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,