Part IV. p. 1.

The religion of genuine Christianity is a revelation so distinct and

specific in its design, and so clear and intelligible in its rules,

that a man of philosophic and retired thought is apt to wonder by what

means the endless systems of error and hostility which divide the

world were ever introduced into it.

What means this hollow cant--this fifty times warmed-up bubble and

squeak? That such parts are intelligible as the Barrister understands?

That such parts as it possesses in common with all systems of religion

and morality are plain and obvious? In other words that ABC are so

legible that they are legible to every one that has learnt to read? If

the Barrister mean other or more than this, if he really mean the whole

religion and revelation of Christ, even as it is found in the original

records, the Gospels and Epistles, he escapes from the silliness of a

truism by throwing himself into the arms of a broad brazenfaced untruth.

What! Is the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel so distinct and specific

in its design, that any modest man can wonder that the best and most

learned men of every age since Christ have deemed it mysterious? Are the

many passages concerning the Devil and demoniacs so very easy? Has this

writer himself thrown the least light on, or himself received one ray of

light from, the meaning of the word Faith;--or the reason of Christ's

paramount declarations respecting its omnific power, its absolutely

indispensable necessity? If the word mean only what the Barrister

supposes, a persuasion that in the present state of our knowledge the

evidences for the historical truth of the miracles of the Gospel

outweigh the arguments of the Sceptics, will he condescend to give us

such a comment on the assertion, that had we but a grain of mustard seed

of it, we might control all material nature, without making Christ

himself the most extravagant hyperbolist that ever mis-used language?

But it is impossible to make that man blush, who can seriously call the

words of Christ as recorded by St. John, plain, easy, common sense, out

of which prejudice, artifice, and selfish interest alone can compose any

difficulty. The Barrister has just as much right to call his religion

Christianity, as to call flour and water plum pudding:--yet we all admit

that in plum pudding both flour and water do exist.

Ib. p. 7.

Socinus can have no claim upon my veneration: I have never concerned

myself with what he believed nor with what he taught &c.

The Scripture is my authority, and on no other authority will I ever,

knowingly, lay the foundation of my faith.

Utterly untrue. It is not the Scripture, but such passages of Scripture

as appear to him to accord with his Procrustean bed of so called reason,

and a forcing of the blankest contradictions into the same meaning, by

explanations to which I defy him to furnish one single analogy as

allowed by mankind with regard to any other writings but the Old and New

Testament. It is a gross and impudent delusion to call a Book his

authority, which he receives only so far as it is an echo of his own

convictions. I defy him to adduce one single article of his whole faith,

(creed rather) which he really derives from the Scripture. Even the

arguments for the Resurrection are and must be extraneous: for the very

proofs of the facts are (as every 'tyro' in theology must know) the

proofs of the authenticity of the Books in which they are contained.

This question I would press upon him:--Suppose we possessed the Fathers

only with the Ecclesiastical and Pagan historians, and that not a page

remained of the New Testament,--what article of his creed would it

alter?

Ib. p. 10.

If the creed of Calvinistic Methodism is really more productive of

conversions than the religion of Christianity, let them openly and at

once say so.

But Calvinistic Methodism? Why Calvinistic Methodism? Not one in a

hundred of the Methodists are Calvinists. Not to mention the impudence

of this crow in his abuse of black feathers! Is it worse in a Methodist

to oppose Socinianism to Christianity, that is, to the doctrines of

Wesley or even Whitfield, which are the same as those of all the

Reformed Churches of Christendom, and differ only wherein the most

celebrated divines of the same churches have differed with each

other,--than for the Barrister to oppose Methodism to Christianity (his

Christianity)--that is, to Socinianism, which in every peculiar doctrine

of Christianity differs from all divines of all Churches of all ages?

For the one tenet in which the Calvinist differs from the majority of

Christians, are there not ten in which the Socinian differs from all? To

what purpose then this windy declamation about John Calvin? How many

Methodists, does the Barrister think, ever saw, much less read, a work

of Calvin's? If he scorns the name of Socinus as his authority, and

appeals to Scripture, do not the Methodists the same? When do they refer

to Calvin? In what work do they quote him? This page is therefore mere

dust in the eyes of the public. And his abuse of Calvin displays only

his own vulgar ignorance both of the man, and of his writings. For he

seems not to know that the humane Melancthon, and not only he, but

almost every Church, Lutheran or Reformed, throughout Europe, sent

letters to Geneva, extolling the execution of Servetus, and returning

their thanks. Yet it was a murder not the less: Yes! a damned murder:

but the guilt of it is not peculiar to Calvin, but common to all the

theologians of that age; and, 'Nota bene,' Mr. Barrister, the Socini not

excepted, who were prepared to inflict the very same punishment on F.

Davidi for denying the adorability of Christ. If to wish, will, resolve,

and attempt to realize, be morally to commit, an action, then must

Socinus and Calvin hunt in the same collar. But, O mercy! if every human

being were to be held up to detestation, who in that age would have

thought it his duty to have passed sentence 'de comburendo heretico' on

a man, who had publicly styled the Trinity "a Cerberus," and "a

three-headed monster of hell," what would the history of the Reformation

be but a list of criminals? With what face indeed can we congratulate

ourselves on being born in a more enlightened age, if we so bitterly

abuse not the practice but the agents? Do we not admit by this very

phrase "enlightened," that we owe our exemption to our intellectual

advantages, not primarily to our moral superiority? It will be time

enough to boast, when to our own tolerance we have added their zeal,

learning, and indefatigable industry. [7]

Ib. p. 13, 14.

If religion consists in listening to long prayers, and attending long

sermons, in keeping up an outside appearance of devotion, and

interlarding the most common discourse with phrases of Gospel

usage:--if this is religion, then are the disciples of Methodism pious

beyond compare. But in real humility of heart, in mildness of temper,

in liberality of mind, in purity of thought, in openness and

uprightness of conduct in private life, in those practical virtues

which are the vital substance of Christianity,--in these are they

superior? No. Public observation is against the fact, and the

conclusion to which such observation leads is rarely incorrect. * *

The very name of the sect carries with it an impression of meanness

and hypocrisy. Scarce an individual that has had any dealings with

those belonging to it, but has good cause to remember it from some

circumstance of low deception or of shuffling fraud. Its very members

trust each other with caution and reluctance. The more wealthy among

them are drained and dried by the leeches that perpetually fasten upon

them. The leaders, ignorant and bigoted--I speak of them collectively

--present us with no counter-qualities that can conciliate respect.

They have all the craft of monks without their courtesy, and all the

subtlety of Jesuits without their learning.

In the whole 'Bibliotlieca theologica' I remember no instance of calumny

so gross, so impudent, so unchristian. Even as a single robber, I mean

he who robs one man, gets hanged, while the robber of a million is a

great man, so it seems to be with calumny. This worthy Barrister will be

extolled for this audacious slander of thousands, for which, if applied

to any one individual, he would be in danger of the pillory. This

paragraph should be quoted: for were the charge true, it is nevertheless

impossible that the Barrister should know it to be true. He positively

asserts as a truth known to him what it is impossible he should

know:--he is therefore doubly a slanderer; for first, the charge is a

gross calumny; and were it otherwise, he would still be a slanderer, for

he could have no proof, no ground for such a charge.

Ib. p. 15.

Amidst all this spirit of research we find nothing--comparatively

nothing--of improvement in that science of all others the most important

in its influence * * *. Religion, except from the emancipating energy of

a few superior minds, which have dared to snap asunder the cords which

bound them to the rock of error * * * has been suffered to remain in its

principles and in its doctrines, just what it was when the craft of

Catholic superstition first corrupted its simplicity. So, so. Here it

comes out at last! It is not the Methodists; no; it is all and each of

all Europe, Infidels and Socinians excepted! O impudence! And then the

exquisite self-conceit of the blunderer!

Ib. p. 29.

--If of 'different denominations', how were they thus conciliated to a

society of this ominous nature, from which they must themselves of

necessity be excluded by that indispensable condition of admittance,

"'a union' of religious sentiment in the 'great doctrines':" which

very want of union it is that creates these 'different denominations'?

