Part I.

THE LITERARY REMAINS

OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

VOLUME THE THIRD

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE.

1838

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE THE THIRD AND FOURTH VOLUMES

OF COLERIDGE'S REMAINS ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

CONTENTS

Preface

Formula Fidei de SS. Trinitate

Nightly Prayer

Notes on 'The Book of Common Prayer'

Notes on Hooker

Notes on Field

Notes on Donne

Notes on Henry More

Notes on Heinrichs

Notes on Hacket

Notes on Jeremy Taylor

Notes on 'The Pilgrim's Progress'

Notes on John Smith

Letter to a Godchild

PREFACE

For a statement of the circumstances under which the collection of Mr.

Coleridge's Literary Remains was undertaken, the Reader is referred to

the Preface to the two preceding Volumes published in 1836. But the

graver character of the general contents of this Volume and of that

which will immediately follow it, seems to justify the Editor in

soliciting particular attention to a few additional remarks.

Although the Author in his will contemplated the publication of some at

least of the numerous notes left by him on the margins and blank spaces

of books and pamphlets, he most certainly wrote the notes themselves

without any purpose beyond that of delivering his mind of the thoughts

and aspirations suggested by the text under perusal. His books, that is,

any person's books--even those from a circulating library--were to him,

whilst reading them, as dear friends; he conversed with them as with

their authors, praising, or censuring, or qualifying, as the open page

seemed to give him cause; little solicitous in so doing to draw

summaries or to strike balances of literary merit, but seeking rather to

detect and appreciate the moving principle or moral life, ever one and

single, of the work in reference to absolute truth. Thus employed he had

few reserves, but in general poured forth, as in a confessional, all his

mind upon every subject,--not keeping back any doubt or conjecture which

at the time and for the purpose seemed worthy of consideration. In

probing another's heart he laid his hand upon his own. He thought pious

frauds the worst of all frauds, and the system of economizing truth too

near akin to the corruption of it to be generally compatible with the

Job-like integrity of a true Christian's conscience. Further, he

distinguished so strongly between that internal faith which lies at the

base of, and supports, the whole moral and religious being of man, and

the belief, as historically true, of several incidents and relations

found or supposed to be found in the text of the Scriptures, that he

habitually exercised a liberty of criticism with respect to the latter,

which will probably seem objectionable to many of his readers in this

country. [1]

His friends have always known this to be the fact; and he vindicated

this so openly that it would be folly to attempt to conceal it: nay, he

pleaded for it so earnestly--as the only middle path of safety and peace

between a godless disregard of the unique and transcendant character of

the Bible taken generally, and that scheme of interpretation, scarcely

less adverse to the pure spirit of Christian wisdom, which wildly arrays

our faith in opposition to our reason, and inculcates the sacrifice of

the latter to the former,--that to suppress this important part of his

solemn convictions would be to misrepresent and betray him. For he threw

up his hands in dismay at the language of some of our modern divinity on

this point;--as if a faith not founded on insight were aught else than a

specious name for wilful positiveness;--as if the Father of Lights could

require, or would accept, from the only one of his creatures whom he had

endowed with reason the sacrifice of fools! Did Coleridge, therefore,

mean that the doctrines revealed in the Scriptures were to be judged

according to their supposed harmony or discrepancy with the evidence of

the senses, or the deductions of the mere understanding from that

evidence? Exactly the reverse: he disdained to argue even against

Transubstantiation on such a ground, well knowing and loudly proclaiming

its utter weakness and instability. But it was a leading principle in

all his moral and intellectual views to assert the existence in all men

equally of a power or faculty superior to, and independent of, the

external senses: in this power or faculty he recognized that image of

God in which man was made; and he could as little understand how faith,

the indivisibly joint act or efflux of our reason and our will, should

be at variance with one of its factors or elements, as how the Author

and Upholder of all truth should be in contradiction to himself. He

trembled at the dreadful dogma which rests God's right to man's

obedience on the fact of his almighty power,--a position falsely

inferred from a misconceived illustration of St. Paul's, and which is

less humbling to the creature than blasphemous of the Creator; and of

the awless doctrine that God might, if he had so pleased, have given to

man a religion which to human intelligence should not be rational, and

exacted his faith in it--Coleridge's whole middle and later life was one

deep and solemn denial. He believed in no God in the very idea of whose

existence absolute truth, perfect goodness, and infinite wisdom, were

not elements essentially necessary and everlastingly copresent.

Thus minded, he sought to justify the ways of God to man in the only way

in which they can be justified to any one who deals honestly with his

conscience, namely, by showing, where possible, their consequence from,

and in all cases their consistency with, the ideas or truths of the pure

reason which is the same in all men. With what success he laboured for

thirty years in this mighty cause of Christian philosophy, the readers

of his other works, especially the Aids to Reflection, will judge: if

measured by the number of resolved points of detail his progress may

seem small; but if tested by the weight and grasp of the principles

which he has established, it may be confidently said that since

Christianity had a name few men have gone so far. If ever we are to find

firm footing in Biblical criticism between the extremes (how often

meeting!) of Socinianism and Popery;--if the indisputable facts of

physical science are not for ever to be left in a sort of admitted

antagonism to the supposed assertions of Scripture;--if ever the

Christian duty of faith in God through Christ is to be reconciled with

the religious service of a being gifted by the same God with reason and

a will, and subjected to a conscience,--it must be effected by the aid,

and in the light, of those truths of deepest philosophy which in all Mr.

Coleridge's works, published or unpublished, present themselves to the

reader with an almost affecting reiteration. But to do justice to those

works and adequately to appreciate the Author's total mind upon any

given point, a cursory perusal is insufficient; study and comprehension

are requisite to an accurate estimate of the relative value of any

particular denial or assertion; and the apparently desultory and

discontinuous form of the observations now presented to the Reader more

especially calls for the exercise of his patience and thoughtful

circumspection.

With this view the Reader is requested to observe the dates which, in

some instances, the Editor has been able to affix to the notes with

certainty. Most of those on Jeremy Taylor belong to the year 1810, and

were especially designed for the perusal of Charles Lamb. Those on Field

were written about 1814; on Racket in 1818; on Donne in 1812 and 1829;

on The Pilgrim's Progress in 1833; and on Hooker and the Book of Common

Prayer between 1820 and 1830. Coleridge's mind was a growing and

accumulating mind to the last, his whole life one of inquiry and

progressive insight, and the dates of his opinions are therefore in some

cases important, and in all interesting.

The Editor is deeply sensible of his responsibility in publishing this

Volume; as to which he can only say, in addition to a reference to the

general authority given by the Author, that to the best of his knowledge

and judgment he has not permitted any thing to appear before the public

which Mr. Coleridge saw reason to retract; and further express his hope

and belief that, with such allowance for defects inherent in the nature

of the work as may rightfully be expected from every really liberal

mind, nothing contained in the following pages can fairly be a ground of

offence to any one.

It only remains to be added that the materials used in the compilation

of this Volume were for the greatest part communicated by Mr. Gillman;

and that the rest were furnished by Mr. Wordsworth, the Rev. Derwent

Coleridge, the Rev. Edward Coleridge, and the Editor.

Lincoln's Inn, March 26, 1838

[Footnote 1: See 'Table Talk', p. 178, 2nd edit.]

FORMULA FIDEI DE SANCTISSIMA TRINITATE.

1830.

THE IDENTITY.

The absolute subjectivity, whose only attribute is the Good; whose only

definition is--that which is essentially causative of all possible true

being; the ground; the absolute will; the adorable [Greek: pr_ópr_oton],

which, whatever is assumed as the first, must be presumed as its

antecedent; [Greek: theòs], without an article, and yet not as an

adjective. See John i. 18. [Greek: theòn oudeìs he_órake p_ópote] as

differenced from ib. 1, [Greek: kai theòs aen o lógos]

But that which is essentially causative of all being must be causative

of its own,--'causa sui', [Greek: autopát_or]. Thence

THE IPSEITY.

The eternally self-affirmant self-affirmed; the "I Am in that I Am," or

the "I shall be that I will to be;" the Father; the relatively

subjective, whose attribute is, the Holy One; whose definition is, the

essential finific in the form of the infinite; 'dat sibi fines'.

But the absolute will, the absolute good, in the eternal act of

self-affirmation, the Good as the Holy One, co-eternally begets

THE ALTERITY.

The supreme being; [Greek: ho ont'os 'on]; the supreme reason; the

Jehovah; the Son; the Word; whose attribute is the True (the truth, the

light, the 'fiat'); and whose definition is, the 'pleroma' of being,

whose essential poles are unity and distinctity; or the essential

infinite in the form of the finite;--lastly, the relatively objective,

'deitas objectiva' in relation to the I Am as the 'deitas subjectiva';

the divine objectivity.

N.B. The distinctities in the 'pleroma' are the eternal ideas, the

subsistential truths; each considered in itself, an infinite in the form

of the finite; but all considered as one with the unity, the eternal

Son, they are the energies of the finific; [Greek: pánta di' autou

egéneto--kaì ek tou plaer'ómatos autou haemeis pántes elábomen.] John

i. 3 and 16.

But with the relatively subjective and the relatively objective, the

great idea needs only for its completion a co-eternal which is both,

that is, relatively objective to the subjective, relatively subjective

to the objective. Hence

THE COMMUNITY.

The eternal life, which is love; the Spirit; relatively to the Father,

the Spirit of Holiness, the Holy Spirit; relatively to the Son, the

Spirit of truth, whose attribute is Wisdom; 'sancta sophia'; the Good in

the reality of the True, in the form of actual Life. Holy! Holy! Holy!

[Greek: hilásthaetí moi].

A NIGHTLY PRAYER.

1831.

Almighty God, by thy eternal Word my Creator, Redeemer and Preserver!

who hast in thy free communicative goodness glorified me with the

capability of knowing thee, the one only absolute Good, the eternal I

Am, as the author of my being, and of desiring and seeking thee as its

ultimate end;--who, when I fell from thee into the mystery of the false

and evil will, didst not abandon me, poor self-lost creature, but in thy

condescending mercy didst provide an access and a return to thyself,

even to thee the Holy One, in thine only begotten Son, the way and the

truth from everlasting, and who took on himself humanity, yea, became

flesh, even the man Christ Jesus, that for man he might be the life and

the resurrection!--O Giver of all good gifts, who art thyself the one

only absolute Good, from whom I have received whatever good I have,

whatever capability of good there is in me, and from thee good

alone,--from myself and my own corrupted will all evil and the

consequents of evil,--with inward prostration of will, mind, and

affections I adore thy infinite majesty; I aspire to love thy

transcendant goodness!--In a deep sense of my unworthiness, and my

unfitness to present myself before thee, of eyes too pure to behold

iniquity, and whose light, the beatitude of spirits conformed to thy

will, is a consuming fire to all vanity and corruption;--but in the name

of the Lord Jesus, of the dear Son of thy love, in whose perfect

obedience thou deignest to behold as many as have received the seed of

Christ into the body of this death;--I offer this my bounden nightly

sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in humble trust, that the

fragrance of my Saviour's righteousness may remove from it the taint of

my mortal corruption. Thy mercies have followed me through all the hours

and moments of my life; and now I lift up my heart in awe and

thankfulness for the preservation of my life through the past day, for

the alleviation of my bodily sufferings and languors, for the manifold

comforts which thou hast reserved for me, yea, in thy fatherly

compassion hast rescued from the wreck of my own sins or sinful

infirmities;--for the kind and affectionate friends thou hast raised up

for me, especially for those of this household, for the mother and

mistress of this family whose love to me hath been great and faithful,

and for the dear friend, the supporter and sharer of my studies and

researches; but above all, for the heavenly Friend, the crucified

Saviour, the glorified Mediator, Christ Jesus, and for the heavenly

Comforter, source of all abiding comforts, thy Holy Spirit! O grant me

the aid of thy Spirit, that I may with a deeper faith, a more enkindled

love, bless thee, who through thy Son hast privileged me to call thee

Abba, Father! O, thou who hast revealed thyself in thy holy word as a

God that hearest prayer; before whose infinitude all differences cease

of great and small; who like a tender parent foreknowest all our wants,

yet listenest well-pleased to the humble petitions of thy children; who

hast not alone permitted, but taught us, to call on thee in all our

needs,--earnestly I implore the continuance of thy free mercy, of thy

protecting providence, through the coming night. Thou hearest every

prayer offered to thee believingly with a penitent and sincere heart.

For thou in withholding grantest, healest in inflicting the wound, yea,

turnest all to good for as many as truly seek thee through Christ, the

Mediator! Thy will be done! But if it be according to thy wise and

righteous ordinances, O shield me this night from the assaults of

disease, grant me refreshment of sleep unvexed by evil and distempered

dreams; and if the purpose and aspiration of my heart be upright before

thee who alone knowest the heart of man, O in thy mercy vouchsafe me yet

in this my decay of life an interval of ease and strength; if so (thy

grace disposing and assisting) I may make compensation to thy church for

the unused talents thou hast entrusted to me, for the neglected

opportunities, which thy loving-kindness had provided. O let me be found

a labourer in the vineyard, though of the late hour, when the Lord and

Heir of the vintage, Christ Jesus, calleth for his servant.

'Our Father', &c.

To thee, great omnipresent Spirit, whose mercy is over all thy works,

who now beholdest me, who hearest me, who hast framed my heart to seek

and to trust in thee, in the name of my Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, I

humbly commit and commend my body, soul, and spirit.

Glory be to thee, O God!

NOTES ON THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.

PRAYER.

A man may pray night and day, and yet deceive himself; but no man can be

assured of his sincerity, who does not pray. Prayer is faith passing

into act; a union of the will and the intellect realizing in an

intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is

wishing, or lip-work; a charm or a mummery. 'Pray always', says the

Apostle;--that is, have the habit of prayer, turning your thoughts into

acts by connecting them with the idea of the redeeming God, and even so

reconverting your actions into thoughts.

THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST.

The best preparation for taking this sacrament, better than any or all

of the books or tracts composed for this end, is, to read over and over

again, and often on your knees--at all events, with a kneeling and

praying heart--the Gospel according to St. John, till your mind is

familiarized to the contemplation of Christ, the Redeemer and Mediator

of mankind, yea, and of every creature, as the living and

self-subsisting Word, the very truth of all true being, and the very

being of all enduring truth; the reality, which is the substance and

unity of all reality; 'the light which lighteth every man', so that what

we call reason, is itself a light from that light, 'lumen a luce', as

the Latin more distinctly expresses this fact. But it is not merely

light, but therein is life; and it is the life of Christ, the co-eternal

son of God, that is the only true life-giving light of men. We are

assured, and we believe that Christ is God; God manifested in the flesh.

As God, he must be present entire in every creature;--(for how can God,

or indeed any spirit, exist in parts?)--but he is said to dwell in the

regenerate, to come to them who receive him by faith in his name, that

is, in his power and influence; for this is the meaning of the word

'name' in Scripture when applied to God or his Christ. Where true belief

exists, Christ is not only present with or among us;--for so he is in

every man, even the most wicked;--but to us and for us.

'That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into

the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the

world knew him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power

to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name;

which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of

the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt

among us.'

John i. 9-14.

Again

'We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.'

John xiv. 23.

As truly and as really as your soul resides constitutively in your

living body, so truly, really, personally, and substantially does Christ

dwell in every regenerate man.

After this course of study, you may then take up and peruse sentence by

sentence the communion service, the best of all comments on the

Scriptures appertaining to this mystery. And this is the preparation

which will prove, with God's grace, the surest preventive of, or

antidote against, the freezing poison, the lethargizing hemlock, of the

doctrine of the Sacramentaries, according to whom the Eucharist is a

mere practical metaphor, in which things are employed instead of

articulated sounds for the exclusive purpose of recalling to our minds

the historical fact of our Lord's crucifixion; in short--(the

profaneness is with them, not with me)--just the same as when

Protestants drink a glass of wine to the glorious memory of William III!

True it is, that the remembrance is one end of the sacrament; but it is,

'Do this in remembrance of me',--of all that Christ was and is, hath

done and is still doing for fallen mankind, and of course of his

crucifixion inclusively, but not of his crucifixion alone.

14 December, 1827.

COMPANION TO THE ALTAR.

First then, that we may come to this heavenly feast holy, and adorned

with the wedding garment, Matt. xxii. 11, we must search our hearts,

and examine our consciences, not only till we see our sins, but until

we hate them.

But what if a man, seeing his sin, earnestly desire to hate it? Shall he

not at the altar offer up at once his desire, and the yet lingering sin,

and seek for strength? Is not this sacrament medicine as well as food?

Is it an end only, and not likewise the means? Is it merely the

triumphal feast; or is it not even more truly a blessed refreshment for

and during the conflict?

This confession of sins must not be in general terms only, that we are

sinners with the rest of mankind, but it must be a special declaration

to God of all our most heinous sins in thought, word, and deed.

Luther was of a different judgment. He would have us feel and groan

under our sinfulness and utter incapability of redeeming ourselves from

the bondage, rather than hazard the pollution of our imaginations by a

recapitulation and renewing of sins and their images in detail. Do not,

he says, stand picking the flaws out one by one, but plunge into the

river, and drown them!--I venture to be of Luther's doctrine.

COMMUNION SERVICE.

In the first Exhortation, before the words 'meritorious Cross and

Passion,' I should propose to insert 'his assumption of humanity, his

incarnation, and.'

Likewise a little lower down, after the word 'sustenance,' I would

insert 'as.'

For not in that sacrament exclusively, but in all the acts of

assimilative faith, of which the Eucharist is a solemn, eminent, and

representative instance, an instance and the symbol, Christ is our

spiritual food and sustenance.

MARRIAGE SERVICE.

Marriage, simply as marriage, is not the means 'for the procreation of

children,' but for the humanization of the offspring procreated.

Therefore in the Declaration at the beginning, after the words,

'procreation of children,' I would insert, 'and as the means for

securing to the children procreated enduring care, and that they may be'

&c.

COMMUNION OF THE SICK.

Third rubric at the end.

But if a man, either by reason of extremity of sickness, &c.

I think this rubric, in what I conceive to be its true meaning, a

precious document, as fully acquitting our Church of all Romish

superstition, respecting the nature of the Eucharist, in relation to the

whole scheme of man's redemption. But the latter part of it--'he doth

eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his

soul's health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his

mouth'--seems to me very incautiously expressed, and scarcely to be

reconciled with the Church's own definition of a sacrament in general.

For in such a case, where is 'the outward and visible sign of the inward

and spiritual grace given?' [1]

[Footnote 1:

'Should it occur to any one that the doctrine blamed in the text, is

but in accordance with that of the Church of England, in her rubric

concerning spiritual communion, annexed to the Office for Communion of

the Sick: he may consider, whether that rubric, explained (as if

possible it must be) in consistency with the definition of a sacrament

in the Catechism, can be meant for any but rare and extraordinary

cases: cases as strong in regard of the Eucharist, as that of

martyrdom, or the premature death of a well-disposed catechumen, in

regard of Baptism.'

Keble's Pref. to Hooker, p. 85, n. 70. Ed.]

XI SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

Epistle.--1 Cor. xv. 1.

Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you.

Why should the obsolete, though faithful, Saxon translation of [Greek:

euaggélion] be retained? Why not 'good tidings?' Why thus change a most

appropriate and intelligible designation of the matter into a mere

conventional name of a particular book?

Ib.

... how that Christ died for our sins.

But the meaning of [Greek: upèr ton hamarti_on haem_on] is, that Christ

died through the sins, and for the sinners. He died through our sins,

and we live through his righteousness.

Gospel, Luke xviii. 14.

This man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

Not simply justified, observe; but justified rather than the other,

[Greek: ae ekeinos],--that is, less remote from salvation.

XXV. SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

Collect.

... that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may

of thee be plenteously rewarded. ...

Rather--"that with that enlarged capacity, which without thee we cannot

acquire, there may likewise be an increase of the gift, which from thee

alone we can wholly receive."

PS. VIII.

v. 2.

'Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast thou ordained

strength, because of thine enemies; that thou mightest still the enemy

and the avenger'.

To the dispensations of the twilight dawn, to the first messengers of

the redeeming word, the yet lisping utterers of light and life, a

strength and a power were given 'because of the enemies', greater and of

more immediate influence, than to the seers and proclaimers of a clearer

day:--even as the first re-appearing crescent of the eclipsed moon

shines for men with a keener brilliance, than the following larger

segments, previously to its total emersion.

Ib. v. 5.

'Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and

worship'.

Power + idea = angel.

Idea - power = man, or Prometheus.

PS. LXVIII.

v. 34.

'Ascribe ye the power to God over Israel: his worship and strength is

in the clouds'.

The 'clouds' in the symbolical language of the Scriptures mean the

events and course of things, seemingly effects of human will or chance,

but overruled by Providence.

PS. LXXII.

This Psalm admits no other interpretation but of Christ, as the Jehovah

incarnate. In any other sense, it would be a specimen of more than

Persian or Moghul hyperbole and bombast, of which there is no other

instance in Scripture, and which no Christian would dare to attribute to

an inspired writer. We know, too, that the elder Jewish Church ranked it

among the Messianic Psalms. N.B. The Word in St. John, and the Name of

the Most High in the Psalms, are equivalent terms.

v. 1.

'Give the king thy judgments, O God; and thy righteousness unto the

king's son'.

God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, the only begotten, the

Son of God and God, King of Kings, and the Son of the King of Kings!

PS. LXXIV.

v. 2.

'O think upon thy congregation, whom thou hast purchased and redeemed

of old'.

The Lamb sacrificed from the beginning of the world, the God-Man, the

Judge, the self-promised Redeemer to Adam in the garden!

v. 15.

'Thou smotest the heads of Leviathan in pieces; and gavest him to be

meat for the people in the wilderness'.

Does this allude to any real tradition? [1] The Psalm appears to have

been composed shortly before the captivity of Judah.

[Footnote 1: According to Bishop Horne, the allusion is to the

destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.--Ed.]

PS. LXXXII. vv. 6-7.

The reference which our Lord made to these mysterious verses, gives them

an especial interest. The first apostasy, the fall of the angels, is,

perhaps, intimated.

PS. LXXXVII.

I would fain understand this Psalm; but first I must collate it word by

word with the original Hebrew. It seems clearly Messianic.

PS. LXXXVIII.

vv. 10--12.

'Dost than shew wonders among the dead, or shall the dead rise up

again and praise thee?' &c.

Compare Ezekiel xxxvii.

PS. CIV.

I think the Bible version might with advantage be substituted for this,

which in some parts is scarcely intelligible.

v. 6.

'the waters stand in the hills.'

No; 'stood above the mountains'. The reference is to the Deluge.

PS. CV.

v. 3.

'Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord.'

If even to seek the Lord be joy, what will it be to find him? Seek me, O

Lord, that I may be found by thee!

PS. CX.

v. 2.

'The Lord shall send the rod of thy power out of Sion'; (saying)

'Rule', &c.

v. 3. Understand:

'Thy people shall offer themselves willingly in the day of conflict in

holy clothing, in their best array, in their best arms and

accoutrements. As the dew from the womb of the morning, in number and

brightness like dew-drops; so shall be thy youth, or the youth of

thee, the young volunteer warriors.'

v. 5.

'He shall shake,'

concuss, 'concutiet reges die iræ suæ,'

v. 6. For

'smite in sunder, or wound, the heads;'

some word answering to the Latin 'conquassare'.

v. 7. For 'therefore,' translate 'then shall he lift up his head again;'

that is, as a man languid and sinking from thirst and fatigue after

refreshment.

N.B. I see no poetic discrepancy between vv. 1 and 5.

PS. CXVIII.

To be interpreted of Christ's church.

PS. CXXVI.

v. 5.

'As the rivers in the south.'

Does this allude to the periodical rains? [1]

As a transparency on some night of public rejoicing, seen by common day,

with the lamps from within removed--even such would the Psalms be to me

uninterpreted by the Gospel. O honored Mr. Hurwitz! Could I but make you

feel what grandeur, what magnificence, what an everlasting significance

and import Christianity gives to every fact of your national history--to

every page of your sacred records!

[Footnote 1: See Horne in loc. note.--Ed.]

ARTICLES OF RELIGION.

XX.

It is mournful to think how many recent writers have criminated our

Church in consequence of their own ignorance and inadvertence in not

knowing, or not noticing, the contra-distinction here meant between

power and authority. Rites and ceremonies the Church may ordain 'jure

proprio': on matters of faith her judgment is to be received with

reverence, and not gainsaid but after repeated inquiries, and on weighty

grounds.

XXXVII.

It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the magistrate,

to wear weapons, and to serve in the wars.

This is a very good instance of an unseemly matter neatly wrapped up.

The good men recoiled from the plain words:

'It is lawful for Christian men at the command of a king to slaughter

as many Christians as they can!'

Well! I could most sincerely subscribe to all these articles.

September, 1831.

NOTES ON HOOKER. [1]

'LIFE OF HOOKER' BY WALTON.

p. 67.

Mr. Travers excepted against Mr. Hooker, for that in one of his

sermons he declared, 'That the assurance of what we believe by the

word of God, is not to us so certain as that which we perceive by

sense.' And Mr. Hooker confesseth he said so, and endeavours to

justify it by the reasons following.

There is, I confess, a shade of doubt on my mind as to this position of

Hooker's. Yet I do not deny that it expresses a truth. The question in

my mind is, only, whether it adequately expresses the whole truth. The

ground of my doubt lies in my inability to compare two things that

differ in kind. It is impossible that any conviction of the reason, even

where no act of the will advenes as a co-efficient, should possess the

vividness of an immediate object of the senses; for the vividness is

given by sensation. Equally impossible is it that any truth of the

super-sensuous reason should possess the evidence of the pure sense.

Even the mathematician does not find the same evidence in the results of

transcendental algebra as in the demonstrations of simple geometry. But

has he less assurance? In answer to Hooker's argument I say,--that God

refers to our sensible experience to aid our will by the vividness of

sensible impressions, and also to aid our understanding of the truths

revealed,--not to increase the conviction of their certainty where they

have been understood.

WALTON'S APPENDIX.

Ib. p. 116.

It is a strange blind story this of the last three books, and of

Hooker's live relict, the Beast without Beauty. But Saravia?--If honest

Isaac's account of the tender, confidential, even confessional,

friendship of Hooker and Saravia be accurate, how chanced it that Hooker

did not entrust the manuscripts to his friend who stood beside him in

his last moments? At all events, Saravia must have known whether they

had or had not received the author's last hand. Why were not Mr. Charke

and the other Canterbury parson called to account, or questioned at

least as to the truth of Mrs. Joan's story? Verily, I cannot help

suspecting that the doubt cast on the authenticity of the latter books

by the high church party originated in their dislike of portions of the

contents.--In short, it is a blind story, a true Canterbury tale, dear

Isaac! [2]

OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.

Pref. c. iii. 7. p. 182.

The next thing hereunto is, to impute all faults and corruptions,

wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical

government established.

How readily would this, and indeed all the disputes respecting the

powers and constitution of Church government have been settled, or

perhaps prevented, had there been an insight into the distinct nature

and origin of the National Church and the Church under Christ! [3] To

the ignorance of this, all the fierce contentions between the Puritans

and the Episcopalians under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, all the errors

and exorbitant pretensions of the Church of Scotland, and the heats and

antipathies of our present Dissenters, may be demonstrably traced.

Ib. 9. p. 183.

Pythagoras, by bringing up his scholars in the speculative knowledge

of numbers, made their conceits therein so strong, that when they came

to the contemplation of things natural, they imagined that in every

particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes, how the

elements of number gave essence and being to the works of nature: a

thing in reason impossible; which notwithstanding, through their

mis-fashioned pre-conceit, appeared unto them no less certain, than if

nature had written it in the very foreheads of all the creatures of

God.

I am not so conversant with the volumes of Duns Scotus as to be able to

pronounce positively whether he is an exception, but I can think of no

other instance of high metaphysical genius in an Englishman. Judgment,

solid sense, invention in specialties, fortunate anticipations and

instructive foretact of truth,--in these we can shew giants. It is

evident from this example from the Pythagorean school that not even our

incomparable Hooker could raise himself to the idea, so rich in truth,

which is contained in the words

'numero, pondere, et mensura generantur coeli et terra'.

O, that Hooker had ever asked himself concerning will, absolute will,

[Greek: ho arithmòs hyperaríthmiòs],

'numerus omues numeros ponens, nunquam positus!' [4]

Ib. p. 183.

When they of the 'Family of Love' have it once in their heads, that

Christ doth not signify any one person, but a quality whereof many are

partakers, &c.

If the Familists thought of Christ as a quality, it was a grievous error

indeed. But I have my doubts whether this was not rather an inference

drawn by their persecutors.

Ib. 15. p. 191.

When instruction doth them no good, let them feel but the least degree

of most mercifully-tempered severity, they fasten on the head of the

Lord's vicegerents here on earth, whatsoever they any where find

uttered against the cruelty of blood-thirsty men, and to themselves

they draw all the sentences which Scripture hath in favor of innocency

persecuted for the truth.

How great the influence of the age on the strongest minds, when so

eminently wise a man as Richard Hooker could overlook the obvious

impolicy of inflicting punishments which the sufferer himself will

regard as merits, and all who have any need to be deterred will extol as

martyrdom! Even where the necessity could be plausibly pretended, it is

war, not punitive law;--and then Augustine's argument for Sarah!

Ib. c. iv. 1. p. 194.

We require you to find out but one church upon the face of the whole

earth, that hath been ordered by your discipline, or hath not been

ordered by ours, that is to say, by episcopal regiment, sithence the

time that the blessed apostles were here conversant.

Hooker was so good a man that it would be wicked to suspect him of

knowingly playing the sophist. And yet strange it is, that he should not

have been aware that it was prelacy, not primitive episcopacy, the

thing, not the name, that the reformers contended against, and, if the

Catholic Church and the national Clerisy were (as both parties unhappily

took for granted) one and the same, contended against with good reason.

Knox's ecclesiastical polity (worthy of Lycurgus), adopted bishops under

a different name, or rather under a translation instead of corruption of

the name [Greek: epáskapoi]. He would have had superintendents.

Ib. c. v. 2. p. 204.

A law is the deed of the whole body politic, whereof if ye judge

yourselves to be any part, then is the law even your deed also.

This is a fiction of law for the purpose of giving to that, which is

necessarily empirical, the form and consequence of a science, to the

reality of which a code of laws can only approximate by compressing all

liberty and individuality into a despotism. As Justinian to Alfred, and

Constantinople, the Consuls and Senate of Rome to the Lord Mayor,

Aldermen, and Common Council of London; so is the imperial Roman code to

the common and statute law of England. The advocates of the discipline

would, according to our present notions of civil rights, have been

justified in putting fact against fiction, and might have challenged

Hooker to shew, first, that the constitution of the Church in Christ was

a congruous subject of parliamentary legislation; that the legislators

were 'bona fide' determined by spiritual views, and that the jealousy

and arbitrary principles of the Queen, aided by motives of worldly state

policy,--for example, the desire of conciliating the Roman Catholic

potentates by retaining all she could of the exterior of the Romish

Church, its hierarchy, its ornaments, and its ceremonies,--were not the

substitutes for the Holy Spirit in influencing the majorities in the two

Houses of Parliament. It is my own belief that the Puritans and the

Prelatists divided the truth between them; and, as half-truths are whole

errors, were both equally in the wrong;--the Prelatists in contending

for that as incident to the Church in Christ, that is, the collective

number [Greek: t_on ekkaloumén_on] or 'ecclesia', which only belonged,

but which rightfully did belong, to the National Church as a component

estate of the realm, the 'enclesia';--the Puritans in requiring of the

'enclesia' what was only requisite or possible for the 'ecclesia'.[5]

Archbishop Grindal is an illustrious exception. He saw the whole truth,

and that the functions of the enclesiastic and those of the ecclesiastic

were not the less distinct, because both were capable of being exercised

by the same person; and _vice versa_, not the less compatible in the

same subject because distinct in themselves. The Lord Chief Justice of

the King's Bench is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Ib. c. vi. 3. p. 209.

God was not ignorant, that the priests and judges, whose sentence in

matters of controversy he ordained should stand, both might and

oftentimes would be deceived in their judgment. However, better it was

in the eye of His understanding, that sometime an erroneous sentence

definitive should prevail, till the same authority perceiving such

oversight, might afterwards correct or reverse it, than that strifes

should have respite to grow, and not come speedily to some end.

It is difficult to say, which most shines through this whole passage,

the spirit of wisdom or the spirit of meekness. The fatal error of the

Romish Church did not consist in the inappellability of the Councils, or

that an acquiescence in their decisions and decree was a duty binding on

the conscience of the dissentients,--not I say in contending for a

practical infallibility of Council or Pope; but in laying claim to an

actual and absolute immunity from error, and consequently for the

unrepealability of their decisions by any succeeding Council or Pope.

Hence, even wise decisions--wise under the particular circumstances and

times--degenerated into mischievous follies, by having the privilege of

immortality without any exemption from the dotage of superannuation.

Hence errors became like _glaciers_, or ice-bergs in the frozen

ocean, unthawed by summer, and growing from the fresh deposits of each

returning winter.

Ib. 6. p. 212.

An argument necessary and demonstrative is such, as being proposed

unto any man, and understood, the mind cannot choose but inwardly

assent. Any one such reason dischargeth, I grant, the conscience, and

setteth it at full liberty.

I would not concede even so much as this. It may well chance that even

an argument demonstrative, if understood, may be adducible against some

one sentence of a whole liturgy; and yet the means of removing it

without a palpable overbalance of evil may not exist for a time; and

either there is no command against schism, or we are bound in such small

matters to offer the sacrifice of willing silence to the public peace of

the Church. This would not, however, prevent a minister from pointing

out the defect in his character as a doctor or learned theologian.

Ib. c. viii. 1. p. 2-20.

For adventuring to erect the discipline of Christ without the leave of

the Christian magistrate, haply ye may condemn us as fools, in that we

hazard thereby our estates and persons further than you which are that

way more wise think necessary: but of any offence or sin therein

committed against God, with what conscience can you accuse us, when

your own positions are, that the things we observe should every of

them be dearer unto us than ten thousand lives; that they are the

peremptory commandments of God; that no mortal man can dispense with

them, and that the magistrate grievously sinneth in not constraining

thereunto?

'Hoc argumentum ad invidiam nimis sycophanticum est quam ut mihi placeat

a tanto viro'. Besides, it contradicts Hooker's own very judicious rule,

that to discuss and represent is the office of the learned, as

individuals, because the truth may be entire in any one mind; but to do

belongs to the supreme power as the will of the whole body politic, and

in effective action individuals are mere fractions without any

legitimate referee to add them together. Hooker's objection from the

nobility and gentry of the realm is unanswerable and within half a

century afterwards proved insurmountable. Imagine a sun containing

within its proper atmosphere a multitude of transparent satellites, lost

in the glory, or all joining to form the visible 'phasis' or disk; and

then beyond the precincts of this sun a number of opake bodies at

various distances, and having a common center of their own round which

they revolve, and each more or less according to the lesser or greater

distance partaking of the light and natural warmth of the sun, which I

have been supposing; but not sharing in its peculiar influences, or in

the solar life sustainable only by the vital air of the solar

atmosphere. The opake bodies constitute the national churches, the sun

the churches spiritual.

The defect of the simile, arising necessarily out of the

incompossibility of spiritual prerogatives with material bodies under

the proprieties and necessities of space, is, that it does not, as no

concrete or visual image can, represent the possible duplicity of the

individuals, the aggregate of whom constitutes the national church, so

that any one individual, or any number of such individuals, may at the

same time be, by an act of their own, members of the church spiritual,

and in every congregation may form an 'ecclesia' or Christian community;

and how to facilitate and favor this without any schism from the

'enclesia', and without any disturbance of the body politic, was the

problem which Grindal and the bishops of the first generation of the

Reformed Church sought to solve, and it is the problem which every

earnest Christian endued with competent gifts, and who is at the same

time a patriot and a philanthropist, ought to propose to himself, as the

'ingens desiderium proborum'.

8th Sept, 1826.

Ib. c. viii. 7. p. 232.

Baptizing of infants, although confessed by themselves, to have been

continued ever sithence the very apostles' own times, yet they

altogether condemned.

'Quære'. I cannot say what the fanatic Anabaptists, of whom Hooker is

speaking, may have admitted; but the more sober and learned

Antipaedobaptists, who differed in this point only from the reformed

churches, have all, I believe, denied the practice of infant baptism

during the first century.

B.J. c. ii. 1. p. 249.

That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth

moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and

measure, of working, the same we term a law.

See the essays on method, in the 'Friend'. [6] Hooker's words literally

and grammatically interpreted seem to assert the antecedence of the

thing to its kind, that is, to its essential characters;--and to its

force together with its form and measure of working, that is, to its

specific and distinctive characters; in short, the words assert the

pre-existence of the thing to all its constituent powers, qualities, and

properties.

Now this is either--first, equivalent to the assertion of a 'prima et

nuda materia', so happily ridiculed by the author of 'Hudibras', [7] and

which under any scheme of cosmogony is a mere phantom, having its whole

and sole substance in an impotent effort of the imagination or sensuous

fancy, but which is utterly precluded by the doctrine of creation which

it in like manner negatives:--or secondly, the words assert a

self-destroying absurdity, namely, the antecedence of a thing to itself;

as if having asserted that water consisted of hydrogen = 77, and oxygen

= 23, I should talk of water as existing before the creation of hydrogen

and oxygen.

All laws, indeed, are constitutive; and it would require a longer train

of argument than a note can contain, to shew what a thing is; but this

at least is quite certain, that in the order of thought it must be

posterior to the law that constitutes it. But such in fact was Hooker's

meaning, and the word, thing, is used 'proleptice' in favour of the

imagination, as appears from the sentences that follow, in which the

creative idea is declared to be the law of the things thereby created. A

productive idea, manifesting itself and its reality in the product is a

law; and when the product is phænomenal, (that is, an object of the

outward senses) it is a law of nature. The law is 'res noumenon'; the

thing is 'res phenomenon' [8] A physical law, in the right sense of the

term, is the sufficient cause of the appearance,--'causa sub-faciens'.

P.S. What a deeply interesting volume might be written on the symbolic

import of the primary relations and dimensions of space--long, broad,

deep, or depth; surface; upper, under, above and below, right, left,

horizontal, perpendicular, oblique:--and then the order of causation, or

that which gives intelligibility, and the reverse order of effects, or

that which gives the conditions of actual existence! Without the higher

the lower would want its intelligibility: without the lower the higher

could not have existed. The infant is a riddle of which the man is the

solution; but the man could not exist but with the infant as his

antecedent.

Ib. 2. p. 250.

In which essential Unity of God, a Trinity personal nevertheless

subsisteth, after a manner far exceeding the possibility of man's

conceit.

If 'conceit' here means conception, the remark is most true; for the

Trinity is an idea, and no idea can be rendered by a conception. An idea

is essentially inconceivable. But if it be meant that the Trinity is

otherwise inconceivable than as the divine eternity and every attribute

of God is and must be, then neither the commonness of the language here

used, nor the high authority of the user, can deter me from denouncing

it as untrue and dangerous. So far is it from being true, that on the

contrary, the Trinity is the only form in which an idea of God is

possible, unless indeed it be a Spinosistic or World-God.

Ib. c. iv. 1. p. 264.

But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from the footstool

to the throne of God, and leaving these natural, consider a little the

state of heavenly and divine, creatures: touching angels which are

spirits immaterial and intellectual, &c.

All this disquisition on the angels confirms my remark that our

admirable Hooker was a giant of the race Aristotle 'versus' Plato.

Hooker was truly judicious,--the consummate 'synthesis' of understanding

and sense. An ample and most ordonnant conceptionist, to the tranquil

empyrean of ideas he had not ascended. Of the passages cited from

Scripture how few would bear a strict scrutiny; being either,

1. divine appearances, Jehovah in human form; or

2. the imagery of visions and all symbolic; or

3. names of honor given to prophets, apostles, or bishops; or

lastly, mere accommodations to popular notions!

Ib. 3. p. 267.

Since their fall, their practices have been the clean contrary unto

those before mentioned. For being dispersed, some in the air, some on

the earth, some in the water, some among the minerals, dens, and

caves, that are under the earth; they have, by all means laboured to

effect a universal rebellion against the laws, and as far as in them

lieth, utter destruction of the works of God.

Childish; but the childishness of the age, without which neither Hooker

nor Luther could have acted on their contemporaries with the intense and

beneficent energy with which, they (God be praised!) did act.

Ib. p. 268.

Thus much therefore may suffice for angels, the next unto whom in

degree are men.

St. Augustine well remarks that only three distinct 'genera' of living

beings are conceivable:

1. the infinite rational:

2. the finite rational:

3. the finite irrational:

that is, God, man, brute animal. 'Ergo', angels can only be with wings

on their shoulders. Were our bodies transparent to our souls, we should

be angels.

Ib. c. x. 4. p. 303.

It is no improbable opinion therefore which the arch-philosopher was

of.

There are, and can be, only two schools of philosophy, differing in kind

and in source. Differences in degree and in accident, there may be many;

but these constitute schools kept by different teachers with different

degrees of genius, talent, and learning;--auditories of philosophizers,

not different philosophies. Schools of psilology (the love of empty

noise) and misosophy are here out of the question. Schools of real

philosophy there are but two,--best named by the arch-philosopher of

each, namely, Plato and Aristotle. Every man capable of philosophy at

all (and there are not many such) is a born Platonist or a born

Aristotelian. [9] Hooker, as may be discerned from the epithet of

arch-philosopher applied to the Stagyrite, 'sensu monarchico', was of

the latter family,--a comprehensive, vigorous, discreet, and discretive

conceptualist,--but not an ideist.

Ib. 8. p. 308.

Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally have

no free and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men,

therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no

man's commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that

society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without

revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as

any man's deed past is good as long as himself continueth; so the act

of a public society of men done five hundred years sithence standeth

as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because

corporations are immortal; we were then alive in our predecessors, and

they in their successors do live still. Laws therefore human, of what

kind soever, are available by consent.

No nobler or clearer example than this could be given of what an idea is

as contra-distinguished from a conception of the understanding,

correspondent to some fact or facts, 'quorum notæ communes

concapiuntur',--the common characters of which are taken together under

one distinct exponent, hence named a conception; and conceptions are

internal subjective words. Reflect on an original social contract, as an

event or historical fact; and its gross improbability, not to say

impossibility, will stare you in the face. But an ever originating

social contract as an idea, which exists and works continually and

efficaciously in the moral being of every free citizen, though in the

greater number unconsciously, or with a dim and confused

consciousness,--what a power it is! [10] As the vital power compared

with the mechanic; as a father compared with a moulder in wax or clay,

such is the power of ideas compared with the influence of conceptions

and notions.

Ib.15. p.316.

... I nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame

themselves to those heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour with

so great instancy gave us concerning peace and unity, if we did all

concur in desire to have the use of ancient Councils again renewed,

rather than these proceedings continued, which either make all

contentions endless, or bring them to one only determination, and that

of all other the worst, which is by sword.

This is indeed a subject that deserves a serious consideration: and it

may be said in favour of Hooker's proposal, namely, that the use of

ancient Councils be renewed, that a deep and universal sense of the

abuse of Councils progressively from the Nicene to that of Trent, and

our knowledge of the causes, occasions, and mode of such abuse, are so

far presumptive for its non-recurrency as to render it less probable

that honest men will pervert them from ignorance, and more difficult for

unprincipled men to do so designedly. Something too must be allowed for

an honourable ambition on the part of the persons so assembled, to

disappoint the general expectation, and win for themselves the unique

title of the honest Council. But still comes the argument, the blow of

which I might more easily blunt than parry, that if Roman Catholic and

Protestant, or even Protestant Episcopalian and Protestant Presbyterian

divines were generally wise and charitable enough to form a Christian

General Council, there would be no need of one.

N.B. The reasoning in this note, as far as it is in discouragement of a

recurrence to general Councils, does not, 'me saltem judice', conclude

against the suffering our Convocation to meet. The virtual abrogation of

this branch of our constitution I have long regarded as one of three or

four Whig patriotisms, that have succeeded in de-anglicizing the mind of

England.

Ib. c. xi. 4. p. 323.

So that nature even in this life doth plainly claim and call for a

more divine perfection than either of these two that have been

mentioned.

Whenever I meet with an ambiguous or multivocal word, without its

meaning being shown and fixed, I stand on my guard against a sophism. I

dislike this term, 'nature,' in this place. If it mean the 'light that

lighteth every man that cometh into the world', it is an inapt term; for

reason is supernatural. Now that reason in man must have been first

actuated by a direct revelation from God, I have myself proved, and do

not therefore deny that faith as the means of salvation was first made

known by revelation; but that reason is incapable of seeing into the

fitness and superiority of these means, or that it is a mystery in any

other sense than as all spiritual truths are mysterious, I do deny and

deem it both a false and a dangerous doctrine.

15 Sept. 1826.

Ib. 6. p.327.

Concerning that faith, hope and charity, without which there can be no

salvation; was there ever any mention made saving only in that law

which God himself hath from heaven revealed? There is not in the world

a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three,

more than hath, been supernaturally received from the mouth of the

eternal God.

That reason could have discovered these divine truths is one thing; that

when discovered by revelation, it is capable of apprehending the beauty

and excellence of the things revealed is another. I may believe the

latter, while I utterly reject the former. That all these cognitions,

together with the fealty or faithfulness in the will whereby the mind of

the flesh is brought under captivity to the mind of the spirit (the

sensous understanding to the reason) are supernatural, I not only freely

grant, but fervently contend. But why the very perfection of reason,

namely, those ideas or truth-powers, in which both the spiritual light

and the spiritual life are co-inherent and one, should be called

super-rational, I do not see. For reason is practical as well as

theoretical; or even though I should exclude the practical reason, and

confine the term reason to the highest intellective power,--still I

should think it more correct to describe the mysteries of faith as

'plusquam rationalia' than super-rational. But the assertions that

provoke the remark arose for the greater part, and still arise, out of

the confounding of the reason with the understanding. In Hooker, and the

great divines of his age, it was merely an occasional carelessness in

the use of the terms that reason is ever put where they meant the

understanding; for, from other parts of their writings, it is evident

that they knew and asserted the distinction, nay, the diversity of the

things themselves; to wit, that there was in man another and higher

light than that of the faculty judging according to sense, that is our

understandings. But, alas! since the Revolution, it has ceased to be a

mere error of language, and in too many it now amounts to a denial of

reason!

B. ii. c. v.3. p.379.

To urge any thing as part of that supernatural and celestially

revealed truth which God hath taught, and not to shew it in Scripture;

this did the ancient Fathers evermore think unlawful, impious,

execrable.

Even this must be received 'cum grano salis.' To be sure, with the

licences of interpretation, which the Fathers of the first three or four

centuries allowed themselves, and with the 'arcana' of evolution by

word, letter, allegory, yea, punning, which they applied to detached

sentences or single phrases of Holy Writ, it would not be easy to

imagine a position which they could not 'shew in Scripture.' Let this be

elucidated by the texts even now cited by the Romish priests for the

truth of purgatory, indulgence, image-worship, invocation of dead men,

and the like. The assertion therefore must be thus qualified. The

ancient Fathers anathematized any doctrine not consentaneous with

Scripture and deducible from it, either 'pari ratione' or by

consequence; as when Scripture clearly commands an end, but leaves the

means to be determined according to the circumstances, as for example,

the frequent assembly of Christians. The appointment of a Sunday or

Lord's day is evidently the fittest and most effectual mean to this end;

but yet it was not practicable, that is the mean did not exist till the

Roman government became Christian. But as soon as this event took place,

the duty of keeping the Sunday holy is truly, though implicitly,

contained in the Apostolic text.

Ib. vi. 3. p. 392.

Again, with a negative argument, David is pressed concerning the

purpose he had to build a temple unto the Lord: 'Thus saith the

Lord, Thou shalt not build me a house to dwelt in. Wheresoever I have

walked with all Israel, spake I one word to any of the judges of

Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people, saying, Why have ye not

built me a house?'

The wisdom of the divine goodness both in the negative, the not having

authorized any of the preceding Judges from Moses downwards to build a

temple--and in the positive, in having commanded David to prepare for

it, and Solomon to build it--I have not seen put in the full light in

which it so well deserves to be. The former or negative, or the evils of

a splendid temple-worship and its effects on the character of the

priesthood,--evils, when not changed to good by becoming the antidote

and preventive of far greater evils,--would require much thought both to

set forth and to comprehend. But to give any reflecting reader a sense

of the providential foresight evinced in the latter, and this foresight

beyond the reach of any but the Omniscient, it will be only necessary to

remind him of the separation of the ten tribes and the breaking up of

the realm into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the very next

reign. Without the continuity of succession provided for by this vast

and splendid temple, built and arranged under the divine sanction

attested by miracles--what criterion would there have existed for the

purity of this law and worship? what security for the preservation and

incorruption of the inspired writings?

Ib. vii. 3. p. 403.

That there is a city of Rome, that Pius Quintus and Gregory the

Thirteenth, and others, have been Popes of Rome, I suppose we are

certainly enough persuaded. The ground of our persuasion, who never

saw the place nor persons before named, can be nothing but man's

testimony. Will any man here notwithstanding allege those mentioned

human infirmities as reasons why these things should be mistrusted or

doubted of? Yea, that which is more, utterly to infringe the force and

strength of man's testimony, were to shake the very fortress of God's

truth.

In a note on a passage in Skelton's 'Deism Revealed', [11] I have

detected the subtle sophism that lurks in this argument, as applied by

later divines in vindication of proof by testimony, in relation to the

miracles of the Old and New Testament. As thus applied, it is a [Greek:

metábasis eis allo génos], though so unobvious, that a very acute and

candid reasoner might use the argument without suspecting the

paralogism. It is not testimony, as testimony, that necessitates us to

conclude that there is such a city as Rome--but a reasoning, that forms

a branch of mathematical science. So far is our conviction from being

grounded on our confidence in human testimony that it proceeds on our

knowledge of its fallible character, and therefore can find no

sufficient reason for its coincidence on so vast a scale, but in the

real existence of the object. That a thousand lies told by as many

several and unconnected individuals should all be one and the same, is a

possibility expressible only by a fraction that is already, to all

intents and purposes, equal to nought.

B. iii. c. iii. 1. p. 447.

The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is

the mother of all error.

'The division in thought of those things which in nature are distinct,

yet one, that is, distinguished without breach of unity, is the

mother,'--so I should have framed the position. Will, reason,

life,--ideas in relation to the mind, are instances; 'entiæ indivise

interdistinctæ'; and the main arguments of the atheists, materialists,

deniers of our Lord's divinity and the like, all rest on the asserting

of division as a necessary consequence of distinction.

