The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge : with an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions

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THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY UPON HIS
PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS

EDITED BY

PROFESSOR W. G-. T. SHEDD

IN SEVEN VOLUMES
VOL. I.

AIDS TO REFLECTION

STATESMAN'S MANUAL

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

1884

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and fifty-three, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court ot the Southern District
of New York

PUBLISHEKS' ADVERTISEMENT.

THIS collection of Coleridge's "Works contains all the
productions of this author that have appeared in England,
with the exception of his newspaper articles, which have
been recently republished under the title of Essays on his
own Times. It has not been deemed advisable to include
these in this series, on account of the ephemeral character
of most of them, and because the author's social, political
and ethical philosophy is much more fully and clearly
presented in the Essays of The Friend. The English
editions of several of the treatises are accompanied with
introductory and supplementary essays by the editors,
which have generally been omitted, because of their pre-
vailing reference to topics and controversies of local and
temporary interest.

The purchaser of this edition, therefore, will, with the
above-mentioned exception, possess the entire and un-
abridged works of S. T. Coleridge.

CONTENTS.

FAOI

Introductory Essay, by the American Editor 9

Editor's Advertisement to the Fourth Edition of the Aids 65

Preliminary Essay, by James Marsh, D.D 67

Author's Address to the Header Ill

Author's Preface 113

AIDS TO REFLECTION:

Introductory Aphorisms 117

On Sensibility 135

Prudential Aphorisms 130

Moral and Religious Aphorisms 146

Elements of Religious Philosophy 199

Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion 190

Aphorisms on that which is indeed Spiritual Religion 20 1

On the difference in kind of Reason and the Understanding 24.1

On Instinct in connection with the Understanding 259

On Original Sin 268

On Redemption 316

On Baptism 333

Conclusion 350

Appendix A. Distinction between Reason and Understanding. . . . 369

Appendix B. On Instinct, by J. H. Green 370

Appendix C. Theory of Life, by S. T. Coleridge 373

STATESMAN'S MANUAL 417

Appendix A 455

Appendix B 456

Appendix C 473

Appendix D 474

Appendix E. , 478

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

IN presenting- the public with a complete edition 01' the works
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it seems proper to prefice it with
some remarks upon their general spirit and tendency. At first
sight this may seem to be a superfluous attempt, because from
the very first appearance of this author before the world, down
to the present moment, he has been the subject of analysis and
criticism, both offensive and defensive, to an extent unparalleled
in the case of any other literary man, within the same length of
time. Yet a second look will enable any one to see, that not
withstanding all this remark upon Coleridge, it is still difficult
to form an estimate of his mind, and of his real worth as a
Thinker. Critics themselves have been embarrassed by the re-
markable universality of his genius, and the wonderful variety
of his productions, and have generally confined themselves to one
side of his mind, and one class of his works. The result is that
one gift of the man has been extolled to the depreciation of an-
other. Those, and they are the great majority, who have been
impressed by the rich and exhaustless Imagination of Coleridge,
and by his contributions to the lighter and more beautiful forms
of Literature, have lamented that so much of the power and
vigor of his intellect, should have been enlisted in Philosophy ;
while the lesser number who have been stimulated and strength-
ened by his profound speculations, as they have been by no con-
temporaneous English writer, have regretted that the poetic na-
ture prevented that singleness of aim and unity of pursuit, which
might have left as the record of his life, a philosophic system, to
be placed beside those of Plato and Kant. With the exception
of the clear and masterly Essay, prefixed to his edition of the-
Aids to Refection, by the late Dr. Marsh, whose premature
decease, in the full vigor of his powers, and the full maturity of
his discipline and scholarship, is the greatest loss American

10 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

Philosophy has yet been called to meet, we call to mind no thor«
oughly elaborated, and truly profound estimate, of the philosophi-
cal opinions of Coleridge. There are two reasons for this. In
the first place, the speculative opinions of Coleridge were a slow
formation, and although they finally came to have a fixed and
determined character, yet during the first half of his literary
career, he was undoubtedly not clear in his own mind. The
consequence therefore is, that the philosophy of Coleridge must
be gathered from his writings rather than quoted from them, and
hence the difficulty for the critic, which does not exist in the in-
stance of a rounded and finished treatise, to determine the real
form and matter of his system. In the second place, the literary
world has not been interested in the department of Philosophy.
Those problems relating to the nature of man, the universe, and
God, which in some ages of the world have swallowed up in their
living vortex all the best thinking of the human mind, and which
in reality have been the root whence have sprung all the loftiest
growths of the human intellect, have been displaced by other
and slighter themes, and hence the English Philosopher of this
age has been a lonely and solitary thinker. There have been
ages when the striking expression of Hazlitt, would apply with
literal truth to the majority of the literary class : — " Sir, I am a
metaphysician, and nothing makes an impression upon me but
abstract ideas." But the age in which one of the most subtile
and profound of English minds made his appearance and cast his
bread upon all waters, was the least abstract in its way of think-
ing, the most concrete and outward in its method and tendency,
oi any. These two causes combined, will account, perhaps, for
the fact that while the poetical and strictly literary productions of
Coleridge have on the whole met with a genial reception and an
appreciative criticism, his philosophical and theological opinions
have been at the best, imperfectly understood, and more often,
much misunderstood and misrepresented. While therefore Cole-
ridge has done more than any other man, with the exception of
Wordsworth, to form the poetic taste of the age and to impart
style and tone to the rising generation of English Poets, and as a
literary man lias done more by far than any other one, to revo-
lutionize the criticism of the age — while in this way " he has
been melted into the rising literatures of England and America'
--Coleridge as a Thinker has accomplished far 'ess.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 11

And yet it is our belief, that in this latter character — in the
capacity of a Philosopher and Theologian — Coleridge is to exert
his greatest and best influence. After his immediate influence
upon Poetry and Belles Lettres shall have disappeared in that
most vital and therefore most shifting of all processes — the ever
evolving development of a national Literature — the direction and
impulse which his speculative opinions have given to the English
thinking of the nineteenth century, will for -a long time to come,
be as distinct and unmistakable as the Gulf-Stream in the Atlan-
tic. It is for this reason that we shall, in this introductory essay,
confine our remarks to the philosophical and theological opinions
of Coleridge ; and it will be our aim, as fully as our limits will
permit, to contemplate him as a Thinker, the main tendency of
whose thinking is in the right direction, and the general spirit
and influence of whose system is profound and salutary. It will
be our object to justify to the general mind that respectful regard
for Coleridge's philosophical and theological views, and that con-
fidence in their general soundness, which is so marked a charac-
teristic of that lesser but increasing public who have been swayed
by him for the last twenty years. In doing this, however, we
mean not to appear as the mere passive recipient of his opinions,
or as the blind adherent of each and every one of them. How
far we are disposed to look upon Coleridge as an original thinker,
in the sense in which the phrase is applied to the Platos and
Aristotles, the Leibnitzes and Kants of the race, and to what ex-
tent we think he may be regarded as the author of a system, and
as the head of a school in Philosophy, will appear in the course
of our remarks.

And we would here in the outset direct attention to the man-
ner in which the opinions of Coleridge originated. It is unfor-
tunate that no biography at all worthy of the man is in exist-
ence, his own most interesting but most fragmentary Biographia
Liter aria, still being the best account of his intellectual and
moral history yet given to the world. With the aid, however, to
be derived from the biographical materials now before the world,
a careful study of his writings themselves will enable the discern-
ing student, not only to gather the general system finally adopted,
and to some extent developed, by Coleridge, but also to trace the
origin and growth of it. A full account, however, of the inward
as we . as outward life of Coleridge, by a congenial mind, would

12 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

be, in many lespects, the richest contribution to psychology that
could be made.

For the mental development of Coleridge was eminently an
historic process. He did not, as do the majority of men, even
literary men, begin with the same general system and method
of thinking, with which he ended, but like the age in which he
lived and upon which he impressed himself, he passed by a slow
but most thorough process from a sensuous to a spiritual system
of speculation. Bred up in the reigning empirical philosophy of
the eighteenth century, it was only gradually, and as we think,
through the intermediate stage of Pantheism, that he finally
came out, in the maturity of his powers, upon the high ground of
a rational and Christian Theism. In like manner, and parallel
with this, he went through a great theological change. Begin-
ning with the Socmianism, which, at the close of the last century,
existed not merely in an independent and avowed form of dissent
from the Established Church of England, but also to some extent
in the clergy of this church itself, Coleridge, partly from the change
in his philosophic views, and still more as we believe from severe
inward struggles, and a change in his own religious experience,
in the end, embraced the Christian system with a depth and
sincerity, a humility and docility of spirit rarely to be found in
the history of philosophers and poets, of whom " few are called."
And finally the same revolution, the same change for the better,
and growth, appears in his political opinions. Embracing with
•' proud precipitance of soul" the cause of a false freedom, he
gradually moderated his views, grew conservative, and in the
end settled down upon the principles of the majority of cultivated
Englishmen, and rested in them.

Now this peculiarity in the origin and formation of the system
of opinions finally adopted by Coleridge, and by which he ought
to be known, and will be known to posterity, deserves serious and
candid attention for several reasons. In the first place, the stu-
dent will thereby be saved from the errors into which many indi-
viduals, and to some extent the age itse f, have fallen, of attributing
to Coleridge, as the. ultimate and fixed view of his mind, opinions
which had but an early and transient existence in it, and which
sustain about the same relation to his final system, that the pang
and the throe do to the living birth. The question for the student
in relation to Coleridge is not : — What did he believe and teach on

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 18

this point, and on that point, in the year 1800 — but what did he
teach and believe in the fulness of his development and in the
maturity of his ripened reason. The question is not : — What can
be logically deduced, and still less what can be twisted and tor-
tured, out of this or that passage in his writings, but wrhat is un-
questionably the strong drift and general spirit of them as a
whole. No writer more needs, or is more deserving of a gener-
ous and large-minded criticism than this one. "Without reserve
he has communicated himself to the world, in all the phases of
•experience and varieties of opinion through which he passed — in
all his weaknesses and in all his strength — and such an exposure
as this, surely ought not to be subjected to the same remorseless
inference as that to which we of right subject the single treatise
on a single doctrine, of a mind made up.

Again, this recognition of the manner in which the opinions of
Coleridge were formed .will, at the very same time that it opens
the eye to all that is true and sound in them, also open it to
whatever is defective or erroneous. How much there is of the
latter is a point upon which each mind must judge for itself, and
such freedom of judgment is one of the plainest lessons and most
natural fruits of the general system contained in these volumes.
Provided only the judgment be intelligent and free from bigotry,
we believe Coleadge will suffer no more than the finite human
mind must suffer, when it allows itself to expatiate in all regions
of inquiry, and attempts to construct a system of universal knowl-
edge. If we remember the immense range of Coleridge's studies
arid the vastness of his schemes, and also remember, that though
he had not the constructive ability of an Aristotle or a Hegel, and
did not fairly arid fully realize a single one of his many plans, he
yet has left on record some expression of his mind, upon nearly
or quite all the more serious and important subjects that L*ome
before the human understanding, we shall not be surprised to find
some misconceptions and errors in his multifarious productions.
But these mistakes and deficiencies themselves will be the most
unerringly detected, and the most effectually guarded against, by
him who is able to view and criticize them from the very van-
tage-ground itself, to which his mind has been lifted by the prin-
ciples of the general system of Coleridge. Having made these
" the fountain-light of all his day, the master-light of all his see-
ing," the inquirer after truth will be able to detect the errors to

14 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

which the human mind is always liable, and which in the present
instance are, as we verily believe, the excrescences merely.

But however it may have been with Coleridge himself, it is
plain that this slow process of renunciation of erroneous systems
and reception of more correct ones, is one of increased interest
and worth for the inquirer. Like the Retractions of Augustine,
the retractions of Coleridge, if we may call them such, have a
negative worth almost equal to that of the positive statements to
which they lead. This rise of the mind through doubts and prej-
udices to a higher and more rectified position — this nearing the
centre of absolute truth, by these corrections — is always one of
the most instructive passages in literary history. And especially
is it so in the case of Coleridge. We see here one of the most
capacious and powerfully-endowed minds of the race, after a slow
and toilsome course, first through the less profound, and lastly
through the most profound of the two .erroneous systems of
speculation, in which many of the most gifted intellects, contem-
poraneous with him, were caught and stopped, ultimately and
with a deep and clear consciousness finding rest in Christianity
as the eternal ground not only of life but also of truth, not only
of religion but also of philosophy. Coleridge lived contempora-
neously with that most wonderful, and for the speculating intel-
lect most overmastering, of all mental processes, the pantheistic
movement in the German mind. But while he was at one pe-
riod of his life — the heyday of hope and aspiration — involved in
it so far as to say that his head was with Spinoza, we find him
freeing himself from it at an after-period when the whole con-
tinental mind was drawn within reach of its tremendous sweep
as within the circles of a maelstrom. He worked his way through
and out of a system the most stupendous for its logical consist-
ence, and the most fascinating for the imagination of any that
the world has yet seen, and undoubtedly stablished and settled
his own mind, whether he may have done the same for others
or not, in the Christian Theism, at a time when the speculation
and philosophizing of his day were fast departing from the centre
of truth, and drawing nearly all the inquiring intellect of Ger-
many and France with them. During the last quarter of his
life, as matter of fact, Coleridge was the resort and the teacher
for many minds who were seeking rest and finding none in
the sphere of philosophy, and whether he relieved their doubts

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 15

and cleared up their difficulties or not, no one of them ever seems
to have doubted that he was clear and settled in his own mind,
and that though he might not succeed in refuting the positions
of Atheism and Pantheism, he was himself impregnable to them.
But there is reason to believe that many minds were strengthened
and armed by him, and that the philosophy and theology of Eng-
land is at this very moment very different from what it Avould
have been had the thinking of Coleridge not been working like
leaven in it.* It is a remark of Goethe that our own faith is
wonderfully increased on learning that another mind shares it
with us ; and perhaps one of the strongest reasons for a wavering
soul, for believing in the highest truths of philosophy and religion,
and for rejecting the skepticism of the human understanding, lies
in such examples as that of Coleridge. His belief was not he-
reditary and passive. He was not ignorant of the arguments and
gigantic schemes which the speculative reason has constructed in
opposition to the truth. He had painfully felt in his own being
the difficulties and doubts to which man is liable, and to which
the acutest intellects have too often succumbed. He had been
over the whole ground from Pyrrho to Hegel, and after all his
investigation saw his way clear into the region of Christian Rev-
elation and rested there. Surely such an example is an argument
and an authority for the doubting mind. All that Burkef says
of the relation of the culture of Montesquieu to the Constitution of
England, in that splendid passage, at once the most magnificent
rhetoric and the strongest logic, applies with fuller and far deeper
force, to the relation of an endowment, a discipline, and an ac-
quisition, like that of Coleridge, to Philosophy and Christianity.

It is in reference to this historical formation and enunciation
of the opinions of Coleridge that this, so far as we know, first
complete collection of his works finds its justification and rec-
ommendation. It has been said in respect to the publication
of such portions of his writings as the Table Talk and the Lit-

* Even the recent picture of Coleridge by Carlyle, unconsciously betrays
tos sense of the superiority of this intellect, in reference to the deeper prob-
lems of man's existence and destiny, while poo: Sterling seems to have de-
rived from the oracle at Highgate, most of that little faith in a personal
God and in man's freedom and immortality, which throws such a Badly
pleasing air over his biography.

\ Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, sub fine.

16 INTRODUUTOKr ESSAY.

crary Remains, that their extremely fragmentary character
ought to exclude them from a permanent collection of a greal
writer's works, and that at least they should be subjected to a
revision that would strike out the less important matter, the
sometimes hastily conceived and rashly uttered remark. But in
the light of what has been said, the value of every jot and tittle
of what Coleridge, and his friends, for him, have ever printed, is
clearly apparent. Not that every thing he has left on record has
high intrinsic worth — not that every thing he. has written can be
regarded as the pure product of his own brain — not that every
thing contained in these volumes is to be received as truth by the
reader — but each and every thing here, has value and interest,
if for nothing else, as exhibiting the course and development of
his intellect. In this reference the volumes containing the Table
Talk and Literary Remains are of the highest value not only
for the wonderful pregnancy and suggestiveness of his remarks
upon all things human or divine, but for the acquaintance they
give the reader with the interior process and change going on
within him. A careful perusal of these in connection with the
dates, throws great light upon the history of Coleridge's mind
Aside however from, the value of these productions in this respect,
they have great intrinsic worth. Besides the profound and pierc-
ing glances into the highest truths of metaphysical philosophy,
scattered throughout the Literary Remains, unquestionably the
best philosophy of Art and of Criticism, and the very best actual
criticism upon the great creative minds in Literature, that is ac-
cessible to the merely English reader, are to be found in this
same miscellany.

It is of course impossible in an introductory essay, to attempt
a criticism in detail upon all the principal topics upon which
Coleridge has philosophized, even if we were competent to the
task, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to a few points,
which we think are deserving of consideration, and which will
tend to place their author in a just and fair light as a thinker.

1. And in the first place, we think this author is to be recom-
mended and confided in, as the foremost and ablest English op-
ponent of Pantheism. We do not speak of formal opposition tc
this, the most powerful and successful of all systems of false phi-
losophy, for Coleridge has left on record no professed and finished
refutation of Spinoza or S shelling, but we allude to the whole

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 17

plan and structure of the philosophy which he finally adopted
and defended, as in its own nature the most effectual preventive
of the adoption of Pantheism, and the best positive remedy for it
when adopted, to be found out of that country, which has
furnished both, the most virulent bane, and the most powerful
antidote. The distinctions lying at the foundation of his whole
system, if recognized and received, render it impossible for the
recipient to be diverted from the true method of thinking, intc
one so illegitimate and abnormal, as the pantheistic, to say noth-
ing of their incompatibility with the fundamental positions of
Pantheism. No ingenuity whatever, «?. g. can amalgamate the
doctrine of which Coleridge makes so muchr of an essential d is-
tinction between Nature and Spirit, with the doctrine of the su b-
stantia una et unica. Ifjhe Natural is of one substance, arid
the Spiritual is of another — if the distinction is not merely forma?
but substantial,^ and no possible heighteningand clarification of
the former can result in the latter — then thereis a gulf between
Nature and_Spirit7between^atter and Minrj, whioh nnn Tint, be
fijledjup. This distinction, moreover, not only permits, but natu-
rally conducts to, the conceptions of an uncreated and a created
essence — conceptions which are precluded by the assumption,
which the pantheist supposes he must make in order to introduce
unity into the system of the universe, that there is ultimatel)
only one substance, uncreated, infinite, and eternal. The verj
moment that the materialism, which is to be found in ideal Pan-
theism notwithstanding its boast of spirituality, as really as in
material Pantheism, is eliminated and refuted and precluded, by
the recognition of a difference in kind between Nature and Spirit,
the inquirer is left alone with the self-determined, personal Spirit,
the contrary and antithesis of Nature and of 'Matter, with its
Reason and its Conscience, and thereafter may be safely left to
answer the questions : — Is there an uncreated personal God ? am
I a created and accountable being ? am I destined to a conscious
immortality of existence ? But if this distinction is denied, and
Nature and Spirit, Matter and Mind, the World and God, are all
one essence and substance, and the distinctions denoted by these
terms are merely formal, subjective and phenomenal, then such
questions as the above are absurd and impossible.

We are aware that in these pantheistic systems the terms
Nature and Spirit, the World and God, are as freely employ e<l a*

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

in theistic systems, and that in the last and most remarkable oi
them all, Philosophy itself is divided into the Philosophy of Na-
ture and the Philosophy of Spirit. But on the hypothesis of a
one sole substance, the subject-matter of each must be one and
the same, and the inquirer in the latter department is only inves-
tigating a mere modification of the same thing which he has
just investigated in the former. He has risen into no essentially
higher sphere of being or of knowing, by passing from the phi-
losophy of Nature to that of Spirit, as he understands and em-
ploys these terms, because he has not passed into any essentially
different sphere. The vice of the whole system is in the fatal
error — the pantheistic postulate — at the outset. There is, and
can be, but one substance, and notwithstanding all the modifica-
tion it may undergo in infinite space and everlasting time, it re-
mains but one substance still. But this vice is impossible in any
system of philosophy or in any method of thinking, that starts
with the fundamental hypothesis of a difference in kind between
the substance of the Natural and the substance of the Spiritual,
or between Matter and Mind.*

Now the earnestness and force with which this distinction, so
fundamental to Theism and preclusive of Pantheism, is insisted
upon by Coleridge, particularly in the Aids to Reflection, the
most complete and self-consistent of his strictly philosophic writ*
ings, will strike every reflecting reader. It is not merely for-
mally laid down, but it enters so thoroughly into his whole meth-
od of philosophizing, that it can be eliminated from it only as
oxygen can from atmospheric air, by decomposition and destruc-
tion. And especially are all pantheistic conceptions and tenden-
cies excluded by the distinction in question, when it is further
considered that the constituent element in the Spiritual, is free-
dom, as that of the Natural is necessity. In Nature, as distin-
guished from Spirit, there is no absolute beginning, no first start,
consequently no self-motion, and consequently no responsibility.
Nature, says Coleridge, is an endless line, in constant and ccn-
tinuous evolution. To be in the middle of an endless series, is the
characteristic of a thing of Nature, says Jacobi,t between whose

* We use Matter in a somewhat loose way in this connection, in order tc
illustrate the strict use of the word Nature as the contrary of Spirit, and
uot because it contains all that is meant by Nature.

f Werke; Bd. 3, S. 40 1. Leipsic Ed. 1816.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 1*

statements regarding this general distinction, in the last part of
his Von Gottlichen Dingen, and those of Coleridge in the Aids,.
there is a striking coincidence. In the Spirit and the Spiritual
realm, on the contrary, this law, and process, of continuity, by
which we are hurried back from the effect to its foregoing cause,
and from this foregoing cause to its foregoing cause, and so
backward endlessly into an infinite inane, and can never reach
a point where a movement has no antecedent, because it really
begins, by seZ/'-movement — that point where a responsible move-
ment is first found, and which is to be reached, not by a gradual
ascent within the sphere of the Natural, to the highest degree
of the same kind, but by a leap over the gulf which divides the
two great domains from each other — this law of continuous cause
and effect, we say, ib excluded from the sphere of the Spiritual
by virtue of its differing in kind from the Natural ; by virtue of
its being of another substance, and consequently, of having an
essentially different function and operation, from Nature and
Matter. It is true that we speak of a continuous evolution and
development, and properly too, within the realm of Spirit as well
as of Nature, but the continuity in this instance is not continuity
without beginning and without ending, or the continuity of the
law of cause and effect which is the only law in the Natural
world, but continuity that has a true beginning or first start, or
the continuity of self-determination. Development in the Spirit,
ual world — that of the human Will for example — begins with
the creation of the "Will, and proceeds freely and responsibly so
long as the Will exists. The development or movement, in this
instance, is not like that of a movement in Nature, a mere and
pure effect. If it were, a cause must be found for it antecedent
to, and other than, it ; and this would bring the process out of
the sphere of the Spiritual or se//"-moved, into the sphere of Na-
ture, and make it a dependent unit in an endless series of pro-
cesses, to the destruction of a.1 responsibility. But we have no
disposition to repeat what has been so clearly expressed by Cole-
ridge on this point, and re-affirmed and explained by Dr. Marsh
in his preliminary Essay to the Aids. The distinction itself,
never more important than at this time when Naturalism is so
rife, can not, after all, be taught in words, so well as it can be
thought out , It is a matter of direct perception, if perceived at
all, as must be the case with all a priori and iundarnental posi-

20 INTRODUCTOKY ESSAY.

tions. The contradiction which clings to the idea of self-motion
when wre attempt to express it through the imperfect medium of
language is merely verbal, and will weigh nothing with the mind
that has once seen the distinction.

Now on the pantheistic system there is really nothing but
Nature. The one Substance, of which all things are modifications
and developments, is nothing but a single infinite Nature. From
eternity to eternity the process of emanation and evolution goes
on, and the result is, all that was, is, and is to come. Though
the terms God and Man, Spirit and Nature, Mind and Matter,
may be employed, yet the objects denoted by them are of one
and the same substance, and therefore have the same primary
attributes. The history of the universe is the history of a single
Being, and of one, merely Natural, necessitated process, slowly
and blindly evolving from that dark ground of all existence, the
one aboriginal substance. There is no creation out of nothing,
of a new and secondary substance, but merely the shaping of the
eternal and only substance. There is, except in a phenomenal
and scenic way, no finite being. The All is One and infinite.
The self-consciousness of the finite subject which the pantheist
recognizes does not help the matter. This consciousness itself
is but a mockery, by which a modification of the one and only
Being is made to suppose for a little time that it has a truly in-
dividual and responsible existence. The only reality on this
scheme is a single universal Nature with its innumerable pro-
cesses, and all the personal self-consciousness which is recognized
by it is a deceptive and transitory phenomenon, for the reason,
that there is, in an essence which is not simply beneath and
through all things, but IS all things, no basis for distinct person
ality, free self-detsrmination and permanent self-consciousness
either in God or man. For there must be coherence between
attributes and their substance, and it is absurd to endow with the
attributes of freedom and responsibility, a substance, or a subjec-
tive modification of a substance, whose whole history is in fact a
necessitated and blind evolution. In order to an infinite Person
ality thore must be an infinite personal Essence or Being. In
order to finite Personality there must be a finite personal Essence
or Being. And these two can not be or become one Essence or
Being, without destroying the peculiar basis for the peculiar con-
sciousness belonging to each. Pantheism has, therefore, no right

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 21

to the terms of Theism, for the simple reason that the objects
denoted by them, are not recognized by it as metaphysically and
scientifically real. Pantheism is but a Philosophy of Nature,
and as matter of fact it has accomplished more, or rather has done
least injury to the cause of truth and true philosophy, when, as
in the case of the earlier system of Schilling, it has been confined
mainly to the sphere of Nature. It would be unjust to deny that
the Pantheism of Schelling has done something toward destroy-
ing the mechanical theory and view of Nature and Natural Sci-
ence, while the fact that he proceeded no farther with it in its
application to the Philosophy of Spirit and of Intelligence, and is
understood to have renounced it in his late attempt to construct
a system that will solve the problems of Intellectual and Spiritual
existence, seems to corroborate the position here taken, that Pan
theism can never at any time, or under any of its forms, rise out
of the sphere of Nature, because it, in reality, recognizes the ex-
istence of nothing but Nature.