No, Barrister! they mean that men of different denominations may yet all

believe in the corruption of the human will, the redemption by Christ,

the divinity of Christ as consubstantial with the Father, the necessity

of the Holy Spirit, or grace (meaning more than the disposition of

circumstances), and the necessity of faith in Christ superadded to a

belief of his actions and doctrines,--and yet differ in many other

points. The points enumerated are called the great points, because all

Christians agree in them excepting the Arians and Socinians, who for

that reason are not deemed Christians by the rest. The Roman Catholic,

the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Arminian, the Greek, with all their

sub-divisions, do yet all accord in these articles:--the booksellers

might have said, all who repeat the Nicene Creed. N. B. I do not

approve, or defend, nay, I dislike, these "United Theological

Booksellers": but this utter Barrister is their best friend by attacking

them so as to secure to them victory, and all the advantages of being

known to have been wickedly slandered;--the best shield a faulty cause

can protend against the javelin of fair opposition.

Ib. p. 56.

Our Saviour never in any single instance reprobated the exercise of

reason: on the contrary, he reprehends severely those who did not

exercise it. Carnal reason is not a phrase to be found in his Gospel;

he appealed to the understanding in all he said, and in all he taught.

He never required 'faith' in his disciples, without first furnishing

sufficient 'evidence' to justify it. He reasoned thus: If I have done

what no 'human power' could do, you must admit that my power is 'from

above', &c.

Good heavens! did he not uniformly require faith as the condition of

obtaining the "evidence," as this Barrister calls it--that is, the

miracle? What a shameless perversion of the fact! He never did reason

thus. In one instance only, and then upbraiding the base sensuality of

the Jews, he said: "If ye are so base as not to believe what I say from

the moral evidence in your own consciences, yet pay some attention to it

even for my works' sake." And this, an 'argumentum ad hominem,' a bitter

reproach (just as if a great chemist should say;--Though you do not care

for my science, or the important truths it presents, yet, even as an

amusement superior to that of your jugglers to whom you willingly crowd,

pay some attention to me)--this is to be set up against twenty plain

texts and the whole spirit of the whole Gospel! Besides, Christ could

not reason so; for he knew that the Jews admitted both natural and

demoniacal miracles, and their faith in the latter he never attacked;

though by an 'argumentum ad hominem' (for it is no argument in itself)

he denied its applicability to his own works. If Christ had reasoned so,

why did not the Barrister quote his words, instead of putting imaginary

words in his mouth?

Ib. 60, 61.

Religion is a system of 'revealed' truth; and to affirm of any

revealed truth, that we 'cannot understand' it, is, in effect, either

to deny that it has been revealed, or--which is the same thing--to

admit that it has been revealed in vain.

It is too worthless! I cannot go on. Merciful God! hast thou not

revealed to us the being of a conscience, and of reason, and of

will;--and does this Barrister tell us, that he "understands" them? Let

him know that he does not even understand the very word understanding.

He does not seem to be aware of the school-boy distinction between the

[Greek: hóti esti] and the [Greek: dióti]? But to all these silly

objections religion must for ever remain exposed as long as the word

Revelation is applied to any thing that can be 'bona fide' given to the

mind 'ab extra', through the senses of eye, ear, or touch. No! all

revelation is and must be 'ab intra'; the external 'phænomena' can only

awake, recall evidence, but never reveal. This is capable of strict

demonstration.

Afterwards the Barrister quotes from Thomas Watson respecting things

above comprehension in the study of nature: "in these cases, the 'fact'

is evident, the cause lies in obscurity, deeply removed from all the

knowledge and penetration of man." Then what can we believe respecting

these causes? And if we can believe nothing respecting them, what

becomes of them as arguments in support of the proposition that we

ought, in religion, to believe what we cannot understand?

Are there not facts in religion, the causes and constitution of which

are mysteries?

[Footnote 1: Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the nature and

effect of Evangelical Preaching. By a Barrister. Fourth Edition, 1808.]

[Footnote 2: See Aids to Reflection, p. 14, 4th edition.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: Quart. Review, vol. ii. p. 187.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See vol. i., p. 217.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5:

"And from this account of obligation it follows, that we can he

obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something

by; for nothing else can be a violent motive to us. As we should not

be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless rewards or

punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other depended upon our

obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged

to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of

God."

'Paley's Moral and Polit. Philosophy', B. II. c. 2.

"The difference, and the only difference, ('between prudence and

duty',) is this; that in the one case we consider what we shall gain

or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what

we shall gain or lose in the world to come."

Ib. c. 3.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: Friend, Vol. I. Essays X. and XI. 3rd edition--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: See Table Talk, pp. 282 and 304. 2d edit.--Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON DAVISON'S DISCOURSES ON PROPHECY. 1825. [1]

Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.

As to systems of religion alien from Christianity, if any of them have

taught the doctrine of eternal life, the reward of obedience, as a

dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden

and difficulty; inasmuch as they could never defend it. They could

never justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce

their warrant and authority to teach it. In such precarious and

unauthenticated principles it may pass for a conjecture, or pious

fraud, or a splendid phantom: it cannot wear the dignity of truth.

Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of

thinking from p. 134 ('Since Prophecy', &c.) to p. 139. ('that mercy')

of this discourse? A fact is no subject of scientific demonstration

speculatively: we can only bring analogies, and these Heraclitus,

Socrates, Plato, and others did bring; but their main argument remains

to this day the main argument--namely, that none but a wicked man dares

doubt it. When it is not in the light of promise, it is in the law of

fear, at all times a part of the conscience, and presupposed in all

spiritual conviction.

Ib. p. 160.

Some indeed have sought the 'star' and the 'sceptre' of Balaam's

prophecy, where they cannot well be found, in the reign of David; for

though a sceptre might be there, the star properly is not.

Surely this is a very weak reason. A far better is, I think, suggested

by the words, 'I shall see him--I shall behold him';--which in no

intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.

Ib. p. 162.

The Israelites could not endure the voice and fire of Mount Sinai.

They asked an intermediate messenger between God and them, who should

temper the awfulness of his voice, and impart to them his will in a

milder way.

'Deut'. xviii. 15. Is the following argument worthy our consideration?

If, as the learned Eichhorn, Paulus of Jena, and others of their school,

have asserted, Moses waited forty days for a tempest, and then, by the

assistance of the natural magic he had learned in the temple of Isis,

'initiated' the law, all our experience and knowledge of the way in

which large bodies of men are affected would lead us to suppose that the

Hebrew people would have been keenly excited, interested, and elevated

by a spectacle so grand and so flattering to their national pride. But

if the voices and appearances were indeed divine and supernatural, well

must we assume that there was a distinctive, though verbally

inexpressible, terror and disproportion to the mind, the senses, the

whole 'organismus' of the human beholders and hearers, which might both

account for, and even in the sight of God justify, the trembling prayer

which deprecated a repetition.

Ib. p. 164.

To justify its application to Christ, the resemblance between him and

Moses has often been deduced at large, and drawn into a variety of

particulars, among which several points have been taken minute and

precarious, or having so little of dignity or clearness of

representation in them, that it would be wise to discard them from the

prophetic evidence.

With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to

evolve the full contents of the word 'like'; but I cannot help thinking

that the contemporaries of Moses (if not otherwise orally instructed,)

must have understood it in the first and historical sense, at least, of

Joshua.

Ib. p. 168.

A distinguished commentator on the laws of Moses, Michaelis,

vindicates their temporal sanctions on the ground of the Mosaic Code

being of the nature of a civil system, to the statutes of which the

rewards of a future state would be incongruous and unsuitable.

I never read either of Michaelis's Works, but the same view came before

me whenever I reflected on the Mosaic Code. Who expects in realities of

any kind the sharp outline and exclusive character of scientific

classification? It is the predominance of the characterizing constituent

that gives the name and class. Do not even our own statute laws, though

co-existing with a separate religious Code, contain many 'formulæ' of

words which have no sense but for the conscience? Davison's stress on

the word 'covet', in the tenth commandment, is, I think, beyond what so

ancient a Code warrants;--and for the other instances, Michaelis would

remind him that the Mosaic constitution was a strict theocracy, and that

Jehovah, the God of all, was their 'king'. I do not know the particular

mode in which Michaelis propounds and supports this position; but the

position itself, as I have presented it to my own mind, seems to me

among the strongest proofs of the divine origin of the Law, and an

essential in the harmony of the total scheme of Revelation.

Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.

