JOHN SMITH, PLATONIST--"AN INTERPRETER OF THE SPIRIT"[1]
Principal Tulloch, in his admirable study of the Cambridge Platonists,
declares that John Smith was "the richest and most beautiful mind and
certainly by far the best writer of them all."[2]
There can be no doubt, in the thought of any one who has come into
close contact with him, of the richness and beauty of his spirit. He
leaves the impression, even after the lapse of more than two hundred
and fifty years, of having been a saint of a rare type. Those who were
nearest to him in fellowship called him "a good man," "a Godlike man,"
"a servant and friend of God," "a serious practicer of the Sermon on
the Mount"; and we who know him only afar off and at second hand feel
sure nevertheless that these lofty words were rightly given to him.
His scholarship was wide--he had "a vastness of learning," as Patrick
says; but his main contribution was not to philosophy nor to theology,
it consisted rather of an exhibition of religion wrought out in the
attractive form of a beautiful spiritual life: "He was an Exemplar of
true Christian Vertue of so poized and even a life that by his Wisdom
and Conscience one might live almost at a venture, walking blindfold
through the world."[3]
The details of his life are very meagre. We are in the {306} main
dependent on the literary portraits of him drawn by two of his
affectionate friends--John Worthington who edited his Discourses, and
Simon Patrick who delivered the remarkable sermon on the occasion of
his funeral.[4] From these sources we learn that John Smith was born
at Achurch near Oundle about the year 1618, "of parents who had long
been childless and were grown aged." It appears incidentally that his
parents were poor, and that Benjamin Whichcote, who was Smith's college
Tutor, made "provision for his support and maintenance" in his early
student days.[5] He entered Emmanuel College in 1636, and here he came
under the profound religious and intellectual influence of Whichcote,
for whom "he did ever express a great and singular regard." He became
a Master of Arts in 1644, and that same year was elected Fellow of
Queens' College. It was about this time that Whichcote returned to
Cambridge, "spreading and propagating a nobler, freer and more generous
sett of opinions," which "the young Masters of Arts soon cordially
embraced." Among those who formed this group of awakened and kindled
students Smith was an enthusiastic member, and he himself soon became a
powerful exponent in the Chapel of Queens' College of a similar
message, which, a contemporary writer says, "contributed to raise new
thoughts and a sublime style in the members of the University." He was
smitten, while still young, with a painful lingering illness, which he
bore "without murmuring or complaining," "resting quietly satisfied in
the Infinite, Unbounded Goodness and Tenderness of his Father," hoping
only that he might "learn that for which God sent the suffering,"[6]
and he died August 7, 1652, "after God had lent him to the world for
about five and thirty years."[7] "I was desirous," his friend Patrick
says at the opening of his funeral sermon, "that I might have stai'd
the wheels of that Triumphant Chariot wherein he seemed to be carried;
that we might have {307} kept him a little longer in this world, till
by his holy breathing into our souls, and the Grace of God, we had been
made meet to have some share in that inheritance of the saints in
light"; but now, he adds, "we are orphans, left without a father."[8]
Patrick adapts to his own departed teacher the beautiful words which
Gregory Thaumaturgus used of his great instructor, Origen: "He hath
entangled and bound up my soul in such fetters of love, he hath so tyed
and knit me to him, that if I would be disengaged, I cannot quit
myself. No, though I depart out of the world, our love cannot die, for
I love him even as my own soul, and so my affection must remain
forever."[9] The whole sermon throbs with intense love, and while it
is somewhat overweighted with quotations and learned allusions, it yet
expresses in an impressive way the sincere affection of a disciple for
a noble master who has "begot another shape in his scholar and has made
another man of him."[10] "Such men," he says, "God hath alwaies in the
world, men of greater height and stature than others, whom He sets up
as torches on an hill to give light to all the regions round
about."[11] Such men "are the guard and defense of the towns where
they reside, yea of the country whereof they are members; they are the
keepers and life-guards of the world; the walls and bulwarks of the
Nation,"[12] and when they leave the world everybody soon feels that a
glory has departed--"when Elijah goes away you shall have fifty men go
three days to seek him!"[13]
This disciple, who declared that whatever "heavenly life" there was in
