dispute + their value, or deny their importance.</blockquote> + +Poor strange Jews! They had, doubtless, what Darwin would call a +specific <i>paralysis</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 34.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Drama didacticum</i>, 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 37.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> —the logic of the new Evangelists will convince him that it is a + contradiction in terms even to <i>suppose</i> himself <i>capable of doing any + thing</i> to help <i>or bringing any thing to recommend himself to the + Divine favour</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>tocsin</i> 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 <i>Do as ye would be done unto</i>, +is an interpolated precept?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 39.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>"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 <i>never supposed as a condition which + the sinner performs to entitle him to mercy</i>, but merely as evidences + that he is brought and has obtained mercy. <i>They cannot be the + conditions</i> of obtaining salvation."</blockquote> + +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, <i>me judice</i>, a worse psychologist?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ai"></a><b>Part II. p. 40.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>repentance</i> of sinners to be the <i>condition</i> on which + <i>alone</i> salvation can be obtained. But the doctors of the new divinity + <i>deny</i> this: they tell us distinctly <i>it cannot</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<i>das Herzknirschen</i>—the very heart +crashed between the teeth of a lock-jaw'd agony!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> What is <i>faith</i>? Is it not a conviction produced in the mind by adequate testimony?</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 41.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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 <i>revealed</i> religion, + and have we not the most miraculous attestation of its truth?</blockquote> + +Just look at the answer of Christ himself to Nicodemus, <i>John</i> 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. <i>Verily, verily, I say unto thee; except a man be born +again, he cannot see the kingdom of God</i>,—that is, he cannot have faith +in me.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 42.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>diatribe</i> 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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 43.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 46.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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! <i>Ergo</i>, the Barrister is infallible.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 47.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>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</i>. This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our + Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 50.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +Does not Christ himself say the same in the plainest and most +unmistakable words? <i>I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to +repentance. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are +sick,</i> 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. +<i>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</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 52.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It was reserved for these days of <i>new discovery</i> to announce to + mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the + promised blessings of the Gospel.</blockquote> + +Merely read <i>that unless they are sick they are precluded from the +offered remedies of the Gospel</i>; 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? <i>If we say we are without sin, +we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ar"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 53.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 54.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>memorabilia</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12at"></a><b>Part III. p. 5.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>antennæ</i> of its next +state of being.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 12.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +The same <i>crambe bis decies cocta</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>vis scientifica</i>; and +the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the +<i>phænomena</i> of sensuous experience. The greatest loss which modern +philosophy has through wilful scorn sustained, is the grand distinction +of the ancient philosophers between the <img src="images/CG171.gif" width="79" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: noúmena"> and <img src="images/CG172.gif" width="102" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: +phainómena"> This gives the true sense of Pliny—<i>venerare Deos</i> (that +is, their statues, and the like,) <i>et numina Deorum</i>, that is, those +spiritual influences which are represented by the images and persons of +Apollo, Minerva, and the rest.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ax"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 17.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>Diatessaron</i>, 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 <i>desideratum</i>; and if +anything could open the eyes of Socinians, this would do it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ay"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 24.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12az"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 27.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> So with the Tinker; I would give him the care of kettles, but I would + not give him <i>the cure of souls</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ba"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 30, 31.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "A <i>truly</i> awakened conscience," (these anti-moral editors of the + Pilgrim's Progress assure us,) "can never find relief from the law: + (that is, the <i>moral law</i>.) The more he looks for peace <i>this way, his + guilt</i>, like a heavy burden, becomes more intolerable; when he becomes + <i>dead</i> to the <i>law</i>,—as to <i>any dependence upon it for + salvation</i>,—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."<br> +<br> + Here we are taught that the <i>conscience</i> can never find relief from + obedience to the law of the Gospel.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr124">Read</a> but that +most affecting and instructive anecdote selected from the Hindostan +Missionary Account by the Quarterly Review<a href="#f124"><sup>4</sup></a>. 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 <i>sui generis!</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 35, 36.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "And behold a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, + Master, what shall I do <i>to inherit eternal life</i>?"<br> +<br> + "He said unto him, <i>What is written in the law? How readest thou?</i>"<br> +<br> + "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy + heart, with all thy soul, and with <i>all thy strength</i>, and with all + thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."<br> +<br> + "And he said unto him, Thou <i>hast answered right. This do, and thou + shall live.</i>"<br> +<br> + Luke x. 25-28.</blockquote> + +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—<i>This +do, and thou shalt live.</i> But what if he has not done it, but the very +contrary? <a name="fr125">And</a> 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<a href="#f125"><sup>5</sup></a>? 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 '<i>oving 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?</i> 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!<br> +<br> +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 <i>die Menschheit</i>—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 <img src="images/CG173.gif" width="63" height="31" border="1" alt="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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 45, 46.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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? <a name="fr126">See</a> what Milton has written on this subject in +the passage quoted in the Friend in the essays on the communication of +truth<a href="#f126"><sup>6</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bd"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 47</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>young</i> and + <i>breeding</i> woman <i>longed</i> for something," &c.</blockquote> + +Out upon the fellow! I could find it in my heart to suspect him of any +vice that the worst of men could commit!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12be"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 55, 56.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the + obedience of one shall many be made righteous.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 63, 64.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>justified</i> before God; that the <i>righteousness</i> of + <i>Christ</i> will be imputed to <i>them</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>in peculio</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 75.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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.)</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bh"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 78.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>"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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bi"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 82.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The spirit with which all their merciless treatment is to be borne is + next pointed out. * * "<i>Patient bearing of injuries</i> is true Christian + fortitude, and will always be more effectual to <i>disarm our enemies</i>, + and to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, than all + <i>arguments</i> whatever."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 86.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bk"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 88.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.)</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 89.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 97.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Note. It was procured, Mr. Collyer informs us, by the merit of his + "Lectures on Scripture facts." It should have been "Lectures on + <i>Scriptural</i> Facts." What should we think of the grammarian, who, + instead of <i>Historical</i>, should present us with "Lectures on <i>History</i> + Facts?"</blockquote> + +But Law Tracts? And is not <i>Scripture</i> as often used semi-adjectively?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 98.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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 <i>was as foolish as it was tyrannical</i>?" + * * * 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 <i>as foolish as it was tyrannical</i>.</blockquote> + + 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) <i>aut voluntate originis aut origine + voluntatis.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bo"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 102, 3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> When at this solemn tribunal the sinner shall be called upon to answer + for the transgression of those <i>moral</i> 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 <i>had neither + terms nor conditions,</i> and that his salvation was secured by a + covenant which procured him pardon and peace, <i>from all eternity</i>: a + covenant, the effects of which no folly or <i>after-act whatever</i> 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?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 106.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +An outrageous blunder.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 107.</b> +<br> + +<blockquote> Lord Bacon was the first who dedicated his profound and penetrating + genius to the cultivation of sound philosophy, &c.</blockquote> + +This very same Lord Bacon has given us his <i>Confessio Fidei</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12br"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 108.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>life</i>.<br> +<br> + 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 <i>doctrinal mysteries</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bs"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 110.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +What! Compare these laws, first, with Tacitus's account of the +constitutional laws of our German ancestors, Pagans; and then with the +Pandects and <i>Novellæ</i> 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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bt"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 113.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>license to teach</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bu"></a><b>Part IV. p. 1.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bv"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 7.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Socinus can have no claim upon my veneration: I have never concerned + myself with what he believed nor with what he taught &c.<br> +<br> + The Scripture is my authority, and on no other authority will I ever, + knowingly, lay the foundation of my faith.</blockquote> + +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 <i>tyro</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 10.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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? <a name="fr127">It</a> will be time +enough to boast, when to our own tolerance we have added their zeal, +learning, and indefatigable industry<a href="#f127"><sup>7</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bx"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 13, 14.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +In the whole <i>Bibliotlieca theologica</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12by"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 15.</b> +<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bz"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 29.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> —If of <i>different denominations</i>, 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, + "<i>a union</i> of religious sentiment in the <i>great doctrines</i>:" which + very want of union it is that creates these <i>different denominations</i>?</blockquote> + +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. <i>N. B.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ca"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 56.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>faith</i> in his disciples, without first furnishing + sufficient <i>evidence</i> to justify it. He reasoned thus: If I have done + what no <i>human power</i> could do, you must admit that my power is <i>from + above</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>argumentum ad hominem,</i> 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 <i>argumentum ad hominem</i> (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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12cb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 60, 61.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Religion is a system of <i>revealed</i> truth; and to affirm of any + revealed truth, that we <i>cannot understand</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<img src="images/CG174.gif" width="75" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: hóti esti"> and the <img src="images/CG175.gif" width="49" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <i>ab extra</i>, through the senses of eye, ear, or touch. No! all +revelation is and must be <i>ab intra</i>; the external <i>phænomena</i> can only +awake, recall evidence, but never reveal. This is capable of strict +demonstration.<br> +<br> +Afterwards the Barrister quotes from Thomas Watson respecting things +above comprehension in the study of nature: "in these cases, the <i>fact</i> +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?<br> +<br> +Are there not facts in religion, the causes and constitution of which +are mysteries?<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f121"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the nature and +effect of Evangelical Preaching. By a Barrister. Fourth Edition, 1808.<br> +<a href="#section12">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f122"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See <i>Aids to Reflection</i>, p. 14, 4th edition.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr122">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f123"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> <i>Quart. Review</i>, vol. ii. p. 187.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr123">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f124"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> See vol. i., p. 217.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr124">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f125"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 5:</span></a> + + <blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +<i>Paley's Moral and Polit. Philosophy</i>, B. II. c. 2. + + <blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +<i>Ib.</i> c. 3.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr125">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f126"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 6:</span></a> <i>Friend</i>, Vol. I. Essays X. and XI. 3rd edition—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr126">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f127"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 7:</span></a> See <i>Table Talk</i>, pp. 282 and 304. 2d edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr127">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section13"></a>Notes on Davison's <i>Discourses on Prophecy</i><a href="#f131"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> + +1825.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13a"></a><b>Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. </blockquote> + +Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of +thinking from p. 134 (<i>Since Prophecy</i>, &c.) to p. 139. (<i>that mercy</i>) +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 160.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Some indeed have sought the <i>star</i> and the <i>sceptre</i> 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.</blockquote> + +Surely this is a very weak reason. A far better is, I think, suggested +by the words, <i>I shall see him—I shall behold him</i>;—which in no +intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 162.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Deut</i>. 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, +<i>initiated</i> 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 <i>organismus</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 164.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to +evolve the full contents of the word <i>like</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 168.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 'formulae' of +words which have no sense but for the conscience? Davison's stress on +the word <i>covet</i>, 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 <i>king</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13f"></a><b>Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13g"></a><b>Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all + countries</i>, should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and + dilapidation, and that too under the <i>opprobrium</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13h"></a><b>Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13i"></a><b>Disc. VI. Pt. II. p. 289.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13j"></a><b>Disc. VI. Pt. IV. p. 325.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. (<i>Ezra</i> i. 1, 2.)</blockquote> + +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 <i>Ezra</i> 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 <img src="images/CG176.gif" width="90" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: anékdota"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 336.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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, <i>prima facie</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and + dreadful day of the Lord.</i></blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 373.</b> +<br><br> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13n"></a><b>Disc. VII. p. 375.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 392.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<img src="images/CG177.gif" width="115" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: katt' exochà en"> without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in +the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they +overlay their reason.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13p"></a><b>Disc. VIII. p. 416.</b> +<br> +<br> +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, <i>a house of the God of Jacob</i>. The +answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, <i>in the top of the +mountains</i>; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the +whole prediction.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 431.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>Go teach all + nations</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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,—(<i>Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to +all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing</i>,)—this is +not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is +this narrower sense without its practical advantages.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13r"></a><b>Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>infausta +tempora scribendi</i>, 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 <i>maculæ</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13s"></a><b>Disc. XII. p. 519.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 521.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 522-3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Quære</i>. See Polybius.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f131"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section13">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section14"></a>Notes on Irving's <i>Ben-Ezra</i><a href="#f141"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1827.<br> +<br> +<table summary="Ben Ezra" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="center" valign="top"> + <td></td> + <td><i>Christ the <b>Word</b></i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="top"> + <td><i>The Scriptures</i></td> + <td><i>The Spirit</i></td> + <td><i>The Church</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="top"> + <td></td> + <td><i>The Preacher</i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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 <i>prothesis</i> or identity;—the +Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the <i>thesis</i> and +<i>antithesis</i>; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise +the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the +<i>synthesis</i>. <a name="fr142">And</a> here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me +asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a <i>tetractys</i>, or +a triad equal to a <i>tetractys</i>: 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a +pentad—God's hand in the world<a href="#f142"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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. + + +<ol start=1 type="I"><li> +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, <i>salva +Catholica fide</i>. 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="I"><li> +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 <i>be done on earth as it is in heaven</i>, will <i>come</i>;—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. </li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="I"><li> +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. </li></ol> + +Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.<br> +<br> +<i>P. S.</i> I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all +the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. (<i>Deuteron</i>. +xxv. 1-8.)<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14a"></a><b>Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +I <a name="fr143">cannot</a> forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to +the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding, <i>genere et +gradu</i>, given in the <i>Aids to Reflection</i><a href="#f143"><sup>3</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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 <i>genera</i>; 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, +<i>materiam objectivam</i>,) 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, <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs">, +as likewise <img src="images/CG178.gif" width="144" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: psychikà e 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, <i>sophia</i>, or wisdom.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14b"></a><b>Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 73, 4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. </blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 85.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: <i>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.</i></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> c. vi. p. 108.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, <i>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</i>, these shall live, + <i>or be raised</i> at the coming of the Lord, <i>which is the first + resurrection.</i></blockquote> + +Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" asserted? The Seer +not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word <img src="images/CG179.gif" width="67" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: +psychás"> souls, expressly asserts the contrary. In no sense of the word +can souls, which descended in Christ's train (<i>chorus sacer animarum et +Christi comitatus</i>) from Heaven, be said <i>resurgere</i>. Resurrection is +always and exclusively resurrection in the body;—not indeed a rising of +the <i>corpus</i> <img src="images/CG180.gif" width="126" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: phantastikón"> that is, the few ounces of carbon, +nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the <i>copula</i> of which +that gave the form no longer exists,—and of which Paul exclaims;—<i>Thou +fool! not this</i>, &c.—but the <i>corpus</i> <img src="images/CG181.gif" width="236" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: hypostatikòn, à e +noúmenon"><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 110.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. <i>Neither + doth corruption inherit incorruption</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.<br> +<br> +Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated +chapter (1 <i>Cor</i>. 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>I</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, <i>medium</i> 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 <i>media</i> of communion between the man and his circumstances.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Dies Messiæ</i>,—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? +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. vii. p. 118.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively, + means in good language this only, that the word <i>quick</i>, 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 <i>dead</i>: for by that word alone is the + whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.</blockquote> + +The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological +reading of their <i>alumni</i> 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' +(<i>vulgo</i> Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic +<i>pic-nic</i>, to which each of the twelve contributed his several +<i>symbolum</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. ix. p. 127.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that + that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)</blockquote> + +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 +<i>amanuensis</i>, 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 <i>Dies Messiæ</i>, the <i>Dies ultima</i>, 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 <i>in +ordine ad</i> some other doctrine or precept, <i>illustrandi causa</i>, or <i>ad +hominem</i>, or <i>more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Part II. p. 145.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Second characteristic. <i>The kingdom shall be divided.</i>—Third + characteristic. <i>The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly + brittle.</i>—Fourth characteristic. <i>They shall mingle themselves with + the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another.</i></blockquote> + +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, <i>grammatici</i>, secretaries, +private tutors, parasites, physicians, and the like!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 153.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>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></blockquote> + +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:—<i>coming in a cloud</i>! 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 253.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Never, Oh! our Lady! never, Oh! our Mother! shalt thou fall again into + the crime of idolatry.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Magna Mater</i> a goddess in her own +right;—and that thus he overlooked the meaning of the word.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 254.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The entire text of the Apostle is as follows:—<i>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</i>, &c. (2 Thess. + ii. 1-10.)</blockquote> + +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, <i>Luke</i> xvii.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 297.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f141"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section14">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f142"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See <i>supra</i>, vol. iii. p. 93.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr142">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f143"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> P. 157, 4th edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr143">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section15"></a>Notes on Noble's <i>Appeal</i><a href="#f151"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1827.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15a"></a><b>Sect. IV. p. 210.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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 <i>genus</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15b"></a><b>Sect. V. p. 286.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>Die Theorie der Geister-Kunde</i>, + printed in 1808.</blockquote> + +Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on +Sung's (<i>alias</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 315.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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>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?</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>visa et audita</i>,—his own experience, as a traveller and +visitor of the spiritual world,—not the words of another as a mere +<i>amanuensis</i>. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 321.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: <i>To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according + to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.</i> (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.</blockquote> + +Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense +intended by Gulielmus, namely, as <i>mania</i>,—I should as little think of +charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured +under an <i>acyanoblepsia</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 323.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of + the Baron's reverie: <i>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?</i></blockquote> + +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. <i>N.B.</i> Not every revelation requires a sensible +miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of +<i>credenda</i>. 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 +<i>Exodus</i> iv. 10.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 346, 7.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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 <i>a wicked and +adulterous generation</i> (that) <i>seeketh after a sign</i>; on which occasion, +according to Mark, <i>he sighed deeply in his spirit</i>. How characteristic +is that touch of the Apostle, <i>The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks +seek after wisdom!</i> (where by wisdom he means the elegance and +refinement of Grecian literature.) </blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG182.gif" width="76" height="26" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG183.gif" width="56" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: sophÃa"> of the Greeks their disputatious <img src="images/CG184.gif" width="86" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: +sophistikà e"> is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art: +and <i>sophistæ</i> may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say, +iron-mongers.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 350.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15h"></a><b>Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>visa et audita</i>. Nor is the Baron himself (as it appears +to me) quite consistent on this point.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 434.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?"<br> +<br> +I have often thought of writing a work to be entitled <i>Vindiciæ +Heterodoxæ, sive celebrium virorum <img src="images/CG185.gif" width="182" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: paradogmatizóntôn"> defensio</i>; +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: + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +Swedenborg's own assertion +and constant belief in the hypothesis of a supernatural illumination; +or, </li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +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, </li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> + +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.</li></ol> + +<i>P. S.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f151"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#section15">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section16">Essay on Faith</a></h2> +<br> +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 +(<i>regula maxima</i> 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 (<i>patientes</i>)—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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>scire possunt hoc vel +illud una cum seipsis</i>; that is, <i>conscire vel scire aliquid mecum</i>, or +to know a thing in relation to myself, and in the act of knowing myself +as acted upon by that something.<br> +<br> +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</i>, I +take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is, +of any application of the will. <a name="fr162">If</a> then, I <i>minus</i> the will be the +<i>thesis</i><a href="#f162"><sup>2</sup></a>; Thou <i>plus</i> will must be the <i>antithesis</i>, 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,—<i>a +fortiori</i>, 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 <i>plus</i> will, the other as <i>minus</i> +will, so is it here: and it is obvious that the reason or +<i>super</i>-individual of each man, whereby he is man, is the factor we are +to take as <i>minus</i> will; and that the individual will or personalizing +principle of free agency (arbitrement is Milton's word) is the factor +marked <i>plus</i> 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 <i>synthesis</i> 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 <i>prothesis</i>, 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 <i>syntheses</i>; for +example, appetite <i>plus</i> personal will=sensuality; lust of power, <i>plus</i> +personal will,=ambition, and so on, equally as in the <i>synthesis</i>, on +which the conscience is grounded. Not this therefore, but the other +<i>synthesis</i>, 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. + +<ol start=1 type="I"><li> + 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="I"><li> + + 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="I"><li> + + 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 <i>eminenter</i>. 