PART II.--INTRODUCTION.

P. 227.

But yet because I will humour J.S. for this once; even here also 'The

Dissuasive' relies upon a first and self-evident principle as any is

in Christianity, and that is, 'Quod primum verum.'

I am surprised to meet such an assertion in so acute a logician and so

prudent an advocate as Jeremy Taylor. If the 'quod primum verum' mean

the first preaching or first institution of Christianity by its divine

Founder, it is doubtless an evident inference from the assumed truth of

Christianity, or, if you please, evidently implied therein; but surely

the truth of the Christian system, composed of historical narrations,

doctrines, precepts, and arguments, is no self-evident position, still

less, if there be any tenable distinction between the words, a primary

truth. How then can an inference from a particular, a variously

proveable and proof-requiring, position be itself a universal and

self-evident one?

But if 'quod primum verum' means 'quod prius verius,' this again is far

from being of universal application, much less self-evident. Astrology

was prior to astronomy; the Ptolemaic to the Newtonian scheme. It must

therefore be confined to history: yet even thus, it is not for any

practicable purpose necessarily or always true. Increase in other

knowledge, physical, anthropological, and psychological, may enable an

historian of A.D. 1800 to give a much truer account of certain events

and characters than the contemporary chroniclers had given, who lived in

an age of ignorance and superstition.

But confine the position within yet narrower bounds, namely, to

Christian antiquity. In addition to all other objections, it has this

great defect; that it takes for granted the very point in dispute,

whether Christianity was an 'opus simul et in toto perfectum,' or

whether the great foundations only were laid by Christ while on earth,

and by the Apostles, and the superstructure or progression of the work

entrusted to the successors of the Apostles; and whether for that

purpose Christ had not promised that his Spirit should be always with

the Church.

Now this growth of truth, not only in each individual Christian who is

indeed a Christian, but likewise in the Church of Christ, from age to

age, has been affirmed and defended by sundry Latitudinarian, Grotian

and Sociman divines even among Protestants: the contrary, therefore, and

an inference from the supposition of the contrary, can never be

pronounced self-evident or primary.

Jeremy Taylor had nothing to do with these mock axioms, but to ridicule

them, as in other instances he has so effectually done. It was

sufficient and easy to shew, that, true or false, the position was

utterly inapplicable to the facts of the Roman Church; that, instead of

passing, like the science of the material heaven, from dim to clear,

from guess to demonstration, from mischievous fancies to guiding,

profitable and powerful truths, it had overbuilt the divinest truths by

the silliest and not seldom wicked forgeries, usurpations and

superstitions. J.S.'s very notion of proving a mass of histories by

simple logic, he would have found exposed to his hand with exquisite

truth and humour by Lucian.

1810.

In the preceding note I think I took Taylor's words in too literal a

sense; the remarks, however, on the common maxim, 'In rebus fidei, quod

prius verius,' seem to me just and valuable. 2. March, 1824.

Ib. p. 297.

When he talks of being infallible, if the notion be applied to his

Church, then he means an infallibility antecedent, absolute,

unconditionate, such as will not permit the Church ever to err.

Taylor himself was infected with the spirit of casuistry, by which

saving faith is placed in the understanding, and the moral act in the

outward deed. How infinitely safer the true Lutheran doctrine: God

cannot be mocked; neither will truth, as a mere conviction of the

understanding, save, nor error condemn;--to love truth sincerely is

spiritually to have truth; and an error becomes a personal error, not by

its aberration from logic or history, but so far as the causes of such

error are in the heart, or may be traced back to some antecedent

un-Christian wish or habit;--to watch over the secret movements of the

heart, remembering ever how deceitful a thing it is, and that God cannot

be mocked, though we may easily dupe ourselves: these, as the

ground-work with prayer, study of the Scriptures, and tenderness to all

around us, as the consequents, are the Christian's rule, and supersede

all books of casuistry, which latter serve only to harden our feelings

and pollute the imagination. To judge from the Roman casuists, nay, I

ought to say, from Taylor's own 'Ductor Dubitantium,' one would suppose

that a man's points of belief and smallest determinations of outward

conduct,--however pure and charitable his intentions, and however holy

or blameless the inward source of those intentions or convictions in his

past and present state of moral being,--were like the performance of an

electrical experiment, and would blow a man's salvation into atoms from

a mere unconscious mistake in the arrangement and management of the

apparatus.

See Livy's account of Tullus Hostilius's unfortunate experiment with one

of Numa's sacrificial ceremonies. The trick not being performed

'secundum artem,' Jupiter enraged shot him dead.[A] Before God our

deeds, which for him can have no value, gain acceptance in proportion as

they are evolutions of our spiritual life. He beholds our deeds in our

principles. For men our deeds have value as efficient causes, worth as

symptoms. They infer our principles from our deeds. Now, as religion or

the love of God cannot subsist apart from charity or the love of our

neighbour, our conduct must be conformable to both.

Ib. p. 305.

Only for their comfort this they might have also observed in that

book,--that there is not half so much excuse for the Papists as there

is for the Anabaptists; and yet it was but an excuse at the best, as

appears in those full answers I have given to all their arguments, in

the last edition of that book, among the polemical discourses in

folio.

Nay, dear Bishop! but such an excuse, as compared with your after

attempt to evacuate it, resembles a coat of mail of your own forging,

which you boil, in order to melt it away into invisibility. You only

hide it by foam and bubbles, by wavelets and steam-clouds, of ebullient

rhetoric: I speak of the Anabaptists as Anti-pædobaptists.

Ib. s. i. p. 337.

'Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what

his Lord doth; but I have called you friends, for all things I have

heard from the Father I have made known to you.'

I never thought of this text before, but it seems to me a stronger

passage in favour of Psilanthropism, or modern Socinianism,--a doctrine

which of all heresies I deem the most fundamental and the worst (the

impurities of madmen out of the question),--than I have ever seen, and

far stronger than that concerning the day of judgment, which in its

apparent sense is clearly high Arianism, or teaching the

super-angelical, yet infra-divine, nature of Christ. We must interpret

it [Greek: kat' analogían píste_os], not as 'all things' absolutely, but

as 'all things' concerning your interests, 'all things' that it behoves

you to know. Else it would contradict Christ's words, 'None knoweth the

Father but the Son,' that is, truly and totally. For Christ does not

promise in this life to give us the same degree of knowledge as he

himself possessed, but only a 'quantum sufficit' of the kind. This is

clear by St. John's 'all things,' which assuredly did not include either

the discoveries of Newton or of Davy.

14 August, 1811.

Ib. s. iii. p. 348.

The Churches have troubled themselves with infinite variety of

questions, and divided their precious unity, and destroyed charity,

and instead of contending against the devil and all his crafty

methods, they have contended against one another, and excommunicated

one another, and anathematized and damned one another; and no man is

the better after all, but most men are very much the worse; and the

Churches are in the world still divided about questions that commenced

twelve or thirteen ages since, and they are like to be so for ever,

till Elias come, &c.

I remember no passages of the Fathers nearer to inspired Scripture than

this and similar ones of Jeremy Taylor, in which, quitting the acute

logician, he combines his heart with his head, and utters general, and

inclusive, and reconciling truths of charity and of common sense. All

amounts but to this:--what is binding on all must be possible to all.

But conformity of intellectual conclusions is not possible. Faith

therefore cannot reside totally in the understanding. But to do what we

believe we ought to do is possible to all, therefore binding on all;

therefore the 'unum necessarium' of Christian faith. Talk not of bad

conscience; it is like bad sense, that is, no sense; and we all know

that we may wilfully lie till we involuntarily believe the lie as truth;

but 'causa causæ est causa vera causati.'

Ib. p. 347.

But if you mean the Catholic Church, then, if you mean her, an

abstracted separate being from all particulars, you pursue a cloud,

and fall in love with an idea and a child of fancy.

Here Taylor uses 'idea' as opposed to image or distinct phantasm; and

this is with few exceptions his general sense, and even the exceptions

are only metaphors from the general sense, that is, images so faint,

indefinite and fluctuating as to be almost no images, that is, ideas; as

we say of a very thin body, it is a ghost or spirit, the lowest degree

of one kind being expressed by the opposite kind.

Ib. p. 380.

'Miracles' were, in the beginning of Christianity, a note of true

believers: Christ told us so. And he also taught us that Anti-Christ

should be revealed in lying signs and wonders, and commanded us, by

that token, to take heed of them.

An excellent distinction between a note or mark by which a thing already

proved may be known, and the proofs of the thing. Thus the poisonous

qualities of the nightshade are established by the proper proofs, and

the marks by which a plant may be known to be the nightshade, are the

number, position, colour, and so on, of its filaments, petals, and the

rest.

Ib.