But the first law meets him on his own terms; it stood upon a present

retribution; the execution of its sentence is matter of history, and

the argument resulting from it is to be answered, before the question

is carried to another world.

This is rendered a very powerful argument by the consideration, that

though so vast a mind as that of Moses, though perhaps even a Lycurgus,

might have distinctly foreseen the ruin and captivity of the Hebrew

people as a necessary result of the loss of nationality, and the

abandonment of the law and religion which were their only point of

union, their centre of gravity,--yet no human intellect could have

foreseen the perpetuity of such a people as a distinct race under all

the aggravated curses of the law weighing on them; or that the obstinacy

of their adherence to their dividuating institutes in persecution,

dispersion, and shame, should be in direct proportion to the wantonness

of their apostasy from the same in union and prosperity.

Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.

Except under the dictate of a constraining inspiration, it is not easy

to conceive how the master of such a work, at the time when he had

brought it to perfection, and beheld it in its lustre, the labour of

so much opulent magnificence and curious art, and designed to be

'exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all

countries', should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and

dilapidation, and that too under the 'opprobrium' of God's vindictive

judgment upon it, nor to imagine how that strain of sinister prophecy,

that forebodes of malediction, should be ascribed to him, if he had no

such vision revealed.

Here I think Mr. Davison should have crushed the objection of the

Infidel grounded on Solomon's subsequent idolatrous impieties. The

Infidel argues, that these are not conceivable of a man distinctly

conscious of a prior and supernatural inspiration, accompanied with

supernatural manifestations of the divine presence.

Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.

In order to evade this conclusion, nothing is left but to deny that

Isaiah, or any person of his age, wrote the book ascribed to him.

This too is my conclusion, but (if I do not delude myself) from more

evident, though not perhaps more certain, premisses. The age of the

Cyrus prophecies is the great object of attack by Eichhorn and his

compilers; and I dare not say, that in a controversy with these men

Davison's arguments would appear sufficient. But this was not the

intended subject of these Discourses.

Disc. VI. Pt. II. p. 289.

But how does he express that promise? In the images of the

resurrection and an immortal state. Consequently, there is implied in

the delineation of the lower subject the truth of the greater.

This reminds me of a remark, I have elsewhere made respecting the

expediency of separating the arguments addressed to, and valid for, a

believer, from the proofs and vindications of Scripture intended to form

the belief, or to convict the Infidel.

Disc. VI. Pt. IV. p. 325.

When Cyrus became master of Babylon, the prophecies of Isaiah were

shewn or communicated to him, wherein were described his victory, and

the use he was appointed to make of it in the restoration of the

Hebrew people. ('Ezra' i. 1, 2.)

This I had been taught to regard as one of Josephus's legends; but upon

this passage who would not infer that it had Ezra for its

authority,--who yet does not expressly say that even the prophecy of the

far later Jeremiah was known or made known to Cyrus, who (Ezra tells us)

fulfilled it? If Ezra had meant the prediction of Isaiah by the words,

'he hath charged me', &c., why should he not have referred to it

together with, or even instead of, Jeremiah? Is it not more probable

that a living prophet had delivered the charge to Cyrus? See 'Ezra' vi.

14.--Again, Davison makes Cyrus speak like a Christian, by omitting the

affix 'of Heaven to the Lord God' in the original. Cyrus speaks as a

Cyrus might be supposed to do,--namely, of a most powerful but yet

national deity, of a God, not of God. I have seen in so many instances

the injurious effect of weak or overstrained arguments in defence of

religion, that I am perhaps more jealous than I need be in the choice of

evidences. I can never think myself the worse Christian for any opinion

I may have formed, respecting the price of this or that argument, of

this or that divine, in support of the truth. For every one that I

reject, I could supply two, and these [Greek: anékdota].

Ib. p. 336.

Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel's family, and

of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the

Gospel, was one of the preparations made whereby to manifest more

distinctly the proper glory of it, in the birth of the Messiah.

In whichever way I take this, whether addressed to a believer for the

purpose of enlightening, or to an inquirer for the purpose of

establishing, his faith in prophecy, this argument appears to me equally

perplexing and obscure. It seems, 'prima facie', almost tantamount to a

right of inferring the fulfilment of a prophecy in B., which it does not

mention, from its entire failure and falsification in A., which, and

which alone, it does mention.

Ib. p. 370.

'Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and

dreadful day of the Lord.'

Almost every page of this volume makes me feel my own ignorance

respecting the interpretation of the language of the Hebrew Prophets,

and the want of the one idea which would supply the key. Suppose an

Infidel to ask me, how the Jews were to ascertain that John the Baptist

was Elijah the Prophet;--am I to assert the pre-existence of John's

personal identity as Elijah? If not, why Elijah rather than any other

Prophet? One answer is obvious enough, that the contemporaries of John

held Elijah as the common representative of the Prophets; but did

Malachi do so?

Ib. p. 373.

I cannot conceive a more beautiful synopsis of a work on the Prophecies

of the Old Testament, than is given in this Recapitulation. Would that

its truth had been equally well substantiated! That it can be, that it

will be, I have the liveliest faith;--and that Mr. Davison has

contributed as much as we ought to expect, and more than any

contemporary divine, I acknowledge, and honor him accordingly. But much,

very much, remains to be done, before these three pages merit the name

of a Recapitulation.

Disc. VII. p. 375.

If I needed proof of the immense importance of the doctrine of Ideas,

and how little it is understood, the following discourse would supply

it.

The whole discussion on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the

page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the

deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the

particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the

steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses. I

neither do nor ever could see any other difficulty on the subject, than

what is contained and anticipated in the idea of eternity.

By Ideas I mean intuitions not sensuous, which can be expressed only by

contradictory conceptions, or, to speak more accurately, are in

themselves necessarily both inexpressible and inconceivable, but are

suggested by two contradictory positions. This is the essential

character of all ideas, consequently of eternity, in which the

attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are included. Now prescience

and freewill are in fact nothing more than the two contradictory

positions by which the human understanding struggles to express

successively the idea of eternity. Not eternity in the negative sense as

the mere absence of succession, much less eternity in the senseless

sense of an infinite time; but eternity,--the Eternal; as Deity, as God.

Our theologians forget that the objection applies equally to the

possibility of the divine will; but if they reply that prescience

applied to an eternal, 'Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio', is

but an anthropomorphism, or term of accommodation, the same answer

serves in respect of the human will; for the epithet human does not

enter into the syllogism. As to contingency, whence did Mr. Davison

learn that it is a necessary accompaniment of freedom, or of free

action? My philosophy teaches me the very contrary.

Ib. p. 392.

He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not

within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the

assumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in

Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and

responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are

in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.

I utterly deny contingency except in relation to the limited and

imperfect knowledge of man. But the misery is, that men write about

freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea

[Greek: katt' exochàen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in

the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they

overlay their reason.

Disc. VIII. p. 416.

It would not be easy to calculate the good which a man like Mr. Davison

might effect, under God, by a work on the Messianic Prophecies,

specially intended for and addressed to the present race of Jews,--if

only he would make himself acquainted with their objections and ways of

understanding Scripture. For instance, a learned Jew would perhaps

contend that this prophecy of Isaiah (c. ii. 2-4,) cannot fairly be

interpreted of a mere local origination of a religion historically; as

the drama might be described as going forth from Athens, and philosophy

from Academus and the Painted Porch, but must refer to an established

and continuing seat of worship, 'a house of the God of Jacob'. The

answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, 'in the top of the

mountains'; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the

whole prediction.

Ib. p. 431.

One point, however, is certain and equally important, namely, that the

Christian Church, when it comes to recognize more truly the obligation

imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, 'Go teach all

nations', &c.

That the duty here recommended is deducible from this text is quite

clear to my mind; but whether it is the direct sense and primary

intention of the words; whether the first meaning is not

negative,--('Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to

all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing',)--this is

not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is

this narrower sense without its practical advantages.

Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.

The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point

of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes

me. It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional 'infausta

tempora scribendi', can account for. I question whether from any modern

work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter

or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and

awkward sentences could be extracted. The paragraph in page 453 and 454,

is not a specimen of the worst. In a volume which ought to be, and which

probably will be, in every young Clergyman's library, these 'maculæ' are

subjects of just regret. The utility of the work, no less than its great

comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the

author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.

Disc. XII. p. 519.