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.</li></ol> + +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, <i>discursus, +discursio,</i> 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."<br> +<br> +We will now take up our reasoning again from the words "motion in +itself."<br> +<br> +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 <i>synthesis</i> 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 (<img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="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. + +<ol start=4 type="I"><li> +Reason, as one with the absolute will, (<i>In the beginning was the + Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God</i>,) 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—<i>sit pro ratione + voluntas</i>;—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.</li></ol> + +<b>Corollary</b>. 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 <i>idem</i> is modified by the <i>alter</i>. +And there arise impulses and objects from this <i>synthesis</i> of the <i>alter +et idem</i>, 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 <i>antithesis</i> in the +abdominal system: but hence arises a <i>synthesis</i> 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 <i>alter</i>, than when it +is confined to the <i>idem</i>; 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 <i>per medium +commune</i> 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, <i>He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of +me</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs"> 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.<br> +<br> +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. + +<br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<b><i>end of volume four, the final volume.</i></b> +<br> +<br> +<hr><br><br> +<br> +<br> +<i>This page prepared by Clytie Siddall, a volunteer member of <a href="https://www.pgdp.net/">Distributed Proofreaders</a>.<br> +<br> +I enjoy volunteer proofreading, and you might, too!<br> +<br> +Anybody, from anywhere, from any language background, can contribute to putting <a href="http://promo.net/pg/">thousands more free books online</a>, by checking just one page at a time.<br> +<br> +Interested? Check out <a href="https://www.pgdp.net/">Distributed Proofreaders</a>, a non-profit, volunteer site where hundreds of people like you and me add up to a great team, helping <a href="http://promo.net/pg/">Project Gutenberg</a> make a hundred thousand books of all kinds available free, anywhere in the world, <b>just one page at a time</b></i>...<br> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10801 ***</div> +</body> diff --git a/10801-h/images/CG1.gif b/10801-h/images/CG1.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d62d86 --- /dev/null +++ b/10801-h/images/CG1.gif diff --git a/10801-h/images/CG10.gif b/10801-h/images/CG10.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..93192dd --- /dev/null +++ b/10801-h/images/CG10.gif diff --git a/10801-h/images/CG100.gif b/10801-h/images/CG100.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b469e29 --- /dev/null +++ b/10801-h/images/CG100.gif diff --git a/10801-h/images/CG101.gif b/10801-h/images/CG101.gif 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determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..74d05ee --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10801 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10801) diff --git a/old/10801-8.txt b/old/10801-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f94b672 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10801-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13627 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. +by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. + +Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +Release Date: January 23, 2004 [EBook #10801] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathon Ingram, Clytie Siddall and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team! + + + + + +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 THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS *** + +***** This file should be named 10801-8.txt or 10801-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/8/0/10801/ + +Produced by Jonathon Ingram, Clytie Siddall and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team! + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. + +Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +Release Date: January 23, 2004 [EBook #10801] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathon Ingram, Clytie Siddall and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team! + + + + + + +</pre> + +<img src="images/CI1.gif" width="333" height="362" align="right" border="1" alt="frontispiece"> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h1>Coleridge's <i>Literary Remains</i></h1> + +<br> +<br><br> +<br> + +<h3>volume 4</h3> +<br> +<br><br> +<br> + +<br> + +collected and edited by<br> +<br> + +Henry Nelson Coleridge<br> +<br><br> +<br> +<br> + +1839<br> +<br> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + + +<p><b><a name="toc">Table of Contents</a></b></p> +<ul> +<li><a href="#introduction">Advertisement</a></li> +</ul><br> +<ul> +<li>Notes on:</li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section1">Luther's <i>Table Talk</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section2"><i>The Life of St. Theresa</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section3">Burnet's <i>Life of Bishop Bedell</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section4">Baxter's <i>Life</i> of himself</a></li> +<li><a href="#section5">Leighton</a></li> +<li><a href="#section6">Sherlock's <i>Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section7">Waterland's <i>Vindication of Christ's Divinity</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section7b">Waterland's <i>Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity</i></a></li> + +<li><a href="#section8">Skelton's <i>Works</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section9">Andrew Fuller's <i>Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section10">Whitaker's <i>Origin of Arianism Disclosed</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section11">Oxlee on <i>The Trinity and Incarnation</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section12"><i>A Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section13">Davison's <i>Discourses on Prophecy</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section14">Irving's <i>Ben-Ezra</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section15">Noble's <i>Appeal</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#section16">Essay on Faith</a></li> +</ul> +</ul><br> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<p><b><a name="index">Extended Contents, or Index</a></b></p> +<ul> +<li><a href="#introduction">Advertisement</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Notes on:</li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section1">Luther's <i>Table Talk</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#1a">The Epistle Dedicatory</a></li> +<li><a href="#1b">Chap. I. p. 1, 2</a>, <a href="#1c">4</a>, <a href="#1d">9</a>, <a href="#1e">12</a>, <a href="#1f">21</a>, <a href="#1g">25</a>, <a href="#1h">32</a></li> +<li><a href="#1i">Chap. II. p. 37</a>, <a href="#1j">54</a>, <a href="#1k">54 cont.</a>, <a href="#1l">61</a>, <a href="#1m">62</a></li> +<li><a href="#1n">Chap. VI. p. 103.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1o">Chap. VII. p. 113.</a>, <a href="#1p">120</a></li> +<li><a href="#1q">Chap. VII. p. 120 cont.</a>, <a href="#1r">121</a></li> +<li><a href="#1s">Chap. VII. p. 121 cont.</a>, <a href="#1t">122</a></li> +<li><a href="#1u">Chap. VIII. p. 147.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1v">Chap. IX. p. 160.</a>, <a href="#1w">161</a>, <a href="#1x">163</a>, <a href="#1y">163 cont.</a>, <a href="#1z">p. 165.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1aa">Chap. X. p. 168, 9</a>, <a href="#1ab">174.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ac">Chap. XII. p. 187</a>, <a href="#1ad">189.</a>, <a href="#1ae">190</a>, <a href="#1af">190 cont.</a>, <a href="#1ag">197</a>, <a href="#1ah">197 cont.</a>, <a href="#1ai">200</a>, <a href="#1aj">203</a>, <a href="#1ak">205</a>, <a href="#1al">205 cont.</a>, <a href="#1am">205 cont. again.</a>, <a href="#1an">206</a>, <a href="#1ao">207.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ap">Chap. XIII. p. 208.</a>, <a href="#1aq">210-11</a>, <a href="#1ar">211</a>, <a href="#1as">213</a>, <a href="#1at"> 214.</a>, <a href="#1au">219-20</a>, <a href="#1av">226</a>, <a href="#1aw">227</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ax">Chap. XIV. p. 230</a>, <a href="#1ay">231-2</a></li> +<li><a href="#1az">Chap. XV. p. 233-4.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ba">Chap. XVI. p. 247.</a>, <a href="#1bb">247 cont.</a>, <a href="#1bc">248</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bd">Chap. XVII. p. 249</a>, <a href="#1be">249 cont.</a>, <a href="#1bf">250</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bg">Chap. XXI. p. 276.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bh">Chap. XXII. p. 290.</a>, <a href="#1bi">291</a>, <a href="#1bj">291 cont.</a>, <a href="#1bk">297</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bl">Chap. XXVII. p. 335.</a>, <a href="#1bm">337</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bn">Chap. XXVIII. p. 347.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bo">Chap. XXIX. p. 349</a>, <a href="#1bp">351</a>, <a href="#1bq">351 cont.</a>, <a href="#1br">352</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bs">Chap. XXXII. p. 362.</a>, <a href="#1bt">364</a>, <a href="#1bu">365</a>, <a href="#1bv">365 cont.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bw">Chap. XXXIII. p. 367.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1bx">Chap. XXXIV. p. 369</a>, <a href="#1by">370</a>, <a href="#1bz">371</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ca">Chap. XXXV. p. 388.</a>, <a href="#1cb">389</a>, <a href="#1cc">389 cont.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cd">Chap. XXXVI. p. 389.</a>, <a href="#1ce">390</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cf">Chap. XXXVII. p. 398.</a>, <a href="#1cg">398 cont.</a>, <a href="#1ch">399</a>, <a href="#1ci">403</a>, <a href="#1cj">404</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ck">Chap. XLIV. p. 431.</a>, <a href="#1cl">432</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cm">Chap. XLVIII. p. 442.</a>, <a href="#1cn">442 cont.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1co">Chap. XLIX. p. 443.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cp">Chap. L. p. 446</a>, <a href="#1cq">447</a>, <a href="#1cr">450</a></li> +<li><a href="#1cs">Chap. LIX. p. 481.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ct">Chap. LX. p. 483.</a></li> +<li><a href="#1ct">Chap. LXX. p. 503.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section2"><i>The Life of St. Theresa</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#2a">Pref. Part I. p. 51. Letter of Father Avila to Mother Teresa de Jesu.</a></li> +<li><a href="#2b">Life, Part I. Chap. IV. p. 15.</a></li> +<li><a href="#2c">Life, Part I. Chap. V. p. 24.</a>, <a href="#2d">43</a></li> +<li><a href="#2e">Life, Part I. Chap. VIII. p. 44.</a>, <a href="#2f">45</a></li> +<li><a href="#2g"><i>In fine</i></a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section3">Burnet's <i>Life of Bishop Bedell</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#3a">p. 12-14</a></li> +<li><a href="#3b">p. 26</a></li> +<li><a href="#3c">p. 158</a></li> +<li><a href="#3d">p. 161</a></li> +<li><a href="#3e">p. 164</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section4">Baxter's <i>Life</i> of himself</a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#4a">Book I. Part I. p. 2.</a>, <a href="#4b">5, 6</a>, <a href="#4c">22</a>, <a href="#4d">22 cont.</a>, <a href="#4e">23</a>, <a href="#4f">23 cont.</a>, <a href="#4g">24</a>, <a href="#4h">25</a>, <a href="#4i">27</a>, <a href="#4j">27 cont.</a>, <a href="#4k">27 cont. again</a>, <a href="#4l">34</a>, <a href="#4m">40</a>, <a href="#4n">41</a>, <a href="#4o">47</a>, <a href="#4p">59</a>, <a href="#4q">62</a>, <a href="#4r">66</a>, <a href="#4s">71</a>, <a href="#4t">75</a>, <a href="#4u">76</a>, <a href="#4v">77</a>, <a href="#4w">77 cont.</a>, <a href="#4x">77 cont. again</a>, <a href="#4y">79</a>, <a href="#4z">80</a>, <a href="#4aa">82</a>, <a href="#4ab">84</a>, <a href="#4ac">87</a>, <a href="#4ad">128</a>, <a href="#4ae">129</a>, <a href="#4af">131</a>, <a href="#4ag">135</a>, <a href="#4ah">136</a></li> +<li><a href="#4ai">Book I. Part II. p.139.</a>, <a href="#4aj">141</a>, <a href="#4ak">142</a>, <a href="#4al">143</a>, <a href="#4am">177</a>, <a href="#4an">179</a>, <a href="#4ao">185</a>, <a href="#4ap">188</a>, <a href="#4aq">189</a>, <a href="#4ar">194</a>, <a href="#4as">198</a>, <a href="#4at">201</a>, <a href="#4au">203</a>, <a href="#4av">222</a>, <a href="#4aw">222 cont.</a>, <a href="#4ax">224</a>, <a href="#4ay">225</a>, <a href="#4az">226</a>, <a href="#4ba">246</a>, <a href="#4bb">248</a>, <a href="#4bc">249</a>, <a href="#4bd">249 cont.</a>, <a href="#4be">250</a>, <a href="#4bf">254</a>, <a href="#4bg">254 cont.</a>, <a href="#4bh">257</a>, <a href="#4bi">269</a>, <a href="#4bj">272</a>, <a href="#4bk">273</a>, <a href="#4bl">308</a>, <a href="#4bm">337</a><a href="#4bn">341</a>, <a href="#4bo">343</a>, <a href="#4bp">368</a>, <a href="#4bq">368 cont.</a>, <a href="#4br">369</a>, <a href="#4bs">369 cont.</a>, <a href="#4bt">369 cont. again</a>, <a href="#4bu">370</a>, <a href="#4bv">373</a>, <a href="#4bw">374</a>, <a href="#4bx">375</a>, <a href="#4by">398</a>, <a href="#4bz">401</a>, <a href="#4ca">405</a>, <a href="#4cb">412</a>, <a href="#4cc">435</a></li> +<li><a href="#4cd">Part III. p. 59.</a>, <a href="#4ce">60</a>, <a href="#4cf">65</a>, <a href="#4cg">67</a>, <a href="#4ch">69</a>, <a href="#4ci">69 cont.</a>, <a href="#4cj">144</a>, <a href="#4ck">153</a>, <a href="#4cl">155</a>, <a href="#4cm">180</a>, <a href="#4cn">181</a>, <a href="#4co">186</a>, <a href="#4cp">191</a></li> +<li><a href="#4cq">Appendix II. p. 37</a>, <a href="#4cr">37 cont.</a>, <a href="#4cs">45</a></li> +<li><a href="#4ct">Appendix. III. p. 55.</a></li> +<li><a href="#4cu"><i>In fine.</i></a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section5">Leighton</a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#5a">Comment Vol. I. p. 2.</a>, <a href="#5b">13-15</a>, <a href="#5c">63-4</a>, <a href="#5d">68</a>, <a href="#5e">75</a>, <a href="#5f">76</a>, <a href="#5g">104-5</a>, <a href="#5h">121</a>, <a href="#5i">122</a>, <a href="#5j">124</a>, <a href="#5k">138</a>, <a href="#5l">158</a>, <a href="#5m">166</a>, <a href="#5n">170</a>, <a href="#5o">174-5</a>, <a href="#5p">194</a>, <a href="#5q">200</a>, <a href="#5r">211</a>, <a href="#5s">216</a>, <a href="#5t">229</a></li> +<li><a href="#5u">Vol. II. p. 242.</a>, <a href="#5v">293</a></li> +<li><a href="#5w">Vol. III. p. 20. Serm. I.</a>, <a href="#5x">p. 63. Serm. V.</a>, <a href="#5y">p. 68</a>, <a href="#5z">73</a>, <a href="#5aa">p. 77. Serm. VI.</a>, <a href="#5ab">p. 104. Serm. VII.</a>, <a href="#5ac">p. 107. Serm. VIII.</a>, <a href="#5ad">Serm. IX. p. 12.</a>, <a href="#5ae">p. 12 cont.</a>, <a href="#5af">p. 12 cont. again</a>, <a href="#5ag">Serm. XV. p. 196.</a>, <a href="#5ah">Serm. XVI. p. 204.</a></li> +<li><a href="#5ai">Lecture IX. vol. IV. p. 96.</a>, <a href="#5aj">105</a>, <a href="#5ak">Lect. XI. p. 113.</a>, <a href="#5al">Lect. XV. p. 152.</a>, <a href="#5am">Lect. XIX. p. 201</a>, <a href="#5an">Lect. XXI. p. 225.</a>, <a href="#5ao">Lect. XXIV. p. 245.</a>, <a href="#5ap">Exhortation to the Students, p. 252.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section6">Sherlock's <i>Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#6a">Sect. I. p. 3.</a>, <a href="#6b">4</a>, <a href="#6c">4 cont.</a>, <a href="#6d">6</a></li> +<li><a href="#6e">Sect. II. p. 13.</a>, <a href="#6f">14.</a>, <a href="#6g">18</a></li> +<li><a href="#6h">Sect. III. p. 23.</a>, <a href="#6i">26</a>, <a href="#6j">27</a>, <a href="#6k">28</a></li> +<li><a href="#6l">Sect. IV. p. 50.</a>, <a href="#6m">64</a>, <a href="#6n">68</a>, <a href="#6o">72</a>, <a href="#6p">72 cont.</a>, <a href="#6q">81</a>, <a href="#6r">88</a>, <a href="#6s">97</a>, <a href="#6t">98</a>, <a href="#6u">98-9</a></li> +<li><a href="#6v">Sect. V. p. 102.</a>, <a href="#6w">110-13</a>, <a href="#6x">115-16</a>, <a href="#6y">117</a>, <a href="#6z">120</a>, <a href="#6aa">120 cont.</a>, <a href="#6ab">121</a>, <a href="#6ac">121 cont.</a>, <a href="#6ad">124</a>, <a href="#6ae">126</a>, <a href="#6af">127</a>, <a href="#6ag">133</a></li> +<li><a href="#6ah">Sect. VI. pp. 147-8.</a>, <a href="#6ai">149</a>, <a href="#6aj">150</a>, <a href="#6ak">153</a>, <a href="#6al">154</a>, <a href="#6am">156</a>, <a href="#6an">159</a>, <a href="#6ao">160</a>, <a href="#6ap">161-3</a>, <a href="#6aq">164</a>, <a href="#6ar">168</a>, <a href="#6as">171</a>, <a href="#6at">177</a>, <a href="#6au">177 cont.</a>, <a href="#6av">177 cont. again</a>, <a href="#6aw">186</a>, <a href="#6ax">222</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section7">Waterland's <i>Vindication of Christ's Divinity</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#7a"><i>In Initio</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#7b">Query I. p. 1.</a>, <a href="#7c">2</a>, <a href="#7d">3</a></li> +<li><a href="#7e">Query II. p. 43.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7f">Query XV. p. 225-6.</a>, <a href="#7g">226</a>, <a href="#7h">226 cont.</a>, <a href="#7i">227-8</a></li> +<li><a href="#7j">Query XVI. p. 234.</a>, <a href="#7k">235</a>, <a href="#7l">237</a>, <a href="#7m">239</a>, <a href="#7n">251</a></li> +<li><a href="#7o">Query XVII.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7p">Query XVIII. p. 269</a>, <a href="#7q">274</a></li> +<li><a href="#7r">Query XIX. p. 279.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7s">Query XX. p. 302.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7t">Query XXI. p. 303.</a>, <a href="#7u">316-7</a></li> +<li><a href="#7v">Query XXIII. p. 351.</a>, <a href="#7w">354</a>, <a href="#7x">357</a>, <a href="#7y">359</a></li> +<li><a href="#7z">Query XXIV. p. 371.</a></li> +<li><a href="#7aa">Query XXVI. p. 412.</a>, <a href="#7ab">412 cont.</a>, <a href="#7ac">414</a>, <a href="#7ad">415</a>, <a href="#7ae">421</a></li> +<li><a href="#7af">Query XXVII. p. 427.</a>, <a href="#7ag">432</a>, <a href="#7ah">436</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section7">Waterland's <i>Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#77a">Chap. I. p. 18.</a></li> +<li><a href="#77b">Chap. IV. p. 111.</a>, <a href="#77c">114</a>, <a href="#77d">114 cont.</a>, <a href="#77e">123</a>, <a href="#77f">126</a>, <a href="#77g">127</a>, <a href="#77h">128</a>, <a href="#77i">129</a>, <a href="#77j">130</a></li> +<li><a href="#77k">Chap. V. p. 140.</a>, <a href="#77l">187</a></li> +<li><a href="#77m">Chap. VI. p. 230.</a>, <a href="#77n">233</a>, <a href="#77o">236</a>, <a href="#77p">238</a>, <a href="#77q">250</a>, <a href="#77r">257</a>, <a href="#77s">257 cont.</a>, <a href="#77t">259</a>, <a href="#77u">266</a>, <a href="#77v">268</a>, <a href="#77w">272</a>, <a href="#77x">286</a>, <a href="#77y">288</a>, <a href="#77z">292</a>, <a href="#77aa">338</a>, <a href="#77ab">340</a></li> +<li><a href="#77ac">Chap. VII. p. 389.</a>, <a href="#77ad">41-2 etc.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section8">Skelton's <i>Works</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#8a">Burdy's Life of Skelton, p. 22.</a>, <a href="#8b">67</a>, <a href="#8c">106</a></li> +<li><a href="#8d">Vol. I. p. 177-180.</a>, <a href="#8e">182</a>, <a href="#8f">185</a>, <a href="#8g">186</a>, <a href="#8h">214.; End of Discourse II.</a>, <a href="#8i">234</a>, <a href="#8j">251</a>, <a href="#8k">265</a>, <a href="#8l">267</a>, <a href="#8m">268</a>, <a href="#8n">276</a>, <a href="#8o">276 cont.</a>, <a href="#8p">279</a>, <a href="#8q">280</a>, <a href="#8r">281</a>, <a href="#8s">287</a>, <a href="#8t">318</a>, <a href="#8u">327</a>, <a href="#8v">Disc. VIII.</a>, <a href="#8w">374-8</a>, <a href="#8x">Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.</a></li> +<li><a href="#8y">Vol. III.</a>, <a href="#8z">393</a>, <a href="#8aa">394</a>, <a href="#8ab">446</a>, <a href="#8ac">478</a></li> +<li><a href="#8ad">Vol. IV. p. 28. Deism Revealed.</a>, <a href="#8ae">35</a>, <a href="#8af">37</a>, <a href="#8ag">243</a>, <a href="#8ah">249</a>, <a href="#8ai">268</a>, <a href="#8aj">281</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section9">Andrew Fuller's <i>Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#9a">Letter III. p. 38.</a></li> +<li><a href="#9b">Letter V. p. 72.</a>, <a href="#9c">77</a></li> +<li><a href="#9d">Letter VI. p. 90.</a>, <a href="#9e">95</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section10">Whitaker's <i>Origin of Arianism Disclosed</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#10a">Chap. I. 4. p. 30.</a></li> +<li><a href="#10b">Chap. II. 1. p. 34.</a>, <a href="#10c">35</a>, <a href="#10d">36</a>, <a href="#10e">2. p. 48.</a>, <a href="#10f">9. p. 107.</a></li> +<li><a href="#10g">Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.</a>, <a href="#10h">132 cont.</a>, <a href="#10i">2. p. 195.</a></li> +<li><a href="#10j">Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.</a>, <a href="#10k">267</a>, <a href="#10l">2. p. 270.</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section11">Oxlee on <i>The Trinity and Incarnation</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#11a">Introduction, p. 4.</a></li> +<li><a href="#11b">Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.</a>, <a href="#11c">ch. iii. p. 26.</a>, <a href="#11d">26-7</a></li> +<li><a href="#11e">Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.</a>, <a href="#11f">39-40</a>, <a href="#11g">40-1</a>, <a href="#11h">ch. III. p. 58.</a>, <a href="#11i">61</a>, <a href="#11j">65</a>, <a href="#11k">66</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section12"><i>A Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#12a"><i>In Initio</i></a></li> +<li><a href="#12b">Part I. p. 49.</a>, <a href="#12c">51, </a>, <a href="#12d">56</a>, <a href="#12e">60</a>, <a href="#12f">60 cont.</a>, <a href="#12g">68</a>, <a href="#12h">68 cont.</a>, <a href="#12i">71</a>, <a href="#12j">72</a>, <a href="#12k">75-9</a>, <a href="#12l">84</a>, <a href="#12m">86</a>, <a href="#12n">94</a>, <a href="#12o">95</a>, <a href="#12p">97</a>, <a href="#12q">97 cont.</a>, <a href="#12r">102</a>, <a href="#12s">105</a>, <a href="#12t">114</a>, <a href="#12u">115-6</a>, <a href="#12v">118</a>, <a href="#12w">133</a></li> +<li><a href="#12x">Part II. p. 14.</a>, <a href="#12y">26</a>, <a href="#12z">29</a>, <a href="#12aa">30</a>, <a href="#12ab">30 cont.</a>, <a href="#12ac">31</a>, <a href="#12ad">32</a>, <a href="#12ae">33</a>, <a href="#12af">34</a>, <a href="#12g">37</a>, <a href="#12ah">39</a>, <a href="#12ai">40.</a>, <a href="#12aj">40 cont.</a>, <a href="#12ak">41</a>, <a href="#12al">42</a>, <a href="#12am">43</a>, <a href="#12an">46</a>, <a href="#12ao">47</a>, <a href="#12ap">50</a>, <a href="#12aq">52</a>, <a href="#12ar">53</a>, <a href="#12as">54</a></li> +<li><a href="#12at">Part III. p. 5.</a>, <a href="#12av">12</a>, <a href="#12aw">16</a>, <a href="#12ax">17</a>, <a href="#12ay">24</a>, <a href="#12az">27</a>, <a href="#12ba">30-1</a>, <a href="#12bb">35-6</a>, <a href="#12bc">45-6</a>, <a href="#12bd">55-6</a>, <a href="#12be">55-6</a>, <a href="#12bf">63-4</a>, <a href="#12bg">75</a>, <a href="#12bh">78</a>, <a href="#12bi">82</a>, <a href="#12bj">86</a>, <a href="#12bk">88</a>, <a href="#12bl">89</a>, <a href="#12bm">97</a>, <a href="#12bn">98</a>, <a href="#12bo">102-3</a>, <a href="#12bp">106</a>, <a href="#12bq">107</a>, <a href="#12br">108</a>, <a href="#12bs">110</a>, <a href="#12bt">113</a></li> +<li><a href="#12bu">Part IV. p. 1.</a>, <a href="#12bv">7</a>, <a href="#12bw">10</a>, <a href="#12bx">13-4</a>, <a href="#12by">15</a>, <a href="#12bz">29</a>, <a href="#12ca">56</a>, <a href="#12cb">60-1</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section13">Davison's <i>Discourses on Prophecy</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#13a">Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.</a>, <a href="#13b">160</a>, <a href="#13c">162</a>, <a href="#13d">164</a>, <a href="#13e">168</a></li> +<li><a href="#13f">Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.</a></li> +<li><a href="#13g">Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.</a></li> +<li><a href="#13h">Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.</a>, <a href="#13i">Pt. II. p. 289.</a>, <a href="#13j">Pt. IV. p. 325.</a>, <a href="#13k">336</a>, <a href="#13l">370</a>, <a href="#13m">373</a></li> +<li><a href="#13n">Disc. VII. p. 375.</a>, <a href="#13o">392</a></li> +<li><a href="#13p">Disc. VIII. p. 416.</a>, <a href="#13q">431</a></li> +<li><a href="#13r">Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.</a></li> +<li><a href="#13s">Disc. XII. p. 519.</a>, <a href="#13t">521</a>, <a href="#13u">522-3</a>, <a href="#13v">533</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section14">Irving's <i>Ben-Ezra</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#14a">Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.</a></li> +<li><a href="#14b">Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.</a>, <a href="#14c">73-4</a>, <a href="#14d">85</a>, <a href="#14e">c. vi. p. 108.</a>, <a href="#14f">110</a>, <a href="#14g">ch. vii. p. 118.</a>, <a href="#14h">ch. ix. p. 127.</a>, <a href="#14i">Part II. p. 145.</a>, <a href="#14j">153</a>, <a href="#14k">253</a>, <a href="#14l">254</a>, <a href="#14m">297</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section15">Noble's <i>Appeal</i></a></li> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#15a">Sect. IV. p. 210.</a></li> +<li><a href="#15b">Sect. V. p. 286.</a>, <a href="#15c">315</a>, <a href="#15d">321</a>, <a href="#15e">323</a>, <a href="#15f">346-7</a>, <a href="#15g">350</a></li> +<li><a href="#15h">Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.</a>, <a href="#15i">434</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li style="list-style: none"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#section16">Essay on Faith</a></li> +</ul> +</ul> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<h2><a name="introduction">Advertisement</a></h2> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Lincoln's Inn,<br> +9th May, 1839. +<br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section1"></a>Notes on Luther's <i>Table Talk</i><a href="#f1"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +I cannot meditate too often, too deeply, or too devotionally on the +personeity of God, and his personality in the Word, <img src="images/CG3.gif" width="173" height="29" border="1" alt="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 +<i>complexus</i> 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 <img src="images/CG1.gif" width="131" height="29" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +Sunday 11th February, 1826.<br> + +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +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 +<img src="images/CG2.gif" width="126" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <i>nexus</i> was conceivable +between the antecedent, the noise of the shout, and the consequent, the +atmospheric discharge.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1a"></a><b>The Epistle Dedicatory</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.<br> +<br> + <i>James</i> i. 27.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG4.gif" width="81" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Thraeskeía"> (outward or ceremonial +worship, <i>cultus</i>, divine service,) by the English <i>religion</i>. +St. James sublimely says: What the <i>ceremonies</i> of the law were to +morality, <i>that</i> morality itself is to the faith in Christ, that +is, its outward symbol, not the substance itself.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1b"></a><b>Chap. I. p. 1, 2.</b><br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>archeus</i> or predominant of +the life of the planet.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 4.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>Mystica Theologia + Dionysii</i> is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's fables. + <i>Omnia sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens</i>; all is something, and + all is nothing, and so he leaveth all hanging in frivolous and idle + sort.</blockquote> + +Still, however, <i>du theure Mann Gottes, mein verehrter Luther</i>! +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—<i>the light that lighteth every man that cometh +into the world</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 9.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 12.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + 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 Œcolampadius 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>lumen +siccum</i> of sincere knowledge!)—I cannot persuade myself that this +vehemence of our dear man of God against Bullinger, Zuinglius and +Œcolampadius 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 21.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Nay, but dear honoured Luther! is this fair? If Christ or Scripture had +said in one place, <i>Believe, and thou mayest be baptized</i>; and in +another place, <i>Baptize infants</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 25.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>evangelium</i> 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 <i>is</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 32.</b><br> + +<blockquote> That God's word, and the Christian Church, is preserved against the + raging of the world.<br> +<br> + The Papists have lost the cause; with God's word they are not able to + resist or withstand us. * * * <i>The kings of the earth stand up, and + the rulers take counsel together, &c</i>. 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. <i>Kiss the Son lest + he be angry, &c</i>. That is, take hold on Christ, or the Devil will + take hold on you, &c.<br> +<br> + 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: + <i>Ego suscitabo vos in novissimo die</i>: 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1i"></a><b>Chap. II. p. 37.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +Too true.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 54.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> The sparrows are the least birds, and yet they are very hurtful, and + have the best nourishment.</blockquote> + +<i>Ergo digni sunt omni persecutione</i>. Poor little Philip Sparrows! +Luther did not know that they more than earn their good wages by +destroying grubs and other small vermin.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 61.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +To know God as God (<img src="images/CG5.gif" width="108" height="30" border="1" alt="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. <i>Ergo</i>. Christianity is of +necessity historical and not philosophical only.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 62.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>What is that to thee</i>? said Christ to Peter. <i>Follow thou + me</i>—me, follow me, and not thy questions, or cogitations.</blockquote> + +Lord! keep us looking to, and humbly following, thee!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1n"></a><b>Chap. VI. p. 103.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ing</i>, or inclosure, that which is contained within an +outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to <i>think</i> 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 <i>Ding, denken</i>; +in Latin <i>res, reor</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1o"></a><b>Chap. VII. p. 113.</b><br> + +<blockquote> Helvidius alleged the mother of Christ was not a virgin; so that + according to his wicked allegation, Christ was born in original sin.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>Christopædia</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> The Prophets (said Luther) did set, speak, and preach of the second + coming of Christ in manner as we now do.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 121.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +As many notes, <i>memoranda</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>vere mortuus +est</i>—in contradiction to the hypothesis of a trance or state of +suspended animation.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1t"></a><b>Chap. VII. p. 122.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Not satisfactory. Doubtless, the command was in connection with the +silence enjoined respecting his Messiahship.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1u"></a><b>Chap. VIII. p. 147.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Luther might have answered, "positive, you mean, not certain."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1v"></a><b>Chap. IX. p. 160.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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, <i>John</i> 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 <i>per figuram causce pro effecto</i>, +'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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 161.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 163.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This follows from the very definition or idea of righteousness;-it is +itself the law;—<img src="images/CG6.gif" width="76" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: pas gàr díkais autonomos."><img src="images/CG7.gif" width="175" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +That is with a lust within correspondent to the temptation from without.<br> +<br> +A Christian's conscience, methinks, ought to be a <i>Janus +bifrons</i>,—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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 165.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aa"></a><b>Chap. X. p. 168, 9.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Kritiques</i> of the pure and of the +practical Reason the problem had never been accurately or adequately +stated, much less solved.<br> +<br> +26 June, 1826.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 174.</b><br> + +<blockquote> Loving friends, (said Luther) our doctrine that free-will is dead and + nothing at all is grounded powerfully in Holy Scripture.</blockquote> + +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 (<i>proh pudor!</i>) 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ac"></a><b>Chap. XII. p. 187.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + <i>Rom</i>. vii.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 189.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>The Lord + thy God will raise up unto thee another prophet out of thy brethren; + Him shall thou hear</i>. (Deut. xviii.)) who then at any time would or + could have believed the Gospel, and forsaken Moses?</blockquote> + +If I could be persuaded that this passage (<i>Deut</i>. 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, <i>the desire of the nations</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 190.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +Since I wrote the above, God has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer +light as to the true nature of the <i>death</i> so often mentioned in +the Scriptures.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 197.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 (<i>formæ formantes</i>), 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 <i>copula</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>He (said Luther), that will dispute with the Devil, &c.</blockquote> + +Queries. +<br> +<ol start=1 type="I"><li> + 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—</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="I"><li> + + 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 + <i>genus</i> of beings under the name of devils?</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="I"><li> + + Is this second <i>hypothesis</i> 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!</li></ol><br><br> + +<a name="1ai"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 200.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +The main reason is, because in this instance, the change in the relation +constitutes the difference of the things. A. considered as acting <i>ab +extra</i> on the selfish fears and desires of men is the Law: the same +A: acting <i>ab intra</i> 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.'<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 203.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Most true.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 205.</b><br> + +<blockquote>The ancient Fathers said: <i>Distingue tempora et concordabis + Scripturas</i>; distinguish the times; then may we easily reconcile + the Scriptures together.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> I verily believe, (said Luther) it (the abolition of the Law) vexed to + the heart the beloved St. Paul himself before his conversion.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> In this case, touching the distinguishing the Law from the Gospel, we + must utterly expel all human and natural wisdom, reason, and + understanding.