himself had been "hatched" by the fostering care, the nurturing love
and the brave conduct of his teacher, has left a few very clear traits
for the creation of a true portrait of this saintly interpreter of the
Spirit: He was a Fountain running over, Worthington says, "an ever
bountifull and bubbling Fountain."[14] Love was bubbling and springing
up in his soul and flowing out to all. He would have emptied his soul
into others. He {308} was dipped into Justice as it were over head and
ears; he had not a slight tincture but was dyed and coloured quite
through with it. He cared only for those substantial and solid things
of a Divine and Immortal Nature, which he might carry out of the world
with him. He was a living library, a walking study, a whole college in
himself, that carried his learning about with him; a man of great
industry, indefatigable pains, and herculean labours. His learning was
so concocted that it lay not in notions in his head, but was wrought
out and formed in his very soul so that a man came away always better
after converse with him. His faith did not busy itself about fine
notions, subtilties, and curiosities, but it was firmly set and fixed
in an experience of the mercy and goodness of God, seen in Jesus
Christ. He lived in a continuous enjoyment of God and perpetually drew
nearer to the Centre of his soul's rest and always stayed God's time of
advancement. His spirit was absorbed in the business and employment of
becoming perfect in his art and profession--which was the art _of being
a good man_.[15] The devoted scholar's highest wish, as he closes his
glowing account of his beloved master, who "enshrined so much Divinity
that everything about him had a kind of sacredness," was that those who
had enjoyed his presence and inspiration and had formed their lives
under his instruction might "so express his life" in theirs, that men
would say as they saw these disciples of his, "There walks at least a
shadow of Mr. Smith!"[16]
It would be difficult to find any one, in the long list of those who
have interpreted Christianity, who has been more insistent than was
John Smith that religion is the normal function of the soul and the
surest evidence of its health and sanity. But religion of this normal
and spiritual type must be sharply differentiated both from
superstition and from legalistic religion. The mark of superstition in
his mind is the apprehension of God as capricious, a hard Master, and
of such a character that his {309} favour can be gained only by servile
flattery or bribery or by spells of magic. Superstition is "a brat of
darkness" born in a heart of fear and consternation. It produces
invariably "a forced and jejune devotion"; it makes "forms of worship
which are grievous and burdensome" to the life; it chills or destroys
all free and joyous converse with God; it kills out love and inward
peace, and instead of inspiring, heightening, and purifying man's soul,
it bends all its energies in the vain attempt to alter the capricious
attitude of the superior Being who scares and terrifies men. It is,
however, a very subtle spirit and one hard to eradicate. It invades
our religion even when we are least aware of it: "it enters into our
chambers, creeps into our clothes, twines about our secret devotions,
and actuates our forms of belief and orthodox opinions."[17]
Legalistic religion, or the "covenant of works," is much of a piece
with superstition. It, again, is always a burden to be borne. Its
mark is "drudgery and servility." It is a "lean and lifeless form of
external performances." Its "law" is always something outside the soul
itself. It is a way of acquiring "merit," of getting reckoned among
"heaven's darlings," but it is not a way of life or expansion or power
or joy.[18]
This "dead" legalistic form of religion is, however, not merely a thing
of antiquity, of some early "dispensation" in the long stretch of years
called "B.C." Like superstition, legalistic religion also has "crept
into our clothes" and "twined about our secret devotions." The
"gospel" can be made, and has often enough been made, "as legal as ever
the religion of the Jews was." The gospel becomes legal, in Smith's
sense, wherever it is treated "as something onely without us," "as a
meer historical story or account," or as a collection of book-facts, or
"as _credenda_ propounded for us to believe," or when we attempt to
"make Christ's righteousness serve onely as our outward
_covering_."[19] "Some of our {310} _Dogmata_," he thinks, "and
Notions of Justification puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits
of ourselves than God hath of us; and we _profanely_ make the unspotted
righteousness of Christ serve only as a _covering_ to wrap up our foul
deformities and filthy vices in."[20] This tendency, wherever it