It has been asserted, we are aware, and perhaps it is still to
some extent beli3ved, that the philosophy of Coleridge is itself
liable to the charge of Pantheism. The warm admiration with
which he regarded Schelling, and the reception at one time of
Schelling's doctrine of the original identity of Subject and Object,
have given some ground for the assertion and belief. We shall,
therefore, dwell briefly upon this point of Coleridge's relation to
Schelling, because while we are clear that the earlier system of
this philosopher, whatever his later system shall prove to be, is
nothing but Spinozism, we are equally clear that Coleridge freed
himself from it, as decidedly as he did from the mechanical phi-
losophy of his youthful days.

After all the study and reflection which Coleridge expended
upon the systems of speculation that sprang up in Germany after
that of Kant, it is very evident that his closest and longest con-
tinued study was applied to Kant himself. After all his wide
study of philosophy, ancient and modem, the two minds who did
most toward the formation of Coleridge's philosophic opinions
were Plato and Kant. From the Greek he derived the doctrine
of Ideas, and fully sympathized with his warmly-glowing and
poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the German he
derived the more strictly scientific part of his system — the funda-
mental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason

22 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

(with the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Prac
tical), and between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympa-
thized in that deep conviction of the absolute nature and validity
of the great ideas of God, Fresdom and Immortality — of the bind-
ing obligation of Conscience — and generally of the supremacy of
the Moral and Practical over the purely Speculative. Indeed any
one who goes to the study of Kant, after having made himself
acquainted with the writings of Coleridge, will be impressed by
the spontaneous and vital concurrence of the latter with the for-
mer— the heartiness and entireness with which the Englishman
enters into the method and system, of this, in many respects,
greatest philosopher of the modern world. For to say that Cole-
ridge was the originator of the distinctions above-mentioned, in
the sense that Kant was, is to claim for him what will never be
granted by the scholar ; and on the other hand to say that Cole
ridge was a mere vulgar plagiary, copying for the mere sake of
gratifying vanity, is not to be thought of for a moment. The
plagiary is always a copyist and never an imitator, to use a dis-
tinction of Kant,* also naturalized among us by Coleridge. There
is no surer test of plagiarism therefore than a dry, mechanical,
and dead method, by which the material handled becomes a mere
caput mortuum. But who would charge such a method upon
Coleridge ? Whatever else may be laid to his charge, there is no
lack of life, and life, too, that organizes and vitalizes. Much of
that obscurity charged upon him is owing to an excess of life ;
the warm stream gushes out with such ebullience that it can not
be confined to a channel, but spreads out on all sides like an in-
undation. Had there been less play of living power in his mind,
he would have been a more distinct thinker for the common
mind, and as we believe, less exposed to the charge of plagiarism.
This power of sympathy with the great minds of the race in all
departments of mental effort — this opulence and exuberance of
endowment, coupled with an immense range of reading and a
brooding contemplation that instantaneously assimilated every
thing brought into his mind — put him unconsciously, and in spite
of himself, into communication with all the best thinking of the
race ; and hence it is, that while the beginner in philosophy finds
the writings of Coleridge full to bursting, with principles, and
germs of truth, freshly presented and entirely new to him, his
* Urtheilskraft, § 32.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 23

altcr-study of the great thinkers of ancient and of modern times,
compels him to deduct from Coleridge's merits on the score of
absolute discovery and invention, though not an iota from them
on the score of originality, in the sense of original treatment. It
is for this reason that the writings of this author .are the very
best preparatory exercise for the student, before he launches out
upon the " mighty and mooned sea" of general philosophy. One
who has thoroughly studied them, is well prepared to begin his
philosophical studies ; and, we may add, no one who has once
mastered this author can possibly stop with him, but is urged on
to the study of the greatest and choicest philosophic systems them-
selves. . . :
But returning to the relation of Coleridge to Schelling, we think
that it is very evident that his reception of the doctrine of the
identity of Subject and Object, of which he gives an account in
the Biographia Literaria, that is mainly a transfusion from Schel-
ling, was temporary. In the year 1834, we find him speaking
thus of this account, " The metaphysical disquisition at the end
of the first volume of the Biographia Liter aria, is unformed and
immature ; it contains the fragments of the truth, but it is not
fully thought out."* This, taken in connection with the general
drift of Coleridge's annotations upon Schelling, contained in the
latest edition of the Biographia LiterariaJ we think is nearly

* Table Talk, Works, VI. p. 520.

f At the end of Schelling's Denkmal der Schrift von den gottlichen Dingen,
<kc., des Jacobi, Coleridge has written :

" Spite of all the superior airs of the Natur-Philosophie, I confess that in
the perusal of Kant I breathe the air of good sense and logical understanding
with the light of reason shining in it and through it : while in the Physics
of Schelling, I am amused with happy conjectures, and in his Theology I am
bewildered by positions which in their first sense are transcendental (iiber
fliegend), and in their literal sense scandalous." — Biog. Lit. Appen., III. p. 709.

P. 64, and then pp. 59-62. " The Spinozism of Schelling's system first be-
trays itself." — Biog. Lit. Appendix, III. p. 707.

"Strange that Fichte and Schelling both hold that the very object which
is the condition of self-consciousness, is nothing but the self itself by an act
of free self-limitation.

" P.S. The above I wrote a year ago ; but the more I reflect, the more
convinced I am of the gross materialism which lies under the whole system."
—Biog. Lit. Appendix, III. p. 701.

This last is a note, it deserves to be noticed, upon Schelling's Briefe vher
Doqmatismus und Criticismus, or attack upon the Critical Philosophy and

24 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

equivalent to a distinct verbal renunciation of the theory in ques-
tion. At any rate his rejection of the system of Spinoza is ex-
pressed often and with emphasis in his writings,'* although in
common with all who have made themselves acquainted with
the works of this remarkable mind, he expresses himself in terms
of the highest admiration, respecting the loftiness and grandeur
of many of his sentiments and reflections, even on subjects per-
taining to ethics and religion. But what is Schelling's identity
of Subject and Object in their ultimate ground, but the reappear-
ance of the one Substance of Spinoza with its two modifications
Thought and Extension ? The theory which teaches that the
Subject contemplating and the Object contemplated are in reality
but one substance, and that the consciousness we have of things
without us "is not only coherent, but identical and one and the
same thing, with our own immediate self-consciousness, "f plainly
does not differ in matter, however it may in form, from the the-
ory of the substantia una et unica. "What is gained by saying
that Spinoza started with an unthinking substance, but that the
system of Identity starts with a thinking subject, $ when the posi-
tion that One is All, and All is One, is the fundamental postulate
of both systems alike ? This position, common to both, renders
both systems alike pantheistic, because it precludes that duality
— that difference in substance between God and the World, and
that distinction between an uncreated and a created Essence or
Being — which must be recognized by a truly theistic philosophy.
The only difference between the two systems is adjective : Spino-
zism being material, and the system of Identity ideal, Pantheism.
If the postulate in question were limited in its application to the
sphere of the finite alone, there might be a shadow of reason for
saying that the doctrine of Identity does not annihilate the Deity,
as other than the World. If an identity of substance were affirmed
only between the human mind and the created universe, a supra-
mundane Deity, other than and above all this finite unity might
still be affirmed without self-contradiction ; though even in this

the earnestness with, which Coleridge in these notes generally, sides with
this latter system, shows that neither his head nor his heart was with the
e y stem of Identity at the time he wrote these annotations.

* Aids to Reflection, Works, I p. 21 1. Table Talk, Works, VI. pp. 301, 302

f Biog. Lit. chapter xii.

t Hegel's Phiinome.nologie, S. 14.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 25

case this limited annihilation of the essential distinction between
Nature and Spirit would result in. its universal and absolute an-
nihilation, so soon as it became apparent that the finite Spirit
though not of the same, is yet of similar substance with the Infinite
Spirit, But there is no limitation of this sort in the system,
neither can there be, for it is its boast that it reduces the All to
a One It is the universal Subject and the universal Object be-
tween which an identity of substance is affirmed.*

But we lay much stress upon the indirect evidence in the case.
It is perfectly plain, as we have already remarked, that the phi-
losophy of Kant is the modern system with which Coleridge
finally and most fully sympathized. If he is to be called after
any one of the great founders of philosophical systems among the
moderns, Coleridge was a Kantean. Not that he pushed his
inquiries no further than Kant had gone, for there is abundant
evidence on many a page of the Literary Remains, that the high-
est problems of Christianity, during the last period of his life,
were themes constantly present to his deep and brooding reflec-
tion, and that whatever it shall be found that he actually accom-
plished, in the way of distinct statement, in the unfinished work
which was to put the crown upon his literary life, he did satisfy
his own mind upon these subjects, and was himself convinced of
the absolute rationality of the highest mysteries of the Christian
Faith. Yet the groundwork of all these processes — the psychol-
ogy and metaphysics from which they all started — was unques-
tionably the theistic method of Kant, and not the pantheistic
method of his successors. Even supposing that Coleridge at one
time may have gone so far as to regard the system of Schelling,
(with the still more remarkable one of Hegel, he does not seem
to have been acquainted, for we do not recall any allusion to him
throughout the whole of his works) as a positive and natural ad-
vance upon that of Kant, there is sufficient reason for saying,
that he saw the error, and fell back upon the old position of Kant,
as the farthest point yet reached in the line of a true philosophic
progress, regarding the systems that sprang up afterward as an
illegitimate progeny. And in so doing, he only exhibited in an
individual, the very same process that has gone on, and is still
going on in the Germanic mind itself. There was a time, when
3vcn the serious theist was inclined to regard with favor at least,
that wondrous evolution of the theoretic brain — the three systems
* See Biog. Lit., Works, III. pp. 270, 271 (Note).

VOL. i B

26 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel — as a natural and normal develop-
ment from Kanteanism, and so to regard the four systems as being
in one and the same straight line of advance. It is true that at
the very time when these later systems were rising into existence
" like an exhalation," a man like Jacobi was found, to protest
against the deviation and error, and to proclaim, with a serious
and deep-toned eloquence that will ever endear him and his opinions
to every serious-minded scholar who feels that his own mentai
repose, with that of the reflecting mind generally, is bound up
in the Ideas of Theism, that these later systems were not genuine
offshoots from Kant, but wild grafts into him. But at the time,
the national mind was caught in the process, and it was not until
the speculative enthusiasm had cooled down, and the utter bar-
renness of this method of philosophizing, so far as all the deeper
and more interesting problems of Philosophy and Religion are
concerned, had revealed itself, that men began to see that all the
movement had been off and away from the line of true progress,
and that the thinker who would make real advance, must join
on where Kant, and not Hegel, left off.

In thus siding ultimately with the Critical Philosophy rather
than with the system of Identity that succeeded it, Coleridge had
much in common with Jacobi. Indeed it seems to us that speak-
ing generally, Coleridge stands in nearly the same relation to
English Philosophy, that Jacobi does to that of Germany, and
Pascal to that of France. Neither of these three remarkably
rich and genial thinkers has left a strictly scientific and finished
system of philosophy, but the function of each was rather an
awakening and suggestive one. The resemblance between Cole-
ridge and Jacobi is very striking. Each has the same estimate
of instinctive feelings, and the same religious sense of the pre-
eminence of the Moral and Spiritual over the merely Intellectual
and Speculative. Each clings, with the same firm and lofty
spirit, to the Ideas of Theism, and plants himself with the same
moral firmness, upon the imperative decisions of Conscience and
the Moral Reason. But in no respect do they harmonize more
than in their thorough rejection of the pantheistic view of 'things
— of that mere Naturalism which swallows up all personality,
and thereby, all morality and religion. In reading Jacobi' s Von
gottlichen Dingen one is struck with the great similarity in con-
ception, and often in statement, with remarks and trains of dis«

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 27

cussion in the Aids to Reflection. The coincidence in this case,
it is very plain to the reader, does not arise, as in the case of
Coleridge's coincidence with Schelling, from a previous study arid
mastery of a predecessor, but from sustaining a similar relation
to Kant, together with a deep sense of the vital importance and
absolute truth of Theism in philosophy. The coincidence in this
case is not a mere genial reception, and fresh transfusion, of the
thought of another mind, but an independent and original shoot,
in common with others, from the one great stock, the general sys-
tem of Theism. Add to this, that both Coleridge and Jacobi
were close students of Plato, and by mental constitution, were
alike predisposed to the moulding influence of this greatest philo-
sophic mind of the Pagan world, and we have still another ground
and cause for the resemblance between the two.

Now in this resemblance with Jacobi, we find still another in-
direct proof of the position, that Coleridge's adoption of the sys
tern of Schelling was temporary, and that he returned, with still
deeper faith and clearer insight, to the theistic system. For no
mind of the age in which he lived, or of any age, was more
decidedly and determinedly theistic, than Jacobi. His Letters
to Mendelssohn upon the system of Spinoza, and still more,
because more regularly constructed, his treatise on Divine
Things and their Revelation, are among the most genial cer-
tainly, and we think among the most impressive, and practically
effective, of all attacks upon the pantheistic Naturalism. We
know that it was fashionable, especially when the hard logical
processes of Hegelianism were more influential and authoritative
as models than they now are, to decry the method of Jacobi as
unscientific, and to endeavor to weaken the force of his views, by
the assertion, that his is the mere " philosophy of feeling." But
there is reason to believe, that this same thinker, though defi-
cient as must be acknowledged in the logical and systematizing
ability of Kant and Hegel, has done a giant's work, in aiding to
bring the German mind back to the position of Theism in philos-
ophy. His influence, healthful and fruitful, is to be traced
through the whole of the spiritual school of theologians. If there
is any one of the many philosophers of Germany, who is re-
garded with admiration and veneration by this class of reflecting
men — a class which shares largely in the disposition of its great
head Schleiermaoher, to establish theology upon an independent

28 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

is, and thereby divorce it altogether from philosophy — it is
Jacob! ; and this, principally on the ground of his earnest re-
ligious abhorrence of that speculation of the mere understanding,
which under the name of philosophy, has so invariably ended in
the overthrow of the foundations of Ethics and Religion.

We have dwelt the longer upon this point of Coleridge's rela-
tion to Schelling, because we believe if to be the fact that the
philosophic system which he finally adopted, and which is the
prominent one in these volumes, is irreconcilable with the system
of Identity, and if so, that it is of the highest importance that the
fact be known and acknowledged. Moreover the establishment
of the position we have taken, acquires some additional interest,
in relation to the charge of plagiarism which has of late been
frequently urged. This charge becomes of little importance, so far
as the question of Coleridge's original power as a philosopher is
concerned, so soon as it appears that this reception of the views
of Schelling, was only one feature in the temporary pantheistic
stage of his mental history, and of still less importance, when it
is further considered, that Schelling himself is entitled to but
small credit on the score of absolute invention ; — the philosophy
of Spinoza being " the rock and the quarry," on and out of which
the whole system of Identity was constructed. Indeed, in leaving
this system, Coleridge has been imitated by Schelling himself, if,
as there is reason to believe, the later system of this philosopher
is a renunciation of his earlier, and not a mere development of
it. How far either of these two minds possessed that highest,
and most truly original, philosophic power — the power of forming
an era in the history of philosophy, by carrying the philosophic
mind onward through another stadium in its normal course and
development — remains yet to be seen. This point can not be
settled until the publication of the Logosophia of Coleridge, and
the recent system of Schelling.

The influence, however, of this pantheistic system upon
Coleridge, was for a time undoubtedly great, harmonizing
as it did with the imaginative side of his nature, and promis-
ing, as it always has done, to reduce all knowledge to a unity —
that promise always so impressive and fascinating for the hu-
man intellect, and which moreover addresses, though in this in-
stance by a false method, one of the necessary and organic
wants of reason itself. Besides the disquisition in the Biographia

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 29

Literaria, there are statements respecting the mutual relations
of Nature and the Mind of man, and trains of reflection, here and
there in these volumes,* which spring, as it seems to us, from
the pantheistic intuition, and which, run out to their legitimate
consequences, would end in a mere Naturalism, of which all
Coleridge's more matured, and more strictly scientific views are
a profound and powerful refutation, and against which, Ms own
moral and spiritual consciousness, certainly for the last twenty
years of his life, was one loud and solemn protest.

In this connection, also, it may be proper to speak of the ob-
jection made to the system of Kant himself, that it is essentially
skeptical. This objection is founded upon the fact, that the Criti-
cal philosophy denies the possibility, within a certain sphere, of
an absolute knowledge on the part of the human mind, because
its knowledge is conformed to forms and modes of cognition, that
pertain to the human understanding, and are peculiar to it. The
thing in itself is not known, but only the thing as it appears to
the finite intelligence. An absolute knowledge, true intrinsically,
and irrespective of the subjective laws of human intelligence, is
therefore impossible within this sphere.

If this theory were to be extended over the whole domain of
knowledge, Spiritual as well as Natural, it is plain that it would
end in universal skepticism. If for instance the knowledge which
the human mind has of right and wrong, of its own freedom and
immortality, of the divine attributes and the Dread One in whom
they inhere, is no real and absolute knowledge, but is merely
subjective, the foundations of all morals and religion would sink
out of sight immediately, and the human mind would be afloat
upon the sea of doubt, conjecture, and denial. This was the
identical skepticism against which Socrates and Plato waged such
serious and successful war. But Kant, as it seems to us, by his f
distinction of the Speculative and Practical reason, intended to
confine, and actually does confine, this doctrine of a subjective
and conditional knowledge to the sphere of the Natural and the
Sensuous. Within this sphere there is no absolute knowledge, for
the good reason that there is no absolute object to be known.
The absolutely and necessarily true, is not within the domain of
Nature, but above it altogether, in the domain of Spirit, f Th*
* See Essays X. and XI. of The Friend, Works, II. pp. 448-479
•j- See Cudworth's Immutable Morality, passim.

30 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

things that are sensuous, are in continual flux, and even in r&

O

gard to the immaterial principles beneath them, even in regard
to the laws of Nature themselves, we can not conceive of their be-
ing of such a necessary and immutable character, as we can not
but conceive moral and spiritual realities to be. For they are
creations, and as such, are only one, out of the infinitely various
manners in which the divine Mind can express itself in a mate-
rial universe. The whole domain of Nature and of Matter is it-
Eelf but a means to an end, and therefore can not, like the do-
main of the Spiritual, which is an end, have absolute and necessary
characteristics, and therefore can not be the object of an absolute
knowledge. All this domain of the Conditional, therefore, legiti-
mately comes before the Understanding, with its subjective forma
of knowing.

But there is another and a higher realm than that of Nature ,
of another substance, and therefore not merely a higher develop-
ment of the Natural. The moral and Spiritual world, as it is not
subject, in its functions and operations, to the law of cause and
effect, but is the sphere of freedom, so it is not cognizable under
the forms of the Understanding, but by the direct intuitions of
Reason. It is no mere afterthought therefore, as has been charged,
but a most strictly philosophic procedure in the system of Kant,
by which, after the whole domain of the Natural and the Condi-
tional has been legitimately brought within the ken of the ration-
alized Understanding, the domain of the Spiritual and the Abso-
lute is assigned to a higher, even the very highest, faculty of the
soul, as the proper organ and inlet of knowledge regarding it. It
is because such an object of knowledge as God, e. g., can not be
truly known, by being brought within the limitations of time and
space, and under the categories of quantity, quality, &c. &c., that
Kant affirmed the existence of a power in man, not hampered by
these forms of the Understanding, through which by an act of
direct spiritual contemplation, this highest of all objects is known.
Not fully and completely known, as some have falsely asserted
that he taught, for the object in question is infinite, and reason in
man is finite ; but truly and absolutely known so far as the
cognition does extend. Kant never claimed, for the finite reason
of man, that plenitude of knowledge, which belongs only to the
infinite reason, but he did affirm, that so far as the reason in man
does have any knowledge of God, and of spiritual objects gener

INTKODUCTORF ESSAY. 81

ally, it has an absolute and reliable knowledge. God is not thus,
for one man's reason, and thus, for another man's, as a color is
thus, for the sense of one man, and thus, for the sense of another ;
but so far as His infinite fulness is known by the finite reason, it
is known as it really is, and is therefore known in the same way
by all rational beings, and is the same to all. The same is true
of all the ideas and objects of the Spiritual, as distinguished from
the Natural world. In the former, the human mind has an ab-
solute, i. e. unconditionally true knowledge, so far as it has any
at all (for-there may be no development of reason, and no use of
the faculty at all), while in the latter, its knowledge is merely
subjective and conditional. Hence the prominence, the suprem-
acy, assigned in Kant's system to the Moral or Practical Reason.
This is reason in its highest and substantive form, and no deci-
sions of any other faculty of the human soul, have such absolute
authority as those of this faculty. It stands over against the
moral and spiritual world, precisely as the five senses stand over
against the world of sense, and there is the same immediateness
of knowledge, in the one case, as in the other. In the phrase
of Jacobi, reason, i. e. the Moral Reason — is the sense for the
supernatural,^ and therefore we have in fact the same kind of
evidence for the reality of spiritual objects, that we have for that
of objects of sense — the evidence of a sense ; the evidence of a i
direct intuition.

There is therefore no room fo"r skepticism on this system within
the only sphere in which the philosopher and the theologian have
any vital interest in keeping it out — the sphere of the Moral and
Spiritual. However subjective and relative may be our knowl-
edge of the Natural, coming to us as it does through the mechan-
ism of the understanding, and shaped by it, into conformity with
our subjective structure, as creatures of sense and time, our
knowledge of the supernatural, so far as we have any at all, is
absolute and unconditional. We may doubt in regard to the real
nature of matter, but we can not doubt in regard to the real na
ture of right and wrong. We may grant that our knowledge of
an object of sense is conditional, and not absolutely reliable, but
we may not grant that our knowledge of a moral attribute of
God, is conditional and not absolutely reliable. The skepticism
of the human mind, on this system, is confined to the lower and
* Von don gottlichen Dingen. Beilage A.

32 * JNTEODUCTOKY ESSAY.

less important sphere of Nature, while the " confidence of reason/*
the faith that is insight, and the insight that is faith— can exist
only in relation to the Moral and Spiritual worlct; only in rela-
tion to Moral and Spiritual objects.

Kant's treatise on the Practical Reason therefore, though from
the very nature of the subject — (it being that Reason which is
freest from the complexity of logical forms — ) not so artificially
constructed as that upon the Theoretic Reason, and seemingly oc-
cupying a humbler place in his general system, should be re-
garded as the sincere and serious expression of his real views
upon the highest form of reason, and upon the very highest themes
of reflection. Certainly no one can peruse those lofty and enno-
bling enunciations, respecting the great practical ideas, of God,
Freedom, and Immortality, and those grand and swelling senti-
ments, regarding the nature of duty and the moral law, that are
contained in this treatise, without a deep conviction that this
part of Kant's system, was by no means an afterthought, or con-
trivance to save himself from universal skepticism. If the cold
and passionless intellect of the sage of Konigsberg ever rises into
the sphere of feeling, and ever exhibits any thing of that real en-
thusiasm, by which a living knowledge is always accompanied
and manifested, it is in this, the most practical and serious-toned
of all his productions. And if it is objected, as it has been, that
this knowledge of the Spiritual is rather a belief, than a knowl-
edge, and that the function of this so-called Practical Reason, is
that of feeling, rather than scientific cognition, the objection must
be acknowledged to have force, provided that that only is scien-
tific, which is the result of logical deductions, and that alone is
knowledge, which comes mediately into the mind by processes of
comparison and generalization. But on the other hand, if it is
proper to call that, knowledge, which by virtue of its immediate-
ness in the rational consciousness, is a most original and intimate
union of both knowing and feeling, of both reason and faith, of
both the scientific and the moral, then the knowledge in question
is the absolutely highest of all, for it contains the elements of
both varieties of knowing, and is the most essentially scientific
of all, because, in the form of first principles, it lies at the foun-
dation of all the processes of logic, and all the structures of
science.