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs">; and the intellectual pole, or the +hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Now the reason +(<i>lux idealis seu spiritualis</i>) shines down into the understanding, +which recognizes the light, <i>id est, lumen a luce spirituali quasi +alienigenum aliquid</i>, 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 <i>genera et species</i>, still they are particular +<i>genera et species</i>) particularity, it distinguishes the formal +light (<i>lumen</i>) (not the substantial light, <i>lux</i>) of reason +by the attributes of the necessary and the universal; and by irradiation +of this <i>lumen</i> or <i>shine</i> the understanding becomes a +conclusive or logical faculty. As such it is <img src="images/CG10.gif" width="57" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: Lógos anthrôpinos."><img src="images/CG11.gif" width="113" height="28" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 206.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>body of this death</i>,—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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 207.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, + <i>And kings shall be their nurses</i>, &c. +</blockquote> + +Corpulent nurses too often, that overlay the babe; distempered nurses, +that convey poison in their milk!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ap"></a><b>Chap. XIII. p. 208.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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?<br> +<br> + 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 <i>gratis</i>, for nothing, only by God's mere mercy, + wherewith and by reason whereof, he imputeth righteousness unto us in + Christ.</blockquote> + +True; but is it more than a dispute about words? Is not the regeneration +likewise <i>gratis</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 210-11.</b> Melancthon's sixth reply.<br> + +<blockquote>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, <i>Woe is me if I preach not the + Gospel</i>. 1. Cor. ix.</blockquote> + +Luther's answer. + + <blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>organismus</i> 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. <a name="fr2">Every</a> where a +something is attributed to the will<a href="#f2"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ar"></a><b>Chap. XIII. p. 211.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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 <i>A faithful</i> 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 <i>shall</i> not + shine, but it doth shine by nature unbidden, it is thereunto created.</blockquote> + +This important paragraph is obscure by the translator's ignorance of the +true import of the German <i>soll</i>, which does not answer to our +<i>shall;</i> but rather to our <i>ought</i>, that is, <i>should</i> do +this or that,—is under an obligation to do it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 213.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 <i>formalis justitia</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1at"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 214.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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?<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. 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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. (John xvi. 14.) Now where Christ is, there is the holy + Spirit. The text saith plainly, <i>The holy Ghost shall glorify me, + &c.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<img src="images/CG12.gif" width="162" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: eukaírôs akaírôs"> <i>in season and out of season</i>. 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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1au"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 219-20.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 + <i>dialectica</i>, for it is altogether wit and wisdom. +</blockquote> + +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—<i>Glaube</i>, and what Luther here says, is +spoken of belief. Of faith he speaks in the next article but one.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 226.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "That regeneration only maketh God's children.<br> +<br> + 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."</blockquote> + +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. <br> +<br> +25th of September, 1819.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 227.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."<br> +<br> + "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.<br> +<br> + "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."<br> +<br> + "Therefore we must answer according to this rule, <i>Verba sunt + accipienda secundum subjectam materiam.</i> * * 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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ax"></a><b>Chap. XIV. p. 230.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +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 <i>son of thunder!</i> O +for a Luther in the present age! <a name="fr3">Why</a>, Charles<a href="#f3"><sup>3</sup></a>! 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 <i>Cristo-galli</i>, +translate the word as you like:—French Christians, or coxcombs!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ay"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 231-2.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +A cordial, rich and juicy speech, such as shaped itself into, and lived +anew in, the Gustavus Adolphuses.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1az"></a><b>Chap. XV. p. 233-4.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +Then (saith the understanding, <img src="images/CG13.gif" width="112" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Tò phrónaema sarkòs"><img src="images/CG9.gif" width="72" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image">) 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 <i>ens spirituale</i>, out of the +cognizance of the understanding.<br> +<br> +The spiritual mind receives the answer in the contemplation of the idea, +life as <i>deitas diffusa</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ba"></a><b>Chap. XVI. p. 247.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>'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, <i>Let him be + accursed</i>."'</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 248.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "And he sent for one of his chiefest privy councillors, named Lord + John <i>Von Minkwitz</i>, 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!'" </blockquote> + +Princely. So Shakspeare would have made a Prince Elector talk. The +metaphor is so grandly in character.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bd"></a><b>Chap. XVII. p. 249.</b><br> + +<blockquote> "<i>Signa sunt subinde facta, minora; res autem et facta subinde + creverunt</i>."</blockquote> + +A valuable remark. As the substance waxed, that is, became more evident, +the ceremonial sign waned, till at length in the Eucharist the +<i>signum</i> united itself with the <i>significatum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1be"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote>A bare writing without a seal is of no force.</blockquote> + +Metaphors are sorry logic, especially metaphors from human and those too +conventional usages to the ordinances of eternal wisdom.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 250.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +A deep thought. Strong meat for men. It must not be offered for milk.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bg"></a><b>Chap. xxi. p. 276.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bh"></a><b>Chap. xxii. p. 290.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This is a remark of deep insight: <i>verum vere Lutheranum</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bi"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 291.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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 <i>a parte post</i> 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.<br> +<br> +By the by, the joke of the 'glass windows' is lost in the translation. +The German for illustrious is <i>durchlauchtig</i>, that is, transparent +or translucent.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +A brief but most excellent comment on the Lord's Prayer.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bk"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 297.</b><br> + +<blockquote> There was never any that understood the Old Testament so well as St. + Paul, except only John the Baptist.</blockquote> + +I cannot conjecture what Luther had in his mind when he made this +exception. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bl"></a><b>Chap. XXVII. p. 335.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +Œcolampadius 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 337.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr4">In</a> 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<a href="#f4"><sup>4</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +18th August, 1826.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bn"></a><b>Chap. XXVIII. p. 347.</b><br> + +<blockquote>God's word a Lord of all Lords.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bo"></a><b>Chap. XXIX. p. 349.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>Patres, quamquam sæpe errant, tamen venerandi propter testimonium + fidei.</i></blockquote> + +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, <i>ante Christum</i> 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 <i>innutritus et juratus</i> 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?"<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 351.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>Take no care what ye shall eat</i>. As though that commandment did + not hinder the carping and caring for the daily bread.</blockquote> + +For 'caring,' read, 'anxiety!' <i>Sit tibi curæ, non autem solicitudini, +panis quotidianus</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Der Teufel</i>! Surely the epithets should be reversed. Austin's +mildness—the <i>durus pater infantum</i>! And the <i>super</i>-Horatian +effulgence of Master Foolgentius! O Swan! thy critical cygnets are but +goslings.<br> +<br> +N.B. I have, however, since I wrote the above, heard Mr. J. Hookham +Frere speak highly of Fulgentius.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1br"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 352.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Symbolum</i>, the <i>Regula +Fidei</i>, the Creed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bs"></a><b>Chap. XXXII. p. 362.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bt"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 364.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Milton has adopted this notion in the Paradise Lost—not improbably from +this book.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bu"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 365.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bv"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +O Luther! Luther! ask your own heart if this is not Jesuit morality.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bw"></a><b>Chap. XXXIII. v. 367.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 + <i>Symbolum</i> so briefly and comfortable.</blockquote> + +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 <i>picnic</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bx"></a><b>Chap. XXXIV. p. 369.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>demonstrative</i> as <i>hic</i>, and <i>disjunctive</i> as <i>hic et +non ille</i>; and in this sense God alone can be without body: secondly, +that which is not merely <i>hic distinctive</i>, but <i>divisive</i>; +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1by"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</b><br> + +<blockquote>The devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly + places, ready to hurt and prejudice people, &c.<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> + "The angel's like a flea,<br> + The devil is a bore;—"<br> + No matter for that! quoth S.T.C.<br> + I love him the better therefore.</blockquote> + +Yes! heroic Swan, I love thee even when thou gabbiest like a goose; for +thy geese helped to save the Capitol.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1bz"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 371.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Yea! two or three more such angels as thyself, Martin Luther, and thy +prediction would be, or perhaps would now have been, accomplished.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ca"></a><b>Chap. XXXV. p. 388.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 389.</b><br> + +<blockquote>Whoso prayeth a Psalm shall be made thoroughly warm.</blockquote> + +<i>Expertus credo</i>.<br> +<br> +19th Aug. 1826.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Sublime!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cd"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> In Job are two chapters concerning <i>Behemoth</i> 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.</blockquote> + +A slight mistake of brother Martin's. The <i>Behemoth</i> 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. +<i>Vindiciæ Behemoticæ</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ce"></a><b>Chap. XXXVI. p. 390.</b><br> + +<blockquote><i>Of Witchcraft</i>.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr5">That</a> the +<i>Ob</i> and <i>Oboth</i> of Moses are no authorities for this absurd +superstition, has been unanswerably shewn by Webster<a href="#f5"><sup>5</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cf"></a><b>Chap. XXXVII. p. 398.</b><br> + +<blockquote> To conclude, (said Luther), I never yet knew a troubled and perplexed + man, that was right in his own wits.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> It was not a thorn in the flesh touching the unchaste love he bore + towards Tecla, as the Papists dream.</blockquote> + +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 <i>thorn in the flesh</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ch"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 399.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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. +</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ci"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 403.</b><br> + +<blockquote> <i>Indignus sum, sed dignus fui—creari a Deo</i>, &c. Although I am + unworthy, yet nevertheless <i>I have been</i> worthy, <i>in that I + am</i> created of God, &c.</blockquote> + +The translation does not give the true sense of the Latin. It should be +<i>was</i> and <i>to be</i>. The <i>dignus fui</i> has here the sense of +<i>dignum me habuit Deus</i>. See Herbert's little poem in the Temple: + +<blockquote>Sweetest Saviour, if my soul<br> + Were but worth the having,<br> +Quickly should I then control<br> + Any thought of waving;<br> +But when all my care and pains<br> + Cannot give the name of gains<br> +To thy wretch so full of stains,<br> + What delight or hope remains?</blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 404.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +More and more I understand the immense difference between the +Faith-article of <i>the Devil</i> <img src="images/CG14.gif" width="133" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: tou Ponaeroù"> and the +superstitious fancy of devils: <i>animus objectivus dominationem in</i> +<img src="images/CG15.gif" width="35" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: tòn Eimì"><img src="images/CG16.gif" width="41" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image"> <i>affectans</i>; <img src="images/CG17.gif" width="340" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: oútos tò méga órganon +Diabólou hypárchei"><img src="images/CG18.gif" width="79" height="28" border="1" alt="see previous image">.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ck"></a><b>Chap. XLIV. p. 431.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 <i>De Peregrinatione</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 432.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Most true; but it is an excellent pioneer and an excellent <i>corps de +reserve</i>, 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 +<i>Rot her and Dam us</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cm"></a><b>Chap. XLVIII. p. 442.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<a name="fr6">Our</a> Lord alluded to the verse that immediately follows and completes his +quotations from Isaiah<a href="#f6"><sup>6</sup></a>. I, Jehovah, will come and do this. That he +implicitly declared himself the Jehovah, the Word,—this was the +offence.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1co"></a><b>Chap. XLIX. p. 443.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. This argument (said Luther) is Stoical, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cp"></a><b>Chap. L. p. 446.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.<br> +<br> + The state of matrimony (said Luther) is the chiefest state in the + world after religion, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>christened</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 447.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>It is + not good that the man should be alone</i>: 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.</blockquote> + +(Add) and in mutual reverence, our spirits in a state of love and +tenderness; and our imaginations pure and tranquil.<br> +<br> +In a word, matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the +same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cr"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 450.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cs"></a><b>Chap. LIX. p. 481.</b><br> + +<blockquote>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.<br> +<br> + Who seeth not here (said Luther) that such significations are mere + juggling tricks? <i>Even so</i> and after the same manner are they + deceived that say, Children ought to be baptized again, because they + had not faith.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1ct"></a><b>Chap. LX. p. 483.</b><br> + +<blockquote> George in the Greek tongue, is called a <i>builder</i>, that buildeth + countries and people with justice and righteousness, &c.</blockquote> + +A mistake for a tiller or boor, from <i>Bauer</i>, <i>bauen</i>. The +latter hath two senses, to build and to bring into cultivation.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="1cu"></a><b>Chap. LXX. p. 503.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>a fortiori</i>, or much more, may we be +expected to do so in a matter of faith.<br> +<br> +In my Noetic, or Doctrine and Discipline of Ideas = <i>logice, +Organon</i>—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 <i>body</i>, in connection with resurrection-men, +&c.—and the last instances, will (please God!) be the sad effects on +the whole system of Christian divinity. <a name="fr7">I</a> must remember Asgill's book<a href="#f7"><sup>7</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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 <i>his</i> faith—yes, in <i>his</i> own faith, instead of +the faith of Christ communicated to him.<br> +<br> +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: + +<blockquote>How we ought to carry ourselves towards the Law's accusations.</blockquote> + +<a name="fr8">Add</a> to these the last two sections of p. 201<a href="#f8"><sup>8</sup></a>. the last touching St. +<a name="fr9">Austin's</a> opinion<a href="#f9"><sup>9</sup></a> especially. <a name="fr10">Likewise</a>, the first half of p. 202<a href="#f10"><sup>10</sup></a>. 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.<br> +<br><br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f1"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> <i>Doctoris Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia:</i> 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. <i>Folio</i> London, 1652.<br> +<a href="#section1">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f2"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> <i>N. B.</i> 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.<br> +<a href="#fr2">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f3"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> Charles Lamb.—<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr3">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f4"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> + + <blockquote>"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." </blockquote> + +<i>Waterland, Vindication</i>, &c., c. vi.—<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr4">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f5"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 5:</span></a> The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, &c. London. +<i>folio</i>. 1677. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr5">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f6"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 6:</span></a> Isaiah xxxv. 4. lxi 1. <i>Ed</i>. Luke iv. 18, 19.<br> +<a href="#fr6">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f7"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 7:</span></a> + + <blockquote>"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." </blockquote> + +See <i>Table Talk. 2nd Edit</i>. p. 127. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr7">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f8"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 8:</span></a> We must preach the Law (said Luther) for the sakes of the +evil and wicked, &c.<br> +<a href="#fr8">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f9"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 9:</span></a> The opinion of St. Austin is (said Luther) that the Law +which through human strength, natural understanding and wisdom is +fulfilled, justifieth not, &c.<br> +<a href="#fr9">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f10"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 10:</span></a> 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."<br> +<a href="#fr10">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section2"></a>Notes on <i>The Life of St. Theresa</i><a href="#f11"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="2a"></a><b>Pref. Part I. p. 51. Letter of Father Avila to Mother Teresa de Jesu.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2b"></a><b>Life, Part I. Chap. IV. p. 15.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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 <i>Ave Maria</i>; 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.<br> + +<br> + +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> + +Dreams, the soul herself forsaking;<br> +Fearful raptures; childlike mirth.<br> +Silent adorations, making<br> +A blessed shadow of this earth!</blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Chap. V. p. 24.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 43.</b><br> + +<blockquote> True it is, that I am both the most weak, and the most wicked of any + living.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Chap. VIII. p. 44.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +That relatively to the command <i>Be ye perfect even as your Father in +Heaven is perfect</i>, 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;—<i>ergo</i>, +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 45.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +A very pretty and sweet remark: truth in new feminine beauty!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="2g"></a><i>In fine</i>.<br> +<br> +How incomparably educated was Teresa for a mystic saint, a mother of +transports and fusions of spirit!<br> + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + +A woman;</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> + +Of rank, and reared delicately;</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> + +A Spanish lady;</li></ol> + +<ol start=4 type="1"><li> + +With very pious parents and sisters;</li></ol> + +<ol start=5 type="1"><li> + +Accustomed in early childhood to read "with most believing heart" all +the legends of saints, martyrs, Spanish martyrs, who fought against the +Moors;</li></ol> + +<ol start=6 type="1"><li> + +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=7 type="1"><li> + +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;</li></ol> + +<ol start=8 type="1"><li> + +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 <i>deliquia</i>:</li></ol> + +<ol start=9 type="1"><li> + +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;</li></ol> + +<ol start=10 type="1"><li> + +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 <i>deliquium</i> 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?</li></ol> + +<ol start=11 type="1"><li> + +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 <img src="images/CG19.gif" width="267" height="25" border="1" alt="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. <a name="fr12">Thence</a> flows in upon and +fills the soul <i>that peace which passeth understanding</i>, 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<a href="#f12"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br></li></ol> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f11"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#section2">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f12"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> London 1685.<br> +<a href="#fr12">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section3"></a>Notes on Burnet's <i>Life of Bishop Bedell</i><a href="#f21"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1810.<br> +<br> +<a name="3a"></a><b>p. 12-14.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3b"></a><b>p. 26</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>anti-climax</i>) 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3c"></a><b>p. 158</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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, <i>who smote his breast, and said, God be merciful to me + a sinner</i>.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3d"></a><b>p. 161</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3e"></a><b>p.164</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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:—<i>whose sins ye + remit, they are remitted, whose sins ye retain, they are retained</i>.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="3f"></a><b><i>In fine</i></b><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f21"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. + + <blockquote>"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."</blockquote> + +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.—<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#section3">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section4"></a>Notes on Baxter's <i>Life</i> of himself<a href="#f31"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1820.<br> +<br> +<br> +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: + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=4 type="1"><li> +In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that +in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the <i>medio +tutissimus ibis</i> is inapplicable. There is no <i>medium</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>de jure +magistratus</i>. 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=5 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=6 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +The saddest error of the theologians of this age is, <img src="images/CG20.gif" width="139" height="25" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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;—<i>Blessed are they +that have not seen and yet believe</i>. And dreadful it appears to me +especially, who in the impossibility of not looking forward to +consciousness after the dissolution of the body (<i>corpus +phoenomenon</i>,) 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4a"></a><b>Book I. Part I. p. 2.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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. + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + + I was much addicted when I feared correction to lie, that I might + scape.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> + + I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples + and pears, &c.</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> + + 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +There is a childlike simplicity in this account of his sins of his +childhood which is very pleasing.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 5, 6.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +What a picture of myself!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 22.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 23.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Excellent.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote>All these assistances were at hand before I came to the immediate + evidences of credibility in the sacred oracles themselves.</blockquote> + +This is as it should be; that is, the evidence <i>a priori</i>, securing +the rational probability; and then the historical proofs of its reality. +Pity that Baxter's chapters in <i>The Saints' Rest</i> should have been +one and the earliest occasion of the inversion of this process, the +fruit of which is the Grotio-Paleyan religion, or <i>minimum</i> of +faith; the maxim being, <i>quanto minus tanto melius</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 24.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>of such is the Kingdom of +Heaven</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 25.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 27.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +How so? If they admitted the King's right to deny, they must admit the +subject's right to entreat.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Did Baxter find it so himself—and when too he had the formal and +recorded promise of Charles II. for it?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> But when the same men (Ussher, Williams, Morton, &c.) saw that greater + things were aimed at, and episcopacy itself in danger, or <i>their + grandeur and riches at least</i>, most of them turned against the + Parliament.</blockquote> + +This, and in this place, is unworthy of Baxter. Even he, good man, could +not wholly escape the jaundice of party.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 34.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 40.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +But according to Grotius, a king waging war against the lawful +copartners of the <i>summa potestas</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 41.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 47.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 59.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 62.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 66.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>Magna Charta</i>. So he talks of the "fundamental constitutions," +just as if these had been aboriginal or rather <i>sans</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 71.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>jus divinum</i> personal and hereditary in the +individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the claim +rested.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 75.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 76.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 77.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Observe the <i>but</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote>The chiefest of these in England are Dr. Pordage and his family.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 79.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 80.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Strange that the common manuals of school logic should not have secured +Baxter from the repeated blunder of <i>Cum hoc, ergo, propter hoc</i>; +but still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against +degrading prayer into medical quackery.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>Subordinate, not exclude</i>. Nature in her ascent leaves nothing +behind, but at each step subordinates and glorifies:—mass, crystal, +organ, sensation, sentience, reflection.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 82.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<img src="images/CG21.gif" width="243" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: Méga biblíon méga kakón.dokei"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 84.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 87.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 128.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 129.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And when I have studied hard to understand some abstruse admired book, + as <i>de Scientia Dei, de Providentia circa malum, de Decretis, de + Prædeterminatione, de Libertate creaturæ</i>, &c. I have but attained + the knowledge of human imperfection, and to see that the author is but + a man as well as I.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 131.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 135.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 136.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ai"></a><b>Book I. Part II. p.139.</b> +<br> +<br> +The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as +an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean <i>clinamen</i>, 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 <i>medium</i> +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.<br> +<br> +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; <i>et volenti nulla fit +injuria</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 141.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>imperium in + imperio</i>; 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 142.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<img src="images/CG22.gif" width="148" height="21" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 143.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Is not this the case with the Houses of Legislature? The members taken +individually are subjects; collectively governors.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 177.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. * * * <i>Potestas + clavium</i> was committed to them only, not to the Seventy.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 179.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>It followeth not a mere Bishop may have a multitude of Churches, + because an Archbishop may, who hath many Bishops under him.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 185.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> I say again, No Church, no Christ; for no body, no head; and if no + Christ then, there is no Christ now.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 188.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Or if they would not yield to this at all, we might have communion + with them as Christians, without acknowledging them for Pastors.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 189.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ar"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 194.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 198.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4at"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 201.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr32">The</a> great question is: Was this +the Baptismal Symbol, the <i>Regula Fidei</i>, which it was forbidden to +put in writing;—or was it not the Christian A. B. C. of the +<i>Catechumeni</i> previously to their Baptismal initiation into the +higher mysteries, to the <i>strong meat</i> which was not for +<i>babes</i><a href="#f32"><sup>2</sup></a>?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4au"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 203.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 222.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>totidem verbis et +syllabis</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>subpoena</i>? 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>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.</i></blockquote> + +This argument <i>ad affectum</i> 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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ax"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 224.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>But this is not the worst. You consequently anathematize</i> 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.</blockquote> + +This introduction of syllogistic form in a letter to a young Lady is +whimsically characteristic.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ay"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 225.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4az"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 226.