appears, is but legal religion. Men adopt it because it does not
"pinch their sins." It gives them a "sluggish and drowsie Belief, a
lazy Lethargy to hugg their supposed acceptation with God"; it enables
them "to grow big and swell with a mighty bulk with airy fancies and
presumptions of being in favour with Heaven," and it fans up "a
pertinacious Imagination that their Names are enrolled in the Book of
Life, or crossed off in the Debt-Book of Heaven." But it is all "a
meer Conceit or Opinion," for such men are "never the better in reality
in themselves and God judges all things as they are." "While men
continue in their wickedness, they do but vainly dream of a device to
tie the hands of Almighty Vengeance."[21]
True religion, on the other hand, is absolutely another thing, sundered
by the width of the sky from either superstition or legalistic
religion. It is a reception and assimilation of the Life of God within
the soul of man which is predisposed by its fundamental nature to the
influx and formative influence of the Spirit of God, who is the
environing Life and inner atmosphere of all human spirits: "_Spiritual
Life comes from God's breath within us and from the formation of Christ
within the soul_."[22]
Like all of his kind, Smith begins with what to him is an axiomatic
fact, that the human soul has a "royal pedigree and noble extraction,"
that, "as the best philosophers have alwaies taught, we must enquire
for God within ourselves," that "Principles of Divine Truth have been
engraven on man's Heart by the finger of God," that we can find "a
clear impression of some Eternal Nature and Perfect Being stamped upon
our own souls," that there are "Radical Principles of Divine Knowledge"
{311} and "Seeds of Divine Nature" hidden within us and that a Divine
Spirit blows and breathes upon men's hearts, assisting the soul to
participate in the Life of God.[23] In one of his bold sayings this
position is summed up as follows: "Religion is a Heaven-born thing, the
Seed of God in the spirits of men, whereby they are formed to a
similitude and likeness of Himself. A true Christian is every way of a
most noble extraction, of an heavenly and divine pedigree."[24]
He finds the mark of man's excelling dignity in the inexhaustible depth
of his nature and in his noble discontent with every finite and mutable
thing. The soul of man is "too big for earthly designs and interests."
There is forever a restless appetite within man for some infinite Good
without which he can never be satisfied. Everything which he attains
or achieves still leaves him in "pinching penury," unsatiated with
"the thin and spare diet which he finds in his finite home." His
soul, "like the daughters of the Horseleach is always crying: 'Give,
give.'" No happiness worth having ever arises, nor through a whole
eternity could arise, for any soul sequestered like a hermit in
the narrow confines of its own private cell, sundered from "the
Fountain-Goodness," for which it was created. The immortal Principle
within forever drives it to seek its Original, and it lives only when
it "lives above itself," and follows "its own proper motion upward."[25]
The real Gospel in contrast to the "legal gospel," is "the formation of
a Christlike Nature in a man's soul by the mighty power of the Divine
Spirit."[26] It is no new set of opinions; no body of Notions about
Truth; "no system of saving Divinity, cast in a Pedagogical mould"; it
is, from its Alpha to its Omega, Spirit and Life, or, to put it in
Smith's own words, it is "a vital or energetical Spirit or Power of
Righteousness," "a Principle of Life working in man's spirit," "a
quickening ministration," "a Seed of God," "a vital Influx, spreading
through all {312} the powers of the soul and bringing it into a Divine
Life."[27] There are many close imitations of this real Gospel which
on the outside look exactly like it, but they only assume "the garish
dress and attire of religion," they put on "the specious and
seemingly-spiritual Forms" without the inward Life and Power which are
always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform
their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties
and system of opinions, underprop their religion with sacred
performances; "chameleon-like, they even turn their insides to whatever
hue and colour" is demanded of religion; they "furnish this domestick
Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of religion
affords them"--only, however they "cunningly fashion out their religion
by Book-skill," they cannot get "the true and living thing," which
creates a new spirit and produces a new inward joy: "True Religion is
no piece of artifice; it is no boiling up of our Imaginative powers nor
the glowing heats of Passion; though these are too often mistaken for
it, when in our jugglings in Religion we cast a mist before our eyes.