But whatever may have been the relative position of the Prac-

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 33

tical Reason and its correspondent Ideas, in the general system of
Kant, or in Kant's own mind, no reader of Coleridge can doubt
that for him, and his system, this form of Reason and these
Ideas are paramount. Coleridge had an interest in developing
this part of philosophy, and establishing an absolute validity for
the decisions of the moral Reason and Conscience, superadded to
that which actuated Kant. The former had received into his
boul the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, while the latter, so far
as we have had the means of judging, stood upon the position
of the serious-minded Deist, and was impelled to the defence of
the foundations of Ethics and Natural Religion, by no other
motives than such as actuated minds like the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Coleridge had more
than a merely moral interest in saving the fundamental prin-
ciples of Ethics and Religion from an all-destroying Skepticism,
or an all-absorbing Naturalism, in philosophy. And hence the
positiveness and in the best sense of the word, the dogmatism,
with which he iterates and reiterates his affirmation that " re-
ligion as both the corner-stone and the key-stone of morality,
must have a moral origin : so far at least, that the evidence of
its doctrines can not, like the truths of abstract science, be wholly
independent of the Will"*

Now as the defender and interpreter of this decidedly and
profoundly theistic system of philosophy, we regard the works
of Coleridge as of great and growing worth, in the present state
of the educated and thinking world. It is not to be disguised
that Pantheism is the most formidable opponent which truth has
to encounter in the cultivated and reflecting classes. We do not
here allude to the formal reception and logical defence of the
system, so much as to that pantheistic way of thinking, which
is unconsciously stealing into the lighter and more imaginative
species of modem literature, and from them is passing over into
the principles and opinions of men at large. This popularized
Naturalism — this Naturalism of polite literature and of literary
society — is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of tone,
arid that heartiness and robustness of temper, which charac-
terize a mind into which the personality of God, and the re-
sponsibility of man, cut sharply, and which does not cowardly
shrink from a severe and salutary moral consciousness. There
* Biographia Literaria, "Works, III. p 297.
B*

34 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

is no remedy for this error of the brain and of the heart, but in
that resolute and positive affirmation (worthy of the name of
Virtue wherever found) of the existence of a distinction in
essence, between the Natural and the Spiritual, with its implica-
tion of a Supreme and Infinite Spirit, the first cause and last
end of both the finitely Spiritual, and the Natural. For all
philosophy, false as well as true, must begin with an affirmation
— a postulate upon which all else rests, and which is itself un-
susceptible of proof, because it is the ground of proof for all
other affirmations. Pantheism itself starts in Dogmatism — starts
with postulating, not proving, the existence of its one only Sub
stance. It has an interest in so doing. The evidence of this its
so-called first truth " is not altogether independent of the Will"
Here too, the voluntary and the theoretic, the practical and the
speculative, are, though illegitimately, in one act of the under-
standing. In respect therefore to the logical necessity — the com-
pulsory necessity — of its first position, we see not the advantage
which it boasts of having, over a Theism which does not pretend
to reject all aid from the moral side of the human soul, or to
regard all evidence as not truly scientific and absolute, which is
not of the nature of mathematical. Since, then, there must be
a postulate to start from, in either or any case, let the individual
mind imitate that justifiable Positivity — that rational Dogmatism
— of the general human mind (which the soundly philosophizing
mind only repeats with a fuller and distincter consciousness of
the meaning and contents of the affirmation) by which the ab-
solute existence of a personal supra-mundane God, is affirmed.
This Being styles Himself the I AM — the self-affirmed self-ex-
istence ; and what is left for the human Reason but to imitate
this positive affirmation, and steadfastly to assert that " HE IS,
and is the re warder of them that diligently seek him."

In driving the hesitating mind over its hesitancy, and urging
it up to that moral resoluteness, which is at the same time the
most rational freedom, whereby it takes sides with the instincts
of Reason and the convictions of Conscience, rather than with the
figments and fictions of the speculative Understanding and tho
immoral deductions from them, we regard these volumes of
Coleridge to be of great worth. Apart from the influence of the
example of this most learned and most contemplative mind, the
clearness and profundity with which the doctrines of Theism are

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 35

enunciated, and their mutual relation and dependence explained,
is admirably fitted to propagate the living process of insight and
of faith into the mind of the student. For it is one great merit
of this author, that when his views are once mastered, they be-
come inward and germinant. The consciousness of the teacher
becomes that of the pupil. " You may," he says with perfect
truth, " you may not understand my system, or any given part, of
it — or by a determined act of wilfulness, you may, even without
perceiving a ray of light, reject it, in anger and disgust. But this
I will say — that if you once master it, or any part of it, you can
not hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth. You can not be
skeptical about it."*1 And we appeal with confidence to those
who have had opportunities for observing, whether as matter of
fact those minds, and especially those young minds (ever most
liable to be misled by the imposing pretensions of a false and
miscalled spiritualism in philosophy) who have once come fairly
and continuously under the influence of the opinions of Coleridge,
have not been, not only shielded from error, but also, fortified in
the truth. Are those who have been educated and trained in
this general method of philosophizing, liable to be drawn aside
from it ? Does not the method itself, beget and nurture a deter-
mined strength of philosophic character, which obstinately refuses
to receive the brilliant and specious theories that are continually
arising in the speculating world ?

This self-conscious and determined spirit in the recipient of the
general system promulgated by Coleridge, springs naturally from
its predominantly moral and practical character. The staple and
stuff of this philosophy, are the great moral Ideas, and the facul
ties of the human soul most honored and developed by it, are the
moral Reason, the Conscience, and the Will. The purely specu-
lative materiel of philosophy, is made to hold its proper subordi-
nate place, and the merely speculative and dialectic faculty, is
also subordinated along with it. By recognizing the absolute
authority of Conscience, not only within the domain of Religio^
but also of Philosophy, and by affirming that the Will itself,
being the inmost centre of the man, and ideally, conjoint and one
with Reason, ought not to stand entirely aloof, while by a com-
pulsory logical process, the first truths of Philosophy and Religion
aro attempted to be forced upon the mind, with the same passivity
* Table Talk, Works, VI. pp. 519, 520.

36 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

and indifference, with which its belief of abstract axioms i<*
necessitated — by regarding, in short, the moral Reason and the
Free- Will, in their living synthesis, as the dominant faculty and
§eat of authority in the human soul, this system of philosophy
not only secures a belief in the truths of Theism, but at the same
time builds up and strengthens the human mind. Mental lielief,
in this system, has the element of Will in it. The doctrine of the
Divine existence e. g. is believed not merely passively and from
the mere mechanic structure of the intellect, as the axioms of
Geometry are, but to a certain extent by free self-determination.
The individual believes in the essential difference between Right
and Wrong, partly because he will believe it, and not because it
is impossible to sophisticate himself into the disbelief of it. On
this theory man becomes responsible for his belief, even in respect
to the first principles of Morals and Religion, and thus feels all
Jhe stimulation of a free and therefore hazardous position.

And this brings us back again to the intensely theistic charac
ter of this philosophy. It is rooted and grounded in the Personal
and the Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the
Natural. Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a
distinct and broad line between these two realms, it keeps them
apart from each other, by affirming a difference in essence, and
steadfastly resists any, and every, attempt to amalgamate them
into one sole substance. The doctrine of Creation, and not of
emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it con-
structs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible
self-determination and not of irresponsible natural development,
is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy
\ and Religion.

2. In th3 second place, we think that this author is worthy of
study, for his general method of Theologizing, and as an able
defender and expounder of the doctrines of Christianity, on ground?
of reason and philosophy.

In treating of this point, we shall be led to speak of Coleridge
in his other principal character of a Theologian. In regard t(
his general merits under this head, there is, both in this country
and in Great Britain, more difference of opinion than in regard tc
his general merits as a Philosopher. We are inclined to the be
lief, however, that there is a growing confidence in the substan
tial orthodoxy of his theological opinions, and that \ :* coming t*

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 37

be the belief, even of those "who do not sympathize with his phil-
osophical opinions, and of course not, therefore, with his method
of unfolding and defending the truths of Christianity, that the
name of Coleridge deserves to be associated with those of the
great English Divines of the seventeenth century, and that his
views do not differ fundamentally from that body of Christian
doctrine, which had its first systematic origin in the head and
heart of Augustine. We are ourselves firm in the belief, that the
theology of Coleridge, notwithstanding variations on some points,
of which we shall speak hereafter, and which we are by no means
disposed to regard as insignificant, is yet heartily and fully on the
Augustinian side of that controversy, which after all, makes up
the pith and substance of dogmatic church history. Even in re-
lation to the difference between the Calvinistic and Armiiiian
schemes, — schemes which, though essentially the same with the
Augustinian and Pelagian, yet have a narrower sweep, and there-
fore allow their adherents less latitude of movement, — even in
relation to these two schemes, respecting which there is such a
shrinking in the English clergy, notwithstanding the strongly-
pronounced tone of the Thirty-nine Articles, from a clear expres
sion of opinion, Coleridge has not hesitated to say, that " Calvin
ism (Archbishop Leighton's for example), compared with Jeremy
Taylor's Arminianism, is as the lamb in the wolfs skin, to the
wolf in the lamb's skin : the one is cruel in phrases, the other in
the doctrine."*

If the reader will peruse the Confession of Faith drawn up by
Coleridge, as far back as 1816,f he will find that he expresses
his solemn belief in the Personality and Tri-unity of God, the free
and guilty Fall of man, the Redemption of man by the incarna-
tion and death of the Son of God, and the Regeneration of the
human soul by the Holy Spirit ; and if he will further peruse the
development of Coleridge's views, in the Aids to Reflection
especially, on these cardinal doctrines of Christianity, he will find
that, with the exception of that part of the subject of Redemption
technically denominated Justification, Coleridge did not shrink
from the most thorough-going statements. No divine — not even
Calvin himself — ever expressed himself more decidedly than this
author, in regard to such points as the Divinity of Christ, the
deplh and totality of man's apostasy, and the utter bondage and
* Lit, Rem., Works, V. p. 200. f Lit. Rem., Works, V. p. U

38 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

helplessness of the fallen will : and the mere novice in theology
knows that profound and thorough views of Sin, lie at the foun
dation of all depth, comprehensiveness, and correctness, in a
general theological system.

It is rare, very rare, in the history of literature, to find a mintl
BO deeply interested in the pursuits of Philosophy and Poetry as
was that of Coleridge, at the same time deeply and increasingly
interested in theological studies and speculations : and still more
rai3 to find the Philosopher and the Poet so thoroughly committed
to :Le distinguishing doctrines of the Scriptures. Compare
Coleridge, for example, with his learned and able contemporary
in Philosophy, Sir James Mackintosh, and observe the wide dif-
ference between the two men, in respect to the relation of each
to the so-called Evangelical system. Compare him again with his
contemporary and friend, the poet Southey, and notice the same
wide difference, in the same respect. Neither Mackintosh nor
Southey seem to have had that profound and living consciousness
of the truth of such doctrines, as those of Sin and Redemption,
which imparts so much of the theological character to Coleridge,
and which would justify his being placed among the Divines of
England, were not Theology, in this as in too many other in-
stances, thrown into the shade by the less noble but more impos-
ing departments of Philosophy and Poetry. He tells us that he
was drawn off from Poetry by the study of Philosophy ; and the
account we gather of his studies and reflections during the last
quarter of his life, shows that he was drawn off — so far as the
nature of the case permits this — from Philosophy itself by Theol-
ogy ; or rather that the one passed over into the other.

Now it seems to us that this mind, having received such a
profound discipline in Philosophy, and that too a spiritual and
theistic Philosophy, and being led both by its original tendency
and the operation of Divine Grace, to the study and defence of
the truths of the Christian religion, on grounds of reason, is emi-
nently fitted to be a guide and aid to reflection in this direction.
We do not recommend Coleridge to the student as the author of
a theological system, but rather as the defender and expounder
of a general method of inquiry and reflection upon theological
doctrines, in the highest degree fruitful and sound. Indeed, what
we have said of Coleridge's lack of systematizing and constructive
ability in the department of Philosophy, applies with stil) more

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 39

force to him as a Theologian. The longest and most continuous
statements, that Coleridge has made upon the doctrines of Chris-
tianity, are to be found in the Aids to Reflection, and yut the
general character of this the most elaborate and valuable of his
prose productions, is aphoristic. The aphoristic method is obvi-
ously not the best by which to convey opinions upon so intrinsi-
cally systematic and systematized themes as the doctrines of
Christianity : much less therefore can this method be employed
successfully, in constructing a whole theological system. Still as
an aid to reflection, as inducing a general style of thinking, and
manner of unfolding and defending truth, this method has some
decided advantages over that of the connected treatise. It allows
of more mental freedom on the part of the pupil, and fosters orig-
inal reflection more, than a work finished in all its parts and de-
tails. " For," says Lord Bacon, " as young men, when they knit
arid shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a further stature, so
knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in
growth ; but when it is once comprehended in exact methods, it
may perchance be further polished and illustrated, and accommo-
dated for use and practice ; but it increaseth no more in bulk and
substance."^

We regard the general method of Theologizing induced by the
reflections of Coleridge upon theological doctrines as eminently
profound and comprehensive. It leads the student to prize first
of all, depth, breadth, and certainty, in his own views, in this de-
partment of knowledge. It does this by teaching as its first and
great lesson, that '; the scheme of Christianity though not discov-

* Advancement of Learning, Book I.

Consonant with this are the following remarks of Schleiermacher : —
Denn erinnert euch nur, wie wenige von denen, welche auf einem eigenen
Wege in das innre der Natur und des Geistes eingedrungen sind und deren
gegenseites Verhaltnisz und innere Harmonie in einem eigenen Lichte ange-
echant und dargestellt haben, wie dennoch nur wenige von ihnen gleich ein
System ihres Erkennens hingestellt, sondern vielmehr fast alle in einer zarte-
reu, sollte es auch sein zerbrechlicheren, Form ihre Entdeckkungen mitgeth-
eilt haben. Und wenn Ihr dagegen auf die Systeme seht in alien Schul^n ; wie
oft diese nicht auders siud als der Sitz uud die Pflanzstatte des todten
Buchfttabens, weil namlich mit seltenen Ausnahmen, der selbstbildende
Geist der hohen Betrachtung zu fliichtig ist und zu frei fiir die strengen
Formen. Reden Ueber die Religion. Erste Rede

40 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

erable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it,"* and that
all reflection upon the truths of Scripture ought therefore to carry
the mind down into deeper and deeper depths of its own being
and result in the most absolute and unassailable conviction that
Divine Revelation is likewise Divine Reason. The influence of
Coleridge's speculations is to produce and establish the belief
that there is no inward and necessary contradiction between Faith
and Reason, but that when both are traced to their ultimate and
central unity, Faith, in the phrase of Heinroth,f will be seen to
be undeveloped and unconscious Reason, and Reason again, this
same Faith, developed, self-conscious, and self-intelligent : in other
words, that when the believer shall have been raised by the high
est grade of Christian consciousness to the highest grade of Chris-
tian knowledge, he will see that the unquestioning and childlike
docility with which he trusted and rested in the truths and mys-
teries of Christianity, was the most rational of all mental acts,
and the most philosophic of all mental processes. That this
absolute consciousness can be perfectly reached, even by the
most profound and holiest soul while in the flesh, we for one
deny ; for the same reason that, within the sphere of life and
practice, we deny the doctrine of spiritual perfection here on
earth. But that this knowledge, this insight into the identity
of the revelation of God, with the reason of God, is a reality, and
may be striven after, and that in its perfect completeness it will
be attained by the human spirit when it has ceased to see through
a glass darkly, has been the steadfast belief of the holy and the
wise, in all ages of the Christian church. There is a point, a
final centre, where faith and insight meet, even in regard to the
mysteries of Christianity, and to this point the earnest straining
eye of Christian speculation, has in all ages steadily turned. This
point is at once the mysterious power that attracts, and the goal
where the whole mighty tendency is to come to a rest. Only on
the hypothesis that the problem is not in its own nature absurd
and insoluble, but that by a legitimate method, Christian Philos-
ophy may draw nearer and nearer its solution, even here in space
and time, can we account for the existence of a Christian Theol-
ogy at all. How far Coleridge has contributed in the employ-
ment of this method to the scientific statement and philosophical
defence of the doctrines of Christianity, and generally what his
* Biographia Litcraria sub fine. f Anthropologie, S. 219

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, 41

positive merits are in respect to this relation of Philosopny to Rev-
elation, is a question to which we would devote a short space.

In respect to the doctrine of The Trinity, upon which his
thoughts seem to have centered during his latter life, the positior
which he took, that this doctrine, though mysterious is yet rational,
and is therefore a legitimate object of investigation for a rational
mind, at first sight seems to extend the sphere of Christian spec-
ulation beyond its proper limits. For the last two centuries it
has been customary among English and American theologians to
receive the doctrine of the Trinity purely on the ground of its be-
ing revealed in Scripture, and attempts to establish its rationality
and intrinsic necessity, have, in the main, been deprecated. It
has not always been so. In some ages the doctrine of the Tri-
unity of the Divine Being, was the battle-ground of the church, and
we are inclined to think that the Christian mind has never
reached a deeper depth in metaphysical philosophy, than that to
which it was compelled to sink, by the acute objections of Arian-
ism and Sabellianism. Let any one thoughtfully peruse the creeds
that had their origin in these controversies, and see with what
masterly care and ability, the orthodox mind, in spite of all the
imperfections of human language, strove to express the idea with
which it was laboring, so as to avoid the Arian, the Sabellian
and Tritheistic ideas of the Divine Nature, and then ask himself
if there is not something of the mental, something of the national,
in the doctrine of the Trinity, by virtue of which it becomes a
legitimate object of contemplation for the human mind, and to
some extent a guide to its inquiry. How could a man like Atha-
nasius, for example, contend so earnestly, and with such truth of
counter-statement, against a false idea, unless he had the true
Idea somewhat clear in his own mind to contend for. And if it
be said that this was derived from the bare letter of the Scrip-
tures, and that the whole controversy between the contending
parties hinged upon the citation of proof texts, the question
arises : — how came Athanasius to see such a different truth in
these texts from that which his opponents saw in them ? Sup-
pose a transfer of consciousness — suppose that the inward convic-
tions and notions, upon the subject of the Trinity, possessed by
Arius, could have been carried over into the mind of Athanasius,
would the letter of these proof-texts have contained the same
spirit or meaning for him, that they actually did ? For it must

4:2 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

be recollected that the Scriptures do not furnish ready-formed, a
systematic and scientific statement of the doctrine in question.
How then came the orthodox mind to derive its own sharply-de-
fined dogma from the Scriptures, and the hetorodox mind its own
equally sharply-defined dogma from the very same Scriptures, un-
less each brought an antecedent interpreting Idea into the con-
troversy ? We do not by any means suppose that this orthodox
Idea of the Trinity, sprang up in the orthodox mind at this pa:-
ticular instant in the history of the church, and entirely inde-
pendent of the Scriptures. It was a slow formation, and had
come down from the beginning, as the joint product of Scriptural
teaching and rational reflection, but was brought out, by this
controversy, into a greater clearness and fulness than it had ever
before appeared in, outside of the circle of inspired minds. But
that the doctrine of the Trinity was now an Idea in the mind
of the church, and therefore contained a mental element by virtue
of which, it was a legitimate object of rational contemplation, and
not a mere letter upon the page of Scripture, is the point we
wished to bring out.

Now we think it a return to an older and better view of the
subject, and not a mere novelty, that Coleridge was disposed to
affirm, that whether it can be distinctly and fully shown or not,
the doctrine of the Trinity is a rational doctrine, and is not, there-
fore, a theme altogether forbidden to the theologian because it
stands in no sort of relation to a human intelligence. "We believe
that the position, taken by him in common with the spiritual
school of theologians in Germany, between whose general views
in theology, and those of Coleridge there is much affinity, that
the doctrine of the Trinity contains the only adequate and final
answer to the standing objection of Pantheism : — viz. that an In-
finite Being can not be personal, because all personal self-con-
sciousness implies limitation — is a valuable one for both Philoso
phy and Theology. It proposes a high aim for both of these
sciences, and provided the investigation be conducted in the light
of Scripture and of the Christian consciousness, and for the very
purpose of destroying the pantheistic conception of the Deity, into
which such abstruse and recondite speculation we confess is very
apt to run,* we have little fear, that the cause of true philosophy
and religion will suffer from the attempt. Whether the attempt
* The Trinity of Hegel is an example.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 43

be successful or not, surely it is honoring Divine Revelation, and
that body of systematic knowledge which has sprung up out of
it, to affirm with Julius Mailer, that " the Christian Religion as
it lies in the New Testament, contains the fundamental elements
of a perfect system of philosophy in itself — that there can not be
a real reconciliation between Philosophy and Christianity, if such
reconciliation must come in from without, and that such a recon-
ciliation is possible only as it is merely an unfolding of that which
is already contained by implication in Christianity : and hence
that it must be possible to find, from the immediate contents of
the Christian Religion, as its metaphysical complement, ultimate
and absolutely scientific statements relative to the existence of
God and the world, and their mutual relations, in such way as
that they shall of themselves constitute a system of Christian
Philosophy."*

Furthermore, whether the attempt to construct the doctrine of
the Trinity philosophically, succeed or not, the mere recognition
of the fact that it is grounded in reason, and the necessity of the
Divine Nature, cuts the root cf the doctrine of a merely modal
Trinity : a heresy which was revived by the contemplative
Schleiermacher. If the doctrine of a Trinity has a rational ne-
cessity, i. e. a necessity in the Divine Essence itself — if God, in
order to be personal and self-conscious, and not merely that He
may manifest Himself, must be Triune — then it follows that a
mere Trinity of manifestation, whatever it may do for other be-
ings than the Deity, leaves the Deity himself destitute of self-con-
sciousness. The position of the Christian Theology is, that irre-
spective of His manifestation in the universe, antecedent to the
Creation, and in the solitude of His own eternity, God is person-
ally self-conscious and therefore Triune — absolutely self-sufficient
and therefore needing to undergo no process of development and
manifestation, in order to absolute plenitude and perfection of
existence. By affirming that the doctrine of the Trinity is an
absolutely rational and necessary one, because the Trinity is
grounded in the Divine Essence, the doctrine of a relative and
modal Trinity is logically precluded.

So far as concerns the speculations themselves, of Coleridge,
upon this doctrine, he undoubtedly received the theological state-
ment of it, contained in the Nicene Creed, as the truth, and en-
* Lehre von der Siinde, Bd. i. SS. 7, 8, 9.

44 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

deavored, from, this as a point of departure, to originate a corres-
ponding philosophical determination of the doctrine. How much
he has actually contributed to the scientific solution of the prob-
lem, each reader will decide for himself. We are free to say for
ourselves, that we think Coleridge committed an error in lejfYirig
the scheme of the Triad for that of the Tetrad, in his construction.
The symbols of the Church, and the Christian mind, proceed
upon the hypothesis of a simple Tria.d, which is also a Monad,
and hence teach a Trinity in Unity and a Unity in Trinity. Cole-
ridge, on the other hand, proceeds upon the scheme of the Pagan
Trinity, of which hints are to be found in Plato, and which can
be traced back as far as Pythagoras — the scheme namely of a
Monad logically anterior to, and other than, the Triad — of a
Monad which originally is not a Triad, but becomes one — where-
by four factors are introduced into the problem. The error in
this scheme consists in this its assumption of an aboriginal Unity
existing primarily by itself, and in the order of nature, before a
Trinity — of a ground for the Trinity, or, in Coleridge's phrase, a
prothesis, which is not in its own nature either triune or personal,
but is merely the impersonal base from which the Trinity propei
is evolved. In this way, we think, a process of development i&
introduced into the Godhead which is incompatible with its im-
mutable perfection, and with that golden position of the school-
men that God is actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate.
There is no latency in the Divine Being. He is the same yes-
terday, to-day, and forever. We think we see in this scheme of
Coleridge, the influence of the pantheistic conception of potential-
ity, instead of the theistic conception of self-completeness, and
that if he had taken the distinct and full personality of the finite
spirit, as the image and likeness of the Infinite Personality, and
having steadfastly contemplated the necessary conditions of self-
consciousness in man, had merely freed them from the limitations
of the Finite — of time and degree — he would have been more
successful, certainly more continuous and progressive. While we
say this, however, we are far from believing that Coleridge's
practical faith as a Christian in the Trinity, was in the least af-
fected by this tendency to modalisrn in his speculative construc-
tion of the doctrine — a modalism, too,, which, as we have re
marked above, is logically, and ought actually to have been,
precluded by the position which he heartily adopted, of the in-

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 40

trinsic rationality and necessity ol the doctrine. Few minds in
the whole history of the Christian Church, as we believe, have
had more awful and adoring views of the Triune God, or have
bowed down in more absolute and lowly worship before the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The reflections of Coleridge upon the great and important
doctrine of Sin, we regard as of the highest worth both in a
practical and speculative respect. Indeed a profound cor>
sciousncss of Sin in the heart, and a correspondingly profound
theory of it in the head, are fundamental to all depth and
soundness of view in the general domain of Theology. Cole-
ridge speaks in several places of his renunciation of Socinian-
ism and reception of Trinitarianism as resulting from a change
in his philosophical opinions : of a Spiritual Philosophy as the
means of bringing him to a Spiritual Religion. Without deny-
ing the co-operation of this influence, we are yet inclined to
the belief, that in his case, as in that of Augustine and of men of
a strongly contemplative bent, generally, the change from error
to truth had its first and deepest source in that profound and bit-
ter experience of an evil nature, which every child of Adam must
pass through before reaching peace of soul, and which more than
any other experience, carries the mind down into the depths of
both the nature of man and of God. The biographical materials
for forming an estimate of the spirituality, and religious experi-
ence, of Coleridge, are exceedingly meagre, but there is full reason
for believing, from the gushes of tender devotional feeling that
burst up spontaneously, and with the utmost unconsciousness, on
the slightest hint or occasion,* that a most profound Christian
experience lay warm and tremulous under the whole of his cul-
ture and character. We think we can see plainly in those most
touching expressions of a sense of bondage which sometimes es-
cape from him, that Coleridge in common with the wise and
the holy of all ages, was slowly but triumphantly fighting through
that great fight between the flesh and the spirit, which, far more
than the richness of a merely human endowment, is the secret
of that lofty and melancholy interest with which, even if person-
ally unacquainted with the struggle, every truly noble and
thoughtful mind, contemplates the lives of those elect spirits whom
God's grace has chosen as its distinguished organs of manifesta-

* See Table Talk, Works, VI. pp. 323 (Note), 327 (Note), 478 (Note), 527 •
and Lit. R<m., Works, V. pp. 19-21, 368, 372, 290.