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, + <i>tongues</i>, and a spirit of revelation and infallibility prove + themselves Apostles, we shall believe them.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>linguipotence</i> 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 <i>in genere</i> with those of the Apostles and the Apostolic +age, as we have in most other of our Protestant controversies.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ba"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 246.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 248.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 249.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bd"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>suppress all Sectaries</i>, and spare not, in a way that will not + suppress the means of knowledge and godliness.</blockquote> + +The present company, that is, our own dear selves, always excepted.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4be"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 250.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 254.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>The apocryphal matter of your lessons in Tobit, Judith, Bel and the + Dragon, &c., is scarce agreeable to the word of God.</blockquote> + +Does not Jude refer to an apocryphal book?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. </blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bh"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 257.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bi"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 269.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 272.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bk"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 273.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 308.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Baxter's Exceptions to the Common Prayer Book. +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + Order requireth that we begin with reverent prayer to God for his + acceptance and assistance, which is not done.</li></ol></blockquote> + +Enunciation of God's invitations, and promises in God's own words, as in +the Common Prayer Book, much better. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=2 type="1"><li>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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +Might have deserved consideration, if the people or the larger number +consisted of uninstructed <i>catechumeni</i>, 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. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=4 type="1"><li>When we have craved help for God's prayers, before we come to them, + we abruptly put in the petition for speedy deliverance—(<i>O God, + make speed to save us: O Lord make haste to help us</i>,) without any + intimation of the danger that we desire deliverance from, and without + any other petition conjoined.</li></ol> + +<ol start=5 type="1"><li> + + It is disorderly in the manner, to sing the Scripture in a plain + tune after the manner of reading.</li></ol> + +<ol start=6 type="1"><li> + + (<i>The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit</i>,) being petitions + for divine assistance, come in abruptly in the midst or near the end + of morning prayer: And (<i>Let us pray</i>.) is adjoined when we were + before in prayer.</li></ol></blockquote> + +Mouse-like squeak and nibble. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=7 type="1"><li>(<i>Lord have mercy upon us: Christ have mercy upon us: Lord have + mercy upon us</i>.) 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 (<i>O Lord, shew thy mercy upon us</i>.)</li></ol></blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote> +<ol start=8 type="1"><li>The prayer for the King (<i>O Lord, save the King</i>.) is without + any order put between the foresaid petition and another general + request only for audience. (<i>And mercifully hear us when we call + upon thee</i>).</li></ol></blockquote> + +A trifle, but just. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=9 type="1"><li>The second Collect is intituled (<i>For Peace</i>.) and hath not a + word in it of petition for peace, but only <i>for defence in assaults + of enemies</i>, and that we <i>may not fear their power</i>. And the + prefaces (<i>in knowledge of whom standeth</i>, &c. and <i>whose + service</i>, &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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=10 type="1"><li> + + The third Collect intituled {<i>For Grace</i>.) 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=12 type="1"><li>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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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: + +<blockquote> (As to the prayer for Bishops and Curates and the position of the + General Thanksgiving, &c.)</blockquote> + +which are defects so palpable and so easily removed, that nothing but +antipathy to the objectors could have retained them. + +<blockquote> + +<ol start=13 type="1"><li>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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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 <i>boa +constrictor</i> 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, <img src="images/CG23.gif" width="134" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 337.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>extempore</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 341.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The paper offered by Bishop Cosins. + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +If not, let them propose what they desire in point of expediency, + and acknowledge it to be no more.</li></ol></blockquote> + +This was proposed, doubtless, by one of your sensible men; it is so +plain, so plausible, shallow, <i>nihili, nauci, pili, flocci-cal</i>. +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:<br> +<br> +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:—<i>ergo</i>, the crossing +cannot be rightfully omitted.<br> +<br> +To this, how easily would the other party reply; + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li>That a small number of Bishops could not be called the Church:</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +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:</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +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:</li></ol> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bo"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 343.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Answer to the foresaid paper. +<ol start=8 type="1"><li> + 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.</li></ol></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 368.</b> +<br> +<br> +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, <i>quam nolumus +mutari</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 368.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>de facto</i> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4br"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 369.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Quære</i>. Whether in the 20th Article these words are not + inserted;—<i>Habet Ecclesia auctoritatem in controversiis fidei</i>. +</blockquote> + +Strange, that the evident antithesis between power in respect of +ceremonies, and authority in points of faith, should have been +overlooked!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bs"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> Some have published, That there is a proper sacrifice in the Lord's + Supper, to exhibit Christ's death in the <i>post-fact</i>, as there + was a sacrifice to prefigure it in the Old Law in the + <i>ante-fact</i>, and therefore that we have a true altar, and not + only metaphorically so called.</blockquote> + +Doubtless a gross error, yet pardonable, for to errors nearly as gross +it was opposed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bt"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> Some have maintained that the Lord's Day is kept merely by + ecclesiastical constitution, and that the day is changeable.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bu"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This no doubt refers to Jeremy Taylor's work on Repentance, and is but +too faithful a description of its character.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bv"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 373.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>pro</i> and +<i>con</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 374.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Since this, Dr. Peter Moulin hath, in his Answer to <i>Philanax + Anglicus</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Icon Basilike</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bx"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 375.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ipso nomine</i> not +generalizable,—therefore not the subjects of a law, which is the +conclusion <i>per genus singuli in genere inclusi</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4by"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 398.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The governing power and obligation over the flock is essential to the + office of a Pastor or Presbyter as instituted by Christ.</blockquote> + +There is, <img src="images/CG24.gif" width="150" height="27" border="1" alt="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 <i>in toto</i>, 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, <i>a fortiori</i>, 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 +<i>discipline</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +20th October, 1829.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4bz"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 401.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This most arbitrary appropriation of the words of Christ, and of the +apostles, John and Paul, by the Clergy to themselves exclusively, is the +<img src="images/CG25.gif" width="138" height="24" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ca"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 405.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 412.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 435.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cd"></a><b>Part III. p. 59.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ce"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 60.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 65.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ad id tempus et ad eam rem</i>, 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 <img src="images/CG26.gif" width="92" height="25" border="1" alt="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 <i>Canon Fidei</i>, or +<i>Symbolum</i> or <i>Regula Fidei</i>, the Creed <img src="images/CG27.gif" width="39" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: kat' +hexocháen"><img src="images/CG28.gif" width="65" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image">, 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 67.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>demi-semi-quaver</i> of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for the +<i>semi-breve</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ch"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 69.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ci"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>vestigia Trinitatis</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +On recollection, however, I am disposed to consider <i>this</i> alone as +Baxter's peculiar claim, I have not indeed any distinct memory of +Giordano Bruno's <i>Logice Venatrix Veritatis</i>; but doubtless the +principle of Trichotomy is necessarily involved in the Polar Logic, +which again is the same with the Pythagorean <i>Tetractys</i>, 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. <i>Prothesis</i> being by the very term anterior to +<i>Thesis</i> can be no part of it. Thus in<br> +<br> +<table summary="logic structure" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"> +<tr align="center" valign="middle"> + <td></td> + <td><i>Prothesis</i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="middle"> + <td><i>Thesis</i></td> + <td></td> + <td><i>Antithesis</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="middle"> + <td></td> + <td><i>Synthesis</i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +<a name="fr33">we</a> have the Tetrad indeed in the intellectual and intuitive +contemplation, but a Triad in discursive arrangement, and a Tri-unity in +result<a href="#f33"><sup>3</sup></a>. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 144.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>privati juris</i>, 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 <i>quasi sacramenta</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ck"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 153.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +This controversy with Goeze was in 1778, nearly a hundred years after +Baxter's writing this.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 155.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 180.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. + +<blockquote><img src="images/CG29.gif" width="359" height="49" border="1" alt="Greek: Taut' élegon períthumos egô gàr mísei en ísô Laudérdalon échô + kaì kerkokerônucha Satan."></blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 181.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4co"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 186.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 191.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cq"></a><b>Appendix II. p. 37.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If I can prove that it hath been the universal practice of the Church + <i>in nudum apertum caput manus imponere</i>, doth it follow that this + is essential, and the contrary null?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cr"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>manuum impositionem</i>, then do + you egregiously <i>tibi ipsi imponere</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Hercules +furens</i> of the phlogistic sect, but else an incomparable +teacher,—used to translate, <i>Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in +sensu</i>,—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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cs"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 45.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>potentia cæca, non nata ad + intelligendum, sed ad volendum vel nolendum intellectum</i>.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4ct"></a><b>Appendix. III. p. 55.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +But the Antipœdo-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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="4cu"></a><b><i>In fine.</i></b> +<br> +<br> +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. <a name="fr34">This</a>, however, is the first sense of +the words, Church of England<a href="#f34"><sup>4</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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 <i>ne plus ultra</i> of my +religious aspirations, it were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed +to express iny 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 <i>passim</i>). 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 <i>pro tempore</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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. <br> +<br> +June 1820.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +Law is—<i>conclusio per regulam generis singulorum in genere isto +inclusorum</i>. Now the extremes <i>et inclusa</i> are contradictory +terms. Therefore extreme cases are not capable subjects of law <i>a +priori</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f31"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> <i>Relliquiæ Baxterianæ</i>: or Mr. Richard Baxter's +Narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times. +Published from his manuscript, by Matthew Sylvester.—London, +<i>folio</i>. 1699.<br> +<a href="#section4">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f32"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See Hooker E. P. V. xviii. 3. Vol. II. p. 80. Keble. +<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr32">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f33"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> See <i>Table Talk</i>, p. 162. 2nd edit. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr33">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f34"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> See the <i>Church and State</i>, p. 73, 3rd edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr34">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section5"></a>Notes on Leighton<a href="#f51"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +April 1814.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5a"></a><b>Comment Vol. I. p. 2.</b><br> + +<blockquote> —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.</blockquote> + +By the blood of Christ I mean this. I contemplate the Christ, + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + + As <i>Christus agens</i>, the Jehovah Christ, the Word:</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> + + As <i>Christus patiens</i>, The God Incarnate. </li></ol> + +In the former he is <i>relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, +sol intelligibilis: relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, +calor fovens</i>. In the latter he is <i>vita vivificans, principium +spiritualis, id est, veræ reproductionis in vitam veram</i>. Now this +principle, or <i>vis vitæ vitam vivificans</i>, considered in <i>forma +passiva, assimilationem patiens</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 13-15.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>Of their sanctification: <i>elect unto obedience</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG31.gif" width="163" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: to prôton +pseudos">, lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all, +in this instance.<br> +<br> +First:—because the terms from which the conclusion must be +drawn-(<i>termini in majore præmissi, a quibus scientialiter et +scientifice demonstrandum erat</i>) are accommodations and not +scientific—that is, proper and adequate, not <i>per idem</i>, but +<i>per quam maxime simile</i>, or rather <i>quam maxime dissimile</i>:<br> +<br> +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, (<i>John</i> i. 5.):<br> +<br> +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,—<i>vox et præterea nihil</i>. 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 +<i>medium</i> 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 <i>know</i> it."<br> +<br> +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 <i>inter-ens</i>, +or <i>ens inter-medium</i> between the life and the spirit;—the +<i>participium</i>, not as a compound, however, but as a <i>medium +indifferens</i>—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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 63-4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Most true, most true!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Bless God, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter! It is the +honey in the lion.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 75.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Lord I believe: help thou my unbelief!</i> My reason acquiesces, and +I believe enough to fear. O, grant me the belief that brings sweet hope!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 76.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Either this is true, or religion is not religion; that is, it adds +nothing to our human reason; <i>non religat</i>. Grant it, grant it me, +O Lord!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 104-5.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 121.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 122.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> He calls those times wherein Christ was unknown to them, <i>the times + of their ignorance</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +How beautiful, and yet how simple, and as it were unconscious of its own +beauty!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 124.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 138.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 158.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The chief point of obedience is believing; the proper obedience to + truth is to give credit to it.</blockquote> + +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. <i>The devils believe.</i><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 166.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>a new creation. Though it + be but a change in qualities</i>, yet it is such a one, and the + qualities so far distant from what they before were, &c.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 170.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. * * * <i>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</i> xiv. 1, 2. Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.</blockquote> + +It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless +subtleties, or mere phantoms—<i>entia logica, vel etiam verbalia +solum</i>. 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 <i>man</i> 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 (<img src="images/CG32.gif" width="30" height="19" border="1" alt="Greek: tò"> <i>videri et tangi</i>) 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,<img src="images/CG33.gif" width="294" height="27" border="1" alt="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, <i>psyche</i> 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. <i>Cor</i>. 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 <i>a new earth</i> and <i>a new heaven</i> 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. <i>Rev</i>. xx.-xxi.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 174-5.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.</i><br> +<br> + And with respect to those learned men that apply the text to God, I + remember not that this <i>abiding for ever</i> is used to express + God's eternity in himself.</blockquote> + +No; nor is it here used for that purpose; but yet I cannot doubt but +that either the Word, <img src="images/CG34.gif" width="172" height="30" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG35.gif" width="67" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek:rháemata"> or Scriptures.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 194.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 200.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +To the regenerate;—but to the conscious sinner a source of terrors +insupportable.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 211.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>precious</i>, and accounted precious by him that hath made them so.</blockquote> + +Though this is not only true, but a most important truth, it would yet +have been well to have obviated the apparent carnal consequences.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 216.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 229.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +"Here I <i>will</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5u"></a><b>Vol. II. p. 242.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 (<i>Heb</i>. xii. 2,) the <i>shame</i> + of the Cross, though he was above it, and despised it, yet that shame + added much to the burden of it.</blockquote> + +I understand Leighton thus: that though our Lord felt it not as +<i>shame</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 293.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5w"></a><b>Vol. III. p. 20. Serm. I.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>They shall see God</i>. 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: <i>for you shall know him as he + is</i>.</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG36.gif" width="108" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: ho ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós"><img src="images/CG37.gif" width="178" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image">—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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 63. Serm. V.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>made manifest by the light</i>, says the Apostle, <i>Eph</i>. 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. <i>If our Gospel be hid</i>, says the Apostle, <i>it + is hid to them that perish</i>: 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him (Christ) <img src="images/CG38.gif" width="92" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: apaúgasma">, <i>the brightness of his Father's glory, and the character + of his person</i>, (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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>veritates verificæ</i> +Leighton himself in other words speaks often. Surely, there must have +been an intelligible propriety in the terms, <i>Logos</i>, Word, +<i>Begotten before all creation</i>,—an adequate idea or <i>icon</i>, +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>Postscript</i><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 73.</b> +<br> +<br> +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 77. Serm. VI.</b> +<br> +<br> +Leighton, I presume, was acquainted with the Hebrew Language, but he +does not appear to have studied it much. His observation on the +<i>heart</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 104. Serm. VII.</b> +<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 107. Serm. VIII.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>genus</i> of which +pleasure is a <i>species</i>. 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 <i>vice versa</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>Postscript.</i><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Serm. IX. p. 12.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + follow<a href="#f41"><sup>A</sup></a> the sway of their nature and condition. +</blockquote> + +<a name="f41"></a><span style="color: #0000FF;">A</span>: 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +If angels be other than spirits made perfect, or, as Leighton writes, +"glorified souls,"—the "unalterable by nature" seems to me rashly +asserted.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> The mind, <img src="images/CG8.gif" width="84" height="27" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +I doubt. <img src="images/CG8.gif" width="84" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema">. signifies an act: and so far I agree with +Leighton. But <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs"> is <i>the flesh</i> (that is, the +natural man,) in the act or habitude of minding—but those acts, taken +collectively, are the faculty—the understanding.<br> +<br> +How often have I found reason to regret, that Leighton had not clearly +made out to himself the diversity of reason and the understanding!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Serm. XV. p. 196.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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. <img src="images/CG39.gif" width="153" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: Eléaeson Kyrie!"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Serm. XVI. p. 204.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Know you not that the redeemed of Christ and He are one? They live one + life, Christ lives in them, and if <i>any man hath not the Spirit of + Christ, he is none of his</i>, 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.<br> +<br> + 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.<br> +<br> + To such I would only say, Are you in a willing league with any known + sin? &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>you</i>; that he died for +<i>you—you—you—yourself</i>?" on to the end of the chapter. This is +Wesley's doctrine.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ai"></a><b>Lecture IX. vol. IV. p. 96.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +But surely in this passage <i>religio</i> must be rendered superstition, +the most effectual means for the removal of which Epicurus supposed +himself to have found in the exclusion of the <i>gods many and lords +many</i>, from their imagined agency in all the <i>phœnomena</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 105.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>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></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XI. p. 113.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +It is inconceivable how any thing can be created in time; and production +is incompatible with interspace.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XV. p. 152.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<a name="fr52">I</a> 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<a href="#f52"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XIX. p. 201.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!"<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XXI. p. 225.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG40.gif" width="91" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: plaeroma"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Lect. XXIV. p. 245.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Ask yourselves, therefore, <i>what you would be at</i>, and with what + dispositions you come to this most sacred table?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="5ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Exhortation to the Students, p. 252.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f51"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> Works of Leighton, 4 vols. 8vo. London 1819. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#section5">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f52"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> <i>Statesman's Manual</i>, p. 230. 2nd edit. <i>Friend</i>, III. +3d edit. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr52">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section6"></a>Notes on Sherlock's <i>Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity</i><a href="#f61"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="6a"></a><b>Sect. I. p. 3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ens logicum</i>), +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: + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +Are they co-ordinate as agent and re-agent;</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +Or is the one subordinate to the other, as effect to cause, and which +is the cause or ground, which the effect or product;</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +Or are they co-ordinate, but not inter-dependent, that is, <i>per +harmonium præstabilitam</i>.</li></ol> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>their subject</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>a petitio principii</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Indeed! Were I either Romanist or Unitarian, I should desire no better +than the admission of body having an <i>esse</i> not in the +<i>percipi</i>, and really subsisting, <img src="images/CG41.gif" width="163" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: autò tò chraema"> as tne +supporter of its accidents. At all events, the Romanist, declaring the +accidents to be those ordinarily impressed on the senses <img src="images/CG42.gif" width="129" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: tà +phaínomena kaì aísthaeta"><img src="images/CG43.gif" width="114" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: see previous image"> by bread and wine, does at the same time +declare the flesh and blood not to be the <img src="images/CG44.gif" width="202" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phaínomena kaì aísthaeta"> so called, but the <img src="images/CG45.gif" width="114" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: noúmena kaì autà tà chráemata"><img src="images/CG46.gif" width="163" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image">. +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 +<i>rem credimus, modum nescimus</i>; next to that, the doctrine of the +Sacramentaries, that it is <i>signum sub rei nomine</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 6.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>modus</i> 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 +<i>him</i>. But the Socinians say;—"We do not understand <i>you</i>. We +cannot attach to the word 'God,' more than three possible meanings; +either, + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +A person, or self-conscious being;</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +Or a thing;</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +Or a quality, property, or attribute.</li></ol> + +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.<br> +<br> +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. + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an +intelligent or self-conscious being; —or,</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +a thing with its qualities and properties; —or,</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> +certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature. </li></ol> + +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."<br> +<br> +The answer to this must commence by a denial of the premisses <i>in +toto</i>: 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 <i>quasi-Tritheism</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6e"></a><b>Sect. II. p. 13.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge + every Person by himself to be God and Lord</i>;—</blockquote> + +(That is, by especial revelation.) + +<blockquote><i>So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are + three Gods, or three Lords.</i></blockquote> + +That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with, +the universal reason, <i>the light that lighteth every man that cometh +into the world</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 14.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>acumen</i> 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 +<i>explicite</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 18.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal</i>. 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 <i>afore, or + after other</i>.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>minus</i> 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 <i>none is greater or less than another</i>, +is universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as +the co-eternal Son; <i>My Father is greater than I</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 <i>ad libitum</i>—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? <a name="fr62">If</a> it differs, how dare we retain both<a href="#f62"><sup>2</sup></a>? 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 <i>syllepsis</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6h"></a><b>Sect. III. p. 23.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If what he says is true: <i>He that errs in a question of faith, after + having used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed, is in no + fault at all</i>; 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?</blockquote> + +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 <i>totus fere mundus factus est +Arianus</i>, 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?"<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 26.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> All Christians must confess, that there is no other name given under + heaven whereby men can be saved, but only the name of Christ.</blockquote> + +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 <i>too too</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 27.</b> +<br> +<br> +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; <img src="images/CG47.gif" width="279" height="25" border="1" alt="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 +<img src="images/CG48.gif" width="136" height="30" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 28.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Notes</i>. By keeping this faith <i>whole and undefiled</i>, 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>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>. 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.<br> +<br> + <i>Answer</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +This Notary manages his cause most weakly, and Sherlock <i>fibs</i> 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 <i>Symbolum Fidei</i>, the <i>Regula</i>, the <i>Canon</i>, +by which, according to the greater number of the <i>ante</i>-Nicene +Fathers, the books of the New Testament were themselves tried and +determined to be Scripture. Now this <i>Symbolum</i> 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 (<i>which faith</i>, &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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6l"></a><b>Sect. IV. p. 50.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>circum-incession</i>, three persons thus intimate + to each other are numerically one.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 64.