B. v. c. xix. 3. vol. ii. p. 87.

Of both translations the better I willingly acknowledge that which

cometh nearer to the very letter of the original verity; yet so that

the other may likewise safely enough be read, without any peril at all

of gainsaying as much as the least jot or syllable of God's most

sacred and precious truth.

Hooker had far better have rested on the impossibility and the

uselessness, if possible, of a faultless translation; and admitting

certain mistakes, and oversights, have recommended them for notice at

the next revision; and then asked, what objection such harmless trifles

could be to a Church that never pretended to infallibility! But in fact

the age was not ripe enough even for a Hooker to feel, much less with

safety to expose, the Protestants' idol, that is, their Bibliolatry.

Ib. c. xxii. 10. p. 125.

Their only proper and direct proof of the thing in question had been

to shew, in what sort and how far man's salvation doth necessarily

depend upon the knowledge of the word of God; what conditions,

properties, and qualities there are, whereby sermons are distinguished

from other kinds of administering the word unto that purpose; and what

special property or quality that is, which being no where found but in

sermons, maketh them effectual to save souls, and leaveth all other

doctrinal means besides destitute of vital efficacy.

Doubtless, Hooker was a theological Talus, with a club of iron against,

opponents with pasteboard helmets, and armed only with crabsticks! But

yet, I too, too often find occasion to complain of him as abusing his

superior strength. For in a good man it is an abuse of his intellectual

superiority, not to use a portion of it in stating his Christian

opponents' cause, his brethren's (though dissentient, and perhaps

erring, yet still brethren's,) side of the question, not as they had

stated and argued it, but as he himself with his higher gifts of logic

and foresight could have set it forth. But Hooker flies off to the

general, in which he is unassailable; and does not, as in candour he

should have done, inquire whether the question would not admit of, nay,

demand, a different answer, when applied solely or principally to the

circumstances, the condition and the needs of the English parishes, and

the population at large, at the particular time when the Puritan divines

wrote, and he, Hooker, replied to them. Now let the cause be tried in

this way, and I should not be afraid to attempt the proof of the

paramount efficacy of preaching on the scheme, and in the line of

argument laid down by himself in this section. In short, Hooker

frequently finds it convenient to forget the homely proverb; 'the proof

of the pudding is in the eating.' Whose parishes were the best

disciplined, whose flocks the best fed, the soberest livers, and the

most awakened and best informed Christians, those of the zealous

preaching divines, or those of the prelatic clergy with their readers?

In whose churches and parishes were all the other pastoral duties,

catechizing, visiting the poor and the like, most strictly practised?

Ib. 11.

The people which have no way to come to the knowledge of God, no

prophesying, no teaching, perish. But that they should of necessity

perish, where any one way of knowledge lacketh, is more than the words

of Solomon import.

But what was the fact? Were those congregations that had those readers

of whom the Puritans were speaking--were they, I say, equally well

acquainted with, and practically impressed by, the saving truths of the

Gospel? Were they not rather perishing for lack of knowledge? To

reply,--It was their own fault; they ought to have been more regular in

their attendance at church, and more attentive, when there, to what was

there read,--is to my mind too shocking, nay, antichristian.

Ib. 16. p.137.

Now all these things being well considered, it shall be no intricate

matter for any man to judge with indifferency, on which part the good

of the church is most conveniently sought; whether on ours, whose

opinion is such as hath been shewed, or else on theirs, who leaving no

ordinary way of salvation for them unto whom the word of God is but

only read, do seldom name them but with great disdain and contempt,

who execute that service in the church of Christ.

If so, they were much to be blamed. But surely this was not the case

with the better and wiser part of those who, clinging to the tenets and

feelings of the first Reformers, and honouring Archbishop Grindal as

much as they dreaded his Arminian successors, were denominated Puritans!

They limited their censures to exclusive reading,--to reading as the

substitute for, and too often for the purpose of doing away with,

preaching.

Ib. lxv. 8. p.415.

Thus was the memory of that sign which they had in baptism a kind of

bar or prevention to keep them even from apostasy, whereinto the

frailty of flesh and blood, overmuch fearing to endure shame, might

peradventure the more easily otherwise have drawn them.

I begin to fear that Hooker is not suited to my nature. I cannot bear

round-abouts for the purpose of evading the short cut straight before my

eyes. 'Exempli gratia;' I find myself tempted in this place to ejaculate

Psha! somewhat abruptly, and ask, 'How many in twenty millions of

Christian men and women ever reverted to the make-believe impression of

the Cross on their forehead in unconscious infancy, by the wetted tip of

the clergyman's finger as a preservative against anger and resentment?

'The whole church of God!' Was it not the same church which, neglecting

and concealing the Scriptures of God, introduced the adoration of the

Cross, the worshipping of relics, holy water, and all the other

countless mummeries of Popery? Something might be pretended for the

material images of the Cross worn at the bosom or hung up in the

bed-chamber. These may, and doubtless often do, serve as silent

monitors; but this eye-falsehood or pretence of making a mark that is

not made, is a gratuitous superstition, that cannot be practised without

serious danger of leading the vulgar to regard it as a charm. Hooker

should have asked--Has it hitherto had this effect on Christians

generally? Is it likely to produce this effect and this principally? In

common honesty he must have answered, No!--Do I then blame the Church of

England for retaining this ceremony? By no means. I justify it as a wise

and pious condescension to the inveterate habits of a people newly

dragged, rather than drawn, out of Papistry; and as a pledge that the

founders and fathers of the Reformation in England regarded innovation

as 'per se' an evil, and therefore requiring for its justification not

only a cause, but a weighty cause. They did well and piously in

deferring the removal of minor spots and stains to the time when the

good effects of the more important reforms had begun to shew themselves

in the minds and hearts of the laity.--But they do not act either wisely

or charitably who would eulogize these 'maculæ' as beauty-spots and

vindicate as good what their predecessors only tolerated as the lesser

evil.

12th Aug. 1826.

Ib. 15. p. 424.

For in actions of this kind we are more to respect what the greatest

part of men is commonly prone to conceive, than what some few men's

wits may devise in construction of their own particular meanings.

Plain it is, that a false opinion of some personal divine excellency

to be in those things which either nature or art hath framed causeth

always religious adoration.

How strongly might this most judicious remark be turned against Hooker's

own mode of vindicating this ceremony!

Ib. lxvi. 2. p. 432.

The Church had received from Christ a promise that such as have

believed in him these signs and tokens should follow them.

'To cast out devils, to speak with tongues, to drive away serpents, to

be free from the harm which any deadly poison could work, and to cure

diseases by imposition of hands.'

'Mark xvi'.

The man who verily and sincerely believes the narrative in St. John's

Gospel of the feeding of five thousand persons with a few loaves and

small fishes, and of the raising of Lazarus, in the plain and literal

sense, cannot be reasonably suspected of rejecting, or doubting, any

narrative concerning Christ and his Apostles, simply as miraculous. I

trust, therefore, that no disbelief of, or prejudice against, miraculous

events and powers will be attributed to me, as the ground or cause of my

strong persuasion that the latter verses of the last chapter of St.

Mark's Gospel were an additament of a later age, for which St. Luke's

Acts of the Apostles misunderstood supplied the hints.

Ib. lxxii. 15 & 16. p.539.

If Richard Hooker had written only these two precious paragraphs, I

should hold myself bound to thank the Father of lights and Giver of all

good gifts for his existence and the preservation of his writings.

B. viii. c. ix. 2. vol. iii. p. 537.

As there could be in natural bodies no motion of anything, unless

there were some which moveth all things, and continueth immoveable;

even so in politic societies, there must be some unpunishable, or else

no man shall suffer punishment.

It is most painful to connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of

Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely

worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of

our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at

least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a

conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable

to a thing or class of things, of which, or of the common characters of

which, it is a reflection. An idea is a power, [Greek: dúnamis noera],

which constitutes its own reality, and is in order of thought

necessarily antecedent to the things in which it is more or less

adequately realized, while a conception is as necessarily posterior.

SERMON OF THE CERTAINTY AND PERPETUITY OF FAITH IN THE ELECT.

Vol. iii. p. 583.

The following truly admirable discourse is, I think, the concluding

sermon of a series unhappily not preserved.

Ib. p.584.

If it were so in matters of faith, then, as all men have equal

certainty of this, so no believer should be more scrupulous and

doubtful than another. But we find the contrary. The angels and

spirits of the righteous in heaven have certainty most evident of

things spiritual: but this they have by the light of glory. That which

we see by the light of grace, though it be indeed more certain; yet it

is not to us so evidently certain, as that which sense or the light of

nature will not suffer a man to doubt of.

Hooker's meaning is right; but he falls into a sad confusion of words,

blending the thing and the relation of the mind to the thing. The fourth

moon of Jupiter is certain in itself; but evident only to the astronomer

with his telescope.

Ib. p. 585-588.

The other, which we call the certainty of adherence, is when the heart

doth cleave and stick unto that which it doth believe. This certainty

is greater in us than the other ... ('down to') the fourth

question resteth, and so an end of this point.

These paragraphs should be written in gold. O! may these precious words

be written on my heart!

1. That we all need to be redeemed, and that therefore we are all in

captivity to an evil:

2. That there is a Redeemer:

3. That the redemption relatively to each individual captive is, if not

effected under certain conditions, yet manifestable as far as is fitting

for the soul by certain signs and consequents:--and

4. That these signs are in myself; that the conditions under which the

redemption offered to all men is promised to the individual, are

fulfilled in myself;

these are the four great points of faith, in which the humble Christian

finds and feels a gradation from trembling hope to full assurance; yet

the will, the act of trust, is the same in all. Might I not almost say,

that it rather increases with the decrease of the consciously discerned

evidence? To assert that I have the same assurance of mind that I am

saved as that I need a Saviour, would be a contradiction to my own

feelings, and yet I may have an equal, that is, an equivalent assurance.

How is it possible that a sick man should have the same certainty of his

convalescence as of his sickness? Yet he may be assured of it. So again,

my faith in the skill and integrity of my physician may be complete, but

the application of it to my own case may be troubled by the sense of my

own imperfect obedience to his prescriptions. The sort of our beliefs

and assurances is necessarily modified by their different subjects. It

argues no want of saving faith on the whole, that I cannot have the same

trust in myself as I have in my God. That Christ's righteousness can

save me,--that Christ's righteousness alone can save--these are simple

positions, all the terms of which are steady and copresent to my mind.

But that I shall be so saved,--that of the many called I have been one

of the chosen,--this is no mere conclusion of mind on known or assured

premisses. I can remember no other discourse that sinks into and draws

up comfort from the depths of our being below our own distinct

consciousness, with the clearness and godly loving-kindness of this

truly evangelical God-to-be-thanked-for sermon. But how large, how

important a part of our spiritual life goes on like the circulation,

absorptions, and secretions of our bodily life, unrepresented by any

specific sensation, and yet the ground and condition of our total sense

of existence!

While I feel, acknowledge, and revere the almost measureless superiority

of the sermons of the divines, who labored in the first, and even the

first two centuries of the Reformation, from Luther to Leighton, over

the prudential morals and apologizing theology that have characterized

the unfanatical clergy since the Revolution in 1688, I cannot but

regret, especially while I am listening to a Hooker, that they withheld

all light from the truths contained in the words 'Satan', 'the Serpent',

'the Evil Spirit', and this last used plurally.

A DISCOURSE OF JUSTIFICATION, WORKS, AND HOW THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH IS

OVERTHROWN.

Ib. s. 31. p. 659-661.

But we say, our salvation is by Christ alone; therefore howsoever, or

whatsoever, we add unto Christ in the matter of salvation, we

overthrow Christ. Our case were very hard, if this argument, so

universally meant as it is proposed, were sound and good. We ourselves

do not teach Christ alone, excluding our own faith, unto

justification; Christ alone, excluding our own work, unto

sanctification; Christ alone, excluding the one or the other as

unnecessary unto salvation. ... As we have received, so we teach that

besides the bare and naked work, wherein Christ, without any other

associate, finished all the parts of our redemption and purchased

salvation himself alone; for conveyance of this eminent blessing unto

us, many things are required, as, to be known and chosen of God

_before_ the foundations of the world; _in_ the world to be called,

justified, sanctified; _after_ we have left the world to be received

into glory; Christ in every of these hath somewhat which he worketh

alone. &c. &c.

No where out of the Holy Scripture have I found the root and pith of

Christian faith so clearly and purely propounded as in this section.

God, whose thoughts are eternal, beholdeth the end, and in the completed

work seeth and accepteth every stage of the process. I dislike only the

word 'purchased;'--not that it is not Scriptural, but because a metaphor

well and wisely used in the enforcement and varied elucidation of a

truth, is not therefore properly employed in its exact enunciation. I

will illustrate, amplify and _divide_ the word with Paul; but I will

propound it collectively with John. If in this admirable passage aught

else dare be wished otherwise, it is the division and yet confusion of

time and eternity, by giving an anteriority to the latter.

I am persuaded, that the practice of the Romish church tendeth to make

vain the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ alone; but judging by

her most eminent divines, I can find nothing dissonant from the truth in

her express decisions on this article. Perhaps it would be safer to

say:--Christ alone saves us, working in us by the faith which includes

hope and love.

Ib. s. 34. p. 671.

If it were not a strong deluding spirit which hath possession of their

hearts; were it possible but that they should see how plainly they do

herein gainsay the very ground of apostolic faith? ... The Apostle, as

if he had foreseen how the Church of Rome would abuse the world in

time by ambiguous terms, to declare in what sense the name of grace

must be taken, when we make it the cause of our salvation, saith, 'He

saved us according to his mercy', &c.

In all Christian communities there have been and ever will be too many

Christians in name only;--too many in belief and notion only: but

likewise, I trust, in every acknowledged Church, Eastern or Western,

Greek, Roman, Protestant, many of those in belief, more or less

erroneous, who are Christians in faith and in spirit. And I neither do

nor can think, that any pious member of the Church of Rome did ever in

his heart attribute any merit to any work as being his work. [12] A

grievous error and a mischievous error there was practically in mooting

the question at all of the condignity of works and their rewards. In

short, to attribute merit to any agent but God in Christ, our faith as

Christians forbids us; and to dispute about the merit of works

abstracted from the agent, common sense ought to forbid us.

A SUPPLICATION MADE TO THE COUNCIL BY MASTER WALTER TRAVERS.

Ib. p. 698.

I said directly and plainly to all men's understanding, that it was

not indeed to be doubted, but many of the Fathers were saved; but the

means, said I, was not their ignorance, which excuseth no man with

God, but their knowledge and faith of the truth, which, it appeareth,

God vouchsafed them, by many notable monuments and records extant of

it in all ages.

Not certainly, if the ignorance proceeded directly or indirectly from a

defect or sinful propensity of the will; but where no such cause is

imaginable, in such cases this position of Master Travers is little less

than blasphemous to the divine goodness, and in direct contradiction to

an assertion of St. Paul's, [13] and to an evident consequence from our

Saviour's own words on the polygamy of the fathers. [14]

ANSWER TO TRAVERS.

Ib. p. 719.

The next thing discovered, is an opinion about the assurance of men's

persuasion in matters of faith. I have taught, he saith, 'That the

assurance of things which we believe by the word, is not so certain as

of that we perceive by sense.'

A useful instance to illustrate the importance of distinct, and the

mischief of equivocal or multivocal, terms. Had Hooker said that the

fundamental truths of religion, though perhaps even more certain, are

less evident than the facts of sense, there could have been no

misunderstanding. Thus the demonstrations of algebra possess equal

certainty with those of geometry, but cannot lay claim to the same

evidence. Certainty is positive, evidence relative; the former, strictly

taken, insusceptible of more or less, the latter capable of existing in

many different degrees.

Writing a year or more after the preceding note, I am sorry to say that

Hooker's reasoning on this point seems to me sophistical throughout.

That a man must see what he sees is no persuasion at all, nor bears the

remotest analogy to any judgment of the mind. The question is, whether

men have a clearer conception and a more stedfast conviction of the

objective reality to which the image moving their eye appertains, than

of the objective reality of the things and states spiritually discovered

by faith. And this Travers had a right to question wherever a saving

faith existed.

August, 1826.

SERMON IV. A REMEDY AGAINST SORROW AND FEAR.

Ib. p. 801.

In spirit I am with you to the world's end.

O how grateful should I be to be made intuitive of the truth intended in

the words--'In spirit I am with you!'

Ib. p. 808.

Touching the latter affection of fear, which respecteth evils to come,

as the other which we have spoken of doth present evils; first, in the

nature thereof it is plain that we are not every future evil afraid.

Perceive we not how they, whose tenderness shrinketh at the least rase

of a needle's point, do kiss the sword that pierceth their souls quite

thorow?

In this and in sundry similar passages of this venerable writer there is

[Greek: h_os emoige dokei], a very plausible, but even therefore the

more dangerous, sophism; but the due detection and exposure of which

would exceed the scanty space of a marginal comment. Briefly, what does

Hooker comprehend in the term 'pain?' Whatsoever the soul finds adverse

to her well being, or incompatible with her free action? In this sense

Hooker's position is a mere truism. But if pain be applied exclusively

to the soul finding itself as life, then it is an error.

Ib. p. 811.

Fear then in itself being mere nature cannot in itself be sin, which

sin is not nature, but therefore an accessary deprivation.

I suspect a misprint, and that it should be depravation'. But if not

nature, then it must be a super-induced and incidental depravation of

nature. The principal, namely fear, is nature; but the sin, that is,

that it is a sinful fear, is but an accessary.

[Footnote 1: The references are to Mr. Keble's edition (1836.)--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: But see Mr. Keble's statement (Pref. xxix.), and the

argument founded on discoveries and collation of MSS. since the note in

the text was written.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See Mr. Coleridge's work 'On the constitution of the Church

and State according to the idea of each.'--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See E. P. I. ii. 3. p. 252.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5: See the 'Church and State,' in which the 'ecclesia' or

Church in Christ, is distinguished from the 'enclesia', or national

Church.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See the essays generally from the fourth to the ninth, both

inclusively, in Vol. III. 3rd edition, more especially, the fifth

essay.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: Part I. c. i. vv. 151--6.--Ed.]

[Footnote 8: See the essay on the idea of the Prometheus of Æschylus.

Literary Remains, Vol. II. p. 323.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9:

'Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I do not think it

possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and

I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They

are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to

conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute;

the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could

get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. ... Aristotle was, and

still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the faculty judging

by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself

into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to

others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as

it were, looked down upon, from the throne of actual ideas, or living,

inborn, essential truths.'

'Table Talk', 2d Edit. p. 95.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10: See the 'Church and State,' c. i.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: See 'post'.--Ed.]

[Footnote 12: But see the language of the Council of Trent:

Si quis dixerit justitiam acceptam non conservari 'atque etiam augeri

coram. Deo per bona opera'; sed opera ipsa fructus solummodo et signa

esse justificationis adeptæ,' non autem ipsius augendæ causam';

anathema sit.

'Sess'. VI. 'Can'. 24.

... Si quis dixerit hominis justificati 'bona opera' ita esse dona

Dei, 'ut non sint etiam bona ipsius justificati merita'; aut ipsum

justificatum 'bonis operibus', quæ ab eo per Dei gratiam, et Jesu

Christi meritum, cujus vivum membrum est, fiunt, 'non vere mereri

augmentum gratiæ, vitam æternam, et ipsius vitæ æternæ, si tamen in

gratia decesserit, conscecutionem atque etiam gloriæ augmentum',

anathema sit.

'Ib. Can.' 32.--Ed.]

[Footnote 13: Rom. ii. 12.--Ed.]

[Footnote 14: Matt. xix. 8.--Ed.]

NOTES ON FIELD ON THE CHURCH. [1]

'Fly-leaf.--Hannah Scollock, her book, February 10', 1787.

This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case;

Your writing therefore I will not erase.

But now this book, once yours, belongs to me,

The Morning Post's and Courier's S. T. C.;--

Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholerage

To friends and public known, as S. T. Coleridge.

Witness hereto my hand, on Ashly Green,

One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen

Year of our Lord--and of the month November,

The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.

28 March, 1819. [2]

MY DEAR DERWENT,

This one volume, thoroughly understood and appropriated, will place you

in the highest ranks of doctrinal Church of England divines (of such as

now are), and in no mean rank as a true doctrinal Church historian.

Next to this I recommend Baxter's own Life, edited by Sylvester, with my

marginal notes. Here, more than in any of the prelatical and Arminian

divines from Laud to the death of Charles II, you will see the strength

and beauty of the Church of England, that is, its liturgy, homilies, and

articles. By contrasting, too, its present state with that which such

excellent men as Baxter, Calamy, and the so called Presbyterian or

Puritan divines, would have made it, you will bless it as the bulwark of

toleration.

Thirdly, you must read Eichorn's Introduction to the Old and New

Testament, and the Apocrypha, and his comment on the Apocalypse; to all

which my notes and your own previous studies will supply whatever

antidote is wanting;--these will suffice for your Biblical learning, and

teach you to attach no more than the supportable weight to these and

such like outward evidences of our holy and spiritual religion.

So having done, you will be in point of professional knowledge such a

clergyman as will make glad the heart of your loving father,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

N. B.--See Book iv Chap. 7, p. 351, both for a masterly confutation of

the Paleyo-Grotian evidences of the Gospel, and a decisive proof in what

light that system was regarded by the Church of England in its best age.

Like Grotius himself, it is half way between Popery and Socinianism.

B. i. c. 3. p. 5.

But men desired only to be like unto God in omniscience and the

general knowledge of all things which may be communicated to a

creature, as in Christ it is to his human soul.

Surely this is more than doubtful; and even the instance given is

irreconcilable with Christ's own assertion concerning the last day,

which must be understood of his human soul, by all who hold the faith

delivered from the foundation, namely, his deity. Field seems to have

excerpted this incautiously from the Schoolmen, who on this premiss

could justify the communicability of adoration, as in the case of the

saints. Omniscience, it may be proved, implies omnipotence. The fourth

of the arguments in this section, and, as closely connected with it, the

first (only somewhat differently stated) seem the strongest, or rather

the only ones. For the second is a mere anticipation of the fourth, and

all that is true in the third is involved in it.

Ib. c. 5. p. 9.

And began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them

utterance.

That is, I humbly apprehend, in other than the Hebrew and Syrochaldaic

languages, which (with rare and reluctant exceptions in favor of the

Greek) were appropriated to public prayer and exhortation, just as the

Latin in the Romish Church. The new converts preached and prayed, each

to his companions in his and their dialect;--they were all Jews, but had

assembled from all the different provinces of the Roman and Parthian

empires, as the Quakers among us to the yearly meeting in London; this

was a sign, not a miracle. The miracle consisted in the visible and

audible descent of the Holy Ghost, and in the fulfilment of the prophecy

of Joel, as explained by St. Peter himself. 'Acts' ii. 15.

Ib. p.10.

'Aliud est etymologia nominis et aliud significatio nominis.

Etymologia attenditur secundum id it quo imponitur nomen ad

significandum: nominis vero significatio secundum id ad quod

significandum imponitur.'

This passage from Aquinas would be an apt motto for a critique on

Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The best service of etymology is,

when the sense of a word is still unsettled, and especially when two

words have each two meanings; A=a-b, and B=a-b, instead of A=a and

B=b. Thus reason and understanding as at present popularly confounded.

Here the 'etyma,--ratio,' the relative proportion of thoughts and

things,--and understanding, as the power which substantiates

'phænomena (substat eis)'--determine the proper sense. But most often

the 'etyma' being equivalent, we must proceed 'ex arbitrio,' as 'law

compels,' 'religion obliges;' or take up what had been begun in some

one derivative. Thus 'fanciful' and 'imaginative,' are

discriminated;--and this supplies the ground of choice for giving to

fancy and imagination, each its own sense. Cowley is a fanciful

writer, Milton an imaginative poet. Then I proceed with the

distinction, how ill fancy assorts with imagination, as instanced in

Milton's Limbo. [3]

Ib.

I should rather express the difference between the faithful of the

Synagogue and those of the Church, thus:--That the former hoped

generally by an implicit faith;--"It shall in all things be well with

all that love the Lord; therefore it cannot but be good for us and well

with us to rest with our forefathers." But the Christian hath an assured

hope by an explicit and particular faith, a hope because its object is

future, not because it is uncertain. The one was on the road journeying

toward a friend of his father's, who had promised he would be kind to

him even to the third and fourth generation. He comforts himself on the

road, first, by means of the various places of refreshment, which that

friend had built for travellers and continued to supply; and secondly,

by anticipation of a kind reception at the friend's own mansion-house.

But the other has received an express invitation to a banquet, beholds

the preparations, and has only to wash and put on the proper robes, in

order to sit down.

Ib. p. 11.

The reason why our translators, in the beginning, did choose rather to

use the word 'congregation' than 'Church,' was not, as the adversary

maliciously imagineth, for that they feared the very name of the

Church; but because as by the name of religion and religious men,

ordinarily in former times, men understood nothing but _factitias

religiones_, as Gerson out of Anselme calleth them, that is, the

professions of monks and friars, so, &c.

For the same reason the word 'religion' for [Greek: Thraeskia] in St.

James [4] ought now to be altered to ceremony or ritual. The whole

version has by change of language become a dangerous mistranslation, and

furnishes a favorite text to our moral preachers, Church Socinians and

other christened pagans now so rife amongst us. What was the substance

of the ceremonial law is but the ceremonial part of the Christian

religion; but it is its solemn ceremonial law, and though not the same,

yet one with it and inseparable, even as form and substance. Such is St.

James's doctrine, destroying at one blow Antinomianism and the Popish

popular doctrine of good works.

Ib. c. 18. p. 27.

But if the Church of God remains in Corinth, where there were

'divisions, sects, emulations', &c. ... who dare deny those societies

to be the Churches of God, wherein the tenth part of these horrible

evils and abuses is not to be found?

It is rare to meet with sophistry in this sound divine; but here he

seems to border on it. For first the Corinthian Church upon admonition

repented of its negligence; and secondly, the objection of the Puritans

was, that the constitution of the Church precluded discipline.

B. II. c. 2. p. 31.

'Miscreant' is twice used in this page in its original sense of

misbeliever.

Ib. c. 4. p. 35.

'Discourse' is here used for the discursive acts of the understanding,

even as 'discursive, is opposed to 'intuitive' by Milton [5] and others.

Thus understand Shakspeare's "discourse of reason" for those discursions

of mind which are peculiar to rational beings.

B. III. c. 1.p. 53.

The first publishers of the Gospel of Christ delivered a rule of faith

to the Christian Churches which they founded, comprehending all those

articles that are found in that 'epitome' of Christian religion, which

we call the Apostles' Creed.

This needs proof. I rather believe that the so called Apostles' Creed

was really the Creed of the Roman or Western church, (and possibly in

its present form, the catechismal rather than the baptismal creed),--and

that other churches in the East had Creeds equally ancient, and, from

their being earlier troubled with Anti Trinitarian heresies, more

express on the divinity of Christ than the Roman.

Ib. p. 58.

Fourthly, that it is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that

our satisfaction is required as a condition, without which Christ's

satisfaction is not appliable unto us, than to say, Peter hath paid

the debt of John, and he to whom it was due accepteth of the same

payment, conditionally if he pay it himself also.

This [6] propriation of a metaphor, namely, forgiveness of sin and

abolition of guilt through the redemptive power of Christ's love and of

his perfect obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity,

expressed, on account of the sameness of the consequences in both cases,

by the payment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not

himself incurred,--the propriation of this, I say, by transferring the

sameness from the consequents to the antecedents is the one point of

orthodoxy (so called, I mean) in which I still remain at issue. It seems

to me so evidently a [Greek: metábasis eis allo génos.] A metaphor is an

illustration of something less known by a more or less partial

identification of it with something better understood. Thus St. Paul

illustrates the consequences of the act of redemption by four different

metaphors drawn from things most familiar to those, for whom it was to

be illustrated, namely, sin-offerings or sacrificial expiation;

reconciliation; ransom from slavery; satisfaction of a just creditor by

vicarious payment of the debt. These all refer to the consequences of

redemption.

Now, St. John without any metaphor declares the mode by and in which it

is effected; for he identifies it with a fact, not with a consequence,

and a fact too not better understood in the one case than in the other,

namely, by generation and birth. There remains, therefore, only the

redemptive act itself, and this is transcendant, ineffable, and 'a

fortiori', therefore, inexplicable. Like the act of primal apostasy, it

is in its own nature a mystery, known only through faith in the spirit.

James owes John £100, which (to prevent James's being sent to prison)

Henry pays for him; and John has no longer any claim. But James is cruel

and ungrateful to Mary, his tender mother. Henry, though no relation,

acts the part of a loving and dutiful son to Mary. But will this satisfy

the mother's claims on James, or entitle him to her esteem, approbation,

and blessing? If, indeed, by force of Henry's example or persuasion, or

any more mysterious influence, James repents and becomes himself a good

and dutiful child, then, indeed, Mary is wholly satisfied; but then the

case is no longer a question of debt in that sense in which it can be

paid by another, though the effect, of which alone St. Paul was

speaking, is the same in both cases to James as the debtor, and to James

as the undutiful son. He is in both cases liberated from the burthen,

and in both cases he has to attribute his exoneration to the act of

another; as cause simply in the payment of the debt, or as likewise

'causa causæ' in James's reformation. Such is my present opinion: God

grant me increase of light either to renounce or confirm it.

Perhaps the different terms of the above position may be more clearly

stated thus:

1. 'agens causator'

2. 'actus causativus:'

3. 'effectus causatus:'

4. 'consequentia ab effecto.'

1. The co-eternal Son of the living God, incarnate, tempted, crucified,

resurgent, communicant of his spirit, ascendant, and obtaining for his

church the descent of the Holy Ghost.

2. A spiritual and transcendant mystery.

3. The being born anew, as before in the flesh to the world, so now in

the spirit to Christ: where the differences are, the spirit opposed to

the flesh, and Christ to the world; the 'punctum indifferens', or

combining term, remaining the same in both, namely, a birth.

4. Sanctification from sin and liberation from the consequences of sin,

with all the means and process of sanctification, being the same for the

sinner relatively to God and his own soul, as the satisfaction of a

creditor for a debt, or as the offering of an atoning sacrifice for a

transgressor of the law; as a reconciliation for a rebellious son or a

subject to his alienated parent or offended sovereign; and as a ransom

is for a slave in a heavy captivity.

Now my complaint is that our systematic divines transfer the paragraph 4

to the paragraphs 2 and 3, interpreting 'proprio sensu et ad totum 'what

is affirmed 'sensu metaphorico et ad partem', that is, 'ad consequentia

a regeneratione effecta per actum causativum primi agentis, uempe

[Greek: Logou] redemptoris', and by this interpretation substituting an

identification absolute for an equation proportional.

4th May, 1819.

Ib. p. 62.

Personality is nothing but the existence of nature itself.

God alone had his nature in himself; that is, God alone contains in

himself the ground of his own existence. But were this definition of

Field's right, we might predicate personality of a worm, or wherever we

find life. Better say,--personality is individuality existing in itself,

but with a nature as its ground.

Ib. p.66.

Accursing Eutyches as a heretic.

It puzzles me to understand what sense Field gave to the word, heresy.

Surely every slight error, even though persevered in, is not to be held

a heresy, or its asserters accursed. The error ought at least to respect

some point of faith essential to the great ends of the Gospel. Thus the

phrase 'cursing Eutyches,' is to me shockingly unchristian. I could not

dare call even the opinion cursed, till I saw how it injured the faith

in Christ, weakened our confidence in him, or lessened our love and

gratitude.

Ib. p.71.

'If ye be circumcised ye are fallen from grace, and Christ

can profit you nothing.'

It seems impossible but that these words had a relation to the

particular state of feeling and belief, out of which the anxiety to be

circumcised did in those particular persons proceed, and not absolutely,

and at all times to the act itself, seeing that St. Paul himself

circumcised Timothy from motives of charity and prudence.

Ib. c.3. p.76.

The things that pertain to the Christian faith and religion are of two

sorts; for there are some things 'explicite', some things

'implicite credenda'; that is, there are some things that must be

particularly and expressly known and believed, as that the Father is

God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three

Gods but one God; and some other, which though all men, at all times,

be not bound upon the peril of damnation to know and believe

expressly, yet whosoever will be saved must believe them at least

'implicite', and in generality, as that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus

fled into Egypt.

Merciful Heaven! Eternal misery and the immitigable wrath of God, and

the inextinguishable fire of hell amid devils, parricides, and haters of

God and all goodness--this is the verdict which a Protestant divine

passes against the man, who though sincerely believing the whole Nicene

creed and every doctrine and precept taught in the New Testament, and

living accordingly, should yet have convinced himself that the first

chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke were not parts of the original

Gospels!

Ib. p.77.

So in the beginning, Nestorius did not err, touching the unity of

Christ's person in the diversity of the natures of God and man; but

only disliked that Mary should be called the mother of God: which form

of speaking when some demonstrated to be very fitting and unavoidable,

if Christ were God and man in the unity of the same person, he chose

rather to deny the unity of Christ's person than to acknowledge his

temerity and rashness in reproving that form of speech, which the use

of the church had anciently received and allowed.

A false charge grounded on a misconception of the Syriac terms.

Nestorius was perfectly justifiable in his rejection of the epithet

[Greek: theotókos], as applied to the mother of Jesus. The Church was

even then only too ripe for the idolatrous 'hyper-dulia' of the

Virgin. Not less weak is Field's defence of the propriety of the term.

Set aside all reference to this holy mystery, and let me ask, I trust

without offence, whether by the same logic a mule's dam might not be

called [Greek: hippotókos], because the horse and ass were united in one

and the same subject. The difference in the perfect God and perfect man

does not remove the objection: for an epithet, which conceals half of a

truth, the power and special concerningness of which, relatively to our

redemption by Christ, depends on our knowledge of the whole, is a

deceptive and a dangerously deceptive epithet.

Ib. c.20. p.110.

Thus, then, the Fathers did sometimes, when they had particular

occasions to remember the Saints, and to speak of them, by way of

'apostrophe', turn themselves unto them, and use words of

doubtful compellation, praying them, if they have any sense of these

inferior things, to be remembrancers to God for them.

The distinct gradations of the process, by which commemoration and

rhetorical apostrophes passed finally into idolatry, supply an analogy

of mighty force against the heretical 'hypothesis 'of the modern

Unitarians. Were it true, they would have been able to have traced the

progress of the Christolatry from the lowest sort of 'Christodulia'

with the same historical distinctness against the universal Church, that

the Protestants have that of hierolatry against the Romanists. The

gentle and soft censures which our divines during the reign of the

Stuarts pass on the Roman Saint worship, or hieroduly, as an

inconvenient superstition, must needs have alarmed the faithful

adherents to the Protestantism of Edward VI. and the surviving exiles of

bloody Queen Mary's times, and their disciples.

Ib. p.111.

The miracles that God wrought in times past by them made many to

attribute more to them than was fit, as if they had a generality of

presence, knowledge, and working; but the wisest and best advised

never durst attribute any such thing unto them.

To a truly pious mind awfully impressed with the surpassing excellency

of God's ineffable love to fallen man, in the revelation of himself to

the inner man through the reason and conscience by the spiritual light

and substantiality--(for the conscience is to the spirit or reason what

the understanding is to the sense, a substantiative power); this

consequence of miracles is so fearful, that it cannot but redouble his

zeal against that fashion of modern theologists which would convert

miracles from a motive to attention and solicitous examination, and at

best from a negative condition of revelation, into the positive

foundation of Christian faith.

Ib. c.22. p.116.

But if this be as vile a slander as ever Satanist devised, the Lord

reward them that have been the authors and advisers of it according

to their works.

O no! no! this the good man did not utter from his heart, but from his

passion. A vile and wicked slander it was and is. O may God have turned

the hearts of those who uttered it, or may it be among their unknown

sins done in ignorance, for which the infinite merits of Christ may

satisfy! I am most assured that if Dr. Field were now alive, or if any

one had but said this to him, he would have replied--"I thank thee,

brother, for thy Christian admonition. Add thy prayer, and pray God to

forgive me my inconsiderate zeal!"

Ib. c. 23. p. 119.

For what rectitude is due to the specifical act of hating God? or what

rectitude is it capable of?

Is this a possible act to any man understanding by the word God what we

mean by God?

Ib. p. 129.

It is this complicated dispute, as to the origin and permission of evil,

which supplies to atheism its most plausible, because its only moral,

arguments; but more especially to that species of atheism which existed

in Greece in the form of polytheism, admitting moral and intelligent

shapers and governors of the world, but denying an intelligent ground,

or self-conscious Creator of the universe; their gods being themselves

the offspring of chaos and necessity, that is, of matter and its

essential laws or properties.

The Leibnitzian distinction of the Eternal Reason, or nature of God,

[Greek: tò theion](the [Greek: nous kaì anágkae] of Timæus Locrus) from

the will or personal attributes of God--([Greek: thélaema kaì

boúlaesis--agathou patròs agathòn boúlaema])--planted the germ of the

only possible solution, or rather perhaps, in words less exceptionable

and more likely to be endured in the schools of modern theology, brought

forward the truth involved in Behmen's too bold distinction of God and

the ground of God;--who yet in this is to be excused, not only for his

good aim and his ignorance of scholastic terms, but likewise because

some of the Fathers expressed themselves no less crudely in the other

extreme; though it is not improbable that the meaning was the same in

both.

At least Behmen constantly makes self-existence a positive act, so as

that by an eternal [Greek: perich_óraesis] or mysterious

intercirculation God wills himself out of the 'ground' ([Greek: tò

theion--tò hèn kaì pan],--'indifferentia absoluta realitatis infinitæ et

infinitæ potentialitatis')--and again by his will, as God existing,

gives being to the ground, [Greek: autogenàes--autophylàes--uhios

heautou]. 'Solus Deus est;--itaque principium, qui ex seipso dedit sibi

ipse principium. Deus ipse sui origo est, suæque causa substantiæ, id

quod est, ex se et in se continens. Ex seipso procreatus ipse se fecit',

&c., of Synesius, Jerome, Hilary, and Lactantius and others involve the

same conception.

Ib. c. 27. p. 140.

The seventh is the heresy of Sabellius, which he saith was revived by

Servetus. So it was indeed, that Servetus revived in our time the

damnable heresy of Sabellius, long since condemned in the first ages

of the Church. But what is that to us? How little approbation he found

amongst us, the just and honourable proceeding against him at Geneva

will witness to all posterity.

Shocking as this act must and ought to be to all Christians at present;

yet this passage and a hundred still stronger from divines and Church

letters contemporary with Calvin, prove Servetus' death not to be

Calvin's guilt especially, but the common 'opprobrium' of all

European Christendom,--of the Romanists whose laws the Senate of Geneva

followed, and from fear of whose reproaches (as if Protestants favoured

heresy) they executed them,--and of the Protestant churches who

applauded the act and returned thanks to Calvin and the Senate for

it. [7]

Ib. c. 30. p. 143.

The twelfth heresy imputed to us is the heresy of Jovinian, concerning

whom we must observe, that Augustine ascribeth unto him two opinions

which Hierome mentioneth not; who yet was not likely to spare him, if

he might truly have been charged with them. The first, that Mary

ceased to be a virgin when she had borne Christ; the second, that all

sins are equal.

Neither this nor that is worthy the name of opinion; it is mere

unscriptural, nay, anti-scriptural gossiping. Are we to blame, or not

rather to praise, the anxiety manifested by the great divines of the

church of England under the Stuarts not to remove further than necessary

from the Romish doctrines? Yet one wishes a bolder method; for example,

as to Mary's private history after the conception and birth of Christ,

we neither know nor care about it.

Ib. c. 31. p. 146.

For the opinions wherewith Hierome chargeth him, this we briefly

answer. First, if he absolutely denied that the Saints departed do

pray for us, as it seemeth he did by Hierome's reprehension, we think

he erred.

Yet not heretically; and if he meant only that we being wholly ignorant,

whether they do or no, ought to act as if we knew they did not, he is

perfectly right; for whatever ye do, do it in faith. As to the ubiquity

of saints, it is Jerome who is the heretic, nay, idolater, if he reduced

his opinion to practice. It perplexes me, that Field speaks so

doubtingly on a matter so plain as the incommunicability of

omnipresence.

Ib. c. 32. p. 147.

Touching the second objection, that Bucer and Calvin deny original

sin, though not generally, as did Zuinglius, yet at least in the

children of the faithful. If he had said that these men affirm the

earth doth move, and the heavens stand still, he might have as soon

justified it against them, as this he now saith.

Very noticeable. A similar passage occurs even so late as in Sir Thomas

Brown, just at the dawn of the Newtonian system, and after Kepler. What

a lesson of diffidence! [8]

Ib. p. 148.

For we do not deny the distinction of venial and mortal sins; but do

think, that some sins are rightly said to be mortal and some venial;

not for that some are worthy of eternal punishment and therefore named

mortal, others of temporal only, and therefore judged venial as the

Papists imagine: but for that some exclude grace out of that man in

which they are found and so leave him in a state wherein he hath

nothing in himself that can or will procure him pardon: and other,

which though in themselves considered, and never remitted, they be

worthy of eternal punishment, yet do not so far prevail as to banish

grace, the fountain of remission of all misdoings.

Would not the necessary consequence of this be, that there are no

actions that can be pronounced mortal sins by mortals; and that what we

might fancy venial might in individual cases be mortal and 'vice

versa'.

Ib.

First, because every offence against God may justly be punished by him

in the strictness of his righteous judgments with eternal death, yea,

with annihilation; which appeareth to be most true, for that there is

no punishment so evil, and so much to be avoided, as the least sin

that may be imagined. So that a man should rather choose eternal

death, yea, utter annihilation, than commit the least offence in the

world.

I admit this to be Scriptural; but what is wanted is, clearly to state

the difference between eternal death and annihilation. For who would not

prefer the latter, if the former mean everlasting misery?

Ib. c. 41. p. 62.

But he will say, Cyprian calleth the Roman Church the principal Church

whence sacerdotal unity hath her spring; hereunto we answer, that the

Roman Church, not in power of overruling all, but in order is the

first and principal; and that therefore while she continueth to hold

the truth, and encroacheth not upon the right of other Churches, she

is to have the priority; but that in either of these cases she may be

forsaken without breach of that unity, which is essentially required

in the parts of the Church.

This is too large a concession. The real ground of the priority of the

Roman see was that Rome, for the first three or perhaps four centuries,

was the metropolis of the Christian world. Afterwards for the very same

reason the Patriarch of New Rome or Constantinople claimed it; and never

ceased to assert at least a co-equality. Had the Apostolic foundation

been the cause, Jerusalem and Antioch must have had priority; not to add

that the Roman Church was not founded by either Paul or Peter as is

evident from the epistle to the Romans.

Append. B. III. p. 205.

I do not think the attack on Transubstantiation the most successful

point of the orthodox Protestant controversialists. The question is,

what is meant in Scripture, as in 'John' vi. by Christ's body or flesh

and blood. Surely not the visible, tangible, accidental body, that is, a

cycle of images and sensations in the imagination of the beholders; but

his supersensual body, the 'noumenon' of his human nature which was

united to his divine nature.

In this sense I understand the Lutheran ubiquity. But may not the

"oblations" referred to by Field in the old canon of the Mass, have

meant the alms, offerings always given at the Eucharist? If by

"substance" in the enunciation of the article be meant 'id quod vere

est', and if the divine nature be the sole 'ens vere ens', then it is

possible to give a philosophically intelligible sense to Luther's

doctrine of consubstantiation; at least to a doctrine that might bear

the same name;--at all events the mystery is not greater than, if it be

not rather the same as, the assumption of the human by the divine

nature.

Now for the possible conception of this we must accurately discriminate

the 'incompossibile negativum' from the 'incompatibile privativum'. Of

the latter are all positive imperfections, as error, vice, and evil

passions; of the former simple limitation.

Thus if '(per impossible)' human nature could make itself sinless and

perfect, it would become or pass into God; and if God should abstract

from human nature all imperfection, it might without impropriety be

affirmed, even as Scripture doth affirm, that God assumed or took up

into himself the human nature.

Thus, to use a dim similitude and merely as a faint illustration, all

materiality abstracted from a circle, it would become space, and though

not infinite, yet one with infinite space. The mystery of omnipresence

greatly aids this conception; 'totus in omni parte': and in truth this

is the divine character of all the Christian mysteries, that they aid

each other, and many incomprehensibles render each of them, in a certain

qualified sense, less incomprehensible.

Ib. p. 208.

But first, it is impious to think of destroying Christ in any sort.

For though it be true, that in sacrificing of Christ on the altar of

the cross, the destroying and killing of him was implied, and this his

death was the life of the world, yet all that concurred to the killing

of him, as the Jews, the Roman soldiers, Pilate, and Judas sinned

damnably, and so had done, though they had shed his blood with an

intention and desire, that by it the world might be redeemed.

Is not this going too far? Would it not imply almost that Christ himself

could not righteously sacrifice himself, especially when we consider

that the Romanists would have a right to say, that Christ himself had

commanded it? But Bellarmine's conceit [9] is so absurd that it scarce

deserves the compliment of a serious confutation. For if sacramental

being be opposed to natural or material, as 'noumenon' to 'phænomenon',

place is no attribute or possible accident of it 'in se'; consequently,

no alteration of place relatively to us can affect, much less destroy,

it; and even were it otherwise, yet translocation is not destruction;

for the body of Christ, according to themselves, doth indeed nourish our

souls, even as a fish eaten sustains another fish, but yet with this

essential difference, that it ceases not to be and remain itself, and

instead of being converted converts; so that truly the only things

sacrificed in the strict sense are all the evil qualities or

deficiencies which divide our souls from Christ.

Ib. p. 218.

That which we do is done in remembrance of that which was then done;

for he saith, 'Do this in remembrance of me.'

This is a 'metastasis' of Scripture. 'Do this in remembrance of

me', that is, that which Christ was then doing. But Christ was not

then suffering, or dying on the cross.

Ib. p.223.

That the Saints do pray for us 'in genere', desiring God to be

merciful to us, and to do unto us whatsoever in any kind he knoweth

needful for our good, there is no question made by us.

To have placed this question in its true light, so as to have allowed

the full force to the Scriptures asserting the communion of Saints and

the efficacy of their intercession without undue concessions to the

'hierolatria' of the Romish church, would have implied an

acquaintance with the science of transcendental analysis, and an insight

into the philosophy of ideas not to be expected in Field, and which was

then only dawning in the mind of Lord Bacon. The proper reply to Brerely

would be this: the communion and intercession of Saints is an idea, and

must be kept such. But the Romish church has changed it away into the

detail of particular and individual conceptions, and imaginations, into

names and fancies.

N.B. Instead of the 'Roman Catholic' read throughout in this and all

other works, and everywhere and on all occasions, unless where the

duties of formal courtesy forbid, say, the 'Romish anti-Catholic

Church;' Romish--to mark that the corruptions in discipline, doctrine

and practice do for the worst and far larger part owe both their origin

and their perpetuation to the court and local tribunals of the city of

Rome, and are not and never have been the catholic, that is, universal

faith of the Roman empire, or even of the whole Latin or Western church;

and anti-Catholic,--because no other Church acts on so narrow and

excommunicative a principle, or is characterized by such a jealous

spirit of monopoly and particularism, counterfeiting catholicity by a

negative totality and heretical self-circumscription, cutting off, or

cutting herself off from, all the other members of Christ's Body.

12th March, 1824.

It is of the utmost importance, wherever clear and distinct conceptions

are required, to make out in the first instance whether the term in

question, or the main terms of the question in dispute, represents or

represent a fact or class of facts simply, or some self-established and

previously known idea or principle, of which the facts are instances and

realizations, or which is introduced in order to explain and account for

the facts. Now the term 'merits,' as applied to Abraham and the saints,

belongs to the former. It is a mere 'nomen appellativum' of the

facts.

Ib. c. 5. p. 252.

The Papists and we agree that original sin is the privation of

original righteousness; but they suppose there was in nature without

that addition of grace, a power to do good, &c.

Nothing seems wanting to this argument but a previous definition and

explanation of the term, 'nature.' Field appears to have seen the truth,

namely, that nature itself is a peccant (I had almost said an unnatural)

state, or rather no State at all, [Greek: ou stásis all' apóstasis].

Ib. c. 6. p. 269.

And surely the words of Augustine do not import that she had no sin,

but that she overcame it, which argueth a conflict; neither doth he

say he will acknowledge she was without sin, but that he will not move

any question touching her, in this dispute of sins and sinners.

Why not say at once, that this anti-Scriptural superstition had already

begun? I scarcely know whether to be pleased or grieved with that edging

on toward the Roman creed, that exceeding, almost Scriptural, tenderness

for the divines of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, which

distinguishes the Church of England dignitaries, from Elizabeth

inclusively to our Revolution in 1688, from other Protestants.

Ib. c. 10. p. 279.

Derwent! should this page chance to fall under your eye, for my sake

read, fag, subdue, and take up into your proper mind this chapter 10 of

Free Will.

Ib. p. 281.

Of these five kinds of liberty, the two first agree only to God, so

that in the highest degree [Greek: to autexoúsion], that is, freedom

of will is proper to God only; and in this sense Calvin and Luther

rightly deny that the will of any creature is or ever was free.

I add, except as in God, and God in us. Now the latter alone is will;

for it alone is 'ens super ens'. And here lies the mystery, which I dare

not openly and promiscuously reveal.

Ib.

Yet doth not God's working upon the will take from it the power of

dissenting, and doing the contrary; but so inclineth it, that having

liberty to do otherwise, yet she will actually determine so.

This will not do. Were it true, then my understanding would be free in a

mathematical proportion; or the whole position amounts only to this,

that the will, though compelled, is still the will. Be it so; yet not a

free will. In short, Luther and Calvin are right so far. A creaturely

will cannot be free; but the will in a rational creature may cease to be

creaturely, and the creature, [Greek: apóstasis], finally cease in

consequence; and this neither Luther nor Calvin seem to have seen. In

short, where omnipotence is on one side, what but utter impotence can

remain for the other? To make freedom possible, the 'antithesis' must be

removed. The removal of this 'antithesis' of the creature to God is the

object of the Redemption, and forms the glorious liberty of the Gospel.

More than this I am not permitted to expose.

Ib. p. 283.