The 'spirit of prophecy' is also a pretty sure note of the true

Church, and yet...I deny not but there have been some prophets in the

Church of Rome: Johannes de Rupe Scissa, Anselmus, Marsicanus, Robert

Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln, St. Hildegardis, Abbot Joachim, whose

prophecies and pictures prophetical were published by Theophrastus

Paracelsus, and John Adrasder, and by Paschalinus Regiselmus, at

Venice, 1589; but (as Ahab said concerning Micaiah) these do not

prophesy good concerning Rome, but evil, &c.

This paragraph is an exquisite specimen of grave and dignified irony,

'telum quod cedere simulat retorquentis'. In contrast with this stands

the paragraph on note 15, (p. 381.) which is a coarse though not

unmerited sneer, or, as a German would have expressed himself, 'an

of-Jeremy-Taylor-unworthy,though a-not-of-the-Roman-Catholic-Papicolar-

polemics-unmerited, sneer.'

Ib. p. 381.

... excepting only some Popes have been remarked by their own

histories for funest and direful deaths.

In the adoption of this word 'funest' into the English language by

'apocope' of the final 'us', Taylor is supported by 'honest' and

'modest;' but then the necessity of pronouncing funest should have

excluded it, the superlative final being an objection to all of them,

though outweighed in the others. A common reader would pronounce it

'funest,' and perhaps mistake it for 'funniest.'

Ib. p. 382.

... sacraments, 'which to be seven', is with them an article of faith.

The fastidious exclusion of this and similar idioms in modern writing

occasions unnecessary embarrassment for the writer, both in narration

and argumenting, and contributes to the monotony of our style.

Ib.

The Fathers and Schoolmen differ greatly in the definition of a

Sacrament.

Had it been in other respects advisable, it would, I think, have been

theologically convenient, if our Reformers had contra-distinguished

Baptism and the Lord's Supper by the term Mysteries, and allowed the

name of Sacrament to Ordination, Confirmation, and Marriage.

Ib. s. iii. p. 388.

And he did so to the Jews ... tradition was not relied upon; it was

not trusted with any law of faith or manners.

This all the later Jews deny, affirming an oral communication from Moses

to the Seventy, on as lame pretences as the Roman Catholics, and for the

same vile purposes as reproved by Christ, who, if he had believed the

story, would not have condemned traditions of men generally without

exception, and would not have proved the immortality of the Patriarchs

by a text which seems to have had no such primary intention, though it

may contain the deduction 'potentialiter'.

But Taylor's 1st and 7th arguments following are, the former weak and

incorrect, the latter 'dictum et vulgatum, sed non probatum, ne dicam

improbatum'. Who doubts that all that is indispensable to the salvation

of each and every one is contained in the New Testament?

But is it not contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel? Is it

not contained in the eleventh of the Acts, and in a score other

separable portions? Necessary, indispensable, and the like, are

multivocal terms. Dogs have survived (and without any noticeable injury)

the excision of the spleen.

Dare we conclude from this fact that the spleen is not necessary to the

continuance of the canine race? What is not indispensable for even the

majority of individual believers may be necessary for the Church.

Instead, therefore, of these terms, put 'true,' 'important,' and

'constitutive,' that is, appertaining to the chain ('ad catenam auream')

of truths interdependent and rendered mutually intelligible, which

constitute the system of the Christian religion, including not alone the

faith and morals of individuals, but the 'organismus' likewise of the

Church, as a body spiritual, yet outward and historical; and this again

not as an aggregate or sum total, like a corn-sheaf, but a unity.

Let the question, I say, be thus restated, and then let the cause come

to trial between the Romish and the Protestant divines.

N. B. As a running comment on all these marginal notes, let it be

understood that I hold the far greater part--the only not all of what

our great Author urges, to apply with irrefutable force against the

doctrine and practice of the Romish Church, as it in fact exists, and no

less against the Familists and 'istius farinæ enthusiastas'.

I contend only, that he himself, in several assertions, lies open to

attack from the supporters of a scheme of faith, as unlike either the

Romish or the Fanatical, as Taylor's own, and which scheme, namely, the

co-ordinate authority of the Word, the Spirit and the Church, I believe

to be the true Apostolic and Catholic doctrine, and that to this scheme

his objections do not apply.

When I can bring myself to believe that from the mere perusal of the New

Testament a man might have sketched out by anticipation the

constitution, discipline, creeds, and sacramental ritual of the

Episcopal Reformed Church of England; or that it is not a true and

orthodox Church, because this is incredible; then I may perhaps be

inclined to echo Chillingworth.

As I cannot think that it detracts from a dial that in order to tell the

time the sun must shine upon it; so neither does it detract from the

Scriptures, that though the best and holiest they are yet Scripture, and

require a pure heart and the consequent assistances of God's

enlightening grace in order to understand them to edification.

1812.

I still agree with the preceding note, and add that Jeremy Taylor should

have cited the Arians and Socinians on the other side. But the Romish

Papal hierarchy cannot for shame say, or only from want of shame can

pretend to say, what a Catholic would be entitled to urge on the triple

link of the Scripture, the Spirit, and the Church.

27 April, 1826.

Ib. s. vi. p. 392.

From this principle, as it is promoted by the Fanatics, they derive a

wandering, unsettled, and a dissolute religion, &c.

The evils of the Fanatic persuasion here so powerfully, so exquisitely,

stated and enforced by our all-eloquent Bishop, supply no proof or even

presumption against the tenet of the Spirit rightly expressed. For

catholicity is the distinctive mark, the 'conditio sine qua non', of a

spiritual teaching; and if men that dream with their eyes open mistake

for this the very contrary, that is, their own particular fancies, or

perhaps sensations, who can help it?

Ib. s. vii. p. 394.

They affirm that the Scriptures are full, that they are a perfect

rule, that they contain all things necessary to salvation; and from

hence they confuted all heresies.

Yes, the heretics were so confuted, I grant; because these would not

acknowledge any other authority but that of the Scriptures, and these

too forged or corrupted by themselves; but by the Scriptures that

remained unaltered the early Fathers of the Church both demonstrated the

omissions and interpolations of the heretical canons and the false

doctrines of the heresy itself. But so far from following the same rule

to the members of the true Church, they made the applicability of this

way of proof the criterion of a heretic.

Ib. p. 394.

'Which truly they then preached, but afterwards by the will of God

delivered to us in the Scriptures, which was to be the pillar and

ground to our faith.'

Lessing has shown this to be a false and even ungrammatical rendering of

Irenæus's words. The 'columen et fundamentum fidei', are the Creed, or

economy of salvation.

Ib. vii. p. 395. Extracts from Clement's 'Stromata'.

It would require a volume to shew the qualifications with which these

'excerpta' must be read. There is no one source of error and endless

controversy more fruitful than this custom of quoting detached

sentences. I would pledge myself in the course of a single morning to

bring an equal number of passages from the same (Ante-Nicene) Fathers in

proof of the Roman Catholic theory. One palpable cheat in these

transcripts is the neglect of appreciating the words, 'inspired,' 'a

'Spiritu dicta'', and the like, in the Patristic use; as if the Fathers

did not frequently apply the same terms to the discourses of the

Bishops, their contemporaries, and to writings not canonical. It is

wonderful how so acute and learned a man as Taylor could have read

Tertullian, Irenæus and Clemens Alexandrinus, and not have seen that the

passages are all against him so far as they all make the Scriptures

subsidiary only to the Spirit in the Church and the Baptismal creed, the

[Greek: kan_òn píste_os], 'regula fidei', or 'æconomia salutis'.

Ib. p. 396.

... that the tradition ecclesiastical, that is, the whole doctrine

taught by the Church of God, and preached to all men, is in the

Scripture.

It is only by the whole context and purpose of the work, and this too

interpreted by the known doctrine of the age, that the intent of the

sentences here quoted can be determined, relatively to the point in

question. But even as they stand here, they do not assert that the

'Traditio Ecclesiastica' was grounded on, or had been deduced from, the

Scriptures; nor that by Scripture Clemens meant principally the New

Testament; and that the Scriptures contain the Tradition Ecclesiastical

or Catholic Faith the Romish divines admit and contend.

Ib. p. 399. Extract from Origen.

As our Saviour imposed silence upon the Sadducees by the word of his

doctrine, and faithfully convinced that false opinion which they

thought to be truth; so also shall the followers of Christ do, by the

examples of Scripture, by which according to sound doctrine every

voice of Pharaoh ought to be silent.

Does not this prove too much; namely, that nothing exists in the New

which does not likewise exist in the Old Testament?

One objection to Jeremy Taylor's argument here must, I think, strike

every reflecting mind; namely, that in order to a fair and full view of

the sentiments of the Fathers of the first four centuries, all they

declare of the Church, and her powers and prerogatives, ought to have

been likewise given.

As soon as I receive any writing as inspired by the Spirit of Truth, of

course I must believe it on its own authority. But how am I assured that

it is an inspired work? Now do not these Fathers reply, By the Church?