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> St. Paul tells us, 1 Cor. ii. 10. <i>That the Spirit searcheth all + things, yea the deep things of God</i>. 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. <i>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.</i></blockquote> + +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:—<i>ergo</i>, the <i>principium +sciendi</i> must be one (that is, homogeneous or consubstantial) with +the <i>principium essendi quoad objectum cognitum</i>. 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 <i>Logos</i> +in like manner relatively to both. So too, the Father has a <i>logos</i> +with which he distinguishes the <i>Logos</i>;—and the <i>Logos</i> has +a <i>logos</i>, and so on: that is to say, there are three several +though not severed triune Gods, each being the same position three times +<i>realiter positum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + + 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 72.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Even this, though not ill-conceived, is inaccurately expressed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 81.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 88.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Nay, this is to my understanding three Gods, and Sherlock seems to have +brought in the material phantom of a thing or substance.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 97.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <img src="images/CG49.gif" width="83" height="21" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +—"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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 98.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Thus each Divine Person is God, and all of them but the same one God; + as I explained it before.</blockquote> + +O no! asserted it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 98-9.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>modi + subsistendi</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +Will not the Arian object, "You admit the <i>modus subsistendi</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6v"></a><b>Sect. V. p. 102.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>Cor</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +The proper answer to Augustine is, that the Son and Holy Ghost are +necessary and essential, not contingent: and that <i>his</i> argument +has a still greater inconvenience, as shewn in note p. 98.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 110-113.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <img src="images/CG50.gif" width="80" height="22" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG51.gif" width="92" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: mía theótaes"> one Godhead and Divinity. +</blockquote> + +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, <img src="images/CG52.gif" width="68" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: ánthropôs"><img src="images/CG53.gif" width="35" height="23" border="1" alt="see previous image"> and <img src="images/CG54.gif" width="108" height="26" border="1" alt="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 +<img src="images/CG55.gif" width="133" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: treis theótaetes">—that is, three Godheads."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 115-16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Gregory Nyssen tells us that <img src="images/CG56.gif" width="36" height="21" border="1" alt="Greek: theòs"> is <img src="images/CG57.gif" width="53" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: theatàes"> and + <img src="images/CG58.gif" width="53" height="22" border="1" alt="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, <img src="images/CG59.gif" width="189" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: allà mìa tìs + gínetai agathou Bouláematos kínaesis kaì diakósmaesis"><img src="images/CG60.gif" width="355" height="22" border="1" alt="see previous image">—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 <img src="images/CG61.gif" width="190" height="22" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +But this is either Tritheism or Sabellianism; it is hard to say which. +Either the <img src="images/CG62.gif" width="85" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Boúlaema"> subsists in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, +and not merely passes through them, and then there would be three +numerical <img src="images/CG63.gif" width="102" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: Boúlaema">, as well as three numerical Persons: +<i>ergo</i>, <img src="images/CG64.gif" width="91" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: treis theoì àe theataí"><img src="images/CG65.gif" width="83" height="24" border="1" alt="see previous image"> (according to Gregory +Nyssen's shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism: +or <img src="images/CG66.gif" width="180" height="28" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 117.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> For I leave any man to judge, whether this <img src="images/CG67.gif" width="127" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: mía kínaesis + Bouláematos"><img src="images/CG68.gif" width="66" height="23" border="1" alt="see previous image">, 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.</blockquote> + +Is not God conscious to all my thoughts, though I am not conscious of +God's? Would Sherlock endure that I should infer: <i>ergo</i>, 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. +<ol type="1"> +<li>Father—Son—Holy Ghost.</li> +<li>Son—Father—Holy Ghost.</li> +<li>Holy Ghost—Son—Father.</li> +</ol> + +Else there is an <i>x</i> in the Father which is not in the Son, a +<i>y</i> in the Son which is not in the Father, and a <i>z</i> in the +Holy Ghost which is in neither: that is, each by himself is not total +God.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 120.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +So that after all this obscuration of the obscure, Sherlock ends by +fairly throwing up his briefs, and yet calls out, "Not guilty! +<i>Victoria</i>!" 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 <i>vice versa</i>, all +three tickets could produce no more than each one; each corresponding to +the whole.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>Hypostases</i> or + Persons, by denying any difference or diversity of nature,<br> + <img src="images/CG69.gif" width="508" height="47" border="1" alt="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. +</blockquote> + +This is just what I have said, p. 116. Whether Sabellianism or +Tritheism, I observed is hard to determine. Extremes meet.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 121.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Secondly, to this <i>homo-ousiotes</i> 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 <i>he might mistake</i> their explication + of it, from the unity of human nature, they were far enough from + Tritheism, or one collective God.</blockquote> + +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 <i>intention</i>, in consequence of their inconvenient and +unphilosophical explication;" which mistake, in fact, consisted in +taking them at their word.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: <i>hujus conjunctionis ratio est indifferentia</i>: + that is, such a sameness of nature as admits of no difference or + variety, or an exact <i>homo-ousiotes</i>, 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. <i>Principium enim + pluralitatis alteritas est. Præter alteritatem enim nec pluralitas + quid sit intelligi potest</i>.</blockquote> + +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? <i>Principium enim, &c.</i><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 124.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> That the Fathers universally acknowledged that the operation of the + whole Trinity, <i>ad extra</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +Then it was not the Son but the whole Trinity that was crucified: for +surely this was an operation <i>ad extra</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 126.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>which</i> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Which</i>! The <i>man</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 127.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Then why do we make tri-personality in unity peculiar to God? +<br> +<br> +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 <i>omni actioni præit sua propria +passio; Deus autem est actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate</i>. 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 <i>passio</i> or recipient. +This unicity we strive, not to <i>express</i>, for that is impossible; +but to designate, by the nearest, though inadequate, analogy,— +<i>Begotten</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 133.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: + <i>the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his + hands</i>.—John iii. 35. <i>And the Father loveth the Son, and + sheweth him all things that himself doeth</i>.-John v. 20; and our + Saviour himself tells us, <i>I love the Father</i>.—John xiv. 31. And + I shewed before, that love is a distinct act, <i>and therefore in God + must be a person: for there are no accidents nor faculties in God.</i></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ah"></a><b>Sect. VI. pp. 147-8.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +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 <i>per se</i> 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.<br> +<br> +"Each <i>per se</i> God." This is the <img src="images/CG70.gif" width="124" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: prôton méga pseudos"><img src="images/CG71.gif" width="62" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image"> of +Sherlock's scheme. Each of the three is whole God, because neither is, +or can be <i>per se</i>; the Father himself being <i>a se</i>, but not +<i>per se</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ai"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 149.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 150.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This and the following paragraph are excellent. <i>O si sic omnia</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 153.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 154.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 + <i>m-x</i>, which is not = + <i>m</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 156.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> So born before all creatures, as <img src="images/CG72.gif" width="88" height="20" border="1" alt="Greek: prôtótokos"> also signifies, + <i>that by him were all things created</i>. + + <i>All things were created by him, and for him, and he is before all + things</i>, (which is the explication of <img src="images/CG73.gif" width="143" height="21" border="1" alt="Greek: pôrtótokos pásaes + ktíseos"><img src="images/CG74.gif" width="68" height="20" border="1" alt="see previous image"> <i>begotten before the whole creation</i>, and therefore no + part of the creation himself.)</blockquote> + +This is quite right. Our version should here be corrected. <img src="images/CG75.gif" width="66" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: +Prôto"> or <img src="images/CG76.gif" width="88" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: prótaton"> is here an intense +comparative,—<i>infinitely before</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 159.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> That he <i>being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be + equal with God</i>, &c.—Phil. ii. 8, 9.</blockquote> + +I should be inclined to adopt an interpretation of the unusual phrase +<img src="images/CG77.gif" width="95" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: hárpagmon"> somewhat different both from the Socinian and the +Church version:—"who being in the form of God did not <i>think equality +with God a thing to be seized with violence</i>, but made, &c."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 160.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 161-3.</b> +<br> +<br> +I find little or nothing to <i>object to</i> in this exposition, from +pp. 161-163 inclusively, of <i>Phil</i>. 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 <i>ante</i>-delegate or pre-substitute +of the Cross, is too like an <i>argumentum in circulo</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 164.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And though Christ be the eternal Son of God, and the natural Lord and + heir of all things, yet <i>God hath</i> in this <i>highly exalted + him</i> and given <i>him a name which is above every name, that at</i> + (or in <img src="images/CG78.gif" width="23" height="19" border="1" alt="Greek: en">) <i>the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of + things in heaven</i>, &c.—Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11.</blockquote> + +Never was a sublime passage more debased than by this rendering of +<img src="images/CG78.gif" width="23" height="19" border="1" alt="Greek: en"> by <i>at</i>, instead of <i>in</i>;—<i>at</i> the +<i>phenomenon</i>, instead of <i>in</i> the <i>noumenon</i>. For such is +the force of <i>nomen</i>, name, in this and similar passages, namely, +<i>in vera et substantiali potestate Jesu</i>: that is, <img src="images/CG79.gif" width="123" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: en lógô +kaì dià lógou"><img src="images/CG80.gif" width="103" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image"> the true <i>noumenon</i> or <i>ens intelligibile</i> of +Christ. To bow at hearing the <i>cognomen</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ar"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 168.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the + Son</i>.—John v. 22. Should the Father judge the world he <i>must</i> + 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?</blockquote> + +(Why? Is mercy incompatible with righteousness? How then can the Son be +righteous?) + +<blockquote> But he has committed judgment to the Son, as a mediatory king, who + judges by the equity and chancery of the Gospel.</blockquote> + +This article required exposition incomparably more than the simple +doctrine of the Trinity, plain and evident <i>simplici intuitu</i>, and +rendered obscure only by diverting the mental vision by terms drawn from +matter and multitude. In the Trinity all the <i>Hows</i>? may and should +be answered by <i>Look</i>! 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, <i>per intuitum +intellectualem</i>, must all the mysteries of faith be contemplated; +—they are intelligible <i>per se</i>, not discursively and <i>per +analogiam</i>. 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 171.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: + <i>he quickeneth whom he will</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>phenomenon</i> in time, but with +the predicates of eternity;—and this is the only possible definition of +a miracle <i>in re ipsa</i>, and not merely <i>ad hominem</i>, or <i>ad +ignorantiam</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6at"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 177.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> His next argument consists in applying such things to the divinity of + our Saviour as belong to his humanity; <i>that he increased in wisdom, + &c.:—that he knows not the day of judgment</i>;—which he evidently + speaks of himself as man: as all the ancient Fathers confess. In St. + Mark it is said, <i>But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, + not the angels that are in heaven, neither the Son, but the + Father</i>. St. Matthew does not mention the Son: <i>Of that day and + hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only</i>.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6au"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> Which shows that the Son in St. Matthew is included in the <img src="images/CG81.gif" width="51" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: oudeìs"> none, or no man, and therefore concerns him only as a man: for + the Father <i>includes the whole Trinity</i>, and therefore includes + the Son, who seeth whatever his Father doth.</blockquote> + +This is an <i>argumentum in circulo</i>, and <i>petitio rei sub +lite</i>. Why is he called the Son in <i>antithesis</i> 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 <i>Son</i> +simply, instead of the Son of Man, or the Messiah?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG82.gif" width="58" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: Oudeìs"> is not <img src="images/CG83.gif" width="129" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: oudeìs anthrôpôn">, but, <i>no one</i>: + as in John i. 18. <i>No one hath seen God at any time</i>; that is, he + is by essence invisible.</blockquote> + +This most difficult text I have not seen explained satisfactorily. I +have thought that the <img src="images/CG84.gif" width="79" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 186.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> When St. Paul calls the Father the One God, he expressly opposes it to + the many gods of the heathens. <i>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</i>: where the <i>one God</i> and <i>one Lord and Mediator</i> is + opposed to the many gods and many lords or mediators which were + worshipped by the heathens.</blockquote> + +But surely the <i>one Lord</i> is as much distinguished from the <i>one +God</i>, as both are contradistinguished from the <i>gods many and lords +many</i> of the heathens. Besides <i>the Father</i> is not the term used +in that age in distinction from the gods that are no gods; but <img src="images/CG85.gif" width="71" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: +Ho epì pántôn theós"><img src="images/CG86.gif" width="127" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="6ax"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 222.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The Word was with God</i>; that is, it was not yet in the world, or + not yet made flesh; but with God.—<i>John</i> i. 1. So that to be + <i>with God</i>, signifies nothing but not to be in the world.</blockquote> + +<b><i>The Word was with God.</i></b> + +<blockquote> 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 <img src="images/CG87.gif" width="135" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: parà tô patrí">, + with the Father, * * and explains it by what Wisdom says, <i>Prov</i>. + vii. 30. <i>Then I was by him, &c.</i> which he does not think a + <i>prosopopoeia</i>, but spoken of a subsisting person.</blockquote> + +But even this is scarcely tenable even as Greek. Had this been St. +John's meaning, surely he would have said, <img src="images/CG88.gif" width="68" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: en theô"> not <img src="images/CG89.gif" width="91" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: +pròs tòn theón"><img src="images/CG90.gif" width="48" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image"> 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 <i>shy cock</i>, and a man of +the world, was always ready to unsay what he had said.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f61"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section6">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f62"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> The third General Council, that at Ephesus in 431, decreed + + <blockquote>"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."</blockquote> + +<i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#fr62">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section7"></a>Notes on Waterland's <i>Vindication of Christ's Divinity</i><a href="#f71"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="7a"></a><i>In initio</i>.<br> +<br> +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; <i>sit pro ratione +voluntas</i>. Now, on the other hand, I affirm, that the article of the +Trinity is religion, is reason, and its universal <i>formula</i>; 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 <i>pseudo</i>-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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>ab omni quod non est Deus</i>, 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 <i>lene +clinamen</i> 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 <i>medium</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7b"></a><b>Query I. p. 1.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The Word was God</i>.—John i. 1. <i>I am the Lord, and there is + none else; there is no God besides me</i>.—Is. xiv. 5, &c.</blockquote> + +In all these texts the <i>was</i>, or <i>is</i>, ought to be rendered +positively, or objectively, and not as a mere connective: <i>The Word Is +God</i>, and saith, <i>I Am the Lord; there is no God besides me</i>, +the Supreme Being, <i>Deitas objectiva</i>. The Father saith, <i>I Am in +that I am,—Deitas subjectiva</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 2.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?<br> +<br> + 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.</blockquote> + +O most unhappy mistranslation of <i>Hypostasis</i> by Person! The Word +is properly the only Person.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>him only shall thou serve</i>. This I take to be a clear + consequence from your principles, and unavoidable.</blockquote> + +Waterland's argument is absolutely unanswerable by a worshipper of +Christ. The modern <i>ultra</i>-Socinian cuts the knot.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7e"></a><b>Query II. p. 43.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And therefore he might as justly bear the style and title of <i>Lord + God, God of Abraham</i>, &c. while he acted in that capacity, as he + did that of <i>Mediator, Messiah, Son of the Father</i>, &c. after + that he condescended to act in another, and to discover his personal + relation.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>medium</i> of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word, +Jehovah,? Is not the <img src="images/CG91.gif" width="73" height="31" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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 +<i>Idea Idearum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7f"></a><b>Query XV. p. 225-6.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The pretence is, that we equivocate in talking of eternal generation.</blockquote> + +All generation is necessarily <img src="images/CG92.gif" width="108" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: ánarchón ti"> without dividuous +beginning, and herein contradistinguished from creation.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 226.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> True, it is not the same with human generation.</blockquote> + +Not the same <i>eodem modo</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> You have not proved that all generation implies beginning; and what is + more, cannot.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 227-8.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7j"></a><b>Query XVI. p. 234.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> But God's <i>thoughts are not our thoughts</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ad hominem</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 235.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This misuse, or rather this <i>omnium-gatherum</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 237.</b> +<br> + +<blockquote>Sacrifice was one instance of worship required under the Law; and it is +said;—<i>He that sacrificeth unto any God, save unto the Lord only, he +shall be utterly destroyed</i> (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.</blockquote> + + +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 <i>sans-culotterie</i> of religion.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 239.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Truly excellent. Let the Church of England praise God for her Saints—a +more glorious Kalendar than Rome can show!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 251.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7o"></a><b>Query XVII.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And we may never be able perfectly to comprehend the relations of the + three persons, <i>ad intra</i>, amongst themselves; the ineffable + order and economy of the ever-blessed co-eternal Trinity.</blockquote> + +"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 +(<i>Ichheit</i>); 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7p"></a><b>Query XVIII. p. 269.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> From what hath been observed, it may appear sufficiently that the + divine <img src="images/CG10.gif" width="57" height="28" border="1" alt="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—<i>only not so distinctly revealed</i>. +</blockquote> + +Here I differ <i>toto orbe</i> from Waterland, and say with Luther and +Zinzendorf, that before the Baptism of John the <i>Logos</i> 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 <i>exegesis</i>. 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 <i>ad extra</i>, not an <i>exegesis</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 274.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +The passage quoted from Bishop Bull is very plausible and very eloquent; +but only <i>cum multis granis salis sumend</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7r"></a><b>Query XIX. p. 279.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> That the Father, whose honour had been sufficiently secured under the + Jewish dispensation, and could not but be so under the Christian also, + &c.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG93.gif" width="68" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: Ho Ôn"> which St. John every where, and St. Paul no +less, makes the peculiar name of the Son, <img src="images/CG94.gif" width="390" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: monogenàes uhiòs, ho +ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós"><img src="images/CG95.gif" width="69" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image">—; 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. +<img src="images/CG96.gif" width="69" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: Ho òn"> is the verbal noun of <img src="images/CG97.gif" width="30" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: hos esti"><img src="images/CG98.gif" width="48" height="27" border="1" alt="see previous image"> not of <img src="images/CG99.gif" width="81" height="32" border="1" alt="Greek: +egô eimí"> It is strange how little use has been made of that profound +and most pregnant text, <i>John</i> i. 18!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7s"></a><b>Query XX. p. 302.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The <img src="images/CG100.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +Most assuredly the very 'disputable' rendering of <img src="images/CG100.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: homooúsion"> 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 <i>usia</i> and homoüsial, as well as +<i>hypostasis</i>, hypostatic, homogeneous, heterogeneous, and the +like;—or as Baptism, Eucharist, Liturgy, Epiphany and the rest?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7t"></a><b>Query XXI. p. 303.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Waterland has weakened his argument by seeming to admit that in all +these 300 texts the Father, <i>distinctive</i>, is meant.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 316-17.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7v"></a><b>Query XXIII. p. 351.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> But taking advantage of the ambiguity of the word <i>hypostasis</i>, + sometimes used to signify substance, and sometimes person, you + contrive a fallacy.</blockquote> + +And why did not Waterland lift up his voice against this mischievous +abuse of the term <i>hypostasis</i>, and the perversion of its Latin +rendering, <i>substantia</i> as being equivalent to <img src="images/CG101.gif" width="52" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ousía">? Why +<img src="images/CG101.gif" width="52" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ousía"> should not have been rendered by <i>essentia</i>, I +cannot conceive. <i>Est</i> seems a contraction of <i>esset</i>, and +<i>ens</i> of <i>essens</i>: <img src="images/CG102.gif" width="103" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: ôn, ousa, ousía"><img src="images/CG101.gif" width="52" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: see previous image"> = <i>essens, +essentis, essentia</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 354.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 357.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> And our English Unitarians * * have been still refining upon the + Socinian scheme, * * and have brought it still nearer to Sabellianism.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 359.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Here comes one of the consequences of the Cartesian Dualism: as if +<img src="images/CG103.gif" width="52" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: sàrx"> the living body, could be or exist without a soul, or a +human living body without a human soul! <img src="images/CG104.gif" width="52" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: Sàrx"> is not Greek for +carrion, nor <img src="images/CG105.gif" width="51" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: sôma"> for carcase.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7z"></a><b>Query XXIV. p. 371.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Necessary existence is an essential character, and belongs equally to + Father and Son.</blockquote> + +Subsistent in themselves are Father, Son and Spirit: the Father only has +origin in himself.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7aa"></a><b>Query XXVI. p. 412.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The words <img src="images/CG106.gif" width="151" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: ouch hôs genómenon"> he construes thus: "not as + eternally generated," as if he had read <img src="images/CG107.gif" width="92" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: gennômenon">, supplying + <img src="images/CG108.gif" width="54" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: aïdíôs"> by imagination. The sense and meaning of the word + <img src="images/CG109.gif" width="83" height="22" border="1" alt="Greek: genómenon">, signifying made, or created, is so fixed and + certain in this author, &c.</blockquote> + +This is but one of fifty instances in which the true Englishing of +<img src="images/CG110.gif" width="181" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: genómenos, egéneto"> &c. would have prevented all mistake. It is +not <i>made</i>, but <i>became</i>. Thus here:—begotten eternally, and +not as one that became; that is, as not having been before. The +only-begotten Son never <i>became</i>; but all things <i>became</i> +through him.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 412.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>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</i>.<br> +<br> +Tertull. Apol. c. 21.</blockquote> + +How strange and crude the realism of the Christian Faith appears in +Tertullian's rugged Latin!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 414.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> He represents Tertullian as making the Son, in his highest capacity, + ignorant of the day of judgment.</blockquote> + +Of the true sense of the text, <i>Mark</i> 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 <img src="images/CG111.gif" width="139" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ei màe ho Patáer">. The <img src="images/CG112.gif" width="62" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: monon"> +of St. Matthew xxiv. 36. is here omitted. I think Waterland's a very +unsatisfying solution of this text.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 415.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>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</i>, + &c.—Tertull. Adv. Prax. c. 26. c. 30.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr72">But</a> 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 <img src="images/CG113.gif" width="116" height="27" border="1" alt="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<a href="#f72"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 421.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7af"></a><b>Query XXVII. p. 427.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG114.gif" width="488" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: Ton alaethinòn kaì óntôs ónta Theòn, tòn tou Christou patéra."> + —Athanas. Cont. Gent.<br> +<br> + The just and literal rendering of the passage is this: 'The true God + who in reality is such, namely, the Father of Christ.'</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG115.gif" width="147" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: tòn óntôs ónta"> distinctively from +<img src="images/CG116.gif" width="47" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: ho ôn">—the <i>Ens omnis entitatis, etiam suæ</i>, that is, the +I Am the Father, in distinction from the <i>Ens Supremum</i>, the Son. +It cannot, however, be denied that in changing the <i>formula</i> of the +<i>Tetractys</i> into the <i>Trias</i>, by merging the <i>Prothesis</i> +in the <i>Thesis</i>, the Identity in the Ipseity, the Christian Fathers +subjected their exposition to many inconveniences.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 432.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG117.gif" width="514" height="48" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> + 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. +</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="7ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 436.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG118.gif" width="510" height="45" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> + We may, as I conceive, preserve (the doctrine of) one God, by + referring both the Son and Holy Ghost to one cause, &c.</blockquote> + +Another instance of the inconvenience of the Trias compared with the +Tetractys.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f71"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. <i>Ed</i>.<br> +<a href="#section7">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f72"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> <blockquote><i>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.</i></blockquote> Fray. Gerundio. ii. 7. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr72">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section7b"></a>Notes on Waterland's <i>Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity</i><a href="#f771"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +<a name="77a"></a><b>Chap. I. p. 18.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.?</blockquote> + +It is strange that so sound, so admirable a logician as Waterland, +should have thought <i>unsearchable</i> and <i>incomprehensible</i> synonymous, or +at least equivalent terms:—and this, though St. Paul hath made it the +privilege of the full-grown Christian, <i>to search out the deep things +of God himself</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77b"></a><b>Chap. IV. p. 111.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>The delivering over unto Satan</i> 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.</blockquote> + +Unless the passage, (<i>Acts</i> 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 <i>not +of this world</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 114.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> '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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG119.gif" width="144" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG119.gif" width="144" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: autokatákritos">—though in his pride of heart he might say with the man +of old, "And I banish you."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 123.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits, + ceased.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 126.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 127.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—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.</blockquote> + +Psha! The 'bidding him God speed',—<img src="images/CG120.gif" width="65" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: légôn autô chaírein"><img src="images/CG121.gif" width="129" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image">—(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 Irenæus.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 128.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +O, no, no, not <i>them</i>! <i>Error quidem, non tamen homo errans, +abominandus</i>: or, to pun a little, <i>abhominandus</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 129.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 130.