Four such ruling kingdoms did arise. The first, the Babylonian, was in

being when the prophecy is represented to have been given. It was

followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the

Roman closed the series.

This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or

Medo-Persian is the second--if I recollect aright. But it always struck

me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own

snares. For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and

actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire

should not have been predicted;--for superhuman predictions, the last

two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a

political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Cassandra, and later than

Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman

should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last and

most important Empire is inexplicable.

Ib. p. 521.

Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel's prophecies were

read publicly among the Jews in their worship, as well as their other

received Scriptures.

It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the

book of Daniel in the third class only, among the Hagiographic

--passionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of our Saviour

were attached to it.

Ib. p. 522-3.

But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view

in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit

that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy,

this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so

plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.

'Quære'. See Polybius.

Ib.

We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this

fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.

This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I

confess, strike me as being. On the contrary, the admission that by a

writer of the Maccabaic æra the Roman power could scarcely have been

overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally

suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires,

rather than the idea of a last. In the age of Augustus this might

possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus

was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late

enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source

of succession.

[Footnote 1: Discourses on Prophecy, in which are considered its

structure, use and inspiration, being the substance of twelve Sermons

preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn in the Lecture founded by the

Right Rev. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison,

B.D. 2nd edit. London, 1825.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON IRVING'S BEN-EZRA. [1] 1827.

Christ the WORD.

|

The Scriptures--The Spirit--The Church.

|

The Preacher.

Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ. The written

Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable

conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued

re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal

Word, Christ from everlasting, is the 'prothesis' or identity;--the

Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the 'thesis' and

'antithesis'; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise

the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the

'synthesis'. And here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me

asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a 'tetractys', or

a triad equal to a 'tetractys': 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a

pentad--God's hand in the world. [2]

It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how

far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend,

Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.

I. How far? First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the

positive assurance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I--even in those points

in which my judgment most coincides with his,--profess only to regard

them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with

orthodoxy. They may be believed, and they may be doubted, 'salva

Catholica fide'. Further, from these points I exclude all

prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places,

of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr.

Irving's and of Lacunza's scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the

Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza,

understands them. Again, I protest against all identification of the

coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under

Constantine.

II. In what sense? In this and no other, that the objects of the

Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;--that the kingdom

of God and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine

will shall 'be done on earth as it is in heaven', will 'come';--and that

the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of

Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final cause of

the world. Life begins in detachment from Nature, and ends in union with

God.

III. Under what conditions? That I retain my former convictions

respecting St. Michael, and the ex-saint Lucifer, and the Genie Prince

of Persia, and the re-institution of bestial sacrifices in the Temple at

Jerusalem, and the rest of this class. All these appear to me so many

pimples on the face of my friend's faith from inward heats, leaving it

indeed a fine handsome intelligent face, but certainly not adding to its

comeliness.

Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.

P.S. I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all

the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. ('Deuteron.'

xxv. 1-8.)

It may be long before Edward Irving sees what I seem at least to see so

clearly,--and yet, I doubt not, the time will come when he too will see

with the same evidentness,--how much grander a front his system would

have presented to judicious beholders; on how much more defensible a

position he would have placed it,--and the remark applies equally to Ben

Ezra (that is, Emanuel Lacunza)--had he trusted the proof to Scriptures

of undisputed catholicity, to the spirit of the whole Bible, to the

consonance of the doctrine with the reason, its fitness to the needs and

capacities of mankind, and its harmony with the general plan of the

divine dealings with the world,--and had left the Apocalypse in the back

ground. But alas! instead of this he has given it such prominence, such

prosiliency of relief, that he has made the main strength of his hope

appear to rest on a vision, so obscure that his own author and

faith's-mate claims a meaning for its contents only on the supposition

that the meaning is yet to come!

Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.

Now of these three, the office of Christ, as our prophet, is the means

used by the Holy Spirit for working the redemption of the

understanding of men; that faculty by which we acquire the knowledge

on which proceed both our inward principles of conduct and our outward

acts of power.

I cannot forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to

the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding, 'genere et

gradu', given in the Aids to Reflection. [3]

What can be plainer than to say: the understanding is the medial faculty

or faculty of means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas

or ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end: by the

understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means

for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to

circumstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that

is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire

correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there

can be neither a first nor a last:--all that we can see, smell, taste,

touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of

our language, entitled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of

motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like

manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which

we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their

several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and

judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective

power, is the source and faculty of words;--and on this account the

understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by

Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense.

However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same

understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its

true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point,

because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding

and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness,

'materiam objectivam',) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the

comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural

mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs],

as likewise [Greek: psychikàe synesis], the intellectual power of the

living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the

spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of

the will and the reason;--and this spirit both the Christian and elder

Jewish Church named, 'sophia', or wisdom.

Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius name Cerinthusas the inventor of many

corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the

palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his

disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most

important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a Sultan,

&c.

I find very great difficulty in crediting these black charges on

Cerinthus, and know not how to reconcile them with the fact that the

Apocalypse itself was by many attributed to Cerinthus. But Mr. Hunt is

not more famous for blacking than some of the Fathers.

Ib. pp. 73, 4.

Against whom a very eloquent man, Dionysius Alexandrinus, a Father of

the Church, wrote an elegant work, to ridicule the Millennarian fable,

the golden and gemmed Jerusalem on the earth, the renewal of the

Temple, the blood of victims. If the book of St. Dionysius had

contained nothing but the derision and confutation of all we have just

read, it is certain that he doth in no way concern himself with the

harmless Millennarians, but with the Jews and Judaizers. It is to be

clearly seen that Dionysius had nothing in his eye, but the ridiculous

excesses of Nepos, and his peculiar tenets upon circumcision, &c.

Lacunza, I suspect, was ignorant of Greek: and seems not to have known

that the object of Dionysius was to demonstrate that the Apocalypse was

neither authentic nor a canonical book.

Ib. p. 85.

The ruin of Antichrist, with all that is comprehended under that name,

being entirely consummated, and the King of kings remaining master of

the field, St. John immediately continues in the 20th chapter, which

thus commenceth: 'And I saw an angel come down from heaven, &c. And I

saw thrones, &c. And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be

loosed out of his prison.'

It is only necessary to know that the whole book from the first verse to

the last is written in symbols, to be satisfied that the true meaning of

this passage is simply, that only the great Confessors and Martyrs will

be had in remembrance and honour in the Church after the establishment

of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. And observe, it is the

souls that the Seer beholds:--there is not a word of the resurrection of

the body;--for this would indeed have been the appropriate symbol of a

resurrection in a real and personal sense.

Ib. c. vi. p. 108.

Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, 'that they

who have been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of

God, and they who have not worshipped the beast', these shall live,

'or be raised' at the coming of the Lord, 'which is the first

resurrection.'

Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" asserted? The Seer

not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word [Greek:

psychás], souls, expressly asserts the contrary. In no sense of the word

can souls, which descended in Christ's train ('chorus sacer animarum et

Christi comitatus') from Heaven, be said 'resurgere'. Resurrection is

always and exclusively resurrection in the body;--not indeed a rising of

the 'corpus' [Greek: phantastikón], that is, the few ounces of carbon,

nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the 'copula' of which

that gave the form no longer exists,--and of which Paul exclaims;--'Thou

fool! not this', &c.--but the 'corpus' [Greek: hypostatikòn, àe

noúmenon].

But there is yet another and worse wresting of the text. Who that reads

Lacunza, p. 108, last line but twelve, would not understand that the

Apocalypt had asserted this enthronement of the souls of the Gentile and

Judæo-Christian Martyrs which he beheld in the train or suite of the

descending Messiah; and that he had first seen them in the descent, and

afterward saw thrones assigned to them? Whereas the sentence precedes,

and has positively no connection with these souls. The literal

interpretation of the symbols c. xx. v. 4, is, "I then beheld the

Christian religion the established religion of the state throughout the

Roman empire;--emperors, kings, magistrates, and the like, all

Christians, and administering laws in the name of Christ, that is,

receiving the Scriptures as the supreme and paramount law. Then in all

the temples the name of Jesus was invoked as the King of glory, and

together with him the old afflicted and tormented fellow-laborers with

Christ were revived in high and reverential commemoration," &c. But that

the whole Vision from first to last, in every sentence, yea, every word,

is symbolical, and in the boldest, largest style of symbolic language;

and secondly, that it is a work of disputed canonicity, and at no known

period of the Church could truly lay claim to catholicity;--but for

this, I think this verse would be worth a cartload of the texts which

the Romanist divines and catechists ordinarily cite as sanctioning the

invocation of Saints.