46 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

tion — that unearthly contest which, more than all else, is the
secret of that superior charm, which sets the Confession? of
Augustine as high above the Confessions of Rousseau, as the
heavens are above the earth. In this connection we believe that
the opium-eating of Coleridge, about which so much has been
said in a pharisaic spirit by those who had small if any knowl-
edge of that publican-like humility and lowly self-despair which
is the heart and kernel of a Christian, as distinguished from a
merely pagan or ethnic, character, was the occasion, as are all
evil habits in the regenerate soul, of this deep and continually
deepening religious consciousness : and that if that peculiarity,
which resulted from this struggle with an evil habit, were to be
taken out of Coleridge's experience as a Christian, it would lose
much of its depth, expanse, and true elevation. We have not
the slightest doubt that when told, " the tale of his long and pas-
sionate struggle with, and final victory over, the habit, will form
one of the brightest, as well as most interesting traits of the
moral and religious being of this humble, this exalted, Christian."*
The pious-minded believer who finds an analogy in his own ex-
perience to this struggle with the relics of an evil nature, and the
truly philosophic inquirer who traces the Christian life to its hid-
den and lowest springs, are both of them alike, far better quali-
fied to be judges and censors over such a frailty and sin, as the
one in question, than those moralists, who are precluded, as of
old, from both the reception and the apprehension of an evan-
gelical spirit, by their self-righteousness, and whose so-called re-
ligion is that merely negative thing, which owes its origin not to
the conflict of grace with sin, but to an excess of lymph in the
blood.

Coleridge's view of Sin, which is to be found the most fully
expressed in the Aids to Reflection, is so intimately connected
with his view of the Will, that it is necessary to direct attention
to the nature and functions of this important faculty. The place
which the Will holds in his system of philosophy was briefly al-
luded to under that head. As the Spiritual, i. e. self-determined,
principle in man, it stands over against all that is strictly and
merely Natural in him, in the sharpest opposition. In the idea
and plan of the human soul it was intended to control and sub-
ject to its own rational self-determination all the functions and
* EL N. Coleridge's Preface to tbt Table Talk, Works, VI. p. 252.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 47

operations, all the appetencies and tendencies of a Nature which,
unallied with such a higher Spiritual power, would be as irrespon-
sible, because as necessitated in its development, in man, as
we find it to be in the brute. All radical deterioration, there-
fore, in the human soul, must begin in the se//"-determined part
of it, for this is the only point at which a radical, responsible
change can be introduced, and from which it can evolve. A
mere Nature, as in the case of irrational and irresponsible exist-
ences, is not capable of either a radical deterioration or a radical
improvement. It must develop itself in the main, and substan-
tially, in accordance with what has been inlaid in it. There are,
therefore, in the world of Nature as distinguished from that of
Spirit, no radical changes — no terrible catastrophes like the fall
of the Will, no glorious recoveries like its renovation. There is,
and must be, within the realm of the strictly Natural, only one
uniform evolution, in one continuous and endless line, because the
development can not, by a free act, go behind itself, and alter the
basis from which it proceeds.

Sin, therefore, as involving a radical change in the character,
development, and history of the human soul originates in the
Will. If maa were a mere creature of Nature, his development
would go on with the same necessary uniformity with which a
crystal or a tree is built up in accordance with the law of Na-
ture. But he is also a Spiritual, i. e. seZ/'-determiried, creature,
and hence that possibility of sinning which has become a dread-
ful actuality. By virtue of this power, man is capable of throw-
ing himself out of the normal line of development prescribed for
him by his Creator, and of beginning by an absolute beginning,
a character, a course, and career, the precise contrary to the right
and ideal one.

Without going into further detail in regard to Sin as origina-
ting within the sphere of freedom — a point upon which there is no
controversy among those who hold to the existence of Sin at all
— we wish to allude as concisely as possible to the idea of the
Will itself as held by Coleridge, and as it is found generally, we
think, in the Platonic as distinguished from the Locke Calvinism.
For the doctrine of Sin assumes a very different form, and is ac-
companied with totally different results, both in speculative and
practical theology, according as the idea of the Will is capacious,
deep, and exhaustive, or the contrary. If the Will is regarded

48 INTKODUCTORY ESSAY

as merely the faculty of single choices, or particular volitions, the
Sin that has its origin in it, must necessarily be atomic — a mere
series of single and isolated acts, or in the technics of theology,
actual and conscious transgressions. If, on the other hand, the
Will is regarded as the power of determining the whole soul, and
the soul as a whole, to an ultimate end of living, the Sin. that has
its origin in it, is dynamic — an immanent process or state of the
Will, having the unity, depth, and totality of a nature, and in
theological phraseology, is an evil nature, from which all actual
and volitionary transgressions proceed. This distinction between
the volitionary and the voluntary power — a distinction plainly
marked by the Latin arbitrium and voluntas, and equally plainly
by the German Willkuhr and Wille — is important, not only in-
trinsically, but, in order to an apprehension of Coleridge's view
of the doctrine of Original Sin, which we think does not differ
materially from that of Augustine and the Reformers. For al-
though Coleridge insists earnestly and at length upon the doctrine
of free self-determination, he is equally earnest and decided in
affirming the absolute bondage and helplessness of the fallen
human Will. According to him, the Will is capable of absolutely
originating its states — its holy state only in concurrence with, and
aided by, the One Holy Will which is the ground and support of
all finite holiness, and its sinful state without any aid or concur-
rence, on the part of the Infinite Will — but when the evil moral
ctate has once been originated, and the Will has once responsibly
formed its sinful character and nature, a central radical change
in the direction and tendency of this faculty is, from the very na-
ture of the case, then out of its power. For the Will is not the
surface-faculty of single volitions, over which the individual has
arbitrary control, but that central and inmost active principle,
into which all the powers of knowing and feeling are grafted, as
into the very core and substance of the personality itself. So
that when the Will, in this full and adequate sense of the word,
puts forth its self-movement, it takes the whole soul along with
it, from centre to circumference, leaving no remainder of power
in reserve, by which the existing direction of its movement can
be reversed. The fall of the Will, therefore, though a free and
self-moved procedure, brings this faculty into such a relation to
holiness, that it is utterly impossible for it to recover itself back
into its primitive state : it being a contradiction, to attribute a

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 49

power of being holy, to a faculty, the ivhole of whose power is
already absorbed in an unintermittent determination to be evil.
The Will as thus conceived, is a unit and a unity, and having
once freely set itself in the direction of evil, it thereby, and in
the same proportion, becomes powerless in respect to a contrary
direction : not because, be it observed, of any compulsion from
without, but because of the obstinate energy and overmastering
momentum within. It is an impossibility, for Satan to cast out
Satan, because it is an incompatibility.

Coleridge, in short, while holding to the doctrine of free self-
determination with the serious earnestness of a philosopher who
well knew the vital importance of it in a system of Theism — the
doctrine of responsible and personal free-will being the very and
only corrosive of all pantheistic Naturalism — at the same time
agreed with the oldest and soundest theology of the Christian
Church, in not affirming the existence of positive and efficient
power in the fallen Will, either to recover itself, or to maintain
itself in holiness, after recovery. " The difference," he says,
" between a Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian
consists in this : — the former not only believes a Will, but that it
is equivalent to the ego ipse, to the actual self, in every moral
agent ; though he believes that in human nature, it is an en-
slaved, because a corrupt Will. In denying free-Will to the un-
regenerate, he no more denies Will, than in asserting the poor
negroes in the West Indies to be slaves, I deny them to be men.
Now the latter, the Priestleyan, uses the word Will — not for any
distinct correspondent power, but — for the mere result and aggre-
gate of fibres, motions, and sensations ; in short it is a mere gen-
eric teim with him, just as when we say, the main current of a
river."* In fine the fallen Will in relation to a holy state — in
relation to the " new heart" of the Scriptures — is a capability
and not an ability, a recipiency and not a self-sufficient power,
because the decided and positive energy of the faculty, its actual
and actuating power, is entirely enlisted and swallowed up in the
process of a sinful self-determination. This sinful self-determination,
involving the whole soul into itself, and implicating all the tenden-
cies of the inward being of man, with itself, constitutes that evil
ground and nature below the range of distinct consciousness, from

* Literary Remains, Works, V. p. 448 ; compare also Aids to Reflection •
Comment on Aphorism x., Works, I. pp. 271-291.

VOL. i. C3

50 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

which all conscious transgression proceeds, and of which it is the
phenomenal manifestation. In this way Sin is seen to be a single
indivisible nature, or disposition, and not merely an innumerable
series of isolated acts, and this nature again is seen to be essential
guilt, because as originated in a "Will and by a Will, it is self-
originated and self-determined. In the phrase of Coleridge man
" receives a nature into his Will, which by this very act becomes
a corrupt Will ; and vice versa this Will becomes his nature and
thus a corrupt nature ;" and bearing in mind the distinguishing
characteristics of Nature and Spirit, the reader will see the truth
of the further position of this author, " that a nature in a Will
is as inconsistent with freedom, as free choice with an incapacity
of choosing aught but evil ; and that a free power in a nature
to fulfil a law above nature is a startling paradox to the reason."*

Respecting the doctrine of Original Sin, therefore, we think
there is a substantial agreement between Coleridge and that form
of doctrine which has come down in the Christian Church, as
the best expression of both the Christian experience and the
Christian reflection upon this momentous subject ; and as we
have already remarked, a profound view of Sin is the deep and
strong soil from which all sound, healthy, and healing growths
in theological speculation, shoot up. Depth and truth of theory
here, is the very best preventive of errors and misconceptions
elsewhere, and the very best mitigation, and remedy for them, if
they exist.

We have thus far spoken of the soundness and fruitfulness of
Coleridge's general method of Theologizing ; of his profound be-
lief in the inward harmony of Reason and Revelation, and of
that instinctive and irresistible desire, which he shared with the
profbundest theologians of all ages, to exhibit and establish this
harmony. We have also dwelt upon his views upon the funda-
mental doctrines of the Trinity and the Fall of man, selecting
these out of the great circle of Christian doctrines, because they
are fundamental, and in their implication contain the whole
Christian system. It is impossible, however, within the space
of an essay, and it is not perhaps desirable, to pursue the opinions
of this author through the whole series of individual doctrines,
and having, as we think, shown his substantial agreement, so far
* Aids to Reflection, Works, I. p. 281 (Note). See also Notes on Jeremj
Taylor's Unum Necessarium. Literary Remains, Works. V. p. 195.

INTROI)CJCTOEY ESSAY. 51

as the general type and character of his Theology is concerned,
\vith the Augustinian, we pass now to a brief consideration of
some erroneous and defective views that cling to it.

Notwithstanding Coleridge's earnest advocacy of the doctrine
of the self-determining power of the human Will, whereby the
origin of Sin is taken out of the course of Nature and merely
Natural processes, and brought within the sphere of freedom and
amenability to justice, we think that the idea of Guilt, though
by no means denied, or unrecognized, either in his personal expe-
rience or his speculations, was not sufficiently deep, clear, and
impressive, for him. Sin, for him, as for many contemplative
minds in the Christian Church — as it was for Origen in the early
Church, for the Mystical Theology of the Middle Ages, for the
school of Schleiermacher at the present time — was too dispropor-
tionately the corruption and disharmony of the human soul, and
not sufficiently its guilt. Now the strongest motive which the
Theologian, as distinguished from the Philosopher, has for main-
taining the doctrine of Free Will, is to find an adequate and ra-
.tiorial ground for the responsibility and criminality of the human
soul as fallen and corrupt. He is not so anxious, if he is thought-
ful and wise, to establish the doctrine of self-determination in
reference to the origin of holiness (though in this reference the
doctrine is important) as in reference to the origin of Sin : know-
ing that while there is little hazard in attributing too much to
the Divine agency, in the production of moral good, there is the
greatest of hazard, in implicating the Deity in the origin of moral
evil. It would seem, therefore, that so determined an advocate
of the doctrine of human freedom as Coleridge was, should have
not only seen that the very essence of Sin, as self-willed, and
thereby distinguished from all other forms of evil, consists in its
ill-desert and penality, and that therefore its first and most im-
portant relation is to Law and Justice, but should especially have
allowed this view to have moulded and shaped in a proper de-
gree his theory of Redemption. But the scheme which Coleridge
presents in the Aids to Reflection is defective in not insisting with
emphasis upon the truth, that as the essential nature of sin (by
virtue of which it is different in kind from all other forms of evil,
and becomes, strictly speaking, the only evil per se) is guilt, so
an essential element in any remedial plan must be atonement 01
expiation. The correlate to guilt is atonement, and to attempt

52 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

to satisfy those specific wants of the sinful soul, which spring OUT
of remorse of conscience, which is the felt and living relation ol
sin to law and justice, by a mere provision for spiritual sanctifi-
cation, however needed and necessary this may be, in its own
place, must be like the attempt to satisfy thirst with food.
Coleridge was repelled from the doctrine of vicarious atonement,
by some of the mechanical schemes and forms under which it has
been exhibited, but if, as the best theology of the church haa
generally done, he had looked at it from the view-point of the
absolute nature of justice, and had brought it under the category
of want and correlate — one of the most vital of all, and one with
which Coleridge's own mind was thoroughly familiar — it seems
to us that he would have seen, that although the terms ranso?n
and payment of a debt, when applied to the agency of the K e-
deemer, are indeed metaphorical, the term sacrificial expiation,
is not.* If he had steadfastly contemplated the subjective
wants of the human soul, while filled with the consciousness
of guilt, and before that sense of corruption and those yearn-
ings for holiness of heart, which are the consequent rather than
antecedent of regeneration, have sprung up in it, and then had
gone still farther and contemplated the dread objective ground
of this remorseful and guilty conscience, in the Divine justice,
v/hich through this finite medium, reveals itself against all
unrighteousness, he would have seen as the Augustines, the
Anselms, the Calvins, and the Howes have seen, that there is a
rational necessity for the expiation of guilt — a necessity founded
secondarily, in the rational nature and moral wants of man, and
therefore primarily, in the nature and attributes of that infinitely
Holy Being, who made man in His own image and after His
likeness.

* See Aids to Reflection, Aph. xix. : Comment, Works, I. pp. 306-321.
We never read this ardent but merely analogical argument against substi-
tuted penal suffering within the Spiritual sphere of justice, based upon the
merely Natural, and wholly unjudicial, relation of a son to his mother, with-
out thinking of the words in Wallenstein,

" 0 thou art blind, with thy deep seeing eyes."

There is no inward and real analogy between the two spheres. There can
be no legitimate arguing from a sphere, from which the retributive is alto-
gether excluded, such as that of the mother and child, over into a sphere
in which the retributive is the sole element, such as that of God the just
ttud man the guilty. It is fjeru^aac eof dA/lo yivoc.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 58

Moreover, in taking the position which he does — viz., that th«
real and absolute relation of the Passion of the Redeemer to the
Divine attributes, is a mystery, in such sense that nothing can be
affirmed concerning it, that can be intelligible to the human in-
tellect, or edifying to the human heart (for this is said, when it
is said that the subjective consequences in the redeemed, are all
that can be known upon the subject), Coleridge stands in re*
maikable inconsistency with himself. We have seen that even
the Trinity was not by him regarded as a mystery, in this
modern, but really improper, sense, of standing in no sort of re-
lation to a rational intelligence ; in this sense of containing 110
element of the rational and mental, upon which the human mind
can seize as a point of union and communion. And yet one
whole side of the work of Redemption — that side too which stands
in the very closest connection with the deepest and most awful
sense in the human soul — the sense of guilt — and ministers to
the d sepest and most awful craving that ever emerges into the
horizon of consciousness — the craving for a deliverance from guilt
on real grounds, i. e. on grounds of justice : (a craving that lies
at the bottom of the whole system of sacrifices, Pagan as well as
Jewish, and is both their rational justification and explanation) —
this whole side of the work of Redemption is thrown utterly out
of, and beyond the range of the human mind, so that although
its consequences in the redeemed may be known, its own inward
nature — the ground and origin of these very consequences — is as
utterly unknown and unknowable as that of a " gorgon 01
chimaera dire !" But aside from this inconsistency it is a fatal
objection to this theory, that these consequences themselves — this
Christian peace of conscience and sense of reconciliation with a
Holy Lawgiver — can not come into existence through such an ig-
norant and blind faith as the soul is shut up to on this scheme.
Such effects can not proceed from such a cause. Here, if any-
where in the whole field of the Christian consciousness, there
must be the union of faith with insight. There must be some
knowledge of the purpose and purport of the death of the Son
of God — some knowledge of the inward and real relation which
the substituted sufferings of Christ sustain to divine justice — before
the guilt-stricken spirit looking about instinctively, but despair-
ingly, for an atonement of guilt, can confidently and calmly rest
in them for purposes of justification. At the very least their in

54 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

trinsic adaptation to the end proposed and desiied — their ade
quacy — must be recognized by the mind, and what is such recog-
nition but a species and a grade of knowledge respecting then
nature, fitness and rational necessity ? The faith of the common
Christian contains the rationale of the doctrine of Atonement, for
the origin and existence of this faith itself, is explicable only on
the hypothesis that there is reason in the doctrine ; and if it is
rational it is apprehensible.

"While, however, we are noticing this defect in Coleridge's
statement of the doctrine of Redemption, it ought at the same time
to be observed, that he was not impelled to the view he took, by
a morbid and feeble moral sentiment, or from any disposition to
merge all the Divine attributes into an irrational and blind Be-
nevolence. It was an intellectual, more than a moral defect,
with him, for when he is himself opposing Socinianism — and few
minds have been more heartily opposed to it than his — we find
him employing the very same objections to a scheme of salvation
that makes no provision for the guilt of man and the Justice of
God, which the orthodox mind has urged in all ages. " Socini-
anism," he says, " is not a religion, but a theory, and that too, a
very pernicious, or a very unsatisfactory theory. Pernicious — for
it excludes all our deep and awful ideas of the perfect holiness of
God, His justice and His mercy, and thereby makes the voice of
conscience a delusion, as having no correspondent in the charac-
ter of the legislator ; regarding God as merely a good-natured
pleasure-giver, so happiness is produced, indifferent as to the
means : — unsatisfactory, for it promises forgiveness, without any
Eolution of the difficulty of the compatibility of this, ivith the
Justice of God."*

In other places,! on the other hand, we find him expressing
himself, respecting the more mechanical view of this doctrine,
with an impatience and rashness, which a deeper, calmer, and
more truly philosophic insight into it, would have precluded. For
he who has meditated profoundly upon the Divine Being, and
has thoughtfully asked himself the question : — Has the Deity af-
fections in any sense, and what solid meaning have such terms as
Anger and Propitiation, when applied to Him ? — will not be in
haste to condemn even the most inadequate statement upon this
:< abyssmal subject," provided he sees that its general meaning

* Lit. Rem., Works, V. pp. 552, 553, and compare V. pp. 447, 448.

\ Lit. Rem., Works, V. p. 74, e. g.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 56

and purport is on the right side of the great controversy. That
Coleridge had not speculatively reached the bottom of this doc-
trine, and acquired a view of it as profound and comprehensive
as that of Anselm, e. g. in his Cur Deus homo ? or as that to
which a tract, like Owen's, on the absolute nature of Divine
Justice, leads, is evident from the irresolution of his mind, arid
the unsteadiness of his attitude.^ In fine, as we remarked at the
outset, the defect in Coleridge's view of this subject is traceable
to a deficiency in his theoretic view of Sin in one of its two main
aspects. The Idea was not full. And perhaps the cause of this
speculative deficiency was a practical one at bottom. Like many
other contemplative spirits, Coleridge came into Christianity
gradually, and not through a violent inward crisis, and hence his
experimental consciousness of Sin, though not by any means en-
tirely lacking the element of remorse, was yet predominantly a
sense of bondage and corruption. We doubt not that Coleridge's
exposition of the doctrine of Redemption (as would that of Schlei-
errnacher) would have been different from what it now is, by a
very important modification, had his own Christian consciousness
been the result of such an inward conflict with Guilt, as Luther's
was, or of such a keen insight into the nature of Law and Jus-
tice, as Calvin had, instead of being, as it was, the result of a
comparatively quiet transition into Christianity and growth
therein ; in which process the yearning after holiness and pu-
rity, instead of the craving after atonement for agonizing Guilt in
the conscience, was the predominant, though not sole, feeling,

In respect to the views of Coleridge upon the subject of Inspi
ration, it is not our purpose to enter into any detail, but simply
to notice the defect in the general principle adopted by hirn.
This principle, to state it in a word, is as follows : — In determining
the absolute truth and authority of the Scriptures, the Objective
generally, is subordinate to the Subjective. With the exception
of those particular cases, in which the Objective Revelation ex-
plicitly claims a paramount superiority to the Subjective Intelli-
gence, by asserting a direct dictation or revelation from God, the

* When himself attacking Socinianism, Coleridge employs the phraseol
ogy of the Calvinist, and seems thereby to reserve the attacking of Calvin-
ism as a pecuhuni of his own : as Johnson allowed no one to abuse Goldsmith
but himself. See Lit. Hem., passim, and observe the general animus of tli«
ootes on Jeremy Taylor, and on A Barrister's Hints.

5ft INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

former has intrinsic authority or validity, only so far as it acquires
it before the bar of the individual judgment. The Subjective
Reason, with the exception specified, is placed first, as the fixed
and absolute norm or rule to which the Objective Reason is to be
brought up and conformed. Now the strongest objection to this
theory of Revelation is to be derived from the principles of the
philosophy adopted, as we have endeavored to show, by Coleridge
himself. But even if we should regard him as an adherent of
the later German philosophy, the absolute and fixed truth would
riot lie in thq. Subject alone, but in the identity of the Subject
and the Object — -in a common ground that contains both factors.
And even this position would be more sound and less objection-
able when applied to the mutual relations of the individual mind
and Divine Revelation than the one which we have mentioned
above, and which is really tenable only by an adherent of Fichte's
system, in which the truth is laid in the Subject wholly. Even
on the principles of the philosophy of Identity, the truth would
not be wholly and ultimately in the Subjective, nor would the
Objective Revelation be so passively exposed to the fluctuations
of an individual consciousness, because, at the very least, there
would be room for action arid reaction, of correction and counter-
correction.

But we think it has been made out, that Coleridge, on this
point of the relation of the Subject to the Object, ultimately
adopted the views of the Critical philosophy, substantially those
of all theistic systems, which explains the possibility of knowl-
edge, by a preconforrnity of the Subject to the Object, instead of
an identity of substance between them. -Ou this system there is
a dualism between the Object and the Subject. Of the two, the
former is the unlimited and the universal, and stands over against
the latter as the limited and particular. It is the Objective,
therefore, which possesses the fixed and uniform character (in this
instance, the infallibility) to which the Subjective comes up with
its pre-conformed powers of apprehension, and the function of the
latter consequently, is a recipient instead of an origiriant or crea-
tive one, as in the system of Fichte, or a self-developing one, as in
the system of Schelling and Hegel.