To the Church it belongs to declare what books are Holy Scriptures, and

to interpret their right sense. Is not this the common doctrine among

the Fathers? And how was the Church to judge?

First, by the same spirit surviving in her; and secondly by the

accordance of the Book itself with the canon of faith, that is the

Baptismal Creed. And what was this? 'Traditio Ecclesiastica'. As to

myself, I agree with Taylor against the Romanists, that the Bible is for

us the only rule of faith; but I do not adopt his mode of proving it.

In the earliest period of Christianity the Scriptures of the New

Testament and the Ecclesiastical Tradition were reciprocally tests of

each other; but for the Christians of the second century the Scriptures

were tried by the Ecclesiastical Tradition, while for us the order is

reversed, and we must try the Ecclesiastical Tradition by the

Scriptures. Therefore I do not expect to find the proofs of the

supremacy of Scripture in the early Fathers, nor do we need their

authority. Our proofs are stronger without it.

Ib. p. 403.

Which words I the rather remark, because this article of the

consubstantiality of Christ with the Father is brought as an instance

(by the Romanists) of the necessity of tradition, to make up the

insufficiency of Scripture.

How shall I make this rhyme to Taylor's own assertion, in the last

paragraph of sect. xix. of his Episcopacy Asserted, [20] in which he

clearly refers to this very question as relying on tradition for its

clearness? Jeremy Taylor was a true Father of the Church, and would

furnish as fine a subject for a 'concordantia discordantiarum' as St.

Austin himself. For the exoteric and esoteric he was a very Pythagoras.

Ib. p. 406.

... for one or two of them say, Theophilus spake against Origen, for

broaching fopperies of his own, and particularly, that Christ's flesh

was consubstantial with the Godhead.

Origen doubtless meant the 'caro noumenon', and was quite right. But

never was a great man so misunderstood as Origen.

Ib. p. 408. n.

'Sed et alia, quoe absque auctoritate et testimoniis Scripturarum,

quasi traditione Apostolica, sponte reperiunt atque contingunt,

percutit gladius Dei'.

"Those things which they make and find, as it were, by Apostolical

tradition, without the authority and testimonies of Scripture, the

word of God smites."

Is it clear that 'Scripturarum' depends on 'auctoritate'? It may well

mean they who without the authority of the Church, or Scriptural

testimony pretend to an Apostolical Tradition.

Ib. p. 411.

But lastly, if in the plain words of Scripture be contained all that

is simply necessary to all, then it is clear, by Bellarmine's

confession, that St. Austin affirmed that the plain places of

Scripture are sufficient to all laics and all idiots, or private

persons, and then it is very ill done to keep them from the knowledge

and use of the Scriptures, which contain all their duty both of faith

and good life; so it is very unnecessary to trouble them with any

thing else, there being in the world no such treasure and repository

of faith and manners, and that so plain, that it was intended for all

men, and for all such men is sufficient. "Read the Holy Scriptures

wherein you shall find some things to be holden, and some to be

avoided."

And yet in the preface to his Apology for authorized and set forms of

Liturgy, [21] Taylor regrets that the Church of England was not able to

confine the laity to such selections of Holy Writ as are in her Liturgy.

But Laud was then alive: and Taylor partook of his 'trepidatiunculæ'

towards the Church of Rome.

Ib. p. 412.

And all these are nothing else, but a full subscription to, and an

excellent commentary upon, those words of St. Paul, 'Let no man

pretend to be wise above what is written.'

Had St. Paul anything beyond the Law and the Prophets in his mind?

Ib. p. 416.

St. Paul's way of teaching us to expound Scripture is, that he that

prophesies should do it [Greek: kat' analogían píste_os], according to

the analogy of faith.

Yet in his Liberty of Prophesying [22] Taylor turns this way into mere

ridicule. I love thee, Jeremy! but an arrant theological barrister that

thou wast, though thy only fees were thy desires of doing good in

'questionibus singulis'.

Ib. s. iii. p. 419.

Only, because we are sure there was some false dealing in this matter,

and we know there might be much more than we have discovered, we have

no reason to rely upon any tradition for any part of our faith, any

more than we could do upon Scripture, if one book or chapter of it

should be detected to be imposture.

What says Jeremy Taylor then to the story of the woman taken in

adultery, ('John, c. viii. 3-11'.) which Chrysostom disdains to comment

on? If true, how could it be omitted in so many, and these the most

authentic, copies? And if this for fear of scandal, why not others? And

who does not know that falsehood may be effected as well by omissions as

by interpolations? But if false,--then--but Taylor draws the consequence

himself.

Ib. p. 427.

So that the tradition concerning the Scriptures being extrinsical to

Scripture is also extrinsical to the question: this tradition cannot

be an objection against the sufficiency of Scripture to salvation, but

must go before this question. For no man inquires whether the

Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation, unless he

believe that there are Scriptures, that these are they, and that they

are the word of God. All this comes to us by tradition, that is, by

universal undeniable testimony.

Very just, and yet this idle argument is the favourite, both shield and

sword, of the Romanists: as if I should pretend to learn the Roman

history from tradition, because by tradition I know such histories to

have been written by Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus!

Ib. p. 435.

The more natural consequence is that their proposition is either

mistaken or uncertain, or not an article of faith (which is rather to

be hoped, lest we condemn all the Greek Churches as infidels or

perverse heretics), or else that it can be derived from Scripture,

which last is indeed the most probable, and pursuant to the doctrine

of those wiser Latins who examined things by reason and not by

prejudice.

It is remarkable that both Stillingfleet and Taylor favoured the Greek

opinion. But Bull's 'Defensio Fidei Nicænæ' was not yet published. It is

to me evident that if the Holy Ghost does not proceed through and from

the Son as well as from the Father, then the Son is not the adequate

substantial idea of the Father. But according to St. Paul, he is--'ergo,

&c'. N.B. These "'ergos, &c'." in legitimate syllogisms, where the

'major' and 'minor' have been conceded, are binding on all human beings,

with the single anomaly of the Quakers. For with them nothing is more

common than to admit both 'major' and 'minor', and, when you add the

inevitable consequence, to say "Nay! I do not think so, Friend! Thou art

worldly wise, Friend!" For example: 'major', it is agreed on both sides

that we ought not to withhold from a man what he has a just right to:

'minor', property in land being the creature of law, a just right in

respect of landed property is determined by the law of the

land:--"agreed, such is the fact:" 'ergo:' the clergyman has a just

right to the tithe. "Nay, nay; this is vanity, and tithes an abomination

of Judaism!"

Ib. s. v. p. 492.

And since that villain of a man, Pope Hildebrand, as Cardinal Beno

relates in his Life, could, by shaking of his sleeve make sparks of

fire fly from it.

If this was fact, was it an idiosyncrasy, as I have known those who by

combing their hair can elicit sparks with a crackling as from a cat's

back rubbed. It is very possible that the sleeve might be silk,

tightened either on a very hairy arm, or else on woollen, and by shaking

it might be meant stripping the silk suddenly off, which would doubtless

produce flashes and sparks.

Vol. XI. s. x. p. 1.

As a general remark suggested indeed by this section, but applicable to

very many parts of Taylor's controversial writings, both against the

anti-Prelatic and the Romish divines, especially to those in which our

incomparable Church-aspist attempts, not always successfully, to

demonstrate the difference between the dogmas and discipline of the

ancient Church, and those which the Romish doctors vindicate by them,--I

would say once for all, that it was the fashion of the Arminian court

divines of Taylor's age, that is, of the High Church party, headed by

Archbishop Laud, to extol, and (in my humble judgment) egregiously to

overrate, the example and authority of the first four, nay, of the first

six centuries; and at all events to take for granted the Evangelical and

Apostolical character of the Church to the death of Athanasius.

Now so far am I from conceding this, that before the first Council of

Nicaea, I believe myself to find the seeds and seedlings of all the

worst corruptions of the Latin Church of the thirteenth century, and not

a few of these even before the close of the second.

One pernicious error of the primitive Church was the conversion of the

ethical ideas, indispensable to the science of morals and religion, into

fixed practical laws and rules for all Christians, in all stages of

spiritual growth, and under all circumstances; and with this the

degradation of free and individual acts into corporate Church

obligations.

Another not less pernicious was the gradual concentration of the Church

into a priesthood, and the consequent rendering of the reciprocal

functions of love and redemption and counsel between Christian and

Christian exclusively official, and between disparates, namely, the

priest and the layman.

Ib. B. II. s. ii. p. 58.

Often have I welcomed, and often have I wrestled with, the thought of

writing an essay on the day of judgment. Are the passages in St. Peter's

Epistle respecting the circumstances of the last day and the final

conflagration, and even St. Paul's, to be regarded as apocalyptic and a

part of the revelation by Christ, or are they, like the dogma of a

personal Satan, accommodations of the current popular creed which they

continued to believe?

Ib. s. iii. p. 105.