Ib. p. 110.

You will say nevertheless, that even the wicked will be raised

incorruptible to inherit incorruption, because being once raised,

their bodies will no more change or be dissolved, but must continue

entire, for ever united with their sad and miserable souls. Well, and

would you call this corruption or incorruptibility? Certainly this is

not the sense of the Apostle, when he formally assures us, yea, even

threatens us, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption. 'Neither

doth corruption inherit incorruption'. What then may this singular

expression mean? This is what it manifestly means;--that no person,

whoever he may be, without any exception, who possesseth a corrupt

heart and corrupt actions, and therein persevereth unto death, shall

have reason to expect in the resurrection a pure, subtile, active and

impassible body.

This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.

Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated

chapter (1 'Cor'. xv.) speaks of a partial or of the general

resurrection, or even conceding to Lacunza that the former opinion is

the more probable; I must still vehemently object to this Jesuitical

interpretation of corruption, as used in a moral sense, and distinctive

of the wicked souls. St. Paul nowhere speaks dogmatically or

preceptively (not popularly and incidentally,) of a soul as the proper

'I'. It is always 'we', or the man. How could a regenerate saint put off

corruption at the sound of the trump, if up to that hour it did not in

some sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It

flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied,

unrefracting, 'medium' to the Apostolic assertion, that corruption in

this passage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism

common to saint and sinner,--standing in precisely the same relation to

the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the

crab and tortoise. These slightly combined and easily decomponible

stuffs are as incapable of subsisting under the altered conditions of

the earth as an hydatid in the blaze of a tropical sun. They would be no

longer 'media' of communion between the man and his circumstances.

A heavy difficulty presses, as it appears to me, on Lacunza's system, as

soon as we come to consider the general resurrection. Our Lord (in books

of indubitable and never doubted catholicity) speaks of some who rise to

bliss and glory, others who at the same time rise to shame and

condemnation. Now if the former class live not during the whole interval

from their death to the general resurrection, including the Millennium,

or 'Dies Messiæ',--how should they, whose imperfect or insufficient

merits excluded them from the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, be all at

once fitted for the kingdom of heaven?

Ib. ch. vii. p. 118.

It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively,

means in good language this only, that the word 'quick', which the

Apostles, full of the Holy Spirit, set down, is a word altogether

useless, which might without loss have been omitted, and that it were

enough to have set down the word 'dead': for by that word alone is the

whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.

The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological

reading of their 'alumni' is strongly marked in this (in so many

respects) excellent work: for example, the "most believing mind," with

which Lacunza takes for granted the exploded fable of the Catechumens'

('vulgo' Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic

'pic-nic', to which each of the twelve contributed his several

'symbolum'.

Ib. ch. ix. p. 127.

The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that

that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)

There are serious difficulties besetting the authenticity of the

Catholic Epistles under the name of Peter; though there exist no grounds

for doubting that they are of the Apostolic age. A large portion too of

the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable

supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated

the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his

'amanuensis', who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which

connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and

biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this

hypothesis. But what is of much greater importance, especially for the

point in discussion, is the character of these and other similar

descriptions of the 'Dies Messiæ', the 'Dies ultima', and the like. Are

we bound to receive them as articles of faith? Is there sufficient

reason to assert them to have been direct revelations immediately

vouchsafed to the sacred writers? I cannot satisfy my judgment that

there is;--first, because I find no account of any such events having

been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and

because I do find these events asserted, and (for aught I have been able

to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired

Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles,

and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these anticipations had

become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they

were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several

other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their

ancient and national religious belief. Now I know of no revealed truth

that did not originate in Revelation, and find it hard to reconcile my

mind to the belief that any Christian truth, any essential article of

faith, should have been first made known by the father of lies, or the

guess-work of the human understanding blinded by Paganism, or at best

without the knowledge of the true God. Of course I would not apply this

to any assertion of any New Testament writer, which was the final aim

and primary intention of the whole passage; but only to sentences 'in

ordine ad' some other doctrine or precept, 'illustrandi causa', or 'ad

hominem', or 'more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice'.

Ib. Part II. p. 145.

Second characteristic. 'The kingdom shall be divided.'--Third

characteristic. 'The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly

brittle.'--Fourth characteristic. 'They shall mingle themselves with

the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another.'

How exactly do these characters apply to the Greek Empire under the

successors of Alexander,--when the Greeks were dispersed over the

civilized world, as artists, rhetoricians, 'grammatici', secretaries,

private tutors, parasites, physicians, and the like!

Ib. p. 153.

'For to them he thus speaketh in the Gospel: And then shall they see

the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when

these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your

heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.'

I cannot deny that there is great force and an imposing verisimilitude

in this and the preceding chapter, and much that demands silent thought

and respectful attention. But still the great question presses on

me:--'coming in a cloud'! What is the true import of this phrase? Has

not God himself expounded it? To the Son of Man, the great Apostle

assures us, all power is given in heaven and on earth. He became

Providence,--that is, a Divine Power behind the cloudy veil of human

agency and worldly events and incidents, controlling, disposing, and

directing acts and events to the gradual unfolding and final

consummation of the great scheme of Redemption; the casting forth of the

evil and alien nature from man, and thus effecting the union of the

creature with the Creator, of man with God, in and through the Son of

Man, even the Son of God made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the

attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son

of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the

Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian,

both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the

teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly

character, that his Apostles, who disclaim all certain knowledge of the

awful event, had understood his words otherwise, and in a sense more

commensurate with their previous notions and the prejudices of their

education? They communicated their conjectures, but as conjectures, and

these too guarded by the avowal, that they had no revelation, no

revealed commentary on their Master's words, upon this occasion, the

great apocalypse of Jesus Christ while yet in the flesh. For by this

title was this great prophecy known among the Christians of the

Apostolic age.

Ib. p. 253.

Never, Oh! our Lady! never, Oh! our Mother! shalt thou fall again into

the crime of idolatry.

Was ever blindness like unto this blindness? I can imagine but one way

of making it seem possible, namely, that this round square or

rectilineal curve--this honest Jesuit, I mean--had confined his

conception of idolatry to the worship of false gods;--whereas his saints

are genuine godlings, and his 'Magna Mater' a goddess in her own

right;--and that thus he overlooked the meaning of the word.

Ib. p. 254.

The entire text of the Apostle is as follows:--'Now we beseech you,

brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering

together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind', &c. (2 Thess.

ii. 1-10.)

O Edward Irving! Edward Irving! by what fascination could your spirit be

drawn away from passages like this, to guess and dream over the

rhapsodies of the Apocalypse? For rhapsody, according to your

interpretation, the Poem undeniably is;--though, rightly expounded, it

is a well knit and highly poetical evolution of a part of this and our

Lord's more comprehensive prediction, 'Luke' xvii.

Ib. p. 297.

On the ordinary ideas of the coming of Christ in glory and majesty, it

will doubtless appear an extravagance to name the Jews, or to take

them into consideration; for, according to those ideas, they should

hardly have the least particle of our attention.

In comparing this with the preceding chapter I could not help

exclaiming; What an excellent book would this Jesuit have written, if

Daniel and the Apocalypse had not existed, or had been unknown to, or

rejected by, him!

You may divide Lacunza's points of belief into two parallel

columns;--the first would be found to contain much that is demanded by,

much that is consonant to, and nothing that is not compatible with,

reason, the harmony of Holy Writ, and the idea of Christian faith. The

second would consist of puerilities and anilities, some impossible, most

incredible; and all so silly, so sensual, as to befit a dreaming

Talmudist, not a Scriptural Christian. And this latter column would be

found grounded on Daniel and the Apocalypse!

[Footnote 1: The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. By Juan Josafat

Ben-Ezra, a converted Jew. Translated from the Spanish, with a

preliminary Discourse. By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. London, 1827.]

[Footnote 2: See 'supra', vol. iii. p. 93.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: P. 157, 4th edit.--Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON NOBLE'S APPEAL. 1827. [1]

How natural it is to mistake the weakness of an adversary's arguments

for the strength of our own cause! This is especially applicable to Mr.