We are aware that Coleridge believed that the Scriptures are,
as matter of fact, true on all primary points, and that thoau
Christian doctrines which he, in common with the Christian

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 57

Church, regarded as vital to human salvation, are all plainly re-
vealed in them. This ought to be noticed, because this of itself
separates him heaven-wide, from a mere Rationalist, and places
him in the same general class with the evangelical school of
theologians in Germany, in respect to this doctrine of Inspiration.
Still we regard it an error in him, and in them, that the Canon
is not contemplated as a complete whole in and by itself, having
a common origin in the Divine Mind, in such sense, that as a
body of information it is infallibly correct on all the subjects that
come within its scope and purpose. There must be truth some-
where, in regard to all, even the most unimportant particulars
of history, biography, and geography, that enter into the subject
matter of the Sacred Canon, and it seems to us altogether the
most rational, in accordance with the general principle enounced
above, to presume and assume that it lies in the Canon itself —
in the outward Revelation considered as a finished whole, and an
infallible unit and unity. These secondary matters are always an
important, and sometimes vital, part^ of the great whole, and as
they are so integrated into the solid doctrinal substance of the
Scriptures, that they can not be taken out of it, any more than
the blue veins can be from the solid marble, why is it not ra-
tional to believe, that they had the same common origin with the
doctrines and fundamental truths themselves, which are encrusted
and crystallized in them — in other words, that the Divine Mind,
whether as positively revealing, or inspiring, or superintending, is
the ultimate Author of the whole ? There are but two objec-
tions to this position. The first is — that the inspired writers be-
come thereby, mere amanuenses and automata. This objection
has no force for one who believes that the Divine can, and does,
dwell and work in the Human, in the most real and absolute
manner, without in the least mutilating or suppressing the

* In some instances at least, a vital part ; as e. g. the biographic memoir*
of the Redeemer by the Evangelists. If these are not infallible as history,
then the whole Christian Religion instantaneously disappears : — for the
Personage in whom it centres and rests can not be proved to have had an
existence in space and time, and the forecasting intimations which the
human soul (of a Plato, e. g.} has had of a Redeemer to come, would not
save it from skepticism and despair. Hence the four gospels, in the late
contest between Rationalism and Supernaturalism in Germany, have beeii
the hottest part of the battle-field.

58 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

Human, and ought not to be urged by one who believes in the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the regenerate soul. As in this
instance, the Human can not be separated from the Divine, in
the individual consciousness, and all " the fruits of the Spirit"
seem to be the very spontaneity of the human soul itself, so in the
instance of the origination of the body of Holy Writ, while all,
even the minutest, parts have the flexibility, freshness, and natu-
ralness of purely human productions, there is yet in and through
them all, the unerring agency of the Supreme Mind. In other
words, the Supreme Intelligence is the organizing principle of
that outstanding body of information which is called the Bible,
and working like any other organizing principle, with thorough-
ness, produces a whole, that is characterized by its own charac-
teristic— perfection of knowledge — even as life in the natural
world diffuses itself and produces all the characteristic marks of
life, out to the rim of the tiniest leaf. The second objection, and
a fatal one, if it can be maintained, is — that there are actual
errors in the Scriptures, on points, in regard to which, they pro-
fess to teach the truth. Let this be shown, if it can be, but until
it has been shown, without possibility of contradiction, the Chris
tian mind is certainly rational, in continuing to assume and affirm
the infallibility of the Written Word. We say this with confi-
dence, because out of the great number of alleged errors and
contradictions that have been urged against the plenary inspira-
tion of the Scriptures, there is not a single one established as such
on grounds that render it absurd for a defender of the doctrine to
take the opposite side. There is no list of conceded errors in the
Scriptures. There are many difficulties still remaining, we
grant, but while there is not a single case in which the absolute
and unappealable settlement has resulted in establishing the fact
of undoubted error, there are many in which it has resulted in
favor of the doctrine of plenary inspiration. No one acquainted
with the results of the severe and skeptical criticism to which
the Canon has been subjected for the last half-century in Ger-
many, will deny that the number of apparent contradictions and
errors is much smaller now, than it was at the beginning of this
period, and that the remainder of the series is diminishing. And
had Coleridge himself kept up with the progress of Biblical Crit-
icism in that country where the foundation of his views on this
subject seems to have been laid, he would undoubtedly have seen

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 5S

reasons for rejecting some erroneous hypotheses, which, though:
exploded in the land of their birth, clung to him till the end of
his life. He seems in regard to such an important point, as the
inspiration and canonical authority of the Christopcedia* in both
Matthew's and Luke's gospels, e. g. not to have made any ad-
vance upon the general views of the brilliant but superficial
Eichorn, who was his teacher in 1799.

This whole subject of Inspiration, a most important, and a most
difficult one, in some respects, turns upon the true relation of the
Subjective to the Objective, and particularly of the Human to
the Divine Reason. We can not but regard the theory of In-
spiration set forth by Coleridge, in common with that spiritual
school of theologians in Germany, which is destined to exert a
great, and we believe, on the whole, salutary influence upon the
theology of this country and Great Britain, for some time to come,
as in direct opposition to that sober and rational philosophy which
regards the Objective as fixed, reliable, and absolute, and con-
ceives of the Subjective as designed to receive this into itself with
intelligence and freedom, and as really free from fluctuation and
error only so far as it partakes of the fixedness and truth of the
Objective. The finite Reason is rather a recipiency than a self-
subsistent power, according to Kant and Jacobi, and there are
passages in these volumes that endorse this. The Human Mind
is rather a capacity, than a self-sufficing fulness like the Divine
Mind ; and therefore the only rational attitude of the Subjective
Intelligence towards an Objective Revelation, and towards all
Revelation of the Supreme Reason, is that of intelligent and liv-
ing recipiency. The Christian consciousness itself can not safely
be left to its own independent movement, without any moulding
and modifying influence of the Written Word. The outward,
fixed, and self-included Revelation, must go down, through all the
ages arid changes of the Christian experience and Christian doc-
trine, as the absolute norm by which the whole process of prac-
tical and speculative development is to be protected from devia-
tions to the right hand and to the left. The Canon is to steady
and solidify that living process of thinking and of feeling which is
embodied and manifested in the Christian Church, arid keep it
from the extremes on either hand, to which a finite mind and a
living process are ever liable. Neither the practical nor th*
* Lit. Remains, Works, V. pp. 76, 78, 79. 532.

60 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

scientific form of a particular doctrine, or of Christian Theologj
generally, may be sought for in the Christian consciousness, ex-
cept as it has been rectified and purified by the Scriptures — in
this Subjective, except as it has been rectified from its errors, and
purified from its foreign elements by the conscious reception
into itself of this Objective, which is absolutely free from both
There would be more weight in the doctrine of the authority of
the finite Reason, and the Christian consciousness, than there now
is, if all the processes of the human soul — even the regenerate
human soul — were normal processes. But he has studied the
history of even Christian Speculation, to little purpose, who has
not learned from it, the need of an objective and fixed authority
lor the fallen human mind. Taken as a whole, the thinking of
the human mind has never been nearer the central line of truth,
than while it has been under the influence and guidance of
Christianity. Christian Philosophy is far nearer this centre than
the best schools of merely Pagan philosophy. And yet how fluc-
tuating has been the movement, and what constant need there
has been of an absolute standard by which to determine and cor-
rect the aberrations of the human mind ! We think that in his
strong belief that Christianity is absolutely rational, and in his
earnest desire to exhibit it as such, Coleridge was led, at times
certainly, to attribute a greater power of origination to the finite
Reason than it really possesses, and to forget that as an endow-
ment superinduced, and not as the whole essence of the finite
mind, Reason in man, though the same in kind with the Supreme
Reason, is not that infinite plenitude of Wisdom, which is incom
municable to a created Spirit.

We have been the more free and full, in speaking of the views
of Coleridge upon the two topics of Vicarious Atonement, and
Inspiration, because we believe that the defect in them origi-
nated not so much from a moral as from a speculative source.
We have already spoken of the manner in which he identifies
himself with the orthodox feeling and view, in relation to the
doctrine of Atonement, when himself opposing Socinianisrn, and
any one, who will carefully peruse the expressions of reverence
and awe for the Scriptures, which spontaneously break from him,
and bear in mind that whatever may be the actual influence,
the serious and solemn purpose, of his little tract, was to
strengthen the Bible in its claims upon the human mind, as the

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 61

source of religious knowledge, can not doubt that Coleridge was in-
duced to reject the common theory of Inspiration from a conviction
that it really defeated its own end, and not because he wished
to weaken in the least, the belief of Christendom in the Divine
Oracles. While therefore we have distinctly expressed our con-
victions upon these points, we wish at the same time to remind
the reader that these defects, though important, are not the sub-
stance and staple of the theological opinions of this author.
Notwithstanding a partial disagreement with the Christian
Mind upon these subjects, there is a positive and profound agree-
ment with it, on all the other important doctrines of Christianity ;
and it should be remembered that in a fundamental agreement
with such a body of truth as the Christian Religion, a basis is
laid for the ultimate correction of views and opinions not in con-
sonance with it. When a mind has once received into itself the
substance of Christianity, it is its tendency, to deepen and widen
its own religious consciousness, and in this process, foreign and
contradictory elements are finally cast out of it, by its own
saliency and vitality. In the case of Coleridge, it should more-
over be observed, that he was compelled to clear himself of sys-
tems of philosophy and religion, inimical to a theistic Philosophy
and a spiritual Christianity, in and during the development of
his positive and final opinions ; and hence, that it is not to be
wondered at, that these latter should, here and there, exhibit the
vanishing hues of the former. It is not to be wondered at, that
some particles of the chaotic slime should have cleaved to him,
compelled as he was, to paw himself out of ground, like the first
lion.*

We have now as briefly as possible, touched upon the leading
points in the Philosophy and Theology of Coleridge, thereby tc
show what is the general drift and spirit of his speculations in
these two highest departments of knowledge. We have not been
anxious to defend this Author upon each and every one of the
various topics on which he has given the world his thoughts, be-
lieving that on some of them he is indefensible. A_t the same

* * * * * now half appeared

The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts ; then springs, as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane. Par, Lost, B. VII

62 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

time we have expressed a decided opinion, that in respect gen-
erally to the highest problems of Philosophy and Theology, the
opinions of Coleridge are every way worthy of being classed with
those of the master minds of the race. We are confident that
these volumes contain, after subtracting the subtrahend, a body
of thought upon the highest themes of reflection, well worthy
of the study of every mind that is seeking a deep, clear, and ex-
panded development of itself. Into the great variety of philo-
sophical theories, and the great diversity in the ways and methods
of thinking, characteristic of this age, we think the speculations
of Coleridge deserve to be cast, and believe that just in propor-
tion as they are thoroughly apprehended, and thereby enter
vitally into the thinking world, will they allay the furious fer-
mentation that is going on, and introduce unity, order, serenity,
and health, into the mental processes of the times. We believe
that they will do still more than this. We believe that they
will help to fortify the minds of the rising generation of educated
men, in that Platonic method of philosophizing, which has come
down through all the mutations in the philosophic world, which
has survived them all, which, more than any other method, haa
shown an affinity with Religion — natural and revealed — and
which, through its doctrine of seminal and germinant Ideas, haa
been the fertile root of all the finest growths and fruitage of
the human mind.

AIDS TO REFLECTION

BY

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEEIDGE

WITH A PRELIMINARY ESSAY BY

JAMES MARSH, D.D.

EDITED BY

PIENRY NELSON COLERIDGE

THIS MAKES, THAT WHATSOEVER HERE BEFALLS,
YOU IN THE REGION OP YOURSELF REMAIN
NEIGHBORING ON HEAVEN ; AND THAT NO FOREIGN LAND.

DANIEL.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

THIS corrected Edition of the Aids to Reflection is commended
to Christian readers, in the hope and the trust that the power
which the book has already exercised over hundreds, it may, by
God's furtherance, hereafter exercise over thousands. No age,
since Christianity had a name, has more pointedly needed the
mental discipline taught in this work than that in which we now
live ; when, in the Author's own words, all the great ideas or
verities of religion seem in danger of being condensed into idols,
or evaporated into metaphors. Between the encroachments, on
the one hand, of those who so magnify means that they practi-
cally impeach the supremacy of the ends which those means
were meant to subserve ; and of those, on the other hand, who,
engrossed in the contemplation of the great Redemptive Act,
rashly disregard or depreciate the appointed ordinances of grace ;
— between those who, confounding the sensuous Understanding,
varying in every individual, with the universal Reason, the
image of God, the same in all men, inculcate a so-called faith,
having no demonstrated harmony with the attributes of God, or
the essential laws of humanity, and being sometimes inconsistent
with both ; and those again who requiring a logical proof of
that which, though not contradicting, does in its very kind, tran-
scend, our reason, virtually deny the existence of true faith alto-
gether ; — between these almost equal enemies of the truth, Cole-
ridge,— in all his works, but pre-eminently in this — has kindled
an inextinguishable beacon of warning and of guidance. In so
doing, he has taken his stand on the sure word of Scripture, and
is supported by the authority of almost every one of our great
divines, before the prevalence of that system of philosophy
( Locke's), which no consistent reasoner can possibly reconcile

66 ADVERTISEMENT.

with the undoubted meaning of the Articles and Formularies of
the English Church : —

In causaque valet, causamque juvantibus armis.

The Editor had intended to offer to the reader a few words
by way of introduction to some of the leading points of philoso-
phy contained in this Volume. But he has been delighted to
find the work already done to his hand, in a manner superior to
anything he could have hoped to accomplish himself, by an affec-
tionate disciple of Coleridge on the other side of the Atlantic.
The following Essay was written by the Rev. James Marsh,
President of the University of Vermont, United States of America,
and prefixed by him to his Edition of the Aids to Reflection,
published at Burlington in 1829. The Editor has printed this
Essay entire ; — as well out of respect for its author, as believing
that the few paragraphs in it, having a more special reference to
the state of opinion in America, will not be altogether without
an interest of their own to -the attentive observers of the pro-
gress of Truth in this or any other country.

26th April, 1836.

PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

BY THE KEY. JAMES MARSH. D.D.

WHETHER the present state of religious feeling, and the prt
vailing topics of theological inquiry among us, are particularly
favorable to the success of the Work herewith offered to the
Public can be determined only by the result. The question,
however, has not been left unconsidered ; and however that may
be, it is not a work, the value of which depends essentially upon
its relation to the passing controversies of the day. Unless I
distrust my own feelings and convictions altogether, I must sup-
pose, that for some, I hope for many, minds, it will have a deep
and enduring interest. Of those classes, for whose use it i?
more especially designated in the Author's Preface, I trust there
are many also in this country, who will justly appreciate the ob-
ject at which it aims, and avail themselves of its instruction and
assistance. I could wish it might be received, by all who con-
cern themselves in religious inquiries and instruction especially,
in the spirit which seems to me to have animated its great and
admirable author ; and I hesitate not to say, that to all of every
class, who shall so receive it, and peruse it with the attention
and thoughtfulness, which it demands and deserves, it will be
found by experience to furnish, what its title imports, " AIDS TO
REFLECTION" on subjects, upon which every man is bound to
reflect deeply arid in earnest.

What the specific objects of the Work are, and for whom it is
written, may be learned in few words from the Preface of the
Author. From this, too, it will be seen to be professedly didactic
It is designed to aid those who wish for instruction, or assistance
in the instruction of others. The plan and composition of the
Work will to most readers probably appear somewhat anomalous ;
but reflection upon the nature of the objects aimed at, and some

68 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

little experience of its results, may convince them that the
method adopted is not without its advantages. It is important
to observe, that it is designed, as its general characteristic, to aid
REFLECTION, and for the most part upon subjects which can be
learned and understood only by the exercise of reflection in the
strict and proper sense of that term. It was not so much to
teach a speculative system of doctrines built upon established
premisses, for which a different method would have been ob-
viously preferable, as to turn the mind continually back upon the
premisses themselves — upon the inherent grounds of truth and
error in its own being. The only way in which it is possible for
any one to learn the science of words, which is one of the objects
to be sought in the present Work, and the true import of those
words especially, which most concern us as rational and account-
able beings, is by reflecting upon and bringing forth into distinct
consciousness, those mental acts, which the words are intended
to designate. We must discover and distinctly apprehend differ-
ent meanings, before we can appropriate to each a several word,
or understand the words so appropriated by others. Now it is
not too much to say, that most men, and even a large proportion
of educated men, do not reflect sufficiently upon their own in-
ward being, upon the constituent laws of their own understand-
ing, upon, the mysterious powers and agencies of reason, and con-
science, and will, to apprehend with much distinctness the objects
to be named, or of course to refer the names with correctness to
their several objects. Hence the necessity of associating the
study of words with the study of morals and religion ; and that
is the most effectual method of instruction, which enables the
teacher most especially to fix the attention upon a definite mean-
ing, that is, in these studies, upon a particular act, or process, or
law of the mind — to call it into distinct consciousness, and assign
to it its proper name, so that the name shall thenceforth have for
the learner a distinct, definite, and intelligible sense. To im-
press upon the reader the importance of this, and to exemplify it
in the particular subjects taken up in the Work, is a leading aim
of the Author throughout ; and it is obviously the only possible
way by which we can arrive at any satisfactory and conclusive
results on subjects of philosophy, morals, and religion. The first
principles, the ultimate grounds, of these, so far as they are pos-
sible objects of knowledge for us, must be sought and found in

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 69

the laws of our being, or they are not found at all. The knowl-
edge of these, terminates in the knowledge of ourselves, of our
rational and personal being, of our proper and distinctive hu-
manity, and of that Divine Being, in whose image we are cre-
ated. " We must retire inward," says St. Bernard, " if we
would ascend upward." It is by self-inspection, by reflecting
upon the mysterious grounds of our own being, that we can alone
arrive at any rational knowledge of the central and absolute
ground of all being. It is by this only, that we can discover
that principle of unity and consistency, which reason instinc-
tively seeks after, which shall reduce to an harmonious system
all our views of truth and of being, and destitute of which all
the knowledge that comes to us from without is fragmentary,
arid in its relation to our highest interests as rational beings but
the patch-work of vanity.

Now, of necessity, the only method, by which another can aid
our efforts in the work of reflection, is by first reflecting himself,
and so pointing out the process and marking the result by words,
that we can repeat it, and try the conclusions by our own con-
sciousness. If he have reflected aright, if he have excluded all
causes of self-deception, and directed his thoughts by those prin-
ciples of truth and reason, and by those laws of the understand-
ing, which belong in common to all men, his conclusions must be
true for all. We have only to repeat the process, impartially to
reflect ourselves, unbiassed by received opinions, and undeceived
by the idols of our own understandings, and we shall find the
same truths in the depths of our own self-consciousness. I am
persuaded that such, for the most part, will be found to be the
case with regard to the principles developed in the present Work,
and that those who, with serious reflection and an unbiassed
love of truth, will refer them to the laws of thought in their own
minds, to the requirements of their own reason, will find there a
witness to their truth.

Viewing the Work in this manner, therefore, as an instructive
and safe guide to the knowledge of what it concerns all men to
know, I can not but consider it in itself as a work of great and
permanent value to any Christian community. Whatever indeed
tends to awaken and cherish the power and to form the habit, of
reflection upon the great constituent principles of our own perma-
nent being and proper humanity, and upon the abiding laws of

70 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

truth and duty, as revealed in our reason and conscience, can not
but promote our highest interests as moral and rational beings.
Even if the particular conclusions, to which the Author has ar-
rived, should prove erroneous, the evil is comparatively of little
importance, if he have at the same time communicated to our
minds such powers of thought, as will enable us to detect his
errors, and attain by our own efforts to a more perfect knowledge
of the truth. That some of his views may not be erroneous, or
that they are to be received on his authority, the Author, I pre-
sume, would be the last to affirm ; and although in the nature of
the case it was impossible for him to aid reflection without an-
ticipating, and in some measure influencing, the results, yet the
piimary tendency and design of the Work is, not to establish this
or that system, but to cultivate in every mind the power and the
will to seek earnestly and steadfastly for the truth in the only
direction, in which it can ever be found. The work is no further
controversial, than every work must be, " that is writ with free
dom and reason" upon subjects of the same kind ; and if it be
found at variance with existing opinions and modes of philoso-
phizing, it is not necessarily to be considered the fault of the
writer.

In republishing the Work in this country, I could wish that it
might be received by all, for whose instruction it was designed,
simply as a didactic work, on its own merits, and without con-
troversy. I must not, however, be supposed ignorant of its bear-
ing upon those questions, which have so often been, and still are,
the prevailing topics of theological controversy among us. It
was indeed incumbent on me, before inviting the attention of the
religious community to the Work, to consider its relation to exist
ing opinions, and its probable influence on the progress of truth.
This I have done with as severe thought as I am capable of be
stowing upon any subject, and I trust too with no want of defer-
ence and conscientious regard to the feelings and opinions of
others. I have not attempted to disguise from myself, nor do I
wish to disguise from the readers of the Work, the inconsistency
of some of its leading principles with much that is taught and re-
ceived in our theological circles. Should it gain much of the
public attention in any way, it will become, as it ought, an ob-
ject of special and deep interest to all, who would contend for
the truth, and labor to establish it upon a permanent basis. 1

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 71

venture to assure such, even those of them who are most capable
of comprehending the philosophical grounds of truth in our spec-
ulative systems of theology, that in its relation to this whole sub-
ject they will find it to be a Work of great depth and power, and,
whether right or wrong, eminently deserving their attention. It
is not to be supposed that all who read, or even all who compre-
hend it, will be convinced of the soundness of its views, or be
prepared to abandon those which they have long considered
essential to the truth. To those, whose understandings by long
habit have become limited in their powers of apprehension, and
as it were identified with certain schemes of doctrine, certain
modes of contemplating all that pertains to religious truth, it may
appear novel, strange, and unintelligible, or even dangerous in its
tendency, and be to them an occasion of offence. But I have no
fear that any earnest arid single-hearted lover of the truth as it is
in Jesus, who will free his mind from the idols of preconceived
opinion, and give himself time and opportunity to understand the
Work by such reflection as the nature of the subject renders un-
avoidable, will find in it any cause of offence, or any source of
alarm. If the Work become the occasion of controversy at all, 1
should expect it from those, who, instead of reflecting deeply
upon the first principles of truth in their own reason arid con-
science and in the word of God, are more accustomed to specu-
late— that is, from premisses given or assumed, but considered
unquestionable, as the constituted point of observation, to look
abroad upon the whole field of their intellectual vision, and
thence to decide upon the true form and dimensions of all which
meets their view. To such I would say with deference, that the
merits of this Work can not be determined by the merely relative
aspect of its doctrines, as seen from the high ground of any pre-
vailing metaphysical or theological system. Those on the con-
trary who will seek tb comprehend it by reflection, to learn the
true meaning of the whole and of all its parts, by retiring into
their own minds and finding there the true point of observation
for each, will not be in haste to question the truth or the ten
dency of its principles. I make these remarks because I am anx
ious, as far as may be, to anticipate the causeless fears of ail, who
earnestly pray and labor for the promotion of the truth, and to
preclude that unprofitable controversy, which might arise from
hasty or prejudiced views of a Work like this At the «ame time

T2 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

I should be far from deprecating any discussion which might tend
to unfold more fully the principles which it teaches, or to exhibit
more distinctly its true bearing upon the interests of theological
science and of spiritual religion. It is to promote this object, in-
deed, that I am induced in the remarks which follow to offer
some of my own thoughts on these subjects, imperfect I am well
aware, and such as, for that reason, as well as others, worldl)
prudence might require me to suppress. If, however, I may in
duce reflecting men, and those who are engaged in theological
inquiries especially, to indulge a suspicion that all truth, which
it is important for them to know, is not contained in the systems
of doctrine usually taught, and that this "Work may be worthy of
their serious and reflecting perusal, my chief object will be ac-
complished. I shall of course not need to anticipate in detail the
contents of the Work itself, but shall aim simply to point out what
I consider its distinguishing and essential character and tendency,
and then direct the attention of my readers to some of those gen-
eral feelings and views on the subjects of religious truth, and of
those particulars in the prevailing philosophy of the age, which
seem to me to be exerting an injurious influence on the cause of
theological science and of spiritual religion, and not only to fur-
nish a fit occasion, but to create an imperious demand, for a Work
Uke that which is here offered to the public.

In regard then to the distinguishing character and tendency oi
Ihe Work itself, it has already been stated to be didactic, and de-
signed to aid reflection on the principles and grounds of truth in
our own being ; but in another point of view, and with reference
to my present object, it might rather be denominated A PHILO-
SOPHICAL STATEMENT AND VINDICATION OF THE DISTINCTIVELY
SPIRITUAL AND PECULIAR DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

In order to understand more clearly the import of this statement,
and the relation of the Author's views to those exhibited in other
systems, the reader is requested to examine in the first place,
what he considers the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and
what he means by the terms spirit and spiritual. A synoptical
view of what he considers peculiar to Christianity as a revelation
is given in Aph. vii. on Spiritual Religion, and, if I mistake not,
will be found essentially to coincide, though not perhaps in the
language employed, with what among us are termed the Evan
gelical doctrines of religion. Those who are anxious to examine

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 73

further into the orthodoxy of the Work in connection with this
statement, may consult the articles on ORIGINAL SIN and REDEMP-
TION, though I must forewarn them that it will require much
study in connection with the other parts of the Work, before one
unaccustomed to the Author's language, and unacquainted with
his views, can fully appreciate the merit of what may be peculiar
in his mode of treating these subjects. With regard to the term
spiritual, it may be sufficient to remark here, that he regards it
as having a specific import, and maintains that in the sense of
tho New Testament, spiritual and natural are contradistin-
guished, so that what is spiritual is different in kind from that
which is natural, and is in fact swptfr-natural. So, too, while
morality is something more than prudence, religion, the spiritual
life, is something more than morality.