And therefore St. Paul left an excellent precept to the Church to

avoid 'profanas vocum novitates', 'the prophane newness of words;'

that is, it is fit that the mysteries revealed in Scripture should be

preached and taught in the words of the Scripture, and with that

simplicity, openness, easiness, and candor, and not with new and

unhallowed words, such as that of Transubstantiation.

Are not then Trinity, Tri-unity, 'hypostasis, perichoresis, diphysis',

and others, excluded? Yet Waterland very ingeniously, nay more, very

honestly and sensibly, shews the necessity of these terms 'per

accidens'. The 'profanum' fell back on the heretics who had occasioned

the necessity.

Ib. p. 106.

"The oblation of a cake was a figure of the Eucharistical bread which

the Lord commanded to do in remembrance of his passion." These are

Justin's words in that place.

Justin Martyr could have meant no more, and the Greek construction means

no more, than that the cake we offer is the representative, substitute,

and 'fac-simile' of the bread which Christ broke and delivered.

I find no necessary absurdity in Transubstantiation. For substance is

but a notion 'thought on' to the aggregate of

accidents--'hinzugedacht'--conceived, not perceived, and conceived

always in universals, never in 'concreto'.

Therefore, X. Y. Z. being unknown quantities, Y. may be as well annexed

by the choice of the mind as the imagined 'substratum' as X. For we

cannot distinguish substance from substance any more than X. from X.

The substrate or 'causa invisibilis' may be the 'noumenon' or actuality,

'das Ding in sich', of Christ's humanity, as well as the 'Ding in sich'

of which the sensation, bread, is the appearance.

But then, on the other hand, there is not a word of sense possible to

prove that it is really so; and from the not impossible to the real is a

strange 'ultra'-Rhodian leap.

And it is opposite both to the simplicity of Evangelical meaning, and

anomalous from the interpretation of all analogous phrases which all men

expound as figures,--'I am the gate, I am the way, I am the vine', and

the like,--and to Christ's own declarations that his words were to be

understood spiritually, that is, figuratively.

Ib. s. vi. p. 164.

However, if you will not commit downright idolatry, as some of their

saints teach you, then you must be careful to observe these plain

distinctions; and first be sure to remember that when you worship an

image, you do it not materially but formally; not as it is of such a

substance, but as it is a sign; next take care that you observe what

sort of image it is, and then proportion your right kind to it, that

you do not give 'latria' to that where 'hyperdulia' is only due; and

be careful that if 'dulia' only be due, that your worship be not

'hyperdulical', &c.

A masterly specimen of grave dignified irony. Indeed, Jeremy Taylor's

'Works' would be of more service to an English barrister than those of

Demosthenes, Æschines, and Cicero taken together.

Ib. s. vii. p. 168.

A man cannot well understand an essence, and hath no idea of it in his

mind, much less can a painter's pencil do it.

Noticeable, that this is the only instance I have met in any English

classic before the Revolution of the word 'idea' used as synonymous

with a mental image. Taylor himself has repeatedly placed the two in

opposition; and even here I doubt whether he has done otherwise. I

rather think he meant by the word 'idea' a notion under an indefinite

and confused form, such as Kant calls a 'schema'or vague outline, an

imperfect embryo of a concrete, to the individuation of which the mind

gives no conscious attention; just as when I say--"any thing," I may

imagine a poker or a plate; but I pay no attention to its being this

rather than that; and the very image itself is so wandering and unstable

that at this moment it may be a dim shadow of the one, and in the next

of some other thing. In this sense, idea is opposed to image in degree

instead of kind; yet still contra-distinguished, as is evident by the

sequel, "much less can a painter's pencil do it:" for were it an image,

'individui et concreti', then the painter's pencil could do it as well

as his fancy or better.

A DISCOURSE OF CONFIRMATION.

Of all Taylor's works, the Discourse of Confirmation seems to me the

least judicious; and yet that is not the right word either. I mean,

however, that one is puzzled to know for what class of readers or

auditors it was intended.

He announces his subject as one of such lofty claims; he begins with

positions taken on such high ground, no less than the superior dignity

and spiritual importance of Confirmation above Baptism itself--whether

considered as a sacramental rite and mystery distinct from Baptism, or

as its completory and crowning part (the 'finis coronans opus')--that we

are eager to hear the proof.

But proofs differ in their value according to our previous valuation of

authorities. What would pass for a very sufficient proof, because

grounded on a reverend authority, with a Romanist, would be a mere

fancy-medal and of no currency with a Bible Protestant.

And yet for Protestants, and those too laymen (for we can hardly suppose

that Taylor thought his Episcopal brethren in need of it), must this

Discourse have been intended; and in this point of view, surely never

did so wise a man adopt means so unsuitable to his end, or frame a

discourse so inappropriate to his audience.

The authorities of the Fathers are, indeed, as strong and decisive in

favour of the Bishop's position as the warmest advocate of Confirmation

could wish; but this very circumstance was calculated to create a

prejudice against the doctrine in the mind of a zealous Protestant, from

the contrast in which the unequivocal and explicit declarations of the

Fathers stand with the remote, arbitrary, and fine-drawn inferences from

the few passages of the New Testament which can be forced into an

implied sanction of a rite no where mentioned, and as a distinct and

separate ministration, utterly, as I conceive, unknown in the Apostolic

age.

How much more rational and convincing (as to me it seems) would it have

been to have shewn, that when from various causes the practice of Infant

Baptism became general in the Church, Confirmation or the acknowledgment

'in propria persona' of the obligations that had been incurred by proxy

was introduced; and needed no other justification than its own evident

necessity, as substantiating the preceding form as to the intended

effects of Baptism on the believer himself, and then to have shewn the

great uses and spiritual benefits of the institution.

But this would not do. Such was the spirit of the age that nothing less

than the assertion of a divine origin,--of a formal and positive

institution by Christ himself, or by the Apostles in their Apostolic

capacity as legislators for the universal Church in all ages, could

serve; and accordingly Bishops, liturgies, tithes, monarchy, and what

not, were, 'de jure divino', with celestial patents, wrapped up in the

womb of this or that text of Scripture to be exforcipated by the

logico-obstetric skill of High Church doctors and ultra-loyal court

chaplains.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO THE DUKE OF ORMONDE.

Ib. p. ccxvii.

This very poor church.

With the exception of Spain, the Church establishment in Ireland is now,

I conceive, the richest in Europe; though by the most iniquitous measure

of the Irish Parliament, most iniquitously permitted to acquire the

force of law at the Union, the Irish Church was robbed of the tithes

from all pasture lands. What occasioned so great a change in its favour

since the time of Charles II?

1810.

Ib. p. ccxviii.

And amidst these and very many more inconveniences it was greatly

necessary that God should send us such a king.

Such a king! O sorrow and shame! Why, why, O Genius! didst thou suffer

thy darling son to crush the fairest flower of thy garland beneath a

mitre of Charles's putting on!

Ib. p. ccxix.

For besides that the great usefulness of this ministry will greatly

endear the Episcopal order, to which (that I may use St. Hierom's

words) "if there be not attributed a more than common power and

authority, there will be as many schisms as priests," &c.

On this ground the Romish divines justify the Papacy. The fact of the

Scottish Church is the sufficient answer to both. Episcopacy needs not

rash assertions for its support.

Ib. p. ccxx.

For it is a sure rule in our religion, and is of an eternal truth,

that "they who keep not the unity of the Church, have not the Spirit

of God."

Contrast with this our xixth and xxth Articles on the Church. The Irish

Roman Catholic Bishops, methinks, must have read this with delight. What

an over hasty simpleton that James II. was! Had he waited and caressed

the Bishops, they would have taken the work off his hands.

Ib. p. 229. Introduction.

It has been my conviction that in respect of the theory of the Faith,

(though God be praised! not in the practical result,) the Papal and the

Protestant communions are equi-distant from the true idea of the Gospel

Institute, though erring from opposite directions.

The Romanists sacrifice the Scripture to the Church virtually annulling

the former: the Protestants reversed this practically, and even in

theory, (see the above-mentioned Articles,) annulling the latter.

The consequence has been, as might have been predicted, the extinction

of the Spirit (the indifference or 'mesothesis') in both considered as

bodies: for I doubt not that numerous individuals in both Churches live

in communion with the Spirit.

Towards the close of the reign of our first James, and during the period

from the accession of Charles I to the restoration of his profligate

son, there arose a party of divines, Arminians (and many of them

Latitudinarians) in their creed, but devotees of the throne and the

altar, soaring High Churchmen and ultra royalists.

Much as I dislike their scheme of doctrine and detest their principles

of government both in Church and State, I cannot but allow that they

formed a galaxy of learning and talent, and that among them the Church

of England finds her stars of the first magnitude.