Noble's Appeal. Assuredly as far as Mr. Beaumont's Notes are concerned,

his victory is complete.

Sect. IV. p. 210.

The intellectual spirit is moving upon the chaos of minds, which

ignorance and necessity have thrown into collision and confusion; and

the result will be a new creation. "Nature" (to use the nervous

language of an-old writer,) "will be melted down and recoined; and all

will be bright and beautiful."

Alas! if this be possible now, or at any time henceforward, whence came

the dross? If nature be bullion that can be melted and thus purified by

the conjoint action of heat and elective attraction, I pray Mr. Noble to

tell me to what name or 'genus' he refers the dross? Will he tell me, to

the Devil? Whence came the Devil? And how was the pure bullion so

thoughtlessly made as to have an elective affinity for this Devil?

Sect. V. p. 286.

The next anecdote that I shall adduce is similar in its nature to the

last * * *. The relater is Dr. Stilling, Counsellor at the Court of

the Duke of Baden, in a work entitled 'Die Theorie der Geister-Kunde',

printed in 1808.

Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on

Sung's ('alias' Dr. Stilling's) testimony, had he ever read the work in

which this passage is found. I happen to possess the work; and a more

anile, credulous, solemn fop never existed since the days of old Audley.

It is strange that Mr. Noble should not have heard, that these three

anecdotes were first related by Immanuel Kant, and still exist in his

miscellaneous writings.

Ib. p. 315.

"Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of

fact? The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to

him in the midst of a strong shining light, and said, 'I am God the

Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men

the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings: I will

dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write?' From this period, the

Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest

manner, what passed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse

with angels and spirits as with men," &c.

I remember no such passage as this in Swedenborg's works. Indeed it is

virtually contradicted by their whole tenor. Swedenborg asserts himself

to relate 'visa et audita',--his own experience, as a traveller and

visitor of the spiritual world,--not the words of another as a mere

'amanuensis'. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.

Ib. p. 321.

The Apostolic canon in such cases is, 'Believe not every spirit, but

try the spirits whether they be of God'. (1 John iv. 1.) And the

touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the

Prophet: 'To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according

to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.' (Is. viii.

20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *. It is simply

this: Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is

insane. To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you

quote, as if from his own works, a passage which is nowhere to be

found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical

dictionary or cyclopædia; few or none of which give anything like a

fair account of the matter.

Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense

intended by Gulielmus, namely, as 'mania',--I should as little think of

charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured

under an 'acyanoblepsia'.

Ib. p. 323.

Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of

the Baron's reverie: 'It came to pass, that, as I took my journey, and

was come nigh unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from

heaven a great light round about me: and I fell on the ground, and

heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?'

In the short space of four years the newspapers contained three several

cases, two of which I cut out, and still have among my ocean of papers,

and which, as stated, were as nearly parallel, in external

accompaniments, to St. Paul's as cases can well be:--struck with

lightning,--heard the thunder as an articulate voice,--blind for a few

days, and suddenly recovered their sight. But then there was no Ananias,

no confirming revelation to another. This it was that justified St. Paul

as a wise man in regarding the incident as supernatural, or as more than

a providential omen. N. B. Not every revelation requires a sensible

miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of

'credenda'. The prophets appealed to records of acknowledged authority,

and to their obvious sense literally interpreted. The Baptist needed no

miracle to attest his right of calling sinners to repentance. See

'Exodus' iv. 10.

Ib. pp. 346, 7.

This sentiment, that miracles are not the proper evidences of

doctrinal truth, is, assuredly, the decision of the Truth itself; as

is obvious from many passages in Scripture. We have seen that the

design of the miracles of Moses, as external performances, was not to

instruct the Israelites in spiritual subjects, but to make them

obedient subjects of a peculiar species of political state. And though

the miracles of Jesus Christ collaterally served as testimonies to his

character, he repeatedly intimates that this was not their main

design. * * * At another time more plainly still, he says, that it is

'a wicked and adulterous generation' (that) 'seeketh after a sign'; on

which occasion, according to Mark, 'he sighed deeply in his spirit'.

How characteristic is that touch of the Apostle, 'The Jews require a

sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom!' (where by wisdom he means the

elegance and refinement of Grecian literature.)

Agreeing, as in the main I do, with the sentiments here expressed by

this eloquent writer, I must notice that he has, however, mistaken the

sense of the [Greek: saemeion], which the Jews would have tempted our

Saviour to shew,--namely, the signal for revolt by openly declaring

himself their king, and leading them against the Romans. The

foreknowledge that this superstition would shortly hurry them into utter

ruin caused the deep sigh,--as on another occasion, the bitter tears.

Again, by the [Greek: sophía] of the Greeks their disputatious [Greek:

sophistikàe] is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art:

and 'sophistæ' may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say,

iron-mongers.

Ib. p. 350.

Some probably will say, "What argument can induce us to believe a man

in a concern of this nature who gives no visible credentials to his

authority?" * * * But let us ask in return, "Is it worthy of a being

wearing the figure of a man to require such proofs as these to

determine his judgment?" * * * "The beasts act from the impulse of

their bodily senses, but are utterly incapable of seeing from reason

why they should so act: and it might easily be shewn, that while a man

thinks and acts under the influence of a miracle, he is as much

incapable of perceiving from any rational ground why he should thus

think and act, as a beast is." "What!" our opponents will perhaps

reply, * * * "Was it not by miracles that the prophets (some of them)

testified their authority? Do you not believe these facts?" Yes, my

friends, I do most entirely believe them, &c.

There is so much of truth in all this reasoning on miracles, that I feel

pain in the thought that the result is false,--because it was not the

whole truth. But this is the grounding, and at the same time pervading,

error of the Swedenborgians;--that they overlook the distinction between

congruity with reason, truth of consistency, or internal possibility of

this or that being objectively real, and the objective reality as fact.

Miracles, 'quoad' miracles, can never supply the place of subjective

evidence, that is, of insight. But neither can subjective insight supply

the place of objective sight. The certainty of the truth of a

mathematical arch can never prove the fact of its existence. I

anticipate the answers; but know that they likewise proceed from the

want of distinguishing between ideas, such as God, Eternity, the

responsible Will, the Good, and the like,--the actuality of which is

absolutely subjective, and includes both the relatively subjective and

the relatively objective as higher or transcendant realities, which

alone are the proper objects of faith, the great postulates of reason in

order to its own admission of its own being,--the not distinguishing, I

say, between these, and those positions which must be either matters of

fact or fictions. For such latter positions it is that miracles are

required in lieu of experience. A.'s testimony of experience supplies

the want of the same experience for B. C. D., &c. For example, how many

thousands believe the existence of red snow on the testimony of Captain

Parry! But who can expect more than hints in a marginal note?

Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.

In the general views, then, which are presented in the writings of

Swedenborg on the subject of Heaven and Hell, as the abodes,

respectively, of happiness and of misery, while there certainly is not

anything which is not in the highest degree agreeable both to reason

and Scripture, there also seems nothing which could be deemed

inconsistent with the usual conceptions of the Christian world.

What tends to render thinking readers a little sceptical, is the want of

a distinct boundary between the deductions from reason, and the

articles, the truth of which is to rest on the Baron's personal

testimony, his 'visa et audita'. Nor is the Baron himself (as it appears

to me) quite consistent on this point.

Ib. p. 434.

Witness, again, the poet Milton, who introduces active sports among

the recreations which he deemed worthy of angels, and (strange indeed

for a Puritan!) included even dancing among the number.

How could a man of Noble's sense and sensibility bring himself thus to

profane the awful name of Milton, by associating it with the epithet

"Puritan?"