But it is a new Nature informing the souls of Men; it is a Godlike
frame of Spirit, discovering it self most of all in serene and clear
Minds, in deep Humility, Meekness, Self-denial, Universal Love of God
and all true Goodness, without Partiality and without Hypocrisie;
whereby we are taught to know God, and knowing Him to love Him and
conform ourselves as much as may be to all that Perfection which shines
forth in Him."[28]
Heaven and Hell for John Smith, as for Boehme and for Whichcote, "have
their foundation laid in Men's own souls."[29] They are rather
something within us than something without us. Sin and hell have the
same origin, "the same lineage and descent." "The Devil is not only
the name of one particular thing, but a _nature_. He is not so much a
particular Being designed to torture wicked men in the world to come as
a hellish and diabolical {313} nature seated in the minds of men. . . .
Could the Devil change his foul and impure nature, he would neither be
a Devil nor miserable. . . . All Sin and Wickedness in man's spirit
hath the Central force and energy of Hell in it, and is perpetually
pressing down towards it as towards its own place. There needs no
fatal necessity or Astral influences to tumble wicked men down forcibly
into Hell: No, Sin itself, hastened by the mighty weight of its own
nature, carries them down thither with the most swift and headlong
motion."[30] "Would wicked men dwell a little more at home, and
_descend into the bottom of their own Hearts_ they would soon find Hell
opening her mouth wide upon them, and those secret fires of inward fury
and displeasure breaking out upon them."[31] So, too, the Kingdom of
Heaven is within. It lies not so much in external things, golden
streets and crowns, as in the quality and disposition of a man's mind.
The enjoying of God consists not so much in a change of place as in
participation in the nature of God and in assimilation to God. Nothing
can stand firm and sure, nothing can have eternal establishment and
abiding permanence that "hath not the everlasting arms of true Goodness
under it."[32]
In a very fine passage, in the noble discourse on "True Religion,"
Smith says: "I wish there be not among some such a light and poor
esteem of Heaven, as makes them more to seek after _Assurance of Heaven
onely in the Idea of it as a thing to come than after Heaven it self_;
which indeed we can never be well assured of untill we find it rising
up within ourselves and glorifying our own souls. When true Assurance
comes, Heaven it self will appear upon the Horizon of our souls, like a
morning light chasing away all our dark and gloomy doublings before it.