Instead of regarding the Reformation established under Edward VI as

imperfect, they accused the Reformers, some of them openly, but all in

their private opinions, of having gone too far; and while they were

willing to keep down (and if they could not reduce him to a primacy of

honor to keep out) the Pope, and to prune away the innovations in

doctrine brought in under the Papal domination, they were zealous to

restore the hierarchy, and to substitute the authority of the Fathers,

Canonists and Councils of the first six or seven centuries, and the

least Papistic of the later Doctors and Schoolmen, for the names of

Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, Calvin and the systematic theologians who

rejected all testimony but that of their Bible.

As far as the principle, on which Archbishop Laud and his followers

acted, went to re-actuate the idea of the Church, as a co-ordinate and

living Power by right of Christ's institution and express promise, I go

along with them; but I soon discover that by the Church they meant the

Clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in a

tangent.

For it is this very interpretation of the Church that, according to my

conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; and I hold

it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemic divines in their

controversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of

the Gospel faith to the Papacy.

Meantime can we be surprised that our forefathers under the Stuarts were

alarmed, and imagined that the Bishops and court preachers were marching

in quick time with their faces towards Rome, when, to take one instance

of a thousand, a great and famous divine, like Bishop Taylor, asserts

the inferiority, in rank and efficacy, of Baptism to Confirmation, and

grounds this assertion so strange to all Scriptural Protestants on a

text of Cabasilas--a saying of Rupertus--a phrase of St. Denis--and a

sentence of Saint Bernard in a Life of Saint Malachias!--for no

Benedictine can be more liberal in his attribution of saintship than

Jeremy Taylor, or more reverently observant of the beatifications and

canonizations of the Old Lady of the scarlet petticoat.

P. S. If the reader need other illustrations, I refer him to Bishop

Hackett's 'Sermons on the Advent and Nativity', which might almost pass

for the orations of a Franciscan brother, whose reading had been

confined to the 'Aurea Legenda'. It would be uncandid not to add that

this indiscreet traffickery with Romish wares was in part owing to the

immense reading of these divines.

Ib. s. i. p. 247. Acts viii. 14-17.

This is an argument indeed, and one that of itself would suffice to

decide the question, if only it could be proved, or even made probable,

that by the Holy Ghost in this place was meant that receiving of the

Spirit to which Confirmation is by our Church declared to be the means

and vehicle.

But this I suspect cannot be done. The whole passage to which sundry

chapters in St. Paul's Epistles seem to supply the comment, inclines and

almost compels me to understand by the Holy Ghost in this narrative the

miraculous gifts, [Greek: tas dynámeis], collectively.

And in no other sense can I understand the sentence 'the Holy Ghost was

not yet fallen upon any of them'. But the subject is beset with

difficulties from the paucity of particular instances recorded by the

inspired historian, and from the multitude and character of these

instances found in the Fathers and Ecclesiastical historians.

Ib. s. ii. p. 254.

Still they are all [Greek: dynámeis], exhibitable powers, faculties.

Were it otherwise what strange and fearful consequences would follow

from the assertion, 'the Holy Spirit was not yet fallen upon any of

them'.

That we misunderstand the gift of tongues, and that it did not mean the

power of speaking foreign languages unlearnt, I am strongly persuaded.

Yea, but this is not the question. If my heart, bears me witness that I

love my brother, that I love my merciful Saviour, and call Jesus Lord

and the Anointed of God with joy of heart, I am encouraged by Scripture

to infer that the Spirit abideth in me; besides that I know that of

myself, and estranged from the Holy Spirit, I cannot even think a

thought acceptable before God.

But how will this help me to believe that I received this Spirit through

the Bishop's hands laid on my head at Confirmation: when perhaps I am

distinctly conscious, that I loved my Saviour, freely forgave, nay,

tenderly yearned for the weal of, them that hated me before my

Confirmation,--when, indeed, I must have been the most uncharitable of

men if I did not admit instances of the most exemplary faith, charity,

and devotion in Christians who do not practise the imposition of hands

in their Churches. What! did those Christians, of whom St. Luke speaks,

not love their brethren?

'In fine'.

I have had too frequent experience of professional divines, and how they

identify themselves with the theological scheme to which they have been

articled, and I understand too well the nature and the power, the effect

and the consequences, of a wilful faith,--where the sensation of

positiveness is substituted for the sense of certainty, and the stubborn

clutch for quiet insight,--to wonder at any degree of hardihood in

matters of belief.

Therefore the instant and deep-toned affirmative to

the question

"And do you actually believe the presence of the material water in the

baptizing of infants or adults is essential to their salvation, so

indispensably so that the omission of the water in the Baptism of an

infant who should die the day after would exclude that infant from the

kingdom of heaven, and whatever else is implied in the loss of

salvation?"

I should not be surprised, I say, to hear this question answered with an

emphatic,

"Yes, Sir! I do actually believe this, for thus I find it written, and

herein begins my right to the name of a Christian, that I have

exchanged my reason for the Holy Scriptures: I acknowledge no reason

but the Bible."

But as this intrepid respondent, though he may dispense with reason,

cannot quite so easily free himself from the obligations of common sense

and the canons of logic,--both of which demand consistency, and like

consequences from like premisses 'in rebus ejusdem generis', in subjects

of the same class,--I do find myself tempted to wonder, some small deal,

at the unscrupulous substitution of a few drops of water sprinkled on

the face for the Baptism, that is, immersion or dipping, of the whole

person, even if the rivers or running waters had been thought

non-essential.

And yet where every word in any and in all the four narratives is so

placed under the logical press as it is in this Discourse by Jeremy

Taylor, and each and every incident pronounced exemplary, and for the

purpose of being imitated, I should hold even this hazardous.

But I must wonder a very great deal, and in downright earnest, at the

contemptuous language which the same men employ in their controversies

with the Romish Church, respecting the corporal presence in the

consecrated bread and wine, and the efficacy of extreme unction.

For my own part, the assertion that what is phenomenally bread and wine

is substantially the Body and Blood of Christ, does not shock my common

sense more than that a few drops of water sprinkled on the face should

produce a momentous change, even a regeneration, in the soul; and does

not outrage my moral feelings half as much.

P. S. There is one error of very ill consequence to the reputation of

the Christian community, which Taylor shares with the Romish divines,

namely, the quoting of opinions, and even of rhetorical flights, from

the writings of this and that individual, with 'Saint' prefixed to his

name, as expressing the faith of the Church during the first five or six

centuries.

Whereas it would not, perhaps, be very difficult to convince

an unprejudiced man and a sincere Christian of the impossibility that

even the decrees of the General Councils should represent the Catholic

faith, that is, the belief essential to, or necessarily consequent on,

the faith in Christ common to all the elect.

[Footnote 1: The references are here given to Heber's edition, 1822. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: The page however remains a blank. But a little essay on

punctuation by the Author is in the Editor's possession, and will be

published hereafter.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See Euseb. 'Hist.' iii. 27.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: 'Vindication, &c. Quer.' 13, 14, 15.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5: See the form previously exhibited in this volume,

p. 93.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: 'Mark' viii. 29. 'Luke' ix. 20.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: 1 'Pet'. v. 13.--Ed.]

[Footnote 8: Lightfoot and Wall use this strong argument for the

lawfulness and implied duty of Infant Baptism in the Christian Church.

It was the universal practice of the Jews to baptize the infant children

of proselytes as well as their parents. Instead, therefore, of Christ's

silence as to infants by name in his commission to baptize all nations

being an argument that he meant to exclude them, it is a sign that he

meant to include them. For it was natural that the precedent custom

should prevail, unless it were expressly forbidden. The force of this,

however, is limited to the ceremony;--its character and efficacy are not

established by it.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9: The Author's views of Baptism are stated more fully and

methodically in the 'Aids to Reflection'; but even that statement is

imperfect, and consequently open to objection, as was frequently

admitted by Mr. C. himself. The Editor is unable to say what precise

spiritual efficacy the Author ultimately ascribed to Infant Baptism; but

he was certainly an advocate for the practice, and appeared as sponsor

at the font for more than one of his friends' children. See his 'Letter

to a Godchild', printed, for this purpose, at the end of this volume;

his 'Sonnet on his Baptismal Birthday', ('Poet. Works', ii. p. 151.) in

the tenth line of which, in many copies, there was a misprint of 'heart'

for 'front;' and the 'Table Talk', 2nd edit. p. 183. Ed.]

[Footnote 10: 'Deut.' xiii. 1-5. xviii. 22.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: 'Galat.' i. 8, 9.--Ed.]

[Footnote 12: Pp. 206-227. Ed.]

[Footnote 13: With reference to all these notes on Original Sin, see

'Aids to Reflection', p. 250-286.--Ed.]

[Footnote 14: 'Aids to Reflection', p. 274.--Ed.]

[Footnote 15: Ante. 'Vindication, &c.' p. 357-8.]

[Footnote 16: Ibid.]