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> For if he who <i>shall break one of the least moral commandments, and + shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven</i>, + (Mat. v. 19,) it must be a very dangerous experiment, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>the Heaven</i> +or the Government, and <i>the Earth</i> or the People or the Governed, as one +<i>corpus politicum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77k"></a><b>Chap. V. p. 140.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + + 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 187.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77m"></a><b>Chap. VI. p. 230.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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" * *. <br> +<img src="images/CG122.gif" width="512" height="71" border="1" alt="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."></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 233.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—true Son of the Father, 'invisible' of invisible, &c.</blockquote> + +How is this reconcilable with <i>John</i> i. 18—(<i>no one hath seen God at +any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he +hath declared him</i>,—) or with the <i>express image</i>, asserted above. +<i>Invisible</i>, I suppose, must be taken in the narrowest sense, that is, +to bodily eyes. But then the one <i>invisible</i> would not mean the same as +the other.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 236.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Symbola certe Ecclesiæ ex ipso Ecclesiæ sensu, non ex hæreticorum + cerebello, exponenda sunt</i>.—Bull. Judic. Eccl. v.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 238.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The very name of Father, applied in the Creed to the first Person, + intimates the relation he bears to a Son, &c.</blockquote> + +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 +(<i>symbolum ad Baptismum</i>), 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 +<i>Scheol</i> or the abode of separated souls;—but really meaning no more +than <i>vere mortuus est</i>.. Jesus was taken from the Cross dead in the very +same sense in which the Baptist was dead after his beheading.<br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 250.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 257.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>In him was life, and the life was the light of men</i>. The same Word + was life, the <img src="images/CG10.gif" width="67" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: logos"> and <img src="images/CG123.gif" width="39" height="23" border="1" alt="Greek: zôáe,"> both one. There was no occasion + therefore for subtilly distinguishing the Word and Life into two Sons, + as some did.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness cometh not upon + it.</i> So I render the verse, conformable to the rendering of the same + Greek verb, <img src="images/CG124.gif" width="115" height="23" border="1" alt="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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>comprehend</i> 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 259.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>And the Word was made flesh</i>—became personally united with the man + Jesus; <i>and dwelt among us</i>,—resided constantly in the human nature + so assumed.</blockquote> + +Waterland himself did but dimly see the awful import of <img src="images/CG125.gif" width="118" height="24" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 266.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Hereupon therefore the Apostle, in defence of Christ's real humanity, + says, <i>This is he that came by water and blood</i>.</blockquote> + +<i>Water and blood,</i> that is <i>serum</i> and <i>crassamentum</i>, mean simply +<i>blood</i>, the blood of the animal or carnal life, which, saith Moses, <i>is +the life</i>. Hence <i>flesh</i> is often taken as, and indeed is a form of, the +blood,—blood formed or organized. Thus <i>blood</i> often includes <i>flesh</i>, +and <i>flesh</i> includes <i>blood</i>. <i>Flesh and blood</i> is equivalent to blood +in its twofold form, or rather as formed and formless. <i>Water and blood</i> +has, therefore, two meanings in St. John, but which <i>in idem +coincidunt</i>: +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> + true animal human blood, and no celestial ichor or phantom:</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +the whole sentiently vital body, fixed or flowing, the pipe and the +stream.</li></ol> + +For the ancients, and especially the Jews, had no distinct apprehension +of the use or action of the nerves: in the Old Testament <i>heart</i> is used +as we use <i>head</i>. <i>The fool hath said in his heart</i>—is in English: "the +worthless fellow (<i>vaurien</i>) hath taken it into his head," &c.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 268.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Is it clear that the distinct <i>hypostasis</i> 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?<br> +<br> +It grieves me to think that such giant <i>archaspistæ</i> of the Catholic +Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 +<i>John</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 272.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Incautiously worded at best. Compare our Lord's own declaration to his +disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while <i>with</i> or <i>among</i> them, in +order to dwell <i>in</i> them permanently.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 286.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 288.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +I agree with Bull in holding <img src="images/CG126.gif" width="169" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: apò tou hymetérou génous"><img src="images/CG127.gif" width="65" height="28" border="1" alt="see previous image"> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 292.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 338.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG128.gif" width="517" height="116" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> + 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.</blockquote> + +Waterland has not mastered the full force of <img src="images/CG129.gif" width="167" height="28" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 340.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> <i>Qui nude tantum hominem eum dicunt ex Joseph generatum * * moriuntur.</i></blockquote> + +<i>Non nude hominem</i>—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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77ac"></a><b>Chap. VII. p. 389.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It is a sufficient reason for not receiving either them (<i>Arian + doctrines</i>), 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="77ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 41-2, &c.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f771"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity +asserted, in reply to some late pamphlets. 2nd edit. Lond. 1734.<br> +<a href="#section7b">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section8"></a>Notes on Skelton's <i>Works</i><a href="#f81"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1825.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8a"></a><b>Burdy's Life of Skelton, p. 22.</b><br> + +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 67.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 106.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Surely there was more zeal than wisdom in this declaration. Does the +Athanasian or rather the <i>pseudo</i>-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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8d"></a><b>Vol. I. p. 177-180.</b> +<br> +<br> +No problem more difficult or of more delicate treatment than the +<i>criteria</i> 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 <i>synopsis</i> <img src="images/CG130.gif" width="111" height="25" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<i>P. S.</i> 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." +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 182.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Are <i>we</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 185.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 186.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>phænomena</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>phænomena</i>, and he draws his conclusion +from an arbitrary and, as seems to me, senseless definition of a +miracle.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 214. End of Discourse II.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 234.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +I understand these words (<i>My Father is greater than I</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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 251.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> This was necessary, because their Law was ordained by angels.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ad homines</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 265.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>Therefore, he saith, <i>I</i> (as a man) <i>can of myself do nothing</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>a fortiori</i> not as the Son of man, and more especially, as +such, in all that refers to the redemption of mankind."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 267.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 268.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If Christ in one place, (<i>John</i> xiv. 28,) says, <i>My Father is greater + than I</i>; he must be understood of his relation to the Father as his + Son, born of a woman.</blockquote> + +I do not see the necessity of this: does not Christ say, <i>My Father and +I will come and we will dwell in you?</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 276.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>the first-born of every +creature</i> as a false version of the words, which (as the argument and +following verse prove) should be rendered <i>begotten before</i>, (or rather +<i>superlatively before</i>), <i>all that was created or made; for by him</i> they +were made.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>Of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which + are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.</i></blockquote> + +I cannot explain myself here; but I have long thought that our Saviour +meant in these words <img src="images/CG131.gif" width="262" height="30" border="1" alt="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—<img src="images/CG132.gif" width="121" height="30" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG134.gif" width="97" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: +oud' ho uhíos"> and its inclusion in the Father. <i>As the Father knoweth +me, so know I the Father</i>.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG135.gif" width="56" height="28" border="1" alt="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, <img src="images/CG133.gif" width="221" height="31" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG134.gif" width="97" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: oud' ho huíos"> +conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word <img src="images/CG136.gif" width="46" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: emou"> +including the Son in the <img src="images/CG137.gif" width="124" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: patàer mónos">. For to his only-begotten +Son before all time the Father showeth all things. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 279.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>whence the Arian is to draw the + consequence himself, which may possibly be wrong</i>.</blockquote> + +Very good.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 280.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>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.</i>—l John v. 20. The whole connection evidently shows the + words to be spoken of Christ.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 281.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> But, farther, it is objected that Christ cannot be God, since God + calls him <i>his servant</i> more than once, particularly 'Isaiah' xlii. 1.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 287.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Hence it appears, that in the passage objected, (1 'Cor'. xv. 24, &c.) + Christ is spoken of purely as that Man whom <i>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.</i> (Phil. ii. 9, 10.)</blockquote> + +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, <i>in +which</i> (mystery) <i>all treasures of knowledge are hidden</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 318.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Hence, perhaps, may be best explained what St. Peter says in the + second Epistle, after pleading a miracle. <i>We have also a more sure + word of prophecy, whereunto you do well that you take heed.</i></blockquote> + +I believe that St. Peter neither said it, nor meant this; but that +<img src="images/CG138.gif" width="114" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: Bebaióteron"> follows <i>the prophetic word</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 327.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Agreeable to these passages of the Prophet, St. Peter tells us (<i>Acts</i> x. 38), <i>God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and + power</i>.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Disc. VIII.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity vindicated.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 374-378.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>phænomena</i> 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 <i>Aids to Reflection</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8x"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> (Disc. XIV. pp. 500-502.)</b> +<br> +<blockquote>Christianity proved by Miracles.</blockquote> + +I cannot see and never could, the purpose, or <i>cui bono</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>idea</i> of a miracle; which word is +with me no <i>idea</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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. <a name="fr82">For</a> 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,)<a href="#f82"><sup>2</sup></a>—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.<br> +<br> +<a name="fr83">So</a> again in the second paragraph of page 502<a href="#f83"><sup>3</sup></a>, 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, <i>ejusdem generis</i>,—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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>If</i> with respect to a much less startling narration is the point in +dispute between us?"<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>ejusdem generis</i>, 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, <i>præter experientiam</i>: and we have the +definition of a miracle in the popular, practical, and appropriated +sense.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8y"></a><b>Vol. III.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>sacrifice, purchase, +bargain, satisfaction</i>, of the creditor by full payment of the <i>debt</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 393.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>tarantula</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 394.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Yet excommunication, the inherent discipline of the Church, which it + exercised under persecution, which it is still permitted to exercise + under the present establishment.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr84">And</a> this it was, that first led me to the distinction +between the <i>Ecclesia</i> and an <i>Enclesia</i>, 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<a href="#f84"><sup>4</sup></a>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 446.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Strange that so great a man as Skelton should first affirm eternity of +both, yet in the next sentence talk of "long before." <a name="fr85">These</a> Reflections<a href="#f85"><sup>5</sup></a> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 478.</b><br> +<br> +<i>In fine.</i> +<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ad"></a><b>Vol. IV. p. 28. Deism Revealed.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="Deism Revealed" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Were you ever at Constantinople, Sir?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>Never.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Temp.</i></td> + <td>I am sure 1 have not.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>Nor I; but what then?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Pray, Mr. Dechaine, did you see Julius Cæsar assassinated in + the Capitol?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>A pretty question! No indeed, Sir.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Have you any doubts about the truth of what is told + us by the historians concerning that memorable transaction?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>Not the least.</td> +</tr><tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>By no means.</td> +</tr><tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>I have.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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' <img src="images/CG139.gif" width="97" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: élegchos metabáseôs eis +állo génos"><img src="images/CG140.gif" width="273" height="29" border="1" alt="see previous image">; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 35.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont." cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Templeton</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +This is the ever open and vulnerable part of Deism. The Deist, as a +Deist, believes, <i>implicite</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 37.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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 +<img src="images/CG141.gif" width="62" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Katà Matthaion"><img src="images/CG142.gif" width="97" height="30" border="1" alt="see previous image"> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 243.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 3" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Temp.</i></td> + <td>ou, Mr. Dechaine, seem to forget that God is just; and you, + Mr. Shepherd, that he is merciful</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>I insist, that, as God is merciful, he will forgive.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>And I insist, that, as he is just, he will punish.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Temp.</i></td> + <td>Pray Mr. Dechaine, are you able, upon the Deistical scheme to + rid yourself of this difficulty?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +Here is the <i>cardo</i>! 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 <i>iota</i> 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 (<i>regula maxima</i>), 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 <i>sensible</i> 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 <img src="images/CG143.gif" width="84" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: +ponaerón"> in this very impossibility.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 249.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 4" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Was Christ innocent?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td><i>He was without sin.</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>And he was put to death by the appointment and + predetermination of God?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td>The Jews put him to death.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Do not evade the question. Was he not <i>the Lamb slain from the + foundation of the world?</i> Was he not <i>so delivered by the + determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that the Jews, having + taken him, by wicked hands crucified and slew him?</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Cunningham</i></td> + <td>And what then?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>Nothing; but that you are to answer, as well as I, for saying + that God predetermined the death of this only innocent person.</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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 <i>duri per durius</i>: 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 <img src="images/CG144.gif" width="130" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: thélaema Theou"> the absolute +ground of all being, from the <img src="images/CG145.gif" width="68" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: Boulàe tou Theou"><img src="images/CG146.gif" width="91" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image"> as the cause +and disposing providence of all existence.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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? + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8ai"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 268.</b> +<br> +<br> +<table summary="DR cont. 5" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Dechaine</i></td> + <td>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.</td> +</tr> +<tr align="left" valign="top"> + <td><i>Shepherd</i></td> + <td>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?</td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="8aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 281.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f81"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The complete Works of the late Rev. Philip Skelton, Rector +of Fintona. 6. vols. 8vo. London, 1824. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#section8">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f82"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See South's Works, vol. iii. p. 500. Clarendon edit. 1823 +—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr82">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f83"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#fr83">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f84"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> The Editor is not aware of the existence of the Essay here +mentioned. But see for the distinction of the <i>Ecclesia</i> and <i>Enclesia</i>, +the Church and State, 3rd edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr84">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f85"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 5:</span></a> On Predestination, as far as p. 445.<br> +<a href="#fr85">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section9"></a>Notes on Andrew Fuller's <i>Clavinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared</i><a href="#f91"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1807.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9a"></a><b>Letter III. p. 38.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<img src="images/CG149.gif" width="100" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Lógos monogenáes"><img src="images/CG150.gif" width="78" height="26" border="1" alt="see previous image">— not as +an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification—but as a +distinct <i>Hypostasis</i> <img src="images/CG147.gif" width="96" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: symphysikáe">:-and hence it might be shown +that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should +call himself the <img src="images/CG148.gif" width="139" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: Theòs phanerós."> This might have been rendered +more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ's answer to the +disciples of John;—<i>and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended +in me</i> (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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>argumentum ad +homines</i>:—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 <i>implicite</i>. 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, <i>Ye are as Gods</i>; and I have a right to do so: for though +a mere man, I am the great Prophet and Messenger which Moses promised +you."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9b"></a><b>Letter V. p. 72.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>the whole world lieth in + wickedness—that every thought and imagination of their heart is only + evil continually</i>—and that <i>there is none of them that doeth good, no + not one</i>.</blockquote> + +To this the Unicists would answer, that by <i>the whole world</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 77.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +This is not, <img src="images/CG151.gif" width="140" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9d"></a><b>Letter VI. p. 90.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> (The systems compared as to their tendency to promote morality in + general.)</blockquote> + +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 <i>ego ipse</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>explicite et implicite</i>, that the <img src="images/CG152.gif" width="90" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: noúmenon"> the +<i>intelligibile</i>, the <i>ipseitas super sensibilis</i>, of guilt is in time, +and of time, and, consequently, a mechanism of cause and effect;—in +other words, in confounding the <img src="images/CG153.gif" width="364" height="29" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +After such admissions, no other possible defence can be made for +Calvinism or any other <i>ism</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="9e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 95.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Deus infinite modificatus</i>:—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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f91"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section9">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section10"></a>Notes on Whitaker's <i>Origin of Arianism Disclosed</i><a href="#f101"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1810.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10a"></a><b>Chap. I. 4. p. 30.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>Making himself equal with God</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG154.gif" width="251" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: íson heautòn poiôn tòn Theô"> (18) refers,—not to the +<img src="images/CG155.gif" width="255" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: paterá ídion élege tòn Theòn"> (18) or the <img src="images/CG156.gif" width="124" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: ho patáer +mou"> (17), but—to the <img src="images/CG157.gif" width="250" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai"> (17). The 19th +verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever +of the <img src="images/CG156.gif" width="124" height="31" border="1" alt="Greek: ho patáer +mou"> (17), but consists wholly of a +justification of the <img src="images/CG158.gif" width="152" height="30" border="1" alt="Greek: kagô ergázomai">.<br> +<br> +1803.<br> +<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG156.gif" width="124" height="31" border="1" alt="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, <img src="images/CG157.gif" width="250" height="29" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10b"></a><b>Chap. II. 1. p. 34.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><img src="images/CG159.gif" width="494" height="28" border="1" alt="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."><img src="images/CG160.gif" width="514" height="116" border="1" alt="see previous image"><br> +<br> + 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 35.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>minutiæ</i> 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 <i>just man</i> is +called <i>the son of God</i>, Jehovah, <img src="images/CG161.gif" width="113" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: pais Kyrión">;—but Christ's +specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was <i>Ben +Elohim</i>, <img src="images/CG162.gif" width="129" height="28" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>just man</i>;—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 <i>the just man</i>; and that it was intended as a +generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the +plural number in the third chapter.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Taken, therefore, as a work <i>ante</i>, or at least <i>extra, Christum</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG163.gif" width="279" height="33" border="1" alt="Greek: ho ôn, kaì ho aen, kaì ho +erchómenos">= 3, and the <i>seven spirits</i>= 10 <i>Sephiroth</i>, constituting +together the <i>Adam Kadmon</i>, the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate +one in the Messiah.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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. <i>N. +B.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 36.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +The belief of the Alexandrian Jews who had acquired Greek philosophy, no +doubt;—but of the Palestine Jews?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 2. p. 48.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +Stranger still. Whitaker could scarcely have read the Greek. Amelius +says, that these truths, if stripped of their allegorical dress, +<img src="images/CG164.gif" width="503" height="30" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 9. p. 107.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being + into power, and dividing the Logos into two.</blockquote> + +Who that had even rested but in the porch of the Alexandrian philosophy, +would not rather say, <i>of substantiating powers and attributes into +being?</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10g"></a><b>Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +How then could Philo have remained a Jew?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 2. p. 195.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10j"></a><b>Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Justin accordingly sets himself to shew, that in the beginning, before + all creatures, God generated a certain rational power out of himself.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 267.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of + Christ,) asserting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance + to the Jews, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="10l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 2. p. 270.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>Grace to you and peace from God our + Father, and</i>—from whom besides?—<i>the Lord Jesus Christ</i>; in which + our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as <i>the Grace of our Lord Jesus + Christ be with you all</i>; and is even <i>invoked</i> the first at times as, + <i>the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the + communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all</i>; shews us plainly, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f101"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The Origin of Arianism Disclosed. By John Whitaker, B.D. +London, 1791.<br> +<a href="#section10">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section11"></a>Notes on Oxlee on <i>The Trinity and Incarnation</i><a href="#f111"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1827.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11a"></a><b>Introduction, p. 4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11b"></a><b>Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. iii. p. 26.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 26-7.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the + Godhead in the following declaration: <i>But Egypt is man, and not God: + and their horses flesh, and not spirit</i>. (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: <i>But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man, + that is, flesh, and not God, who is spirit</i>.</blockquote> + +Assuredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is +even doubtful whether <img src="images/CH1.gif" width="53" height="30" border="1" alt="Hebrew: unable to transliterate. html Ed."> +(<i>ruach</i>) in this place means <i>spirit</i> in contradistinction to <i>matter</i> +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 <i>flesh</i> and +<i>spirit</i> in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he +wrote in Greek, favours our common version,— <i>flesh and not spirit</i>: +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: <i>Egypt +is man, and not God; and her horses flesh, and not wind</i>. If Mr. Oxlee +renders the fourth verse of Psalm civ.—<i>He maketh spirits his +messengers</i>, (for our version—<i>He maketh his angels spirits</i>—is +without a violent inversion senseless), this is a case in point for the +use of the word, <i>spirits</i>, 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;—<i>He maketh the winds his angels +or messengers, and the lightnings his ministrant servants</i>.<br> +<br> +As to Mr. Oxlee's <i>abstract intelligences,</i> I cannot but think +<i>abstract</i> for <i>pure</i>, 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 <i>spirit</i>, and believed it +to be an emission from the Almighty Father of Spirits: the latter they +called <i>body</i>; 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—<i>anima, +animus</i>, that is, <img src="images/CG165.gif" width="79" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: ánemos"> spiritus, <img src="images/CG166.gif" width="74" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: pneuma"> In the +childhood, they are fire, <i>mens ignea, ignicula</i>, and God himself +<img src="images/CG167.gif" width="237" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <i>imagine</i> 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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11e"></a><b>Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 +<i>whimmy</i>, 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 +<i>Chron</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 39-40.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>dicta</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 40, 41.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. III. p. 58.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +Inspired Scripture amply supplied by the Talmudic and Rabbinical +traditions!—This from a Clergyman of the Church of England!<br> +<br> +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 <i>ad quas res</i>, 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 <i>mens agitans molem</i>. But this the Cabalists evaded by their +double meaning of the term, 'nothing', namely as nought = 0, and as no +<i>thing</i>; 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. <a name="fr112">It</a> is not, therefore, half a dozen passages respecting the +first three <i>proprietates</i><a href="#f112"><sup>2</sup></a> 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 <i>proprietates</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 61.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 65.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>a fortiori</i> the +rationality of three: the Unitarian from the Three pretends to deduce +the equal rationality of as many thousands.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="11k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 66.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>wicked</i> personalities of the +Godhead?—How does this rhyme?— Even as a metaphor, emanation is an +ill-chosen term; for it applies only to fluids. <i>Ramenta</i>, unravellings, +threads, would be more germane.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f111"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> The Christian Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation +considered and maintained on the principles of Judaism. By the Rev. John +Oxlee. London, 1815.<br> +<a href="#section11">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f112"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> That is, Intelligence or the Crown, Knowledge, Wisdom.<i> Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr112">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section12"></a>Notes on <i>A Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching</i><a href="#f121"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1810.<br> +<br> +<blockquote>For only that man understands in deed<br> + Who well remembers what he well can do;<br> +The faith lives only where the faith doth breed<br> + Obedience to the works it binds us to.<br> +And as the Life of Wisdom hath exprest—<br> +'If this ye know, then do it and be blest'.<br> + <br> +LORD BROOK.</blockquote> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12a"></a><b><i>In Initio</i></b> +<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG168.gif" width="87" height="27" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12b"></a><b>Part I. p. 49.