We shall not then need to light up our Candles to seek for it in
corners; no, it will display its own lustre and brightness so before us
that we may see it in its own light, and our souls the true possessours
of it." "Should a man hear a Voice from Heaven or see a Vision from
the Almighty to testifie unto him the Love of God towards him [and the
{314} Assurance of his Salvation]; yet methinks it were more desirable
to find a Revelation of all _from within_, arising up from the Bottome
and centre of a man's own soul, in the Reall and Internal impressions
of a Godlike nature upon his own spirit; and thus to find the
Foundation and Beginning of Heaven and Happiness within himself; it
were more desirable to see the crucifying of our own Will, the
mortifying of the meer Animal life and to see a Divine life rising up
in the room of it, as a sure Pledge and Inchoation of Immortality and
Happiness, the very Essence of which consists in a perfect conformity
and cheerful compliance of all the Powers of our Souls with the Will of
God."[33]
The consciousness of Immortality rises or falls with the moral and
spiritual height of the soul. Nothing makes men doubt or question the
Immortality of their souls so much as their own "base and earthly
loves," and so, too, inward goodness "breeds a sense of the Soul's
Immortality": "Goodness and vertue make men know and love, believe and
delight in their Immortality. When the soul is purged and enlightened
by true sanctity it is more capable of those Divine irradiations
whereby it feels it self in conjunction with God. It knows that
Almighty Love, by which it lives, is stronger than death. It knows
that God will never forsake His own life which He has quickened in the
soul. Those breathings and gaspings after an Eternal participation of
Him are but the energy of His own breath within us."[34]
Smith finds the world in which he lives a fair world, everywhere full
of "the Prints and Footsteps of God," the finite creatures of which are
"Glasses wherein God reflects His glory." There are many "golden links
that unite the world to God," and good men, "conversing with this lower
world and viewing the invisible things of God in the things that are
made in the outward Creation, may many times find God secretly flowing
into their souls and leading them silently out of the Court of the
Temple into the Holy Place."[35]
{315}
The outward world is thus not something stubbornly foreign to the
spirit; it is not the enemy's country, but every finite good and
everything of beauty is "a Blossom of the First Goodness, a Beam from
the Father of Lights." The spiritual person discovers that the whole
creation is spiritual. He learns to "love all things in God and God in
all things, and he sees that God is All in all, the Beginning and
Original of Being, the Perfect Idea of their goodness and the end of
their motion." In the calming illumination of this clarified vision,
the good man, in whose soul religion has flowered, "is no longer
solicitous whether this or that good thing be mine, or whether my
perfections exceed the measure of this or that particular Creature, for
whatever good he beholds anywhere he enjoys and delights in as much as
if it were his own, and whatever he beholds in himself he looks upon
not as his _property_ but _as a common good_; for all these Beams come
from one and the same Fountain and Ocean of Light in whom he loves them
all with an universal Love. When his affections run along the stream
of any created excellencies, whether his own or any one's else, yet
they stay not here but run on until they fall into the Ocean; they do
not settle into a fond love and admiration either of himself or any
other's excellencies, but he owns them as so many Pure Effluxes and
Emanations from God, and in any particular Being loves the Universal
Goodness. Thus a good man may walk up and down the world as in a
Garden of Spices and suck a Divine Sweetness out of every flower.
There is a twofold meaning in every Creature: a Literal and Mystical; a
good man says of everything that his Senses offer to him: it speaks to
his lower part but it points out something above to his Mind and
Spirit. . . . True Religion never finds it self out of the Infinite
Sphere of Divinity and wherever it finds Beauty, Harmony, Goodness,
Love, Ingenuity, Wisdom, Holiness, Justice, and the like, it is ready
to say: _Here is God_. Wheresoever any such Perfections shine out, an
holy Mind climbs up by these Sunbeams and raises up it self to
God. . . . A good man finds every place he {316} treads upon _Holy
Ground_; to him the world is God's Temple."[36]
The supreme instance of the revelation of the Universal through the
particular, of the invisible through the visible, the Divine through
the human, is seen in Christ. It was precisely such an event as might
have been expected, for "the Divine Bounty and Fulness has always been
manifesting Itself to the spirits of men." Those who have lived by
inward insight have perpetually found themselves "hanging upon the arms
of Immortal Goodness." At length, in this One Life the Divine Goodness
blossomed into perfect flower and revealed its Nature to men. In Him
divinity and humanity are absolutely united in one Person. In Christ
we have a clear manifestation of God and in Him, too, "we may see with
open face what human nature can attain to."[37] This stupendous event,
however, was no "gracious contrivance," no scheme to restore lapsed men
in order that God might have "a Quire of Souls to sing eternal
Hallelujahs to Him"; it was just "the overflowing fountain and efflux
of Almighty Love bestowing itself upon men and crowning Itself by
communicating Itself."[38] The Christ who is thus divine Grace become
visible and vocal is also at the same time the irresistible attraction,
"strongly and forcibly moving the souls of men into a conjunction with
Divine Goodness," which is what Smith always means by the great word,
_Faith_. It is something in the hearts of men which by experience
"feels the mighty insinuations of Divine Goodness"; complies with it;
perpetually rises into co-operation with it, and attains its true "life
and vivacity" by partaking of it.[39] Christ is thus the Node, or
Centre, of both Grace and Faith.