[Footnote 17:

'Dupliciter vero sanguis Christi et caro intelligitur, spiritualis

ilia atque divina, de qua ipse dixit, Caro mea vere est cibus, &c.,

vel caro et sanguis, quæ crucifixa est, et qui militis effusus est

lancea.'

In 'Epist. Ephes.' c.i.]

[Footnote 18: See 'Table Talk', p. 72, second edit. Ed.]

[Footnote 19:

'Ipsum regem tradunt, volventem commentaries Numæ, quum ibi occulta

solennia sacrificia Jovi Elicio facta invenisset, operatum his sacris

se abdidisse; sed non rite initum aut curatum id sacrum esse; nee

solum nullam ei oblatam Cælestium speciem, sed ira Jovis, sollicitati

prava religione, fulmine ictum cum domo conflagrasse.'

L. i. c. xxxi.--Ed.]

[Footnote 20:

"This also rests upon the practice apostolical and traditive

interpretation of holy Church, and yet cannot be denied that so it

ought to be, by any man that would not have his Christendom suspected.

To these I add the communion of women, the distinction of books

apocryphal from canonical, that such books were written by such

Evangelists and Apostles, the whole tradition of Scripture itself, the

Apostles' Creed, &c. ... These and divers others of greater

consequence, (which I dare not specify for fear of being

misunderstood,) rely but upon equal faith with this of Episcopacy,"

&c.--Ed.]

[Footnote 21: S. xxvi.]

[Footnote 22: S. iv. 4.--Ed.]

NOTES ON THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I,

according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as

teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that

was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in my conviction,

incomparably the best 'Summa Theologiæ Evangelicæ' ever produced by

a writer not miraculously inspired.

June 14, 1830.

It disappointed, nay surprised me, to find Robert Southey express

himself so coldly respecting the style and diction of the Pilgrim's

Progress. I can find nothing homely in it but a few phrases and single

words. The conversation between Faithful and Talkative [1] is a model of

unaffected dignity and rhythmical flow.

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF BUNYAN.

P. xiv.

"We intended not," says Baxter, "to dig down the banks, or pull up the

hedge, and lay all waste and common, when we desired the Prelates'

tyranny might cease." No; for the intention had been under the pretext

of abating one tyranny to establish a far severer and more galling in

its stead: in doing this the banks had been thrown down, and the hedge

destroyed; and while the bestial herd who broke in rejoiced in the

havoc, Baxter, and other such erring though good men, stood marvelling

at the mischief, which never could have been effected, if they had not

mainly assisted in it.

But the question is, would these 'erring good' men have been either

willing or able to assist in this work, if the more erring Lauds and

Sheldons had not run riot in the opposite direction? And as for the

'bestial herd,'--compare the whole body of Parliamentarians, all the

fanatical sects included, with the royal and prelatical party in the

reign of Charles II. These were, indeed, a bestial herd. See Baxter's

unwilling and Burnet's honest description of the moral discipline

throughout the realm under Cromwell.

Ib. p. xv.

They passed with equal facility from strict Puritanism to the utmost

license of practical and theoretical impiety, as Antinomians or as

Atheists, and from extreme profligacy to extreme superstition in any

of its forms.

'They!' How many? and of these how many that would not have been in

Bedlam, or fit for it, under some other form? A madman falls into love

or religion, and then, forsooth! it is love or religion that drove him

mad.

Ib. p. xxi.

In an evil hour were the doctrines of the Gospel sophisticated with

questions which should have been left in the Schools for those who are

unwise enough to employ themselves in excogitations of useless

subtlety.

But what, at any rate, had Bunyan to do with the Schools? His

perplexities clearly rose out of the operations of his own active but

unarmed mind on the words of the Apostle. If anything is to be

arraigned, it must be the Bible in English, the reading of which is

imposed (and, in my judgment, well and wisely imposed) as a duty on all

who can read. Though Protestants, we are not ignorant of the occasional

and partial evils of promiscuous Bible-reading; but we see them vanish

when we place them beside the good.

Ib. p. xxiv.

False notions of that corruption of our nature which it is almost as

perilous to exaggerate as to dissemble.

I would have said "which it is almost as perilous to misunderstand as to

deny."

Ib. p. xli. &c.

But the wickedness of the tinker has been greatly over-charged; and it

is taking the language of self-accusation too literally, to pronounce

of John Bunyan that he was at any time depraved. The worst of what he

was in his worst days is to be expressed in a single word ... he had

been a blackguard, &c.

All this narrative, with the reflections on the facts, is admirable and

worthy of Robert Southey: full of good sense and kind feeling--the

wisdom of love.

Ib. p. lxi.

But the Sectaries had kept their countrymen from it (the Common Prayer

Book), while they had the power, and Bunyan himself in his sphere

laboured to dissuade them from it.

Surely the fault lay in the want, or in the feeble and inconsistent

manner, of determining and supporting the proper powers of the Church.

In fact, the Prelates and leading divines of the Church were not only at

variance with each other, but each with himself.

One party, the more faithful and less modified disciples of the first

Reformers, were afraid of bringing anything into even a semblance of a

co-ordination with the Scriptures; and, with the _terriculum_ of Popery

ever before their eyes, timidly and sparingly allowed to the Church any

even subordinate power beyond that of interpreting the Scriptures; that

is, of finding the ordinances of the Church implicitly contained in the

ordinances of the inspired writers.

But as they did not assume infallibility in their interpretations, it

amounted to nothing for the consciences of such men as Bunyan and a

thousand others.

The opposite party, Laud, Taylor, and the rest, with a sufficient

dislike of the Pope (that is, at Rome) and of the grosser theological

corruptions of the Romish Church, yet in their hearts as much averse to

the sentiments and proceedings of Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Zuinglius,

and their fellows, and proudly conscious of their superior learning,

sought to maintain their ordinances by appeals to the Fathers, to the

recorded traditions and doctrine of the Catholic priesthood during the

first five or six centuries, and contended for so much that virtually

the Scriptures were subordinated to the Church, which yet they did not

dare distinctly to say out.

The result was that the Anti-Prelatists answered them in the gross by

setting at nought their foundation, that is, the worth, authority and

value of the Fathers.

So much for their variance with each other. But each vindicator of our

established Liturgy and Discipline was divided in himself: he minced

this out of fear of being charged with Popery, and that he dared not

affirm for fear of being charged with disloyalty to the King as the head

of the Church.

The distinction between the Church of which the king is the rightful

head, and the Church which hath no head but Christ, never occurred

either to them or to their antagonists; and as little did they succeed

in appropriating to Scripture what belonged to Scripture, and to the

Church what belonged to the Church.

All things in which the temporal is concerned may be reduced to a

pentad, namely, prothesis, thesis, antithesis, mesothesis and synthesis.

So here--

'Prothesis'

Christ, the Word

'Thesis' 'Mesothesis' 'Antithesis'

The Scriptures The Holy Spirit The Church

'Synthesis'

The Preacher

[2]

Ib. p. lxiii.

"But there are two ways of obeying," he observed; "the one to do that

which I in my conscience do believe that I am bound to do, actively;

and where I cannot obey actively, there I am willing to lie down, and

to suffer what they shall do unto me."

Genuine Christianity worthy of John and Paul!

Ib. p. lxv.

I am not conscious of any warping power that could have acted for so

very long a period; but from sixteen to now, sixty years of age, I have

retained the very same convictions respecting the Stuarts and their

adherents. Even to Lord Clarendon I never could quite reconcile myself.

How often the pen becomes the tongue of a systematic dream,--a

somniloquist! The sunshine, that is, the comparative power, the distinct

contra-distinguishing judgment of realities as other than mere thoughts,

is suspended. During this state of continuous, not single-mindedness,

but one-side-mindedness, writing is manual somnambulism; the somnial

magic superinduced on, without suspending, the active powers of the mind.

Ib. p. lxxix.

"They that will have heaven, they must run for it, because the devil,

the law, sin, death and hell, follow them. There is never a poor soul

that is going to heaven, but the devil, the law, sin, death and hell

make after that soul. 'The devil, your adversary, as a roaring lion,

goeth about seeking whom he may devour.' And I will assure you the

devil is nimble; he can run apace; he is light of foot; he hath

overtaken many; he hath turned up their heels, and hath given them an

everlasting fall. Also the law! that can shoot a great way: have a

care thou keep out of the reach of those great guns the Ten

Commandments! Hell also hath a wide mouth," &c.

It is the fashion of the day to call every man, who in his writings or

discourses gives a prominence to the doctrines on which, beyond all

others, the first Reformers separated from the Romish communion, a

Calvinist. Bunyan may have been one, but I have met with nothing in his

writings (except his Anti-pædobaptism, to which too he assigns no saving

importance) that is not much more characteristically Lutheran; for

instance, this passage is the very echo of the chapter on the Law and

Gospel, in Luther's 'Table Talk'.

It would be interesting, and I doubt not, instructive, to know the

distinction in Bunyan's mind between the devil and hell.