It is not given, nor is it wanting, to all men to have an insight into

the mystery of the human will and its mode of inherence on the will

which is God, as the ineffable 'causa sui'; but this chapter will

suffice to convince you that the doctrines of Calvin were those of

Luther in this point;--that they are intensely metaphysical, and that

they are diverse 'toto genere' from the merely moral and

psychological--tenets of the modern Calvinists. Calvin would have

exclaimed, 'fire and fagots!' before he had gotten through a hundred

pages of Dr. Williams's Modern Calvinism.

Ib. c. 11. p. 296.

Neither can Vega avoid the evidence of the testimonies of the Fathers,

and the decree of the Council of Trent, so that he must be forced to

confess that no man can so collectively fulfil the law as not to sin,

and consequently, that no man can perform that the law requireth.

The paralogism of Vega as to this perplexing question seems to lurk in

the position that God gives a law which it is impossible we should obey

collectively. But the truth is, that the law which God gave, and which

from the essential holiness of his nature it is impossible he should not

have given, man deprived himself of the ability to obey. And was the law

of God therefore to be annulled? Must the sun cease to shine because the

earth has become a morass, so that even that very glory of the sun hath

become a new cause of its steaming up clouds and vapors that strangle

the rays? God forbid! 'But for the law I had not sinned'. But had I not

been sinful the law would not have occasioned me to sin, but would have

clothed me with righteousness, by the transmission of its splendour.

'Let God be just, and every man a liar'.

B. iv. c. 4. p. 346.

The Church of God is named the 'Pillar of Truth;' not as if truth did

depend on the Church, &c.

Field might have strengthened his argument, by mention of the custom of

not only affixing records and testimonials to the pillars, but books, &c.

Ib. c. 7. p. 353.

Others therefore, to avoid this absurdity, run into that other before

mentioned, that we believe the things that are divine by the mere and

absolute command of our will, not finding any sufficient motives and

reasons of persuasion.

Field, nor Count Mirandula have penetrated to the heart of this most

fundamental question. In all proper faith the will is the prime agent,

but not therefore the choice. You may call it reason if you will, but

then carefully distinguish the speculative from the practical reason,

and the reason itself from the understanding.

Ib. c. 8. p. 356.

'Illius virtute' (saith he) 'illuminati, jam non aut nostro, aut

aliorum judicio credimus a Deo esse Scripturam, sed supra humanum

judicium certo certius constituimus, non secus ac si ipsius Dei numen

illic intueremur, hominum ministerio ab ipsissimo Dei ore fluxisse.'

Greatly doth this fine passage need explanation, that knowing what it

doth mean, the reader may understand what it doth not mean, nor of

necessity imply. Without this insight, our faith may be terribly shaken

by difficulties and objections. For example; If all the Scripture, then

each component part; thence every faithful Christian infallible, and so

on.

Ib. p. 357.

In the second the light of divine reason causeth approbation of that

they believe: in the third sort, the purity of divine understanding

apprehendeth most certainly the things believed, and causeth a

foretasting of those things that hereafter more fully shall be enjoyed.

Here too Field distinguishes the understanding from the reason, as

experience following perception of sense. But as perception through the

mere presence of the object perceived, whether to the outward or inner

sense, is not insight which belongs to the 'light of reason,' therefore

Field marks it by 'purity' that is unmixed with fleshly sensations or

the 'idola' of the bodily eye. Though Field is by no means consistent in

his 'epitheta' of the understanding, he seldom confounds the word

itself. In theological Latin, the understanding, as influenced and

combined with the affections and desires, is most frequently expressed

by 'cor', the heart. Doubtless the most convenient form of appropriating

the terms would be to consider the understanding as man's intelligential

faculty, whatever be its object, the sensible or the intelligible world;

while reason is the tri-unity, as it were, of the spiritual eye, light,

and object.

Ib. c. 10. p. 358.

Of the Papists preferring the Church's authority before the Scripture.

Field, from the nature and special purpose of his controversy, is

reluctant to admit any error in the Fathers,--too much so indeed; and

this is an instance. We all know what we mean by the Scriptures, but how

know we what they mean by the Church, which is neither thing nor person?

But this is a very difficult subject.

Ib. p. 359.

First, so as if the Church might define contrary to the Scriptures, as

she may contrary to the writings of particular men, how great soever.

Verbally, the more sober divines of the Church of Rome do not assert

this; but practically and by consequence they do. For if the Church

assign a sense contradictory to the true sense of the Scripture, none

dare gainsay it. [10]

Ib.

This we deny, and will in due place 'improve' their error herein.

That is, prove against, detect, or confute.

Ib. c. 11. p. 360.

If the comparison be made between the Church consisting of all the

believers that are and have been since Christ appeared in the flesh,

so including the Apostles, and their blessed assistants the

Evangelists, we deny not but that the Church is of greater authority,

antiquity, and excellency than the Scriptures of the New Testament, as

the witness is better than his testimony, and the law-giver greater

than the laws made by him, as Stapleton allegeth.

The Scriptures may be and are an intelligible and real one, but the

Church on earth can in no sense be such in and through itself, that is,

its component parts, but only by their common adherence to the body of

truth made present in the Scripture. Surely you would not distinguish

the Scripture from its contents?

Ib. c. 12. p. 361.

For the better understanding whereof we must observe, as Occam fitly

noteth, that an article of faith is sometimes strictly taken only for

one of those divine verities, which are contained in the Creed of the

Apostles: sometimes generally for any catholic verity.

I am persuaded, that this division will not bear to be expanded into all

its legitimate consequences 'sine periculo vel fidei vel charitatis'. I

should substitute the following:

1. The essentials of that saving faith, which having its root and its

proper and primary seat in the moral will, that is, in the heart and

affections, is necessary for each and every individual member of the

church of Christ:--

2. Those truths which are essential and necessary in order to the

logical and rational possibility of the former, and the belief and

assertion of which are indispensable to the Church at large, as those

truths without which the body of believers, the Christian world, could

not have been and cannot be continued, though it be possible that in

this body this or that individual may be saved without the conscious

knowledge of, or an explicit belief in, them.

Ib.

And therefore before and without such determination, men seeing

clearly the deduction of things of this nature from the former, and

refusing to believe them, are condemned of heretical pertinacy.

Rather, I should think, of a nondescript lunacy than of heretical

pravity. A child may explicitly know that 5 + 5 = 10, yet not see that

therefore 10 - 5 = 5; but when he has seen it how he can refrain from

believing the latter as much as the former, I have no conception.

Ib. c. 16. p. 367.

And the third of jurisdiction; and so they that have supreme power,

that is, the Bishops assembled in a general Council, may interpret the

Scriptures, and by their authority suppress all them that shall

gainsay such interpretations, and subject every man that shall disobey

such determinations as they consent upon, to excommunication and

censures of like nature.

This would be satisfactory, if only Field had cleared the point of the

communion in the Lord's Supper; whether taken spiritually, though in

consequence of excommunication not ritually, it yet sufficeth to

salvation. If so, excommunication is merely declarative, and the evil

follows not the declaration but that which is truly declared, as when

Richard says that Francis deserves the gallows, as a robber. The gallows

depends on the fact of the robbery, not on Richard's saying.

Ib. c. 29. p. 391.

In the 1 Cor. 15. the Greek, that now is, hath in all copies; 'the

first man was of the earth, earthly; the second man is the Lord from

heaven'. The latter part of this sentence Tertullian supposeth to have

been corrupted, and altered by the Marcionites. Instead of that the

Latin text hath; 'the second man was from heaven, heavenly', as

Ambrose, Hierome, and many of the Fathers read also.

There ought to be, and with any man of taste there can be, no doubt that

our version is the true one. That of Ambrose and Jerome is worthy of

mere rhetoricians; a flat formal play of 'antithesis' instead of the

weight and solemnity of the other. [11] According to the former the

scales are even, in the latter the scale of Christ drops down at once,

and the other flies to the beam like a feather weighed against a mass of

gold.

Append. Part. I. s. 4. p. 752.

And again he saith, that every soul, immediately upon the departure

hence, is in this appointed invisible place, having there either pain,

or ease and refreshing; that there the rich man is in pain, and the

poor in a comfortable estate. For, saith he, why should we not think,

that the souls are tormented, or refreshed in this invisible place,

appointed for them in expectation of the future judgment?

This may be adduced as an instance, specially, of the evil consequences

of introducing the 'idolon' of time as an 'ens reale' into

spiritual doctrines, thus understanding literally what St. Paul had

expressed by figure and adaptation. Hence the doctrine of a middle

state, and hence Purgatory with all its abominations; and an instance,

generally, of the incalculable possible importance of speculative errors

on the happiness and virtue of man-kind.

[Footnote 1: Folio 1628.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: The following letter was written on, and addressed with,

the book to the Rev. Derwent Coleridge.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: 'P. L.' III. 487.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: i. 27. See 'Aids to Reflection'. 3d edit. p. 17. n.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5:

... whence the soul

Reason receives, and reason is her being,

Discursive or intuitive.

'P. L.' v. 426.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: The reader of the 'Aids to Reflection' will recognize in

this note the rough original of the passages p. 313, &c. of the 3d

edition of that work.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: See 'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 283. Melancthon's words to

Calvin are:

'Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affirmu etiam vestros magistratus

juste fecisse, quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata,

interfecerunt.'

14th Oct. 1554.--Ed.

[Footnote 8:

"But to circle the earth, 'as the heavenly bodies do',' &c. 'So we may

see that the opinion of Copernicus touching the rotation of the earth,

which astronomy itself cannot correct, because it is not repugnant to

any of the 'phænomena', yet 'natural history may correct'."

'Advancement of Learning', B. II.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9: That Christ had a twofold being, natural and sacramental;

that the Jews destroyed and sacrificed his natural being, and that

Christian priests destroy and sacrifice in the Mass his sacramental

being.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10:

'Fides catholica', says Bellarmine, 'docet omnem virtutem esse bonam,

omne vitium esse malum. Si autem erraret Papa præcipiendo vitia vel

prohibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona et

virtutes malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare.'

'De Pont. Roman'. IV. 5.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: The ordinary Greek text is:

[Greek: ho deúteros anthropos, ho Kyrios ex ouranou].

The Vulgate is:

'primus homo de terra, terrenus; secundus homo de coelis,

coelestis.'--Ed.]

NOTES ON DONNE. [1]

There have been many, and those illustrious, divines in our Church from

Elizabeth to the present day, who, overvaluing the accident of

antiquity, and arbitrarily determining the appropriation of the words

'ancient,' 'primitive,' and the like to a certain date, as for example,

to all before the fourth, fifth, or sixth century, were resolute

protesters against the corruptions and tyranny of the Romish hierarch,

and yet lagged behind Luther and the Reformers of the first generation.

Hence I have long seen the necessity or expedience of a threefold

division of divines. There are many, whom God forbid that I should call

Papistic, or, like Laud, Montague, Heylyn, and others, longing for a

Pope at Lambeth, whom yet I dare not name Apostolic. Therefore I divide

our theologians into,

1. Apostolic or Pauline:

2. Patristic:

3. Papal.

Even in Donne, and still more in Bishops Andrews and Hackett, there is a

strong Patristic leaven. In Jeremy Taylor this taste for the Fathers and

all the Saints and Schoolmen before the Reformation amounted to a

dislike of the divines of the continental Protestant Churches, Lutheran

or Calvinistic. But this must, in part at least, be attributed to

Taylor's keen feelings as a Carlist, and a sufferer by the Puritan

anti-prelatic party.

I would thus class the pentad of operative Christianity:--

'Prothesis'

Christ, the Word

'Thesis' 'Mesothesis' 'Antithesis'

The Scriptures The Holy Spirit The Church

'Synthesis'

The Preacher

The Papacy elevated the Church to the virtual exclusion or suppression

of the Scriptures: the modern Church of England, since Chillingworth,

has so raised up the Scriptures as to annul the Church; both alike have

quenched the Holy Spirit, as the 'mesothesis' of the two, and

substituted an alien compound for the genuine Preacher, who should be

the 'synthesis' of the Scriptures and the Church, and the sensible voice

of the Holy Spirit.

Serm. I. Coloss. i. 19, 20. p. 1.

Ib. E.

What could God pay for me? What could God suffer? God himself could

not; and therefore God hath taken a body that could.

God forgive me,--or those who first set abroad this strange [Greek:

metábasis eis allo génos], this debtor and creditor scheme of expounding

the mystery of Redemption, or both! But I never can read the words, 'God

himself could not; and therefore took a body that could'--without being

reminded of the monkey that took the cat's paw to take the chestnuts out

of the fire, and claimed the merit of puss's sufferings. I am sure,

however, that the ludicrous images, under which this gloss of the

Calvinists embodies itself to my fancy, never disturb my recollections

of the adorable mystery itself. It is clear that a body, remaining a

body, can only suffer as a body: for no faith can enable us to believe

that the same thing can be at once A. and not A. Now that the body of

our Lord was not transelemented or transnatured by the 'pleroma'

indwelling, we are positively assured by Scripture. Therefore it would

follow from this most unscriptural doctrine, that the divine justice had

satisfaction made to it by the suffering of a body which had been

brought into existence for this special purpose, in lieu of the debt of

eternal misery due from, and leviable on, the bodies and souls of all

mankind! It is to this gross perversion of the sublime idea of the

Redemption by the cross, that we must attribute the rejection of the

doctrine of redemption by the Unitarian, and of the Gospel 'in toto' by

the more consequent Deist.

Ib. p. 2. C.

And yet, even this dwelling fullness, even in this person Christ

Jesus, by no title of merit in himself, but only 'quia complacuit',

because it pleased the Father it should be so.

This, in the intention of the preacher, may have been sound, but was it

safe, divinity? In order to the latter, methinks, a less equivocal word

than 'person' ought to have been adopted; as 'the body and soul of the

man Jesus, considered abstractedly from the divine Logos, who in it took

up humanity into deity, and was Christ Jesus.' Dare we say that there

was no self-subsistent, though we admit no self-originated, merit in the

Christ? It seems plain to me, that in this and sundry other passages of

St. Paul, 'the Father' means the total triune Godhead.

It appears to me, that dividing the Church of England into two æras--the

first from Ridley to Field, or from Edward VI. to the commencement of

the latter third of the reign of James I, and the second ending with

Bull and Stillingfleet, we might characterize their comparative

excellences thus: That the divines of the first æra had a deeper, more

genial, and a more practical insight into the mystery of Redemption, in

the relation of man toward both the act and the author, namely, in all

the inchoative states, the regeneration and the operations of saving

grace generally;--while those of the second æra possessed clearer and

distincter views concerning the nature and necessity of Redemption, in

the relation of God toward man, and concerning the connection of

Redemption with the article of Tri-unity; and above all, that they

surpassed their predecessors in a more safe and determinate scheme of

the divine economy of the three persons in the one undivided Godhead.

This indeed, was mainly owing to Bishop Bull's masterly work 'De Fide

Nicæna', [2] which in the next generation Waterland so admirably

maintained, on the one hand, against the philosophy of the Arians,--the

combat ending in the death and burial of Arianism, and its descent and

'metempsychosis' into Socinianism, and thence again into modern

Unitarianism,--and on the other extreme, against the oscillatory creed

of Sherlock, now swinging to Tritheism in the recoil from Sabellianism,

and again to Sabellianism in the recoil from Tritheism.

Ib.

First, we are to consider this fullness to have been in Christ, and

then, from this fullness arose his merits; we can consider no merit in

Christ himself before, whereby he should merit this fullness; for this

fullness was in him before he merited any thing; and but for this

fullness he had not so merited. 'Ille homo, ut in unitatem filii Dei

assumeretur, unde meruit'? How did that man (says St. Augustine,

speaking of Christ, as of the son of man), how did that man merit to

be united in one person with the eternal Son of God? 'Quid egit ante?

Quid credidit'? What had he done? Nay, what had he believed? Had he

either faith or works before that union of both natures?

Dr. Donne and St. Augustine said this without offence; but I much

question whether the same would be endured now. That it is, however, in

the spirit of Paul and of the Gospel, I doubt not to affirm, and that

this great truth is obscured by what in my judgment is the

post-Apostolic 'Christopædia', I am inclined to think.

Ib.

What canst thou imagine he could foresee in thee? a propensness, a

disposition to goodness, when his grace should come? Either there is

no such propensness, no such disposition in thee, or, if there be,

even that propensness and disposition to the good use of grace, is

grace; it is an effect of former grace, and his grace wrought before

he saw any such propensness, any such disposition; grace was first,

and his grace is his, it is none of thine.

One of many instances in dogmatic theology, in which the half of a

divine truth has passed into a fearful error by being mistaken for the

whole truth.

Ib. p. 6. D.

God's justice required blood, but that blood is not spilt, but poured

from that head to our hearts, into the veins and wounds of our own

souls: there was blood shed, but no blood lost.

It is affecting to observe how this great man's mind sways and

oscillates between his reason, which demands in the word 'blood' a

symbolic meaning, a spiritual interpretation, and the habitual awe for

the letter; so that he himself seems uncertain whether he means the

physical lymph, 'serum,' and globules that trickled from the wounds

of the nails and thorns down the sides and face of Jesus, or the blood

of the Son of Man, which he who drinketh not cannot live. Yea, it is

most affecting to see the struggles of so great a mind to preserve its

inborn fealty to the reason under the servitude to an accepted article

of belief, which was, alas! confounded with the high obligations of

faith;--faith the co-adunation of the finite individual will with the

universal reason, by the submission of the former to the latter. To

reconcile redemption by the material blood of Jesus with the mind of the

spirit, he seeks to spiritualize the material blood itself in all men!

And a deep truth lies hidden even in this. Indeed the whole is a

profound subject, the true solution of which may best, God's grace

assisting, be sought for in the collation of Paul with John, and

specially in St. Paul's assertion that we are baptized into the death of

Christ, that we may be partakers of his resurrection and life. [3] It

was not on the visible cross, it was not directing attention to the

blood-drops on his temples and sides, that our blessed Redeemer said,

'This is my body', and 'this is my blood!

Ib. p. 9. A.

But if we consider those who are in heaven, and have been so from the

first minute of their creation, angels, why have they, or how have

they any reconciliation? &c.

The history and successive meanings of the term 'angels' in the Old and

New Testaments, and the idea that shall reconcile all as so many several

forms, and as it were perspectives, of one and the same truth--this is

still a 'desideratum' in Christian theology.

Ib. C.

For, at the general resurrection, (which is rooted in the resurrection

of Christ, and so hath relation to him) the creature 'shall be

delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of

the children of God; for which the whole creation groans, and travails

in pain yet'. (Rom. viii. 21.) This deliverance then from this

bondage the whole creature hath by Christ, and that is their

reconciliation. And then are we reconciled by the blood of his cross,

when having crucified ourselves by a true repentance, we receive the

real reconciliation in his blood in the sacrament. But the most proper

and most literal sense of these words, is, that all things in heaven

and earth be reconciled to God (that is, to his glory, to a fitter

disposition to glorify him) by being reconciled to another in Christ;

that in him, as head of the church, they in heaven, and we upon earth,

be united together as one body in the communion of saints.

A very meagre and inadequate interpretation of this sublime text. The

philosophy of life, which will be the 'corona et finis coronans' of the

sciences of comparative anatomy and zoology, will hereafter supply a

fuller and nobler comment.

Ib. p. 9. A. and B.

The blood of the sacrifices was brought by the high priest 'in sanctum

sanctorum', into the place of greatest holiness; but it was brought

but once, 'in festo expiationis', in the feast of expiation; but in

the other parts of the temple it was sprinkled every day. The blood of

the cross of Christ Jesus hath had this effect 'in sancto sanctorum',

&c. ... '(to)' Christ Jesus.

A truly excellent and beautiful paragraph.

Ib. C.

If you will mingle a true religion, and a false religion, there is no

reconciling of God and Belial in this text. For the adhering of

persons born within the Church of Rome to the Church of Rome, our law

says nothing to them if they come; but for reconciling to the Church

of Rome, for persons born within the allegiance of the king, or for

persuading of men to be so reconciled, our law hath called by an

infamous and capital name of treason, and yet every tavern and

ordinary is full of such traitors, &c.

A strange transition from the Gospel to the English statute-book! But I

may observe, that if this statement could be truly made under James I,

there was abundantly ampler ground for it in the following reign. And

yet with what bitter spleen does Heylyn, Laud's creature, arraign the

Parliamentarians for making the same complaint!

Serm. II. Isaiah vii. 14. p. 11.

The fear of giving offence, especially to good men, of whose faith in

all essential points we are partakers, may reasonably induce us to be

slow and cautious in making up our minds finally on a religious

question, and may, and ought to, influence us to submit our conviction

to repeated revisals and rehearings. But there may arrive a time of such

perfect clearness of view respecting the particular point, as to

supersede all fear of man by the higher duty of declaring the whole

truth in Jesus. Therefore, having now overpassed six-sevenths of the

ordinary period allotted to human life,--resting my whole and sole hope

of salvation and immortality on the divinity of Christ, and the

redemption by his cross and passion, and holding the doctrine of the

Triune God as the very ground and foundation of the Gospel faith,--I

feel myself enforced by conscience to declare and avow, that, in my

deliberate judgment, the 'Christopædia' prefixed to the third Gospel and

concorporated with the first, but, according to my belief, in its

present form the latest of the four, was unknown to, or not recognized

by, the Apostles Paul and John; and that, instead of supporting the

doctrine of the Trinity, and the Filial Godhead of the Incarnate Word,

as set forth by John i 1, and by Paul, it, if not altogether

irreconcilable with this faith, doth yet greatly weaken and bedim its

evidence; and that, by the too palpable contradictions between the

narrative in the first Gospel and that in the third, it has been a

fruitful magazine of doubts respecting the historic character of the

Gospels themselves. I have read most of the criticisms on this text, and

my impression is, that no learned Jew can be expected to receive the

common interpretation as the true primary sense of the words. The

severely literal Aquila renders the Hebrew word [Greek: neanis]. But

were it asked of me: Do you then believe our Lord to have been the Son

of Mary by Joseph? I reply: It is a point of religion with me to have no

belief one way or the other. I am in this way like St. Paul, more than

content not to know Christ himself [Greek: katà sárka]. It is enough for

me to know that the Son of God 'became flesh', [Greek: sàrx egéneto

genómenos ek gynaikòs] [4] and more than this, it appears to me, was

unknown to the Apostles, or, if known, not taught by them as

appertaining to a saving faith in Christ.

October 1831.

Note the affinity in sound of 'son' and 'sun', 'Sohn' and 'Sonne', which

is not confined to the Saxon and German, or the Gothic dialects

generally. And observe 'conciliare versöhnen=confiliare, facere esse cum

filio', one with the Son.

Ib. p. 17. B.

It is a singular testimony, how acceptable to God that state of

virginity is. He does not dishonor physic that magnifies health; nor

does he dishonor marriage, that praises virginity; let them embrace

that state that can, &c.

One of the sad relics of Patristic super-moralization, aggravated by

Papal ambition, which clung to too many divines, especially to those of

the second or third generation after Luther. Luther himself was too

spiritual, of too heroic faith, to be thus blinded by the declamations

of the Fathers, whom, with the exception of Augustine, he held in very

low esteem.

Ib. D.

And Helvidius said, she had children after.

'Annon Scriptura ipsa'? And a 'heresy,' too! I think I might safely put

the question to any serious, spiritual-minded, Christian: What one

inference tending to edification, in the discipline of will, mind, or

affections, he can draw from the speculations of the last two or three

pages of this Sermon respecting Mary's pregnancy and parturition?

_Can_--I write it emphatically--_can_ such points appertain to our faith

as Christians, which every parent would decline speaking of before a

family, and which, if the questions were propounded by another in the

presence of my daughter, aye, or even of my, no less, in mind and

imagination, innocent wife, I should resent as an indecency?

Serm. III. Gal. iv. 4, 5. p. 20.

'God sent forth his Son made of a woman'.

I never can admit that [Greek: genómenon] and [Greek: egéneto] in St.

Paul and St. John are adequately, or even rightly, rendered by the

English 'made.'

Ib. p. 21, A.

What miserable revolutions and changes, what downfalls, what

break-necks and precipitations may we justly think ourselves ordained

to, if we consider, that in our coming into this world out of our

mothers' womb, we do not make account that a child comes right, except

it come with the head forward, and thereby prefigure that headlong

falling into calamities which it must suffer after?

The taste for these forced and fantastic analogies, Donne, with the

greater number of the learned prelatic divines from James I. to the

Restoration, acquired from that too great partiality for the Fathers,

from Irenæus to Bernard, by which they sought to distinguish themselves

from the Puritans.

Ib. C.

That now they (the Jews,) express a kind of conditional acknowledgment

of it, by this barbarous and inhuman custom of theirs, that they

always keep in readiness the blood of some Christian, with which they

anoint the body of any that dies amongst them, with these words; "If

Jesus Christ were the Messias, then may the blood of this Christian

avail thee to salvation!"

Is it possible that Donne could have given credit to this absurd legend!

It was, I am aware, not an age of critical 'acumen'; grit, bran,

and flour, were swallowed in the unsifted mass of their erudition. Still

that a man like Donne should have imposed on himself such a set of idle

tales, as he has collected in the next paragraph for facts of history,

is scarcely credible; that he should have attempted to impose them on

others, is most melancholy.

Ib. p. 22. D. E.

He takes the name of the son of a woman, and 'wanes' the miraculous

name of the son of a virgin.--Christ 'waned' the glorious name of Son

of God, and the miraculous name of Son of a virgin too; which is not

omitted to draw into doubt the perpetual virginity of the blessed

virgin, the mother of Christ, &c.

Very ingenious; but likewise very presumptuous, this arbitrary

attribution of St. Paul's silence, and presumable ignorance of the

virginity of Mary, to Christ's own determination to have the fact passed

over.

N.B. Is 'wane' a misprint for 'wave' or 'waive?' It occurs so often, as

to render its being an 'erratum' improbable; yet I do not remember

to have met elsewhere 'wane' used for 'decline' as a verb active.

Ib. p. 23. A.

If there were reason for it, it were no miracle.

The announcement of the first comet, that had ever been observed, might

excite doubt in the mind of an astronomer, to whom, from the place where

he lived, it had not been visible. But his reason could have been no

objection to it. Had God pleased, all women might have conceived,

[Greek: aneu tou andròs], as many of the 'polypi' and 'planariæ' do. Not

on any such ground do I suspend myself on this as an article of faith;

but because I doubt the evidence.

Ib. p. 25. A--E.

Though we may think thus in the law of reason, yet, &c.

It is, and has been, a misfortune, a grievous and manifold loss and

hindrance for the interests of moral and spiritual truth, that even our

best and most vigorous theologians and philosophers of the age from

Edward VI. to James II. so generally confound the terms, and so too

often confound the subjects themselves, reason and understanding; yet

the diversity, the difference in kind, was known to, and clearly

admitted by, many of them,--by Hooker for instance, and it is implied in

the whole of Bacon's 'Novum Organum'. Instead of the 'law of reason,'

Donne meant, and ought to have said, 'judging according to the ordinary

presumptions of the understanding,' that is, the faculty which,

generalizing particular experiences, judges of the future by analogy to

the past.

Taking the words, however, in their vulgar sense, I most deliberately

protest against all the paragraphs in this page, from A to E, and should

cite them, with a host of others, as sad effects of the confusion of the

reason and the understanding, and of the consequent abdication of the

former, instead of the bounden submission of the latter to a higher

light. Faith itself is but an act of the will, assenting to the reason

on its own evidence without, and even against, the understanding. This

indeed is, I fully agree, to be brought into captivity to the faith. [5]

Ib. p. 26. A. B.

And therefore to be 'under the Law,' signifies here thus much; to be a

debtor to the law of nature, to have a testimony in our hearts and

consciences, that there lies a law upon us, which we have no power in

ourselves to perform, &c.

This exposition of the term 'law' in the epistles of St. Paul is most

just and important. The whole should be adopted among the notes to the

epistle to the Romans, in every Bible printed with notes.

Ib. p. 27. A.

And this was his first work, 'to redeem,' to vindicate them from the

usurper, to deliver them from the intruder, to emancipate them from

the tyrant, to cancel the covenant between hell and them, and restore

them so far to their liberty, as that they might come to their first

master, if they would; this was 'redeeming.'

There is an absurdity in the notion of a finite divided from, and

superaddible to, the infinite,--of a particular 'quantum' of power

separated from, not included in, omnipotence, or all-power. But, alas!

we too generally use the terms that are meant to express the absolute,

as mere comparatives taken superlatively. In one thing only are we

permitted and bound to assert a diversity, namely, in God and 'Hades',

the good and the evil will. This awful mystery, this truth, at once

certain and incomprehensible, is at the bottom of all religion; and to

exhibit this truth free from the dark phantom of the Manicheans, or the

two co-eternal and co-ordinate principles of good and evil, is the glory

of the Christian religion.

But this mysterious dividuity of the good and the evil will, the will of

the spirit and the will of the flesh, must not be carried beyond the

terms 'good' and 'evil.' There can be but one good will--the spirit in

all;--and even so, all evil wills are one evil will, the devil or evil

spirit. But then the One exists for us as finite intelligences,

necessarily in a two-fold relation, universal and particular. The same

Spirit within us pleads to the Spirit as without us; and in like manner

is every evil mind in communion with the evil spirit. But, O comfort!

the good alone is the actual, the evil essentially potential. Hence the

devil is most appropriately named the 'tempter,' and the evil hath its

essence in the will: it cannot pass out of it. Deeds are called evil in

reference to the individual will expressed in them; but in the great

scheme of Providence they are, only as far as they are good, coerced

under the conditions of all true being; and the devil is the drudge of

the All-good.

Serm. IV. Luke ii. 29, 30. p. 29.

Ib. p. 30. B.

We shall consider that that preparation, and disposition, and

acquiescence, which Simeon had in his epiphany, in his visible seeing

of Christ then, is offered to us in this epiphany, in this

manifestation and application of Christ in the sacrament; and that

therefore every penitent, and devout, and reverent, and worthy

receiver hath had in that holy action his 'now'; there are all things

accomplished to him; and his 'for, for his eyes have seen his

salvation'; and so may be content, nay glad, 'to depart in peace'.

O! would that Donne, or rather that Luther before him, had carried out

this just conception to its legitimate consequences;--that as the

sacrament of the Eucharist is the epiphany for as many as receive it in

faith, so the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ himself

in the flesh, were the epiphanies, the sacramental acts and 'phænomena'

of the 'Deus patiens', the visible words of the invisible Word that was

in the beginning, symbols in time and historic fact of the redemptive

functions, passions, and procedures of the Lamb crucified from the

foundation of the world;--the incarnation, cross, and passion,--in

short, the whole life of Christ in the flesh, dwelling a man among men,

being essential and substantive parts of the process, the total of which

they represented; and on this account proper symbols of the acts and

passions of the Christ dwelling in man, as the Spirit of truth, and for

as many as in faith have received him, in Seth and Abraham no less

effectually than in John and Paul! For this is the true definition of a

symbol, as distinguished from the thing, on the one hand, and from a

mere metaphor, or conventional exponent of a thing, on the other. Had

Luther mastered this great idea, this master-truth, he would never have

entangled himself in that most mischievous Sacramentary controversy, or

had to seek a murky hiding-hole in the figment of Consubstantiation.

Ib. B. C.

In the first part, then ... More he asks not, less he takes not for

any man, upon any pretence of any unconditional decree.

A beautiful paragraph, well worth extracting, aye, and re-preaching.

Ib. p. 34. E.

When thou comest to this seal of thy peace, the sacrament, pray that

God will give thee that light that may direct and establish thee in

necessary and fundamental things; that is, the light of faith to see

that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action;

but for the manner, how the Body and Blood of Christ is there, wait

his leisure, if he have not yet manifested that to thee: grieve not at

that, wonder not at that, press not for that; for he hath not

manifested that, not the way, not the manner of his presence in the

Sacrament to the Church.

O! I have ever felt, and for many years thought that this 'rem credimus,

modum nescimus,' is but a poor evasion. It seems to me an attempt so to

admit an irrational proposition as to have the credit of denying it, or

to separate an irrational proposition from its irrationality. I admit 2

+ 2 = 5; how I do not pretend to know, but in some way not in

contradiction to the multiplication table. To spiritual operations the

very term 'mode' is perhaps inapplicable, for these are immediate. To

the linking of this with that, of A. with Z. by 'intermedia,' the term

'mode,'--the question 'how?' is properly applied. The assimilation of

the spirit of a man to the Son of God, to God as the Divine

Humanity,--this spiritual transubstantiation, like every other process

of operative grace, is necessarily modeless. The whole question is

concerning the transmutation of the sensible elements. Deny this, and to

what does the 'modum nescimus' refer? We cannot ask how that is done,

which we declare not done at all. Admit this transmutation, and you

necessarily admit by implication the Romish dogma, of the separation of

a sensible thing from the sensible accidents which constitute all we

ever meant by the thing. To rationalize this figment of his church,

Bossuet has recourse to Spinosism, and dares make God the substance and

sole 'ens reale' of all body, and by this very 'hypothesis' baffles his

own end, and does away all miracle in the particular instance.

Ib. p. 35. B.

When I pray in my chamber, I build a temple there that hour; and that

minute, when I cast out a prayer in the street, I build a temple

there; and when my soul prays without any voice, my very body is then

a temple.

Good; but it would be better to regard solitary, family, and templar

devotion as distinctions in sort, rather than differences in degree. All

three are necessary.

Ib. E.

And that more fearful occasion of coming, when they came only to elude

the law, and proceeding in their treacherous and traitorous religion

in their heart, and yet communicating with us, draw God himself into

their conspiracies; and to mock us, make a mock of God, and his

religion too.

What, then, was their guilt, who by terror and legal penalties tempted

their fellow Christians to this treacherous mockery? Donne should have

asked himself that question.

Serm. V. Exod. iv. 13. p. 39.

Ib. p. 39. C. D.

It hath been doubted, and disputed, and denied too, that this text,

'O my Lord, send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt

send', hath any relation to the sending of the Messiah, to the

coming of Christ, to Christmas day; yet we forbear not to wait upon

the ancient Fathers, and as they said, to say, that Moses 'at

last' determines all in this, 'O my Lord', &c. It is a work,

next to the great work of the redemption of the whole world, to redeem

Israel out of Egypt; and therefore do both works at once, put both

into one hand, and 'mitte quem missurus es, Send him whom I know

thou wilt send'; him, whom, pursuing thine own decree, 'thou

shouldest send'; send Christ, send him now, to redeem Israel from

Egypt.

This is one of the happier accommodations of the 'gnosis', that is,

the science of detecting the mysteries of faith in the simplest texts of

the Old Testament history, to the contempt or neglect of the literal and

contextual sense. It was, I conceive, in part at least, this

'gnosis', and not knowledge, as our translation has it, that St.

Paul warns against, and most wisely, as puffing up, inflating the heart

with self-conceit, and the head with idle fancies.

Ib. E.

But as a thoughtful man, a pensive, a considerative man, that stands

still for a while with his eyes fixed upon the ground before his feet,

when he casts up his head, hath presently, instantly the sun or the

heavens for his object; he sees not a tree, nor a house, nor a steeple

by the way, but as soon as his eye is departed from the earth where it

was long fixed, the next thing he sees is the sun or the heavens;--so

when Moses had fixed himself long upon the consideration of his own

insufficiency for this service, when he took his eye from that low

piece of ground, himself, considered as he was then, he fell upon no

tree, no house, no steeple, no such consideration as this--God may

endow me, improve me, exalt me, enable me, qualify me with faculties

fit for this service, but his first object was that which presented an

infallibility with it, Christ Jesus himself, the Messias himself, &c.

Beautifully imagined, and happily applied.

Ib. p. 40. B.

That 'germen Jehovæ', as the prophet Esay calls Christ, that offspring

of Jehova, that bud, that blossom, that fruit of God himself, the Son

of God, the Messiah, the Redeemer, Christ Jesus, grows upon every tree

in this paradise, the Scripture; for Christ was the occasion before,

and is the consummation after, of all Scripture.

If this were meant to the exclusion or neglect of the primary sense,--if

we are required to believe that the sacred writers themselves had such

thoughts present to their minds,--it would, doubtless, throw the doors

wide open to every variety of folly and fanaticism. But it may admit of

a safe, sound, and profitable use, if we consider the Bible as one work,

intended by the Holy Spirit for the edification of the Church in all

ages, and having, as such, all its parts synoptically interpreted, the

eldest by the latest, the last by the first, and the middle by both.

Moses, or David, or Jeremiah (we might in this view affirm) meant so and

so, according to the context, and the light under which, and the

immediate or proximate purposes for which, he wrote: but we, who command

the whole scheme of the great dispensation, may see a higher and deeper

sense, of which the literal meaning was a symbol or type; and this we

may justifiably call the sense of the spirit.

Ib. p. 41. B.

So in our liturgy 'we stand up at the profession of the creed'

thereby to declare to God and his Church our readiness to stand to,

and our readiness to proceed in, that profession.

Another Church might sit down, thereby denoting a resolve to abide in

this profession. These things are indifferent; but charity, love of

peace, and on indifferent points to prefer another's liking to our own,

and to observe an order once established for order's sake,--these are

not indifferent.

Ib. p. 42. C.

This paragraph is excellent. Alas! how painfully applicable it is to

some of our day!

Ib. p. 46. C.

Howsoever all intend that this is a name that denotes essence, being:

Being is the name of God, and of God only.

Rather, I should say, 'the eternal antecedent of being;' 'I that shall

be in that I will to be'; the absolute will; the ground of being; the

self-affirming 'actus purissimus'.

Serm. VI. Isaiah liii. 1. p. 52.

A noble sermon in thought and diction.

Ib. p. 59. E.

Therefore we have a clearer light than this; 'firmiorem propheticum

sermonem', says St. Peter; 'we have a more sure word of the prophets';

that is, as St. Augustine reads that place, 'clariorem', a more

manifest, a more evident, declaration in the prophets, than in nature,

of the will of God towards man, &c.

The sense of this text, as explained by the context, seems to me

this;--that, in consequence of the fulfilment of so large a proportion

of the oracles, the Christian Church has not only the additional light

given by the teaching and miracles of Christ, but even the light

vouchsafed to the old Church (the prophetic) stronger and clearer.

Ib. p. 60. A.

He spake personally, and he spake aloud, in the declaration of

miracles; but 'quis credidit auditui Filii?' Who believed even his

report? Did they not call his preaching sedition, and call his

miracles conjuring? Therefore, we have a clearer, that is, a nearer

light than the written Gospel, that is, the Church.

True; yet he who should now venture to assert this truth, or even

contend for a co-ordinateness of the Church and the Written Word, must

bear to be thought a semi-Papist, an 'ultra' high-Churchman. Still the

truth is the truth.

Serm. VII. John x. 10. p. 62.

Since the Revolution in 1688 our Church has been chilled and starved too

generally by preachers and reasoners Stoic or Epicurean;--first, a sort

of pagan morality was substituted for the righteousness by faith, and

latterly, prudence or Paleyanism has been substituted even for morality.

A Christian preacher ought to preach Christ alone, and all things in him

and by him. If he find a dearth in this, if it seem to him a

circumscription, he does not know Christ, as the 'pleroma', the

fullness. It is not possible that there should be aught true, or seemly,

or beautiful, in thought, will, or deed, speculative or practical, which

may not, and which ought not to, be evolved out of Christ and the faith

in Christ;--no folly, no error, no evil to be exposed, or warred

against, which may not, and should not, be convicted and denounced from

its contrariancy and enmity to Christ. To the Christian preacher Christ

should be in all things, and all things in Christ: he should abjure

every argument that is not a link in the chain, of which Christ is the

staple and staple ring.

Ib. p. 64.

In this page Donne passes into rhetorical extravagance, after the manner

of too many of the Fathers from Tertullian to Bernard.

Ib. p. 66. A.

Some of the later authors in the Roman Church ... have noted ('in

several of the Fathers') some inclinations towards that opinion, that

the devil retaining still his faculty of free-will, is therefore

capable of repentance, and so of benefit by this coming of Christ.

If this be assumed,--namely, the free-will of the devil,--as a

consequence would indeed follow his capability of repenting, and the

possibility that he may repent. But then he is no longer what we mean by

the devil; he is no longer the evil spirit, but simply a wicked soul.

Ib. p. 68. C.

As though God had said 'Qui sum', my name is 'I am'; yet in truth it

is 'Qui ero', my name is 'I shall be'.

Nay, 'I will or shall be in that I will to be'. I am that only one who

is self-originant, 'causa sui', whose will must be contemplated as

antecedent in idea to or deeper than his own co-eternal being. But

'antecedent,' 'deeper,' &c. are mere 'vocabula impropria', words of

accommodation, that may suggest the idea to a mind purified from the

intrusive phantoms of space and time, but falsify and extinguish the

truth, if taken as adequate exponents.

Ib. p. 69. C.

We affirm that it is not only as impious and irreligious a thing, but

as senseless and as absurd a thing, to deny that the Son of God hath

redeemed the world, as to deny that God hath created the world.

A bold but a true saying. The man who, cannot see the redemptive agency

in the creation has but a dim apprehension of the creative power.

Ib. D. E. p. 70. A.

These paragraphs exhibit a noble instance of giving importance to the

single words of a text, each word by itself a pregnant text. Here, too,

lies the excellence, the imitable, but alas! unimitated, excellence of

our divines from Elizabeth to William III.

Ib. D.

O, that our clergy did but know and see that their tithes and glebes

belong to them as officers and functionaries of the nationalty,--as

clerks, and not exclusively as theologians, and not at all as ministers

of the Gospel;--but that they are likewise ministers of the Church of

Christ, and that their claims and the powers of that Church are no more

alienated or affected by their being at the same time the established

clergy, than they are by the common coincidence of being justices of the

peace, or heirs to an estate, or stockholders! [6] The Romish divines

placed the Church above the Scriptures; our present divines give it no

place at all.

But Donne and his great contemporaries had not yet learnt to be afraid

of announcing and enforcing the claims of the Church, distinct from, and

coordinate with, the Scriptures. This is one evil consequence, though

most un-necessarily so, of the union of the Church of Christ with the

national Church, and of the claims of the Christian pastor and preacher

with the legal and constitutional rights and revenues of the officers of

the national clerisy. Our clergymen in thinking of their legal rights,

forget those rights of theirs which depend on no human law at all.

Ib. p. 71. A.

This is the difference between God's mercy and his judgments, that

sometimes his judgments may he plural, complicated, enwrapped in one

another; but his mercies are always so, and cannot be otherwise.

A just sentiment beautifully expressed.

Ib. C.

Whereas the Christian religion is, as Gregory Nazianzen says,

'simplex et nuda, nisi prave in artem difficillimam

converteretur': it is a plain, an easy, a perspicuous truth.

A religion of ideas, spiritual truths, or truth-powers,--not of notions

and conceptions, the manufacture of the understanding,--is therefore

'simplex et nuda', that is, immediate; like the clear blue heaven of

Italy, deep and transparent, an ocean unfathomable in its depth, and yet

ground all the way. Still as meditation soars upwards, it meets the

arched firmament with all its suspended lamps of light. O, let not the

'simplex et nuda' of Gregory be perverted to the Socinian, 'plain and

easy for the meanest understandings!' The truth in Christ, like the

peace of Christ, passeth all understanding. If ever there was a

mischievous misuse of words, the confusion of the terms, 'reason' and

'understanding,' 'ideas' and 'notions,' or 'conceptions,' is most

mischievous; a Surinam toad with a swarm of toadlings sprouting out of

its back and sides.

Serm. VIII. Mat. v. 16. p. 77.

Ib. C.

Either of the names of this day were text enough for a sermon,

Purification or Candlemas. Join we them together, and raise we only

this one note from both, that all true purification is in the light,

&c.

The illustration of the name of the day contained in the first two or

three paragraphs of this sermon would be censured as quaint by our

modern critics. Would to heaven we had but even a few preachers capable

of such quaintnesses!

Ib. D.

Every good work hath faith for the root; but every faith hath not good

works for the fruit thereof.

Faith, that is, fidelity--the fealty of the finite will and

understanding to the reason, 'the light that lighteth every man that

cometh into the world', as one with, and representative of, the absolute

will, and to the ideas or truths of the pure reason, the supersensuous

truths, which in relation to the finite will, and as meant to determine

the will, are moral laws, the voice and dictates of the

conscience;--this faith is properly a state and disposition of the will,

or rather of the whole man, the I, or finite will, self-affirmed. It is

therefore the ground, the root, of which the actions, the works, the

believings, as acts of the will in the understanding, are the trunk and

the branches. But these must be in the light. The disposition to see

must have organs, objects, direction, and an outward light. The three

latter of these our Lord gives to his disciples in this blessed sermon

on the Mount, preparatorily, and, as Donne rightly goes on to observe,

presupposing faith as the ground and root. Indeed the whole of this and

the next page affords a noble specimen, how a minister of the Church of

England should preach the doctrine of good works, purified from the

poison of the practical Romish doctrine of works, as the mandioc is

evenomated by fire, and rendered safe, nutritious, a bread of life. To

Donne's exposition the heroic Solifidian, Martin Luther himself, would

have subscribed, hand and heart.

Ib. p. 78. C.

And therefore our latter men of the Reformation are not to be blamed,

who for the most, pursuing St. Cyril's interpretation, interpret this

universal 'light that lighteneth every man' to be the light of

nature.

The error here, and it is a grievous error, consists in the word

'nature.' There is, there can be, no light of nature: there may be a

light in or upon nature; but this is the light that shineth down into

the darkness, that is, the nature, and the darkness comprehendeth it

not. All ideas, or spiritual truths, are supernatural.

Ib. p. 79.

Throughout this page, Donne rather too much plays the rhetorician. If

the faith worketh the works, what is true of the former must be equally

affirmed of the latter;--'causa causæ causa causati'. Besides, he falls

into something like a confusion of faith with belief, taken as a

conviction or assent of the judgment. The faith and the righteousness of

a Christian are both alike his, and not his--the faith of Christ in him,

the righteousness in and for him. 'I am crucified with Christ:

nevertheless I live; yet, not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life

which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who

loved me, and gave himself for me'. [7]

Donne was a truly great man; but, after all, he did not possess that

full, steady, deep, and yet comprehensive, insight into the nature of

faith and works which was vouchsafed to Martin Luther. Donne had not

attained to the reconciling of distinctity with unity,--ours, yet God's;

God's, yet ours.

Ib. D.

'Velle et nolle nostrum est', to assent, or to dis-assent, is our own.

Is not this, even with the saving afterwards, too nakedly expressed?

Ib.

And certainly our works are more ours than our faith is; and man

concurs otherwise in the acting and perpetration of a good work, than

he doth in the reception and admission of faith.

Why? Because Donne confounds the act of faith with the assent of the

fancy and understanding to certain words and conceptions. Indeed, with

all my reverence for Dr. Donne, I must warn against the contents of this

page, as scarcely tenable in logic, unsound in metaphysics, and unsafe,

slippery divinity; and principally in that he confounds faith--

essentially an act, the fundamental work of the Spirit--with belief,

which is then only good when it is the effect and accompaniment of faith.

Ib. p. 80. D.

Because things good in their institution may he depraved in their

practice--'ergone nihil ceremoniarum rudioribus dabitur, ad juvandam

eorum imperitiam?'

Some ceremonies may be for the conservation of order and civility, or to

prevent confusion and unseemliness; others are the natural or

conventional language of our feelings, as bending the knees, or bowing

the head; and to neither of these two sorts do I object. But as to the

'adjuvandam rudiorum imperitiam', I protest against all such ceremonies,

and the pretexts for them, 'in toto'. What? Can any ceremony be more

instructive than the words required to explain the ceremony? I make but

two exceptions, and those where the truths signified are so vital, so

momentous, that the very occasion and necessity of explaining the sign

are of the highest spiritual value. Yet, alas! to what gross and

calamitous superstitions have not even the visible signs in Baptism and

the Eucharist given occasion!

Ib. p. 81. E.

Blessed St. Augustine reports, (if that epistle be St. Augustine's)

that when himself was writing to St. Hierome, to know his opinion of

the measure and quality of the joy and glory of heaven, suddenly in

his chamber there appeared 'ineffabile lumen', says he, an

unspeakable, an unexpressible light, ... and out of that light issued

this voice, 'Hieronymi anima sum', &c.

The grave recital of this ridiculous legend is one instance of what I

have called the Patristic leaven in Donne, who assuredly had no belief

himself in the authenticity of this letter. But yet it served a purpose.

As to Master Conradus, just above, who could read at night by the light

at his fingers' ends, he must of course have very recently been shaking

hands with Lucifer.

Ib. p. 83. D.

Eve's recognition upon the birth of her first son, 'Cain I have

gotten, I possess a man from the Lord.'

'I have gotten the Jehovah-man', is, I believe, the true rendering

and sense of the Hebrew words. Eve, full of the promise, supposed her

first-born, the first-born on earth, to be the promised deliverer.

Ib. p. 84. D. E.

Serm. IX. Rom. xiii. 7. p. 86,

Admirable passages. Ib. p. 90. A.

That soul that is accustomed, &c.

Ib. p. 94. A. B.

Serm. XII. Mat. v. 2. p. 112.

Ib. B. C. D.

The disposition of our Church divines, under James I, to bring back the

stream of the Reformation to the channel and within the banks formed in

the first six centuries of the Church, and their alienation from the

great patriarchs of Protestantism, Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, and

others, who held the Fathers of the 'ante'-Papal Church, with

exception of Augustine, in light esteem, this disposition betrays itself

here and in many other parts of Donne. For here Donne plays the Jesuit,

disguising the truth, that even as early as the third century the Church

had begun to Paganize Christianity, under the pretext, and no doubt in

the hope, of Christianizing Paganism. The mountain would not go to

Mahomet, and therefore Mahomet went to the mountain.

Ib. p. 115. A.

An excellent passage.

Ib. p. 117. E.

And therefore when the prophet says, 'Quis sapiens, et intelliget hæc?

Who is so wise as to find out this way'? he places this cleanness

which we inquire after in wisdom. What is wisdom?

The primitive Church appropriated the name to the third 'hypostasis' of

the Trinity; hence 'Sancta Sophia' became the distinctive name of the

Holy Ghost; and the temple at Constantinople, dedicated by Justinian to

the Holy Ghost, is called the Church--alas! now the mosque--of Santa

Sophia. Now this suggests, or rather implies, a far better and more

precise definition of wisdom than Donne's. The distinctive title of the

Father, as the Supreme Will, is the Good; that of the only-begotten

Word, as the Supreme Reason, ('Ens Realissimum', [Greek: Ho_O N], the

Being) is the True; and the Spirit proceeding from the Good through the

True is the Wisdom. Goodness in the form of truth is wisdom. Wisdom is

the pure will, realizing itself intelligently, or the good manifesting

itself as the truth, and realized in the act. Wisdom, life, love,

beauty, the beauty of holiness, are all 'synonyma' of the Holy Spirit.