With this apprehension of Faith as a vital thing--a new and living
way--Smith thinks very lightly of "notions" and what he calls "a
knowledge of Divinity [Theology] which appears in systems and
models."[40] This is but a poor way, he thinks, to "the Land of
Truth." {317} "It is but a thin and aiery knowledge that is got by meer
speculation." "This is but spider-like to spin a worthless web out of
one's own bowels." "Jejune and barren speculations may unfold the
Plicatures of Truth's garment, but they cannot discover her lovely
Face." "To find Truth," he says in another figure, "we must break
through the outward shell of words and phrases which house it," and by
_experience and practice_ discover the "inward beauty, life and
loveliness of Truth."[41]
This hard "shell of words and phrases" which must be broken before
Truth is found, is one of Sebastian Franck's favourite sayings, and we
find Smith also repeating Franck's vivid accounts of the weakness of
Scripture when it is treated only as external history, or as words,
texts, and phrases. "Scripture," he says, in the exact words and
figures of the German Humanist, "is a Sealed Book which the greatest
Sophist may be most acquainted with. It is like the Pillar of fire and
cloud that parted between the Israelites and Egyptians, giving a clear
and comfortable light to all those that are under the manuduction and
guidance thereof [_i.e._ those who have the inner experience] but being
full of darkness and obscurity to those that rebel against it."[42]
"The dead letter," he says, "is a sandy foundation" for religion,
because it is never in books and writings but rather in the human soul
that men must seek for God.[43] Action and not words; life and not
motions; heart and not brain, hold the key to Truth: "They cannot be
good at Theorie that are bad at Practice."[44] "Our Saviour," he says,
"would not draw Truth up into any System, nor would He lay it out into
Canons or Articles of Faith, because He was not so careful to stock the
world with Opinions and Notions as to make it thrive with true piety,
Godlike purity and spiritual understanding"; and in a very happy
passage, he reminds us that there are other ways of propagating
religion besides writing books: "They are not alwaies the best Men who
blot the most paper; Truth is not so {318} voluminous nor swells into
such a mighty bulk as our Bookes doe. Those minds are not alwaies the
most chaste that are the most parturient with learned Discourses."[45]
I have, I believe, now given a true account of Smith's type of
Christianity, It was no new message. It was a re-expression of ideas
and ideals that had already been often proclaimed to the dull ears of
the world. He, however, is never a repeater of other men's ideas.
What he offers is always as much his own as was the life-blood which
coursed through his heart. He fed upon the literature which was
kindred to his growing spirit, and his books helped him find the road
which he was seeking; but he was nobly true to his own theory that the
way of Life is discovered by spiritual experience rather than by
"verbal description," and this quiet, sincere scholar and prophet of
the soul found it thus. He once said that "Truth is content, when it
comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language and to
conform itself as it were to our dress and fashions";[46] that is to
say, prophets speak in their own dialect and use the modes of their own
culture, but they are prophets through their own temporal experience of
that one eternal Reality which shines into their souls in its own
Light.[47]
What impressed his contemporary friends most was the beauty of his
spirit, and that is what still most impresses the reader of his
Discourses. He has succeeded in preserving some of the strong elixir
of his life in the words which survive him, and we know him as a
valiant soldier in that great army of soldier-saints who have fought
with spiritual weapons. "This fight and contest," he himself has told
us, "with Sin and Satan is not to be known by the rattling of Chariots
or the sound of an alarm: it is indeed alone transacted upon the inner
stage of men's souls and spirits--but it never consists in a sluggish
kind of doing nothing that so God might do all."[48] A Life is always
battle, and the true Christian is always "a Champion of God" clad in
the armour of Light for the defeat of {319} darkness and the seed of
Satan. In this battle of Armageddon John Smith took a man's part, and
his affectionate disciple Simon Patrick was quite right in saying, as
the master passed away, "My father, my father, The chariot of Israel
and the horsemen thereof."