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>know</i> 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 <i>absurd</i> 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 <i>Gospel</i> to + propose to the sinner <i>to do his best</i>, by way of healing the disease + of the soul—and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his + recovery. The <i>only</i> previous qualification is to <i>know</i> our misery, + and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 51.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>do their best</i> towards maintaining themselves by honest labour, + instead of perpetually planning new systems of fraud, and new schemes + of depredation.</blockquote> + +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 <i>sarsaparilla</i>, and <i>lignum vitæ</i>, or +<i>senna</i> in contempt of all mercurial preparations.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 56.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Not for the revenues of an Archbishop would he exhort them to a duty + <i>unknown in Scripture</i>, of adding their five talents to the five they + have received, &c.</blockquote> + +All this is mere calumny and wilful misstatement of the tenets of +Wesley, who never doubted that we are bound to improve our <i>talents</i>, +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, <i>Well done thou good and faithful servant</i>, &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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 60.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> It must afford him (Rowland Hill) great consolation, amidst the + increasing immorality * * * that when their village Curate exhorts + them, if they have <i>faith</i> in the doctrine of a world to come, to add + to it those <i>good works</i> in which the sum and substance of religion + consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as <i>chopping a + new-fashioned</i> logic.</blockquote> + +That this is either false or nugatory, see proved in <i>The Friend</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 68.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Tom Payne himself never laboured harder to root all virtue out of + society.—Mandeville nor Voltaire never even laboured so much.</blockquote> + +Indeed!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> They were content with declaring their disbelief of a future state.</blockquote> + +In what part of their works? Can any wise man read Mandeville's <i>Fable of +the Bees</i>, and not see that it is a keen satire on the inconsistency of +Christians, and so intended.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 71.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>no offences too many or + too aggravated</i>, to disqualify the perpetrators of them + for—salvation, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 72.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "In every age," says the moral divine (Blair), "the practice has + prevailed of substituting certain appearances of piety in the place of + the great <i>duties</i> of humanity and mercy," &c.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 75-79.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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. <i>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</i>. Rev. xx. 12, 13. Let us recall to mind the +urgent caution conveyed in the writings of Paul * * <i>Be not deceived; +God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also +reap</i>. And let us further add * * the confirmation * * of the Saviour +himself:—<i>When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, * * * but the +righteous into life eternal</i>. Matt. xxv. 31, <i>ad finem</i>. 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, <i>except one</i>, puts you upon <i>doing something</i>, +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, <i>not</i> +according to our works, but according to the Father's own purpose and +grace, which was <i>not</i> sold to us <i>on certain conditions to be fulfilled +by ourselves</i>, but was given us in Christ before the world began." +Toplady's Works: Sermon on James ii. 18.</blockquote> + +<i>Si sic omnia!</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 84.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The sacred volume of Holy Writ declares that <i>true</i> (pure?) <i>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</i>. James i. 27</blockquote> + +This is now at least, whatever might have been the meaning of the word +<i>religion</i> 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, <img src="images/CG169.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: thraeskeía"> It should be +rendered, <i>True worship</i>, &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,—<i>to visit the fatherless</i>, &c. True religion does not +consist <i>quoad essentiam</i> 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 <img src="images/CG169.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="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, (<i>cultus religionis</i>, +<img src="images/CG169.gif" width="90" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: thraeskeía">) <a name="fr122">Christ</a> 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 +<i>true cult</i><a href="#f122"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 86.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12n"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 94.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<i>Vicisti, O Galilæe!</i><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 95.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> They never fail to refer to the proud Pharisee, whom they term + self-<i>righteous</i>; 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 <i>moral + duties</i>:—whereas the plain truth is that the Pharisee was <i>not + righteous</i>, but merely arrogated to himself that character; he had + neglected all the <i>moral duties</i> of life.</blockquote> + +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. <i>or order</i>." Once +assume merits, and I defy you to keep out supererogation and the old +<i>Monte di Pietà</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12p"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 97.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> —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 + <i>merited</i> the one, or <i>deserved</i> the other.</blockquote> + +Can the Barrister have read the New Testament? Or does he know it only +by quotations?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> —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.</blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG170.gif" width="48" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: Átae"> +<i>venatrix</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12r"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 102.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>He that doeth righteousness is righteous</i>. Since then it is plain + that each must <i>himself</i> be righteous, if he be so at all, what do + they mean who thus inveigh against <i>self</i>-righteousness, since Christ + himself declares there is no other?</blockquote> + +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 <i>subauditur</i> of <i>Deus</i> for +their common nominative case;—which said <i>Deus</i>, however, is but +another <i>automaton</i>, 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 <i>through the +only merits of Jesus Christ</i>? 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 <i>lues confirmata</i> of statute heresy? +What says the reverend critic to this? <a name="fr123">Will</a> 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 <i>iota</i> unswallowed, if we are to believe +his own recent and voluntary manifesto<a href="#f123"><sup>3</sup></a>? What says he to this +Barrister, and his Hints to the Legislature?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12s"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 105.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> If the new faith be the only true one, let us embrace it; but let not + those who vend these <i>new articles</i> expect that we should choose them + with our eyes shut.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 114.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. * * *. <i>This + catalogue,</i> says he, <i>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.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +Very good.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 115-16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the + sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his <i>saving + change</i> to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or + other of <i>their</i> Evangelical fraternity. They always hold <i>themselves</i> + 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 <i>Gospel</i> has no such effect. —It is + always the <i>Gospel Preacher</i> who works the miracle, &c.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 118.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>infamous profession</i> as that through the medium of + which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to + mend the heart, &c.</blockquote> + +Whoo! See Milton's Preface to the <i>Samson Agonistes</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12w"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 133.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 * + *—<i>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.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Io Pæan!</i> for the enemy with a vengeance.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12x"></a><b>Part II. p. 14.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It behoved him (Dr. Hawker in his Letter to the Barrister) to show in + what manner a covenant can exist without terms or conditions.</blockquote> + +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:—<i>Ergo</i>, +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12y"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 26.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Jesus answered him thus—<i>Verily, I say unto you, unless a man be born + of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of + God</i>.—The true sense of which is obviously this:—Except a man be + initiated into my religion by Baptism, (which <i>at that time</i> was + always <i>preceded by a confession of faith</i>) and unless he manifest his + sincere reception of it, by leading that upright and <i>spiritual</i> life + which it enjoins, <i>he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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: <i>The wind bloweth where +it listeth</i>, &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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12z"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 29.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The true meaning of being <i>born again</i>, 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>ab extra</i> (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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aa"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 30.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.</blockquote> + +"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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ab"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for + 1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, by <i>setting + her at liberty, while employed</i> in the necessary business of <i>washing</i> + for her family, &c.</blockquote> + +<i>N. B.</i> Not the famous rabbit-woman.—She was Robarts.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ac"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 31.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> A washerwoman has <i>all her sins blotted out</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> + <i>Rode, caper, vitem: tamen hinc cum stabis ad aras, In tua quod fundi + cornua possit, erit.</i> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ad"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 32.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ae"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 33.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>—their faiths in the efficacy of their own rites, and creeds, and + ceremonies, and their whole train of <i>substitutions</i> for <i>moral duty</i>, + was so entire, and in their opinion was such a <i>saving faith</i>, that + they could not at all interpret any language that seemed to dispute + their value, or deny their importance.</blockquote> + +Poor strange Jews! They had, doubtless, what Darwin would call a +specific <i>paralysis</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12af"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 34.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Drama didacticum</i>, 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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ag"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 37.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> —the logic of the new Evangelists will convince him that it is a + contradiction in terms even to <i>suppose</i> himself <i>capable of doing any + thing</i> to help <i>or bringing any thing to recommend himself to the + Divine favour</i>.</blockquote> + +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 <i>tocsin</i> 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 <i>Do as ye would be done unto</i>, +is an interpolated precept?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ah"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 39.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>"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 <i>never supposed as a condition which + the sinner performs to entitle him to mercy</i>, but merely as evidences + that he is brought and has obtained mercy. <i>They cannot be the + conditions</i> of obtaining salvation."</blockquote> + +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, <i>me judice</i>, a worse psychologist?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ai"></a><b>Part II. p. 40.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>repentance</i> of sinners to be the <i>condition</i> on which + <i>alone</i> salvation can be obtained. But the doctors of the new divinity + <i>deny</i> this: they tell us distinctly <i>it cannot</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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—<i>das Herzknirschen</i>—the very heart +crashed between the teeth of a lock-jaw'd agony!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> What is <i>faith</i>? Is it not a conviction produced in the mind by adequate testimony?</blockquote> + +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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ak"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 41.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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 <i>revealed</i> religion, + and have we not the most miraculous attestation of its truth?</blockquote> + +Just look at the answer of Christ himself to Nicodemus, <i>John</i> 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. <i>Verily, verily, I say unto thee; except a man be born +again, he cannot see the kingdom of God</i>,—that is, he cannot have faith +in me.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12al"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 42.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>diatribe</i> 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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12am"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 43.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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!</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12an"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 46.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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! <i>Ergo</i>, the Barrister is infallible.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ao"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 47.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>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</i>. This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our + Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ap"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 50.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +Does not Christ himself say the same in the plainest and most +unmistakable words? <i>I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to +repentance. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are +sick,</i> 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. +<i>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</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 52.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It was reserved for these days of <i>new discovery</i> to announce to + mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the + promised blessings of the Gospel.</blockquote> + +Merely read <i>that unless they are sick they are precluded from the +offered remedies of the Gospel</i>; 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? <i>If we say we are without sin, +we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ar"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 53.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12as"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 54.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>memorabilia</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12at"></a><b>Part III. p. 5.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>antennæ</i> of its next +state of being.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12av"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 12.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +The same <i>crambe bis decies cocta</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12aw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 16.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>vis scientifica</i>; and +the discourse, or prudential power, the proper objects of which are the +<i>phænomena</i> of sensuous experience. The greatest loss which modern +philosophy has through wilful scorn sustained, is the grand distinction +of the ancient philosophers between the <img src="images/CG171.gif" width="79" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: noúmena"> and <img src="images/CG172.gif" width="102" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: +phainómena"> This gives the true sense of Pliny—<i>venerare Deos</i> (that +is, their statues, and the like,) <i>et numina Deorum</i>, that is, those +spiritual influences which are represented by the images and persons of +Apollo, Minerva, and the rest.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ax"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 17.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<i>Diatessaron</i>, 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 <i>desideratum</i>; and if +anything could open the eyes of Socinians, this would do it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ay"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 24.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12az"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 27.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> So with the Tinker; I would give him the care of kettles, but I would + not give him <i>the cure of souls</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ba"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 30, 31.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "A <i>truly</i> awakened conscience," (these anti-moral editors of the + Pilgrim's Progress assure us,) "can never find relief from the law: + (that is, the <i>moral law</i>.) The more he looks for peace <i>this way, his + guilt</i>, like a heavy burden, becomes more intolerable; when he becomes + <i>dead</i> to the <i>law</i>,—as to <i>any dependence upon it for + salvation</i>,—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."<br> +<br> + Here we are taught that the <i>conscience</i> can never find relief from + obedience to the law of the Gospel.</blockquote> + +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. <a name="fr124">Read</a> but that +most affecting and instructive anecdote selected from the Hindostan +Missionary Account by the Quarterly Review<a href="#f124"><sup>4</sup></a>. 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 <i>sui generis!</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 35, 36.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "And behold a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, + Master, what shall I do <i>to inherit eternal life</i>?"<br> +<br> + "He said unto him, <i>What is written in the law? How readest thou?</i>"<br> +<br> + "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy + heart, with all thy soul, and with <i>all thy strength</i>, and with all + thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."<br> +<br> + "And he said unto him, Thou <i>hast answered right. This do, and thou + shall live.</i>"<br> +<br> + Luke x. 25-28.</blockquote> + +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—<i>This +do, and thou shalt live.</i> But what if he has not done it, but the very +contrary? <a name="fr125">And</a> 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<a href="#f125"><sup>5</sup></a>? 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 '<i>oving 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?</i> 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!<br> +<br> +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 <i>die Menschheit</i>—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 <img src="images/CG173.gif" width="63" height="31" border="1" alt="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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bc"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 45, 46.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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? <a name="fr126">See</a> what Milton has written on this subject in +the passage quoted in the Friend in the essays on the communication of +truth<a href="#f126"><sup>6</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bd"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 47</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>young</i> and + <i>breeding</i> woman <i>longed</i> for something," &c.</blockquote> + +Out upon the fellow! I could find it in my heart to suspect him of any +vice that the worst of men could commit!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12be"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 55, 56.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the + obedience of one shall many be made righteous.</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bf"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 63, 64.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>justified</i> before God; that the <i>righteousness</i> of + <i>Christ</i> will be imputed to <i>them</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>in peculio</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bg"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 75.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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.)</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bh"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 78.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>"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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bi"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 82.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The spirit with which all their merciless treatment is to be borne is + next pointed out. * * "<i>Patient bearing of injuries</i> is true Christian + fortitude, and will always be more effectual to <i>disarm our enemies</i>, + and to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, than all + <i>arguments</i> whatever."</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bj"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 86.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bk"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 88.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.)</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bl"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 89.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bm"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 97.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Note. It was procured, Mr. Collyer informs us, by the merit of his + "Lectures on Scripture facts." It should have been "Lectures on + <i>Scriptural</i> Facts." What should we think of the grammarian, who, + instead of <i>Historical</i>, should present us with "Lectures on <i>History</i> + Facts?"</blockquote> + +But Law Tracts? And is not <i>Scripture</i> as often used semi-adjectively?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bn"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 98.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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 <i>was as foolish as it was tyrannical</i>?" + * * * 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 <i>as foolish as it was tyrannical</i>.</blockquote> + + 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) <i>aut voluntate originis aut origine + voluntatis.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bo"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 102, 3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> When at this solemn tribunal the sinner shall be called upon to answer + for the transgression of those <i>moral</i> 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 <i>had neither + terms nor conditions,</i> and that his salvation was secured by a + covenant which procured him pardon and peace, <i>from all eternity</i>: a + covenant, the effects of which no folly or <i>after-act whatever</i> 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?</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bp"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 106.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +An outrageous blunder.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bq"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 107.</b> +<br> + +<blockquote> Lord Bacon was the first who dedicated his profound and penetrating + genius to the cultivation of sound philosophy, &c.</blockquote> + +This very same Lord Bacon has given us his <i>Confessio Fidei</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12br"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 108.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>life</i>.<br> +<br> + 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 <i>doctrinal mysteries</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bs"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 110.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +What! Compare these laws, first, with Tacitus's account of the +constitutional laws of our German ancestors, Pagans; and then with the +Pandects and <i>Novellæ</i> 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."<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bt"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 113.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>license to teach</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bu"></a><b>Part IV. p. 1.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bv"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 7.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Socinus can have no claim upon my veneration: I have never concerned + myself with what he believed nor with what he taught &c.<br> +<br> + The Scripture is my authority, and on no other authority will I ever, + knowingly, lay the foundation of my faith.</blockquote> + +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 <i>tyro</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bw"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 10.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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? <a name="fr127">It</a> will be time +enough to boast, when to our own tolerance we have added their zeal, +learning, and indefatigable industry<a href="#f127"><sup>7</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bx"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 13, 14.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +In the whole <i>Bibliotlieca theologica</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12by"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 15.</b> +<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12bz"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 29.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> —If of <i>different denominations</i>, 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, + "<i>a union</i> of religious sentiment in the <i>great doctrines</i>:" which + very want of union it is that creates these <i>different denominations</i>?</blockquote> + +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. <i>N. B.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12ca"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 56.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>faith</i> in his disciples, without first furnishing + sufficient <i>evidence</i> to justify it. He reasoned thus: If I have done + what no <i>human power</i> could do, you must admit that my power is <i>from + above</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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 <i>argumentum ad hominem,</i> 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 <i>argumentum ad hominem</i> (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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="12cb"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> 60, 61.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Religion is a system of <i>revealed</i> truth; and to affirm of any + revealed truth, that we <i>cannot understand</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<img src="images/CG174.gif" width="75" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: hóti esti"> and the <img src="images/CG175.gif" width="49" height="29" border="1" alt="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 <i>ab extra</i>, through the senses of eye, ear, or touch. No! all +revelation is and must be <i>ab intra</i>; the external <i>phænomena</i> can only +awake, recall evidence, but never reveal. This is capable of strict +demonstration.<br> +<br> +Afterwards the Barrister quotes from Thomas Watson respecting things +above comprehension in the study of nature: "in these cases, the <i>fact</i> +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?<br> +<br> +Are there not facts in religion, the causes and constitution of which +are mysteries?<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f121"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the nature and +effect of Evangelical Preaching. By a Barrister. Fourth Edition, 1808.<br> +<a href="#section12">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f122"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See <i>Aids to Reflection</i>, p. 14, 4th edition.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr122">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f123"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> <i>Quart. Review</i>, vol. ii. p. 187.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr123">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f124"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 4:</span></a> See vol. i., p. 217.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr124">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f125"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 5:</span></a> + + <blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +<i>Paley's Moral and Polit. Philosophy</i>, B. II. c. 2. + + <blockquote> "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."</blockquote> + +<i>Ib.</i> c. 3.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr125">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f126"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 6:</span></a> <i>Friend</i>, Vol. I. Essays X. and XI. 3rd edition—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr126">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f127"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 7:</span></a> See <i>Table Talk</i>, pp. 282 and 304. 2d edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr127">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section13"></a>Notes on Davison's <i>Discourses on Prophecy</i><a href="#f131"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> + +1825.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13a"></a><b>Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. </blockquote> + +Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of +thinking from p. 134 (<i>Since Prophecy</i>, &c.) to p. 139. (<i>that mercy</i>) +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13b"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 160.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Some indeed have sought the <i>star</i> and the <i>sceptre</i> 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.</blockquote> + +Surely this is a very weak reason. A far better is, I think, suggested +by the words, <i>I shall see him—I shall behold him</i>;—which in no +intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 162.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Deut</i>. 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, +<i>initiated</i> 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 <i>organismus</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 164.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to +evolve the full contents of the word <i>like</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 168.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 'formulae' of +words which have no sense but for the conscience? Davison's stress on +the word <i>covet</i>, 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 <i>king</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13f"></a><b>Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13g"></a><b>Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 + <i>exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all + countries</i>, should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and + dilapidation, and that too under the <i>opprobrium</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13h"></a><b>Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13i"></a><b>Disc. VI. Pt. II. p. 289.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13j"></a><b>Disc. VI. Pt. IV. p. 325.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. (<i>Ezra</i> i. 1, 2.)</blockquote> + +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 <i>Ezra</i> 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 <img src="images/CG176.gif" width="90" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: anékdota"><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 336.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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, <i>prima facie</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 370.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and + dreadful day of the Lord.</i></blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 373.</b> +<br><br> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13n"></a><b>Disc. VII. p. 375.</b> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13o"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 392.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 +<img src="images/CG177.gif" width="115" height="28" border="1" alt="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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13p"></a><b>Disc. VIII. p. 416.</b> +<br> +<br> +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, <i>a house of the God of Jacob</i>. The +answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, <i>in the top of the +mountains</i>; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the +whole prediction.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13q"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 431.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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, <i>Go teach all + nations</i>, &c.</blockquote> + +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,—(<i>Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to +all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing</i>,)—this is +not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is +this narrower sense without its practical advantages.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13r"></a><b>Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.</b> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>infausta +tempora scribendi</i>, 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 <i>maculæ</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13s"></a><b>Disc. XII. p. 519.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13t"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 521.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13u"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 522-3.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +<i>Quære</i>. See Polybius.