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.