The other members of this impressive group of Cambridge Platonists,
especially Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Nathaniel Culverwel and John
Norris, might well be studied, and they would furnish some additional
aspects of religious thought, but the teachings of the two exponents
whom I have selected as representative of the school have brought the
central ideas and the underlying spirit of this seventeenth century
religious movement sufficiently into view. Their intimate connection
with the currents of thought which preceded them has also been made
adequately clear. This volume does not pretend to be exhaustive, and
it cannot follow out all the interesting ramifications of the
complicated historical development which I have been tracing. I have
been compelled to limit myself to the presentation of typical specimens
and examples of this continuously advancing spiritual movement which
found one of its noblest figures in John Smith.
[1] Simon Patrick uses this phrase in his funeral sermon on his friend
John Smith. _Select Discourses_ (1673), p. 472.
[2] _Rational Theology_, ii. p. 122.
[3] Patrick's Sermon, _Select Discourses_, p. 496.
[4] Worthington's Sketch is given in the Preface to the Reader in
_Select Discourses_, pp. iii-xxx, and Patrick's Sermon is given as an
Appendix to the same volume, pp. 471-512.
[5] Preface, p. vi.
[6] Patrick, _op. cit._ p. 498.
[7] Preface, p. xxviii.
[8] Patrick, _op. cit._ pp. 471 and 472.
[9] _Ibid._ p. 484.
[10] _Ibid._ p. 477.
[11] _Ibid._ p. 474.
[12] _Ibid._ pp. 480-481.
[13] _Ibid._ p. 486.
[14] Preface, p. iii.
[15] This portrait is made up entirely of passages gathered out of
Patrick's Sermon, and but slightly altered.
[16] _Op. cit._ p. 509.
[17] "A Short Discourse on Superstition," in _Select Discourses_, pp.
24-36.
[18] "Discourse on Legal Righteousness, etc.," _ibid._ pp. 273-338.
[19] Smith uses this phrase in precisely the same manner as Jacob
Boehme.
[20] _Select Discourses_, p. 316.
[21] _Ibid._ pp. 319-321, quoted freely.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 21, quoted freely.
[23] _Select Discourses_, pp. 13, 14, 57, 61, and 118.
[24] _Ibid._ p. 370.
[25] _Ibid._ pp. 375, 393, 395, 403, 407-408.
[26] _Ibid._ p. 311.
[27] _Select Discourses_, pp. 303, 305, and 315.
[29] _Ibid._ p. 364. For Smith's view of mimical Christians see pp.
359-364.
[29] _Ibid._ p. 144.
[30] _Select Discourses_, p. 452.
[31] _Ibid._ p. 456.
[32] _Ibid._ pp. 452 and 445.
[33] _Select Discourses_, p. 416.
[34] _Ibid._ pp. 97-98. Quoted freely.
[35] _Ibid._ pp. 419-420.
[36] _Select Discourses_, pp. 421-423.
[37] _Ibid._ pp. 332 and 336.
[38] _Ibid._ p. 398.
[39] _Ibid._ p. 325.
[40] _Ibid._ p. 2.
[41] _Select Discourses_, pp. 4, 7, and 8.
[42] _Ibid._ p. 278.
[43] _Ibid._ pp. 3 and 288.
[44] _Ibid._ p. 12.
[45] _Select Discourses_, p. 12.
[46] _Ibid._ p. 165.
[47] _Ibid._ p. 260.
[48] _Ibid._ pp. 461 and 458.
{320}