6, December, 1831.

Ib. p. 121. A.

The Arians' opinion, that God the Father only was invisible, but the

Son 'and the Holy Ghost' might be seen.

Here we have an instance, one of many, of the inconveniences and

contradictions that arise out of the assumed contrary essences of body

and soul; both substances, and independent of each other, yet so

absolutely diverse as that the one is to be defined by the negation of

the other.

Serm. XIII. Job xvi. 17, 18, 19. p. 127.

Ib. p. 129. A. B. C.

Ib. pp. 134. 135.

Truly excellent.

Serm. XV. 1 Cor. xv. 26. p. 144.

Ib. D.

Who, then, is this enemy? an enemy that may thus far think himself

equal to God, that as no man ever saw God, and lived; so no man ever

saw this enemy, and lived; for it is death.

This borders rather too closely on the Irish Franciscan's conclusion to

his sermon of thanksgiving: "Above all, brethren, let us thankfully laud

and extol God's transcendant mercy in putting death at the end of life,

and thereby giving us all time for repentance!"

Dr. Donne was an eminently witty man in a very witty age; but to the

honour of his judgment let it be said, that though his great wit is

evinced in numberless passages, in a few only is it shown off. This

paragraph is one of those rare exceptions.

N. B. Nothing in Scripture, nothing in reason, commands or authorizes us

to assume or suppose any bodiless creature. It is the incommunicable

attribute of God. But all bodies are not flesh, nor need we suppose that

all bodies are corruptible. 'There are bodies celestial'. In the three

following paragraphs of this sermon, we trace wild fantastic positions

grounded on the arbitrary notion of man as a mixture of heterogeneous

components, which Des Cartes shortly afterwards carried into its

extremes. On this doctrine the man is a mere phenomenal result, a sort

of brandy-sop or toddy-punch. It is a doctrine unsanctioned by, and

indeed inconsistent with, the Scriptures. It is not true that body

'plus' soul makes man. Man is not the 'syntheton' or composition of body

and soul, as the two component units. No; man is the unit, the

'prothesis', and body and soul are the two poles, the positive and

negative, the 'thesis' and 'antithesis' of the man; even as attraction

and repulsion are the two poles in and by which one and the same magnet

manifests itself.

Ib. p. 146. B.

For it is not so great a depopulation to translate a city from

merchants to husbandmen, from shops to ploughs, as it is from many

husbandmen to one shepherd; and yet that hath been often done.

For example, in the Highlands of Scotland in our own day.

Ib. p. 148. A.

The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell

me how high or how large that was. It tells me not what flocks it

sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust

of great persons' graves is speechless too, it says nothing, it

distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst

not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not, look upon, will trouble

thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath

blown the dust of the churchyard unto the church, and the man sweeps

out the dust of the church into the church-yard, who will undertake to

sift those dusts again, and to pronounce;--this is the patrician, this

is the noble, flour, and this the yeomanly, this the plebeian, bran.

[8]

Very beautiful indeed.

Ib. p. 149. C.

But when I lie under the hands of that enemy, that hath reserved

himself to the last, to my last bed; then when I shall be able to stir

no limb in any other measure than a fever or a palsy shall shake them;

when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present

dimness of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present

chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present

gnawing of the agonies of my body and anguishes of my mind; when the

last enemy shall watch my remediless body, and my disconsolate soul

there,--there, where not the physician in his way, perchance not the

priest in his, shall be able to give any assistance; and when he hath

sported himself with my misery, &c.

This is powerful; but is too much in the style of the monkish preachers:

'Papam redolet'. Contrast with this Job's description of death, [9] and

St. Paul's 'sleep in the Lord'.

Ib. p. 150. A.

Neither doth Calvin carry those emphatical words which are so often

cited for a proof of the last resurrection,--'that he knows his

Redeemer lives, that he knows he shall stand the last man upon earth,

that though his body be destroyed, yet in his flesh and with his eyes

shall he see God'--to any higher sense than so, that how low soever he

be brought, to what desperate state soever he be reduced in the eyes

of the world, yet he assures himself of a resurrection, a reparation,

a restitution to his former bodily health, and worldly fortune which

he had before. And such a resurrection we all know Job had.

I incline to Calvin's opinion, but am not decided. 'After my skin', must

be rendered 'according to, or as far as my skin is concerned.' 'Though

the flies and maggots in my ulcers have destroyed my skin, yet still,

and in my flesh, I shall see God as my Redeemer'. Now St. Paul says,

that flesh and blood cannot ([Greek: sàrx kaì aima--ou dynantai])

inherit the kingdom of heaven, that is, the spiritual world. Besides how

is the passage, as commonly interpreted, consistent with the numerous

expressions of doubt and even of despondency in Job's speeches? [10]

Ib. B. C. (Ezekiel's vision xxxvii.)

I cannot but think that Dr. Donne, by thus antedating the distinct

belief of the Jews in the resurrection, "which you all know already,"

destroys in great measure the force and sublimity of this vision.

Besides, it does not seem, in the common people at least, to have been

much more than a mongrel Egyptian-catacomb sort of faith, or rather

superstition.

_In fine_. This is one of Donne's least estimable discourses; the worst

sermon on the best text. Yet what a Donne-like passage is this that

follows!

P. 146. A.

Let the whole world be in thy consideration as one house; and then

consider in that, in the peaceful harmony of creatures, in the

peaceful succession, and connexion of causes and effects, the peace of

nature. Let this kingdom, where God hath blessed thee with a being, be

the gallery, the best room of that house, and consider in the two

walls of that gallery, the Church and the state, the peace of a royal

and religious wisdom. Let thine own family be a cabinet in this

gallery, and find in all the boxes thereof, in the several duties of

wife and children, and servants, the peace of virtue, and of the

father and mother of all virtues, active discretion, passive

obedience; and then lastly, let thine own bosom be the secret box and

reserve in this cabinet, and then the gallery of the best home that

can be had, peace with the creature, peace in the Church, peace in the

state, peace in thy house, peace in thy heart, is a fair model, and a

lovely design even of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is _visio pacis_,

where there is no object but peace.

Serm. XVI. John xi. 35. p. 153.

Ib. C.

The Masorites (the Masorites are the critics upon the Hebrew Bible,

the Old Testament) cannot tell us, who divided the chapters of the Old

Testament into verses: neither can any other tell, who did it in the

New Testament. [11]

How should the Masorites, when the Hebrew Scriptures were not as far as

we know divided into verses at all in their time? The Jews seem to have

adopted the invention from the Christians, who were led to it in the

construction of Concordances.

Ib. p. 154. E.

If they killed Lazarus, had not Christ done enough to let them see

that he could raise him again?

Malice, above all party-malice, is indeed a blind passion, but one can

scarcely conceive the chief priests such dolts as to think that Christ

could raise Lazarus again. Their malice blinded them as to the nature of

the incident, made them suppose a conspiracy between Jesus and the

family of Lazarus, a mock burial, in short; and this may be one, though

it is not, I think, the principal, reason for this greatest miracle

being omitted in the other Gospels.

Ib. p. 155. B.

Christ might ungirt himself, and give more scope and liberty to his

passions than any other man; both because he had no original sin

within to drive him, &c.

How then is he said to have 'condemned sin in the flesh'? Without guilt,

without actual sin, assuredly he was; but [Greek: egéneto sàrx], and

what can we mean by original sin relatively to the flesh, but that man

is born with an animal life and a material organism that render him

temptible to evil, and which tends to dispose the life of the will to

contradict the light of the reason? Did St. Paul by [Greek: homoi_ómati

sarkòs hamartiás] mean a deceptive resemblance? [12]

Ib. D.

I can see no possible edification that can arise from these

_ultra_-Scriptural speculations respecting our Lord.

Ib. p. 157. A.

Though the Godhead never departed from the carcase ... yet because the

human soul was departed from it, he was no man.

Donne was a poor metaphysician; that is, he never closely questioned

himself as to the absolute meaning of his words. What did he mean by the

'soul?' what by the 'body?' [13]

Ib. D.

And I know that there are authors of a middle nature, above the

philosophers, and below the Scriptures, the Apocryphal books.

A whimsical instance of the disposition in the mind for every pair of

opposites to find an intermediate,--a 'mesothesis' for every 'thesis'

and 'antithesis'. Thus Scripture may be opposed to philosophy; and then

the Apocryphal books will be philosophy relatively to Scripture, and

Scripture relatively to philosophy.

Ib. p. 159. B.

And therefore the same author (Epiphanius) says, that because they

thought it an uncomely thing for Christ to weep for any temporal

thing, some men have expunged and removed that verse out of St. Luke's

Gospel, that 'Jesus, when he saw that city, wept'. [14]

This, by the by, rather indiscreetly lets out the liberties, which the

early Christians took with their sacred writings. Origen, who, in answer

to Celsus's reproach on this ground, confines the practice to the

heretics, furnishes proofs of the contrary himself in his own comments.

Ib. p. 161. D.

That world, which finds itself in an authumn in itself, finds itself

in a spring in our imaginations.

Worthy almost of Shakspeare!

Serm. XVII. Matt. xix. 17. p. 163.

Ib. E.

The words are part of a dialogue, of a conference, between Christ and

a man who proposed a question to him; to whom Christ makes an answer

by way of another question, 'Why callest thou me good?' &c. In the

words, and by occasion of them, we consider the text, the context, and

the pretext; not as three equal parts of the building; but the

context, as the situation and prospect of the house, the pretext, as

the access and entrance into the house, and then the text itself, as

the house itself, as the body of the building: in a word, in the text

the words; in the context the occasion of the words; in the pretext

the purpose, the disposition of him who gave the occasion.

What a happy example of elegant division of a subject! And so also the

'compendium' of Christianity in the preceding paragraph (D). Our great

divines were not ashamed of the learned discipline to which they had

submitted their minds under Aristotle and Tully, but brought the

purified products as sacrificial gifts to Christ. They baptized the

logic and manly rhetoric of ancient Greece.

Ib. p. 164. A. B.

Excellent illustration of fragmentary morality, in which each man takes

his choice of his virtues and vices.

Ib. D.

Men perish with whispering sins, nay, with silent sins, sins that

never tell the conscience they are sins, as often as with crying sins.

Yea, I almost doubt whether the truth here so boldly asserted is not of

more general necessity for ordinary congregations, than the denunciation

of the large sins that cannot remain 'in incognito'.

Ib. p. 165. A.

'Venit procurrens, he came running'. Nicodemus came not so, Nicodemus

durst not avow his coming, and therefore he came creeping, and he came

softly, and he came seldom, and he came by night.

Ah! but we trust in God that he did in fact come. The adhesion, the

thankfulness, the love which arise and live after the having come,

whether from spontaneous liking, or from a beckoning hope, or from a

compelling good, are the truest 'criteria' of the man's Christianity.

Ib. B.

When I have just reason to think my superiors would have it thus, this

is music to my soul; when I hear them say they would have it thus,

this is rhetoric to my soul; when I see their laws enjoin it to be

thus, this is logic to my soul; but when I see them actually, really,

clearly, constantly do thus, this is a demonstration to my soul, and

demonstration is the powerfullest proof. The eloquence of inferiors is

in words, the eloquence of superiors is in action.

A just representation, I doubt not, of the general feeling and principle

at the time Donne wrote. Men regarded the gradations of society as God's

ordinances, and had the elevation of a self-approving conscience in

every feeling and exhibition of respect for those of ranks superior to

their own. What a contrast with the present times! Is not the last

sentence beautiful? "The eloquence of inferiors is in words, the

eloquence of superiors is in action."

Ib. B. and C.

He came to Christ, he ran to him; and when he was come, as St. Mark

relates it, 'he fell upon his knees to Christ'. He stood not then

Pharisaically upon his own legs, his own merits, though he had been a

diligent observer of the commandments before, &c.

All this paragraph is an independent truth; but I doubt whether in his

desire to make every particle exemplary, to draw some Christian moral

from it, Donne has not injudiciously attributed, _quasi per prolepsin_,

merits inconsistent with the finale of a wealthy would-be proselyte. At

all events, a more natural and, perhaps, not less instructive

interpretation might be made of the sundry movements of this religiously

earnest and zealous admirer of Christ, and worshipper of Mammon. O, I

have myself known such!

Ib. D.

He was no ignorant man, and yet he acknowledged that he had somewhat

more to learn of Christ than he knew yet. Blessed are they that

inanimate all their knowledge, consummate all in Christ Jesus, &c.

The whole paragraph is pure gold. Without being aware of this passage in

Donne, I expressed the same conviction, or rather declared the same

experience, in the appendix [15] to the Statesman's Manual. O! if only one

day in a week, Christians would consent to have the Bible as the only

book, and their minister's labour to make them find all substantial good

of all other books in their Bibles!

Ib. E.

I remember one of the Panegyrics celebrates and magnifies one of the

Roman emperors for this, that he would marry when he was young; that

he would so soon confine and limit his pleasures, so soon determine

his affections in one person.

It is surely some proof of the moral effect which Christianity has

produced, that in all Protestant countries, at least, a writer would be

ashamed to assign this as a ground of panegyric; as if promiscuous

intercourse with those of the other sex had been a natural good, a

privilege, which there was a great merit in foregoing! O! what do not

women owe to Christianity! As Christians only it is that they do, or

ordinarily can, cease to be things for men, instead of co-persons in one

spiritual union.

Ib. p. 166. A.

But such is often the corrupt inordinateness of greatness, that it

only carries them so much beyond other men, but not so much nearer to

God.

Like a balloon, away from earth, but not a whit nearer the arch of

heaven. There is a praiseworthy relativeness and life in the morality of

our best old divines. It is not a cold law in brass or stone; but "this

I may and should think of my neighbour, this of a great man," &c.

Ib. p. 167. A.

Christ was pleased to redeem this man from this error, and bring him

to know truly what he was, that he was God. Christ therefore doth not

rebuke this man, by any denying that he himself was good; for Christ

doth assume that addition to himself, 'I am the good shepherd'.

Neither doth God forbid that those good parts which are in men should

be celebrated with condign praise. We see that God, as soon as he saw

that any thing was good, he said so, he uttered it, he declared it,

first of the light, and then of other creatures. God would be no

author, no example of smothering the due praise of good actions. For

surely that man hath no zeal to goodness in himself, that affords no

praise to goodness in other men.

Very fine. But I think another--not, however, a different--view might be

taken respecting our Lord's intention in these words. The young noble,

who came to him, had many praiseworthy traits of character; but he

failed in the ultimate end and aim. What ought only to have been valued

by him as means, was loved, and had a worth given to it, as an end in

itself. Our Lord, who knew the hearts of men, instantly in the first

words applies himself to this, and takes the occasion of an ordinary

phrase of courtesy addressed to himself, to make the young man aware of

the difference between a mere relative good and that which is absolutely

good; that which may be called good, when regarded as a mean to good,

but which must not be mistaken for, or confounded with, that which is

good, and itself the end.

Ib. B. C. D.

All excellent, and D. most so. Thus, thus our old divines showed the

depth of their love and appreciation of the Scriptures, and thus led

their congregations to feel and see the same. Here is Donne's authority

(_Deus non est ens_, &c.) for what I have so earnestly endeavored to

show, that _Deus est ens super ens_, the ground of all being, but

therein likewise absolute Being, in that he is the eternal

self-affirmant, the I Am in that I Am; and that the key of this mystery

is given to us in the pure idea of the will, as the alone _Causa Sui_.

O! compare this manhood of our Church divinity with the feeble dotage of

the Paleyan school, the 'natural' theology, or watchmaking scheme, that

knows nothing of the maker but what can be proved out of the watch, the

unknown nominative case of the verb impersonal _fit--et natura est_; the

'it,' in short, in 'it rains,' 'it snows,' 'it is cold,' and the

like. When, after reading the biographies of Walton and his

contemporaries, I reflect on the crowded congregations, on the

thousands, who with intense interest came to their hour and two hour

long sermons, I cannot but doubt the fact of any true progression, moral

or intellectual, in the mind of the many. The tone, the matter, the

anticipated sympathies in the sermons of an age form the best moral

criterion of the character of that age.

Ib. E.

His name of Jehova we admire with a reverence.

Say, rather, Jehova, his name. It is not so properly a name of God, as

God the Name,--God's name and God.

Ib. p. 169. A.

Land, and money, and honour must be called goods, though but of

fortune, &c.

We should distinguish between the conditions of our possessing goods and

the goods themselves. Health, for instance, is ordinarily a condition of

that working and rejoicing for and in God, which are goods in the end,

and of themselves. Health, competent fortune, and the like are good as

the negations of the preventives of good; as clear glass is good in

relation to the light, which it does not exclude. Health and ease

without the love of God are plate glass in the darkness.

Ib. p. 170.

Much of this page consists of play on words; as, that which is useful as

rain, and that which is of use as rain on a garden after drouth. There

is also much sophistry in it. Pain is not necessarily an ultimate evil.

As the mean of ultimate good, it may be a relative good; but surely that

which makes pain, anguish, heaviness necessary in order to good, must be

evil. And so the Scripture determines. They are the _wages of sin_; but

God's infinite mercy raises them into sacraments, means of grace. Sin is

the only absolute evil; God the only absolute good. But as myriads of

things are good relatively through participation of God, so are many

things evil as the fruits of evil. What is the apostasy, or fall of

spirits? That that which from the essential perfection of the Absolute

Good could not but be possible, that is, have a potential being, but

never ought to have been actual, did nevertheless strive to be

actual?--But this involved an impossibility; and it actualized only its

own potentiality.

What is the consequence of the apostasy? That no philosophy is possible

of man and nature but by assuming at once a zenith and a nadir, God and

'Hades'; and an ascension from the one through and with a condescension

from the other; that is, redemption by prevenient and then auxiliary

grace.

Ib. p. 171. B.

So says St. Augustine, 'Audeo dicere', though it be boldly said, yet I

must say it, 'utile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum', &c.

No doubt, a sound sense may be forced into these words: but why use

words, into which a sound sense must be forced? Besides, the subject is

too deep and too subtle for a sermon. In the two following paragraphs,

especially, Dr. Donne is too deep, and not deep enough. He treads

waters, and dangerous waters. N. B. The Familists.

Serm. XVIII. Acts, ii. 36. p. 175.

Ib. B.

I would paraphrase, or rather lead the way to this text, something as

follows:--

Truth is a common interest; it is every man's duty to convey it to his

brother, if only it be a truth that concerns or may profit him, and he

be competent to receive it. For we are not bound to say the truth, where

we know that we cannot convey it, but very probably may impart a

falsehood instead; no falsehoods being more dangerous than truths

misunderstood, nay, the most mischievous errors on record having been

half-truths taken as the whole.

But let it be supposed that the matter to be communicated is a fact of

general concernment, a truth of deep and universal interest, a momentous

truth involved in a most awe-striking fact, which all responsible

creatures are competent to understand, and of which no man can safely

remain in ignorance. Now this is the case with the matter, on which I am

about to speak; 'therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly,

that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord

and Christ!'

Ib. p. 176. A. B. C.

True Christian love not only permits, but enjoins, courtesy. God

himself, says Donne, gave us the example.

Ib. p. 177. A. C. E.

All excellent, and E. of deeper worth. All that is wanting here is to

determine the true sense of 'knowing God,'--that sense in which it is

revealed that to know God is life ever-lasting.

Ib p. 178. A.

Now the universality of this mercy hath God enlarged and extended very

far, in that he proposes it even to our knowledge; 'sciant', let all

know it. It is not only 'credant', let all believe it; for the

infusing of faith is not in our power; but God hath put it in our

power to satisfy their reason, &c.

A question is here affirmatively started of highest importance and of

deepest interest, that is, faith so distinguished from reason, 'credat'

from 'sciat', that the former is an infused grace 'not in our power;'

the latter an inherent quality or faculty, on which we are able to

calculate as man with man. I know not what to say to this. Faith seems

to me the coadunation of the individual will with the reason, enforcing

adherence alike of thought, act, and affection to the Universal Will,

whether revealed in the conscience, or by the light of reason, however

the same may contravene, or apparently contradict, the will and mind of

the flesh, the presumed experience of the senses and of the

understanding, as the faculty, or intelligential yet animal instinct, by

which we generalize the notices of the senses, and substantiate their

'spectra' or 'phænomena'. In this sense, therefore, and in this only, I

agree with Donne.

'No man cometh to Christ unless the' 'Father lead him'. The corrupt will

cannot, without prevenient as well as auxiliary grace, be unitively

subordinated to the reason, and again, without this union of the moral

will, the reason itself is latent. Nevertheless, I see no advantage in

not saying the 'will,' or in substituting the term 'faith' for it. But

the sad non-distinction of the reason and the understanding throughout

Donne, and the confusion of ideas and conceptions under the same term,

painfully inturbidates his theology. Till this distinction of the

[Greek: nous] and the [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs] be seen, nothing can be

seen aright. Till this great truth be mastered, and with the sight that

is insight, other truths may casually take possession of the mind, but

the mind cannot possess them. If you know not this, you know nothing;

for if you know not the diversity of reason from the understanding, you

know not reason; and reason alone is knowledge.

All that follows in B. is admirable, worthy of a divine of the Church of

England, the National and the Christian, and indeed proves that Donne

was at least possessed by the truth which I have always labored to

enforce, namely, that faith is the 'apotheosis' of the reason in

man, the complement of reason, the will in the form of the reason. As

the basin-water to the fountain shaft, such is will to reason in faith.

The whole will shapes itself in the image of God wherein it had been

created, and shoots on high toward, and in the glories of, Heaven!

Ib. D.

If we could have been in Paradise, and seen God take a clod of red

earth, and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body

as should be fit to receive his breath, &c.

A sort of pun on the Hebrew word 'Adam' or red earth, common in Donne's

age, but unworthy of Donne, who was worthy to have seen deeper into the

Scriptural sense of the 'ground,' the Hades, the multeity, the many

'absque numero el infra numerum', that which is below, as God is that

which transcends, intellect.

Ib. p. 179. B.

We place in the School, for the most part, the infinite merit of

Christ Jesus ... rather 'in pacto' than 'in persona', rather that this

contract was thus made between the Father and the Son, than that

whatsoever that person, thus consisting of God and Man, should do,

should, only in respect of the person, be of an infinite value and

extension to that purpose, &c.

O, this is sad misty divinity! far too scholastical for the pulpit, far

too vague and unphilosophic for the study.

Ib. p. 180. A.

'Quis nisi infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum?' says St.

Augustine.

Where? [16] Pearson expressly asserts and proves that the clause was in

none of the ancient creeds or confessions. And even now the sense of

these words, 'He descended into hell', is in no Reformed Church

determined as an article of faith.

Ib. p. 182. D.

'Audacter dicam', says St. Hierome, 'cum omnia posset Deus, suscitare

virginem post ruinam non potest.'

One instance among hundreds of the wantonness of phrase and fancy in the

Fathers. What did Jerome mean? 'quod Deus membranam hymenis luniformem

reproducere nequit?' No; that were too absurd. What then?--that God

cannot make what has been not to have been? Well then, why not say that,

since that is all you can mean?

Serm. XIX. Rev. xx. 6. p. 183.

The exposition of the text in this sermon is a lively instance how much

excellent good sense a wise man, like Donne, can bring forth on a

passage which he does not understand. For to say that it may mean either

X, or Y, or Z, is to confess he knows not what it means; but that if it

be X. then, &c.; if Y. then, &c.; and lastly if it be Z. then, &c.; that

is to say, that he understands X, Y, and Z; but does not understand the

text itself.

Ib. p. 185. B.

Seas of blood and yet but brooks, tuns of blood and yet but basons,

compared with the sacrifices, the sacrifices of the blood of men, in

the persecutions of the primitive Church. For every ox of the Jew, the

Christian spent a man; and for every sheep and lamb, a mother and her

child, &c.

Whoo! Had the other nine so called persecutions been equal to the tenth,

that of Diocletian, Donne's assertion here would be extravagant.

Serra. XXXIV. Rom. viii. 16. p. 332.

Ib. p. 335. A.

But by what manner comes He from them? By proceeding.

If this mystery be considered as words, or rather sounds vibrating on

some certain ears, to which the belief of the hearers assigned a

supernatural cause, well and good! What else can be said? Such were the

sounds: what their meaning is, we know not; but such sounds not being in

the ordinary course of nature, we of course attribute them to something

extra-natural.

But if God made man in his own image, therein as in a mirror, misty no

doubt at best, and now cracked by peculiar and in-herited defects--yet

still our only mirror--to contemplate all we can of God, this word

'proceeding' may admit of an easy sense.

For if a man first used it to express as well as he could a notion found

in himself as man 'in genere', we have to look into ourselves, and there

we shall find that two facts of vital intelligence may be conceived; the

first, a necessary and eternal outgoing of intelligence ([Greek: nous])

from being ([Greek:tò on]), with the will as an accompaniment, but not

from it as a cause,--in order, though not necessarily in time,

precedent. This is true filiation.

The second is an act of the will and the reason, in their purity strict

identities, and therefore not begotten or filiated, but proceeding from

intelligent essence and essential intelligence combining in the act,

necessarily and coeternally.

For the coexistence of absolute spontaneity with absolute necessity is

involved in the very idea of God, one of whose intellectual definitions

is, the 'synthesis, generative ad extra, et annihilative, etsi

inclusive, quoad se,' of all conceivable 'antitheses;' even as the best

moral definition--(and, O! how much more godlike to us in this state of

antithetic intellect is the moral beyond the intellectual!)--is, God is

love.

This is to us the high prerogative of the moral, that all its dictates

immediately reveal the truths of intelligence, whereas the strictly

intellectual only by more distant and cold deductions carries us towards

the moral.

For what is love? Union with the desire of union. God therefore is the

cohesion and the oneness of all things; and dark and dim is that system

of ethics, which does not take oneness as the root of all virtue.

Being, Mind, Love in action, are ideas distinguishable though not

divisible; but Will is incapable of distinction or division: it is

equally implied in vital action, in essential intelligence, and in

effluent love or holy action.

Now will is the true principle of identity, of selfness, even in our

common language. The will, therefore, being indistinguishably one, but

the possessive powers triply distinguishable, do perforce involve the

notion expressed by a Trinity of three Persons and one God.

There are three Persons eternally coexisting, in whom the one Will is

totally all in each; the truth of which mystery we may know in our own

minds, but can understand by no analogy.

For "the wind ministrant to divers at the same moment"--thence, to aid

the fancy--borrows or rather steals from the mind the idea of 'total 'in

omni parte',' which alone furnishes the analogy; but that both it and by

it a myriad of other material images do enwrap themselves 'in hac veste

non sua,' and would be even no objects of conception if they did not;

yea, that even the very words, 'conception,' 'comprehension,' and all in

all languages that answer to them, suppose this trans-impression from

the mind, is an argument better than all analogy.

Serm. XXXV. Mat. xii. 31. p. 341.

Ib. p. 342. B.

First then, for the first term, 'sin,' we use to ask in the

school, whether any action of man's can have 'rationem demeriti;'

whether it can be said to offend God, or to deserve ill of God? for

whatsoever does so, must have some proportion with God.

This appears to me to furnish an interesting example of the bad

consequences in reasoning, as well as in morals, of the 'cui bono? cui

malo?' system of ethics,--that system which places the good and evil

of actions in their painful or pleasurable effects on the sensuous or

passive nature of sentient beings, not in the will, the pure act itself.

For, according to this system, God must be either a passible and

dependent being,--that is, not God,--or else he must have no interest,

arid therefore no motive or impulse, to reward virtue or punish vice.

The veil which the Epicureans threw over their atheism was itself an

implicit atheism. Nay, the world itself could not have existed; and as

it does exist, the origin of evil (for if evil means no more than pain

'in genere', evil has a true being in the order of things) is not

only a difficulty of impossible solution, but is a fact necessarily

implying the non-existence of an omnipotent and infinite goodness,--that

is, of God.

For to say that I believe in a God, but not that he is omnipotent,

omniscient, and all-good, is as mere a contradiction in terms as to say,

I believe in a circle, but not that all the rays from its centre to its

circumference are equal.

I cannot read the profound truth so clearly expressed by Donne in the

next paragraph--"it does not only want that rectitude, but it should

have that rectitude, and therefore hath a sinful want"--without an

uneasy wonder at its incongruity with the preceding dogmas.

Serm. LXXI. Mat. iv. 18, 19, 20. p. 717.

Ib. p.725. A.

But still consider, that they did but leave their nets, they did not

burn them. And consider, too, that they left but nets, those things

which might entangle them, and retard them in their following of

Christ, &c.

An excellent paragraph grounded on a mere pun. Such was the taste of the

age; and it is an awful joy to observe, that not great learning, great

wit, great talent, not even (as far as without great virtue that can be)

great genius, were effectual to preserve the man from the contagion, but

only the deep and wise enthusiasm of moral feeling. Compare in this

light Donne's theological prose even with that of the honest Knox; and,

above all, compare Cowley with Milton.

Serm. LXXII. Mat. iv. 18, 19, 20. p. 726.

Ib. p.727. A.-E.

It is amusing to see the use which the Christian divines make of the

very facts in favour of their own religion, with which they triumphantly

battered that of the heathens; namely, the gross and sinful

anthropomorphitism of their representations of the Deity; and yet the

heathen philosophers and priests--Plutarch for instance--tell us as

plainly as Donne or Aquinas can do, that these are only accommodations

to human modes of conception,--the divine nature being in itself

impassible;--how otherwise could it be the prime agent?

Paganism needs a true philosophical judge. Condemned it will be,

perhaps, more heavily than by the present judges, but not from the same

statutes, nor on the same evidence.

'In fine.'

If our old divines, in their homiletic expositions of Scripture,

wire-drew their text, in the anxiety to evolve out of the words the

fulness of the meaning expressed, implied, or suggested, our modern

preachers have erred more dangerously in the opposite extreme, by making

their text a mere theme, or 'motto', for their discourse. Both err in

degree; the old divines, especially the Puritans, by excess, the modern

by defect. But there is this difference to the disfavor of the latter,

that the defect in degree alters the kind. It was on God's holy word

that our Hookers, Donnes, Andrewses preached; it was Scripture bread

that they divided, according to the needs and seasons. The preacher of

our days expounds, or appears to expound, his own sentiments and

conclusions, and thinks himself evangelic enough if he can make the

Scripture seem in conformity with them.

Above all, there is something to my mind at once elevating and soothing

in the idea of an order of learned men reading the many works of the

wise and great, in many languages, for the purpose of making one book

contain the life and virtue of all others, for their brethren's use who

have but that one to read. What, then, if that one book be such, that

the increase of learning is shown by more and more enabling the mind to

find them all in it! But such, according to my experience--hard as I am

on threescore--the Bible is, as far as all moral, spiritual, and

prudential,--all private, domestic, yea, even political, truths arid

interests are concerned. The astronomer, chemist, mineralogist, must go

elsewhere; but the Bible is the book for the man.

[Footnote 1: The LXXX Sermons, fol. 1640.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2:

"Mr. Coleridge's admiration of Bull and Waterland as high theologians

was very great. Bull he used to read in the Latin 'Defensio Fidei

Nicoenoe', using the Jesuit Zola's edition of 1784, which, I think,

he bought at Rome. He told me once, that when he was reading a

Protestant English Bishop's work on the Trinity, in a copy edited by

an Italian Jesuit in Italy, he felt proud of the Church of England,

and in good humour with the Church of Rome."

'Table Talk,' 2d edit. p. 41.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: Rom. vi. 3, 4, 5.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: John i 14. Gal. iv 4. Ed.]

[Footnote 5: See the whole argument on the difference of the reason and

the understanding, in the 'Aids to Reflection', 3d edit. pp. 206-227.

Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See the author's entire argument upon this subject in the

'Church and State'.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: Galat. ii 20.--Ed.]

[Footnote 8: Compare 'Hamlet', Act V. sc. 1. This sermon was preached,

March 8, 1628-9.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9: C. iii. 13, &c.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10: See, however, the author's expressions at, I believe, a

rather later period.

"I now think, after many doubts, that the passage; 'I know that my

Redeemer liveth', &c. may fairly be taken as a burst of determination,

a 'quasi' prophecy. I know not how this can be; but in spite of all my

difficulties, this I do know, that I shall be recompensed!"

'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 80.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: How so? Is it not admitted that Robert Stephens first

divided the New Testament into verses in 1551? See the testimony to that

effect of Henry Stephens, his son, in the Preface to his

Concordance.--Ed. ]

[Footnote 12: 'Rom'. viii. 3. Mr. C. afterwards expressed himself to the

same effect:

"Christ's body, as mere body, or rather carcase (for body is an

associated word), was no more capable of sin or righteousness than

mine or yours; that his humanity had a capacity of sin, follows from

its own essence. He was of like passions as we, and was tempted. How

could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of being seduced?"

'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 261.--Ed.]

[Footnote 13: See Hooker's admirable declaration of the doctrine:--

"These natures from the moment of their first combination have been

and are for ever inseparable. For even when his soul forsook the

tabernacle of his body, his Deity forsook neither body nor soul. If it

had, then could we not truly hold either that the person of Christ was

buried, or that the person of Christ did raise up itself from the

dead. For the body separated from the Word can in no true sense be

termed the person of Christ; nor is it true to say that the Son of God

in raising up that body did raise up himself, if the body were not

both with him and of him even during the time it lay in the sepulchre.

The like is also to be said of the soul, otherwise we are plainly and

inevitably Nestorians. The very person of Christ therefore for ever

one and the self-same, was only touching bodily substance concluded

within the grave, his soul only from thence severed, but by personal

union his Deity still unseparably joined with both."

E. P. V. 52. 4.--'Keble's edit'. Ed. ]

[Footnote 14: xix. 41.--Ed. ]

[Footnote 15: (C.) which should be (B.)

"The object of the preceding discourse was to recommend the Bible as

the end and centre of our reading and meditation. I can truly affirm

of myself, that my studies have been profitable and availing to me

only so far, as I have endeavored to use all my other knowledge as a

glass enabling me to receive more light in a wider field of vision

from the Word of God."

Ed.]

[Footnote 16: Ep. 99. See Pearson, Art. v.--Ed. ]

HENRY MORE'S THEOLOGICAL WORKS. [1]

There are three principal causes to which the imperfections and errors

in the theological schemes and works of our elder divines, the glories

of our Church,--men of almost unparalleled learning and genius, the rich

and robust intellects from the reign of Elizabeth to the death of

Charles II,--may, I think, be reasonably attributed. And striking,

unusually striking, instances of all three abound in this volume; and in

the works of no other divine are they more worthy of being regretted:

for hence has arisen a depreciation of Henry More's theological

writings, which yet contain more original, enlarged, and elevating views

of the Christian dispensation than I have met with in any other single

volume. For More had both the philosophic and the poetic genius,

supported by immense erudition. But unfortunately the two did not

amalgamate. It was not his good fortune to discover, as in the preceding

generation William Shakspeare discovered, a mordaunt' or common base of

both, and in which both the poetic and the philosophical power blended

in one.

These causes are,--

First, and foremost,--the want of that logical [Greek: propaidéia

dokimastikàe], that critique of the human intellect, which, previously

to the weighing and measuring of this or that, begins by assaying the

weights, measures, and scales themselves; that fulfilment of the

heaven-descended 'nosce teipsum', in respect to the intellective part of

man, which was commenced in a sort of tentative broadcast way by Lord

Bacon in his 'Novum Organum', and brought to a systematic completion by

Immanuel Kant in his 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft, der Urtheilskrajt, und

der metaphysiche Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft'.

From the want of this searching logic, there is a perpetual confusion of

the subjective with the objective in the arguments of our divines,

together with a childish or anile overrating of human testimony, and an

ignorance in the art of sifting it, which necessarily engendered

credulity.

Second,--the ignorance of natural science, their physiography scant in

fact, and stuffed out with fables; their physiology imbrangled with an

inapplicable logic and a misgrowth of 'entia rationalia', that is,

substantiated abstractions; and their physiogony a blank or dreams of

tradition, and such "intentional colours" as occupy space but cannot

fill it. Yet if Christianity is to be the religion of the world, if

Christ be that Logos or Word that 'was in the beginning', by whom all

things 'became'; if it was the same Christ who said, 'Let there be

light'; who in and by the creation commenced that great redemptive

process, the history of life which begins in its detachment from nature,

and is to end in its union with God;--if this be true, so true must it

be that the book of nature and the book of revelation, with the whole

history of man as the intermediate link, must be the integral and

coherent parts of one great work: and the conclusion is, that a scheme

of the Christian faith which does not arise out of, and shoot its beams

downward into, the scheme of nature, but stands aloof as an insulated

afterthought, must be false or distorted in all its particulars. In

confirmation of this position, I may challenge any opponent to adduce a

single instance in which the now exploded falsities of physical science,

through all its revolutions from the second to the seventeenth century

of the Christian æra, did not produce some corresponding warps in the

theological systems and dogmas of the several periods.

The third and last cause, and especially operative in the writings of

this author, is the presence and regnancy of a false and fantastic

philosophy, yet shot through with refracted light from the not risen but

rising truth,--a scheme of physics and physiology compounded of

Cartesian mechanics and empiricism (for it was the credulous childhood

of experimentalism), and a corrupt, mystical, theurgical,

pseudo-Platonism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart

dynasty. The only not universal belief in witchcraft and apparitions,

and the vindication of such monster follies by such men as Sir M. Hale,

Glanville, Baxter, Henry More, and a host of others, are melancholy

proofs of my position. Hence, in the first chapters of this volume, the

most idle inventions of the ancients are sought to be made credible by

the most fantastic hypotheses and analogies.

To the man who has habitually contemplated Christianity as interesting

all rational finite beings, as the very 'spirit of truth', the

application of the prophecies as so many fortune-tellings and

soothsayings to particular events and persons, must needs be felt as

childish--like faces seen in the moon, or the sediments of a teacup. But

reverse this, and a Pope and a Buonaparte can never be wanting,--the

molehill becomes an Andes. On the other hand, there are few writers

whose works could be so easily defecated as More's. Mere omission would

suffice; and perhaps one half (an unusually large proportion) would come

forth from the furnace pure gold; if but a fourth, how great a gain!

EXPLANATION OF THE GRAND MYSTERY OF GODLINESS.

Dedication. 'Servorum illius omnium indignissimus.'

'Servus indignissimus,' or 'omnino indignus', or any other positive

self-abasement before God, I can understand; but how an express avowal

of unworthiness, comparatively superlative, can consist with the

Job-like integrity and sincerity of profession especially required in a

solemn address to Him, to whom all hearts are open, this I do not

understand in the case of such men as Henry More, Jeremy Taylor, Richard

Baxter were, and by comparison at least with the multitude of evil

doers, must have believed themselves to be.

Ib. V. c.14. s.3.

This makes me not so much wonder at that passage of Providence, which

allowed so much virtue to the bones of the martyr Babylas, once bishop

of Antioch, as to stop the mouth of Apollo Daphneus when Julian would

have enticed him to open it by many a fat sacrifice. To say nothing of

several other memorable miracles that were done by the reliques of

saints and martyrs in those times.

Strange lingering of childish credulity in the most learned and in many

respects enlightened divines of the Protestant episcopal church even to

the time of James II! The Popish controversy at that time made a great

clearance.

Ib. s. 9.

At one time Professor Eichorn had persuaded me that the Apocalypse was

authentic; that is, a Danielitic dramatic poem written by the Apostle

and Evangelist John, and not merely under his name. But the repeated

perusal of the vision has sadly unsettled my conclusion. The entire

absence of all spirituality perplexes me, as forming so strong a

contrast with the Gospel and Epistles of John; and then the too great

appearance of an allusion to the fable of Nero's return to life and

empire, to Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana on the one hand (that is

the Eichornian hypothesis), and the insurmountable difficulties of

Joseph Mede and others on to Bicheno and Faber on the other. In short, I

feel just as both Luther and Calvin felt,--that is, I know not what to

make of it, and so leave it alone.

It is much to be regretted that we have no contemporary history of

Apollonius, or of the reports concerning him, and the popular notions in

his own time. For from the romance of Philostratus we cannot be sure as

to the fact of the lies themselves. It may be a lie, that there ever was

such or such a lie in circulation.

Ib. c. 15. s. 2.

Fourthly. The 'little horn', Dan. vii, that rules 'for a time and

times and half a time', it is evident that it is not Antiochus

Epiphanes, because this 'little horn' is part of the fourth

beast--namely, the Roman.

Is it quite clear that the Macedonian was not the fourth empire;

1. the Assyrian;

2. the Median;

3. the Persian;

4. the Macedonian?

However, what a strange prophecy, that, 'e confesso' having been

fulfilled, remains as obscure as before!

Ib. s. 6

'And ye shall have the tribulation of ten days',--that is, the utmost

extent of tribulation; beyond which there is nothing further, as there

is no number beyond ten.

It means, I think, the very contrary. 'Decent dierum' is used even in

Terence for a very short time. [2] In the same way we say, a nine days'

wonder.

Ib. c. 16. s. 1.

But for further conviction of the excellency of Mr. Mede's way above

that of Grotius, I shall compare some of their main interpretations.

Hard to say which of the two, Mede's or Grotius', is the more

improbable. Beyond doubt, however, the Cherubim are meant as the scenic

ornature borrowed from the Temple.

Ib. s. 2.

That this 'rider of the white horse' is Christ, they both agree

in.

The 'white horse' is, I conceive, Victory or Triumph--that is, of the

Roman power--followed by Slaughter, Famine, and Pestilence. All this is

plain enough. The difficulty commences after the writer is deserted by

his historical facts, that is, after the sacking of Jerusalem.

Ib. s. 5.

It would be no easy matter to decide, whether Mede plus More was at a

greater distance from the meaning, or Grotius from the poetry, of this

eleventh chapter of the Revelations; whether Mede was more wild, or

Grotius more tame, flat, and prosaic.

Ib. c. 17. s. 8.

The Old and New Testament, which by a 'prosopopoeia' are here called

the 'two witnesses.'

Where is the probability of this so long before the existence of the

collection since called the New Testament?

Ib. vi. c. l. s. 2.

We may draw from this passage (1 'Thess'. iv. 16, 17.) the strongest

support of the fact of the ascension of Christ, or at least of St.

Paul's (and of course of the first generation of Christians') belief of

it. For had they not believed his ascent, whence could they have derived

the universal expectation of his descent,--his bodily, personal descent?

The only scruple is, that all these circumstances were parts of the

Jewish 'cabala' or idea of the Messiah by the spiritualists before the

Christian æra, and therefore taken for granted with respect to Jesus as

soon as he was admitted to be the Messiah.

Ib. s. 6.

But light-minded men, whose hearts are made dark with infidelity, care

not what antic distortions they make in interpreting Scripture, so

they bring it to any show of compliance with their own fancy and

incredulity.

Why so very harsh a censure? What moral or spiritual, or even what

physical, difference can be inferred from all men's dying, this of one

thing, that of another, a third, like the martyrs, burnt alive, or all

in the same way? In any case they all die, and all pass to judgment.

Ib. c. 15.

With his 'semi'-Cartesian, 'semi'-Platonic, 'semi'-Christian notions,

Henry More makes a sad jumble in his assertion of chronochorhistorical

Christianity. One decisive reference to the ascension of the visible and

tangible Jesus from the surface of the earth upward through the clouds,

pointed out in the writings of St. Paul or in the Gospel, beginning as

it certainly did, and as in the copy according to Mark it now does, with

the baptism of John, or in the writings of the Apostle John, would have

been more effective in flooring Old Nic of Amsterdam [3] and his

familiars, than volumes of such "maybe's," "perhapses," and "should be

rendered," as these.

Ib. viii. c. 2. c. 6.

I must confess our Saviour compiled no books, it being a piece of

pedantry below so noble and divine a person, &c.

Alas! all this is woefully beneath the dignity of Henry More, and

shockingly against the majesty of the High and Holy One, so very

unnecessarily compared with Hendrick Nicholas, of Amsterdam, mercer!

Ib. x. c. 13. s. 5, 6.

A new sect naturally attracts to itself a portion of the madmen of the

time, and sets another portion into activity as alarmists and

oppugnants. I cannot therefore pretend to say what More might not have

found in the writings, or heard from the mouth, of some lunatic who

called himself a Quaker. But I do not recollect, in any work of an

acknowledged Friend, a denial of the facts narrated by the Evangelists,

as having really taken place in the same sense as any other facts of

history. If they were symbols of spiritual acts and processes, as Fox

and Penn contended, they must have been, or happened;--else how could

they be symbols?

It is too true, however, that the positive creed of the Quakers is and

ever has been extremely vague and misty. The deification of the

conscience, under the name of the Spirit, seems the main article of

their faith; and of the rest they form no opinion at all, considering it

neither necessary nor desirable. I speak of Quakers in general. But what

a lesson of experience does not this thirteenth chapter of so great and

good a man as H. More afford to us, who know what the Quakers really

are! Had the followers of George Fox, or any number of them

collectively, acknowledged the mad notions of this Hendrick Nicholas? If

not----

INQUIRY INTO THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY.

Part II. ii. c. 2.

Confutation of Grotius on the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse.

Has or has not Grotius been overrated? If Grotius applied these words

('magnus testis et historiarum diligentissimus inquisitor') to

Epiphanius in honest earnest, and not ironically, he must have been

greatly inferior in sound sense and critical tact both to Joseph

Scaliger and to Rhenferd. Strange, that to Henry More, a poet and a man

of fine imagination, it should never have occurred to ask himself,

whether this scene, Patmos, with which the drama commences, was not a

part of the poem, and, like all other parts, to be interpreted

symbolically? That the poetic--and I see no reason for doubting the

real--date of the Apocalypse is under Vespasian, is so evidently implied

in the five kings preceding (for Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, were

abortive emperors) that it seems to me quite lawless to deny it. That

[Greek: Lateinos] is the meaning of the 666, (c. xiii. 18.) and the

treasonable character of this, are both shown by Irenæus's pretended

rejection, and his proposal of the perfectly senseless 'Teitan' instead.

[Footnote 1: Folio. 1708.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: 'Decem dierum vix mihi est familia'. Heaut. v. i.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: Hendrick Nicholas and the Family of Love.--Ed.]

HEINRICHS'S COMMENTARY ON THE APOCALYPSE. [1]

P. 245.

It seems clear that Irenæus invented the unmeaning 'Teitan', in order to

save himself from the charge of treason, to which the 'Lateinos' might

have exposed him. See Rabelais 'passim'.

P.246.

'Nec magis blandiri poterit alterum illud nomen, Teitan, quod studiose

commendavit Irenoeus'.

No! 'non studiose, sed ironice commendavit Irenæus'. Indeed it is

ridiculous to suppose that Irenæus was in earnest with 'Teitan'. His

meaning evidently is:--if not 'Lateinos', which has a meaning, it is

some one of the many names having the same numeral power, to which a

meaning is to be found by the fulfillment of the prophecy. My own

conviction is, that the whole is an ill-concerted conundrum, the secret

of which died with the author. The general purpose only can be

ascertained, namely, some test, partaking of religious obligation, of

allegiance to the sovereignty of the Roman Emperor.

If I granted for a moment the truth of Heinrichs's supposition, namely,

that, according to the belief of the Apocalypt, the line of the Emperors

would cease in Titus the seventh or complete number (Galba, Otho, and

Vitellius, being omitted) by the advent of the Messiah;--if I found my

judgment more coerced by his arguments than it is,--then I should use

this book as evidence of the great and early discrepance between the

Jewish-Christian Church and the Pauline; and my present very serious

doubts respecting the identity of John the Theologian and John the

Evangelist would become fixed convictions of the contrary.

P. 91. Rev. xvii. 11.

Among other grounds for doubting this interpretation (that 'the eighth'

in v.11. is Satan), I object, 1. that it almost necessitates the

substitution of the Coptic [Greek: aggelos] for [Greek: ogdoos] against

all the MSS., and without any Patristic hint. For it seems a play with

words unworthy the writer, to make Satan, who possessed all the seven,

himself an 'eighth', and still worse if 'the eighth': 2. that it is not

only a great and causeless inconcinnity in style, but a wanton adding of

obscurity to the obscure to have, first, so carefully distinguished (c.

xiii. 1-11.) the [Greek: drák_on] from the two [Greek: tháeria], and the

one [Greek: thaeríon] from the other, and then to make [Greek: thaeríon]

the appellative of the [Greek: drák_on]: as if having in one place told

of Nicholas 'senior', Dick and another Dick his cousin, I should soon

after talk of Dick, meaning old Nicholas by that name; that is, having

discriminated Nicholas from Dick, then to say Dick, meaning Nicholas!

Rev. xix. 9.

These words might well bear a more recondite interpretation; that is,

[Greek: outoi] (these blessed ones) are the true [Greek: lógoi] or

[Greek: tékna Theou], as the Logos is the [Greek: huiòs Theou].

Ib. 10.

According to the law of symbolic poetry this sociable angel (the

Beatrice of the Hebrew Dante) ought to be, and I doubt not is, 'sensu

symbolico', an angel; that is, the angel of the Church of Ephesus, John

the Evangelist, according to the opinion of Eusebius.

P. 294. Rev. xx. 'Millennium'.

'Die vorzüglichsten Bekenner Jesu sollen auferstehen, die übrigen

Menschen sollen es nicht. Hiesse jenes, sie sollen noch nach ihrem

Tode fortwürken, so wäre das letztere falsch: denn auch die übrigen

würken nach ihrem Tode durch ihre schriften, ihre Andenken, ihre

Beispiel.'

'Euge! Heinrichi'. O, the sublime bathos of thy prosaism--the muddy

eddy of thy logic! Thou art the only man to understand a poet!

I have too clearly before me the idea of a poet's genius to deem myself

other than a very humble poet; but in the very possession of the idea, I

know myself so far a poet as to feel assured that I can understand and

interpret a poem in the spirit of poetry, and with the poet's spirit.

Like the ostrich, I cannot fly, yet have I wings that give me the

feeling of flight; and as I sweep along the plain, can look up toward

the bird of Jove, and can follow him and say:

"Sovereign of the air,--who descendest on thy nest in the cleft of the

inaccessible rock, who makest the mountain pinnacle thy perch and

halting-place, and, scanning with steady eye the orb of glory right

above thee, imprintest thy lordly talons in the stainless snows, that

shoot back and scatter round his glittering shafts,--I pay thee

homage. Thou art my king. I give honor due to the vulture, the falcon,

and all thy noble baronage; and no less to the lowly bird, the

sky-lark, whom thou permittest to visit thy court, and chant her matin

song within its cloudy curtains; yea the linnet, the thrush, the

swallow, are my brethren:--but still I am a bird, though but a bird of

the earth.