In vindicating the peculiar doctrines of the Christian system
so stated, and a faith in the reality of agencies and modes of being
essentially spiritual or supernatural, he aims to show their con-
sistency with reason and with the true principles of philosophy,
and that indeed, so far from being irrational, CHRISTIAN FAITH is
THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN REASON. By reflection upon the sub-
jective grounds of knowledge and faith in the human mind itself,
and by an analysis of its faculties, he develops the distinguish-
ing characteristics and necessary relations of the natural and the
spiritual in our modes of being and knowing, and the all-impor-
tant fact, that although the former does not comprehend the
latter, yet neither does it preclude its existence. He proves, that
" the scheme of Christianity, though not discoverable by reason,
is yet in accordance with it — that link follows link by necessary
consequence — that religion passes out of the ken of reason only
where the eye of. reason has reached its own horizon — and that
faith is then but its continuation."* Instead of adopting, like
the popular metaphysicians of the day, a system of philosophy at
war with religion, and which tends inevitably to undermine our
belief in the reality of any thing spiritual in the only proper sense
of that word, and then coldly and ambiguously referring us for
the support of our faith to the authority of Revelation, he boldly
asserts the reality of something distinctively spiritual in man, and
the futility of all those modes of philosophizing, in which this is
not recognized, or which are incompatible with it. He considers
* Biographia /,i<e.-<m'<*, Works III. p. 594.— 8. C.

VOL. 1 I)

74 PKELIMINARY ESSAY.

it the highest and most rational purpose of any system of phi
losophy, at least of one professing to be Christian, to investigate
those higher and peculiar attributes, which distinguish us from
the brutes that perish — which are the image of God in us, and
constitute our proper humanity. It is in his view the propei
business and the duty of the Christian philosopher to remove all
appearance of contradiction between the several manifestation?
of the one Divine Word, to reconcile reason with revelation, and
thus to justify the ways of God to man. The methods by which
he accomplishes this, cither in regard to the terms in which he
enunciates the great doctrines of the Gospel, or the peculiar views
of philosophy by which he reconciles them with the subjective
grounds of faith in the universal reason of man, need not be
stated here. I will merely observe, that the key to his system
will be found in the distinctions, which he makes and illustrates
between nature and free-will, and between the understanding
and reason. It may meet the prejudices of some to remark far-
tner, that in philosophizing on the grounds of our faith he does
not profess or aim to solve all mysteries, and to bring all truth
within the comprehension of the understanding. A truth may
be mysterious, and the primary ground of all truth and leality
must be so. But though we may believe what passeth all un-
derstanding, we can not believe what is absurd, or contradictory
to reason.

Whether the Work be well executed, according to the idea of
it, as now given, or whether the Author have accomplished his
purpose, must be determined by those who are capable of judg-
ing, when they shall have examined and reflected upon the whole
as it deserves. The inquiry which I have now to propose to my
readers is, whether the idea itself be a rational one, and whether
the purpose of the Author be one which a wise man and a
Christian ought to aim at, or which in the present state of our
religious interests, and of our theological science, specially needs
to be accomplished.

No one, who has had occasion to observe the general feelings
and views of our religious community for a few years past, can be
ignorant, that a strong prejudice exists against the introduction
of philosophy, in any ibrm, in the discussion of theological subjects.
The terms philosophy and metaphysics, even reason and rational,
eem, in the minds of those most devoted to the suppr it of reli-

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 75

gious truth, to have forfeited their original, and to have acquired a
new import, especially in their relation to matters of faith. By
a philosophical view of religious truth would generally be under-
stood a view, not only varying from the religion of the Bible in
the form and manner of presenting it, but at war with it ; and a
rational religion is supposed to be of course something diverse
from revealed religion. A philosophical and rational system of
religious truth would by most readers among us, if I mistake not,
be supposed a system deriving its doctrines not from revelation,
but from the speculative reason of men, or at least relying on
that only for their credibility. That these terms have been used
to designate such systems, and that the prejudice against reason
and philosophy so employed is not, therefore, without cause, I
need not deny ; nor would any friend of revealed truth be less
disposed to give credence to such systems, than the Author of the
Work before us.

But, on the other hand, a moment's reflection only can be
necessary to convince any man, attentive to the use of language,
that we do at the same time employ these terms in relation to
truth generally in a better and much higher sense. Rational,
as contradistinguished from irrational and absurd, certainly de-
notes a quality, which every man would be disposed to claim, noi
only for himself, but for his religious opinions. Now, the adjec-
tive reasonable having acquired a different use and signification,
the word rational is the adjective corresponding in sense to the
substantive reason, and signifies what is conformed to reason.
In one sense, then, all men would appeal to reason in behalf of
their religious faith ; they would deny that it was irrational or ab-
surd. If we do not in this sense, adhere to reason, we forfeit our
prerogative as rational beings, and our faith is no better than the
bewildered dream of a man who has lost his reason. Nay, 1
maintain that when we use the term in this higher sense, it is
impossible for us to believe on any authority what is directly con-
tradictory to reason and seen to be so. No evidence from another
source, and no authority could convince us, that a proposition in
geometry, for example, is false, which our reason intuitively dis-
covers to be true. Now if we suppose (and we may at least sup-
pose this), that reason has the same power of intuitive insight in
relation to certain moral and spiritual truths, as in relation to the

76 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

truths of geometry, then it would be equally impossible to dives4
us of our belief of those truths.

Furthermore, we are not only unable to believe the same prop-
osition to be false, which our reason sees to be true, but we can
riot believe another proposition, which by the exercise of the
same rational faculty we see to be incompatible with the former,
or to contradict it. We may, and probably often do, receive
with a certain kind and degree of credence opinions, which re-
flection would show to be incompatible. But when we have
reflected, and discovered the inconsistency, we can not retain
both. We can not believe two contradictory propositions, know-
ing them to be such. It would be irrational to do so.

Again, we can not conceive it possible, that what by the same
power of intuition we see to be universally and necessarily true
should appear otherwise to any other rational being. We can
not, for example, but consider the propositions of geometry as
necessarily true for all rational beings. So, too, a little reflec-
tion, I think, will convince any one, that we attribute the same
necessity of reason to the principles of moral rectitude. What in
the clear daylight of our reason, and after mature reflection, we
see to be right, we can not believe to be wrong in the view of
other rational beings in the distinct exercise of their reason.
Nay, in regard to those truths, which are clearly submitted to
the view of our reason, and which we behold with distinct and
steadfast intuitions, we necessarily attribute to the Supreme
Reason, to the Divine Mind, views the same, or coincident, with
those of our own reason. We can not (I say it with reverence
arid I trust with some apprehension of the importance of the as-
sertion), we can not believe that to be right in the view of the
Supreme Reason, which is clearly and decidedly wrong in the
view of our own. It would be contradictory to reason, it would
be irrational, to believe it, and therefore we can not do so, till we
lose our reason, or cease to exercise it.

I would ask, now, whether this be not an authorized use of
the words reason and rational, and whether so used they do not
mean something. If it be so — and I appeal to the mind of every
man capable of reflection, and of understanding the use of lan-
guage, if it be not — then there is meaning in the terms universal
reason, and unity of reason, as used in this Work. There is,
and can be, ID this highest sense of the word, but one reason,

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. V7

and whatever contradicts that reason, being seen to do so, can
not be received as matter either of knowledge or faith. To rec-
oncile religion with reason used in this sense, therefore, and to
justify the ways of God to man, or in the view of reason, is so
far from being irrational, that reason imperatively demands it of
us. We can not, as rational beings, believe a proposition on the
grounds of reason, and deny it on the authority of revelation.
We can not believe a proposition in philosophy, and deny the
same proposition in theology : nor can we believe two incompati-
ble propositions on the different grounds of reason and revelation.
So far as we compare our thoughts, the objects of our knowledge
and faith, and by reflection refer them to their common measure
in th^ universal laws of reason, so far the instinct of reason im-
pels us to reject whatever is contradictory and absurd, and to
bring unity and consistency into all our views of truth. Thus,
in the language of the Author of this Work, though " the word
rational has been strangely abused of late times, this must not
disincline us to the weighty consideration, that thoughtfulness,
and a desire to rest all our convictions on grounds of right reason,
are inseparable from the character of a Christian."

But I beg the reader to observe, that in relation to the doc-
trines of spiritual religion — to all that he considers the peculiar
doctrines of the Christian revelation, the Author assigns to reason
only a negative validity. It does not teach us what those doctrines
are, or what they are not, except that they are not, and can not
be, such as contradict the clear convictions of right reason. But
his views on this point are fully stated in 'the Work, and the gen-
eral office of reason in relation to all that is proposed for our belief,
is given with philosophical precision in other parts of his Works.*

If then it be our prerogative, as rational beings, and our duty
as Christians, to think, as well as to act, rationally, — to see that
our convictions of truth rest on the grounds of right reason ; and
if it be one of the clearest dictates of reason, that we should en-
deavor to shun, and on discovery should reject, whatever is con-
tradictory to the universal laws of thought, or to doctrines already
established, I know not by what means we are to avoid the ap-
plication of philosophy, at least to some extent, in the study of
theology. For to determine what are the grounds of right rea
son, what are those ultimate truths, and those universal laws of
* See Statesman's Manual, Appendix (B.), p. 258, 2d. edit. — Ed

78 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

thought, which we can not rationally contradict, and by reflec-
tion to compare with these whatever is proposed for pur belief, is
in fact to philosophize ; and whoever does this to a greater or
less extent, is so far a philosopher in the best and highest sense
of the word. To this extent we are bound to philosophize in
theology, as well as in every other science. For what is not
rational in theology, is, of course, irrational, and can not be of
the household of faith ; and to determine whether it be rational
in the sense already explained or not, is the province of philoso-
phy. It is in this sense that the Work before us is to be consid-
ered a philosophical work, namely, that it proves the doctrines
of the Christian Faith to be rational, and exhibits philosophical
grounds for the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. The
reality of those experiences, or states of being, which constitute
experimental or spiritual religion, rests on other grounds. It is
incumbent on the philosopher to free them from the contradic-
tions of reason, and nothing more ; and who will deny, that to
do this is a purpose worthy of the ablest philosopher and the
most devoted Christian ? Is it not desirable to convince all men
that the doctrines, which we affirm to be revealed in the Gospel,
are not contradictory to the requirements of reason and con-
science ? Is it not, on the other hand, vastly important to the
cause of religious truth, and even to the practical influence of
religion on our own minds, and the minds of the community at
large, that we should attain and exhibit views of philosophy and
doctrines in metaphysics, which are at least compatible with, if
they do not specially favor, those views of religion, which, on
other grounds, we find it our duty to believe and maintain ?
For, I beg it may be observed, as a point of great moment, that
it is not the method of the genuine philosopher to separate his
philosophy and religion, and adopting his principles independently
in each, to leave them to be reconciled or not, as the case may
be. He has, and can have, rationally but one system, in which
his philosophy becomes religious, and his religion philosophical.
Nor am I disposed in compliance with popular opinion to limit
the application of this remark, as is usually doi.e, to the mere
external evidences of revelation. The philosophy which we
adopt will and must influence not only our decision of the ques-
tion, whether a book be of divine authority, but our views also
of its meaning.

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 79

But this is a subject, on which, if possible, I would avoid being
misunderstood, and must, therefore, exhibit it more fully, even at
the risk of repeating what was said before, or is elsewhere found
in the Work. It has been already, I believe, distinctly enough
stated, that reason and philosophy ought to prevent our reception
of doctrines claiming the authority of revelation only so far as
the very necessities of our rational being require. However mys-
terious the thing affirmed may be, though it passefh all under-
standing, if it can not be shown to contradict the unchangeable
principles of right reason, its being incomprehensible to our un-
derstandings is not an obstacle to our faith. If it contradict rea
son, we can not believe it, but must conclude, either that the
writing is not of divine authority, or that the language has been
misinterpreted. So far it seems to me, that our philosophy ought
to modify our views of theological doctrines, and our mode of in
terpreting the language of an inspired writer. But then we must
be cautious, that we philosophize rightly, and " do not call that
reason which is not so. Otherwise we may be led by the sup-
posed requirements of reason to interpret metaphorically, what
ought to be received literally, and evacuate the Scriptures of their
most important doctrines." But what I mean to say here is, that
we can not avoid the application of our philosophy in the inter-
pretation of the language of Scripture, and in the explanation of
the doctrines of religion generally. We can not avoid incurring
the danger just alluded to of philosophizing erroneously, even to
the extent of rejecting as irrational that which tends to the per-
fection of reason itself. And hence I maintain, that instead of
pretending to exclude philosophy from our religious inquiries, it
is very important that we philosophize in earnest — that we should
endeavor by profound reflection to learn the real requirements of
reason, and attain a true knowledge of ourselves.

If any dispute the necessity of thus combining the study of phi-
losophy with that of religion, I would beg them to point out the
age since that of the Apostle's, in which the prevailing metaphys-
ical opinions have not distinctly manifested themselves in the
prevailing views of religion, ind if, as I fully believe will be the
case, they fail to discover a single system of theolosy, a single
volume on the subject of the Christian religion, in which the au
thor's views are not modified by the metaphysical opinions of the
age or of the individual, it would be desirable to ascertain,

80 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

whether this influence be accidental or necessary. The meta-
physician analyzes the faculties and operations of the human
mind, and teaches us to arrange, to classify, and to name them,
according to his views of their various distinctions. The lan-
guage of the Scriptures, at least to a great extent, speaks of sub-
jects that can be understood only by a reference to those same
powers and processes of thought and feeling, which we have
learned to think of, and to name, according to our particular sys-
tem of metaphysics. How is it possible then to avoid interpret-
ing the one by the 'other ? Let us suppose, for example, that a
man has studied and adopted the philosophy of Brown, is it pos-
sible for him to interpret the 8th chapter of Romans, without
having his views of its meaning influenced by his philosophy ?
Would he not unavoidably interpret the language and explain
the doctrines, which it contains, differently from one, who should
have adopted such views of the human mind as are taught in
this Work ? I know it is customary to disclaim the influence of
philosophy in the business of interpretation, and every writer
now-a-days on such subjects will assure us, that he has nothing
to do with metaphysics, but is guided only by common sense and
the laws of interpretation. But I should like to know how a
man comes by any common sense in relation to the movements
and laws of his intellectual and moral being without metaphy-
sics. What is the common sense of a Hottentot on subjects of
this sort ? I have no hesitation in saying, that from the very
nature of the case, it is nearly, if not quite, impossible for any
man entirely to separate his philosophical views of the human
mind from his reflections on religious subjects. Probably no man
has endeavored more faithfully to do this, perhaps no one has
succeeded better in giving the truth of Scripture free from the
glosses of metaphysics, than Professor Stuart. Yet, I should risk
little in saying that a reader deeply versed in the language of
metaphysics, extensively acquainted with the philosophy of dif-
^?rent ages, and the peculiar phraseology of different schools,
night ascertain his metaphysical system from many a passage
of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. What then,
hi me ask, is the possible use to the cause of truth and of reli-
gion, from thus perpetually decrying philosophy in theological in-
quiries, when we can not avoid it if we would ? Every man,
who has reflected at all, lias his metaphysics ; and if he reads on

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 81

religious subjects, he interprets and understands the language,
which he employs, by the help of his metaphysics. He can not
do otherwise. — And the proper inquiry is, not whether we admit
our philosophy into our theological and religious investigations,
but whether our philosophy be right and true. For myself, I am
fully convinced that we can have no right views of theology, till
we have right views of the human mind ; and that these are to
be acquired only by laborious and persevering reflection. My
belief is, that the distinctions unfolded in this Work will place us
in the way to truth, and relieve us from numerous perplexities,
in which we are involved by the philosophy which we have so
long taken for our guide. For we are greatly deceived, if we
suppose for a moment that the systems of theology which have
been received among us, or even the theoretical views which are
now most popular, are free from the entanglements of worldly
wisdom. The readers of this Work will be able to see, I think,
more clearly the import of this remark, and the true bearing of
the received views of philosophy on our theological inquiries.
Those who study the Work without prejudice, and adopt its prin-
ciples to any considerable extent, will understand too how deeply
an age may be ensnared in the metaphysical webs of its own
weaving, or entangled in the net which the speculations of a for-
mer generation have thrown over it, and yet suppose itself blessed
with a perfect immunity from the dreaded evils of metaphysics.

But before I proceed to remark on those particulars, in which
our prevailing philosophy seems to be dangerous in its tendency,
and unfriendly to the cause of spiritual religion, I must beg leave
to guard myself and the Work from misapprehension on another
point of great importance in its relations to the whole subject
While it is maintained that reason and philosophy, in their true
character, ought to have a certain degree and extent of influence
in the formation of our religious system, and that our metaphysi-
cal opinions, whatever they may be, ivill almost unavoidably,
modify more or less our theoretical views of religious truth gen-
erally, it is yet a special object of the Author of the Work to
show that the spiritual life, or what among us is termed experi-
mental religion, is, in itself, and in its own proper growth and
development, essentially distinct from the forms and processes of
the understanding ; and that, although a true faith can not cou-
tradict any universal principle of specii lative reason, it is yet in

D*

82 PRELIMINAEY ESSAY.

a certain sense independent of the discursions of philosophy, and
in its proper nature beyond the reach " of positive science and
theoretical insight." " Christianity is not a theory or a specu
lation ; but a life. Not a philosophy of life, but a life and a liv-
ing process." It is not, therefore, so properly a species of knowl-
edge, as a form of being. And although the theoretical views of
the understanding, and the motives of prudence which it pre-
sents, may be, to a certain extent, connected with the develop
inent of the spiritual principle of religious life in the Christian,
yet a true and living faith is not incompatible with at least some
degree of speculative error. As the acquisition of merely specu-
lative knowledge can not of itself communicate the principle of
spiritual life, so neither does that principle, and the living process
of its growth, depend wholly, at least, upon the degree of specu-
lative knowledge with which it co-exists. That religion, of which
our blessed Saviour is himself the essential Form and the living
Word, and to which he imparts the actuating Spirit, has a prin
ciplc of unity and consistency in itself distinct from the unity and
consistency of our theoretical views. Of this we have evidence
in every day's observation of Christian character ; ibr how often
do we see and acknowledge the power of religion, and the growth
of a spiritual life in minds but little gifted with speculative
knowledge, and little versed in the iorms of logic or philosophy !
How obviously, too, does the living principle of religion manifest
the same specific character, the same essential form, amidst all
the diversities of condition, of talents, of education, and natural
disposition, with which it is associated ; everywhere rising above
nature, and the powers of the natural man, and unlimited in its
goings on by the forms in which the understanding seeks to com-
prehend and confine its spiritual energies. There are diversities
of gifts, but the same Spirit ; and it is no less true now than in
the age of the Apostles, that in all lands, and in every variety
of circumstances, the manifestations of spiritual life are essentially
the same ; and all who truly believe in heart, however diverse
in natural condition, in the character of their understandings,
and even in their theoretical views of truth, are one in Christ,
JesAS. The essential faith is not to be found in the understand-
ing or the speculative theory, but " the life, the substance, the
hope, the love — in one word, the faith — these are derivatives
from the practical, moral, and spiritual nature and being of man.'

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 83

Speculative systems of theology indeed have often had little con-
nection with the essential spirit of religion, and are usually little
more than schemes resulting from the strivings of the finite un-
derstanding to comprehend and exhibit under its own forms and
conditions a mode of being and spiritual truths essentially diverse
from their proper objects, and with which they are incommensu-
rate.

This I am aware is an imperfect, and I fear may be an unin-
telligible, view of a subject exceedingly difficult of apprehension
at the best. If so, I must beg the reader's indulgence, and re-
quest him to suspend his j udgment, as to the absolute intelligi-
bility of it, till he becomes acquainted with the language and
sentiments of the "Work itself. It will, however, I hope, be so
far understood, at least, as to answer the purpose for which it was
introduced — of precluding the supposition that, in the remarks
which preceded, or in those which follow, any suspicion was in-
tended to be expressed, with regard to the religious principles or
the essential faith of those who hold the opinions in question.
According to this view of the inherent and essential nature of
Spiritual Religion, as existing in the practical reason of man, we
may not only admit, but can better understand the possibility of
what every charitable Christian will acknowledge to be a fact,
so far as human observation can determine facts of this sort —
that a man may be truly religious, and essentially a believer at
heart, while his understanding is sadly bewildered with the at-
tempt to comprehend and express philosophically, what yet ho
feels and knows spiritually. It is indeed impossible for us to tell
how far the understanding may impose upon itself by partial
views and false disguises, without perverting the will, or estrang-
ing it from the laws and the authority of reason and the divine
word. We can not say to what extent a false system of philos-
ophy and metaphysical opinions, which in their natural and un-
counteracted tendency would go to destroy all religion, may bo
received in a Christian community, and yet the power of spiritual
religion retain its hold and its efficacy in the hearts of the peo-
ple. We may perhaps believe that in opposition to all the might
of false philosophy, so long as the great body of the people have
the Bible in their hands, and are taught to reverence and receive
its heavenly instructions, though the Church may sufier injury
flora unwise and unfruitful speculations, it will yet be preserved ;

84 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

and that the spiritual seed ot me divine word, though mingled
with many tares of worldly wisdom and philosophy falsely so-
called, will yet spring up, and bear fruit unto everlasting life.

But though we may hope and believe this, we can not avoid
believing, at the same time, that injury must result from an un-
suspecting confidence in metaphysical opinions, which are essen-
tially at variance with the doctrines of Revelation. Especially
must the effect be injurious, where those opinions lead gradually
tc alter our views of religion itself, and of all that is peculiar in
the Christian system. The great mass of the community, who
know little of metaphysics, and whose faith in revelation is not
so readily influenced by speculations not immediately connected
with it, may, indeed, for a time, escape the evil, and continue to
receive ivith meekness the ingrafted word. But in the minds of
the better educated, especially those who think and follow out
their conclusions with resolute independence of thought, the re-
sult must be either a loss of confidence in the opinions themselves,
or a rejection of all those parts of the Christian system which are
at variance with them. Under particular circumstances, indeed,
where both the metaphysical errors, and the great doctrines of
the Christian Faith, have a strong hold upon the minds of a com-
munity, a protracted struggle may take place, and earnest and
long-continued efforts may be made to reconcile opinions which
we are resolved to maintain, with a faith which our consciences
will not permit us to abandon. But so long as the effort con-
tinues and such opinions retain their hold upon our confidence, it
must be with some diminution of the fulness and simplicity of
our faith. To a greater or less degree, according to the educa-
tion and habits of thought in different individuals, the word of
God is received with doubt, or with such glozing modifications as
enervate its power. Thus the light from heaven is intercepted,
and we are left to a shadow-fight of metaphysical schemes and
metaphorical interpretations. While one party, with conscien-
tious and earnest endeavors, and at great expense of talent and
ingenuity, contends for the Faith, and among the possible shap-
ings of the received metaphysical system, seeks that which will
best comport with the simplicity of. the Gospel, — another more
boldly interprets the language of the Gospel itself in conformity
with those views of religion to which their philosophy seems ob-
viously to conduct them. The substantial being and the living en

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 85

ergry of the WORD, which is not only the light but the life of men,
is either misapprehended or denied by all parties ; and even those
who contend for what they conceive the literal import of the
Gospel, do it — as they must to avoid too glaring absurdity — with
such explanations of its import as to make it to become, in no
small degree, the ivords of man's wisdom, rather than a simple
demonstration of the Spirit and of poiver. Hence, although
su3h as have experienced the spiritual and life-giving power of
the Divine V-'ord, may be able, through the promised aids of the
Spirit, to overcome the natural tendency of speculative error, and,
by the law of the spirit of life which is in them, may at length
be made free from the law of sin and death, yet who can tell
how much they may lose of the blessings of the Gospel, and be
retarded in their spiritual growth when they are but too often
fed with the lifeless and starveling products of the human under-
standing, instead of that living bread which came down from
heaven ? Who can tell, moreover, how many, through the prev-
alence of such philosophical errors as lead to misconceptions of
the truth or create a prejudice against it, and thus tend to inter-
cept the light from heaven, may continue in their ignorance,
alienated from the life of God, and groping in the darkness of
their own understandings ?

But however that may be, enlightened Christians, and espe-
cially Christian instructors, know it to be their duty, as far as
possible, to prepare the way for the full and unobstructed influ-
ence of the Gospel, to do all in their power to remove those nat-
ural prejudices, and those errors of the understanding, which are
obstacles to the truth, that the word of God may find access to
the heart, and conscience, and reason of every man, that it may
have free course, and run, and be glorified. My own belief,
that such obstacles to the influence of truth exist in the specula-
tive and metaphysical opinions generally adopted in this country,
and that the present Work is in some measure at least calculated
to remove, them, is pretty clearly indicated by the remarks which
I have already made. But, to be perfectly explicit on the sub-
ject I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the natural
tendency of some of the leading principles of our prevailing sys-
tem of metaphysics, and those which must unavoidably have
more or less influence on our theoretical views of religion, are of
an injurious and dangerous tendency, and that 30 long as we re

66 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

tain them, however we may profess to exclude their influence
from our theological inquiries, and from the interpretation of
Scripture, we can maintain no consistent system of Scriptural
theology, nor clearly and distinctly apprehend the spiritual im-
port of the Scripture language. The grounds of this conviction I
shall proceed to exhibit, though only in a very partial manner,
as 1 could not do more without anticipating the contents of the
Work itself, instead of merely preparing the reader to peruse them
with attention. I am aware, too, that some of the language,
which I have already employed, and shall be obliged to employ,
will not convey its full import to the reader, till he becomes ac-
quainted with some of the leading principles and distinctions un-
folded in the Work. But this also is an evil which I saw no
means of avoiding without incurring a greater, and writing a
book instead of a brief essay.