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="13v"></a><b><i>Ib.</i></b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f131"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section13">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section14"></a>Notes on Irving's <i>Ben-Ezra</i><a href="#f141"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1827.<br> +<br> +<table summary="Ben Ezra" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> +<tr align="center" valign="top"> + <td></td> + <td><i>Christ the <b>Word</b></i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="top"> + <td><i>The Scriptures</i></td> + <td><i>The Spirit</i></td> + <td><i>The Church</i></td> +</tr> +<tr align="center" valign="top"> + <td></td> + <td><i>The Preacher</i></td> + <td></td> +</tr> +</table><br> +<br> +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 <i>prothesis</i> or identity;—the +Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the <i>thesis</i> and +<i>antithesis</i>; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise +the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the +<i>synthesis</i>. <a name="fr142">And</a> here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me +asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a <i>tetractys</i>, or +a triad equal to a <i>tetractys</i>: 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a +pentad—God's hand in the world<a href="#f142"><sup>2</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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. + + +<ol start=1 type="I"><li> +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, <i>salva +Catholica fide</i>. 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="I"><li> +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 <i>be done on earth as it is in heaven</i>, will <i>come</i>;—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. </li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="I"><li> +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. </li></ol> + +Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.<br> +<br> +<i>P. S.</i> I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all +the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. (<i>Deuteron</i>. +xxv. 1-8.)<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14a"></a><b>Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +I <a name="fr143">cannot</a> forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to +the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding, <i>genere et +gradu</i>, given in the <i>Aids to Reflection</i><a href="#f143"><sup>3</sup></a>.<br> +<br> +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 <i>genera</i>; 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, +<i>materiam objectivam</i>,) 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, <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs">, +as likewise <img src="images/CG178.gif" width="144" height="30" border="1" alt="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, <i>sophia</i>, or wisdom.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14b"></a><b>Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 73, 4.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. </blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 85.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: <i>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.</i></blockquote> + +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> c. vi. p. 108.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, <i>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</i>, these shall live, + <i>or be raised</i> at the coming of the Lord, <i>which is the first + resurrection.</i></blockquote> + +Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" asserted? The Seer +not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word <img src="images/CG179.gif" width="67" height="29" border="1" alt="Greek: +psychás"> souls, expressly asserts the contrary. In no sense of the word +can souls, which descended in Christ's train (<i>chorus sacer animarum et +Christi comitatus</i>) from Heaven, be said <i>resurgere</i>. Resurrection is +always and exclusively resurrection in the body;—not indeed a rising of +the <i>corpus</i> <img src="images/CG180.gif" width="126" height="24" border="1" alt="Greek: phantastikón"> that is, the few ounces of carbon, +nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the <i>copula</i> of which +that gave the form no longer exists,—and of which Paul exclaims;—<i>Thou +fool! not this</i>, &c.—but the <i>corpus</i> <img src="images/CG181.gif" width="236" height="25" border="1" alt="Greek: hypostatikòn, àe +noúmenon"><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 110.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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. <i>Neither + doth corruption inherit incorruption</i>. 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.</blockquote> + +This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.<br> +<br> +Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated +chapter (1 <i>Cor</i>. 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>I</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, <i>medium</i> 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 <i>media</i> of communion between the man and his circumstances.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Dies Messiæ</i>,—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? +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. vii. p. 118.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively, + means in good language this only, that the word <i>quick</i>, 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 <i>dead</i>: for by that word alone is the + whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.</blockquote> + +The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological +reading of their <i>alumni</i> 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' +(<i>vulgo</i> Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic +<i>pic-nic</i>, to which each of the twelve contributed his several +<i>symbolum</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14h"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> ch. ix. p. 127.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that + that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)</blockquote> + +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 +<i>amanuensis</i>, 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 <i>Dies Messiæ</i>, the <i>Dies ultima</i>, 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 <i>in +ordine ad</i> some other doctrine or precept, <i>illustrandi causa</i>, or <i>ad +hominem</i>, or <i>more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> Part II. p. 145.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Second characteristic. <i>The kingdom shall be divided.</i>—Third + characteristic. <i>The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly + brittle.</i>—Fourth characteristic. <i>They shall mingle themselves with + the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another.</i></blockquote> + +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, <i>grammatici</i>, secretaries, +private tutors, parasites, physicians, and the like!<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14j"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 153.</b> +<br> +<blockquote><i>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></blockquote> + +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:—<i>coming in a cloud</i>! 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14k"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 253.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Never, Oh! our Lady! never, Oh! our Mother! shalt thou fall again into + the crime of idolatry.</blockquote> + +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 <i>Magna Mater</i> a goddess in her own +right;—and that thus he overlooked the meaning of the word.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14l"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 254.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> The entire text of the Apostle is as follows:—<i>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</i>, &c. (2 Thess. + ii. 1-10.)</blockquote> + +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, <i>Luke</i> xvii.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="14m"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 297.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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!<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f141"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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.<br> +<a href="#section14">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f142"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 2:</span></a> See <i>supra</i>, vol. iii. p. 93.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr142">return</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="f143"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 3:</span></a> P. 157, 4th edit.—<i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#fr143">return</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section15"></a>Notes on Noble's <i>Appeal</i><a href="#f151"><span style="font-size: 70%;"><sup>1</sup></span></a></h2> +<br> +1827.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15a"></a><b>Sect. IV. p. 210.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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."</blockquote> + +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 <i>genus</i> 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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15b"></a><b>Sect. V. p. 286.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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 <i>Die Theorie der Geister-Kunde</i>, + printed in 1808.</blockquote> + +Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on +Sung's (<i>alias</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15c"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 315.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> "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>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?</i> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>visa et audita</i>,—his own experience, as a traveller and +visitor of the spiritual world,—not the words of another as a mere +<i>amanuensis</i>. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15d"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 321.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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: <i>To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according + to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.</i> (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.</blockquote> + +Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense +intended by Gulielmus, namely, as <i>mania</i>,—I should as little think of +charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured +under an <i>acyanoblepsia</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15e"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 323.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of + the Baron's reverie: <i>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?</i></blockquote> + +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. <i>N.B.</i> Not every revelation requires a sensible +miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of +<i>credenda</i>. 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 +<i>Exodus</i> iv. 10.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15f"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> pp. 346, 7.</b> +<br> +<blockquote>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 <i>a wicked and +adulterous generation</i> (that) <i>seeketh after a sign</i>; on which occasion, +according to Mark, <i>he sighed deeply in his spirit</i>. How characteristic +is that touch of the Apostle, <i>The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks +seek after wisdom!</i> (where by wisdom he means the elegance and +refinement of Grecian literature.) </blockquote> + +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 <img src="images/CG182.gif" width="76" height="26" border="1" alt="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 <img src="images/CG183.gif" width="56" height="27" border="1" alt="Greek: sophía"> of the Greeks their disputatious <img src="images/CG184.gif" width="86" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: +sophistikàe"> is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art: +and <i>sophistæ</i> may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say, +iron-mongers.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15g"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 350.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15h"></a><b>Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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 <i>visa et audita</i>. Nor is the Baron himself (as it appears +to me) quite consistent on this point.<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="15i"></a><b><i>Ib.</i> p. 434.</b> +<br> +<blockquote> 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.</blockquote> + +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?"<br> +<br> +I have often thought of writing a work to be entitled <i>Vindiciæ +Heterodoxæ, sive celebrium virorum <img src="images/CG185.gif" width="182" height="28" border="1" alt="Greek: paradogmatizóntôn"> defensio</i>; +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: + +<ol start=1 type="1"><li> +Swedenborg's own assertion +and constant belief in the hypothesis of a supernatural illumination; +or, </li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="1"><li> +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, </li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="1"><li> + +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.</li></ol> + +<i>P. S.</i> 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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr width="25%" align="left"><br> +<br> +<a name="f151"><span style="color: #FF0000;">Footnote 1:</span></a> 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. <i>Ed.</i><br> +<a href="#section15">return to footnote mark</a><br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<h2><a name="section16">Essay on Faith</a></h2> +<br> +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 +(<i>regula maxima</i> 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 (<i>patientes</i>)—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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, <i>scire possunt hoc vel +illud una cum seipsis</i>; that is, <i>conscire vel scire aliquid mecum</i>, or +to know a thing in relation to myself, and in the act of knowing myself +as acted upon by that something.<br> +<br> +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</i>, I +take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is, +of any application of the will. <a name="fr162">If</a> then, I <i>minus</i> the will be the +<i>thesis</i><a href="#f162"><sup>2</sup></a>; Thou <i>plus</i> will must be the <i>antithesis</i>, 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,—<i>a +fortiori</i>, 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 <i>plus</i> will, the other as <i>minus</i> +will, so is it here: and it is obvious that the reason or +<i>super</i>-individual of each man, whereby he is man, is the factor we are +to take as <i>minus</i> will; and that the individual will or personalizing +principle of free agency (arbitrement is Milton's word) is the factor +marked <i>plus</i> 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 <i>synthesis</i> 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 <i>prothesis</i>, 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 <i>syntheses</i>; for +example, appetite <i>plus</i> personal will=sensuality; lust of power, <i>plus</i> +personal will,=ambition, and so on, equally as in the <i>synthesis</i>, on +which the conscience is grounded. Not this therefore, but the other +<i>synthesis</i>, 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. + +<ol start=1 type="I"><li> + 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=2 type="I"><li> + + 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.</li></ol> + +<ol start=3 type="I"><li> + + 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 <i>eminenter</i>. 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.</li></ol> + +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, <i>discursus, +discursio,</i> 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."<br> +<br> +We will now take up our reasoning again from the words "motion in +itself."<br> +<br> +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 <i>synthesis</i> 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 (<img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="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. + +<ol start=4 type="I"><li> +Reason, as one with the absolute will, (<i>In the beginning was the + Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God</i>,) 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—<i>sit pro ratione + voluntas</i>;—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.</li></ol> + +<b>Corollary</b>. 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 <i>idem</i> is modified by the <i>alter</i>. +And there arise impulses and objects from this <i>synthesis</i> of the <i>alter +et idem</i>, 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 <i>antithesis</i> in the +abdominal system: but hence arises a <i>synthesis</i> 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 <i>alter</i>, than when it +is confined to the <i>idem</i>; 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 <i>per medium +commune</i> 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, <i>He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of +me</i>; 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <img src="images/CG30.gif" width="156" height="26" border="1" alt="Greek: phrónaema sarkòs"> 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.<br> +<br> +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. + +<br> +<br> +<p><a href="#toc">Contents</a> / <a href="#index">Index</a></p> +<hr><br><br> + + +<b><i>end of volume four, the final volume.</i></b> +<br> +<br> +<hr><br><br> +<br> +<br> +<i>This page prepared by Clytie Siddall, a volunteer member of <a href="https://www.pgdp.net/">Distributed Proofreaders</a>.<br> +<br> +I enjoy volunteer proofreading, and you might, too!<br> +<br> +Anybody, from anywhere, from any language background, can contribute to putting <a href="http://promo.net/pg/">thousands more free books online</a>, by checking just one page at a time.<br> +<br> +Interested? 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. + +Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +Release Date: January 23, 2004 [EBook #10801] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathon Ingram, Clytie Siddall and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team! + + + + + +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: Gio 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 paschein]) 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: heterou 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: Thraeskeia.] (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: ton 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 'Christopaedia' +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 gar dikais 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 ('formae 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: phronaema sarkos]; 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: Logos anthropinos]. + + +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: eukairos akairos], _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: To phronaema sarkos]) 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 saepe 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 curae, 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. 'Vindiciae +Behemoticae'. + + +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 Ponaerou]) and the +superstitious fancy of devils: 'animus objectivus dominationem in' +[Greek: ton Eimi] 'affectans'; [Greek: outos to mega organon Diabolou +hyparchei]. + + +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 theos en haemin ho oikeios theos],) +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 emoige +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: Mega biblion mega kakon.] + + +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 + Praedeterminatione, de Libertate creaturae', &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 L500 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: koinoi +episkopoi]--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: herkos +hodonton]. 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. + + 'Quaere'. 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: hos emoige 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 Caesar, 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: proton 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' hexochaen], 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' elegon perithumos ego gar misei en iso Lauderdalon echo + kai kerkokeronucha 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 caeca, 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: phronaema sarkos], 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: 'Relliquiae Baxterianae': 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, verae reproductionis in vitam veram'. Now this principle, or 'vis +vitae 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 proton +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 praemissi, 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 praeterea 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: to] '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: ta mae onta, all' aei +ginomena],--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 Logos 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: +rhaemata] 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 on eis ton kolpon tou patros],--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: + apaugasma], '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 verificae' 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 +traditionalae wisdom,--degraded in after times, but which in its purest +parts existed long before the Christian aera,--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: phronaema]. 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: Phronaema] signifies an act: and so far I agree with +Leighton. But [Greek: phronaema sarkos] 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: Eleaeson 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 'phaenomena' 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 praestabilitam'. + + +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: auto to chraema]) as the supporter of its +accidents. At all events, the Romanist, declaring the accidents to be +those ordinarily impressed on the senses ([Greek: ta phainomena kai +aisthaeta]) by bread and wine, does at the same time declare the flesh +and blood not to be the [Greek: phainomena kai aisthaeta] so called, but +the [Greek: noumena kai auta ta chraemata]. 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: polloi men en de mia theotaeti]. 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: heteron geneon] 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: monadikos], 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: homoousioi], 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: mia theotaes], 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: anthropos] and [Greek: +anthropotaes] 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 theotaetes],--that is, three Godheads." + + +Ib. p. 115-16. + + Gregory Nyssen tells us that [Greek: theos] is [Greek: theataes] and + [Greek: ephoros], 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: alla mia tis + ginetai agathou Boulaematos kinaesis kai diakosmaesis];--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: achronos kai adiaretos], 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: Boulaema] subsists in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, +and not merely passes through them, and then there would be three +numerical [Greek: Boulaemata], as well as three numerical Persons: +'ergo', [Greek: treis theoi ae theatai] (according to Gregory Nyssen's +shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism: or [Greek: +hen ti ginetai Boulaema], 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: mia kinaesis + Boulaematos], 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: hos ek tou + mae dechesthai taen kata physin diaphoran, mixin tina ton hypostaseon + kai anakuklaesin kataskeuzonta], 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, Sec. 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. Praeter 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 praeit 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 Judaeus, +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: proton mega 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: prototokos] 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: portotokos pasaes + ktiseos], begotten before the whole creation', and therefore no part + of the creation himself.) + +This is quite right. Our version should here be corrected. [Greek: +Proto] or [Greek: protaton] 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: harpagmon] 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 logo kai dia logou], 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: + oudeis] 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: Oudeis] is not [Greek: oudeis anthropon], 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: aggeloi] 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 epi panton +theos]. + + +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: para to patri], + 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 theo], not [Greek: +pros ton theon], 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: anarchon 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: Logos] 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 On], which St. John every where, and St. Paul no +less, makes the peculiar name of the Son, [Greek: monogenaes uhios, ho +on eis ton kolpon tou patros]--; 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 on] is the verbal noun of [Greek: hos esti], not of [Greek: +ego eimi]. 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: homoousion] 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 homouesial, 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: ousia]? Why +[Greek: ousia] should not have been rendered by 'essentia', I cannot +conceive. 'Est' seems a contraction of 'esset', and 'ens' of 'essens': +[Greek: on, ousa, ousia] = '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: sarx], the living body, could be or exist without a soul, or a +human living body without a human soul! [Greek: Sarx] is not Greek for +carrion, nor [Greek: soma] 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 hos genomenon] he construes thus: "not as + eternally generated," as if he had read [Greek: gennomenon], supplying + [Greek: aidios] by imagination. The sense and meaning of the word + [Greek: genomenon], 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: genomenos, egeneto], &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 quae omnia + molitum Deum ediximus, propriam substantiam Spiritum inscribimus; cui + et Sermo insit praenuntianti, et Ratio adsit disponenti, et Virtus + perficienti. Hunc ex Deo prolatum didicimus, et prolatione generatum, + et idcirco Filium Dei et Deum dictum ex unitate substantiae'.--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 Homouesian 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 mae ho Pataer]. 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 haec vox + carnis et animae, 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: archaspistaes] 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 alaethinon kai ontos onta Theon, ton tou Christou patera]. + --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: ton ontos onta] distinctively from +[Greek: ho on]--the 'Ens omnis entitatis, etiam suae', 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 poiaetaes ton holon estai Theos ho to Mosei eipon + auton einai Theon Abraam, kai Theon Isaak, kai Theon Iakob].--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' an, hos ho emos logos, ehis men Theos, eis hen + aition kai Ghiou kai Pneumatos anapheromenon. 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 ahi esta el Doctor Jorge Bull Profesor de Teologia, y + Presbitero de la Iglesia Anglicana, que murio Obispo de San David el + ano de 1716, cuyas obras teologico--escolasticas, en folio, nada deben + a las mas alambicadas que se han estampado en Salamanca y en Coimbra; + y como los puntos que por la mayor parte trato en ellas son sobre los + misterios capitales de nuestra Santa Fe, conviene a 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 manejo con tanto nervio y con tanta delicadeza, que + los teologos ortodojos mas escolastizados, como si dijeramos + electrizados, hacen grande estimacion de dichas obras. Y aun en los + dos Tratados que escribio acerca de la Justification, que es punto mas + resvaladizo, en los principios que abrazo, no se separo de los + teologos Catolicos; pero en algunas consecuencias que infirio, ya dio + bastantemente a 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: autokatakritos], 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: +autokatakritos],--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: legon auto chairein],--(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: Kai eis hena Kyrion Iaesoun Christon, + ton uhion tou Theou monogenae, ton ek tou patros gennaethenta, Theon + alaethinon, pro panton ton aionon, di' ohu ta panta egeneto]. + +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 Ecclesiae ex ipso Ecclesiae sensu, non ex haereticorum + 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 Irenaeus, 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, Irenaeus 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 Irenaean tradition;--that the Creed of +Cerinthus was what Irenaeus 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 +'Christopaedia', 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 zoae], 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: katalambano], 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: egeneto +sarx],--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 'archaspistae' 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 'Christopaedia', 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: apo tou hymeterou genous] 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: Phusei de taes phthoras prosgenomenaes, anagkaion aen hoti + sosai Boulomenos ae taen phthoropoion ousian aphanisas touto de ouk + aen heteros genesthai ei maeper hae kata phusin zoae proseplakae to + taen phthoran dexameno, aphanizousa men taen phthoran, athanaton de + tou loipou to 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: hae kata phusin +zoae]. 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 Irenaeus, 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 Irenaeus 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 +pantos], 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 'phaenomena', 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 'phaenomena', 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: ainittein taen theotaeta 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 +mae ho pataer]--"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 uhios], 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: +aion], 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 uhios, ei mae ho pataer]; 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 huios], +conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou] +including the Son in the [Greek: pataer monos]. 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: Bebaioteron] 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 'phaenomena' 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, 'praeter 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 Caesar 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 Caesar? + + '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: elegchos metabaseos eis +allo genos]); 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 Caesar 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: Kata 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: +ponaeron], 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: thelaema Theou], the absolute +ground of all being, from the [Greek: Boulae 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: Logos monogenaes],--not as +an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification--but as a +distinct 'Hypostasis' [Greek: symphysikae]:-and hence it might be shown +that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should +call himself the [Greek: Theos phaneros]. 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: hos emoige 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: noumenon], 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: phainomena, ta rheonta, ta mae +ontos onta],--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: ison heauton poion ton Theo] (18) refers,--not to the +[Greek: patera idion elege ton Theon], (18) or the [Greek: ho pataer +mou] (17), but--to the [Greek: ergazetai, kago ergazomai] (17). The 19th +verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever +of the [Greek: ho pataer mou] (17), but consists wholly of a +justification of the [Greek: kago ergazomai]. + +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 +pataer 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: +ergazetai, kago ergazomai], 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: (Philon)--peri men oun ta theia kai patria mathaemata, poson + te kai paelikon eisenaenektai ponon, ergo pasi daelos kai peri ta + philosopha de kai eleutheria taes exothen paideias oios tis aen, ouden + dei legein hoti kai malista taen kata Platona kai Pythagoran ezaelokos + agogaen, dienegken apantas tous kath' heauton, 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 'minutiae' 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 Kyrion];--but Christ's +specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was 'Ben +Elohim', [Greek: uhios 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 on, kai ho aen, kai ho +erchomenos]= 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: metapephrasmena ek taes tou Barbarou theologias]) 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 Irenaeus, 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: anemos], spiritus, [Greek: pneuma]. In the +childhood, they are fire, 'mens ignea, ignicula', and God himself +[Greek: pur noeron, pur aeizoon]. 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 +Linnaeus 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: misaetron] 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 vitae', 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: thraeskeia]. 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: +thraeskeia]. 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: thraeskeia]). 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 Galilaee'! + + +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 Pieta'. + + +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: Atae] +'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, + AEschylus, 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 Paean'! 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 'antennae' 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 +'phaenomena' 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: noumena], and [Greek: +phainomena]. 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: eikon]) 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 'Novellae' 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: hoti esti] and the [Greek: dioti]? 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 'phaenomena' 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 'formulae' 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: anekdota]. + + +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' exochaen] 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 'maculae' 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. + +'Quaere'. 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 aera 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: phronaema sarkos], +as likewise [Greek: psychikae 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: +psychas], 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: phantastikon], 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: hypostatikon, ae +noumenon]. + +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 +Judaeo-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 Messiae',--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 Messiae', 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 cyclopaedia; 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: sophia] of the Greeks their disputatious [Greek: +sophistikae] is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art: +and 'sophistae' 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 'Vindiciae +Heterodoxae, sive celebrium virorum [Greek: paradogmatizonton] 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: phronaema sarkos]) 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. 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