"Monarch of our kind, I am a bird, even as thou; and I have shed

plumes, which have added beauty to the beautiful, and grace to terror,

waving over the maiden's brow and on the helmed head of the war-chief;

and majesty to grief, drooping o'er the car of death!"

[Footnote 1: Göttingen, 1821. The few following notes are, something out

of order, inserted here in consequence of their connection with the

immediately preceding remarks in the text.--Ed.]

LIFE OF BISHOP HACKET. [1]

Ib. p. 8.

Yet he would often dispute the necessity of a country living for a

London minister to retire to in hot summer time, out of the sepulchral

air of a churchyard, where most of them are housed in the city, and

found for his own part that by Whitsuntide he did 'rus anhelare', and

unless he took fresh air in the vacation, he was stopt in his lungs

and could not speak clear after Michaelmas.

A plausible reason certainly why A. and B. should occasionally change

posts, but a very weak one, methinks, for A.'s having both livings all

the year through.

Ib. p. 42-3.

The Bishop was an enemy to all separation from the Church of England;

but their hypocrisy he thought superlative that allowed the doctrine,

and yet would separate for mislike of the discipline. ... And

therefore he wished that as of old all kings and other Christians

subscribed to the Conciliary Decrees, so now a law might pass that all

justices of peace should do so in England, and then they would be more

careful to punish the depravers of Church Orders.

The little or no effect of recent experience and sufferings still more

recent, in curing the mania of persecution! How was it possible that a

man like Bishop Hacket should not have seen that if separation on

account of the imposition of things by himself admitted to be

indifferent, and as such justified, was criminal in those who did not

think them indifferent,--how doubly criminal must the imposition have

been, and how tenfold criminal the perseverance in occasioning

separation; how guilty the imprisoning, impoverishing, driving into

wildernesses their Christian brethren for admitted indifferentials in

direct contempt of St. Paul's positive command to the contrary!

HACKET'S SERMONS.

Serm. I. Luke ii. 7.

Moreover as the woman Mary did bring forth the son who bruised the

serpent's head, which brought sin into the world by the woman Eve, so

the Virgin Mary was the occasion of grace as the Virgin Eve was the

cause of damnation. Eve had not known Adam as yet when she was

beguiled and seduced the man; so Mary, &c.

A Rabbinical fable or gloss on Gen. iii. 1. Hacket is offensively fond

of these worse than silly vanities.

Ib. p. 5.

The more to illustrate this, you must know that there was a twofold

root or foundation of the children of Israel for their temporal being:

Abraham was the root of the people; the kingdom was rent from Saul,

and therefore David was the root of the kingdom; among all the kings

in the pedigree none but he hath the name; and Jesse begat David the

king, and David the king begat Solomon; and therefore so often as God

did profess to spare the people, though he were angry, he says he

would do it for Abraham's sake: so often as he professeth to spare the

kingdom of Judah, he says he would do it for his servant David's sake;

so that 'ratione radicis', as Abraham and David are roots of the

people and kingdom, especially Christ is called the Son of David, the

Son of Abraham.

A valuable remark, and confirmative of my convictions respecting the

conversion of the Jews, namely, that whatever was ordained for them as

'Abrahamidæ' is not repealed by Christianity, but only what appertained

to the republic, kingdom, or state. The modern conversions are, as it

seems to me, in the face of God's commands.

Ib.

I come to the third strange condition of the birth; it was without

travel, or the pangs of woman, as I will shew you out of these words;

'fasciis involvit', that 'she wrapt him in swaddling clouts, and laid

him in a manger. Ipsa genitrix fuit obstetrix', says St. Cyprian. Mary

was both the mother and the midwife of the child; far be it from us to

think that the weak hand of the woman could facilitate the work which

was guided only by the miraculous hand of God. The Virgin conceived

our Lord without the lusts of the flesh, and therefore she had not the

pangs and travel of woman upon her, she brought him forth without the

curse of the flesh. These be the Fathers' comparisons. As bees draw

honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of

Adam's side without any grief to him, as a sprig issues out of the

bark of a tree, as the sparkling light from the brightness of the

star, such ease was it to Mary to bring forth her first born son; and

therefore having no weakness in her body, feeling no want of vigor,

she did not deliver him to any profane hand to be drest, but by a

special ability, above all that are newly delivered, she wrapt him in

swaddling clouts. 'Gravida, sed non gravabatur'; she had a burden in

her womb, before she was delivered, and yet she was not burdened for

her journey which she took so instantly before the time of the child's

birth. From Nazareth to Bethlem was above forty miles, and yet she

suffered it without weariness or complaint, for such was the power of

the Babe, that rather he did support the Mother's weakness than was

supported; and as he lighted his Mother's travel by the way from

Nazareth to Bethlem that it was not tedious to her tender age, so he

took away all her dolour and imbecility from her travel in

child-birth, and therefore 'she wrapt him in swaddling clouts'.

A very different paragraph indeed, and quite on the cross road to Rome!

It really makes me melancholy; but it is one of a thousand instances of

the influence of Patristic learning, by which the Reformers of the Latin

Church were distinguished from the renovators of the Christian religion.

Can we wonder that the strict Protestants were jealous of the

backsliding of the Arminian prelatical clergy and of Laud their leader,

when so strict a Calvinist as Bishop Hacket could trick himself up in

such fantastic rags and lappets of Popish monkery!--could skewer such

frippery patches, cribbed from the tyring room of Romish Parthenolatry,

on the sober gown and cassock of a Reformed and Scriptural Church!

Ib. p. 7.

But to say the truth, was he not safer among the beasts than he could

be elsewhere in all the town of Bethlem? His enemies perchance would

say unto him, as Jael did to Sisera, 'Turn in, turn in, my Lord', when

she purposed to kill him; as the men of Keilah made a fair shew to

give David all courteous hospitality, but the issue would prove, if

God had not blessed him, that they meant to deliver him into the hands

of Saul that sought his blood. So there was no trusting of the

Bethlemites. Who knows, but that they would have prevented Judas, and

betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver unto Herod? More humanity is

to be expected from the beasts than from some men, and therefore she

laid him in a manger.

Did not the life of Archbishop Williams prove otherwise, I should have

inferred from these Sermons that Hacket from his first boyhood had been

used to make themes, epigrams, copies of verses, and the like, on all

the Sunday feasts and festivals of the Church; had found abundant

nourishment for this humour of points, quirks, and quiddities in the

study of the Fathers and glossers; and remained a 'junior soph' all his

life long. I scarcely know what to say: on the one hand, there is a

triflingness, a shewman's or relique-hawker's gossip that stands in

offensive contrast with the momentous nature of the subject, and the

dignity of the ministerial office; as if a preacher having chosen the

Prophets for his theme should entertain his congregation by exhibiting a

traditional shaving rag of Isaiah's with the Prophet's stubble hair on

the dried soap-sud. And yet, on the other hand, there is an innocency in

it, a security of faith, a fulness evinced in the play and plash of its

overflowing, that at other times give one the same sort of pleasure as

the sight of blackberry bushes and children's handkerchief-gardens on

the slopes of a rampart, the promenade of some peaceful old town, that

stood the last siege in the Thirty Years' war!

Ib. Serm. II. Luke ii. 8.

Tiberius propounded his mind to the senate of Rome, that Christ, the

great prophet in Jewry, should be had in the same honour with the

other gods which they worshipped in the Capitol. The motion did not

please them, says Eusebius; and this was all the fault, because he was

a god not of their own, but of Tiberius' invention.

Here, I own, the negative evidence of the silence of Seneca and

Suetonius--above all, of Tacitus and Pliny--outweigh in my mind the

positive testimony of Eusebius, which rested, I suspect, on the same

ground with the letters of Pontius Pilate, so boldly appealed to by

Tertullian. [2]

Ib. Serm. III. Luke ii. 9.

But our bodies shall revive out of that dust into which they were

dissolved, and live for ever in the resurrection of the righteous.

I never could satisfy myself as to the continuance and catholicity of

this strange Egyptian tenet in the very face of St. Paul's indignant,

'Thou fool! not that, &c.' I have at times almost been tempted to

conjecture that Paul taught a different doctrine from the Palestine

disciples on this point, and that the Church preferred the sensuous and

therefore more popular belief of the Evangelists' [Greek: katà sárka] to

the more intelligible faith of the spiritual sage of the other Athens;

for so Tarsus was called.

And was there no symptom of a commencing relapse to the errors of that

Church which had equalled the traditions of men, yea, the dreams of

phantasts with the revelations of God, when a chosen elder with the law

of truth before him, and professing to divide and distribute the bread

of life, could, paragraph after paragraph, place such unwholesome

vanities as these before his flock, without even a hint which might

apprize them that the gew-gaw comfits were not part of the manna from

heaven? All this superstitious trash about angels, which the Jews

learned from the Persian legends, asserted as confidently as if Hacket

had translated it word for word from one of the four Gospels! Salmasius,

if I mistake not, supposes the original word to have been bachelors,

young unmarried men. Others interpret angels as meaning the bishop and

elders of the Church. More probably it was a proverbial expression

derived from the Cherubim in the Temple: something as the country folks

used to say to children, Take care, the Fairies will hear you! It was a

common notion among the Jews, in the time of St. Paul, that their angels

were employed in carrying up their prayers to the throne of God. Of

course they must have been in special attendance in a house of prayer.

After much search and much thought on the subject of angels as a diverse

kind of finite beings, I find no sufficing reason to hold it for a

revealed doctrine, and if not revealed it is assuredly no truth of

philosophy, which, as I have elsewhere remarked, can conceive but three

kinds; 1. the infinite reason; 2. the finite rational; and 3. the finite

irrational--that is, God, man, and beast. What indeed, even for the

vulgar, is or can an archangel be but a man with wings, better or worse

than the wingless species according as the feathers are white or black?

I would that the word had been translated instead of Anglicised in our

English Bible.

The following paragraph is one of Hacket's sweetest passages. It is

really a beautiful little hymn.

By this it appears how suitably a beam of admirable light did concur

in the angels' message to set out the majesty of the Son of God: and I

beseech you observe,--all you that would keep a good Christmas as you

ought,--that the glory of God is the best celebration of his Son's

nativity; and all your pastimes and mirth (which I disallow not, but

rather commend in moderate use) must so be managed, without riot,

without surfeiting, without excessive gaming, without pride and vain

pomp, in harmlessness, in sobriety, as if the glory of the Lord were

round about us. Christ was born to save them that were lost; but

frequently you abuse his nativity with so many vices, such disordered

outrages, that you make this happy time an occasion for your loss

rather than for your salvation. Praise him in the congregation of the

people! praise him in your inward heart! praise him with the sanctity

of your life! praise him in your charity to them that need and are in

want! This is the glory of God shining round, and the most Christian

solemnizing of the birth of Jesus.

SERMONS ON THE TEMPTATION.

As the Temptation is found in the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and

Luke, it must have formed part of the 'Prot-evangelion', or original

Gospel;--from the Apostles, therefore, it must have come, and from some

or all who had heard the account from our Lord himself. How, then, are

we to understand it? To confute the whims and superstitious nugacities

of these Sermons, and the hundred other comments and interpretations

'ejusdem farinæ', would be a sad waste of time. Yet some meaning, and

that worthy of Christ, it must have had. The struggle with the

suggestions of the evil principle, first, to force his way and compel

belief by a succession of miracles, disjoined from moral and spiritual

purpose,--miracles for miracles' sake;--second, doubts of his Messianic

character and divinity, and temptations to try it by some ordeal at the

risk of certain death;--third, to interpret his mission, as his

countrymen generally did, to be one of conquest and royalty;--these

perhaps--but I am lost in doubt.

SERMON ON THE TRANSFIGURATION.

Luke IX. 33.

'I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren,

my kinsmen according to the flesh'.

Rom. ix. 3.

St. Paul does not say, "I would desire to be accursed," nor does he

speak of any deliberated result of his consideration; but represents a

transient passion of his soul, an actual but undetermined impulse,--an

impulse existing in and for itself in the moment of its ebullience, and

not completed by an act and confirmation of the will,--as a striking

proof of the exceeding interest which he continued to feel in the

welfare of his countrymen, His heart so swelled with love and compassion

for them, that if it were possible, if reason and conscience permitted

it, 'Methinks,' says he, 'I could wish that myself were accursed, if so

they might be saved.' Might not a mother, figuring to herself as

possible and existing an impossible or not existing remedy for a dying

child, exclaim, 'Oh, I could fly to the end of the earth to procure it!'

Let it not be irreverent, if I refer to the fine passage in

Shakspeare--Hotspur's rapture-like reverie--so often ridiculed by

shallow wits. In great passion, the crust opake of present and existing

weakness and boundedness is, as it were, fused and vitrified for the

moment, and through the transparency the soul, catching a gleam of the

infinity of the potential in the will of man, reads the future for the

present. Percy is wrapt in the contemplation of the physical might

inherent in the concentrated will; the inspired Apostle in the sudden

sense of the depth of its moral strength.

SERMON ON THE RESURRECTION.

Acts II. 4.

Thirdly, the necessity of it: 'for it was not possible that he should

be holden of death'.

One great error of textual divines is their inadvertence to the dates,

occasion, object and circumstances, at and under which the words were

written or spoken. Thus the simple assertion of one or two facts

introductory to the teaching of the Christian religion is taken as

comprising or constituting the Christian religion itself. Hence the

disproportionate weight laid on the simple fact of the resurrection of

Jesus, detached from the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption.

Ib.

St. Austin says, that Tully, in his '3 lib. de Republica', disputed

against the reuniting of soul and body. His argument was, To what end?

Where should they remain together? For a body cannot be assumed into

heaven. I believe God caused those famous monuments of his wit to

perish, because of such impious opinions wherewith they were farced.

I believe, however, that these books have recently themselves enjoyed a

resurrection by the labor of Angelo Mai. [3]

Ib.

And let any equal auditor judge if Job were not an Anti-Socinian; Job

xix. 26. 'Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my

flesh shall I see God, whom I shall behold for myself, and mine eyes

shall see, and not another'.

This text rightly rendered is perhaps nothing to the purpose, but may

refer to the dire cutaneous disease with which Job was afflicted. It may

be merely an expression of Job's confidence of his being justified in

the eyes of men, and in this life. [4]

In the whole wide range of theological 'mirabilia', I know none stranger

than the general agreement of orthodox divines to forget to ask

themselves what they precisely meant by the word 'body.' Our Lord's and

St. Paul's meaning is evident enough, that is, the personality.

Ib.

St. Chrysostom's judgment upon it ('having loosed the pains of death')

is, that when Christ came out of the grave, death itself was delivered

from pain and anxiety--[Greek: _odike katéchon autòn thánatos, kaì tà

deinà epasche.] Death knew it held him captive whom it ought not to

have seized upon, and therefore it suffered torments like a woman in

travail till it had given him up again. Thus he. But the Scripture

elsewhere testifies, that death was put to sorrow because it had lost

its sting, rather than released from sorrow by our Saviour's

resurrection.

Most noticeable! See the influence of the surrounding myriotheism in the

'dea Mors!'

Ib.

Let any competent judge read Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams, and

then these Sermons, and so measure the stultifying, nugifying effect of

a blind and uncritical study of the Fathers, and the exclusive

prepossession in favor of their authority in the minds of many of our

Church dignitaries in the reign of Charles I.

HACKET'S LIFE OF LORD KEEPER WILLIAMS. [5]

Prudence installed as virtue, instead of being employed as one of her

indispensable handmaids, and the products of this exemplified and

illustrated in the life of Archbishop Williams, as a work, I could

warmly recommend to my dearest Hartley. Williams was a man bred up to

the determination of being righteous, both honorably striving and

selfishly ambitious, but all within the bounds and permission of the

law, the reigning system of casuistry; in short, an egotist in morals,

and a worldling in impulses and motives. And yet by pride and by innate

nobleness of nature munificent and benevolent, with all the negative

virtues of temperance, chastity, and the like,--take this man on his

road to his own worldly aggrandizement. Winding his way through a grove

of powerful rogues, by flattery, professions of devoted attachment, and

by actual and zealous as well as able services, and at length becoming

in fact nearly as great a knave as the knaves (Duke of Buckingham for

example) whose favor and support he had been conciliating,--till at last

in some dilemma, some strait between conscience and fear, and increased

confidence in his own political strength, he opposes or hesitates to

further some too foolish or wicked project of his patron knave, or

affronts his pride by counselling a different course (not a less wicked,

but one more profitable and conducive to his Grace's elevation);-and

then is 'floored' or crushed by him, and falls unknown and unpitied.

Such was that truly wonderful scholar and statesman, Archbishop

Williams.

Part 1. s. 61.

'And God forbid that any other course, should be attempted. For this

liberty was settled on the subject, with such imprecations upon the

infringers, that if they should remove these great landmarks, they

must look for vengeance, as if entailed by public vows on them and

their posterity.' These were the Dean's instructions, &c.

He deserves great credit for them. They put him in strong contrast with

Laud.

Ib. s. 80.

Thus for them both together he solicits:--My most noble lord, what

true applause and admiration the King and your Honor have gained, &c.

All this we, in the year 1833, should call abject and base; but was it

so in Bishop Williams? In the history of the morality of a people,

prudence, yea cunning, is the earliest form of virtue. This is expressed

in Jacob, and in Ulysses and all the most ancient fables. It will

require the true philosophic calm and serenity to distinguish and

appreciate the character of the morality of our great men from Henry

VIII to the close of James I,--'nullum numen abest, si sit

prudentia',--and of those of Charles I to the Restoration. The

difference almost amounts to contrast.

Ib. s. 81-2.

How is it that any deeply-read historian should not see how imperfect

and precarious the rights of personal liberty were during this period;

or, seeing it, refuse to do justice to the patriots under Charles I? The

truth is, that from the reign of Edward I, (to go no farther backward),

there was a spirit of freedom in the people at large, which all our

kings in their senses were cautious not to awaken by too rudely treading

on it; but for individuals, as such, there was none till the conflict

with the Stuarts.

Ib. s. 84.

Of such a conclusion of state, 'quæ aliquando incognita, semper

justa', &c.

This perversion of words respecting the decrees of Providence to the

caprices of James and his beslobbered minion the Duke of Buckingham, is

somewhat nearer to blasphemy than even the euphuism of the age can

excuse.

Ib. s. 85.

... tuus, O Jacobe, quod optas

Explorare labor, mihi jussa capessere fas est.

In our times this would be pedantic wit: in the days of James I, and in

the mouth of Archbishop Williams it was witty pedantry.

Ib. s. 89.

He that doth much in a short life products his mortality.

'Products' for 'produces;' that is, lengthens out, 'ut apud geometros'.

But why Hacket did not say 'prolongs,' I know not.

Ib.

See what a globe of light there is in natural reason, which is the

same in every man: but when it takes well, and riseth to perfection,

it is called wisdom in a few.

The good affirming itself--(the will, I am)--begetteth the true, and

wisdom is the spirit proceeding. But in the popular acceptation, common

sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Ib. s. 92.

A well-spirited clause, and agreeable to holy assurance, that truth is

more like to win than love. Could the light of such a Gospel as we

profess be eclipsed with the interposition of a single marriage?

And yet Hacket must have lived to see the practical confutation of this

shallow Gnathonism in the result of the marriage with the Papist

Henrietta of France!

Ib. s. 96.

"Floud," says the Lord Keeper, "since I am no Bishop in your opinion,

I will be no Bishop to you."

I see the wit of this speech; but the wisdom, the Christianity, the

beseemingness of it in a Judge and a Bishop,--what am I to say of that?

Ib.

And after the period of his presidency (of the Star Chamber), it is

too well known how far the enhancements were stretched. 'But the

wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood'. Prov. 30-33.

We may learn from this and fifty other passages, that it did not require

the factious prejudices of Prynne or Burton to look with aversion on the

proceedings of Laud. Bishop Hacket was as hot a royalist as a loyal

Englishman could be, yet Laud was 'allii nimis'.

Ib. s. 97.

New stars have appeared and vanished: the ancient asterisms remain;

there's not an old star missing.

If they had been, they would not have been old. This therefore, like

many of Lord Bacon's illustrations, has more wit than meaning. But it is

a good trick of rhetoric. The vividness of the image, 'per se', makes

men overlook the imperfection of the simile. "You see my hand, the hand

of a poor, puny fellow-mortal; and will you pretend not to see the hand

of Providence in this business? He who sees a mouse must be wilfully

blind if he does not see an elephant!"

Ib. s. 100.

The error of the first James,--an ever well-intending, well-resolving,

but, alas! ill-performing monarch, a kind-hearted, affectionate, and

fondling old man, really and extensively learned, yea, and as far as

quick wit and a shrewd judgment go to the making up of wisdom, wise in

his generation, and a pedant by the right of pedantry, conceded at that

time to all men of learning (Bacon for example),--his error, I say,

consisted in the notion, that because the stalk and foliage were

originally contained in the seed, and were derived from it, therefore

they remained so in point of right after their evolution. The kingly

power was the seed; the House of Commons and the municipal charters and

privileges the stock of foliage; the unity of the realm, or what we mean

by the constitution, is the root. Meanwhile the seed is gone, and

reappears as the crown and glorious flower of the plant. But James, in

my honest judgment, was an angel compared with his son and grandsons. As

Williams to Laud, so James I was to Charles I.

Ib.

Restraint is not a medicine to cure epidemical diseases.

A most judicious remark.

Ib. s. 103.

The least connivance in the world towards the person of a Papist.

It is clear to us that this illegal or 'præter'-legal and desultory

toleration by connivance at particular cases,--this precarious depending

on the momentary mood of the King, and this in a stretch of a questioned

prerogative,--could neither satisfy nor conciliate the Roman-Catholic

potentates abroad, but was sure to offend and alarm the Protestants at

home. Yet on the other hand, it is unfair as well as unwise to censure

the men of an age for want of that which was above their age. The true

principle, much more the practicable rules, of toleration were in

James's time obscure to the wisest; but by the many, laity no less than

clergy, would have been denounced as soul-murder and disguised atheism.

In fact--and a melancholy fact it is,--toleration then first becomes

practicable when indifference has deprived it of all merit. In the same

spirit I excuse the opposite party, the Puritans and Papaphobists.

Ib. s. 104.

It was scarcely to be expected that the passions of James's age would

allow of this wise distinction between Papists, the intriguing restless

partizans of a foreign potentate, and simple Roman-Catholics, who

preferred the 'mumpsimus' of their grandsires to the corrected

'sumpsimus' of the Reformation. But that in our age this distinction

should have been neglected in the Roman-Catholic Emancipation Bill!

Ib. s. 105.

But this invisible consistory shall be confusedly diffused over all

the kingdom, that many of the subjects shall, to the intolerable

exhausting of the wealth of the realm, pay double tithes, double

offerings, double fees, in regard of their double consistory. And if

Ireland be so poor as it is suggested, I hold, under correction, that

this invisible consistory is the principal cause of the exhausting

thereof.

A memorable remark on the evil of the double priesthood in Ireland.

Ib.

Dr. Bishop, the new Bishop of Chalcedon, is to come to London

privately, and I am much troubled at it, not knowing what to advise

his majesty as things stand at this present. If you were shipped with

the Infanta, the only counsel were to let the judges proceed with him

presently; hang him out of the way, and the King to blame my lord of

Canterbury or myself for it.

Striking instance and illustration of the tricksy policy which in the

seventeenth century passed for state wisdom even with the comparatively

wise. But there must be a Ulysses before there can be an Aristides and

Phocion.

Poor King James's main errors arose out of his superstitious notions of

a sovereignty inherent in the person of the king. Hence he would be a

sacred person, though in all other respects he might be a very devil.

Hence his yearning for the Spanish match; and the ill effects of his

toleration became rightly attributed by his subjects to foreign

influence, as being against his own acknowledged principle, not on a

principle.

Ib. s. 107.

I have at times played with the thought, that our bishoprics, like most

of our college fellowships, might advantageously be confined to single

men, if only it were openly declared to be on ground of public

expediency, and on no supposed moral superiority of the single state.

Ib. s. 108.

That a rector or vicar had not only an office in the church, but a

freehold for life, by the common law, in his benefice.

O! if Archbishop Williams had but seen in a clear point of view what he

indistinctly aims at,--the essential distinction between the nationalty

and its trustees and holders, and the Christian Church and its

ministers. [6]

Ib. s. 111.

I will represent him (the archbishop of Spalato) in a line or two,

that he was as indifferent, or rather dissolute, in practice as in

opinion. For in the same chapter, art. 35, this is his Nicolaitan

doctrine:--'A pluralitate uxorum natura humana non abhorret, imo

fortasse neque ab earum communitate.'

How so? The words mean only that the human animal is not withholden by

any natural instinct from plurality or even community of females. It is

not asserted, that reason and revelation do not forbid both the one and

the other, or that man unwithholden would not be a Yahoo, morally

inferior to the swallow. The emphasis is to be laid on 'natura', not on

'humana'. Humanity forbids plural and promiscuous intercourse, not

however by the animal nature of man, but by the reason and religion that

constitute his moral and spiritual nature.

Ib. s. 112.

But being thrown out into banishment, and hunted to be destroyed as a

partridge in the mountain, he subscribed against his own hand, which

yet did not prejudice Athanasius his innocency:--[Greek: tà gàr ek

basánon parà tàen ex archaes gn_ómaen gignómena, tauta ou t_on

phobaethént_on, alla t_on basanizónt_on estì bouláemata.]

I have ever said this of Sir John Cheke. I regret his recantation as one

of the cruelties suffered by him, and always see the guilt flying off

from him and settling on his persecutors.

Ib. s. 151.

I conclude, therefore, that his Highness having admitted nothing in

these oaths or articles, either to the prejudice of the true, or the

equalizing or authorizing of the other, religion, but contained

himself wholly within the limits of penal statutes and connivances,

wherein the state hath ever challenged and usurped a directing power,

&c.

Three points seem wanting to render the Lord Keeper's argument

air-tight;--

1. the proof that a king of England even then had a right to dispense,

not with the execution in individual cases of the laws, but with the

laws themselves 'in omne futurum'; that is, to repeal laws by his own

act;

2. the proof that such a tooth-and-talon drawing of the laws did not

endanger the equalizing and final mastery of the unlawful religion;

3. the utter want of all reciprocity on the part of the Spanish monarch.

In short, it is pardonable in Hacket, but would be contemptible in any

other person, not to see this advice of the Lord Keeper's as a black

blotch in his character, both as a Protestant Bishop and as a councillor

of state in a free and Protestant country.

Ib. s. 152.

Yet opinions were so various, that some spread it for a fame, that, &c.

Was it not required of--at all events usual for--all present at a

Council to subscribe their names to the act of the majority? There is a

modern case in point, I think, that of Sir Arthur Wellesley's signature

to the Convention of Cintra.

Ib. s. 164.

For to forbid judges against their oath, and justices of peace (sworn

likewise), not to execute the law of the land, is a thing

unprecedented in this kingdom. 'Durus sermo', a harsh and bitter pill

to be digested upon a sudden, and without some preparation.

What a fine India-rubber conscience Hacket, as well as his patron, must

have had! Policy with innocency,' 'cunning with conscience,' lead up the

dance to the tune of ''Tantara' rogues all!'

Upon my word, I can scarcely conceive a greater difficulty than for an

honest, warm-hearted man of principle of the present day so to

discipline his mind by reflection on the circumstances and received

moral system of the Stuarts' age (from Elizabeth to the death of Charles

I), and its proper place in the spiral line of ascension, as to be able

to regard the Duke of Buckingham as not a villain, and to resolve many

of the acts of those Princes into passions, conscience-warped and

hardened by half-truths and the secular creed of prudence, as being

itself virtue instead of one of her handmaids, when interpreted by minds

constitutionally and by their accidental circumstances imprudent and

rash, yet fearful and suspicious; and with casuists and codes of

casuistry as their conscience-leaders! One of the favorite works of

Charles I was Sanderson 'de Juramento'.

Ib. s. 200.

Wherefore he waives the strong and full defence he had made upon

stopping of an original writ, and deprecates all offence by that maxim

of the law which admits of a mischief rather than an inconvenience:

which was as much as to say, that he thought it a far less evil to do

the lady the probability of an injury (in her own name) than to suffer

those two courts to clash together again.

All this is a tangle of sophisms. The assumption is, it is better to

inflict a private wrong than a public one: we ought to wrong one rather

than many. But even then, it is badly stated. The principle is true only

where the tolerating of the private wrong is the only means of

preventing a greater public wrong. But in this case it was the certainty

of the wrong of one to avoid the chance of an inconvenience that might

perchance be the occasion of wrong to many, and which inconvenience both

easily might and should have been remedied by rightful measures, by

mutual agreement between the Bishop and Chancellor, and by the King, or

by an act of Parliament.

Ib. s. 203.

'Truly, Sir, this is my dark lantern, and I am not ashamed to inquire

of a Dalilah to resolve a riddle; for in my studies of divinity I have

gleaned up this maxim, 'licet uti alieno peccato';--though the Devil

make her a sinner, I may make good use of her sin.' Prince, merrily,

'Do you deal in such ware?' 'In good faith, Sir,' says the Keeper, 'I

never saw her face.'

And Hacket's evident admiration, and not merely approbation, of this

base Jesuitry,--this divinity which had taught the Archbishop 'licere

uti alieno peccato'! But Charles himself was a student of such divinity,

and yet (as rogues of higher rank comfort the pride of their conscience

by despising inferior knaves) I suspect that the 'merrily' was the

Sardonic mirth of bitter contempt; only, however, because he disliked

Williams, who was simply a man of his age, his baseness being for us,

not for his contemporaries, or even for his own mind. But the worst of

all is the Archbishop's heartless disingenuousness and moon-like nodes

towards his kind old master the King. How much of truth was there in the

Spaniard's information respecting the intrigues of the Prince and the

Duke of Buckingham? If none, if they were mere slanders, if the Prince

had acted the filial part toward his father and King, and the Duke the

faithful part towards his master and only too fond and affectionate

benefactor, what more was needed than to expose the falsehoods? But if

Williams knew that there was too great a mixture of truth in the

charges, what a cowardly ingrate to his old friend to have thus curried

favor with the rising sun by this base jugglery!

Ib. s. 209.

He was the topsail of the nobility, and in power and trust of offices

far above all the nobility.

James I was no fool, and though through weakness of character an unwise

master, yet not an unthinking statesman; and I still want a satisfactory

solution of the accumulation of offices on Buckingham.

Ib. s. 212.

Prudent men will continue the oblations of their forefathers' piety.

The danger and mischief of going far back, and yet not half far enough!

Thus Hacket refers to the piety of individuals our forefathers as the

origin of Church property. Had he gone further back, and traced to the

source, he would have found these partial benefactions to have been mere

restitutions of rights co-original with their own property, and as a

national reserve for the purposes of national existence--the condition

'sine qua non' of the equity of their proprieties; for without

civilization a people cannot be, or continue to be, a nation. But, alas!

the ignorance of the essential distinction of a national clerisy, the

'Ecclesia', from the Christian Church. The 'Ecclesia' has been an

eclipse to the intellect of both Churchmen and Sectarians, even from

Elizabeth to the present day, 1833.

Ib. s. 214.

And being threatened, his best mitigation was, that perhaps it was not

safe for him to deny so great a lord; yet it was safest for his

lordship to be denied. ... The king heard the noise of these crashes,

and was so pleased, that he thanked God, before many witnesses, that

he had put the Keeper into that place: 'For,' says he, 'he that will

not wrest justice for Buckingham's sake, whom I know he loves, will

never be corrupted with money, which he never loved.'

Strange it must seem to us; yet it is evident that Hacket thought it

necessary to make a mid something, half apology and half eulogy, for the

Lord Keeper's timid half resistance to the insolence and iniquitous

interference of the minion Duke. What a portrait of the times! But the

dotage of the King in the maintenance of the man, whose insolence in

wresting justice he himself admits! Yet how many points, both of the

times and of the King's personal character, must be brought together

before we can fairly solve the intensity of James's minionism, his

kingly egotism, his weak kindheartedness, his vulgar coarseness of

temper, his systematic jealousy of the ancient nobles, his timidity, and

the like!

Ib.

'Sir,' says the Lord Keeper, 'will you be pleased to listen to me,

taking in the Prince's consent, of which I make no doubt, and I will

shew how you shall furnish the second and third brothers with

preferments sufficient to maintain them, that shall cost you nothing.

... If they fall to their studies, design them to the bishoprics of

Durham and Winchester, when they become void. If that happen in their

nonage, which is probable, appoint commendatories to discharge the

duty for them for a laudable allowance, but gathering the fruits for

the support of your grandchildren, till they come to virility to be

consecrated,' &c.

Williams could not have been in earnest in this villanous counsel, but

he knew his man. This conceit of dignifying dignities by the Simoniacal

prostitution of them to blood-royal was just suited to James's

fool-cunningness.

Part II. s. 74.

... To yield not only passive obedience (which is due) but active

also, &c.

'Which is due.' What in the name of common sense can this mean, that is,

speculatively? Practically, the meaning is clear enough, namely, that we

should do what we can to escape hanging; but the distinction is for

decorum, and so let it pass.

Ib. s. 75.

This is the venom of this new doctrine, that by making us the King's

creatures, and in the state of minors or children, to take away all

our property; which would leave us nothing of our own, and lead us

(but that God hath given us just and gracious Princes) into slavery.

And yet this just and gracious Prince prompts, sanctions, supports, and

openly rewards this envenomer, in flat contempt of both Houses of

Parliament,--protects and prefers him and others of the same principles

and professions on account of these professions! And the Parliament and

nation were inexcusable, forsooth, in not trusting to Charles's

assurances, or rather the assurances put in his mouth by Hyde, Falkland,

and others, that he had always abhorred these principles.

Ib. s. 136.

When they saw he was not 'selfish' (it is a word of their own new

mint), &c.

Singular! From this passage it would seem that our so very common word

'selfish' is no older than the latter part of the reign of Charles I.

Ib. s. 137.

Their political aphorisms are far more dangerous, that His Majesty is

not the highest power in his realms; that he hath not absolute

sovereignty; and that a Parliament sitting is co-ordinate with him in

it.

Hacket himself repeatedly implies as much; for would he deny that the

King with the Lords and Commons is not more than the King without them?

or that an act of Parliament is not more than a proclamation?

Ib. s.154.

What a venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that black-mouthed

Zoilus, that blows his viper's breath upon those immortal devotions

from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all

irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little

duty to the father that begat him: the same that wrote for the

Pharisees, that it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every

cause,--and against Christ, for not allowing divorces: the same, O

horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever

was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty

schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the

prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius, [Greek: philosophiás

pásaes aphroditae kaì lyra], as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's

scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, who would

have scorned to drop a pen-full of ink against so base an adversary,

but to maintain the honor of so good a King ... Get thee behind me,

Milton! Thou savourest not the things that be of truth and loyalty,

but of pride, bitterness, and falsehood. There will be a time, though

such a Shimei, a dead dog in Abishai's phrase, escape for a while ...

It is no marvel if this canker-worm Milton, &c.

A contemporary of Bishop Racket's designates Milton as the author of a

profane and lascivious poem entitled Paradise Lost. The biographer of

our divine bard ought to have made a collection of all such passages. A

German writer of a Life of Salmasius acknowledges that Milton had the

better in the conflict in these words: 'Hans (Jack) von Milton--not to

be compared in learning and genius with the incomparable Salmasius, yet

a shrewd and cunning lawyer,' &c. 'O sana posteritas!'

Ib. s. 178.

Dare they not trust him that never broke with them? And I have heard

his nearest servants say, that no man could ever challenge him of the

least lie.

What! this after the publication of Charles's letters to the Queen! Did

he not within a few months before his death enter into correspondence

with, and sign contradictory offers to, three different parties, not

meaning to keep any one of them; and at length did he not die with

something very like a falsehood in his mouth in allowing himself to be

represented as the author of the Icon Basilike?

Ib. s. 180.

If an under-sheriff had arrested Harry Martin for debt, and pleaded

that he did not imprison his membership, but his Martinship, would the

Committee for privileges be fobbed off with that distinction?

To make this good in analogy, we must suppose that Harry Martin had

notoriously neglected all the duties, while he perverted and abused all

the privileges, of membership: and then I answer, that the Committee of

privileges would have done well and wisely in accepting the

under-sheriff's distinction, and, out of respect for the membership,

consigning the Martinship to the due course of law.

Ib.

'That every soul should be subject to the higher powers.' The higher

power under which they lived was the mere power and will of Cæsar,

bridled in by no law.

False, if meant 'de jure'; and if 'de facto', the plural 'powers' would

apply to the Parliament far better than to the King, and to Cromwell as

well as to Nero. Every even decently good Emperor professed himself the

servant of the Roman Senate. The very term 'Imperator', as Gravina

observes, implies it; for it expresses a delegated and instrumental

power. Before the assumption of the Tribunitial character by Augustus,

by which he became the representative of the majority of the

people,--'majestatem indutus est,--Senatus consulit, Populus jubet,

imperent Consules', was the constitutional language.

Ib. s. 190.

Yet so much dissonancy there was between his tongue and his heart,

that he triumphed in the murder of Cæsar, the only Roman that exceeded

all their race in nobleness, and was next to Tully in eloquence.

There is something so shameless in this self-contradiction as of itself

almost to extinguish the belief that the prelatic royalists were

conscientious in their conclusions. For if the Senate of Rome were not a

lawful power, what could be? And if Cæsar, the thrice perjured traitor,

was neither perjured nor traitor, only because he by his Gaulish troops

turned a republic into a monarchy,--with what face, under what pretext,

could Hacket abuse 'Sultan Cromwell?'

[Footnote 1: By Thomas Plume. Folio, 1676.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2:

'Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam pro sua conscientia

Christianus, Cæsari tum Tiberio nuntiavit.'

Apologet, ii. 624. See the account in Eusebius. Hist. Eccl. ii. 2.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See 'M. T. Ciceronis de Republica quæ supersunt. Zell.

Stuttgardt'. 1827.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See 'supra'.--Ed].

[Footnote 5: Folio. 1693.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See The Church and State.--Ed.]

NOTES ON JEREMY TAYLOR.

I have not seen the late Bishop Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's

'Works'; but I have been informed that he did little more than

contribute the 'Life', and that in all else it is a mere London

booksellers' job. This, if true, is greatly to be regretted. I know no

writer whose works more require, I need not say deserve, the

annotations, aye, and occasional animadversions, of a sound and learned

divine. One thing is especially desirable in reference to that most

important, because (with the exception perhaps of the 'Holy Living and

Dying') the most popular, of Taylor's works, 'The Liberty of

Prophesying'; and this is a careful collation of the different editions,

particularly of the first printed before the Restoration, and the last

published in Taylor's lifetime, and after his promotion to the episcopal

bench. Indeed, I regard this as so nearly concerning Taylor's character

as a man, that if I find that it has not been done in Heber's edition,

and if I find a first edition in the British Museum, or Sion College, or

Dr. Williams's library, I will, God permitting, do it myself. There

seems something cruel in giving the name, Anabaptist, to the English

Anti-pædo-baptists; but still worse in connecting this most innocent

opinion with the mad Jacobin ravings of the poor wretches who were

called Anabaptists, in Munster, as if the latter had ever formed part of

the Baptists' creeds. In short 'The Liberty of Prophesying' is an

admirable work, in many respects, and calculated to produce a much

greater effect on the many than Milton's treatise on the same subject:

on the other hand, Milton's is throughout unmixed truth; and the man who

in reading the two does not feel the contrast between the

single-mindedness of the one, and the 'strabismus' in the other, is--in

the road of preferment.

GENERAL DEDICATION OF THE POLEMICAL DISCOURSES. [1]

Vol. vii. p. ix.

And the breath of the people is like the voice of an exterminating

angel, not so killing but so secret.

That is, in such wise. It would be well to note, after what time 'as'

became the requisite correlative to 'so,' and even, as in this instance,

the preferable substitute. We should have written 'as' in both places

probably, but at all events in the latter, transplacing the sentences

'as secret though not so killing;' or 'not so killing, but quite as

secret.' It is not generally true that Taylor's punctuation is

arbitrary, or his periods reducible to the post-Revolutionary standard

of length by turning some of his colons or semi-colons into full stops.

There is a subtle yet just and systematic logic followed in his

pointing, as often as it is permitted by the higher principle, because

the proper and primary purpose, of our stops, and to which alone from

their paucity they are adequate,--that I mean of enabling the reader to

prepare and manage the proportions of his voice and breath. But for the

true scheme of punctuation, [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], see the blank

page over leaf which I will try to disblank into a prize of more worth

than can be got at the E.O.'s and little goes of Lindley Murray. [2]

Ib. p. xv.

But the most complained that, in my ways to persuade a toleration, I

helped some men too far, and that I armed the Anabaptists with swords

instead of shields, with a power to offend us, besides the proper

defensitives of their own ... But wise men understand the thing and

are satisfied. But because all men are not of equal strength; I did

not only in a discourse on purpose demonstrate the true doctrine in

that question, but I have now in this edition of that book answered

all their pretensions, &c.

No; in the might of his genius he called up a spirit which he has in

vain endeavored to lay, or exorcise from the conviction.

Ib. p. xvii.

For episcopacy relies not upon the authority of Fathers and Councils,

but upon Scripture, upon the institution of Christ, or the institution

of the Apostles, upon a universal tradition, and a universal practice,

not upon the words and opinions of the doctors: it hath as great a

testimony as Scripture itself hath, &c.

We must make allowance for the intoxication of recent triumph and final

victory over a triumphing and victorious enemy; or who but would start

back at the aweless temerity of this assertion? Not to mention the

evasion; for who ever denied the historical fact, or the Scriptural

occurrence of the word expressing the fact, namely, 'episcopi,

episcopatus?'? What was questioned by the opponents was,

1;--Who and what these 'episcopi' were; whether essentially different

from the presbyter, or a presbyter by kind in his own 'ecclesia', and a

president or chairman by accident in a synod of presbyters:

2;--That whatever the 'episcopi' of the Apostolic times were, yet were

they prelates, lordly diocesans; were they such as the Bishops of the

Church of England? Was there Scripture authority for Archbishops?

3;--That the establishment of Bishops by the Apostle Paul being granted

(as who can deny it?)--yet was this done 'jure Apostolico' for the

universal Church in all places and ages; or only as expedient for that

time and under those circumstances; by Paul not as an Apostle, but as

the head and founder of those particular churches, and so entitled to

determine their bye laws?

DEDICATION OF THE SACRED ORDER AND OFFICES OF EPISCOPACY.

Ib. p. xxiii.

But the interest of the Bishops is conjunct with the prosperity of the

King, besides the interest of their own security, by the obligation of

secular advantages. For they who have their livelihood from the King,

and are in expectance of their fortune from him, are more likely to

pay a tribute of exacter duty, than others, whose fortunes are not in

such immediate dependency on His Majesty.

The cat out of the bag! Consult the whole reigns of Charles I. and II.

and the beginning of James II. Jeremy Taylor was at this time

(blamelessly for himself and most honourably for his patrons) ambling on

the high road of preferment; and to men so situated, however sagacious

in other respects, it is not given to read the signs of the times.

Little did Taylor foresee that to indiscreet avowals, like these, on the

part of the court clergy, the exauctorations of the Bishops and the

temporary overthrow of the Church itself would be in no small portion

attributable. But the scanty measure and obscurity (if not rather, for

so bright a luminary, the occultation) of his preferment after the

Restoration is a problem, of which perhaps his virtues present the most

probable solution.

Ib. p. xxv.

A second return that episcopacy makes to royalty, is that which is the

duty of all Christians, the paying tributes and impositions.

This is true; and it was an evil hour for the Church,--and led to the

loss of its Convocation, the greatest and, in an enlarged state-policy,

the most impolitic affront ever offered by a government to its own

established Church,--in which the clergy surrendered their right of

taxing themselves.

Ib. p. xxvii.

I mean the conversion of the kingdom from Paganism by St. Augustine,

Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Reformation begun and promoted by

Bishops.

From Paganism in part; but in part from primitive Christianity to

Popery. But neither this nor the following boast will bear narrow

looking into, I suspect.

'In fine.'

Like all Taylor's dedications and dedicatory epistles, this is easy,

dignified, and pregnant. The happiest 'synthesis' of the divine, the

scholar, and the gentleman was perhaps exhibited in him and Bishop

Berkeley.

Introd. p.3.

In all those accursed machinations, which the device and artifice of

hell hath invented for the supplanting of the Church, 'inimicus homo,'

that old superseminator of heresies and crude mischiefs, hath

endeavoured to be curiously compendious, and, with Tarquin's device,

'putare summa papaverum.'

Quoere-spiritualiter papaveratorurn?

Ib.

His next onset was by Julian, and 'occidere presbyterium,' that was

his province. To shut up public schools, to force Christians to

ignorance, to impoverish and disgrace the clergy, to make them vile

and dishonorable, these are his arts; and he did the devil more

service in this fineness of undermining, than all the open battery of

ten great rams of persecution.

What felicity, what vivacity of expression! Many years ago Mr.

Mackintosh gave it as an instance of my perverted taste, that I had

seriously contended that in order to form a style worthy of Englishmen,

Milton and Taylor must be studied instead of Johnson, Gibbon, and

Junius; and now I see by his introductory Lecture given at Lincoln's

Inn, and just published, he is himself imitating Jeremy Taylor, or

rather copying his semi-colon punctuation, as closely as he can. Amusing

it is to observe, how by the time the modern imitators are at the

half-way of the long breathed period, the asthmatic thoughts drop down,

and the rest is,--words! I have always been an obstinate hoper: and even

this is a 'datum' and a symptom of hope to me, that a better, an

ancestral, spirit is forming and will appear in the rising generation.

Ib. p. 5.

First, because here is a concourse of times; for now after that these

times have been called the last times for 1600 years together, our

expectation of the great revelation is very near accomplishing.

Rather a whimsical consequence, that because a certain party had been

deceiving themselves for sixteen centuries they were likely to be in the

right at the beginning of the seventeenth. But indeed I question whether

in all Taylor's voluminous writings there are to be found three other

paragraphs so vague and misty-magnific as this is. It almost reminds me

of the "very cloudy and mighty alarming" in Foote.

S. i. p. 4.

If there be such a thing as the power of the keys, by Christ

concredited to his Church, for the binding and loosing delinquents and

penitents respectively on earth, then there is clearly a court erected

by Christ in his Church.

We may, without any heretical division of person, economically

distinguish our Lord's character as Jesus, and as Christ, so far that

during his sojourn on earth, from his baptism at least to his

crucifixion, he was in some respects his own Elias, bringing back the

then existing Church to the point at which the Prophets had placed it;

that is, distinguishing the 'ethica' from the 'politica,' what was

binding on the Jews as descendants of Abraham and inheritors of the

patriarchal faith from the statutes obligatory on them as members of the

Jewish state.

Jesus fulfilled the Law, which culminated in a pure religious morality

in principles, affections, and acts; and this he consolidated and

levelled into the ground-stead on which the new temple 'not made with

hands,' wherein Himself, even Christ the Lord, is the Shechinah, was to

rise and be raised.

Thus he taught the spirit of the Mosaic Law, while by his acts,

sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and demission of the

Comforter, he created and realized the contents, objects, and materials

of that redemptive faith, the everlasting Gospel, which from the day of

Pentecost his elect disciples, [Greek: t_on mystaeri_ón hierokáerykes],

Were Sent forth to disperse and promulgate with suitable gifts, powers,

and evidences.

In this view, I interpret our Lord's sayings concerning the Church, as

applying wholly to the Synagogue or established Church then existing,

while the binding and loosing refers, immediately and primarily as I

conceive, to the miraculous gifts of healing diseases communicated to

the Apostles; and I am not afraid to avow the conviction, that the first

three Gospels are not the books of the New Testament, in which we should

expect to find the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith explicitly

delivered, or forming the predominant subject or contents of the

writing.

S. viii. p. 25.

Imposition of hands for Ordination does indeed give the Holy Ghost,

but not as he is that promise which is called 'the promise of the

truth'.

Alas! but in what sense that does not imply some infusion of power or

light, something given and inwardly received, which would not have

existed in and for the recipient without this immission by the means or

act of the imposition of the hands? What sense that does not amount to

more and other than a mere delegation of office, a mere legitimating

acceptance and acknowledgment, with respect to the person, of that which

already is in him, can be attached to the words, 'Receive the Holy

Ghost', without shocking a pious and single-minded candidate? The

miraculous nature of the giving does not depend on the particular kind

or quality of the gift received, much less demand that it should be

confined to the power of working miracles.

For "miraculous nature" read "supernatural character;" and I can

subscribe this pencil note written so many years ago, even at this

present time, 2d March, 1824.

S. xxi. p. 91.

'Postquam unusquisque eos quos baptizabat suos putabat esse, non

Christi, et diceretur in populis, Ego sum Pauli, Ego Apollo, Ego autem

Cephæ, in toto orbe decretum est ut unus de presbyteris electus

superponeretur cateris, ut schismatum semina tollerentur.'

The natural inference would, methinks, be the contrary. There would be

more persons inclined and more likely to attach an ambition to their

belonging to a single eminent leader and head than to a body,--rather to

Cæsar, Marius, or Pompey, than to the Senate. But I have ever thought

that the best, safest, and at the same time sufficient, argument is,

that by the nature of human affairs and the appointments of God's

ordinary providence every assembly of functionaries will and must have a

president; that the same qualities which recommended the individual to

this dignity would naturally recommend him to the chief executive power

during the intervals of legislation, and at all times in all points

already ruled; that the most solemn acts, Confirmation and Ordination,

would as naturally be confined to the head of the executive in the state

ecclesiastic, as the sign manual and the like to the king in all limited

monarchies; and that in course of time when many presbyteries would

exist in the same district, Archbishops and Patriarchs would arise 'pari

ratione' as Bishops did in the first instance. Now it is admitted that

God's extraordinary appointments never repeal but rather perfect the

laws of his ordinary providence: and it is enough that all we find in

the New Testament tends to confirm and no where forbids, contradicts, or

invalidates the course of government, which the Church, we are certain,

did in fact pursue.

Ib. s. xxxvi. p. 171.

But those things which Christianity, as it prescinds from the interest

of the republic, hath introduced, all them, and all the causes

emergent from them, the Bishop is judge of.... Receiving and disposing

the patrimony of the Church, and whatsoever is of the same

consideration according to the fortyfirst canon of the Apostles.