Ib. p. xcvii.

Bunyan concludes with something like a promise of a third part. There

appeared one after his death, and it has had the fortune to be

included in many editions of the original work.

It is remarkable that Southey should not have seen, or having seen, have

forgotten to notice, that this third part is evidently written by some

Romish priest or missionary in disguise.

LIFE OF BUNYAN. [3]

The early part of his life was an open course of wickedness.

Southey, in the Life prefixed to his edition of the Pilgrim's Progress,

has, in a manner worthy of his head and heart, reduced this oft repeated

charge to its proper value. Bunyan was never, in our received sense of

the word, wicked. He was chaste, sober, honest; but he was a bitter

blackguard; that is, damned his own and his neighbour's eyes on slight

or no occasion, and was fond of a row. In this our excellent Laureate

has performed an important service to morality. For the transmutation of

actual reprobates into saints is doubtless possible; but like the many

recorded facts of corporeal alchemy, it is not supported by modern

experiments.

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

Part i. p. II.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world.

That in the Apocalypse the wilderness is the symbol of the world, or

rather of the worldly life, Bunyan discovered by the instinct of a

similar genius. The whole Jewish history, indeed, in all its details is

so admirably adapted to, and suggestive of, symbolical use, as to

justify the belief that the spiritual application, the interior and

permanent sense, was in the original intention of the inspiring Spirit,

though it might not have been present, as an object of distinct

consciousness, to the inspired writers.

Ib.

... where was a den.

The jail. Mr. Bunyan wrote this precious book in Bedford jail, where he

was confined on account of his religion. The following anecdote is

related of him. A Quaker came to the jail, and thus addressed him:

"Friend Bunyan, the Lord sent me to seek for thee, and I have been

through several counties in search of thee, and now I am glad I have

found thee."

To which Mr. Bunyan replied,

"Friend, thou dost not speak the truth in saying the Lord sent thee to

seek me; for the Lord well knows that I have been in this jail for

some years; and if he had sent thee, he would have sent thee here

directly."

'Note in Edwards'.

This is a valuable anecdote, for it proves, what might have been

concluded 'a priori', that Bunyan was a man of too much genius to be a

fanatic. No two qualities are more contrary than genius and fanaticism.

Enthusiasm, indeed, [Greek: o theòs en haemin], is almost a synonyme of

genius; the moral life in the intellectual light, the will in the

reason; and without it, says Seneca, nothing truly great was ever

achieved by man.

Ib. p. 12.

And not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable

cry, saying, "What shall I do?"

Reader, was this ever your case? Did you ever see your sins, and feel

the burden of them, so as to cry out in the anguish of your soul, What

must I do to be saved? If not, you will look on this precious book as

a romance or history, which no way concerns you; you can no more

understand the meaning of it than if it were wrote in an unknown

tongue, for you are yet carnal, dead in your sins, lying in the arms

of the wicked one in false security. But this book is spiritual; it

can only be understood by spiritually quickened souls who have

experienced that salvation in the heart, which begins with a sight of

sin, a sense of sin, a fear of destruction and dread of damnation.

Such and such only commence Pilgrims from the City of Destruction to

the heavenly kingdom.

'Note in Edwards'.

Most true. It is one thing to perceive and acknowledge this and that

particular deed to be sinful, that is, contrary to the law of reason or

the commandment of God in Scripture, and another thing to feel sin

within us independent of particular actions, except as the common ground

of them. And it is this latter without which no man can become a

Christian.

Ib. p. 39.

Now whereas thou sawest that as soon as the first began to sweep, the

dust did so fly about that the room by him could not be cleansed, but

that thou wast almost choked therewith; this is to show thee, that the

Law, instead of cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth

revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it

doth discover and forbid it; for it doth not give power to subdue.

See Luther's 'Table Talk'. The chapters in that work named "Law and

Gospel," contain the very marrow of divinity. Still, however, there

remains much to be done on this subject; namely, to show how the

discovery of sin by the Law tends to strengthen the sin; and why it must

necessarily have this effect, the mode of its action on the appetites

and impetites through the imagination and understanding; and to

exemplify all this in our actual experience.

Ib. p. 40.

Then I saw that one came to Passion, and brought him a bag of

treasure, and poured it down at his feet; the which he took up, and

rejoiced therein, and withal laughed Patience to scorn; but I beheld

but awhile, and he had lavished all away, and had nothing left him but

rags.

One of the not many instances of faulty allegory in 'The Pilgrim's

Progress'; that is, it is no allegory. The beholding "but awhile," and

the change into "nothing but rags," is not legitimately imaginable. A

longer time and more interlinks are requisite. It is a hybrid compost of

usual images and generalized words, like the Nile-born nondescript, with

a head or tail of organized flesh, and a lump of semi-mud for the body.

Yet, perhaps, these very defects are practically excellencies in

relation to the intended readers of 'The Pilgrim's Progress'.

Ib. p. 43.

The Interpreter answered, "This is Christ, who continually, with the

oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart; by

the means of which, notwithstanding what the Devil can do, the souls

of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the

man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, this is to teach thee,

that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is

maintained in the soul."

This is beautiful; yet I cannot but think it would have been still more

appropriate, if the waterpourer had been a Mr. Legality, a prudentialist

offering his calculation of consequences as the moral antidote to guilt

and crime; and if the oil-instillator, out of sight and from within, had

represented the corrupt nature of man, that is, the spiritual will

corrupted by taking up a nature into itself.

Ib.

What, then, has the sinner who is the subject of grace no hand in

keeping up the work of grace in the heart? No! It is plain Mr. Bunyan

was not an Arminian.

'Note in Edwards'.

If by metaphysics we mean those truths of the pure reason which always

transcend, and not seldom appear to contradict, the understanding, or

(in the words of the great Apostle) spiritual verities which can only be

spiritually discerned--and this is the true and legitimate meaning of

metaphysics, [Greek: metà tà physikà]--then I affirm, that this very

controversy between the Arminians and the Calvinists, in which both are

partially right in what they affirm, and both wholly wrong in what they

deny, is a proof that without metaphysics there can be no light of faith.

Ib. p. 45.

I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my

lusts

This single paragraph proves, in opposition to the assertion in the

preceding note in Edwards, that in Bunyan's judgment there must be at

least a negative co-operation of the will of man with the divine grace,

an energy of non-resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit. But the

error of the Calvinists is, that they divide the regenerate will in man

from the will of God, instead of including it.

Ib. p. 49.

So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross,

his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back,

and began to tumble; and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth

of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

'We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an

understanding' (or discernment of reason) 'that we may know him that is

true, and we are in him that is true, even in his son Jesus Christ. This

is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from

idols'. 1. John, v. 20, 21.

Alas! how many Protestants make a mental idol of the Cross, scarcely

less injurious to the true faith in the Son of God than the wooden

crosses and crucifixes of the Romanists!--and this, because they have

not been taught that Jesus was both the Christ and the great symbol of

Christ.

Strange, that we can explain spiritually, what to take up the cross of

Christ, to be crucified with Christ, means;--yet never ask what the

Crucifixion itself signifies, but rest satisfied in the historic image.

That one declaration of the Apostle, that by wilful sin we 'crucify the

Son of God afresh', might have roused us to nobler thoughts.

Ib. p. 52.

And besides, say they, if we get into the way, what matters which way

we get in? If we are in, we are in. Thou art but in the way, who, as

we perceive, came in at the gate: and we are also in the way, that

came tumbling over the wall: wherein now is thy condition better than

ours?

The allegory is clearly defective, inasmuch as 'the way' represents two

diverse meanings;

1. the outward profession of Christianity, and

2. the inward and spiritual grace.

But it would be very difficult to mend it.

1830.

In this instance (and it is, I believe, the only one in the work,) the

allegory degenerates into a sort of pun, that is, in the two senses of

the word 'way,' and thus supplies Formal and Hypocrite with an argument

which Christian cannot fairly answer, or rather one to which Bunyan

could not make his Christian return the proper answer without

contradicting the allegoric image.

For the obvious and only proper answer is: No! you are not in the same

'way' with me, though you are walking on the same 'road.'

But it has a worse defect, namely, that it leaves the reader uncertain

as to what the writer precisely meant, or wished to be understood, by

the allegory.

Did Bunyan refer to the Quakers as rejecting the outward Sacraments of

Baptism and the Lord's Supper?

If so, it is the only unspiritual passage in the whole beautiful

allegory, the only trait of sectarian narrow-mindedness, and, in

Bunyan's own language, of legality.

But I do not think that this was Bunyan's intention. I rather suppose

that he refers to the Arminians and other Pelagians, who rely on the

coincidence of their actions with the Gospel precepts for their

salvation, whatever the ground or root of their conduct may be; who

place, in short, the saving virtue in the stream, with little or no

reference to the source.