I have often thought of writing a work to be entitled 'Vindiciæ

Heterodoxæ, sive celebrium virorum [Greek: paradogmatizóntôn] defensio';

that is, Vindication of Great Men unjustly branded; and at such times

the names prominent to my mind's eye have been Giordano Bruno, Jacob

Behmen, Benedict Spinoza, and Emanuel Swedenborg. Grant, that the origin

of the Swedenborgian theology is a problem; yet on which ever of the

three possible hypotheses--(possible I mean for gentlemen, scholars and

Christians)--it may be solved---namely:

1. Swedenborg's own assertion

and constant belief in the hypothesis of a supernatural illumination;

or,

2. that the great and excellent man was led into this belief by

becoming the subject of a very rare, but not (it is said) altogether

unique, conjunction of the somniative faculty (by which the products of

the understanding, that is to say, words, conceptions and the like, are

rendered instantaneously into forms of sense) with the voluntary and

other powers of the waking state; or,

3. the modest suggestion that the first and second may not be so

incompatible as they appear--still it ought never to be forgotten that

the merit and value of Swedenborg's system do only in a very secondary

degree depend on any one of the three. For even though the first were

adopted, the conviction and conversion of such a believer must,

according to a fundamental principle of the New Church, have been

wrought by an insight into the intrinsic truth and goodness of the

doctrines, severally and collectively, and their entire consonance with

the light of the written and of the eternal word, that is, with the

Scriptures and with the sciential and the practical reason. Or say that

the second hypothesis were preferred, and that by some hitherto

unexplained affections of Swedenborg's brain and nervous system, he from

the year 1743, thought and reasoned through the 'medium' and

instrumentality of a series of appropriate and symbolic visual and

auditual images, spontaneously rising before him, and these so clear and

so distinct, as at length to overpower perhaps his first suspicions of

their subjective nature, and to become objective for him, that is, in

his own belief of their kind and origin,--still the thoughts, the

reasonings, the grounds, the deductions, the facts illustrative, or in

proof, and the conclusions, remain the same; and the reader might derive

the same benefit from them as from the sublime and impressive truths

conveyed in the Vision of Mirza or the Tablet of Cebes. So much even

from a very partial acquaintance with the works of Swedenborg, I can

venture to assert; that as a moralist Swedenborg is above all praise;

and that as a naturalist, psychologist, and theologian, he has strong

and varied claims on the gratitude and admiration of the professional

and philosophical student.--April 1827.

P. S. Notwithstanding all that Mr. Noble says in justification of his

arrangement, it is greatly to be regretted that the contents of this

work are so confusedly tossed together. It is, however, a work of great

merit.

[Footnote 1: An Appeal in behalf of the views of the eternal world and

state, and the doctrines of faith and life, held by the body of

Christians who believe that a New Church is signified (in the

Revelation, c. xxi.) by the New Jerusalem, including Answers to

objections, particularly those of the Rev. G. Beaumont, in his work

entitled "The Anti-Swedenborg." Addressed to the reflecting of all

denominations. By Samuel Noble, Minister of Hanover Street Chapel,

London. London, 1826. Ed.]

* * * * *

ESSAY ON FAITH.

Faith may be defined, as fidelity to our own being--so far as such being

is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear

inference or implication, to being generally, as far as the same is not

the object of the senses: and again to whatever is affirmed or

understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same.

This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am

conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto

others as I would they should do unto me;--in other words, a categorical

(that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;--that the maxim

('regula maxima' or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and

outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising

therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings;--this, I

say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different

way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my

outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act of being conscious

of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact of which all men

either are or ought to be conscious;--a fact, the ignorance of which

constitutes either the non-personality of the ignorant, or the guilt, in

which latter case the ignorance is equivalent to knowledge wilfully

darkened. I know that I possess this consciousness as a man, and not as

Samuel Taylor Coleridge; hence knowing that consciousness of this fact

is the root of all other consciousness, and the only practical

contradistinction of man from the brutes, we name it the conscience; by

the natural absence or presumed presence of which, the law, both divine

and human, determines whether X Y Z be a thing or a person:--the

conscience being that which never to have had places the objects in the

same order of things as the brutes, for example, idiots; and to have

lost which implies either insanity or apostasy. Well--this we have

affirmed is a fact of which every honest man is as fully assured as of

his seeing, hearing or smelling. But though the former assurance does

not differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in

the kind; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is

essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in

any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will,

dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses

impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses

we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned,

we are passive;--but in the fact of the conscience we are not only

agents, but it is by this alone, that we know ourselves to be such; nay,

that our very passiveness in this latter is an act of passiveness, and

that we are patient ('patientes')--not, as in the other case, 'simply'

passive. The result is, the consciousness of responsibility; and the

proof is afforded by the inward experience of the diversity between

regret and remorse.

If I have sound ears, and my companion speaks to me with a due

proportion of voice, I may persuade him that I did not hear, but cannot

deceive myself. But when my conscience speaks to me, I can, by repeated

efforts, render myself finally insensible; to which add this other

difference in the case of conscience, namely, that to make myself deaf

is one and the same thing with making my conscience dumb, till at length

I become unconscious of my conscience. Frequent are the instances in

which it is suspended, and as it were drowned, in the inundation of the

appetites, passions and imaginations, to which I have resigned myself,

making use of my will in order to abandon my free-will; and there are

not, I fear, examples wanting of the conscience being utterly destroyed,

or of the passage of wickedness into madness;--that species of madness,

namely, in which the reason is lost. For so long as the reason

continues, so long must the conscience exist either as a good

conscience, or as a bad conscience.

It appears then, that even the very first step, that the initiation of

the process, the becoming conscious of a conscience, partakes of the

nature of an act. It is an act, in and by which we take upon ourselves

an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty; and this

fealty or fidelity implying the power of being unfaithful, it is the

first and fundamental sense of Faith. It is likewise the commencement of

experience, and the result of all other experience. In other words,

conscience, in this its simplest form, must be supposed in order to

consciousness, that is, to human consciousness. Brutes may be, and are

scions, but those beings only, who have an I, 'scire possunt hoc vel

illud una cum seipsis'; that is, 'conscire vel scire aliquid mecum', or

to know a thing in relation to myself, and in the act of knowing myself

as acted upon by that something.

Now the third person could never have been distinguished from the first

but by means of the second. There can be no He without a previous Thou.

Much less could an I exist for us, except as it exists during the

suspension of the will, as in dreams; and the nature of brutes may be

best understood, by conceiving them as somnambulists. This is a deep

meditation, though the position is capable of the strictest

proof,--namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and that a Thou

is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as equal to Thou,

and yet not the same. And this again is only possible by putting them in

opposition as correspondent opposites, or correlatives. In order to

this, a something must be affirmed in the one, which is rejected in the

other, and this something is the will. I do not will to consider myself

as equal to myself, for in the very act of constituting myself 'I', I

take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is,

of any application of the will. If then, I 'minus' the will be the

'thesis'; [2] Thou 'plus' will must be the 'antithesis', but the

equation of Thou with I, by means of a free act, negativing the sameness

in order to establish the equality, is the true definition of

conscience. But as without a Thou there can be no You, so without a You

no They, These or Those; and as all these conjointly form the materials

and subjects of consciousness, and the conditions of experience, it is

evident that the con-science is the root of all consciousness,--'a

fortiori', the precondition of all experience,--and that the conscience

cannot have been in its first revelation deduced from experience. Soon,

however, experience comes into play. We learn that there are other

impulses beside the dictates of conscience; that there are powers within

us and without us ready to usurp the throne of conscience, and busy in

tempting us to transfer our allegiance. We learn that there are many

things contrary to conscience, and therefore to be rejected, and utterly

excluded, and many that can coexist with its supremacy only by being

subjugated, as beasts of burthen; and others again, as, for instance,

the social tendernesses and affections, and the faculties and

excitations of the intellect, which must be at least subordinated. The

preservation of our loyalty and fealty under these trials and against

these rivals constitutes the second sense of Faith; and we shall need

but one more point of view to complete its full import. This is the

consideration of what is presupposed in the human conscience. The answer

is ready. As in the equation of the correlative I and Thou, one of the

twin constituents is to be taken as 'plus' will, the other as 'minus'

will, so is it here: and it is obvious that the reason or

'super'-individual of each man, whereby he is man, is the factor we are

to take as 'minus' will; and that the individual will or personalizing

principle of free agency (arbitrement is Milton's word) is the factor

marked 'plus' will;--and again, that as the identity or coinherence of

the absolute will and the reason, is the peculiar character of God; so

is the 'synthesis' of the individual will and the common reason, by the

subordination of the former to the latter, the only possible likeness or

image of the 'prothesis', or identity, and therefore the required proper

character of man. Conscience, then, is a witness respecting the identity

of the will and the reason effected by the self-subordination of the

will, or self, to the reason, as equal to, or representing, the will of

God. But the personal will is a factor in other moral 'syntheses'; for

example, appetite 'plus' personal will=sensuality; lust of power, 'plus'

personal will,=ambition, and so on, equally as in the 'synthesis', on

which the conscience is grounded. Not this therefore, but the other

'synthesis', must supply the specific character of the conscience; and

we must enter into an analysis of reason. Such as the nature and objects

of the reason are, such must be the functions and objects of the

conscience. And the former we shall best learn by recapitulating those

constituents of the total man which are either contrary to, or disparate

from, the reason.