Let it be understood, then, without further preface, that by the
prevailing system of metaphysics, I mean the system, of which
in modern times Locke is the reputed author, and the leading
principles of which, with various modifications, more or less im-
portant, but not altering its essential character, have been almost
universally received in this country. It should be observed, too,
that the causes enumerated by the Author, as having elevated it
to its "pride of place" in Europe, have been aided by other fa-
voring circumstances here. In the minds of our religious com-
munity, especially, some of its most important doctrines have be-
come associated with names justly loved and revered among
ourselves, and so connected with all our theoretical views of re-
ligion, that a man can hardly hope to question their validity with-
out hazarding his reputation, not only for orthodoxy, but even for
common sense. To controvert, for example, the prevailing doc-
trines with regard to the freedom of the will, the sources of our
knowledge, the nature of the understanding as containing the con
ti ailing principles of our whole being, and the universality of the
law of cause and effect, even in connection with the arguments
and the authority of the most powerful intellect of the age, may
even now be worse than in vain. Yet I have reasons for believ-
ing there are some among us, and that their number is fast
increasing, who are willing to revise their opinions on these sub-
jects, and who will contemplate the views presented in this
Work with a liberal, and something of a prepared feeling of curi-

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 87

osity. The difficulties in which men find themselves involved
by the received doctrines on these subjects, in their most anxious
efforts to explain and defend the peculiar doctrines of spiritual
religion, have led many to suspect that there must be some lurk-
ing error in the premises. It is not that these principles lead us
to mysteries which we can not comprehend ; they are found, or
believed at least by many, to involve us in absurdities which we
can comprehend. It is necessary indeed only to form some no-
tion of the distinctive and appropriate import of the term spirit-
ual, as opposed to natural in the New Testament, and then to
look at the writings, or hear the discussions, in which the doc-
trines of the Spirit and of spiritual influences are taught and de-
fended, to see the insurmountable nature of the obstacles, which
these metaphysical dogmas throw in the way of the most power-
ful minds. To those who shall read this "Work with any degree
of reflection, it must, I think, be obvious, that something more is
implied in the continual opposition of these terms in the New
Testament, than can be explained consistently with the prevail-
ing opinions on the subjects above enumerated ; and that through
their influence our highest notions of that distinction have been
rendered confused, contradictory, and inadequate. I have al-
ready directed the attention of the reader to those parts of the
Work, where this distinction is unfolded ; and had 1 no other
grounds than the arguments and views there exhibited, I should
be convinced that so long as we hold the doctrines of Locke and
the Scotch metaphysicians respecting power, cause and effect, mo-
tives, and the freedom of the will, we not only can make and de-
fend no essential distinction between that which is 'natural, and
that which is spiritual, but we can not even find rational grounds
for the feeling of moral obligation, and the distinction between
regret and remorse.

According to the system of these authors, as nearly and dis-
tinctly as my limits will permit me to state it, the same law of
cause and effect is the law of the universe. It extends to the
moral and spiritual — if in courtesy these terms may still be used
— no less than to the properly natural powers and agencies of
our being. The acts of the free-will are pre-determined by a
cause out of the will, according to the same law of cause and
effect which controls the changes in the physical world. "We
have no notion of power but uniformity of antecedent and conse-

88 PKELIMINARY ESSAX .

quent. The notion of a power in the will to act freely is there-
fore nothing more than an inherent capacity of being acted upon,
agreeably to its nature, and according to a fixed law, by the
motives which are present in the understanding. I feel author-
ized to take this statement partly from Brown's Philosophy, be-
cause that work has been decidedly approved by our highest
theological authorities ; and indeed it would not be essentially
varied, if expressed in the precise terms used by any of the wri-
ters most usually quoted in reference to these subjects.

I am aware that variations may be found in the mode of stat-
ing these doctrines ; but I think every candid reader, who is
acquainted with the metaphysics and theology of this country,
will admit the above to be a fair representation of the form in
which they are generally received. I am aware, too, that much
has been said and written to make out, consistently with these
general principles, a distinction between natural and moral
causes, natural and moral ability, and inability, and the like.
But I beg all lovers of sound and rational philosophy to look
carefully at the general principles, and see whether there be, in
fact, ground left for any such distinctions of this kind as are
worth contending for. My first step in arguing with a defender
of these principles, and of the distinctions in question, as con-
nected with them, would be to ask for his definition of nature
and natural. And when he had arrived at a distinctive general
notion of the import of these, it would appear, if I mistake not,
that he had first subjected our whole being to the law of nature,
and then contended for the existence of something which is no1
nature. For in their relation to the law of moral rectitude, and
to the feeling of moral responsibility, what difference is there,
and what difference can there be, between what are called nat-
ural and those which are called moral powers and affections, if
they are all under the control of the same universal law of cause
and effect ? If it still be a mere nature, and the determinations
of our will be controlled by causes out of the will, according to
our nature, then I maintain that a moral nature has no more to
do with the feeling of responsibility than any other nature.

Perhaps the difficulty may be r.iade more obvious in this way
It will be admitted that brutes are possessed of va rious natures,
some innocent or useful, otherwise noxious, but all alike irrespon-
sible in a moral point of view But why ? Simply because

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 89

they act in accordance \vith their natures. They possess, each
according to its proper nature, certain appetites and susceptibili-
ties which are stimulated and acted upon by their, appropriate
objects in the world of the senses ; and the relation — the law of
action and reaction — subsisting between these specific suscepti-
bilities and their corresponding outward objects, constitutes their
nature. They have a power of selecting and choosing in the
world of sense the objects appropriate to the wants of their na-
ture ; but that nature is the sole law of their being. Their
power of choice is but a part of it, instrumental in accomplishing
its ends, but not capable of rising above it, of controlling its im-
pulses, and of determining itself with reference to a purely ideal
law, distinct from their nature. They act in accordance with
the law of cause and effect, which constitutes their several na-
tures, and can not do otherwise. They are, therefore, not respon-
sible— not capable of guilt, or of remorse.

Now let us suppose another being, possessing, in addition to
the susceptibilities of the brute, certain other specific suscepti-
bilities with their correlative objects, either in the sensible world,
or in a future world, but that these are subjected, like the other,
to the same binding and inalienable law of cause and effect.
What, I ask, is the amount of the difference thus supposed be-
tween this being and the brute ? The supposed addition, it is
to be understood, is merely an addition to its nature ; and the
only power of will belonging to it is, as in the case of the brute,
only a capacity of choosing "and acting uniformly in accordance
with its nature. These additional susceptibilities still act but as
they are acted upon ; and the will is determined accordingly.
What advantage is gained in this case by calling these supposed
additions moral affections, and their correlative stimulants moral
causes ? Do we thereby find any rational ground for the feeling
of moral responsibility, for conscience, for remorse ? The being
acts according to its nature, and why is it blameworthy more
than the brute ? If the moral law existing out of the will be a
power or cause which, in its relation to the specific susceptibility
of the moral being, produces under the same circumstances uni-
ibrmly the same result, according to the law of cause and effect ;
if the acts of the will be subject to the same law, as mere links
in the chain of antecedents and consequents, and thus a part of
•ur nature, what is gained, I ask again, by the distinction of a

90 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

moral and a physical nature ? It is still only a nature under the
law of cause and effect, and the liberty of the moral being is
under the same condition with the liberty of the brute. Both
are free to follow and fulfil the law of their nature, and both are
alike bound by that law, as by an adamantine chain. The very
conditions of the law preclude the possibility of a power to act
otherwise than according to their nature. They preclude the
very idea of a free-will, and render the feeling of moral responsi
bility not an enigma merely, not a mystery, but a self-contradic-
tion and an absurdity.

Turn the matter as we will — call these correlatives, namely,
the inherent susceptibilities and the causes acting on them from
without, natural, or moral, or spiritual — so long as their action
and reaction, or the law of reciprocity, which constitutes their
specific natures, is considered as the controlling law of our whole
being, so long as we refuse to admit the existence in the will of a
power capable of rising above this law, and controlling its opera-
tion by an act of absolute self determination, so long as we shall
be involved in perplexities both in morals and religion. At all
events, the only method of avoiding them will be to adopt the
creed of the Necessitarians entire, to give man over to an irre-
sponsible nature as a better sort of animal, and resolve the will
of the Supreme Reason into a blind and irrational fate.

I am well aware of the objections that will be made to this
statement, and especially the demonstrated incomprehensibleness
of a self-determining power. To this I may be permitted to an-
swer, that, although the power to originate an act or state of
mind may be beyond the capacity of our understandings to com-
prehend, it is still not contradictory to reason ; and that I find it
more easy to believe the existence of that, which is simply in-
comprehensible to my understanding, than of that which involves
an absurdity for my reason. I venture to affirm, moreover, thai
however we may bring our understandings into bondage to tho
more comprehensible doctrine, smiply because it is comprehensi-
ble under the forms of the understanding, every man docs, in
fact, believe himself possessed of freedom in the higher sense of
self-determination. Every man's conscience commands him to
believe it, whenever for a moment he indulges the feeling of
moral self-approbation, or of remorse. Nor can we on any other
grounds justify the ways of God to man upon the supposition that

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 91

he inflicts or will inflict any other punishment than that -which
is simply remedial or disciplinary. But this subject will be
found more fully explained in the course of the Work. My pres-
ent object is merely to show the necessity of some system in rela-
tion to these subjects different from the received one.

It may perhaps be thought, that the language used above is
too strong and too positive. But I venture to ask every candid
man, at least every one who has not committed himself by wri-
ting and publishing on the subject, whether in considering thf
great questions connected with moral accountability and the doc
trine of rewards and punishments, he has not felt himself pressed
with such difficulties as those above stated ; and whether he has
ever been able fully to satisfy his reason, that there was not a
lurking contradiction in the idea of a being created and placed
under the law of its nature, and possessing at the same time a
feeling of moral obligation to fulfil a law above its nature. That
many have been in this state of mind I know. I know, too, that
some whose moral and religious feelings had led them to a full
belief in the doctrines of spiritual religion, but who at the same
time had been taught to receive the prevailing opinions in meta-
physics, have found these opinions carrying them unavoidably, if
they would be consequent in their reasonings, and not do violence
to their reason, to adopt a system of religion which does not pro-
fess to be spiritual, and thus have been compelled to choose be-
tween their philosophy and their religion. In most cases indeed,
where men reflect at all, I am satisfied that it requires all the
force of authority, and all the influence of education, to carry the
mind over these difficulties ; and that then it is only by a vague
belief that, though we can not see how, there must be some
method of reconciling what seems to be so contradictory.

If examples were wanting to prove that serious and trying dif-
ficulties are felt to exist here, enough may be found, as it has ap-
peared to me, in the controversy respecting the nature and origin
of sin, which is at this moment interesting the public rnind. Let
any impartial observer trace the progress of that discussion, and
after examining the distinctions which are made or attempted to
be made, decide whether the subject, as there presented, bo not
involved in difficulties, which can not be solved on the principles
to which, hitherto, both parties have adhered ; whether, holding
as they do the same premisses in regard to the freedom of the

92 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

will, they can avoid coming to the same conclusion in regard to
the nature and origin of sin; whether in fact the distinctions
aimed at must not prove merely verbal distinctions, and the con-
troversy a fruitless one. But in the September number of the
Christian Spectator, the reader will find remarks on this subject,
to which I beg leave to refer him, and which I could wish him
attentively to consider in connection with the remarks which I
ave made. I allude to the correspondence with the editors near
the end of the number. The letter there inserted is said to be,
and obviously is, from the pen of a very learned and able writer :
and I confess it has been no small gratification and encouragement
to me, while laboring to bring this Work and this subject be-
fore the public, to find such a state of feeling expressed, concern-
ing the great question at issue, by such a writer. It will be
seen by reference to p. 545, of the C. S., that he places the "nu-
cleus of the dispute" just where it is placed in this Work and in
the above remarks. It will be seen, too, that by throwing au-
thorities aside, and studying his own mind, he has " corne seri-
ously to doubt," whether the received opinions with regard to
motives, the law of cause and effect, and the freedom oftheivill,
may not be erroneous. They appear to him " to be bordering on
fatalism, if riot actually embracing it." He doubts whether the
mind may not have within itself the adequate cause of its own
acts ; whether indeed it have not a self-determining power, " for
the power in question involves the idea of originating volition.
Less than this it can not be conceived to involve, and yet be free
agency." Now this is just the view offered in the present Work ;
and, as it seems to me, these are just the doubts and conclusions
which every one will entertain, who lays aside authority, and re-
flects upon the goings on of his own mind, and the dictates of his
own reason and conscience.

But let us look for a moment at the remarks of the editors in
reply to the letter above quoted. They maintain, in relation to
original sin and the perversion of the will, that from either the
original or the acquired strength of certain natural appetites,
principles of self-love, &c., " left to themselves," the corruption
of the heart will certainly follow. " In every instance the will
does, in fact, yield to the demands of these. But whenever it thus
yielded, there was power to the contrary; otherwise thero could
be no freedom of moral action." Now I beg leave to place mv

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 93

(inger on the phrase in italics, and ask the editors what they mean
by it. If they hold the common doctrines with regard to the rela-
tion of cause and effect, and with regard to power as connected with
that relation, and apply these to the acts of the will, I can sec
no more possibility of conceiving a poiuer to the contrary in this
case, than of conceiving such a power in the current of a river.
But if they mean to assert the existence in the will of an actual
power to rise above the demands of appetite, &c., above the law
of nature and to decide arbitrarily, whether to yield or not to
yield, then they admit that the will is not determined absolutely
by the extraneous cause, but is in fact seZ/'-determined. They
agree with the letter- writer ; and the question for them is at rest.
Thus, whatever distinctions may be attempted here, there can be
no real distinction but between an irresponsible nature and a will
that is self-determined. The reader will find a few additional
remarks on this topic in a note, and for the general views of the
Work is again referred to a former note and the references there
made. To the subject of that note, and to the great distinction
between nature and the will, between the natural and the spir-
itual, as unfolded in the Work, I must beg leave, also, again to
request the special and candid attention of the reader. I must
beg, too, the unprejudiced attention of every reader, friendly to
the cause of practical and spiritual religion, to the tendency of
this part of the Author's system, and of the remarks hazarded
y ove.

I can not but be aware, that the views of the Will here ex
nibited will meet with strong prejudices in a large portion, at
least, of our religious community. I could wish that all such
would carefully distinguish between the Author's views of the
doctrines of religion and the philosophical grounds on which he
supposes those doctrines are to be defended. If no one disputes,
and I trust no one will dispute, the substantial orthodoxy of the
Work, without first carefully examining what has been the ortho-
doxy of the Church in general, and of the great body of the Re.
formers, then I should hope it may be wisely considered, whether
as a question of philosophy, the metaphysical principles of this
Work are not in themselves more in accordance with the doc-
trines of a spiritual religion, and better suited to their explanation
and defence, than those above treated of. If on examination it
can not Ixi disputed that they are, then, if not before, I trust the

94 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

two systems may be compared without undue impartial! ty, and
the simple question of the truth of each may be determined by
that calm and persevering reflection, which alone can determine
questions of this sort.

If the system here taught be true, then it will follow, not, be it
observed, that our religion is necessarily wrong, or our essential
faith erroneous, but that the philosophical grounds, on which we
are accustomed to defend our faith, are unsafe, and that their
natural tendency \$ to error. If the spirit of the Gospel still ex-
ert its influence ; if a truly spiritual religion be maintained, it
is in opposition to our philosophy, and not at all by its aid. 1
know it will be said, that the practical results of our peculiar
forms of doctrine are at variance with these remarks. But this
I am not prepared to admit. True, religion and religious insti-
tutions have nourished : the Gospel, in many parts of our country,
has been affectionately and faithfully preached by great and good
men ; the word and the Spirit of God have been communicated
to us in rich abundance ; and I rejoice with heartfelt joy and
thanksgiving, in the belief, that thereby multitudes have been
regenerated to a new and spiritual life. But so were equal or
greater effects produced under the preaching of Baxter, and
Howe, and other good and faithful men of the same age, with
none of the peculiarities of our theological systems. Neither
reason nor experience indeed furnish any ground for believing
that the living and life-giving power of the Divine Word has
ever derived any portion of its efficacy, in the conversion of the
heart to God, from the forms of metaphysical theology, with
which the human understanding has invested it. It requires,
moreover, but little knowledge of the history of philosophy, and
of the writings of the 16th and 17th centuries to know, that the
opinions of the Reformers, and of all the great divines of that
period, on subjects of this sort, were far different from those of
Mr. Locke and his followers, and were in fact essentially the same
with those taught in this Work. This last remark applies not
only to the views entertained by the eminent philosophers and
divines of that period on the particular subject above discussed,
but to the distinctions made, and the language employed by them
with reference to other points of no less importance in the consti-
tution of our being.

It must have been observed by the reader of the foregoing

PKELIMINARY ESSAY. 95

pages, that I have used several words, especially understanding
and reason, in a sense somewhat diverse from their present accep-
tation ; and the occasion of this I suppose would be partly un-
derstood from my having already directed the attention of the
reader to the distinction exhibited between these words in the
Work, and from the remarks made on the ambiguity of the word
(< reason" in its common use. I now proceed to remark, that
the ambiguity spoken of, and the consequent perplexity in regard
to the use and authority of reason, have arisen from the habit of
usinof, since the time of Locke, the terms understanding and
reason indiscriminately, and thus confounding a distinction clearly
marked in the philosophy and in the language of the older
writers. Alas ! had the terms only been confounded, or had we
suffered only an inconvenient ambiguity of language, there would
be comparatively little cause for earnestness upon the subject ; or
had our views of the things signi'fied by these terms been only
partially confused, and had we still retained correct notions of
our prerogative, as rational and spiritual beings, the consequences
might have been less deplorable. But the misfortune is, that the
powers of understanding and reason have not merely been blended
and confounded in the view of our philosophy ; — the higher and
far more characteristic, as an essential constituent of our proper
humanity, has been as it were obscured and hidden from our ob-
servation in the inferior power, which belongs to us in "common
with the brutes which perish. According to the old, the more
spiritual, and genuine philosophy, the distinguishing attributes of
our humanity — that image of God in which man alone was cre-
ated of all the dwellers upon earth, and in virtue of which he
was placed at the head of this lower world, was said to be found
in the reason and free-ivill. But understanding these in their
strict and proper sense, and according to the true ideas of them,
as contemplated by the older metaphysicians, we have literally,
if the system of Locke and the popular philosophy of the day be
true, neither the one nor the other of these — neither reason nor
free-will. What they esteemed the image of God in the soul,
and considered as distinguishing us specifically, and so vastly too,
above each and all of the irrational animals, is found, according
to this system, to have in fact no real existence. The reality
neither of the free-will, nor of any of those laws or ideas, which
spring from, or rather constitute reason, can be authenticated b}

96 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

the sort of proof which is demanded, and we must therefore re-
linquish our prerogative, and take our place with becoming hu-
mility among our more unpretending companions. In the as-
cending series of powers, enumerated hy Milton, with so much
philosophical truth, as well as beauty of language, in the fifth
book of Paradise Lost, he mentions

Fancy and understanding, whence the soul
REASON receives. And reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive.

But the highest power here, that which is the being of the soul,
considered as any thing differing in kind from the understanding,
has no place in our popular metaphysics. Thus we have only
the understanding, " the faculty judging according to sense," a
faculty of abstracting and generalizing, of contrivance and fore-
cast, as the highest of our intellectual powers ; and this we are
expressly taught belongs to us in common with brutes. Nay,
these views of our essential being, consequences and all, are
adopted by men, whom one would suppose religion, if not phi-
losophy, should have taught their utter inadequateness to the true
and essential constituents of our humanity. Dr. Paley teJls us in
his Natural Theology, that only " CONTRIVANCE," a poAver ob-
viously and professedly belonging to brutes, is necessary to consti-
tute personality. His whole system both of theology and morals
neither teaches, nor implies, the existence of any specific differ-
ence either between the understanding and reason, or between
nature and the will. It does not imply the existence of any
power in man, which does not obviously belong, in a greater or
less degree, to irrational animals. Dr. Fleming, another reverend
prelate in the English Church, in his " Philosophy of Zoology,"
maintains in express terms, that AVC have no faculties differing in
kind from those which belong to brutes. How many other
learned, and reverend, and wise men adopt the same opinions, 1
know not : though these are obviously not the peculiar views of
the individuals, but conclusions resulting from the essential prin-
ciples of their system. If, then, there is no better system, if this
be the genuine philosophy, and founded in the nature of things,
there is no help for us, and we must believe it — if ice can. But
most certainly it will follow, that we ought, as fast as the preju-
dice!? of education will permit, to rid ourselves of certain notioni

PKELIMINARY ESSAY. 97

of prerogative, and certain feelings of our own sup priority, which
somehow have been strangely prevalent among our race. For
Ihough we have indeed, according to this system, a little more
understanding than other animals — can abstract and generalize
and forecast events, and the consequences of our actions, and com-
pare motives more skilfully than they ; though we have thus
more knowledge and can circumvent them ; though we have
more power and can subdue them ; yet, as to any distinctive and
peculiar characteristic — as to any inherent and essential worthy
we are after all but little better — though we may be better off -
than our dogs and horses. There is no essential difference, and
we may rationally doubt — at least we might do so, if by the sup-
position we were rational beings — whether our fellow animals of
the kennel and the stall are not unjustly deprived of certain per-
sonal rights, and whether a dog charged with trespass may not
rationally claim to be tried by a jury of his peers. Now however
trifling and ridiculous this may appear, I would ask in truth ap^
soberness, if it be not a fair and legitimate inference from the
premisses, and whether the absurdity of the one does not demon-
strate the utter falsity of the other. And where, I would beg to
know, shall we look, according to the popular system of philoso-
phy, for that image of God in which we are created ? Is it a
thing of degrees ? And is it simply because we have something
more of the same faculties which belong to brutes, that we become
the objects of God's special and fatherly care, the distinguished
objects of his Providence, and the sole objects of his Grace? —
Doth God take care for oxen ? But why not ?

I assure my readers, that I ha.ve no desire to treat with dis-
respect and contumely the opinions of great or good men ; but the
distinction in question, and the assertion and exhibition of the
higher prerogatives of reason, as an essential constituent of our
being, are so vitally important, in my apprehension, to the forma-
tion and support of any rational system of philosophy, and — no
less than the distinction before treated of — so pregnant of conse-
quences to the interests of truth, in morals, and religion, and in-
deed of all truth, that mere opinion and the authority of names
may well be disregarded. The discussion, moreover, relates to
facts, and to such facts, too, as are not to be learned from the in-
struction, or received 011 the authority, of any man. They must
be ascertained by every man for himself, by reflection upon the

VOL. i. E

98 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

processes and laws of his own inward being, or they are not
learned at all to any valuable purpose. We do indeed find in
ourselves then, as no one will deny, certain powers of intelligence,
which we have abundant reason to believe the brutes possess in
common writh us in a greater or less degree. The functions of
the understanding, as treated of in the popular systems of meta-
physics, its faculties of attention, of abstraction, of generalization,
the power of forethought and contrivance, of adapting means to
ends, and the law of association, may be, so far as we can judge,
severally represented more or less adequately in the instinctive
intelligence of the higher orders of brutes. But, not to anticipate
too far a topic treated of in the Work, do these, or any and all the
faculties which we discover in irrational animals, satisfactorily
account to a reflecting mind for all the phenomena which are
presented to our observation in our own consciousness ? Would
any supposable addition to the degree merely of those powers
which we ascribe to brutes, render them rational beings, and re-
move the sacred distinction, which law and reason have sanc-
tioned, between things and persons ? Will any such addition ac-
count for our having — what the brute is not supposed to have —
the pure ideas of the geometrician, the power of ideal construc-
tion, the intuition of geometrical or other necessary and universal
truths ? Would it give rise, in irrational animals, to a law of
moral rectitude and to conscience — to the feelings of moral
responsibility and remorse ? Would it awaken them to a reflec-
tive self-consciousness, and lead them to form and contemplate
the ideas of the soul, of free-will, of immortality, and of God ?
It seems to me, that we have only to reflect for a serious hour
upon what we mean by these, and then to compare them with our
notion of what belongs to a brute, its inherent powers and their
correlative objects, to feel that they are utterly incompatible —
that in the blessing of these we enjoy a prerogative, which we
can not disclaim without a violation of reason, and a voluntary
abasement of ourselves — and that we must therefore be possessed
of some peculiar powers — of some source of ideas distinct from
the understanding, differing in kind from any arid all of those
which belong to us in common with inferior and irrational
animals.