But it is the faith acting in our poor imperfect deeds that alone saves

us; and even this faith is not ours, but the faith of the Son of God in

us.

'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.'

Gal. ii. 20.

Illustrate this by a simile. Labouring under chronic 'bronchitis', I am

told to inhale chlorine as a specific remedy; but I can do this only by

dissolving a saturated solution of the gas in warm water, and then

breathing the vapour. Now what the aqueous vapour or steam is to the

chlorine, that our deeds, our outward life, [Greek: bíos], is to faith.

Ib. p. 55.

And the other took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him

into a wide field, full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell,

and rose no more.

This requires a comment. A wide field full of mountains and of dark

mountains, where Hypocrite stumbled and fell! The images here are

unusually obscure.

Ib. p. 70.

They showed him Moses' rod, the hammer and nail with which Jael slew

Sisera.

I question whether it would be possible to instance more strikingly the

power of a predominant idea (that true mental kaleidoscope with

richly-coloured glass) on every object brought before the eye of the

mind through its medium, than this conjunction of Moses' rod with the

hammer of the treacherous assassin Jael, and similar encomiastic

references to the same detestable murder, by Bunyan and men like Bunyan,

good, pious, purely-affectioned disciples of the meek and holy Jesus;

yet the erroneous preconception that whatever is uttered by a Scripture

personage is, in fact, uttered by the infallible Spirit of God, makes

Deborahs of them all.

But what besides ought we to infer from this and similar facts? Surely,

that the faith in the heart overpowers and renders innocent the errors

of the understanding and the delusions of the imagination, and that

sincerely pious men purchase, by inconsistency, exemption from the

practical consequences of particular errors.

Ib. p. 76.

All this is true, and much more which thou hast left out, &c. This is

the best way; to own Satan's charges, if they be true; yea, to

exaggerate them also, to exalt the riches of the grace of Christ above

all, in pardoning all of them freely.

'Note in Edwards'.

That is, to say what we do not believe to be true! 'Will ye speak

wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for him?' said righteous Job.

Ib. p. 83.

One thing I would not let slip: I took notice that now poor Christian

was so confounded, that he did not know his own voice; and thus I

perceived it: just when he was come over against the mouth of the

burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him, and stepped up

softly to him, and whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to

him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind.

There is a very beautiful letter of Archbishop Leighton's to a lady

under a similar distemperature of the imagination. [4] In fact, it can

scarcely not happen under any weakness and consequent irritability of

the nerves to persons continually occupied with spiritual

self-examination. No part of the pastoral duties requires more

discretion, a greater practical psychological science. In this, as in

what not?

Luther is the great model; ever reminding the individual that not he,

but Christ, is to redeem him; and that the way to be redeemed is to

think with will, mind, and affections on Christ, and not on himself. I

am a sin-laden being, and Christ has promised to loose the whole burden

if I but entirely trust in him.

To torment myself with the detail of the noisome contents of the fardel

will but make it stick the closer, first to my imagination and then to

my unwilling will.

Ib.

For that he perceived God was with them, though in that dark and

dismal state; and why not, thought he, with me, though by reason of

the impediment that attends this place, I cannot perceive it? But it

may be asked, Why doth the Lord suffer his children to walk in such

darkness? It is for his glory: it tries their faith in him, and

excites prayer to him: but his love abates not in the least towards

them, since he lovingly inquires after them, 'Who is there among you

that feareth the Lord and walketh in darkness, and hath no light?'

Then he gives most precious advice to them: 'Let him trust in the

Lord', and 'stay himself upon his God'.

Yes! even in the sincerest believers, being men of reflecting and

inquiring minds, there will sometimes come a wintry season, when the

vital sap of faith retires to the root, that is, to atheism of the will.

'But though he slay me, yet will I cling to him.'

Ib. p. 85.

And as for the other (Pope), though he be yet alive, he is, by reason

of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his

younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now

do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as

they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them.

O that Blanco White would write in Spanish the progress of a pilgrim

from the Pope's cave to the Evangelist's wicket-gate and the

Interpreter's house!

1836.

Ib. p. 104.

And let us assure ourselves that, at the day of doom, men shall be

judged according to their fruit. It will not be said then, "Did you

believe?" but "Were you doers or talkers only?" and accordingly shall

be judged.

All the doctors of the Sorbonne could not have better stated the Gospel

'medium' between Pelagianism and Antinomian-Solifidianism, more properly

named Sterilifidianism. It is, indeed, faith alone that saves us; but it

is such a faith as cannot be alone. Purity and beneficence are the

'epidermis,' faith and love the 'cutis vera' of Christianity. Morality

is the outward cloth, faith the lining; both together form the

wedding-garment given to the true believer in Christ, even his own

garment of righteousness, which, like the loaves and fishes, he

mysteriously multiplies. The images of the sun in the earthly dew-drops

are unsubstantial phantoms; but God's thoughts are things: the images of

God, of the Sun of Righteousness, in the spiritual dew-drops are

substances, imperishable substances.

Ib. p. 154.

Fine-spun speculations and curious reasonings lead men from simple

truth and implicit faith into many dangerous and destructive errors.

The Word records many instances of such for our caution. Be warned to

study simplicity and godly sincerity.

'Note in Edwards on Doubting Castle.'

And pray what does implicit faith lead men into? Transubstantiation and

all the abominations of priest-worship. And where is the Scriptural

authority for this implicit faith? Assuredly not in St. John, who tells

us that Christ's life is and manifests itself in us as the light of man;

that he came to bring light as well as immortality. Assuredly not in St.

Paul, who declares all faith imperfect and perilous without insight and

understanding; who prays for us that we may comprehend the deep things

even of God himself. For the Spirit discerned, and the Spirit by which

we discern, are both God; the Spirit of truth through and in Christ from

the Father.

Mournful are the errors into which the zealous but unlearned preachers

among the dissenting Calvinists have fallen respecting absolute

election, and discriminative, yet reasonless, grace:--fearful this

divorcement of the Holy Will, the one only Absolute Good, that,

eternally affirming itself as the I AM, eternally generateth the Word,

the absolute Being, the Supreme Reason, the Being of all Truth, the

Truth of all Being:--fearful the divorcement from the reason; fearful

the doctrine which maketh God a power of darkness, instead of the God of

light, the Father of the light which lighteth every man that cometh into

the world!

This we know and this we are taught by the holy Apostle Paul; that

without will there is no ground or base of sin; that without the law

this ground or base cannot become sin; (hence we do not impute sin to

the wolf or the tiger, as being without or below the law;) but that with

the law cometh light into the will; and by this light the will becometh

a free, and therefore a responsible, will.

Yea! the law is itself light, and the divine light becomes law by its

relation and opposition to the darkness; the will of God revealed in its

opposition to the dark and alien will of the fallen Spirit. This

freedom, then, is the free gift of God; but does it therefore cease to

be freedom?

All the sophistry of the Predestinarians rests on the false notion of

eternity as a sort of time antecedent to time. It is timeless, present

with and in all times.

There is an excellent discourse of the great Hooker's, affixed with two

or three others to his Ecclesiastical Polity, on the final perseverance

of Saints; [5] but yet I am very desirous to meet with some judicious

experimental treatise, in which the doctrine, with the Scriptures on

which it is grounded, is set forth more at large; as likewise the rules

by which it may be applied to the purposes of support and comfort,

without danger of causing presumption and without diminishing the dread

of sin.

Above all, I am anxious to see the subject treated with as little

reference as possible to the divine predestination and foresight; the

argument from the latter being a mere identical proposition followed by

an assertion of God's prescience.

Those who will persevere, will persevere, and God foresees; and as to

the proof from predestination, that is, that he who predestines the end

necessarily predestines the adequate means, I can more readily imagine

logical consequences adverse to the sense of responsibility than

Christian consequences, such as an individual may apply for his own

edification.

And I am persuaded that the doctrine does not need these supports,

according, I mean, to the ordinary notion of predestination. The

predestinative force of a free agent's own will in certain absolute

acts, determinations, or elections, and in respect of which acts it is

one either with the divine or the devilish will; and if the former, the

conclusions to be drawn from God's goodness, faithfulness, and spiritual

presence; these supply grounds of argument of a very different

character, especially where the mind has been prepared by an insight

into the error and hollowness of the antithesis between liberty and

necessity.

Ib. p. 178.

But how contrary to this is the walk and conduct of some who profess

to be pilgrims, and yet can wilfully and deliberately go upon the

Devil's ground, and indulge themselves in carnal pleasures and sinful

diversions.

'Note in Edwards on the Enchanted Ground'.

But what pleasures are carnal,--what are sinful diversions,--so I mean

as that I may be able to determine what are not? Shew us the criterion,

the general principle; at least explain whether each individual case is

to be decided for the individual by his own experience of the effects of

the pleasure or the diversion, in dulling or distracting his religious

feelings; or can a list, a complete list, of all such pleasures be made

beforehand?