'Præcipimus ut in potestate sua episcopus ecclesice res habeat'. Let

the Bishops have the disposing of the goods of the Church; adding this

reason: 'si enim animte hominum pretiosæ illi sint creditæ, multo

magis eum oportet curam pecuniarum gerere'. He that is intrusted with

our precious souls may much more be intrusted with the offertories of

faithful people.

Let all these belong to the overseer of the Church: to whom else so

properly? but what is the nature of the power by which he is to enforce

his orders? By secular power? Then the Bishop's power is no derivative

from Christ's royalty; for his kingdom is not of the world; but the

monies are Cæsar's; and the 'cura pecuniarum' must be vested where the

donors direct, the law of the land permitting.

Ib.

Such are the delinquencies of clergymen, who are both clergy and

subjects too; 'clerus Domini', and 'regis subditi': and for their

delinquencies, which are 'in materia justiæ', the secular tribunal

punishes, as being a violation of that right which the state must

defend; but because done by a person who is a member of the sacred

hierarchy, and hath also an obligation of special duty to his Bishop,

therefore the Bishop also may punish him; and when the commonwealth

hath inflicted a penalty, the Bishop also may impose a censure, for

every sin of a clergyman is two.

But why of a clergyman only? Is not every sheep of his flock a part of

the Bishop's charge, and of course the possible object of his censure?

The clergy, you say, take the oath of obedience. Aye! but this is the

point in dispute.

Ib. p. 172.

So that ever since then episcopal jurisdiction hath a double part, an

external and an internal: this is derived from Christ, that from the

king, which because it is concurrent in all acts of jurisdiction,

therefore it is that the king is supreme of the jurisdiction, namely,

that part of it which is the external compulsory.

If Christ delegated no external compulsory power to the Bishops, how

came it the duty of princes to God to do so? It has been so since---yes!

since the first grand apostasy from Christ to Constantine.

Ib. s. xlviii. p. 248.

Bishops 'ut sic' are not secular princes, must not seek for it; but

some secular princes may be Bishops, as in Germany and in other places

to this day they are. For it is as unlawful for a Bishop to have any

land, as to have a country; and a single acre is no more due to the

order than a province; but both these may be conjunct in the same

person, though still, by virtue of Christ's precept, the functions and

capacities must be distinguished.

True; but who with more indignant scorn attacked this very distinction

when applied by the Presbyterians to the kingship, when they professed

to fight for the King against Charles? And yet they had on their side

both the spirit of the English constitution and the language of the law.

The King never dies; the King can do no wrong. Elsewhere, too, Taylor

could ridicule the Romish prelate, who fought and slew men as a captain

at the head of his vassals, and then in the character of a Bishop

absolved his other homicidal self. However, whatever St. Peter might

understand by Christ's words, St. Peter's three-crowned successors have

been quite of Taylor's opinion that they are to be paraphrased

thus:--"Simon Peter, as my Apostle, you are to make converts only by

humility, voluntary poverty, and the words of truth and meekness; but if

by your spiritual influence you can induce the Emperor Tiberius to make

you Tetrarch of Galilee or Prefect of Judaea, then

[Greek: katakyríeue]--you may lord it as loftily as you will, and

deliver as Tetrarch or Prefect those stiff-necked miscreants to the

flames for not having been converted by you as an Apostle."

Ib. p. 276.

I end with the golden rule of Vincentius Lirinensis:--'magnopere

curandum est ut id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus

creditum est.'

Alas! this golden rule comes full and round from the mouth; nor do I

deny that it is pure gold: but like too many other golden rules, in

order to make it cover the facts which the orthodox asserter of

episcopacy at least, and the chaplain of Archbishop Laud and King

Charles the Martyr must have held himself bound to bring under it, it

must be made to display another property of the sovereign metal, its

malleableness to wit; and must be beaten out so thin, that the weight of

truth in the portion appertaining to each several article in the

orthodox systems of theology will be so small, that it may better be

called gilt than gold; and if worth having at all, it will be for its

show, not for its substance. For instance, the 'aranea theologica' may

draw out the whole web of the Westminster Catechism from the simple

creed of the beloved Disciple,--'whoever believeth with his heart, and

professeth with his mouth, that Jesus is Lord and Christ,'--shall be

saved. If implicit faith only be required, doubtless certain doctrines,

from which all other articles of faith imposed by the Lutheran, Scotch,

or English Churches, may be deduced, have been believed 'ubique, semper,

et ab omnibus.' But if explicit and conscious belief be intended, I

would rather that the Bishop than I should defend the golden rule

against Semler.

APOLOGY FOR AUTHORIZED AND SET FORMS OF LITURGY.

Preface, s. vi. p. 286.

Not like women or children when they are affrighted with fire in their

clothes. We shaked off the coal indeed, but not our garments, lest we

should have exposed our Churches to that nakedness which the excellent

men of our sister Churches complained to be among themselves.

O, what convenient things metaphors and similes are, so charmingly

indeterminate! On the general reader the literal sense operates: he

shivers in sympathy with the poor shift-less matron, the Church of

Geneva. To the objector the answer is ready--it was speaking

metaphorically, and only meant that she had no shift on the outside of

her gown, that she made a shift without an over-all. Compare this sixth

section with the manful, senseful, irrebuttable fourth section--a folio

volume in a single paragraph! But Jeremy Taylor would have been too

great for man, had he not occasionally fallen below himself.

Ib. s. x. p. 288.

And since all that cast off the Roman yoke thought they had title

enough to be called Reformed, it was hard to have pleased all the

private interests and peevishness of men that called themselves

friends; and therefore that only in which the Church of Rome had

prevaricated against the word of God, or innovated against Apostolical

tradition, all that was pared away.

Aye! here is the 'ovum,' as Sir Everard Home would say, the

'proto'-parent of the whole race of controversies between Protestant and

Protestant; and each had Gospel on their side. Whatever is not against

the word of God is for it,--thought the founders of the Church of

England. Whatever is not in the word of God is a word of man, a

will-worship presumptuous and usurping,--thought the founders of the

Church of Scotland and Geneva. The one proposed to themselves to be

reformers of the Latin Church, that is, to bring it back to the form

which it had during the first four centuries; the latter to be the

renovators of the Christian religion as it was preached and instituted

by the Apostles and immediate followers of Christ thereunto specially

inspired. Where the premisses are so different, who can wonder at the

difference in the conclusions?

Ib. s. xii. ib.

It began early to discover its inconvenience; for when certain zealous

persons fled to Frankfort to avoid the funeral piles kindled by the

Roman Bishops in Queen Mary's time, as if they had not enemies enough

abroad, they fell foul with one another, and the quarrel was about the

Common Prayer Book.

But who began the quarrel? Knox and his recent biographer lay it to

Dr. Cox and the Liturgists.

Ib. s. xiii. p. 289.

Here therefore it became law, was established by an act of Parliament,

was made solemn by an appendant penalty against all that on either

hand did prevaricate a sanction of so long and so prudent

consideration.

Truly evangelical way of solemnizing a party measure, and sapientizing

Calvin's 'tolerabiles ineptias' by making them 'ineptias usque ad

carcerem et verbera intolerantes!'

Ib. s. xiv. ib.

But the Common Prayer Book had the fate of St. Paul; for when it had

scaped the storms of the Roman See, yet a viper sprung out of Queen

Mary's fires, &c.

As Knox and his friends confined themselves to the inspired word,

whether vipers or no, they were not adders at all events.

Ib. xxvi. p. 296.

For, if we deny to the people a liberty of reading the Scriptures, may

they not complain, as Isaac did against the inhabitants of the land,

that the Philistines had spoiled his well and the fountains of living

water? If a free use to all of them and of all Scriptures were

permitted, should not the Church herself have more cause to complain

of the infinite licentiousness and looseness of interpretations, and

of the commencement of ten thousand errors, which would certainly be

consequent to such permission? Reason and religion will chide us in

the first, reason and experience in the latter ... The Church with

great wisdom hath first held this torch out; and though for great

reasons intervening and hindering, it cannot be reduced to practice,

yet the Church hath shewn her desire to avoid the evil that is on both

hands, and she hath shewn the way also, if it could have been insisted

in.

If there were not, at the time this Preface, or this paragraph at least,

was written or published, some design on foot or 'sub lingua' of making

advances to the continental catholicism for the purpose of conciliating

the courts of Austria, France and Spain, in favor of the Cavalier and

Royalist party at home and abroad, this must be considered as a useless

and worse than useless avowal. The Papacy at the height of its influence

never asserted a higher or more anti-Protestant right than this of

dividing the Scriptures into permitted and forbidden portions. If there

be a functionary of divine institution, synodical or unipersonal, who

with the name of the 'Church' has the right, under circumstances of its

own determination, to forbid all but such and such parts of the Bible,

it must possess potentially, and under other circumstances, a right of

withdrawing the whole book from the unlearned, who yet cannot be

altogether unlearned; for the very prohibition supposes them able to do

what, a few centuries before, the majority of the clergy themselves were

not qualified to do, that is, read their Bible throughout. Surely it

would have been politic in the writer to have left out this sentence,

which his Puritan adversaries could not fail to translate into the

Church shewing her teeth though she dared not bite. I bitterly regret

these passages; neither our incomparable Liturgy, nor this full,

masterly, and unanswerable defence of it, requiring them.

Ib. s. xlv, p. 308.

So that the Church of England, in these manners of dispensing the

power of the keys, does cut off all disputings and impertinent

wranglings, whether the priest's power were judicial or declarative;

for possibly it is both, and it is optative too, and something else

yet; for it is an emanation from all the parts of his ministry, and he

never absolves, but he preaches or prays, or administers a sacrament;

for this power of remission is a transcendent, passing through all the

parts of the priestly offices. For the keys of the kingdom of heaven

are the promises and the threatenings of the Scripture, and the

prayers of the Church, and the Word, and the Sacraments, and all these

are to be dispensed by the priest, and these keys are committed to his

ministry, and by the operation of them all he opens and shuts heaven's

gates ministerially.

No more ingenious way of making nothing of a thing than by making it

every thing. Omnify the disputed point into a transcendant, and you may

defy the opponent to lay hold of it. He might as well attempt to grasp

an 'aura electrica'.

Apology, &c. s. ii. p. 320.

And it may be when I am a little more used to it, I shall not wonder

at a synod, in which not one Bishop sits in the capacity of a Bishop,

though I am most certain this is the first example in England since it

was first christened.

Is this quite fair? Is it not, at least logically considered and at the

commencement of an argument, too like a 'petitio principii' or

'presumptio rei litigatae'? The Westminster divines were confessedly not

prelates, but many in that assembly were, in all other points, orthodox

and affectionate members of the Establishment, who with Bedell,

Lightfoot, and Usher, held them to be Bishops in the primitive sense of

the term, and who yet had no wish to make any other change in the

hierarchy than that of denominating the existing English prelates

Archbishops. They thought that what at the bottom was little more than a

question of names among Episcopalians, ought not to have occasioned such

a dispute; but yet the evil having taken place, they held a change of

names not too great a sacrifice, if thus the things themselves could be

preserved, and Episcopacy maintained against the Independents and

Presbyterians.

Ib. s. v. p. 321.

It is a thing of no present importance, but as a point of history, it is

worth a question whether there were any divines in the Westminster

Assembly who adopted by anticipation the notions of the Seekers, Quakers

and others 'ejusdem farinœ.' Baxter denies it. I understand the

controversy to have been, whether the examinations at the admission to

the ministry did or not supersede the necessity of any directive models

besides those found in the sacred volumes:--if not necessary, whether

there was any greater expedience in providing by authority forms of

prayer for the minister than forms of sermons. Reading, whether of

prayers or sermons, might be discouraged without encouraging

unpremeditated praying and preaching. But the whole question as between

the prelatists and the Assembly divines has like many others been best

solved by the trial. A vast majority among the Dissenters themselves

consider the antecedents to the sermon, with exception of their

congregational hymns, as the defective part of their public service, and

admit the superiority of our Liturgy.

P.S.--It seems to me, I confess, that the controversy could never have

risen to the height it did, if all the parties had not thrown too far

into the back ground the distinction in nature and object between the

three equally necessary species of worship, that is, public, family, and

private or solitary, devotion. Though the very far larger proportion of

the blame falls on the anti-Liturgists, yet on the other hand, too many

of our Church divines--among others that exemplar' of a Churchman and a

Christian, the every way excellent George Herbert--were scared by the

growing fanaticism of the Geneva malcontents into the neighbourhood of

the opposite extreme; and in their dread of enthusiasm, will-worship,

insubordination, indecency, carried their preference of the established

public forms of prayer almost to superstition by exclusively both using

and requiring them even on their own sick-beds. This most assuredly was

neither the intention nor the wish of the first compilers. However, if

they erred in this, it was an error of filial love excused, and only not

sanctioned, by the love of peace and unity, and their keen sense of 'the

beauty of holiness' displayed in their mother Church. I mention this the

rather, because our Church, having in so incomparable a way provided for

our public devotions, and Taylor having himself enriched us with such

and so many models of private prayer and devotional exercise--(from

which, by the by, it is most desirable that a well arranged collection

should be made; a selection is requisite rather from the opulence, than

the inequality, of the store;)--we have nothing to wish for but a

collection of family and domestic prayers and thanksgivings equally (if

that be not too bold a wish) appropriate to the special object, as the

Common Prayer Book is for a Christian community, and the collection from

Taylor for the Christian in his closet or at his bed side. Here would

our author himself again furnish abundant materials for the work. For

surely, since the Apostolic age, never did the spirit of supplication

move on the deeps of a human soul with a more genial life, or more

profoundly impregnate the rich gifts of a happy nature, than in the

person of Jeremy Taylor! To render the fruits available for all, we need

only a combination of Christian experience with that finer sense of

propriety which we may venture to call devotional taste in the

individual choosing, or chosen, to select, arrange and methodize; and no

less in the dignitaries appointed to revise and sanction the collections.

Perhaps another want is a scheme of Christian psalmody fit for all our

congregations, and which should not exceed 150 or 200 psalms and hymns.

Surely if the Church does not hesitate in the titles of the Psalms and

of the chapters of the Prophets to give the Christian sense and

application, there can be no consistent objection to do the same in its

spiritual songs. The effect on the morals, feelings, and information of

the people at large is not to be calculated. It is this more than any

other single cause that has saved the peasantry of Protestant Germany

from the contagion of infidelity.

Ib. s. xvii. p. 325.

Thus the Holy Ghost brought to their memory all things which Jesus

spake and did, and, by that means, we come to know all that the Spirit

knew to be necessary for us.

Alas! it is one of the sad effects or results of the enslaving Old

Bailey fashion of defending, or, as we may well call it, apologizing

for, Christianity,--introduced by Grotius and followed up by the modern

'Alogi', whose wordless, lifeless, spiritless, scheme of belief it alone

suits,--that we dare not ask, whether the passage here referred to must

necessarily be understood as asserting a miraculous remembrancing,

distinctly sensible by the Apostles; whether the gift had any especial

reference to the composition of the Gospels; whether the assumption is

indispensable to a well grounded and adequate confidence in the veracity

of the narrators or the verity of the narration; if not, whether it does

not unnecessarily entangle the faith of the acute and learned inquirer

in difficulties, which do not affect the credibility of history in its

common meaning--rather indeed confirm our reliance on its authority in

all the points of agreement, that is, in every point which we are in the

least concerned to know,--and expose the simple and unlearned Christian

to objections best fitted to perplex, because easiest to be understood,

and within the capacity of the shallowest infidel to bring forward and

exaggerate; and lastly, whether the Scriptures must not be read in that

faith which comes from higher sources than history, that is, if they are

read to any good and Christian purpose. God forbid that I should become

the advocate of mechanical infusions and possessions, superseding the

reason and responsible will. The light 'a priori', in which, according

to my conviction, the Scriptures must be read and tried, is no other

than the earnest, 'What shall I do to be saved?' with the inward

consciousness,--the gleam or flash let into the inner man through the

rent or cranny of the prison of sense, however produced by earthquake,

or by decay,--as the ground and antecedent of the question; and with a

predisposition towards, and an insight into, the 'a priori' probability

of the Christian dispensation as the necessary consequents. This is the

holy spirit in us praying to the Spirit, without which 'no man can say

that Jesus is the Lord:' a text which of itself seems to me sufficient

to cover the whole scheme of modern Unitarianism with confusion, when

compared with that other,--'I am the Lord (Jehovah): that is my name;

and my glory will I not give to another'. But in the Unitarian's sense

of 'Lord,' and on his scheme of evidence, it might with equal justice be

affirmed, that no man can say that Tiberius was the Emperor but by the

Holy Ghost.

Ib. s. xxix. p. 331.

And that this is for this reason called 'a gift and grace,' or issue

of the Spirit, is so evident and notorious, that the speaking of an

ordinary revealed truth, is called in Scripture, 'a speaking by the

spirit', 1 Cor. xii. 8. 'No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by

the Holy Ghost'. For, though the world could not acknowledge Jesus for

the Lord without a revelation, yet now that we are taught this truth

by Scripture, and by the preaching of the Apostles, to which they were

enabled by the Holy Ghost, we need no revelation or enthusiasm to

confess this truth, which we are taught in our creeds and catechisms,

&c.

I do not, nay I dare not, hesitate to denounce this assertion as false

in fact and the paralysis of all effective Christianity. A greater

violence offered to Scripture words is scarcely conceivable. St. Paul

asserts that 'no man can.' Nay, says Taylor, every man that knows his

catechism can; but unless some six or seven individuals had said it by

the Holy Ghost some seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, no man

could say so.

Ib. s. xxxii. p. 334.

And yet, because the Holy Ghost renewed their memory, improved their

understanding, supplied to some their want of human learning, and so

assisted them that they should not commit an error in fact or opinion,

neither in the narrative nor dogmatical parts, therefore they wrote by

the spirit.

And where is the proof?--and to what purpose, unless a distinct and

plain diagnostic were given of the divinities and the humanities which

Taylor himself expressly admits in the text of the Scriptures?

And even then what would it avail unless the interpreters and

translators, not to speak of the copyists in the first and second

centuries, were likewise assisted by inspiration?

As to the larger part of the Prophetic books, and the whole of the

Apocalypse, we must receive them as inspired truths, or reject them as

simple inventions or enthusiastic delusions.

But in what other book of Scripture does the writer assign his own work

to a miraculous dictation or infusion? Surely the contrary is implied in

St. Luke's preface. Does the hypothesis rest on one possible

construction of a single passage in St. Paul, 2 'Tim'. iii. 16.?

And that construction resting materially on a [Greek: kai (theópneustos,

kai _ophélimos)] not found in the oldest MSS., when the context would

rather lead us to understand the words as parallel with the other

assertion of the Apostle, that all good works are given from God,--that

is, 'Every divinely inspired writing is profitable, &c'.

Finally, will not the certainty of the competence and single mindedness

of the writers suffice; this too confirmed by the high probability,

bordering on certainty, that God's especial grace worked in them; and

that an especial providence watched over the preservation of writings,

which, we know, both are and have been of such pre-eminent importance to

Christianity, and yet by natural means?

But alas! any thing will be pretended, rather than admit the necessity

of internal evidence, or than acknowledge, among the external proofs,

the convictions and spiritual experiences of believers, though they

should be common to all the faithful in all ages of the Church!

But in all superstition there is a heart of unbelief, and, 'vice versa',

where an individual's belief is but a superficial acquiescence,

credulity is the natural result and accompaniment, if only he be not

required to sink into the depths of his being, where the sensual man can

no longer draw breath. It is not the profession of Socinian tenets, but

the spirit of Socinianism in the Church itself that alarms me. This,

this, is the dry rot in the beams and timbers of the Temple!

Ib. s. li. p. 348.

So that let the devotion be ever so great, set forms of prayer will be

expressive enough of any desire, though importunate as extremity

itself.

This, and much of the same import in this treatise, is far more than

Taylor, mature in experience and softened by afflictions, would have

written. Besides, it is in effect, though not in logic, a deserting of

his own strong and unshaken ground of the means and ends of public

worship.

Ib. s. s. lxix. lxx. pp. 359-60.

These two sections are too much in the vague mythical style of the

Italian and Jesuit divines, and the argument gives to these a greater

advantage against our Church than it gains over the Sectarians in its

support.

We well know who and how many the compilers of our Liturgy were under

Edward VI, and know too well what the weather-cock Parliaments were,

both then and under Elizabeth, by which the compilation was made law.

The argument therefore should be inverted;--not that the Church (A. B.,

C. D., F. L., &c.) compiled it; 'ergo', it is unobjectionable; but (and

truly we may say it) it is so unobjectionable, so far transcending all

we were entitled to expect from a few men in that state of information

and such difficulties, that we are justified in concluding that the

compilers were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

But the same order holds good even with regard to the Scriptures. We

cannot rightly affirm they were inspired, and therefore they must be

believed; but they are worthy of belief, because excellent in so

universal a sense to ends commensurate with the whole moral, and

therefore the whole actual, world, that as sure as there is a moral

Governor of the world, they must have been in some sense or other, and

that too an efficient sense, inspired.

Those who deny this, must be prepared to assert, that if they had what

appeared to them good historic evidence of a miracle, in the world of

the senses, they would receive the hideous immoral doctrines of Mahomet

or Brahma, and thus disobey the express commands both of the Old and New

Testament. Though an angel should come from heaven and work all

miracles, yet preach another doctrine, we are to hold him accursed.

'Gal.' i. 8.

Ib. s. lxxv. p. 356.

When Christ was upon the Mount, he gave it for a pattern, &c.

I cannot thoroughly agree with Taylor in all he says on this point. The

Lord's Prayer is an encyclopedia of prayer, and of all moral and

religious philosophy under the form of prayer. Besides this, that

nothing shall be wanting to its perfection, it is itself singly the best

and most divine of prayers. But had this been the main and primary

purpose, it must have been thenceforward the only prayer permitted to

Christians; and surely some distinct references to it would have been

found in the Apostolic writings.

Ib. s. lxxx. p. 358.

Now then I demand, whether the prayer of Manasses be so good a prayer

as the Lord's prayer? Or is the prayer of Judith, or of Tobias, or of

Judas Maccabeus, or of the son of Sirach, is any of these so good?

Certainly no man will say they are; and the reason is, because we are

not sure they are inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.

How inconsistent Taylor often is, the result of the system of

economizing truth! The true reason is the inverse. The prayers of Judith

and the rest are not worthy to be compared with the Lord's Prayer;

therefore neither is the spirit in which they were conceived worthy to

be compared with the spirit from which the Lord's Prayer proceeded: and

therefore with all fulness of satisfaction we receive the latter, as

indeed and in fact our Lord's dictation.

In all men and in all works of great genius the characteristic fault

will be found in the characteristic excellence. Thus in Taylor, fulness,

overflow, superfluity.

His arguments are a procession of all the nobles and magnates of the

land in their grandest, richest, and most splendid 'paraphernalia': but

the total impression is weakened by the multitudes of lacqueys and

ragged intruders running in and out between the ranks.

As far as the Westminster divines were the antagonists to be

answered--and with the exception of these, and those who like Baxter,

Calamy, and Bishop Reynolds, contended for a reformation or correction

only of the Church Liturgy, there were none worth answering,--the

question was, not whether the use of one and the same set of prayers on

all days in all churches was innocent, but whether the exclusive

imposition of the same was comparatively expedient and conducive to

edification?

Let us not too severely arraign the judgment or the intentions of the

good men who determined for the negative. If indeed we confined

ourselves to the comparison between our Liturgy, and any and all of the

proposed substitutes for it, we could not hesitate: but those good men,

in addition to their prejudices, had to compare the lives, the

conversation, and the religious affections and principles of the

prelatic and anti-prelatic parties in general.

And do not we ourselves now do the like? Are we not, and with abundant

reason, thankful that Jacobinism is rendered comparatively feeble and

its deadly venom neutralized, by the profligacy and open irreligion of

the majority of its adherents?

Add the recent cruelties of the Star Chamber under Laud;--(I do not say

the intolerance; for that which was common to both parties, must be

construed as an error in both, rather than a crime in either);--and do

not forget the one great inconvenience to which the prelatic divines

were exposed from the very position which it was the peculiar honor of

the Church of England to have taken and maintained, namely, the golden

mean;--(for in consequence of this their arguments as Churchmen would

often have the appearance of contrasting with their grounds of

controversy as Protestants,)--and we shall find enough to sanction our

charity as brethren, without detracting a tittle from our loyalty as

members of the established Church.

As to this Apology, the victory doubtless remains with Taylor on the

whole; but to have rendered it full and triumphant, it would have been

necessary to do what perhaps could not at that time, and by Jeremy

Taylor, have been done with prudence; namely, not only to disprove in

part, but likewise in part to explain, the alleged difference of the

spiritual fruits in the ministerial labors of the high and low party in

the Church,--(for remember that at this period both parties were in the

Church, even as the Evangelical, Reformed and Pontifical parties before

the establishment of a schism by the actually schismatical Council of

Trent,)--and thus to demonstrate that the differences to the

disadvantage of the established Church, as far as they were real, were

as little attributable to the Liturgy, as the wound in the heel of

Achilles to the shield and breast-plate which his immortal mother had

provided for him from the forge divine.

Ib. s. lxxxvi. p. 361.

That the Apostles did use the prayer their Lord taught them, I think

needs not much be questioned.

'Ad contra', see above. But that they did not till the siege of

Jerusalem deviate unnecessarily from the established usage of the

Synagogue is beyond rational doubt. We may therefore safely maintain

that a set form was sanctioned by Apostolic practice; though the form

was probably settled after the converts from Paganism began to be the

majority of Christians.

Ib. s. lxxxvii. p. 361.

Now that they tied themselves to recitation of the very words of

Christ's prayer 'pro loco et tempore', I am therefore easy to believe,

because I find they were strict to a scruple in retaining the

sacramental words which Christ spake when he instituted the blessed

Sacrament.

Not a case in point. Besides it assumes the controverted sense of

[Greek: ohut_os] as "in these words" 'versus' "to this purport." Grotius

and Lightfoot, however, have settled this dispute by proving that the

Lord's prayer is a selection of prayers from the Jewish ritual: and a

most happy and valuable inference against novelties obtruded for

novelty's sake does Grotius draw from this fact.

When I consider the manner in which the Jews usually quoted or referred

to particular passages of Scripture, it does not seem altogether

improbable that the several articles of the 'Oratio Dominica' might have

been the initial sentences of several prayers; but I have not the least

doubt that by the loud utterance of the 'My God! my God! why hast thou

forsaken me?' our blessed Redeemer referred to and recalled to John and

Mary that most wonderful and prophetic twenty-second Psalm.

And what a glorious light does not this throw on the whole scene of the

crucifixion, and in what additional loveliness does it not present the

god-like character of the crucified Son of Man!

With the very facts before them, of which the former and larger portion

of the Psalm referred to resembles a detailed history rather than a

prophecy,--with what force, and with what lively consolation and

infusion of stedfast hope and faith, when all human grounds of hope had

sunk from under them, must not the obvious and inevitable inference have

flashed on the convictions of the holy mother and the beloved disciple!

"If all we now behold was pre-ordained and so distinctly predicted; if

the one mournful half of the prophecy has been so entirely and

minutely fulfilled, after so great a lapse of ages, dare we, can we,

doubt for a moment that the glorious remainder will with equal

fidelity be accomplished?"

Thus to his very last moments did our Lord (setting as it beseemed the

sun of righteousness to set) manifest with a wider and wider face of

glory his self-oblivious love. In the act he was offering, he himself

was a sacrifice of love for the whole creation; and yet the cup

overflowed into particular streams; first, for his enemies, his

persecutors, and murderers; then for his friends and humanly nearest

relative; 'Woman, behold thy son!' O what a transfer!

Nor does the proposed interpretation preclude any inward and mysterious

sense of the words 'My God! my God!'--though I confess I have never yet

met with a single plausible resolution of the words into any one of the

mysteries of the Trinity, or the Incarnation, or the Passion. Nay, were

there any necessity for supposing such an allusion, which there is not,

the obvious interpretation would, I fear, too dangerously favor the

heresy of those who divided and severed the divinity from the humanity;

so that not the incarnate God, very God of very God, would have atoned

for us on the cross, but the incarnating man; a heresy which either

denies or reduces to an absurdity the whole doctrine of redemption, that

is, Christianity itself, which rests on the two articles of faith;

first, the necessity, and secondly, the reality of a Redeemer--both

articles alike incompatible with redemption by a mere man.

Ib. s. lxxxviii. p. 362.

And I the rather make the inference from the preceding argument

because of the cognation one hath with the other; for the Apostles did

also in the consecration of the Eucharist use the Lord's Prayer; and

that together with the words of institution was the only form of

consecration, saith St. Gregory; and St. Jerome affirms, that the

Apostles, by the command of their Lord, used this prayer in the

benediction of the elements.

This section is an instance of impolitic management of a cause, into

which Jeremy Taylor was so often seduced by the fertility of his

intellect and the opulence of his erudition. An antagonist by exposing

the improbability of the tradition, (and most improbable it surely is),

and the little credit due to Saint Gregory and Saint Jerome (not

forgetting a Miltonic sneer at their saintship), might draw off the

attention from the unanswerable parts of Taylor's reasoning and leave an

impression of his having been confuted.

Ib. s. lxxxix. p. 362.

But besides this, when the Apostles had received great measures of the

spirit, and by their gift of prayer composed more forms for the help

and comfort of the Church, &c.

Who would not suppose, that the first two lines were an admitted point

of history, instead of a bare conjecture in the form of a bold

assertion? O, dearest man! so excellent a cause did not need such

Bellarminisms.

Ib. p. 363.

And the Fathers of the Council of Antioch complain against Paulus

Samosatenus, 'quod Psalmos et cantus, qui ad Domini nostri Jesu

Christi honorem decantari solent, tanquam recentiores, et a viris

recentioris memoriœ editos, exploserit.'

This Sam-in-satin-hose, or Paul, the same-as-Satan-is, might, I think,

have found his confutation in Pliny's Letter to Trajan. 'Carmen Christo,

quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem.'

Ib. s. xc. p. 364.

Which together with the [Greek: tà apomnaemoneúmata t_on propháeton],

the 'lectionarium' of the Church, the books of the Apostles and

Prophets spoken of by Justin Martyr, and said to be used in the

Christian congregations, are the constituent parts of liturgy.

An ingenious but not tenable solution of Justin Martyr's [Greek:

apomnaemoneúmata t_on apostól_on] which were presumably a Gospel not the

same, and yet so nearly the same, as our Matthew, that its history and

character involve one of the hardest problems of Christian antiquity. By

the by, one cause of the small impression--(small in proportion to their

vast superiority in knowledge and genius)--which Jeremy Taylor and his

compeers made on the religious part of the community by their

controversial writings during the life of Charles I is to be found in

their undue predilection for Patristic learning and authority. This

originated in the wish to baffle the Papists at their own weapons; but

it could not escape notice, that the latter, though regularly beaten,

were yet not so beaten, but that they always kept the field: and when

the same mode of warfare was employed against the Puritans, it was

suspected as Papistical.

Ib. s. xci. pp. 364-5.

For the offices of prose we find but small mention of them in the very

first time, save only in general terms, and that such there were, and

that St. James, St. Mark, St. Peter, and others of the Apostles and

Apostolical men, made Liturgies; and if these which we have at this

day were not theirs, yet they make probation that these Apostles left

others, or else they were impudent people that prefixed their names so

early, and the Churches were very incurious to swallow such a bole, if

no pretension could have been reasonably made for their justification.

A rash and dangerous argument. 1810.

A many-edged weapon, which might too readily be turned against the

common faith by the common enemy. For if these Liturgies were rightly

attributed to St. James, St. Mark, St. Peter, and others of the Apostles

and Apostolical men, how could they have been superseded? How could the

Church have excluded them from the Canon?

But if falsely, and yet for a time and at so early an age generally

believed to have been composed by St. James and the rest, it is to be

feared that the difference will not stop at the point to which Paul of

Samosata carried it;--a fearful consideration for a Christian of the

Grotian and Paleyan school. It would not, however, shake my nerves, I

confess.

The Epistles of St. Paul, and the Gospel, Epistles, and Apocalypse of

St. John, contain an evidence of their authenticity, which no

uncertainty of ecclesiastic history, no proof of the frequency and

success of forgery or ornamental titles (as the Wisdom of Solomon)

mistaken for matter of fact, can wrest from me; and with these for my

guides and sanctions, what one article of Christian faith could be taken

from me, or even unsettled?

It seems to me, as it did to Luther, incomparably more probable that the

eloquent treatise, entitled an Epistle to the Hebrews, was written by

Apollos than by Paul; and what though it was written by neither? It is

demonstrable that it was composed before the siege of Jerusalem and the

destruction of the Temple; and scarcely less satisfactory is the

internal evidence that it was composed by an Alexandrian.

These two 'data' are sufficient to establish the fact, that the Pauline

doctrine at large was common to all Christians at that early period, and

therefore the faith delivered by Christ. And this is all I want; nor

this for my own assurance, but as arming me with irrefragable arguments

against those psilanthropists who as falsely, as arrogantly, call

themselves Unitarians, on the one hand; and against the infidel fiction,

that Christianity owes its present shape to the genius and rabbinical

'cabala' of Paul on the other: while at the same time it weakens the

more important half of the objection to, or doubt concerning, the

authenticity of St. Peter's Epistles.

To this too I attach a high controversial value (for the beauty and

excellence of the Epistles themselves are not affected by the question);

and I receive them as authentic, for they have all the circumstantial

evidence that I have any right to expect.

But I feel how much more genial my conviction would become, should I

discover, or have pointed out to me, any positive internal evidence

equivalent to that which determines the date of the Epistle to the

Hebrews, or even to that which leaves no doubt on my mind that the

writer was an Alexandrian Jew.

This, my dear Lamb, is one of the advantages which the previous evidence

supplied by the reason and the conscience secures for us. We learn what

in its nature 'passes all understanding', and what belongs to the

understanding, and on which, therefore, the understanding may and ought

to act freely and fearlessly: while those who will admit nothing above

the understanding ([Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]), which in its nature has

no legitimate object but history and outward 'phoenomena', stand in

slavish dread like a child at its house of cards, lest a single card

removed may endanger the whole foundationless edifice. 1819.

Ib. s. xcii. p. 365.

Now here dear Jeremy Taylor begins to be himself again; for with all his

astonishing complexity, yet versatile agility, of powers, he was too

good and of too catholic a spirit to be a good polemic. Hence he so

continually is now breaking, now varying, the thread of the argument:

and hence he is so again and again forgetting that he is reasoning

against an antagonist, and falls into conversation with him as a

friend,--I might almost say, into the literary chit-chat and un with

holding frankness of a rich genius whose sands are seed-pearl. Of his

controversies, those against Popery are the most powerful, because there

he had subtleties and obscure reading to contend against; and his wit,

acuteness, and omnifarious learning found stuff to work on. Those on

Original Sin are the most eloquent.

But in all alike it is the digressions, overgrowths, parenthetic 'obiter

et in transitu' sentences, and, above all, his anthropological

reflections and experiences--(for example, the inimitable account of a

religious dispute, from the first collision to the spark, and from the

spark to the world in flames, in his 'Dissuasive from Popery'),--these

are the costly gems which glitter, loosely set, on the chain armour of

his polemic Pegasus, that expands his wings chiefly to fly off from the

field of battle, the stroke of whose hoof the very rock cannot resist,

but beneath the stroke of which the opening rock sends forth a

Hippocrene. The work in which all his powers are confluent, in which

deep, yet gentle, the full stream of his genius winds onward, and still

forming peninsulas in its winding course--distinct parts that are only

not each a perfect whole--or in less figurative style--(yet what

language that does not partake of poetic eloquence can convey the

characteristics of a poet and an orator?)--the work which I read with

most admiration, but likewise with most apprehension and regret, is the

'Liberty of Prophesying'.

If indeed, like some Thessalian drug, or the strong herb of Anticyra,

... that helps and harms,

Which life and death have sealed with counter charms--

it could be administered by special prescription, it might do good

service as a narcotic for zealotry, or a solvent for bigotry.

The substance of the preceding tract may be comprised as follows:

1. During the period immediately following our Lord's Ascension, or the

so called Apostolic age, all the gifts of the Spirit, and of course the

gift of prayer, as graces bestowed, not merely or principally for the

benefit of the Apostles and their contemporaries, but likewise and

eminently for the advantage of all after-ages, and as means of

establishing the foundations of Christianity, differed in kind, degree,

mode, and object, from those ordinary graces promised to all true

believers of all times; and possessed a character of extraordinary

partaking of the nature of miracles, to which no believer under the

present and regular dispensations of the Spirit can make pretence

without folly and presumption.

2. Yet it is certain that even the first miraculous gifts and graces

bestowed on the Apostles themselves supervened on, but did not

supersede, their natural faculties and acquired knowledge, nor enable

them to dispense with the ordinary means and instruments of cultivating

the one, and applying the other, by study, reading, past experience, and

whatever else Providence has appointed for all men as the conditions and

efficients of moral and intellectual progression. The capabilities of

deliberating, selecting, and aptly disposing of our thoughts and works

are God's good gifts to man, which the superadded graces of the Spirit,

vouchsafed to Christians, work on and with, call forth and perfect.

Therefore deliberation, selection, and method become duties, inasmuch as

they are the bases and recipients of the Spirit, even as the polished

crystal is of the light.

But if the Prophets and Apostles did not (as Taylor demonstrates that

they did not) find in miraculous aids any such infusions of light as

precluded or rendered superfluous the exertion of their natural

faculties and personal attainments, then 'a fortiori' not the possessors

or legatees of the ordinary graces bequeathed by Christ to his Church as

the usufructuary property of all its members; and he who wilfully lays

aside all premeditation, selection, and ordonnance, that he may enter

unprepared on the highest and most awful function of the soul,--that of

public prayer,--is guilty of no less indecency and irreverence than if,

having to present a petition as the representative of a community before

the throne, he purposely put off his seemly garments in order to enter

into the presence of the monarch naked or in rags: and expects no less

an absurdity than to become a passive 'automaton', in which the Holy

Spirit is to play the ventriloquist.

3. If, then, each congregation is to receive a prepared form of prayer

from its head or minister, why not rather from the collective wisdom of

the Church represented in the assembled heads and spiritual Fathers?

4. This is admitted by implication by the Westminster Assembly. But they

are not contented with the existing form, and therefore substitute for

it a Directory as the fruits of their meditations and counsels. The

whole question, then, is now reduced to the comparative merits and

fitness of the Directory and the book of Common Prayer; and how complete

the victory of the latter, how glaring the defects, how many the

deficiencies, of the former, Jeremy Taylor evinces unanswerably.

Such is the substance of this Tract. What the author proposed to prove

he has satisfactorily proved.

The faults of the work are:

1. The intermixture of weak and strong arguments, and the frequent

interruption of the stream of his logic by doubtful, trifling, and

impolitic interruptions; arguments resting in premisses denied by the

antagonists, and yet taken for granted; in short, appendages that

cumber, accessions that subtract, and confirmations that weaken:--

2. That he commences with a proper division of the subject into two

distinct branches, that is, extempore prayer as opposed to set forms,

and, The Directory, as prescribing a form opposed to the existing

Liturgy; but that in the sequel he blends and confuses and intermingles

one with the other, and presses most and most frequently on the first

point, which a vast majority of the party he is opposing had disowned

and reprobated no less than himself, and which, though easiest to

confute, scarcely required confutation.

DISCOURSE OF THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING, WITH ITS JUST LIMITS AND

TEMPER.

Epistle Dedicatory, p. cccciii.

And first I answer, that whatsoever is against the foundation of faith

is out of the limits of my question, and does not pretend to

compliance or toleration.

But as all truths hang together, what error is there which may not be

proved to be against the foundation of faith? An inquisitor might make

the same code of toleration, and in the next moment light the faggots

around a man who had denied the infallibility of Pope and Council.

Ib. p. ccccxxix.

Indeed if by a heresy we mean that which is against an article of

creed, and breaks part of the covenant made between God and man by the

mediation of Jesus Christ, I grant it to be a very grievous crime, a

calling God's veracity into question, &c.

How can he be said to question God's veracity, whose belief is that God

never declared it,--who perhaps disbelieves it, because he thinks it

opposite to God's honor? For example:--Original sin, in the literal

sense of the article, was held by both Papists and Protestants (with

exception of the Socinians) as the fundamental article of Christianity;

and yet our Jeremy Taylor himself attacked and reprobated it. Why?

because he thought it dishonored God. Why may not another man believe

the same of the Incarnation, and affirm that it is equal to a circle

assuming the essence of a square, and yet remaining a circle? But so it

is; we spoil our cause, because we dare not plead it 'in toto'; and a

half truth serves for a proof of the opposite falsehood. Jeremy Taylor

dared not carry his argument into all its consequences.

LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING.

S. i. p. 443.

Of the nature of faith, and that its duty is completed in believing

the articles of the Apostle's creed.

This section is for the most part as beautifully written as it was

charitably conceived; yet how vain the attempt! Jeremy Taylor ought to

have denied that Christian faith is at all intellectual primarily, but

only probably; as, 'coecteris paribus', it is probable that a man with a

pure heart will believe an intelligent Creator. But the faith resides in

the predisposing purity of heart, that is, in the obedience of the will

to the uncorrupted conscience. For take Taylor's instances; and I ask

whether the words or the sense be meant? Surely the latter.

Well then, I understand, and so did the dear Bishop, by these texts the

doctrine of a Redeemer, who by his agonies of death actually altered the

relations of the spirits of all men to their Maker, redeemed them from

sin and death eternal, and brought life and immortality into the world.

But the Socinian uses the same texts; and means only that a good and

gifted teacher of pure morality died a martyr to his opinions, and by

his resurrection proved the possibility of all men rising from the dead.

He did nothing;--he only taught and afforded evidence. Can two more

diverse opinions be conceived? God here; mere man there. Here a redeemer

from guilt and corruption, and a satisfaction for offended holiness;

there a mere declarer that God imputed no guilt wherever, with or

without Christ, the person had repented of it.

What could Jeremy Taylor say for the necessity of his sense (which is

mine) but what might be said for the necessity of the Nicene Creed? And

then as to Rom. x. 9, how can the text mean any thing, unless we know

what St. Paul implied in the words 'the Lord Jesus'. From other parts of

his writings we know that he meant by the word 'Lord' his divinity or at

least essential superhumanity. But the Socinian will not allow this; or,

allowing it, denies St. Paul's authority in matters of speculative

faith. As well then might I say, it is sufficient for you to believe and

repeat the words 'forte miles reddens'; and though one of you mean by it

"Perhaps I may be balloted for the militia," and the other understands

it to mean, that "Reading is forty miles from London," you are still

co-symbolists and believers! While a third person may say, I believe,

but do not comprehend, the words; that is, I believe that the person who

first used them meant something that is true,--what I do not know; that

is, I believe his veracity.

O! had this work been published when Charles I, Archbishop Laud, whose

chaplain Taylor was, and the other Star Chamber inquisitors, were

sentencing Prynne, Bastwick, Leighton, and others, to punishments that

have left a brand-mark on the Church of England, the sophistry might

have been forgiven for the sake of the motive, which would then have

been unquestionable. Or if Jeremy Taylor had not in effect retracted

after the Restoration;--if he had not, as soon as the Church had gained

its power, most basely disclaimed and disavowed the principle of

toleration, and apologized for the publication by declaring it to have

been a 'ruse de guerre', currying pardon for his past liberalism by

charging, and most probably slandering, himself with the guilt of

falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy, his character as a man would at

least have been stainless. Alas, alas, most dearly do I love Jeremy

Taylor; most religiously do I venerate his memory! But this is too foul

a blotch of leprosy to be forgiven. He who pardons such an act in such a

man partakes of its guilt.

Ib. s. vii. p. 346-7.

In the pursuance of this great truth, the Apostles, or the holy men,

their contemporaries and disciples, composed a creed to be a rule of

faith to all Christians; as appears in Irenæus, Tertullian, St.

Cyprian, St. Austin, Ruffinus, and divers others; which creed, unless

it had contained all the entire object of faith, and the foundation of

religion, &c.

Jeremy Taylor does not appear to have been a critical scholar. His

reading had been oceanic; but he read rather to bring out the growths of

his own fertile and teeming mind than to inform himself respecting the

products of those of other men. Hence his reliance on the broad

assertions of the Fathers; yet it is strange that he should have been

ignorant that the Apostles' Creed was growing piecemeal for several

centuries.

Ib. p. 447.

All catechumens in the Latin Church coming to baptism were

interrogated concerning their faith, and gave satisfaction on the

recitation of this Creed.

I very much doubt this, and rather believe that our present Apostles'

Creed was no more than the first instruction of the catechumens prior to

baptism; and (as I conclude from Eusebius) that at baptism they

professed a more mysterious faith;--the one being the milk, the other

the strong meat. Where is the proof that Tertullian was speaking of this

Creed? Eusebius speaks in as high terms of the 'Symbolum Fidei', and,

defending himself against charges of heresy, says, "Did I not at my

baptism, in the 'Symbolum Fidei', declare my belief in Christ as God and

the co-eternal Word?" The true Creed it was impiety to write down; but

such was never the case with the present or initiating Creed. Strange,

too, that Jeremy Taylor, who has in this very work written so divinely

of tradition, should assume as a certainty that this Creed was in a

proper sense Apostolic. Is then the Creed of greater authority than the

inspired Scriptures? And can words in the Creed be more express than

those of St. Paul to the Colossians, speaking of Christ as the creative

mind of his Father, before all worlds, 'begotten before all things

created?'

Ib. s. x. p. 449.

This paragraph is indeed a complexion, as Taylor might call it, of

sophisms. Thus;--unbelief from want of information or capacity, though

with the disposition of faith, is confounded with disbelief. The

question is not, whether it may not be safe for a man to believe simply

that Christ is his Saviour, but whether it be safe for a man to

disbelieve the article in any sense which supposes an essential

supra-humanity in Christ,--any sense that would not have been equally

applicable to John, had God chosen to raise him instead of his cousin?

Ib. s. xi. p. 450.

Neither are we obliged to make these Articles more particular and

minute than the Creed. For since the Apostles, and indeed our blessed

Lord himself, promised heaven to them who believed him to be the

Christ that was to come into the world, and that he who believes in

him should be partaker of the resurrection and life eternal, he will

be as good as his word. Yet because this article was very general, and

a complexion rather than a single proposition, the Apostles and others

our Fathers in Christ did make it more explicit: and though they have

said no more than what lay entire and ready formed in the bosom of the

great Article, yet they made their extracts to great purpose and

absolute sufficiency; and therefore there needs no more deductions or

remoter consequences from the first great Article than the Creed of

the Apostles.

Most true; but still the question returns, what was meant by the phrase

'the' Christ? Contraries cannot both be true. 'The Christ' could not be

both mere man and incarnate God. One or the other must believe falsely

on this great key-stone of all the intellectual faith in Christianity.

For so it is; alter it, and everything alters; as is proved in

Trinitarianism and Socinianism. No two religions can be more

different;--I know of no two equally so.

Ib. s. xii. p. 451.

The Church hath power to intend our faith, but not to extend it; to

make our belief more evident, but not more large and comprehensive.

This and the preceding pages are scarcely honest. For Jeremy Taylor

begins with admitting that the Creed might have been composed by others.

He has no proof of that most absurd fable of the twelve Apostles

clubbing to make it; yet here all he says assumes its inspiration as a

certain fact.

Ib. p. 454.

But for the present there is no insecurity in ending there where the

Apostles ended, in building where they built, in resting where they

left us, unless the same infallibility which they had had still

continued, which I think I shall hereafter make evident it did not.

What a tangle of contradictions Taylor thrusts himself into by the

attempt to support a true system, a full third of which he was afraid to

mention, and another third was by the same fear induced to deny--at

least to take for granted the contrary: for example, the absolute

plenary inspiration and infallibility of the Apostles and Evangelists;

and yet that their whole function, as far as the consciences of their

followers were concerned, was to repeat the two or three sentences, that

'Jesus was Christ' (so says one of the Evangelists), 'the Christ of God'

(so says another), 'the Christ the Son of the living God' (so says a

third), that he rose from the dead, and for the remission of sins, to as

many as believed and professed that he was the Christ or the Lord, and

died and rose for the remission of sins. Surely no miraculous

communication of God's infallibility was necessary for this.

But if this infallibility was stamped on all they said and wrote, is it

credible that any part should not be equally binding? I declare I can

make nothing out of this section, but that it is necessary for men to

believe the Apostles' Creed; but what they believe by it is of no

consequence. For instance; what if I chose to understand by the word

'dead' a state of trance or suspended animation;--language furnishing

plenty of analogies--dead in a swoon--dead drunk--and so on;--should I

still be a Christian?

'Born of the Virgin Mary.' What if, as Priestley and others, I

interpreted it as if we should say, 'the former Miss Vincent was his

mother.' I need not say that I disagree with Taylor's premisses only

because they are not broad enough, and with his aim and principal

conclusion only because it does not go far enough. I would have the law

grounded wholly in the present life, religion only on the life to come.

Religion is debased by temporal motives, and law rendered the drudge of

prejudice and passion by pretending to spiritual aims. But putting this

aside, and judging of this work solely as a chain of reasoning, I seem

to find one leading error in it; namely, that Taylor takes the condition

of a first admission into the Church of Christ for the fullness of faith

which was to be gradually there acquired. The simple acknowledgment,

that they accepted Christ as their Lord and King was the first lisping

of the infant believer at which the doors were opened, and he began the

process of growth in the faith.

Ib. s. ii. p. 457.

The great heresy that troubled them was the doctrine of the necessity

of keeping the law of Moses, the necessity of circumcision, against

which doctrine they were therefore zealous, because it was a direct

overthrow to the very end and excellency of Christ's coming.

The Jewish converts were still bound to the rite of circumcision, not

indeed as under the Law, or by the covenant of works, but as the

descendants of Abraham, and by that especial covenant which St. Paul

rightly contends was a covenant of grace and faith. But the heresy

consisted wholly in the attempt to impose this obligation on the Gentile

converts, in the infatuation of some of the Galatians, who, having no

pretension to be descendants of Abraham, could, as the Apostle urges,

only adopt the rite as binding themselves under the law of works, and

thereby apostatizing from the covenant of faith by free grace. And this

was the decision of the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem. Acts' xv.

Rhenferd, in his Treatise on the Ebionites and other pretended heretics

in Palestine, so grossly and so ignorantly calumniated by Epiphanius,

has written excellently well on this subject. Jeremy Taylor is mistaken

throughout.

Ib. s. iv. p. 459.

And so it was in this great question of circumcision.

It is really wonderful that a man like Bishop Taylor could have read the

New Testament, and have entertained a doubt as to the decided opinion of

all the Apostles, that every born Jew was bound to be circumcised.