I. Reason, and the proper objects of reason, are wholly alien from

sensation. Reason is supersensual, and its antagonist is

appetite, and the objects of appetite the lust of the flesh.

II. Reason and its objects do not appertain to the world of the

senses inward or outward; that is, they partake not of sense or

fancy. Reason is super-sensuous, and here its antagonist is the

lust of the eye.

III. Reason and its objects are not things of reflection, association,

discursion, discourse in the old sense of the word as opposed to

intuition; "discursive or intuitive," as Milton has it. Reason

does not indeed necessarily exclude the finite, either in time or

in space, but it includes them 'eminenter'. Thus the prime mover

of the material universe is affirmed to contain all motion as its

cause, but not to be, or to suffer, motion in itself.

Reason is not the faculty of the finite. But here I must premise the

following. The faculty of the finite is that which reduces the confused

impressions of sense to their essential forms,--quantity, quality,

relation, and in these action and reaction, cause and effect, and the

like; thus raises the materials furnished by the senses and sensations

into objects of reflection, and so makes experience possible. Without

it, man's representative powers would be a delirium, a chaos, a scudding

cloudage of shapes; and it is therefore most appropriately called the

understanding, or substantiative faculty. Our elder metaphysicians, down

to Hobbes inclusively, called this likewise discourse, 'discursus,

discursio,' from its mode of action as not staying at any one object,

but running as it were to and fro to abstract, generalize, and classify.

Now when this faculty is employed in the service of the pure reason, it

brings out the necessary and universal truths contained in the infinite

into distinct contemplation by the pure act of the sensuous imagination,

that is, in the production of the forms of space and time abstracted

from all corporeity, and likewise of the inherent forms of the

understanding itself abstractedly from the consideration of particulars,

as in the case of geometry, numeral mathematics, universal logic, and

pure metaphysics. The discursive faculty then becomes what our

Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason."

We will now take up our reasoning again from the words "motion in

itself."

It is evident then, that the reason, as the irradiative power, and the

representative of the infinite, judges the understanding as the faculty

of the finite, and cannot without error be judged by it. When this is

attempted, or when the understanding in its 'synthesis' with the

personal will, usurps the supremacy of the reason, or affects to

supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the

flesh ([Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]) or the wisdom of this world. The

result is, that the reason is super-finite; and in this relation, its

antagonist is the insubordinate understanding, or mind of the flesh.

IV. Reason, as one with the absolute will, ('In the beginning was the

Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God',) and

therefore for man the certain representative of the will of God, is

above the will of man as an individual will. We have seen in III.

that it stands in antagonism to all mere particulars; but here it

stands in antagonism to all mere individual interests as so many

selves, to the personal will as seeking its objects in the

manifestation of itself for itself--'sit pro ratione

voluntas';--whether this be realized with adjuncts, as in the lust

of the flesh, and in the lust of the eye; or without adjuncts, as in

the thirst and pride of power, despotism, egoistic ambition. The

fourth antagonist, then, of reason is the lust of the will.

Corollary. Unlike a million of tigers, a million of men is very

different from a million times one man. Each man in a numerous society

is not only coexistent with, but virtually organized into, the multitude

of which he is an integral part. His 'idem' is modified by the 'alter'.

And there arise impulses and objects from this 'synthesis' of the 'alter

et idem', myself and my neighbour. This, again, is strictly analogous to

what takes place in the vital organization of the individual man. The

cerebral system of nerves has its correspondent 'antithesis' in the

abdominal system: but hence arises a 'synthesis' of the two in the

pectoral system as the intermediate, and, like a drawbridge, at once

conductor and boundary. In the latter as objectized by the former arise

the emotions, affections, and in one word, the passions, as

distinguished from the cognitions and appetites. Now the reason has been

shown to be super-individual, generally, and therefore not less so when

the form of an individualization subsists in the 'alter', than when it

is confined to the 'idem'; not less when the emotions have their

conscious or believed object in another, than when their subject is the

individual personal self. For though these emotions, affections,

attachments, and the like, are the prepared ladder by which the lower

nature is taken up into, and made to partake of, the highest room,--as

we are taught to give a feeling of reality to the higher 'per medium

commune' with the lower, and thus gradually to see the reality of the

higher (namely, the objects of reason) and finally to know that the

latter are indeed and pre-eminently real, as if you love your earthly

parents whom you see, by these means you will learn to love your

Heavenly Father who is invisible;--yet this holds good only so far as

the reason is the president, and its objects the ultimate aim; and cases

may arise in which the Christ as the Logos or Redemptive Reason

declares, 'He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of

me'; nay, he that can permit his emotions to rise to an equality with

the universal reason, is in enmity with that reason. Here then reason

appears as the love of God; and its antagonist is the attachment to

individuals wherever it exists in diminution of, or in competition with,

the love which is reason.

In these five paragraphs I have enumerated and explained the several

powers or forces belonging or incidental to human nature, which in all

matters of reason the man is bound either to subjugate or subordinate to

reason. The application to Faith follows of its own accord. The first or

most indefinite sense of faith is fidelity: then fidelity under previous

contract or particular moral obligation. In this sense faith is fealty

to a rightful superior: faith is the duty of a faithful subject to a

rightful governor. Then it is allegiance in active service; fidelity to

the liege lord under circumstances, and amid the temptations, of

usurpation, rebellion, and intestine discord. Next we seek for that

rightful superior on our duties to whom all our duties to all other

superiors, on our faithfulness to whom all our bounden relations to all

other objects of fidelity, are founded. We must inquire after that duty

in which all others find their several degrees and dignities, and from

which they derive their obligative force. We are to find a superior,

whose rights, including our duties, are presented to the mind in the

very idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are

predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a

circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle, consequently

underived, unconditional, and as rationally insusceptible, so probably

prohibitive, of all further question. In this sense then faith is

fidelity, fealty, allegiance of the moral nature to God, in opposition

to all usurpation, and in resistance to all temptation to the placing

any other claim above or equal with our fidelity to God.

The will of God is the last ground and final aim of all our duties, and

to that the whole man is to be harmonized by subordination, subjugation,

or suppression alike in commission and omission. But the will of God,

which is one with the supreme intelligence, is revealed to man through

the conscience. But the conscience, which consists in an inappellable

bearing-witness to the truth and reality of our reason, may legitimately

be construed with the term reason, so far as the conscience is

prescriptive; while as approving or condemning, it is the consciousness

of the subordination or insubordination, the harmony or discord, of the

personal will of man to and with the representative of the will of God.

This brings me to the last and fullest sense of Faith, that is, as the

obedience of the individual will to the reason, in the lust of the flesh

as opposed to the supersensual; in the lust of the eye as opposed to the

supersensuous; in the pride of the understanding as opposed to the

infinite, in the [Greek: phronaema sarkos] in contrariety to the

spiritual truth; in the lust of the personal will as opposed to the

absolute and universal; and in the love of the creature, as far as it is

opposed to the love which is one with the reason, namely, the love of

God.

Thus then to conclude. Faith subsists in the 'synthesis' of the reason

and the individual will. By virtue of the latter therefore it must be an

energy, and inasmuch as it relates to the whole moral man, it must be

exerted in each and all of his constituents or incidents, faculties and

tendencies;--it must be a total, not a partial; a continuous, not a

desultory or occasional energy. And by virtue of the former, that is,

reason, faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of truth.

In the incomparable words of the Evangelist, therefore--'faith must be a

light originating in the Logos, or the substantial reason, which is

coeternal and one with the Holy Will, and which light is at the same

time the life of men'. Now as life is here the sum or collective of all

moral and spiritual acts, in suffering, doing, and being, so is faith

the source and the sum, the energy and the principle of the fidelity of

man to God, by the subordination of his human will, in all provinces of

his nature to his reason, as the sum of spiritual truth, representing

and manifesting the will Divine.

END OF VOL. IV. (The Final Volume in this series.)