Opinion? The very doubt never suggested itself. When something like this

opinion was slanderously attributed to Paul, observe the almost

ostentatious practical contradiction of the calumny which was adopted by

him at the request and by the advice of the other Apostles. ('Acts',

xxi. 21-26.) The rite of circumcision, I say, was binding on all the

descendants of Abraham through Isaac for all time even to the end of the

world; but the whole law of Moses was binding on the Jewish Christians

till the heaven and the earth--that is, the Jewish priesthood and the

state--had passed away in the destruction of the temple and city; and

the Apostles observed every tittle of the Law.

Ib. s. vi. p. 460.

The heresy of the Nicolaitans.

Heresy is not a proper term for a plainly anti-Christian sect.

Nicolaitans is the literal Greek translation of Balaamites; destroyers

of the people. 'Rev'. ii. 14, 15.

Ib. s. viii. p. 461.

For heresy is not an error of the understanding, but an error of the

will.

Most excellent. To this Taylor should have adhered, and to its converse.

Faith is not an accuracy of logic, but a rectitude of heart.

Ib. p. 462.

It was the heresy of the Gnostics, that it was no matter how men

lived, so they did but believe aright.

I regard the extinction of all the writings of the Gnostics among the

heaviest losses of Ecclesiastical literature. We have only the account

of their inveterate enemies. Individual madmen there have been in all

ages, but I do not believe that any sect of Gnostics ever held this

opinion in the sense here supposed.

Ib.

And, indeed, if we remember that St. Paul reckons heresy amongst the

works of the flesh, and ranks it with all manner of practical

impieties, we shall easily perceive that if a man mingles not a vice

with his opinion,--if he be innocent in his life, though deceived in

his doctrine,--his error is his misery not his crime; it makes him an

argument of weakness and an object of pity, but not a person sealed up

to ruin and reprobation.

O admirable! How could Taylor, after this, preach and publish his Sermon

in defence of persecution, at least against toleration!

Ib. s. xxii. p. 479.

Ebion, Manes.

No such man as Ebion ever, as I can see, existed; [3] and Manes is

rather a doubtful 'ens'.

Ib. s. xxxi. p. 487.

But I shall observe this, that although the Nicene Fathers in that

case, at that time, and in that conjuncture of circumstances, did

well, &c.

What Bull and Waterland have urged in defence of the Nicene Fathers is

(like every thing else from such men) most worthy of all attention. They

contend that no other term but [Greek: homoousía] could secure the

Christian faith against both the two contrary errors, Tritheism with

subversion of the unity of the Godhead on the one hand, and

creature-worship on the other. For, to use Waterland's mode of argument,

[4] either Eusebius of Nicomedia with the four other dissenters at Nice

were right or wrong in their assertion, that Christ could not be of the

[Greek: ousía] of the self-originated First by derivation, as a son from

a father:--if they were right, they either must have discovered some

third distinct and intelligible form of origination in addition to

'begotten' and 'created', or they had not and could not. Now the latter

was notoriously the fact. Therefore to deny the [Greek: homoousía] was

implicitly to deny the generation of the second Person, and thus to

assert his creation. But if he was a creature, he could not be adorable

without idolatry. Nor did the chain of inevitable consequences stop

here. His characteristic functions of Redeemer, Mediator, King, and

final Judge, must all cease to be attributable to Christ; and the

conclusion is, that between the Homoousian scheme and mere

Psilanthropism there is no intelligible 'medium'. If this, then, be not

a fundamental article of faith, what can be?

To this reasoning I really can discern no fair reply within the sphere

of conceptual logic, if it can be made evident that the term [Greek:

homooúsios] is really capable of achieving the end here set forth. One

objection to the term is, that it was not translatable into the language

of the Western Church. Consubstantial is not the translation:

'substantia' answers to [Greek: hypóstasis], not to [Greek: ousía]; and

hence, when [Greek: hypóstasis] was used by the Nicene Fathers in

distinction from [Greek: ousía], the Latin Church was obliged to render

it by some other word, and thus introduced that most unhappy and

improper term 'persona'. Would you know my own inward judgment on this

question, it is this: first, that this pregnant idea, the root and form

of all ideas, is not within the sphere of conceptual logic,--that is, of

the understanding,--and is therefore of necessity inexpressible; for no

idea can be adequately represented in words:--secondly, that I agree

with Bull and Waterland against Bishop Taylor, that there was need of a

public and solemn decision on this point:--but, lastly, that I am more

than doubtful respecting the fitness or expediency of the term [Greek:

homooúsios], and hold that the decision ought to have been negative. For

at first all parties agreed in the positive point, namely, that Christ

was the Son of God, and that the Son of God was truly God, "or very God

of very God." All that was necessary to be added was, that the only

begotten Son of God was not created nor begotten in time. More than this

might be possible, and subject of insight; but it was not determinable

by words, and was therefore to be left among the rewards of the Spirit

to the pure in heart in inward vision and silent contemplation.

Ib. s. xl. p. 495.

All that is necessary to give a full and satistory import to this

excellent paragraph, and to secure it from all inconvenient

consequences, is to understand the distinction between the objective and

general revelation, by which the whole Church is walled around and kept

together ('principium totalitatis et cohæsionis'), and the subjective

revelation, the light from the life ('John' i. 4.), by which the

individual believers, each according to the grace given, grow in faith.

For the former, the Apostles' Creed, in its present form, is more than

enough; for the latter, it might be truly said in the words of the

fourth Gospel, that all the books which the world could contain would

not suffice to set forth explicitly that mystery in which all treasures

of knowledge are hidden, 'reconduntur'.

From the Apostles' Creed, nevertheless, if regarded in the former point

of view, several clauses must be struck out, not as false, but as not

necessary. "I believe that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified under

Pontius Pilate, rose from the dead on the third day; and I receive him

as the Christ, the Son of the living God, who died for the remission of

the sins of as many as believe in the Father through him, in whom we

have the promise of life everlasting." This is the sufficient creed.

More than this belongs to the Catechism, and then to the study of the

Scriptures.

Ib. s. vi. p. 506.

So did the ancient Papias understand Christ's millenary reign upon

earth, and so depressed the hopes of Christianity and their desires to

the longing and expectation of temporal pleasures and satisfactions.

And he was followed by Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Lactantius,

and indeed, the whole Church generally, till St. Austin and St.

Jerome's time, who, first of any whose works are extant, did reprove

the error.

Bishop Taylor is, I think, mistaken in two points; first, that the

Catholic Millenaries looked forward to carnal pleasures in the kingdom

of Christ;--for even the Jewish Rabbis of any note represented the

'Millenium' as the preparative and transitional state to perfect

spiritualization:--second, that the doctrine of Christ's reign upon

earth rested wholly or principally on the twentieth chapter of the

Revelations, which actually, in my judgment, opposes it.

I more than suspect that Austin's and Jerome's strongest ground for

rejecting the second coming of our Lord in his kingly character, was,

that they were tired of waiting for it. How can we otherwise interpret

the third and fourth clauses of the Lord's Prayer, or, perhaps, the

[Greek: en toi kairoi toútoi], 'in hoc seculo', (x. 30) of St. Mark? If

the first three Gospels, joined with the unbroken faith and tradition of

the Church for nearly three centuries, can decide the question, the

Millenarians have the best of the argument.

Vol. viii. s. ix. p. 22.

One thing only I observe (and we shall find it true in most writings,

whose authority is urged in questions of theology), that the authority

of the tradition is not it which moves the assent, but the nature of

the thing; and because such a canon is delivered, they do not

therefore believe the sanction or proposition so delivered, but

disbelieve the tradition if they do not like the matter, and so do not

judge of the matter by the tradition, but of the tradition by the

matter.

This just and acute remark is, in fact, no less applicable to Scripture

in all doctrinal points, and if infidelity is not to overspread England

as well as France, the same criterion (that is, the internal evidence)

must be extended to all points, to the narratives no less than to the

precept. The written words must be tried by the Word from the beginning,

in which is life, and that life the light of men. Reduce it to the

noetic pentad, or universal form of contemplation, except where all the

terms are absolute, and consequently there is no 'punctum indifferens,--in

divinis tetras, in omnibus aliis pentas,' and the form stands thus.

[5]

Ib. s. iii. p. 36.

So that it cannot make it divine and necessary to be heartily

believed. It may make it lawful, not make it true; that is, it may

possibly, by such means, become a law, but not a truth.

This is a sophism which so evident a truth did not need. Apply the

reasoning to an act of Parliament previously to the royal sanction. Will

it hold good to say, if it was law after the sanction, it was law

before? The assertion of the Papal theologians is, that the divine

providence may possibly permit even the majority of a legally convened

Council to err; but by force of a divine promise cannot permit both a

majority and the Pope to err on the same point. The flaw in this is,

that the Romish divines rely on a conditional promise unconditionally.

To Taylor's next argument the Romish respondent would say, that an

exception, grounded on a specific evident necessity, does not invalidate

the rule in the absence of any equally evident necessity.

Taylor's argument is a [Greek: metábasis eis allo génos]. It is not the

truth, but the sign or mark, by which the Church at large may know that

it is truth, which is here provided for; that is, not the truth simply,

but the obligation of receiving it as such. Ten thousand may apprehend

the latter, only ten of whom might be capable of determining the former.

Ib. 5.

So that now (that we may apply this) there are seven general Councils,

which by the Church of Rome are condemned of error ... The council of

Ariminum, consisting of six hundred Bishops.

It is the mark of a faction that it never hesitates to sacrifice a

greater good common to them and to their opponents to a lesser advantage

obtained over those opponents. Never was there a stranger instance of

imprudence, at least, than the act of the Athanasian party in condemning

so roundly the great Council of Ariminum as heretical, and for little

more than the charitable wish of the many hundred Bishops there

assembled to avoid a word that had set all Christendom by the ears. They

declared that [Greek: ho agénnaetos patàer, kaì ho achron_os gennaetòs

uhiòs, kaì tò pneuma ekporeuómenon] were substantially (hypostatik_os)

distinct, but nevertheless, one God; and though there might be some

incautious phrases used by them, the good Bishops declared that if their

decree was indeed Arian, or introduced aught to the derogation of the

Son's absolute divinity, it was against their knowledge and intention,

and that they renounced it.

Ib. s. x. p. 46.

Gratian says, that the Council means by a concubine a wife married

'sine dote et solennitate'; but this is daubing with untempered

mortar.

Here I think Taylor wrong and Gratian right; for not a hundred years ago

the very same decree was passed by the Lutheran clergy in Prussia,

determining that left-hand marriages were to be discouraged, but did not

exclude from communion. These marriages were invented for the sake of

poor nobles: they could have but that one wife, and the children

followed the rank and title of the mother, not of the father.

Ib. s. vii. p. 56.

Thirdly; for 'pasce oves', there is little in that allegation besides

the boldness of the objectors.

I have ever thought that the derivation of the Papal monarchy from the

thrice repeated command, 'pasce oves', the most brazen of all the Pope's

bulls. It was because Peter had given too good proof that he was more

disposed to draw the sword for Christ than to perform the humble duties

of a shepherd, that our Lord here strongly, though tenderly, reminds him

of his besetting temptation. The words are most manifestly a reproof and

a warning, not a commission. In like manner the very letter of the

famous paronomastic text proves that Peter's confession, not Peter

himself, was the rock. His name was, perhaps, not so much stone as

stoner; not so much rock as rockman; and Jesus hearing this unexpected

confession of his mysterious Sonship (for this is one of the very few

cases in which the internal evidence decides for the superior fidelity

of the first Gospel), and recognizing in it an immediate revelation from

heaven, exclaims, "Well, art thou the man of the rock; 'and upon this

rock will I build my church,'" not on this man. Add too, that the law

revealed to Moses and the confession of the divine attributes, are named

the rock, both in the Pentateuch and in the Psalms.

Mark has simply, 'Thou art the Christ'; Luke, 'The Christ of God'; [6]

but that Jesus was the Messiah had long been known by the Apostles, at

all events conjectured. Had not John so declared him at the baptism?

Besides, it was included among the opinions concerning our Lord which

led to his question, the aim of which was not simply as to the

Messiahship, but that the Messiah, instead of a mere descendant of

David, destined to reestablish and possess David's throne, was the

Jehovah himself, 'the Son of the living God; God manifested in the

flesh'. 1 'Tim'. iii. 16.

Ib. s. viii. p. 62.

And yet again, another degree of uncertainty is, to whom the Bishops

of Rome do succeed. For St. Paul was as much Bishop of Rome as St.

Peter was; there he presided, there he preached, and he it was that

was the doctor of the uncircumcision and of the Gentiles, St. Peter of

the circumcision and of the Jews only; and therefore the converted

Jews at Rome might with better reason claim the privilege of St.

Peter, than the Romans and the Churches in her communion, who do not

derive from Jewish parents.

I wonder that Taylor should have introduced so very strong an argument

merely 'obiter'. If St. Peter ever was at Rome, it must have been for

the Jewish converts or _convertendi_ exclusively, and on what do the

earliest Fathers rest the fact of Peter's being at Rome? Do they appeal

to any document? No; but to their own arbitrary and most improbable

interpretation of the word Babylon in St. Peter's first epistle. [7] I

am too deeply impressed with the general difficulty arising out of the

strange eclipse of all historic documents, of all particular events,

from the arrival of St. Paul at Rome as related by St. Luke and the time

when Justin Martyr begins to shed a scanty light, to press any

particular instance of it. Yet, if Peter really did arrive at Rome, and

was among those destroyed by Nero, it is strange that the Bishop and

Church of Rome should have preserved no record of the particulars.

Ib. s. xv. p. 71.

But what shall we think of that decretal of Gregory the Third, who

wrote to Boniface his legate in Germany, 'quod illi, quorum uxores

infirmitate aliqua morbida debitum reddere noluerunt, aliis poterant

nubere.'

Supposing the 'noluerunt' to mean 'nequeunt', or at least any state of

mind and feeling that does not exclude moral attachment, I, as a

Protestant, abominate this decree of Gregory III; for I place the moral,

social, and spiritual helps and comforts as the proper and essential

ends of Christian marriage, and regard the begetting of children as a

contingent consequence. But on the contrary tenet of the Romish Church,

I do not see how Gregory could consistently decree otherwise.

Ib. s. iii. p. 82.

Nor that Origen taught the pains of hell not to have an eternal

duration.

And yet there can be no doubt that Taylor himself held with Origen on

this point. But, 'non licebat dogmatizare oppositum, quia determinatum

fuerat.'

Ib. p. 84.

And except it be in the Apostles' Creed and articles of such nature,

there is nothing which may with any color be called a consent, much

less tradition universal.

It may be well to remember, whenever Taylor speaks of the Apostles'

Creed, that Pearson's work on that Creed was not then published. Nothing

is more suspicious than copies of creeds in the early Fathers; it was so

notoriously the custom of the transcribers to make them square with

those in use in their own time.

Ib. s. iv.

Such as makes no invasion upon their great reputation, which I desire

should be preserved as sacred as it ought.

The vision of the mitre dawned on Taylor; and his recollection of Laud

came to the assistance of the Fathers; of many of whom in his heart

Taylor, I think, entertained a very mean opinion. How could such a man

do otherwise? I could forgive them their nonsense and even their

economical falsehoods; but their insatiable appetite for making

heresies, and thus occasioning the neglect or destruction of so many

valuable works, Origen's for instance, this I cannot forgive or forget.

Ib. s. i. p. 88.

Of the incompetency of the Church, in its diffusive capacity, to be

judge of controversies; and the impertinency of that pretence of the

Spirit.

Now here begin my serious differences with Jeremy Taylor, which may be

characterized in one sentence; ideas 'versus' conceptions and images. I

contend that the Church in the Christian sense is an idea;--not

therefore a chimera, or a fancy, but a real being and a most powerful

reality. Suppose the present state of science in this country, with this

only difference that the Royal and other scientific societies were not

founded: might I not speak of a scientific public, and its influence on

the community at large? Or should I be talking of a chimera, a shadow,

or a non-entity? Or when we speak with honest pride of the public spirit

of this country as the power which supported the nation through the

gigantic conflict with France, do we speak of nothing, because we cannot

say,--"It is in this place or in that catalogue of names?" At the same

time I most readily admit that no rule can be grounded formally on the

supposed assent of this ideal Church, the members of which are recorded

only in the book of life at any one moment. In Taylor's use and

application of the term, Church, the visible Christendom, and in reply

to the Romish divines, his arguments are irrefragable.

Ib. s. ii. p. 93,

So that if they read, study, pray, search records, and use all the

means of art and industry in the pursuit of truth, it is not with a

resolution to follow that which shall seem truth to them, but to

confirm what before they did believe.

Alas, if Protestant and Papist were named by individuals answering or

not answering to this description, what a vast accession would not the

Pope's muster-roll receive! In the instance of the Council of Trent, the

iniquity of the Emperor and the Kings of France and Spain consisted in

their knowledge that the assembly at Trent had no pretence to be a

general Council, that is, a body representative of the Catholic or even

of the Latin Church. It may be, and in fact it is, very questionable

whether any Council, however large and fairly chosen, is not an

absurdity except under the universal faith that the Holy Ghost

miraculously dictates all the decrees: and this is irrational, where the

same superseding Spirit does not afford evidence of its presence by

producing unanimity. I know nothing, if I may so say, more ludicrous

than the supposition of the Holy Ghost contenting himself with a

majority, in questions respecting faith, or decrees binding men to

inward belief, which again binds a Christian to outward profession.

Matters of discipline and ceremony, having peace and temporal order for

their objects, are proper enough for a Council; but these do not need

any miraculous interference. Still if any Council is admitted in matters

of doctrine, those who have appealed to it must abide by the

determination of the majority, however they might prefer the opinion of

the minority, just as in acts of Parliament.

Ib. s. xi. p. 98.

Of some causes of error in the exercise of reason, which are inculpate

in themselves.

It is a lamentable misuse of the term, reason,--thus to call by that

name the mere faculty of guessing and babbling. The making reason a

faculty, instead of a light, and using the term as a mere synonyme of

the understanding, and the consequent ignorance of the true nature of

ideas, and that none but ideas are objects of faith--are the grounds of

all Jeremy Taylor's important errors.

Ib.

But men may understand what they please, especially when they are to

expound oracles.

If this sentence had occurred in Hume or Voltaire!

Ib. s. iii. p. 103.

And then if ever truth be afflicted, she shall also be destroyed.

Here and in many other passages of his other works Jeremy Taylor very

unfairly states this argument of the anti-prelatic party. It was not

that the Church of England was afflicted (the Puritans themselves had

been much more afflicted by the prelates); but that having appealed to

the decision of the sword, the cause was determined against it. But in

fact it is false that the Puritans ever did argue as Taylor represents

them. Laud and his confederates had begun by incarcerating, scourging,

and inhumanly mutilating their fellow Christians for not acceding to

their fancies, and proceeded to goad and drive the King to levy or at

least maintain war against his Parliament: and the Parliamentary party

very naturally cited their defeat and the overthrow of the prelacy as a

judgment on their blood-thirstiness, not as a proof of their error in

questions of theology.

Ib. s. iv. p. 105.

All that I shall say, &c. 'ad finem'.

An admirable paragraph. Taylor is never more himself, never appears

greater, or wiser, than when he enters on this topic, namely, the many

and various causes beside truth which occasion men to hold an opinion

for truth.

Ib. s. vii. p. 111.

Of such men as these it was said by St. Austin: 'Cæteram turbam non

intelligendi vivacitas, sed credendi simplicitas tutissimam facit.'

Such charity is indeed notable policy: salvation made easy for the

benefit of obedient dupes.

Ib. s. ii. p. 119.

I deny not but certain and known idolatry, or any other sort of

practical impiety with its principiant doctrine, may be punished

corporally, because it is no other but matter of fact.

In the Jewish theocracy, I admit; because the fact of idolatry was a

crime, namely, 'crimen læsæ majestatis', an overt act subversive of the

fundamental law of the state, and breaking asunder the 'vinculum et

copulam unitatis et cohæsionis'. But in making the position general,

Taylor commits the 'sophisma omissi essentialis'; he omits the essential

of the predicate, namely, criminal;--not its being a fact rendering it

punishable, but its being a criminal fact.

Ib. s. iii.

Oh that this great and good man, who saw and has expressed so large a

portion of the truth,--(if by the Creed I might understand the true

Apostles', that is, the Baptismal Creed, free from the additions of the

first five centuries, I might indeed say the whole truth),--had but

brought it back to the great original end and purpose of historical

Christianity, and of the Church visible, as its exponent, not as a

'hortus siccus' of past revelations,--but an ever enlarging inclosed

'area' of the opportunity of individual conversion to, and reception of,

the spirit of truth! Then, instead of using this one truth to inspire a

despair of all truth, a reckless scepticism within, and a boundless

compliance without, he would have directed the believer to seek for

light where there was a certainty of finding it, as far as it was

profitable for him, that is, as far as it actually was light for him.

The visible Church would be a walled Academy, a pleasure garden, in

which the intrants having presented their 'symbolum portae', or

admission-contract, walk at large, each seeking private audience of the

invisible teacher,--alone now, now in groups,--meditating or

conversing,--gladly listening to some elder disciple, through whom (as

ascertained by his intelligibility to me) I feel that the common Master

is speaking to me,--or lovingly communing with a class-fellow, who, I

have discovered, has received the same lesson from the inward teaching

with myself,--while the only public concerns in which all, as a common

weal, exercised control and vigilance over each, are order, peace,

mutual courtesy and reverence, kindness, charity, love, and the fealty

and devotion of all and each to the common Master and Benefactor!

Ib. s. viii. p. 124.

It is characteristic of the man and the age, Taylor's high-strained

reverential epithets to the names of the Fathers, and as rare and naked

mention of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin--the least of whom was not

inferior to St. Augustin, and worth a brigade of the Cyprians,

Firmilians, and the like. And observe, always 'Saint' Cyprian!

Ib. s. xii. p. 128-9.

Gibbon's enumeration of the causes, not miraculous, of the spread of

Christianity during the first three centuries is far from complete.

This, however, is not the greatest defect of this celebrated chapter.

The proportions of importance are not truly assigned; nay, the most

effective causes are only not omitted--mentioned, indeed, but 'quasi in

transitu', not developed or distinctly brought out: for example, the

zealous despotism of the Cæsars, with the consequent exclusion of men of

all ranks from the great interests of the public weal, otherwise than as

servile instruments; in short, the direct contrary of that state and

character of men's minds, feelings, hopes and fancies, which elections,

Parliaments, Parliamentary reports, and newspapers produce in England;

and this extinction of patriotism aided by the melting down of states

and nations in the one vast yet heterogeneous Empire;--the number and

variety of the parts acting only to make each insignificant in its own

eyes, and yet sufficient to preclude all living interest in the peculiar

institutions and religious forms of Rome; which beginning in a petty

district, had, no less than the Greek republics, its mythology and

[Greek: thraeskeia] intimately connected with localities and local

events. The mere habit of staring or laughing at nine religions must

necessarily end in laughing at the tenth, that is, the religion of the

man's own birth-place. The first of these causes, that is, the

detachment of all love and hope from the things of the visible world,

and from temporal objects not merely selfish, must have produced in

thousands a tendency to, and a craving after, an internal religion,

while the latter occasioned an absolute necessity of a mundane as

opposed to a national or local religion. I am far from denying or

doubting the influence of the excellence of the Christian faith in the

propagation of the Christian Church or the power of its evidences; but

still I am persuaded that the necessity of some religion, and the

untenable nature and obsolete superannuated character of all the others,

occasioned the conversion of the largest though not the worthiest part

of the new-made Christians. Here, though exploded in physics, we have

recourse to the 'horror vacui' as an efficient cause. This view of the

subject can offend or startle those only who, in their passion for

wonderment, virtually exclude the agency of Providence from any share in

the realizing of its own benignant scheme; as if the disposition of

events by which the whole world of human history, from north and south,

east and west, directed their march to one central point, the

establishment of Christendom, were not the most stupendous of miracles!

It is a yet sadder consideration, that the same men who can find God's

presence and agency only in sensuous miracles, wholly misconceive the

characteristic purpose and proper objects of historic Christianity and

of the outward and visible Church, of which historic Christianity is the

ground and the indispensable condition; but this is a subject delicate

and dangerous, at all events requiring a less scanty space than the

margins of these honestly printed pages.

Ib. s. iv. p. 133.

The death of Ananias and Sapphira, and the blindness of Elymas the

sorcerer, amount not to this, for they were miraculous inflictions.

One great difficulty respecting, not the historic truth (of which there

can be no rational doubt), but the miraculous nature, of the sudden

deaths of Ananias and Sapphira is derived from the measure which gave

occasion to it, namely, the sale of their property by the new converts

of Palestine, in order to establish that community of goods, which,

according to a Rabbinical tradition, existed before the Deluge, and was

to be restored by the children of Seth (one of the names which the

Jewish Christians assumed) before the coming of the Son of Man. Now this

was a very gross and carnal, not to say fanatical, misunderstanding of

our Lord's words, and had the effect of reducing the Churches of the

Circumcision to beggary, and of making them an unnecessary burthen on

the new Churches in Greece and elsewhere. See Rhenferd as to this.

The fact of Elymas, however, concludes the miraculous nature of the

deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, which, taken of themselves, would indeed

have always been supposed, but could scarcely have been proved, the

result of a miraculous or superhuman power. There are for me, I confess,

great difficulties in this incident, especially when it is compared with

our Lord's reply to the Apostles' proposal of calling down fire from

heaven. 'The Son of Man is not come to destroy', &c. At all events it is

a subject that demands and deserves deep consideration.

Ib. s. i. p. 141.

The religion of Jesus Christ is 'the form of sound doctrine and

wholesome words', which is set down in Scripture indefinitely,

actually conveyed to us by plain places, and separated as for the

question of necessary or not necessary by the Symbol of the Apostles.

I cannot refrain from again expressing my surprise at the frequency and

the undoubting positiveness of this assertion in so great a scholar, so

profound a Patrician, as Jeremy Taylor was. He appears 'bona fide' to

have believed the absurd fable of this Creed having been a pic-nic to

which each of the twelve Apostles contributed his 'symbolum'. Had Jeremy

Taylor taken it for granted so completely and at so early an age, that

he read without attending to the various passages in the Fathers and

ecclesiastical historians, which shew the gradual formation of this

Creed? It is certainly possible, and I see no other solution of the

problem.

Ib. s. ix. p. 153.

'Judge not, that ye be not judged'. The dread of these words is, I fear,

more influential on my spirit than either the duty of charity or my

sense of Taylor's high merits, in enabling me to struggle against the

strong inclination to pass the sentence of dishonesty on the reasoning

in this paragraph. Had I met the passage in Richard Baxter or in Bishop

Hall, it would have made no such unfavourable impression. But Taylor was

so acute a logician, and had made himself so completely master of the

subject, that it is hard to conceive him blind to sophistry so glaring.

I am myself friendly to Infant Baptism, but for that reason feel more

impatience of any unfairness in its defenders.

Ib. Ad. iii. and xiii. p. 178.

But then, that God is not as much before hand with Christian as with

Jewish infants is a thing which can never be believed by them who

understand that in the Gospel God opened all his treasures of mercies,

and unsealed the fountain itself; whereas, before, he poured forth

only rivulets of mercy and comfort.

This is mere sophistry; and I doubt whether Taylor himself believed it a

sufficient reply to his own argument. There is no doubt that the primary

purpose of Circumcision was to peculiarize the Jews by an indelible

visible sign; and it was as necessary that Jewish infants should be

known to be Jews as Jewish men. Then humanity and mere safety determined

that the bloody rite should be performed in earliest infancy, as soon as

the babe might be supposed to have gotten over the fever of his birth.

This is clear; for women had no correspondent rite, but the same result

was obtained by the various severe laws concerning their marriage with

aliens and other actions.

Ib. p. 180.

And as those persons who could not be circumcised (I mean the

females), yet were baptized, as is notorious in the Jews' books and

story.

Yes, but by no command of God, but only their own fancies.

Ib. Ad. iv. p. 181.

'Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child,

shall not enter therein': receive it as a little child receives it,

that is, with innocence, and without any let or hinderance.

Is it not evident that Christ here converted negatives into positives?

As a babe is without malice negatively, so you must be positively and by

actuation, that is, full of love and meekness; as the babe is

unresisting, so must you be docile, and so on.

Ib. Ad. v.

And yet, notwithstanding this terrible paragraph, Taylor believed that

infants were not a whit the worse off for not being baptized. Strange

contradiction! They are born in sin, and Baptism is the only way of

deliverance; and yet it is not. For the infant is 'de se' of the kingdom

of heaven. Christ blessed them, not in order to make them so, but

because they already were so. So that this argument seems more than all

others demonstrative for the Anabaptist, and to prove that Baptism

derives all its force if it be celestial magic, or all its meaning if it

be only a sacrament and symbol, from the presumption of actual sin in

the person baptized.

Ib. Ad. xv. p. 186.

And he that hath without difference commanded that all nations should

be baptized, hath without difference commanded all sorts of persons.

Even so our Lord commanded all men to repent, did he therefore include

babes of a month old? [8] Yes, when they became capable of repentance.

And even so babes are included in the general command of Baptism, that

is, as soon as they are baptizable. But Baptism supposed both repentance

and a promise; babes are not capable of either, and therefore not of

Baptism. For the physical element was surely only the sign and seal of a

promise by a counter promise and covenant. The rite of Circumcision is

wholly inapplicable; for there a covenant was between Abraham and God,

not between God and the infant. "Do so and so to all your male children,

and I will favor them. Mark them before the world as a peculiar and

separate race, and I will then consider them as my chosen people." But

Baptism is personal, and the baptized a subject not an object; not a

thing, but a person; that is, having reason, or actually and not merely

potentially. Besides, Jeremy Taylor was too sound a student of Erasmus

and Grotius not to know the danger of screwing up St. Paul's

accommodations of Jewish rites, meant doubtless as inducements of

rhetoric and innocent compliances with innocent and invincible

prejudices, into articles of faith. The conclusions are always true; but

all the arguments are not and were never intended to be reducible into

syllogisms demonstrative.

Ib. Ad. xviii. p. 191.

But let us hear the answer. First, it is said, that Baptism and the

Spirit signify the same thing; for by water is meant the effect of the

Spirit.

By the 'effect,' the Anabaptist clearly means the 'causa causans', the

'act of the Spirit.' As well might Taylor say that a thought is not

thinking, because it is the effect of thinking. Had Taylor been right,

the water to be an apt sign ought to have been dirty water; for that

would be the 'res effecta'. But it is pure water, therefore 'res agens'.

Ib. p. 192.

For it is certain and evident, that regeneration or new birth is here

enjoined to all as of absolute and indispensable necessity.

Yet Taylor himself has denied it over and over again in his tracts on

Original Sin; and how is it in harmony with the words of Christ--'Of

such are the kingdom of heaven'? Are we not regenerated back to a state

of spiritual infancy? Yet for such Anti-pædobaptists as hold the dogma

of original guilt it is doubtless a fair argument; but Taylor ought not

to have used it as certain and evident in itself, and not merely 'ad

hominem et per accidens'. As making a bow is in England the understood

conventional mark or visible language of reverence, so in the East was

Baptism the understood outward and visible mark of conversion and

initiation. So much for the visible act: then for the particular meaning

affixed to it by Christ. This was [Greek: metánoia], an adoption of a

new principle of action and consequent reform of conduct; a cleansing,

but especially a cleansing away of the carnal film from the mind's eye.

Hence the primitive Church called baptism [Greek: ph_os], light, and the

Eucharist [Greek: z_oàe], life. Baptism, therefore, was properly the

sign, the 'precursor', or rather the first act, the 'initium', of that

regeneration of which the whole spiritual life of a Christian is the

complete process; the Eucharist indicating the means, namely, the

continued assimilation of and to the Divine Humanity. Hence the

Eucharist was called the continuation of the Incarnation.

Ib.

And yet it does not follow that they should all be baptized with the

Holy Ghost and with fire. But it is meant only that that glorious

effect should be to them a sign of Christ's eminency above him; they

should see from him a Baptism greater than that of John.

This is exactly of a piece with that gloss of the Socinians in evasion

of St. Paul's words concerning Christ's emptying himself of the form of

God, and becoming a servant, which all the world of Christians had

interpreted of the Incarnation. But no! it only referred to the miracle

of his transfiguration!

... 'credat Judæus Apella!

Non ego'.

St. John could not mean this, unless he denied the distinct personality

of the Holy Ghost. For it was the Holy Ghost that then descended 'as the

substitute of Christ; nor does St. Luke even hint that it was understood

to be a Baptism, even if we suppose the 'tongues of fire' to be anything

visual, and not as we say, Victory sate on his helmet like an eagle. The

spirit of eloquence descended into them like a tongue of fire, and that

they spoke different languages is, I conceive, no where said; but only

that being rustic Galileans they yet spake a dialect intelligible to all

the Jews from the most different provinces. For it is clear they were

all Jews, and, as Jews, had doubtless a 'lingua communis' which all

understood when spoken, though persons of education only could speak it.

Even so a German boor understands, but yet cannot talk in, High German,

that is, the language of his Bible and Hymn-book. So it is with the

Scotch of Aberdeen with regard to pure English. In short Taylor's

arguments press on the Anabaptists, only as far as the Anabaptists

baptize at all; they are in fact attacks on Baptism; and it would only

follow from them that the Baptist is more rational than the Pædobaptist,

but that the Quaker is more consistent than either. To pull off your hat

is in Europe a mark of respect. What, if a parent in his last will

should command his children and posterity to pull off their hats to

their superiors,--and in course of time these children or descendants

emigrated to China, or some place, where the same ceremony either meant

nothing, or an insult. Should we not laugh at them if they did not

interpret the words into, Pay reverence to your superiors. Even so

Baptism was the Jewish custom, and natural to those countries; but with

us it would be a more significant rite if applied as penance for excess

of zeal and acts of bigotry, especially as sprinkling.

Ib. p. 196.

But farther yet I demand, can infants receive Christ in the Eucharist?

Surely the wafer and the tea-spoonful of wine might be swallowed by an

infant, as well as water be sprinkled upon him. But if the former is not

the Eucharist because without faith and repentance, so cannot the

latter, it would seem, be Baptism. For they are declared equal adjuncts

of both Sacraments. The argument therefore is a mere 'petitio principii

sub lite'.

Ib. Ad. ix. p. 197.

The promise of the Holy Ghost is made to all, to us and to our

children: and if the Holy Ghost belongs to them, then Baptism belongs

to them also.

If this be not rank enthusiasm I know not what is. The Spirit is

promised to them, first, as protection and providence, and as internal

operation when those faculties are developed, in and by which the Spirit

co-operates. Can Taylor shew an instance in Scripture in which the Holy

Spirit is said to operate simply, and without the co-operation of the

subject?

Ib. Ad. xix. p. 199.

And when the boys in the street sang Hosanna to the Son of David, our

blessed Lord said that if they had held their peace, the stones of the

street would have cried out Hosanna.

By the same argument I could defend the sprinkling of mules and asses

with holy water, as is done yearly at Rome on St. Antony's day, I

believe. For they are capable of health and sickness, of restiveness and

of good temper, and these are all emanations from their Creator. Besides

in the great form of Baptism the words are not [Greek: en onómati], but

[Greek: eis tò onoma], and many learned men have shewn that they may

mean 'into the power or influence' of the Father, the Son, and the

Spirit. But spiritual influences suppose capability in act of receiving

them; and we must either pretend to believe that the soul of the babe,

that is, his consciousness, is acted on without his consciousness, or

that the instrumental cause is antecedent by years to its effect, which

would be a conjunction disjunctive with a vengeance. Again, Baptism is

nothing except as followed by the Spirit; but it is irrational to say,

that the Spirit acts on the mere potentialities of an infant. For

wherein is the Spirit, as used in Scripture in appropriation to

Christians, different from God's universal providence and goodness, but

that the latter like the sun may shine on the wicked and on the good, on

the passive and on those who by exercise increase its effect; whereas

the former always implies a co-operant subject, that is, a developed

reason. When God gave his Spirit miraculously to the young child,

Daniel, he at the same time miraculously hastened the development of his

understanding.

Ib. Ad. xxviii. p. 205.

But we see also that although Christ required faith of them who came

to be healed, yet when any were brought, or came in behalf of others,

he only required faith of them who came, and their faith did benefit

to others....

But this instance is so certain a reproof of this objection of theirs,

which is their principal, which is their all, that it is a wonder to

me they should not all be convinced at the reading and observing of

it.

So far from certainty, I find no strength at all in this reproof.

Doubtless Christ at a believer's request might heal his child's or his

servant's bodily sickness; for this was an act of power, requiring only

an object. But is it any where said, that at a believer's request he

gave the Spirit and the graces of faith to an unbeliever without any

mental act, or moral co-operation of the latter? This would have been a

proof indeed; but Taylor's instance is a mere 'ad aliud'.

Ib. Ad. xxxi. p. 207.

And although there are some effects of the Holy Spirit which require

natural capacities to be their foundation; yet those are the [Greek:

energáemata] or powers of working: but the [Greek: charísmata], and

the inheritance and the title to the promises require nothing on our

part, but that we can receive them.

The Bishop flutters about and about, but never fairly answers the

question, What does Baptism do? The Baptist says it attests forgiveness

of sins, as the reward of faith and repentance. This is intelligible;

but as to the [Greek: charísmata]--the children of believers, if so

taught and educated, are surely entitled to the promises; and what

analogy is there in this to any one act of power and gift of powers

mentioned as [Greek: charísmata], when the word is really used in

contradistinction from [Greek: energáemata] Baptism is spoken of many

times by St. Paul properly as well as metaphorically, and in the former

sense it is never described as a [Greek: chárisma] on a passive

recipient, while in the latter sense it always respects an [Greek:

enérgaema] of the Spirit of God, and a [Greek: synérgaema] in the spirit

of the recipient. All that Taylor can make out is, that Baptism effects

a potentiality in a potentiality, or a chalking of chalk to make white

white.

Ib. p. 210.

And if it be questioned by wise men whether the want of it do not

occasion their eternal loss, and it is not questioned whether Baptism

does them any hurt or no, then certainly to baptize them is the surer

way without all peradventure.

Now this is the strongest argument of all against Infant Baptism, and

that which alone weighed at one time with me, namely, that it supposes

and most certainly encourages a belief concerning God, the most

blasphemous and intolerable; and no human wit can express this more

forcibly and affectingly than Taylor himself has done in his Letter to a

Lady on Original Sin. It is too plain to be denied that the belief of

the strict necessity of Infant Baptism, and the absolute universality of

the practice did not commence till the dogma of original guilt had begun

to despotize in the Church: while that remained uncertain and sporadic,

Infant Baptism was so too; some did it, many did not. But as soon as

Original Sin in the sense of actual guilt became the popular creed, then

all did it. [9]

Ib. s. xvi. p. 224.

And although they have done violence to all philosophy and the reason

of man, and undone and cancelled the principles of two or three

sciences, to bring in this article; yet they have a divine revelation,

whose literal and grammatical sense, if that sense were intended,

would warrant them to do violence to all the sciences in the circle.

And indeed that Transubstantiation is openly and violently against

natural reason is no argument to make them disbelieve it, who believe

the mystery of the Trinity in all those niceties of explication which

are in the School (and which now-a-days pass for the doctrine of the

Church), with as much violence to the principles of natural and

supernatural philosophy as can be imagined to be in the point of

Transubstantiation.

This is one of the many passages in Taylor's works which lead me to

think that his private opinions were favorable to Socinianism. Observe,

to the views of Socinus, not to modern Unitarianism, as taught by

Priestley and Belsham. And doubtless Socinianism would much more easily

bear a doubt, whether the difference between it and the orthodox faith

was not more in words than in the things meant, than the Arian

hypothesis. A mere conceptualist, at least, might plausibly ask whether

either party, the Athanasian or the Socinian, had a sufficiently

distinct conception of what the one meant by the hypostatical union of

the Divine Logos with the man Jesus; or the other of his plenary, total,

perpetual, and continuous inspiration, to have any well-grounded

assurance, that they do not mean the same thing.

Moreover, no one knew better than Jeremy Taylor that this apparent soar

of the hooded falcon, faith, to the very empyrean of bibliolatry

amounted in fact to a truism of which the following syllogism is a fair

illustration. All stones are men: all men think: 'ergo', all stones

think. The 'major' is taken for granted, the minor no one denies; and

then the conclusion is good logic, though a very foolish untruth. Or, if

an oval were demonstrated by Euclid to be a circle, it would be a

circle; and if it were a demonstrable circle, it would be a circle,

though the strait lines drawable from the centre to the circumference

are unequal. If we were quite certain that an omniscient Being,

incapable of deceiving, or being deceived, had assured us that 5 X 5 = 6

X 3, and that the two sides of a certain triangle were together less

than the third, then we should be warranted in setting at nought the

science of arithmetic and geometry. On another occasion, as when it was

the good Bishop's object to expose the impudent assertions of the Romish

Church since the eleventh century, he would have been the first to have

replied by a counter syllogism.

If we are quite certain that any writing pretending to divine origin

contains gross contradictions to demonstrable truths 'in eodem

genere', or commands that outrage the clearest principles of right

and wrong; then we may be equally certain that the pretence is a

blasphemous falsehood, inasmuch as the compatibility of a document with

the conclusions of self-evident reason, and with the laws of conscience,

is a condition 'a priori' of any evidence adequate to the proof of

its having been revealed by God.

This principle is clearly laid down both by Moses and by St. Paul. If a

man pretended to be a prophet, he was to predict some definite event

that should take place at some definite time, at no unreasonable

distance: and if it were not fulfilled, he was to be punished as an

impostor. But if he accompanied his prophecy with any doctrine

subversive of the exclusive Deity and adorability of the one God of

heaven and earth, or any seduction to a breach of God's commandments, he

was to be put to death at once, all other proof of his guilt and

imposture being superfluous. [10] So St. Paul. If any man preach another

Gospel, though he should work all miracles, though he had the appearance

and evinced the superhuman powers of an angel from heaven--he was at

once, in contempt of all imaginable sensuous miracles, to be holden

accursed. [11]

Ib. s. xviii. p. 225.

And now for any danger to men's persons for suffering such a doctrine,

this I shall say, that if they who do it are not formally guilty of

idolatry, there is no danger that they whom they persuade to it,

should be guilty ... When they believe it to be no idolatry, then

their so believing it is sufficient security from that crime, which

hath so great a tincture and residency in the will, that from thence

only it hath its being criminal.

Will not this argument justify all idolaters? For surely they believe

themselves worshippers either of the Supreme Being under a permitted

form, or of some son of God (as Apollo) to whom he has delegated such

and such powers. If this be the case, there is no such crime as

idolatry: yet the second commandment expressly makes the worshipping of

God in or before a visual image of him not only idolatry, but the most

hateful species of it. Now do they not worship God in the visible form

of bread, and prostrate themselves before pictures of the Trinity? Are

we so mad as to suppose that the pious heathens thought the statue of

Jupiter, Jove himself? No; and yet these heathens were idolaters. But

there was no such being as Jupiter. No! Was there no King of Kings and

Lord of Lords; and does the name Jove instead of Jehovah (perhaps the

same word too) make the difference? Were Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus

idolaters?

UNUM NECESSARIUM; OR THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE.

1. The first great divines among the Reformers, Luther, Calvin, and

their compeers and successors, had thrown the darkness of storms on an

awful fact of human nature, which in itself had only the darkness of

negations. What was certain, but incomprehensible, they rendered

contradictory and absurd by a vain attempt at explication. It was a

fundamental fact, and of course could not be comprehended; for to

comprehend, and thence to explain, is the same as to perceive, and

thence to point out, a something before the given fact, and Standing to

it in the relation of cause to effect. Thus they perverted original sin

into hereditary guilt, and made God act in the spirit of the cruellest

laws of jealous governments towards their enemies, upon the principle of

treason in the blood. This was brought in to explain their own

explanation of God's ways, and then too often God's alleged way in this

case was adduced to justify the cruel state law of treason in the blood.

2. In process of time, good men and of active minds were shocked at

this; but, instead of passing back to the incomprehensible fact, with a

vault over the unhappy idol forged for its comprehension, they

identified the two in name; and while in truth their arguments applied

only to a false theory, they rejected the fact for the sake of the

mis-solution, and fell into far worse errors. For the mistaken theorist

had built upon a foundation, though but a superstructure of chaff and

straw; but the opponents built on nothing. Aghast at the superstructure,

these latter ran away from that which is the sole foundation of all

human religion.

3. Then came the persecutions of the Arminians in Holland; then the

struggle in England against the Arminian Laud and all his

party--terrible persecutors in their turn of the Calvinists and

systematic divines; then the Civil War and the persecutions of the

Church by the Puritans in their turn; and just in this state of heated

feelings did Taylor write these Works, which contain dogmas subversive

of true Christian faith, namely, his 'Unum Necessarium', or Doctrine and

Practice of Repentance, which reduces the cross of Christ to nothing,

especially in the seventh chapter of the same, and the after defences of

it in his Letters on Original Sin to a Lady, and to the Bishop of

Rochester; and the Liberty of Prophesying, which, putting toleration on

a false ground, has left no ground at all for right or wrong in matters

of Christian faith.

In the marginal notes, which I have written in these several treatises

on Repentance, I appear to myself to have demonstrated that Taylor's

system has no one advantage over the Lutheran in respect of God's

attributes; that it is 'bona fide' Pelagianism (though he denies

it; for let him define that grace which Pelagius would not accept,

because incompatible with free will and merit, and profess his belief in

it thus defined, and every one of his arguments against absolute decrees

tell against himself); and lastly, that its inevitable logical

consequences are Socinianism and 'quæ sequuntur'. In Tillotson the

face of Arminianism looked out fuller, and Christianity is represented

as a mere arbitrary contrivance of God, yet one without reason. Let not

the surpassing eloquence of Taylor dazzle you, nor his scholastic

retiary versatility of logic illaqueate your good sense. Above all do

not dwell too much on the apparent absurdity or horror of the dogma he

opposes, but examine what he puts in its place, and receive candidly the

few hints which I have admarginated for your assistance, being in the

love of truth and of Christ,

Your Brother.

I have omitted one remark, probably from over fullness of intention to

have inserted it.

1. The good man and eloquent expresses his conjectural belief that, if

Adam had not fallen, Christ would still have been necessary, though not

perhaps by Incarnation. Now, in the first place, this is only a play

thought of himself, and Scotus, and perhaps two or three others in the

Schools; no article of faith or of general presumption; consequently it

has little serious effect even on the guessers themselves. In the next

place, if it were granted, yet it would be a necessity wholly 'ex parte

Dei', not at all 'ex parte Hominis':--for what does it amount to but

this--that God having destined a creature for two states, the earthly

rational, and the heavenly spiritual, and having chosen to give him, in

the first instance, faculties sufficient only for the first state, must

afterwards superinduce those sufficient for the second state, or else

God would at once and the same time destine and not destine. This

therefore is a mere fancy, a theory, but not a binding religion; no

covenant.

2. But the Incarnation, even after the fall of Adam, he clearly makes to

be specifically of no necessity. It was only not to take away peevishly

the estate of grace from the poor innocent children, because of the

father,--according to the good Bishop, a poor ignorant, who before he

ate the apple of knowledge did not know what right and wrong was; and

Christ's Incarnation would have been no more necessary then than it was

before, according to Taylor's belief. Here again the Incarnation is

wholly a contrivance 'ex parte Dei', and no way resulting from any

default of man.

3. Consequently Taylor neither saw nor admitted any 'a priori' necessity

of the Incarnation from the nature of man, and which, being felt by man

in his own nature, is itself the greatest of proofs for the admission of

it, and the strongest pre-disposing cause of the admission of all proof

positive. Not having this, he was to seek 'ab extra' for proofs in

facts, in historical evidence in the world of sense. The same causes

produce the same effects. Hence Grotius, Taylor, and Baxter (then, as

appears in his Life, in a state of uneasy doubt), were the first three

writers of evidences of the Christian religion, such as have been since

followed up by hundreds,--nine-tenths of them Socinians or

Semi-Socinians, and which, taking head and tail, I call the

Grotio-Paleyan way.

4. Hence the good man was ever craving for some morsel out of the

almsbasket of all external events, in order to prove to himself his own

immortality; and, with grief and shame I tell it, became evidence and

authority in Irish stories of ghosts, and apparitions, and witches. Let

those who are astonished refer to Glanville on Witches, and they will be

more astonished still. The fact now stated at once explains and

justifies my anxiety in detecting the errors of this great and excellent

genius at their fountain head,--the question of Original Sin: for how

important must that error be which ended in bringing Bishop Jeremy

Taylor forward as an examiner, judge, and witness in an Irish apparition

case!

Ib. s. xxxviii. p. 278.

Although God exacts not an impossible law under eternal and

insufferable pains, yet he imposes great holiness in unlimited and

indefinite measures, with a design to give excellent proportions of

reward answerable to the greatness of our endeavour. Hell is not the

end of them that fail in the greatest measures of perfection; but

great degrees of heaven shall be their portion who do all that they

can always, and offend in the fewest instances.

It is not to be denied that one if not more of the parables appears to

sanction this, but the same parables would by consequence seem to favour

a state of Purgatory. From John, Paul, and the philosophy of the

doctrine, I should gather a different faith, and find a sanction for

this too in one of the parables, namely, that of the labourer at the

eleventh hour. Heaven, bliss, union with God through Christ, do not seem

to me comparative terms, or conceptions susceptible of degree. But it is

a difficult question. The first Fathers of the Reformation, and the

early Fathers of the primitive Church, present different systems, and in

a very different spirit.

Ib. p. 324-328.

Descriptions of repentance taken from the Holy Scriptures.

This is a beautiful collection of texts. Still the pious but unconverted

Jew (a Moses Mendelsohn, for instance), has a right to ask, What then

did Christ teach or do, such and of such additional moment as to be

rightfully entitled the founder of a new law, instead of being, like

Isaiah and others, an enforcer and explainer of the old? If

Christianity, or the 'opus operans' of Redemption, was synchronous with

the Fall of man, then the same answer must be returned to the passages

here given from the Old Testament as to those from the New; namely, that

Sanctification is the result of Redemption, not its efficient cause or

previous condition. Assuredly [Greek: metanóaesis] and Sanctification

differ only as the plant and the growth or growing of the plant. But the

words of the Apostle (it will be said) are exhortative and dehortative.

Doubtless! and so would be the words of a wise physician addressed to a

convalescent. Would this prove that the patient's revalescence had been

independent of the medicines given him? The texts are addressed to the

free will, and therefore concerning possible objects of free will. No

doubt! Should that process, the end and virtue of which is to free the

will, destroy the free will? But I cannot make it out to my

understanding, how the two are compatible.--Answer; the spirit knows the

things of the spirit. Here lies the sole true ground of

Latitudinarianism, Arminian, or Socinian; and this is the sole and

sufficient confutation; 'spiritualia spiritus cognoscit'. Would you

understand with your ears instead of hearing with your understanding?

Now, as the ears to the understanding, so is the understanding to the

spirit. This Plato knew; and art thou a master in Israel, and knowest it

not?

Ib. p. 330.

'Who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the

blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing,

and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace'.

By this passage we must interpret the words "sin wilfully," in reference

to an unpardonable sin, in the preceding sentence.

Of the moral capacity of sinful habits.

Ib. s. ii. p. 432.

Probably from the holiness of his own life, Taylor has but just

fluttered about a bad habit, not fully described it. He has omitted, or

rather described contradictorily, the case of those with whom the

objections to sin are all strengthened, the dismal consequences more

glaring and always present to them as an avenging fury, the sin loathed,

detested, hated; and yet, spite of all this, nay, the more for all this,

perpetrated. Both lust and intemperance would furnish too many instances

of these most miserable victims.

Ib. s. xxxix. p. 456.

For every vicious habit being radicated in the will, and being a

strong love, inclination and adhesion to sin, unless the natural being

of this love be taken off, the enmity against God remains.

But the most important question is as to those vicious habits in which

there is no love to sin, but only a dread and recoiling from intolerable

pain, as in the case of the miserable drunkard! I trust that these

epileptic agonies are rather the punishments than the augumenters of his

guilt. The annihilation of the wicked is a fearful thought, yet it would

solve many difficulties both in natural religion and in Scripture. And

Taylor in his Arminian dread of Calvinism is always too shy of this

"grace of God:" he never denies, yet never admits, it any separate

operancy 'per se'. And this, I fancy, is the true distinction of

Arminianisrn and Calvinism in their moral effects. Arminianism is cruel

to individuals, for fear of damaging the race by false hopes and

improper confidences; while Calvinism is horrible for the race, but full

of consolation to the suffering individual.

The next section is, taken together, one of the many instances that

confirm my opinion that Calvinism (Archbishop Leighton's for example),

compared with Taylor's Arminianism, is as the lamb in the wolf's skin to

the wolf in the lamb's skin: the one is cruel in the phrases, the other

in the doctrine.

Ib. s. lvi. p. 469.

But if a single act of contrition cannot procure pardon of sins that

are habitual, then a wicked man that returns not till it be too late

to root out vicious habits, must despair of salvation. I answer, &c.

Would not Taylor's purposes have been sufficiently attained by pressing

the contrast between attrition and contrition with faith, and the utter

improbability that the latter (which alone can be efficient), shall be

vouchsafed to a sinner who has continued in his sins in the flattery of

a death-bed repentance; a blasphemy that seems too near that against the

Holy Ghost? My objection to Taylor is, that he seems to reduce the death

of Christ almost to a cypher; a contrivance rather to reconcile the

attributes of God, than an act of infinite love to save sinners. But the

truth is, that this is the peccant part of Arminianism, and Tillotson is

yet more open than Taylor. Forbid me, common goodness, that I should

think Tillotson conscious of Socinianism! but that his tenets involved

it, I more than suspect. See his Discourses on Transubstantiation, and

those near it in the same volume.

Ib. lxiv. p. 478.

Now there is no peradventure, but new-converted persons, heathens

newly giving up their names to Christ and being baptized, if they die

in an hour, and were baptized half an hour after they believe in

Christ, are heirs of salvation.

This granted, I should little doubt of confuting all the foregoing, as

far as I object to it. I would rather be 'durus pater infantum', like

Austin, than 'durus pater ægrotantium'. Taylor considers all Christians

who are so called.

Ib. s. lxvi. p. 481.

All this paragraph is as just as it is fine and lively, but far from

confirming Taylor's doctrine. The case is as between one individual and

a general rule. I know God's mercy and Christ's merits; but whether your

heart has true faith in them, I cannot know. 'Be it unto thee according

to thy faith', said Christ: so should his ministers say. All these

passages, however, are utterly irreconcilable with the Roman doctrine,

that the priest's absolution is operant, and not simply declarative. As

to the decisions of Paulinus and Asterius, it is to be feared that they

had the mortmain bequests and compensations in view more than the words

of St. Paul, or the manifest purposes of redemption by faith. Yea,

Taylor himself has his 'redime peccata eleemosynis'.

By the by, I know of few subjects that have been more handled and less

rationally treated than this of alms-giving. Every thing a rich man

purchases beyond absolute necessaries, ought to be purchased in the

spirit of alms, that is, as the most truly beneficial way of disparsing

that wealth, of which he is the steward, not owner.

Ib.

St. Paul taught us this secret, that sins are properly made habitual

upon the stock of impunity. 'Sin taking occasion by the law wrought in

me all concupiscence'; [Greek: 'aphormàen labousa'], 'apprehending

impunity,' [Greek: 'dià taes entolaes'], 'by occasion of the

commandment,' that is, so expressed and established as it was; because

in the commandment forbidding to lust or covet, there was no penalty

annexed or threatened in the sanction or in the explication. Murder

was death, and so was adultery and rebellion. Theft was punished

severely too; and so other things in their proportion; but the desires

God left under a bare restraint, and affixed no penalty in the law.

Now sin, that is, men that had a mind to sin, taking occasion hence,

&c.

This is a very ingenious and very plausible exposition of St. Paul's

words; but surely, surely, it is not the right one. I find both the

meaning and the truth of the Apostle's words in the vividness and

consequently attractive and ad-(or in-)sorbent power given to an image

or thought by the sense of its danger, by the consciousness of its being

forbidden,--which, in an unregenerate and unassisted will, struggling

with, or even exciting, the ever ready inclination of corrupted nature,

produces a perplexity and confusion which again increase the person's

susceptibility of the soliciting image or fancy so intensified. Guilt

and despair add a stimulus and sting to lust. See Iago in Shakspeare.

Ib. s. xi. p. 500.

It was not well with thee when thou didst first enter into the suburbs

of hell by single actions of sin, &c.

Aye! this is excellent indeed, and worthy of a guardian angel of the

Church. When Jeremy Taylor escapes from the Mononomian Romaism, which

netted him in his too eager recoil from the Antinomian boar, brought

forth and foddered (as he imagined) in Calvin's stye; when from this

wiry net he escapes into the devotional and the dietetic, as into a

green meadow-land, with springs, and rivulets, and sheltering groves,

where he leads his flock like a shepherd;--then it is that he is most

himself,--then only he is all himself, the whole Jeremy Taylor; or if

there be one other subject graced by the same total heautophany, it is

in the pouring forth of his profound common sense on the ways and

weaknesses of men and conflicting sects, as for instance, in the

admirable birth, parentage, growth, and consummation of a religious

controversy in his 'Dissuasive from Popery'.

Ib. s. xiii. p. 502.

Let every old man that repents of the sins of his evil life be very

diligent in the search of the particulars; that by drawing them into a

heap, and spreading them before his eyes, he may be mightily ashamed

at their number and burthen.

I dare not condemn, but I am doubtful of this as a universal rule. If

there be a true hatred of sin, the precious time and the spiritual

'nisus' will, I think, be more profitably employed in enkindling

meditation on holiness, and thirstings after the mind of Christ.

Ib. ss. xxxi-xxxv. pp..517, 518.

Scarce a word in all this but for form's sake concerning the merits and

sacrifice of the Incarnate God! Surely Luther would not have given this

advice to a dying penitent, but have directed him rather to employ his

little time in agony of prayer to Christ, or in earnest meditations on

the astounding mystery of his death. In Taylor man is to do every thing.

Vol. IX. s. xi. p. 5.

For God was so exasperated with mankind, that being angry he would

still continue that punishment even to the lesser sins and sinners,

which he only had first threatened to Adam; and so Adam brought it

upon them.

And such a phrase as this used by a man in a refutation of Original Sin,

on the ground of its incompatibility with God's attributes!

"Exasperated" with those whom Taylor declares to have been innocent and

most unfortunate, the two things that most conciliate love and pity!

Ib. p. 6.

If the sequel of the paragraph, comparing God to David in one of his

worst actions, be not blasphemy, the reason is that the good man meant

it not as such. 'In facto est, sed non' in agents.

Ib. ss. xvi. xvii. pp. 8, 9.

For the further explication of which it is observable that the word

'sinner' and 'sin' in Scripture is used for any person, that hath a

fault or a legal impurky, a debt, a vitiosity, defect, or imposition,

&c.

These facts, instead of explaining away Original Sin, are

unintelligible, nay, absurd and immoral, except as shadows, types, and

symbols of it, and of the Redemption from it. Observe, too, that Taylor

never dares explain what he means by "Adam was mortal of himself and we

are mortal from him:" he did not dare affirm that soul and body are

alike material and perishable, even as the lute and the potentiality of

music in the lute. And yet if he believed the contrary, then, in his

construction of the doctrine of Original Sin, what has Christ done? St.

John died in the same sense as Abel died: and in the sense of the Church

of England neither died, but only slept in the Lord.

This same system forced Taylor into the same error which Warburton

afterwards dressed up with such trappings and trammels of erudition, in

direct contempt of the plain meaning of the Church's article; and he

takes it for granted, in many places, that the Jews under Moses knew

only of temporal life and the death of the body. Lastly, he greatly

degrades the mind of man by causelessly representing death as an evil in

itself, which, if it be considered as a crisis, or phenomenal change,

incident to a progressive being, ought as little to be thought so, as

the casting of the caterpillar's skin to make room for the wings of the

butterfly. It is the unveiling of the Psyche.

I do not affirm this as an article of Christian faith; but I say that no

candid writer ought to hide himself in double meanings. Either he should

have used the term 'death' ('ex Adamo') as loss of body, or as

change of mode of being and of its circumstances; and again this latter

as either evil for all, or as evil or good according to the moral habits

of each individual.

Observe, however, once for all, that I do not pretend to account for

Original Sin. I declare it to be an unaccountable fact. How can we

explain a 'species', when we are wholly in the dark as to the

'genus'? Now guilt itself, as well as all other immediate facts of

free will, is absolutely inexplicable; of course original guilt. If we

will perversely confound the intelligible with the sensible world,

misapply the logic appropriate to _phænomena_ and the categories, or

forms, which are empty except as substantialized in facts of experience,

in order to use them as the Procrustes' bed of faith respecting noumena:

if in short, we will strive to understand that of which we can only know

[Greek: hoti estì], we may and must make as wild work with reason, will,

conscience, guilt, and virtue, as with Original Sin and Redemption. On

every subject first ask, Is it among the [Greek: aisthaetà], or the

[Greek: noúmena]?

Ib. s. xxiii. p. 12.

It could not make us heirs of damnation. This I shall the less need to

insist upon, because, of itself, it seems so horrid to impute to the

goodness and justice of God to be author of so great calamity to

innocents, &c.

Never was there a more hazardous way of reasoning, or rather of placing

human ignorance in the judgment seat over God's wisdom. The whole might

be closely parodied in support of Atheism: rather, this is but a

paraphrase of the old atheistic arguments. Either God could not, or

would not, prevent the moral and physical evils of the universe,

including the everlasting anguish of myriads of millions: therefore he

is either not all-powerful or not all-good: but a being deficient in

power or goodness is not God:--_Ergo, &c._

Ib. s. xxv. p. 13.

I deny not but all persons naturally are so, that they cannot arrive

at heaven; but unless some other principle be put into them, or some

great grace done for them, must for ever stand separate from seeing

the face of God.

But this is but accidentally occasioned by the sin of Adam. Just so

might I say, that without the great grace of air done for them no living

beings could live. If it mean more, pray where was the grace in creating

a being, who without an especial grace must pass into utter misery? If

Taylor reply; but the grace was added in Christ: why so say the

Calvinists. According to Taylor there is no fall of man; but only an act

and punishment of a man, which punishment consisted in his living in the

kitchen garden, instead of the flower garden and orchard: and Cain was

as likely to have murdered Abel before, as after, the eating of the

forbidden fruit. But the very name of the fruit confutes Taylor. Adam

altered his nature by it. Cain did not. What Adam did, I doubt not, we

all do. Time is not with things of spirit.

Ib. s. xxvii. p. 14.

Is hell so easy a pain, or are the souls of children of so cheap, so

contemptible a price, that God should so easily throw them into hell?

This is an argument against the 'sine qua non' of Baptism, not against

Original Sin.

Ib. s. lxvii. p. 49.

Origen said enough to be mistaken in the question. [Greek: Hharà tò

Adàm koinàe pánt'on esti. Kaì tà katà taes gynaikòs, ouk esti kath aes

ou légetai.] 'Adam's curse is common to all. And there is not a woman

on earth, to whom may not be said those things which were spoken to

this woman.'

Origen's words ought to have prevented all mistake, for he plainly

enough overthrows the phantom of hereditary guilt; and as to guilt from

a corruption of nature, it is just such guilt as the carnivorous

appetites of a weaned lion, or the instinct of a brood of ducklings to

run to water. What then is it? It is an evil, and therefore seated in

the will; common to all men, the beginning of which no man can determine

in himself or in others. How comes this? It is a mystery, as the will

itself. Deeds are in time and space, therefore have a beginning. Pure

action, that is, the will, is a 'noumenon', and irreferable to time.

Thus Origen calls it neither hereditary nor original, but universal sin.

The curse of Adam is common to all men, because what Adam did, we all

do: and thus of Eve. You may substitute any woman in her place, and the

same words apply. This is the true solution of this unfortunate

question. The [Greek: pr'oton pseudos] is in the dividing the will from

the acts of the will. The will is 'ego-agens'.

Ib. s. lxxxii. p. 52.

This paragraph, though very characteristic of the Author, is fitter for

a comedy than for a grave discourse. It puts one in mind of the

play--"More sacks in the mill! Heap, boys, heap!"

Ib. s. lxxxiv. p. 56.

'Præposterum est' (said Paulus the lawyer) 'ante nos locupletes dici

quam acquisiverimus'. We cannot be said to lose what we never had; and

our fathers' goods were not to descend upon us, unless they were his

at his death.

Take away from me the knowledge that he was my father, dear Bishop, and

this will be true. But as it stands, the whole is, "says Paulus the

Lawyer;" and, "Well said, Lawyer!" say I.

Ib. p. 57.

Which though it was natural, yet from Adam it began to be a curse;

just as the motion of a serpent upon his belly, which was concreated

with him, yet upon this story was changed into a malediction and an

evil adjunct.

How? I should really like to understand this.

Ib. ch. vii. p. 73 'in initio'.

In this most eloquent treatise we may detect sundry logical lapses,

sometimes in the statement, sometimes in the instances, and once or

twice in the conclusions. But the main and pervading error lies in the

treatment of the subject 'in genere' by the forms and rules of

conceptual logic; which deriving all its material from the senses, and

borrowing its forms from the sense ([Greek: aisthaesis katharà]) or

intuitive faculty, is necessarily inapplicable to spiritual mysteries,

the very definition or contra-distinguishing character of which is that

they transcend the sense, and therefore the understanding, the faculty,

as Archbishop Leighton and Immanuel Kant excellently define it, which

judges according to sense. In the Aids to Reflection, [12] I have shewn

that the proper function of the understanding or mediate faculty is to

collect individual or sensible concretes into kinds and sorts ('genera

et species') by means of their common characters ('notæ communes'); and

to fix and distinguish these conceptions (that is, generalized

perceptions) by words. Words are the only immediate objects of the

understanding. Spiritual verities, or truths of reason 'respective ad

realia', and herein distinguished from the merely formal, or so called

universal truths, are differenced from the conceptions of the

understanding by the immediatcy of the knowledge, and from the immediate

truths of sense,--that is, from both pure and mixed intuitions,--by not

being sensible, that is, not representable by figure, measurement or

weight; nor connected with any affection of our sensibility, such as

color, taste, odors, and the like. And such knowledges we, when we speak

correctly, name ideas.

Now Original Sin, that is, sin that has its origin in itself, or in the

will of the sinner, but yet in a state or condition of the will not

peculiar to the individual agent, but common to the human race, is an

idea: and one diagnostic or contra-distinguishing mark appertaining to

all ideas, is, that they are not adequately expressible by words. An

idea can only be expressed (more correctly suggested) by two

contradictory positions; as for example; the soul is all in every

part;--nature is a sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, and its

circumference no where, and the like.

Hence many of Bishop Taylor's objections, grounded on his expositions of

the doctrine, prove nothing more than that the doctrine concerns an

idea. But besides this, Taylor everywhere assumes the consequences of

Original Sin as superinduced on a pre-existing nature, in no essential

respect differing from our present nature;--for instance, on a material

body, with its inherent appetites and its passivity to material

agents;--in short, on an animal nature in man. But this very nature, as

the antagonist of the spirit or supernatural principle in man, is in

fact the Original Sin,--the product of the will indivisible from the act

producing it; just as in pure geometry the mental construction is

indivisible from the constructive act of the intuitive faculty. Original

Sin, as the product, is a fact concerning which we know by the light of

the idea itself, that it must originate in a self-determination of a

will. That which we do not know is how it originates, and this we cannot

explain; first, from the necessity of the subject, namely, the will; and

secondly, because it is an idea, and all ideas are inconceivable. It is

an idea, because it is not a conception.

Ib. s. ii. p. 74, 75.

And they are injurious to Christ, who think that from Adam we might

have inherited immortality. Christ was the giver and preacher of it;

'he brought life and immortality to light through the gospel'. It is a

singular benefit given by God to mankind through Jesus Christ.

And none inherit it but those who are born of Christ; 'ergo', bad men

and infidels are not immortal. Immortality is one thing, a happy

immortality another. St. Paul meant the latter: Taylor either the

former, or his words have no meaning at all; for no man ever thought or

dreamed that we inherited heaven from Adam, but that as sons of Adam,

that is, as men, we have souls that do not perish with the body. I often

suspect that Taylor, in 'abditis fidei' [Greek: es_oterikaes], inclined

to the belief that there is no other immortality but heaven, and that

hell is a 'pæna damni negativa, haud privativa'. I own myself strongly

inclined to it;--but so many texts against it! I am confident that the

doctrine would be a far stronger motive than the present; for no man

will believe eternal misery of himself, but millions would admit, that

if they did not amend their lives they would be undeserving of living

for ever.

Ib. s. vi. p. 77.

[Greek: hina màe plaemmúra tòn en haemin katapontísae logismòn eis

tòn taes hamartiás buthón.]

"Lest the tumultuous crowd throw the reason within us over bridge into

the gulf of sin." What a vivid figure! It is enough to make any man set

to work to read Chrysostom.

Ib.

... 'peccantes mente sub una.'

Note Prudentius's use of 'mente sub una' for 'in one person.'

Ib. p. 78.

For even now we see, by a sad experience, that the afflicted and the

miserable are not only apt to anger and envy, but have many more

desires and more weaknesses, and consequently more aptnesses to sin in

many instances than those who are less troubled. And this is that

which was said by Arnobius; 'proni ad culpas, et ad libidinis varios

appetitos vitio sumus infirmitatis ingenitæ'.

No. Arnobius never said so good and wise a thing in his lifetime. His

quoted words have no such profound meaning.

Ib. s. vii. p. 78.

That which remained was a reasonable soul, fitted for the actions of

life and reason, but not of anything that was supernatural.

What Taylor calls reason I call understanding, and give the name reason

to that which Taylor would have called spirit.

Ib. s. xii. p. 84.

And all that evil which is upon us, being not by any positive

infliction, but by privative, or the taking away gifts, and blessings,

and graces from us, which God, not having promised to give, was

neither naturally, nor by covenant, obliged to give,--it is certain he

could not be obliged to continue that to the sons of a sinning father,

which to an innocent father he was not obliged to give.

Oh! certainly not, if hell were not attached to acts and omissions,

which without these very graces it is morally impossible for men to

avoid. Why will not Taylor speak out?

Ib. s. xiv. p. 85.

The doctrine of the ancient Fathers was that free will remained in us

after the Fall.

Yea! as the locomotive faculty in a man in a strait waistcoat. Neither

St. Augustine nor Calvin denied the remanence of the will in the fallen

spirit; but they, and Luther as well as they, objected to the flattering

epithet 'free' will. In the only Scriptural sense, as concerning the

unregenerate, it is implied in the word will, and in this sense,

therefore, it is superfluous and tautologic; and, in any other sense, it

is the fruit and final end of Redemption,--the glorious liberty of the

Gospel.

Ib. s. xvi. p. 92.

For my part I believe this only as certain, that nature alone cannot

bring them to heaven, and that Adam left us in a state in which we

could not hope for it.

This is likewise my belief, and that man must have had a Christ, even if

Adam had continued in Paradise--if indeed the history of Adam be not a

'mythos'; as, but for passages in St. Paul, we should most of us

believe; the serpent speaking, the names of the trees, and so on; and

the whole account of the creation in the first chapter of Genesis seems

to me clearly to say:--"The literal fact you could not comprehend if it

were related to you; but you may conceive of it as if it had taken place

thus and thus."

Ib. s. 1. p. 166.

That in some things our nature is cross to the divine commandment, is

not always imputable to us, because our natures were before the

commandment.

This is what I most complain of in Jeremy Taylor's ethics; namely, that

he constantly refers us to the deeds or 'phenomena' in time, the

effluents from the source, or like the 'species' of Epicurus; while the

corrupt nature is declared guiltless and irresponsible; and this too on

the pretext that it was prior in time to the commandment, and therefore

not against it. But time is no more predicable of eternal reason than of

will; but not of will; for if a will be at all, it must be 'ens

spirituale'; and this is the first negative definition of

spiritual--whatever having true being is not contemplable in the forms

of time and space. Now the necessary consequence of Taylor's scheme is a

conscience-worrying, casuistical, monkish work-holiness. Deeply do I

feel the difficulty and danger that besets the opposite scheme; and

never would I preach it, except under such provisos as would render it

perfectly compatible with the positions previously established by Taylor

in this chapter, s. xliv. p. 158. 'Lastly; the regenerate not only hath

received the Spirit of God, but is wholly led by him,' &c.

Ib.

If this Treatise of Repentance contain Bishop Taylor's habitual and

final convictions, I am persuaded that in some form or other he believed

in a Purgatory. In fact, dreams and apparitions may have been the

pretexts, and the immense addition of power and wealth which the belief

entailed on the priesthood, may have been their motives for patronizing

it; but the efficient cause of its reception by the churches is to be

found in the preceding Judaic legality and monk-moral of the Church,

according to which the fewer only could hope for the peace of heaven as

their next immediate state. The holiness that sufficed for this would

evince itself (it was believed) by the power of working miracles.

Ib. s. lii. p. 208.

'It shall not be pardoned in this world nor in the world to come';

that is, neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles. For 'sæculum hoc',

this world, in Scripture, is the period of the Jews' synagogue, and

[Greek: mellon aion], the world to come, is taken for the Gospel, or

the age of the Messias, frequently among the Jews.

This is, I think, a great and grievous mistake. The Rabbis of best name

divide into two or three periods, the difference being wholly in the

words; for the dividers by three meant the same as those by two.

The first was the 'dies expectationis', or 'hoc sæculum,' [Greek: en

touto kairo]: the second 'dies Messiæ', the time of the Messiah, that

is, the 'millenium': the third the 'sæculum futurum', or future state,

which last was absolutely spiritual and celestial.

But many Rabbis made the 'dies Messiæ' part, that is, the consummation

of this world, the conclusive Sabbath of the great week, in which they

supposed the duration of the earth or world of the senses to be

comprised; but all agreed that the 'dies', or thousand years, of the

Messiah was a transitional state, during which the elect were gradually

defecated of body, and ripened for the final or spiritual state.

During the 'millenium' the will of God will be done on earth, no less,

though in a lower glory, than it will be done hereafter in heaven.

Now it is to be carefully observed that the Jewish doctors or Rabbis

(all such at least as remained unconverted) had no conception or belief

of a suffering Messiah, or of a period after the birth of the Messiah,

previous to the kingdom, and of course included in the time of

expectation.

The appearance of the Messiah and his assumption of the throne of David

were to be contemporaneous. The Christian doctrine of a suffering

Messiah, or of Christ as the high priest and intercessor, has of course

introduced a modification of the Jewish scheme.

But though there is a seeming discrepance in different texts in the

first three Gospels, yet the Lord's Prayer appears to determine the

question in favour of the elder and present Rabbinical belief; that is,

it does not date the 'dies Messiae,' or kingdom of the Lord, from his

Incarnation, but from a second coming in power and glory, and hence we

are taught to pray for it as an event yet future.

Nay, our Lord himself repeatedly speaks of the Son of Man in the third

person, as yet to come. Assuredly our Lord ascended the throne and

became a King on his final departure from his disciples. But it was the

throne of his Father, and he an invisible King, the sovereign Providence

to whom all power was committed.

And this celestial kingdom cannot be identified with that under which

the divine will will be done on earth as it is in heaven; that is, when

on this earth the Church militant shall be one in holiness with the

triumphant Church.

The difficulties, I confess, are great; and for those who believe the

first Gospel (and this in its present state) to have been composed by

the Apostle Matthew, or at worst to be a literal and faithful

translation from a Hebrew (Syro-Chaldaic) Gospel written by him, and who

furthermore contend for its having been word by word dictated by an

infallible Spirit, the necessary duty of reconciling the different

passages in the first Gospel with each other, and with others in St.

Luke's, is, 'me saltern judice', a most Herculean one.

The most consistent and rational scheme is, I am persuaded, that which

is adopted in the Apocalypse. The new creation, commencing with our

Lord's resurrection, and measured as the creation of this world ('hujus

sæculi', [Greek: toutou ai_onos]) was by the doctors of the Jewish

church--namely, as a week--divided into two principal epochs,--the six

sevenths or working days, during which the Gospel was gradually to be

preached in all the world, and the number of the elect filled up,--and

the seventh, the Sabbath of the Messiah, or the kingdom of Christ on

earth in a new Jerusalem.

But as the Jewish doctors made the day (or one thousand years) of

Messiah, a part, because the consummation, of this world, [Greek: toutou

aionos toutou kairou], so the first Christians reversely made the

kingdom commence on the first (symbolical) day of the sacred week, the

last or seventh day of which was to be the complete and glorious

manifestation of this kingdom. If any one contends that the kingdom of

the Son of Man, and the re-descent of our Lord with his angels in the

clouds, are to be interpreted spiritually,

I have no objection; only you cannot pretend that this was the

interpretation of the disciples. It may be the right, but it was not the

Apostolic belief.

Ib. s. 1. p. 257.

For this was giving them pardon, by virtue of those words of Christ,

'Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted;' that is, if ye, who are the

stewards of my family, shall admit any one to the kingdom of Christ on

earth, they shall be admitted to the participation of Christ's kingdom

in heaven; and what ye bind here shall be bound there; that is, if

they be unworthy to partake of Christ here, they shall be accounted

unworthy to partake of Christ hereafter.

Then without such a gift of reading the hearts of men, as priests do not

now pretend to, this text means almost nothing. A wicked shall not, but

a good man shall, be admitted to heaven; for if you have with good

reason rejected any one here, I will reject him hereafter, amounts to no

more than the rejection or admission of men according to their moral

fitness or unfitness, the truth or unsoundness of their faith and

repentance. I rather think that the promise, like the miraculous insight

which it implies, was given to the Apostles and first disciples

exclusively, and that it referred almost wholly to the admission of

professed converts to the Church of Christ.

'In fine'.

I have written but few marginal notes to this long Treatise, for the

whole is to my feeling and apprehension so Romish, so anti-Pauline, so

unctionless, that it makes my very heart as dry as the desert sands,

when I read it. Instead of partial animadversions, I prescribe the

chapter on the Law and the Gospel, in Luther's 'Table Talk', as the

general antidote. [13]

VINDICATION OF THE GLORY OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN THE QUESTION OF

ORIGINAL SIN.

Ib. Obj. iv. p. 346.

But if Original Sin be not a sin properly, why are children baptized?

And what benefit comes to them by Baptism? I answer, as much as they

need, and are capable of.

The eloquent man has plucked just prickles enough out of the dogma of

Original Sin to make a thick and ample crown of thorns for his

opponents; and yet left enough to tear his own clothes off his back, and

pierce through the leather jerkin of his closeliest wrought logic. In

this answer to this objection he reminds me of the renowned squire, who

first scratched out his eyes in a quickset hedge, and then leaped back

and scratched them in again. So Jeremy Taylor first pulls out the very

eyes of the doctrine, leaves it blind and blank, and then leaps back

into it and scratches them in again, but with a most opulent squint that

looks a hundred ways at once, and no one can tell which it really looks

at.

Ib.

By Baptism children are made partakers of the Holy Ghost and of the

grace of God; which I desire to be observed in opposition to the

Pelagian heresy, who did suppose nature to be so perfect, that the

grace of God was not necessary, and that by nature alone, they could

go to heaven; which because I affirm to be impossible, and that

Baptism is therefore necessary, because nature is insufficient and

Baptism is the great channel of grace, &c.

What then of the poor heathens, that is, of five-sixths of all mankind.

Would more go to hell by nature alone? If so: where is God's justice in

Taylor's plan more than in Calvin's?

Ib. Obj. v. p. 355.

Although I have shewn the great excess and abundance of grace by

Christ over the evil that did descend by Adam; yet the proportion and

comparison lies in the main emanation of death from one, and life from

the other.

Does Jeremy Taylor then believe that the sentence of death on Adam and

his sons extended to the soul; that death was to be absolute cessation

of being! Scarcely I hope. But if bodily only, where is the difference

between 'ante' and 'post Christum?'

Ib. p. 356.

Not that God could be the author of a sin to any, but that he

appointed the evil which is the consequent of sin, to be upon their

heads who descended from the sinner.

Rare justice! and this too in a tract written to rescue God's justice

from the Supra- and Sub-lapsarians! How quickly would Taylor have

detected in an adversary the absurd realization contained in this and

the following passages of the abstract notion, sin, from the sinner: as

if sin were any thing but a man sinning, or a man who has sinned! As

well might a sin committed in Sirius or the planet Saturn justify the

infliction of conflagration on the earth and hell-fire on all its

rational inhabitants. Sin! the word sin! for abstracted from the sinner

it is no more: and if not abstracted from him, it remains separate from

all others.

Ib. p. 358.

The consequent of this discourse must needs at least be this; that it

is impossible that the greatest part of mankind should be left in the

eternal bonds of hell by Adam; for then quite contrary to the

discourse of the Apostle, there had been abundance of sin, but a

scarcity of grace.

And yet Jeremy Taylor will not be called a Pelagian. Why? Because

without grace superadded by Christ no man could be saved: that is, all

men must go to hell, and this not for any sin, but from a calamity, the

consequences of another man's sin, of which they were even ignorant. God

would not condemn them the sons of Adam for sin, but only inflicted on

them an evil, the necessary effect of which was that they should all

troop to the devil! And this is Jeremy Taylor's defence of God's

justice! The truth is Taylor was a Pelagian, believed that without

Christ thousands, Jews and heathens, lived wisely and holily, and went

to heaven; but this he did not dare say out, probably not even to

himself; and hence it is that he flounders backward and forward, now

upping and now downing.

In truth, this eloquent Treatise may be compared to a statue of Janus,

with one face fixed on certain opponents, full of life and force, a

witty scorn on the lip, a brow at once bright and weighty with

satisfying reason: the other looking at the something instead of that

which had been confuted, maimed, noseless, and weather-bitten into a

sort of visionary confusion and indistinctness. [14] It looks like

this--aye and very like that--but how like it is, too, such another

thing!

AN ANSWER TO A LETTER WRITTEN BY THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF

ROCHESTER, CONCERNING THE CHAPTER OF ORIGINAL SIN, IN THE "UNUM

NECESSARIUM."

Ib. p. 367.

And they who are born eunuchs should be less infected by Adam's

pollution, by having less of concupiscence in the great instance of

desires.

The fact happens to be false: and then the vulgarity, most unworthy of

our dear Jeremy Taylor, of taking the mode of the manifestation of the

disobedience of the will to the reason, for the disobedience itself. St.

James would have taught him that he who offendeth against one, offendeth

against all; and that there is some truth in the Stoic paradox that all

crimes are equal. Equal is indeed a false phrase; and therein consists

the paradox, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is the same as

the falsehood. The truth is they are all the same in kind; but unequal

in degree. They are all alike, though not equally, against the

conscience.

Ib. p. 369.

So that there is no necessity of a third place; but it concludes only

that in the state of separation from God's presence there is great

variety of degrees and kinds of evil, and every one is not the

extreme.

What is this? If hell be a state, and not a mere place, and a particular

state, its meaning must in common sense be a state of the worst sort. If

then there be a mere 'pæna damni', that is, the not being so blest as

some others may be; this is a different state 'in genere' from the 'pæna

sensus': 'ergo', not hell; 'ergo' rather a third state; or else heaven.

For every angel must be in it, than whom another angel is happier; that

is negatively damned, though positively very happy.

Ib. p. 370-1.

Just so it is in infants: hell was not made for man, but for devils;

and therefore it must be something besides mere nature that can bear

any man thither: mere nature goes neither to heaven or hell.

And how came the devils there? If it be hard to explain how Adam fell;

how much more hard to solve how purely spiritual beings could fall? And

nature! What? so much of nature, and no kind of attempt at a definition

of the word? Pray what is nature?

Ib. p. 371.

I do not say that we, by that sin (original) deserved that death,

neither can death be properly a punishment of us, till we superadd

some evil of our own; yet Adam's sin deserved it, so that it was

justly left to fall upon us, we, as a consequent and punishment of his

sin, being reduced to our natural portion.

How? What is this but flying to the old Supra-lapsarian blasphemy of a

right of property in God over all his creatures, and destroying that

sacred distinction between person and thing which is the light and the

life of all law human and divine? Mercy on us! Is not agony, is not the

stone, is not blindness, is not ignorance, are not headstrong, inherent,

innate, and connate, passions driving us to sin when reason is least

able to withhold us,--are not all these punishments, grievous

punishments, and are they not inflicted on the innocent babe? Is not

this the result infused into the 'milk not mingled' of St. Peter; [15]

spotting the immaculate begotten, souring and curdling the innocence

'without sin or malice'? [16] And if this be just, and compatible with

God's goodness, why all this outcry against St. Austin and the

Calvinists and the Lutherans, whose whole addition is a lame attempt to

believe guilt, where they cannot find it, in order to justify a

punishment which they do find?

Ib. p. 379.

But then for the evil of punishment, that may pass further than the

action. If it passes upon the innocent, it is not a punishment to

them, but an evil inflicted by right of dominion; but yet by reason of

the relation of the afflicted to him that sinned, to him it is a

punishment.

Here the snake peeps out, and now takes its tail into its mouth. Right

of dominion! Nonsense! Things are not objects of right or wrong. Power

of dominion I understand, and right of judgment I understand; but right

of dominion can have no immediate, but only a relative, sense. I have a

right of dominion over this estate, that is, relatively to all other

persons. But if there be a 'jus dominandi' over rational and free

agents, then why blame Calvin? For all attributes are then merged in

blind power: and God and fate are the same:

[Greek: Zeùs kaì Moira kaì aeerophoitis Erinnús]

Strange Trinity! God, Necessity, and the Devil. But Taylor's scheme has

far worse consequences than Calvin's: for it makes the whole scheme of

Redemption a theatrical scenery. Just restore our bodies and corporeal

passions to a perfect 'equilibrium' and fortunate instinct, and, there

being no guilt or defect in the soul, the Son of God, the Logos, and

Supreme Reason, might have remained unincarnate, uncrucified. In short,

Socinianism is as inevitable a deduction from Taylor's scheme as Deism

or Atheism is from Socinianism.

'In fine'.

The whole of Taylor's confusion originated in this;--first, that he and

his adversaries confound original with hereditary sin; but chiefly that

neither he nor his adversaries had considered that guilt must be a

'noumenon'; but that our images, remembrances, and consciousnesses of

our actions are 'phænomena'. Now the 'phænomenon' is in time, and an

effect: but the 'noumenon' is not in time any more than it is in space.

The guilt has been before we are even conscious of the action; therefore

an original sin (that is, a sin universal and essential to man as man,

and yet guilt, and yet choice, and yet amenable to punishment), may be

at once true and yet in direct contradiction to all our reasonings

derived from 'phænomena', that is, facts of time and space. But we ought

not to apply the categories of appearance to the [Greek: ontos onta] of

the intelligible or causative world. This (I should say of Original Sin)

is mystery! We do not so properly believe it, as we know it. What is

actual must be possible. But if we will confound actuals with reals, and

apply the rules of the latter to cases of the former, we must blame

ourselves for the clouds and darkness and storms of opposing winds,

which the error will not fail to raise. By the same process an Atheist

may demonstrate the contradictory nature of eternity, of a being at once

infinite and of resistless causality, and yet intelligent. Jeremy Taylor

additionally puzzled himself with Adam, instead of looking into the fact

in himself.

How came it that Taylor did not apply the same process to the congeneric

question of the freedom of the will? In half a dozen syllogisms he must

have gyved and hand-cuffed himself into blank necessity and mechanic

motions. All hangs together. Deny Original Sin, and you will soon deny

free will;--then virtue and vice;--and God becomes 'Abracadabra'; a

sound, nothing else.

SECOND LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.

Ib. p. 390-1.

To this it is answered as you see, there is a double guilt; a guilt of

person, and of nature. That is taken away, this is not: for sacraments

are given to persons, not to natures.

I need no other passage but this to convince me that Jeremy Taylor, the

angle in which the two 'apices' of logic and rhetoric meet,

consummate in both, was yet no metaphysician. Learning, fancy,

discursive intellect, 'tria juncta in uno', and of each enough to

have alone immortalized a man, he had; but yet [Greek: ouden metà

physin]. Images, conceptions, notions, such as leave him but one rival,

Shakspeare, there were; but no ideas. Taylor was a Gassendist. O! that

he had but meditated in the silence of his spirit on the mystery of an

'I AM'! He would have seen that a person, 'quoad' person, can

have nothing common or generic; and that where this finds place, the

person is corrupted by introsusception of a nature, which becomes evil

thereby, and on this relation only is an evil nature. The nature itself,

like all other works of God, is good, and so is the person in a yet

higher sense of the word, good, like all offsprings of the Most High.

But the combination is evil, and this not the work of God; and one of

the main ends and results of the doctrine of Original Sin is to silence

and confute the blasphemy that makes God the author of sin, without

avoiding it by fleeing to the almost equal blasphemy against the

conscience, that sin in the sense of guilt does not exist.

THE REAL PRESENCE AND SPIRITUAL OF CHRIST IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT,

PROVED AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

Perhaps the most wonderful of all Taylor's works. He seems, if I may so

say, to have transubstantiated his vast imagination and fancy into

subtlety not to be evaded, acuteness to which nothing remains

unpierceable, and indefatigable agility of argumentation. Add to these

an exhaustive erudition, and that all these are employed in the service

of reason and common sense; whereas in some of his Tracts he seems to

wield all sorts of wisdom and wit in defence of all sorts of folly and

stupidity. But these were 'ad popellum', and by virtue of the 'falsitas

dispensativa', which he allowed himself.

Epist. dedicatory.

The question of transubstantiation.

I have no doubt that if the Pythagorean bond had successfully

established itself, and become a powerful secular hierarchy, there would

have been no lack of furious partizans to assert, yea, and to damn and

burn such as dared deny, that one was the same as two; two being two in

the same sense as one is one; that consequently 2+2=2 and 1+1=4. But I

should most vehemently doubt that this was the intention of Pythagoras,

or the sense in which the mysterious dogma was understood by the

thinking part of his disciples, who nevertheless were its professed

believers. I should be prepared to find that the true import and purport

of the article was no more than this;--that the one in order to its

manifestation must appear in and as two; that the act of re-union was

simultaneous with that of the self-production, (in the geometrical use

of the word 'produce,' as when a point produces, or evolves, itself on

each side into a bipolar line), and that the Triad is therefore the

necessary form of the Monad.

Even so is the dispute concerning Transubstantiation. I can easily

believe that a thousand monks and friars would pretend, as Taylor says,

to 'disbelieve their eyes and ears, and defy their own reason,' and to

receive the dogma in the sense, or rather in the nonsense, here ascribed

to it by him, namely, that the phenomenal bread and wine were the

phenomenal flesh and blood. But I likewise know that the respectable

Roman Catholic theologians state the article free from a contradiction

in terms at least; namely, that in the consecrated elements the

'noumena' of the phenomenal bread and wine are the same with that which

was the 'noumenon' of the phenomenal flesh and blood of Christ when on

earth.

Let M represent a slab or plane of mahogany,

and m its ordinary supporter or under-prop; and

let S represent a slab or plane of silver,

and s its supporter.

Now to affirm that M = S is a contradiction,

or that m = s;

but it is no contradiction to say, that on certain occasions

(S having been removed)

s is substituted for m,

and that what was M/m,

is by the command of the common master changed into M/s.

It may be false in fact, but it is not a self-contradiction in the

terms.

The mode in which s subsists in M/s may be inconceivable,

but not more so than the mode in which m subsists in M/m,

or that in which s subsisted in S/s.

I honestly confess that I should confine my grounds of opposition to the

article thus stated to its unnecessariness, to the want of sufficient

proofs from Scripture that I am bound to believe or trouble my head with

it. I am sure that Bishop Bull, who really did believe the Trinity,

without either Tritheism or Sabellianism, could not consistently have

used the argument of Taylor or of Tillotson in proof of the absurdity of

Transubstantiation.

Ib. p. ccccxvi.

But for our dear afflicted mother, she is under the portion of a child

in the state of discipline, her government indeed hindered, but her

worshippings the same, the articles as true, and those of the church

of Rome as false as ever.

O how much there is in these few words,--the sweet and comely

sophistry, not of Taylor, but of human nature. Mother! child! state of

discipline! government hindered! that is to say, in how many instances,

scourgings hindered, dungeoning in dens foul as those of hell,

mutilation of ears and noses, and flattering the King mad with

assertions of his divine right to govern without a Parliament, hindered.

The best apology for Laud, Sheldon, and their fellows will ever be that

those whom they persecuted were as great persecutors as themselves, and

much less excusable.

Ib. s. ii. p. 422.

'In Synaxi Transubstantiationem sero definivit Ecclesia; diu satis

erat credere, sive sub pane consecrate, sive quocunque modo adesse

verum corpus Christi;' so said the great Erasmus.

'Verum corpus,' that is, 'res ipsissima,' or the thing in its actual

self, opposed [Greek: to phainomen'o].

Ib. s. vi. p. 425.

Now that the spiritual is also a real presence, and that they are

hugely consistent, is easily credible to them that believe the gifts

of the Holy Ghost are real graces, and a spirit is a proper substance.

But how the body of Christ, as opposed to his Spirit and to his Godhead,

can be taken spiritually, 'hic labor, hoc opus est.' Plotinus says,

[Greek: kai hae hylae as'ómatos]; so we must say here [Greek: kaì tò

s'oma as'ómaton].

Ib. s. vii. p. 426.

So we may say of the blessed Sacrament; Christ is more truly and

really present in spiritual presence than in corporal; in the heavenly

effect than in the natural being.

But the presence of Christ is not in question, but the presence of

Christ's body and blood. Now that Christ effected much for us by coming

in the body, which could not or would not have been effected had he not

assumed the body, we all, Socinians excepted, believe; but that his body

effected it, other than as Christ in the body, where shall we find? how

can we understand?

Ib. p. 427.

So when it is said, 'Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of

God,' that is, corruption shall not inherit; and in the resurrection,

our bodies are said to be spiritual, that is, not in substance, but in

effect and operation.

This is, in the first place, a wilful interpretation, and secondly, it

is absurd; for what sort of flesh and blood would incorruptible flesh

and blood be? As well might we speak of marble flesh and blood. But in

Taylor's mind, as seen throughout, the logician was predominant over the

philosopher, and the fancy outbustled the pure intuitive imagination. In

the sense of St. Paul, as of Plato and all other dynamic philosophers,

flesh and blood is 'ipso facto' corruption, that is, the spirit of life

in the mid or balancing state between fixation and reviviscence. 'Who

shall deliver me from the body of this death?' is a Hebraism for 'this

death which the body is.' For matter itself is but 'spiritus in

coagulo,' and organized matter the coagulum in the act of being

restored; it is then repotentiating. Stop its self-destruction as

matter, and you stop its self-reproduction as a vital organ. In short,

Taylor seems to fall into the very fault he reproves in Bellarmine, and

with this additional evil, that his reasoning looks more like tricking

or explaining away a mystery. For wherein does the Sacrament of the

Eucharist differ from that of Baptism, nay, even of grace before meat,

when performed fervently and in faith? Here too Christ is present in the

hearts of the faithful by blessing and grace. I see at present no other

way of interpreting the text so as not to make the Sacrament a mere

arbitrary 'memento,' but by an implied negative. In propriety, the word

is confined to no portion of corporality in particular. "This (the bread

and wine) are as truly my flesh and blood as the 'phænomena' which you

now behold and name as such."

Ib. s. ix. p. 429.

From this paragraph I conclude, though not without some perplexity, that

by 'the body and blood verily and indeed taken,' we are not to

understand body and blood in their limited sense, as contradistinguished

from the soul or Godhead of Christ, but as a 'periphrasis' for Christ

himself, or at least Christ's humanity. Taylor, however, has

misconstrued Phavorinus' meaning though not his words. 'Spiritualia

eterna quoad spiritum.' But this is the very depth of the purified

Platonic philosophy.

Ib. s. x. p. 430.

But because the words do perfectly declare our sense, and are owned

publicly in our doctrine and manner of speaking, it will be in vain to

object against us those words of the Fathers, which use the same

expressions: for if by virtue of those words 'really,'

'substantially,' 'corporally,' 'verily and indeed,' and 'Christ's body

and blood,' the Fathers shall be supposed to speak for

Transubstantiation, they may as well suppose it to be our doctrine

too; for we use the same words, and therefore those authorities must

signify nothing against us, unless these words can be proved in them

to signify more than our sense of them does import; and by this truth,

many, very many of their pretences are evacuated.

A sophism, dearest Jeremy. We use the words because these early Fathers

used them, and have forced our own definitions on them. But should we

have chosen these words to express our opinion by, if there had been no

controversy on the subject? But the Fathers chose and selected these

words as the most obvious and natural.

Ib. s. xi. p. 431.

It is much insisted upou that it be inquired whether, when we say we

believe Christ's body to be really in the Sacrament, we mean 'that

body, that flesh, that was born of the Virgin Mary, that was

crucified, dead, and buried?' I answer, that I know none else that he

had or hath: there is but one body of Christ natural and glorified.

This may be true, or at least intelligible, of Christ's humanity or

personal identity as [Greek: nóaeton ti], but applied to the phenomenal

flesh and blood, it is nonsense. For if every atom of the human frame be

changed by succession in eleven or twelve years, the body born of the

Virgin could not be the body crucified, much less the body crucified be

the body glorified, spiritual and incorruptible. I construe the words of

Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Taylor below, [17] literally, and they

perfectly express my opinion; namely, that Christ, both in the

institution of the Eucharist and in the sixth chapter of John, spoke of

his humanity as a 'noumenon,' not of the specific flesh and blood which

were its 'phænomena' at the last supper and on the cross. But Jeremy

Taylor was a semi-materialist, and though no man better managed the

logic of substance and accidents, he seems to have formed no clear

metaphysical notion of their actual meaning. Taken notionally, they are

mere interchangeable relations, as in concentric circles the outmost

circumference is the substance, the other circles its accidents; but if

I begin with the second and exclude the first from my thoughts, then

this is substance and the interior ones accidents, and so on; but taken

really, we mean the complex action of co-agents on our senses, and

accident as only an agent acting on us. Thus we say, the beer has turned

sour: sour is the accident of the substance beer. But, in fact, a new

agent, oxygen, has united itself with other agents in the joint

composition, the essence of which new comer is to be sour: at all

events, Taylor's construction is a mere assertion, meaning no more than

'in this sense only can I subscribe to the words of Bertram, Jerome, and

Clement.'

If a re-union of the Lutheran and English Churches with the Roman were

desirable and practicable, the best way, [Greek: h_os emoige dokei,]

would be, that any remarkable number should offer union on a given

profession of faith chiefly negative, as we protest against the

authority of the Church in temporals; that the words agreed to by Beza

and Espencoeus, on the part of the Reformers and Romanists respectively,

at Poissy, used with implicit faith, shall suffice. 'Credimus in usu

coentæ Dominicæ vere, reipsa, substantialiter, seu in substantia, verum

corpus et sanguinem Christi spirituali et ineffabili modo esse,

exhiberi, sumi a fidelibus communicantibus.'

Ib. s. in. p. 434.

The other Schoolman I am to reckon in this account, is Gabriel Biel.

Taylor should have informed the reader that Gabriel Biel is but the echo

of Occam, and that both were ante-Lutheran Protestants in heart, and as

far as they dared, in word likewise.

Ib. s. vi. p. 436.

So that if, according to the Casuists, especially of the Jesuits'

order, it be lawful to follow the opinion of any one probable doctor,

here we have five good men and true, besides Occam, Bassolis, and

Mechior Camus, to acquit us from our search after this question in

Scripture.

Taylor might have added Erasmus, who, in one of his letters, speaking of

Oecolampadius's writings on the Eucharist, says '"ut seduci posse

videantur etiam electi,"' and adds, that he should have embraced his

interpretations, '"nisi obstaret consensus Ecclesiæ;"' that is,

Oecolampadius has convinced me, and I should avow my conviction, but for

motives of personal prudence and regard for the public peace.

OF THE SIXTH CHAPTER OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL.

Ib. p. 436.

I cannot but think that the same mysterious truth, whatever it be, is

referred to in the Eucharist and in this chapter of St. John; and I

wonder that Taylor, who makes the Eucharist a spiritual sumption of

Christ, should object to it. A = C and B = C, therefore A = B. [18]

Ib. s. iv. p. 440.

The error on both sides, Roman and Protestant, originates in the

confusion of sign or figure with symbol, which latter is always an

essential part of that, of the whole of which it is the representative.

Not seeing this, and therefore seeing no 'medium' between the whole

thing and the mere metaphor of the thing, the Romanists took the former

or positive pole of the error, the Protestants the latter or negative

pole. The Eucharist is a symbolic, or solemnizing and 'totum in parte'

acting of an act, which in a true member of Christ's body is supposed to

be perpetual. Thus the husband and wife exercise the duties of their