But what these powers are, or what is the precise nature of
the distinction between the understanding and reason, it is riot

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 9&

my province, nor have I undertaken, to show. My object is
merely to illustrate its necessity, and the palpable obscurity,
vagueness and deficiency, in this respect, of the mode of philoso-
phizing, which is held in so high honor among us. The distinc-
tion itself will be found illustrated with some of its important
bearings in the Work, and in the notes and Appendix attached
to it ; and can not be too carefully studied — in connection with
that between nature and the will — by the student who would
acquire distinct and intelligible notions of what constitutes the
truly spiritual in our being, or find rational grounds for the pos-
sibility of a truly spiritual religion. Indeed, could I succeed in
fixing the attention of the reader upon this distinction, in such a
way as to secure his candid and reflecting perusal of the Work,
I should consider any personal effort or sacrifice abundantly
recompensed. Nor am I alone in this view of its importance.
A literary friend, whose opinion on this subject would be valued
by all who knew the soundness of his scholarship, says in a let-
ter just now received, — " If you can get the attention of think-
ing men fixed on his distinction between the reason and the un-
derstanding, you will have done enough to reward the labor of
a life. As prominent a place as it holds in the writings of Cole-
ridge, he seems to me far enough from making too much of it."
No person of serious and philosophical mind, I am confident, can
reflect upon the subject, enough to understand it in its various
aspects, without arriving at the same views of the importance
of the distinction, whatever may be his conviction with regard
to its truth.

But indeed the only grounds, which I find, to apprehend that
the reality of the distinction and the importance of the conse-
quences resulting from it, will be much longer denied and re-
jected among us, is in the overweening assurance, which pre-
vails with regard to the adequateness and perfection of the
system of philosophy which is already received. It is taken for
granted, as a fact undisputed and indisputable, that this is the
most enlightened age of the world, not only with regard to the
more general diffusion of certain points of practical knowledge ;
in which, probably, it may be so, but in all respects ; that our
whole system of the philosophy of mind as derived from Lord
Bacon, especially, is the only one, which has any claims to com-
mon sense ; and that all distinctions not recognized in that are

100 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

consequently unworthy of our regard. "What those Reformers,
to whose transcendent powers of mind, and to whose characters
as truly spiritual divines, we are accustomed to look with feelings
of so much general regard, might find to say in favor of their
philosophy, few take the pains to inquire. Neither they nor the
great philosophers with whom they held communion on subjects
of this sort, can appear among us to speak in their own defence
and even the huge folios and quartos, in which, though dead,
they yet speak — and ought to he heard — have seldom strayed to
this side of the Atlantic. All our information respecting their
philosophical opinions, and the grounds on which they defended
them, has been received from writers, who were confessedly ad
vocating a system of recent growth, at open war with every thing
more ancient, and who, in the great abundance of their self-
complacency, have represented their own discoveries as contain-
ing the sum and substance of all philosophy, and the accumu-
lated treasures of ancient wisdom as unworthy the- attention of
" this enlightened age." Be it so — yet the foolishness of anti-
quity, if it be of God, may prove iviser than men. It may be
found that the philosophy of the Reformers and their religion
are essentially connected, and must stand or fall together. It
may at length be discovered, that a system of religion essentially
spiritual, and a system of philosophy which excludes the very
idea of all spiritual power and agency, in their only distinctive
and proper character, can not be consistently associated together.
It is our peculiar misfortune in this country, that while the
philosophy of Locke and the Scottish writers has been received
in full faith, as the only rational system, and its leading princi-
ples especially passed off as unquestionable, the strong attach-
ment to religion, and the fondness for speculation, by both of
which we are strongly characterized, have led us to combine and
associate these principles, such as they are, with our religious
interests and opinions, so variously and so intimately, that by
most persons they are considered as necessary parts of the same
system ; and from being so long contemplated together, the re-
jection, of one seems impossible without doing violence to the
other. Yet how much evidence might not an impartial observer
find in examining the theological discussions which have pre-
vailed, the speculative systems which have been formed and
arrayed against each other, for the last seventy years, to convince

PKELIMINARY ESSAY. 101

him that there must be some discordance in the elements, tome
principle of secret but irreconcilable hostility between a philoso-
phy and a religion, which, under every ingenious variety of form
and shaping, still stand aloof from each other and refuse to co-
here. For is it not a fact, that in regard to every speculative
system which has been formed on these philosophical principles,
— to every new shaping of theory which has been devised and
has gained adherents among us, — is it not a fact, I ask, that, to
all, except those adherents, the system — the philosophical theory
— has seemed dangerous in its tendency, and at war with ortho-
dox views of religion — perhaps even with the attributes of God ?
Nay, to bring the matter still nearer and more plainly to view, 1
ask, whether at this moment the organs and particular friends of
our leading theological seminaries in New England, both devo-
tedly attached to an orthodox and spiritual system of religion, and
expressing mutual confidence as to the essentials of their mutual
faith, do not each consider the other as holding a philosophical
theory subversive of orthodoxy ? If I am not misinformed, this
is the simple fact.

Now, if these things be so, I would ask again with all ear-
nestness, and out of regard to the interests of truth alone, whether
serious and reflecting men may not be permitted, without tho
charge of heresy in RELIGION, to stand in doubt of this PHILOSO-
PHY altogether ; whether these facts which will not be disputed,
do not furnish just grounds for suspicion, that the principles of
our philosophy may be erroneous, or at least induce us to look
with candor and impartiality at the claims of another and a dif-
ferent system ?

"What are the claims of the system, to which the attention of
the public is invited in. this Work, can be understood fully, only
by a careful and reflecting examination of its principles in con-
nection with the conscious wants of our inward being — the re-
quirements of our own reason and consciences. Its purpose and
tendency, I have endeavored in some measure to exhibit ; and if
the influence of authority, which the prevailing system furnishes
against it, can and must be counteracted by any thing of a like
kind — (and whatever professions we may rnak*, the influence of
authority produces at least a predisposing effect upon our minds)
— the remark which I have made, will show, that the Drincipiea
here taught are not wholly unauthorized by men, whom we have

102 .PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

been taught to jeverence among tne great and good. I can not
but add, as a matter of simple justice to the question, that how
ever our prevailing system of philosophizing may have appealed
to the authority of Lord Bacon, it needs but a candid examina-
tion of his writings, especially the first part of his Novum Or
ganum, to be convinced that such an appeal is without grounds ;
and that in fact the fundamental principles of his philosophy are
the same with those taught in this work. The great distinction
especially, between the understanding and the reason, is fully and
clearly recognized ; and as a philosopher he would be far more
properly associated with Plato, or even Aristotle, than with the
modern philosophers, who have miscalled their systems by his
name. For further remarks on this point, the reader is requested
to refer to the notes. In our own times, moreover, there is abun-
dant evidence, whatever rnay be thought of the principles of this
Work here, that the same general views of philosophy are regain-
ing their ascendency elsewhere. In Great Britain there are not
few, who begin to believe that the deep-toned and sublime elo-
quence of Coleridge on these great subjects may have something
to claim their attention besides a few peculiarities of language.
In Paris, the doctrines of a rational and spiritual system of phi
losophy are taught to listening and admiring thousands by one
of the most learned and eloquent philosophers of the age ; and in
Germany, if I mistake not, the same general views are adopted
by the serious friends of religious truth among her great and
learned men.

Such — as I have no doubt — must be the case, wherever think-
ing men can be brought distinctly and impartially to examine
their claims ; and indeed to those who shall study and compre-
hend the general history of philosophy, it must always be matter
of special wonder, that in the Christian community, anxiously
striving to explain and defend the doctrines of Christianity in
their spiritual sense, there should have been a long-continued and
tenacious adherence to philosophical principles, so subversive of
their faith in every thing distinctively spiritual ; while those of
an opposite tendency, and claiming a near relationship and cor-
respondence with the truly spiritual in the Christian system, and
the mysteries of its sublime faith, were looked upon with suspi-
cion and jealousy, as unintelligible or dangerous metaphysics.

And here 1 must be allowed to add a few remarks with regard

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 103

to the popular objections against the system of philosophy, the
claims of which I am urging, especially against the writings of
the Author, under whose name it appears in the present Work.
These are various and often contradictory, but usually have ref-
erence either to his peculiarities of language, or to the depth —
whether apparent or real, — and the unintelligibleness, of his
thoughts.

To the first of these it seems to me a sufficient answer, for a
mind that would deal honestly and frankly by itself, to suggest
that in the very nature of things it is impossible for a writer to
express by a single word any truth, or to mark any distinction,
not recognized in the language of his day, unless he adopts a
wrord entirely new, or gives to one already in use a new and more
peculiar sense. Now in communicating truths, which the writer
deems of great and fundamental importance, shall he thus appro-
priate a single word old or new, or trust to the vagueness of per-
petual circumlocution ? Admitting for example, the existence of
the important distinction, for which this writer contends, between
the understanding and reason, and that this distinction when rec-
ognized at all is confounded in the common use of language by
employing the words indiscriminately, shall he still use these
words indiscriminately, and either invent a new word, or mark
the distinction by descriptive circumlocutions, or shall he assign
a more distinctive and precise meaning to the words already
used ? It seems to me obviously more in accordance with the
laws and genius of language to take the course which he has
adopted. But in this case and in many others, where his lan-
guage seems peculiar, it can not be denied that the words had
already been employed in the same sense, and the same distinc-
tions recognized, by the older and many of the most distinguished
writers in the language. But the reader will find, the Author's
own views of the subject in the Work.

With regard to the more important objection, that the
thoughts of Coleridge are unintelligible, if it be intended to im-
ply, that his language is not in itself expressive of an intelligibb
meaning, or that he affects the appearance of depth and mys-
tery, while his thoughts are common-place, it is an objection,
which no one who has read his Works attentively, and acquired
a feeling of interest for them, will treat their Author with so
much disrespect as to answer at all. Every such reader knows

104 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

that he uses words uniformly with astonishing precision, and that
language becomes, in his use of it — in a degree, of which few
writers can give us a conception — a living power, " consubstan-
tial" with the power of thought, that gave birth to it, and
awakening and calling into action a corresponding energy in our
own minds. There is little encouragement, moreover, to answer
the objections of any man, who will permit himself to be incurably
prejudiced against an Author by a few peculiarities of language,
or an apparent difficulty of being understood, and without in-
quiring into the cause of that difficulty, where at the same time
he can not but see and acknowledge the presence of great intel-
lectual and moral power.

But if it be intended by the objection to say simply, that the
thoughts of the Author are often difficult to be apprehended —
that he makes large demands not only upon the attention, but
upon the reflecting and thinking powers, of his readers, the fact
is not, and need not be, denied : and it will only remain to be
decided, whether the instruction offered, as the reward, will re-
pay us for the expenditure of thought required, or can be obtained
for less. I know it is customary in this country, as well as in
Great Britain — and that too among men from whom different
language might be expected — to affect either contempt or mod
esty, in regard to all that is more than common-place in philos-
ophy, and especially " Coleridge's Metaphysics," as " too deep for
them." Now it may not be every man's duty, or in every man's
power, to devote to such studies the time and thought necessary
to understand the deep things of philosophy. But for one who
professes to be a scholar, and to cherish a manly love of truth for
the truth's sake, to object to a system of metaphysics because it is
" too deep for him," must be either a disingenuous insinuation,
that its depths are not worth exploring — which is more than the
objector knows — or a confession that — with all his professed love
of truth and knowledge — he prefers to " sleep after dinner." The
misfortune is, that men have been cheated into a belief, that all
philosophy and metaphysics worth knowing are contained in a
few volumes, which can be understood with little expense of
thought ; and that they may very well spare themselves the
vexation of trying to comprehend the depths of " Coleridge's
Metaphysics." According to the popular notions of the day, it is
a very easy matter to understand the philosophy of mind. A

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 105

new work on philosophy is as easy to read as the last new novel ;
and superficial, would-be scholars, who have a very sensible hor-
ror at the thought of studying Algebra, or the doctrine of fluxions,
can yet go through a course of moral sciences, and know alJ
about the philosophy of the mind.

Now why will not men of sense, and men who have any just
pretensions to scholarship, see that there must of necessity be
gross sophistry somewhere in any system of metaphysics, which
pretends to give us an adequate and scientific self-knowledge — to
render comprehensive to us the mysterious laws of our own in-
ward being, with less manly and persevering effort of thought on
our part, than is confessedly required to comprehend the simplest
of those sciences, all of which are but some of the phenomena,
from which the laws in question are to be inferred ? — Why will
they not see and acknowledge — what one would suppose a mo-
ment's reflection would teach them — that to attain true self-
knowledge by reflection upon the objects of our inward conscious-
ness— not merely to understand the motives of our conduct as
conscientious Christians, but to know ourselves scientifically as
philosophers — must, of necessity, be the most deep and difficult
of all our attainments in knowledge ? I trust that what I have
already said will be sufficient to expose the absurdity of objec-
tions against metaphysics in general, and do something towards
showing, that we are in actual and urgent need of a system some-
what deeper than those, the contradictions of which have not
without reason made the name of philosophy a terror to the
friends of truth and of religion. " False metaphysics can be
effectually counteracted by true metaphysics alone ; and if the
reasoning be clear, solid, and pertinent, the truth deduced can
never be the less valuable on account of the depth from which it
may have been drawn." It is a fact, too, of great importance to
be kept in mind, in relation to this subject, that in the study of
ourselves — in attaining a knowledge of our own being, — there are
truths of vast concernment, and living at a great depth, which
yet no man can draw for another. However the depth may
have been fathomed, and the same truth brought up by others,
for a light and a joy to their own minds, it must still remain,
and be sought for by us, each for himself, at the bottom of the
well.

The system of philosophy here taught does not profess to make
E*

106 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

men philosophers, or — which ought to mean the same thing — to
guide them to the knowledge of themselves, without the labor
both of attention and of severe thinking. If it did so, it would
have, like the more popular works of philosophy, far less affinity
than it now has, with the mysteries of religion, and those pro-
found truths concerning our spiritual being and destiny, which
are revealed in the things Jiard to be understood of St. Paul and
of the beloved disciple. For I can not but remind my readers
again, that the Author does not undertake to teach us the phi
losophy of the human mind, with the exclusion of the truth and
influences of religion. He would not undertake to philosophize
respecting the being and character of man, and at the same time
exclude from his view the very principle which constitutes his
proper humanity : he would not, in teaching the doctrine of the
solar system, omit to mention the sun, and the law of gravitation .
He professes to investigate and unfold the being of man as man,
in his higher, his peculiar, and distinguishing attributes. These
it is, which are hard to be understood, and to apprehend which
requires the exercise of deep reflection and exhausting thought.
Nor in aiming at this object would he consider it very philosophi-
cal to reject the aid and instruction of eminent writers on the
subject of religion, or even of the volume of Revelation itself.
He would consider St. Augustine as none the less a philosopher,
because he became a Christian. The Apostles John and Paul
were, in the view of this system of philosophy, the most rational
of all writers, and the New Testament the most philosophical of
all books. They are so because they unfold more fully, than any
< ther, the true and essential principles of our being ; because
they give us a clearer and deeper insight into those constituent
laws of our humanity, which as men, and therefore as philoso-
phers, we are most concerned to know. Not only to those, who
seek the practical self-knowledge of the humble, spiritually-minded
Christian, but to those also, who are impelled by the " heaven
descended yv&Qt, aeavrov" to study themselves as philosophers,
and ;o make self-knowledge a science, the truths of Scripture are
a light and a revelation. The more earnestly we reflect upon
these and refer them, whether as Christians or as philosophers, to
the movements of our inward being — to the laws which reveal
themselves in our own consciousness, the more fully shall we un-
derstand, not only the language of Scripture, but all that mont

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 107

demands and excites the curiosity of the genuine philosopher in
the mysterious character of man. It is by this guiding light, that
we can best search into and apprehend the constitution of that
" marvellous microcosm," which, the more it has been known,
has awakened more deeply the wonder and admiration of the
true philosopher in every age.

Nor would the Author of this "Work, or those who have im-
bibed the spirit of his system, join with the philosophers of the
day in throwing aside and treating with a contempt, as ignorant
as it is a rrogant, the treasures of ancient wisdom. He, says the
son of Sirach, that giveth his mind to the law of the Most High,
and is occupied in the meditation thereof, ivill seek out the ivis-
dom of all the ancient. In the estimation of the true philosopher,
the case should not be greatly altered in the present day ; and
now that two thousand years have added such rich and manifold
abundance to those ancient " sayings of the wise," he will still
approach them with reverence, and receive their instruction with
gladness of heart. In seeking to explore and unfold 1hese deeper
and more solemn mysteries of our being, which inspire us with
awe, while they baffle our comprehension, he will especially be-
ware of trusting to his own understanding, or of contradicting,
in compliance with the self-flattering inventions of a single age,
the universal faith and consciousness of the human race. On
such subjects, though he would call no man master, yet neither
would he willingly forego the aids to be derived, in the search
after truth, from those great oracles of human wisdom — those
giants in intellectual power, who from generation to generation
were admired and venerated by the great and good. Much less
could he think it becoming, or consistent with his duty to hazard
the publication of his own thoughts on subjects of the deepest con-
cernment, and on which minds of greatest depth and power had
been occupied in former ages, while confessedly ignorant alike of
their doctrines and of the arguments by which they are sus-
tained.

It is in this spirit, that the Author of the work here offered to
the public has prepared himself to deserve the candid and even
confiding attention of his readers, with reference to the great sub-
ject of which he treats.

And although the claims of the Work upon our attention, as
of every other work, must depend more upon its inherent and cs«

108 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

sential character, than upon the worth and authority of its Au-
thor, it may yet be of service to the reader to know, that he is
no hasty or unfurnished adventurer in the department of author-
ship, to which the Work belongs. The discriminating reader of
this Work can not fail to discover his profound knowledge of the
philosophy of language, the principles of its construction, and the
laws of its interpretation. In others of his works, perhaps more
fully than in this, there is evidence of an unrivalled mastery
over all that pertains both to logic and philology. It has been
already intimated, that he is no contemner of the great writers
of antiquity and of their wise sentences ; and probably few Eng-
lish scholars, even in those days when there were giants of learn-
ing in Great Britain, and minds more richly furnished with the
treasures of ancient lore. But especially will the reader of this
Work observe with admiration the profoundness of his philosophi-
cal attainments, and his thorough and intimate knowledge, not
only of the works and systems of Plato and Aristotle, and of the
celebrated philosophers of modern times, but of those too much
neglected writings of the Greek and Roman Fathers, and of the
great leaders of the Reformation, which more particularly quali-
fied him for discussing the subjects of the present Work. If these
qualifications, and — with all these, and above all — a disposition
professed and made evident seriously to value them, chiefly as
they enable him more fully and clearly to comprehend and illus-
trate the truths of the Christian system, — if these, I say, can
give an Author a elaim to serious and thoughtful attention, then
may the Work here offered urge its claim upon the reader. My
own regard for the cause of truth, for the interests of philosophy,
of reason, and of religion, lead me to hope that they may not be
urged in vain.

Of his general claims to our regard, whether from exalted per
sonal and moral worth, or from the magnificence of his intellec-
tual powers, and the vast extent and variety of his accumulated
stores of knowledge, I shall not venture to speak. If it be true
indeed that a really great mind can be worthily commended only
by those who adequately both appreciate and comprehend its
greatness, there are few who should undertake to estimate, and
set forth in appropriate terms, the intellectual power and moral
worth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Neither he, nor the public,
would be benefited by such commendations as I could bestow

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 109

The few among us who have read his works with the attention
which they deserve, are at no loss what rank to assign him among
the writers of the present age ; to those who have riot, any Ian
guage, which I might use, would appear hyperbolical and ex-*
travagant. The character and influence of his principles as a
philosopher, a moralist, and a Christian, and of the writings by
which he is enforcing them, do not ultimately depend upon the
estimation in which they may now be held ; and to posterity he
may safely intrust those " productive ideas" and "living words"
—those

truths that wake

To perish never,

the possession of which will be for their benefit, and connected
with which, in the language of the Son of Sirach, — His own
memorial shall not depart away and his name shall live fi am
generation to generation. J. M.

THE AUTHOR'S ADDRESS TO THE READER.

FELLOW- CHRISTIAN ! the wish to be admired as a fine writer
held a very subordinate place in my thoughts and feelings in the
composition of this Volume. Let then its comparative merits
and demerits, in respect of style and stimulancy, possess a propor-
tional weight, and no more, in determining your judgment for or
against its contents. Read it through : then compare the state
of your mind with the state in which your mind was when you
first opened the book. Has it led you to reflect ? Has it supplied
or suggested fresh subjects for reflection ? Has it given you any
new information ? Has it removed any obstacle to a lively con-
viction of your responsibility as a moral agent ? Has it solved
any difficulties, which had impeded your faith as a Christian ?
Lastly, has it increased your power of thinking connectedly —
especially on the scheme and purpose of the Redemption by
Christ ? If it h&ve done none of these things, condemn it aloud
as worthless : a;id strive to compensate for your own loss of time,/
by preventing others from wasting theirs. But if your conscience
dictates an affirmative answer to all or any of the preceding
questions, declare this too aloud, and endeavor to extend my
utility.

Travra Trpof kavrrjv eTrdyovca, /cat ovvrjdpoiajLtevr, tyvxij, avrr) elf avrf
Aa'tara Kac //a/la 8e8aiug fiaKapi^eral. MARIXUS.

Omnis divince atque humance eruditionis elementa tria, Ifosse, Velle,
Posse ; quorum principium unum Mens ; cujus oculus Ratio ; cui lumen * *
prcebet Deus. vico.

Naturam hominis hanc Deus ipse voluit, ut duarum rerum cupidus et ap-
petens esset, religionis et sapientia. Sed homines ideo falluntur, quod aut
religionem suscipiunt omissa sapientia; aut sapientics soli student omissa
religione ; cum alterum sine altero esse non possit verum

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

V

AN Author has three points to settle : to what sort his work
belongs, for what description of readers it is intended, and the
specific end or object, which it is to answer. There is indeed a
preliminary question respecting the end which the writer himself
has in view, whether the number of purchasers, or the henefit of
the readers. But this may be safely passed by ; since where the
book itself or the known principles of the writer do not supersede
the question, there will seldom be sufficient strength of character
for good or for evil to afford much chance of its being either dis-
tinctly put or fairly answered.

I shall proceed therefore to state as briefly as possible the in-
tentions of the present Volume in reference to the three first-men-
tioned points, namely, What ? For whom ? For what ?

I. What ? The answer is contained in the title-page. It be-
longs to the class of didactic works. Consequently, those who
neither wish instruction for themselves, nor assistance in instruct-
ing others, have no interest in its contents.

Sis sus, sis Divus : sum caltha, et non tibi spiro !

II. For whom ? Generally, for as many in all classes as wish
for aid in disciplining their minds to habits of reflection ; for all,
who desirous of building up a manly character in the light of dis-
tinct consciousness, are content to study the principles of moral
architecture on the several grounds of prudence, morality, and re-
ligion. And lastly, for all who feel an interest in the position
which I have undertaken to defend, this, namely, Jiat the Chris-
tiaiTTaith is the perfection of human intelligence, — an interes
sufficiently strong to insure a patient attention to the argument
brought in its support.

But if I am to mention any particular class or description of
readers, who were prominent in my thought during the cornposi-

4

I

1

114 PKEFACE.

tion of the volume my reply must be ; that it was especially de-
signed for the studious young at the close of their education or on
their first entrance into the duties of manhood and the rights of
self-government . And of these, again, in thought and wish I
destined the work (the latter and larger portion, at least) yet
more particularly to students intended for the ministry ; first, as
in duty bound, to the members of our Universities : secondly (but
only in respect of this merrj^aljprecedency second), to all alike of
whatever name, who have dedicated their future lives jtp_ the cul-
tivation of their race, as pastors, preachers, missionaries, or in-
structorsj)f youth.

III. For what ? The worth of an author is estimated by the
ends, the attainment of which he proposed to himself by the par-
ticular work ; while the value of the work depends on its fitness,
as the means. The objects of the present volume are the follow-
ing, arranged in the order of their comparative importance.

1. To direct the reader's attention to the value of the science
ojjwords, their use and abuse, and the incalculable advantages
attached to the habit of using them appropriately, and with a
distinct knowledge of their primary, derivative, and metaphorical
senses. And in furtherance of this object I have neglected no
occasion of enforcing the maxim, that to expose a sophism and to
detect the equivocal or double meaning of a word is, in the great
majority of cases, one and the same thing. Home Tooke entitled
his celebrated work,"£Vrea meQuevm, winged words : or language,
not only the vehicle of thought but the wheels. With my con-
victions and views, for e.iea I should substitute Aoyot, that is,
words select and determinate, and for TJTEQOSVTU ^MOVIES, that is,
livino1 words. The wheels of the intellect I admit them to be :

_- o

but such as Ezekiel beheld in the visions of God as he sate
among the captives by the river of Chebar Whithersoever the
Spirit was to go, the wheels went, and thither was their Spirit
to go ; for the Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also.

2. To establish the distinct characters of prudence, morality,
and religion : and to impress the conviction, that though the sec-
orKTrequires the first, and the third contains and supposes both
the former ; yet still moral goodness is other and more than pru-
dence on the principle of expediency ; and religion more and
higher than morality. For this distinction the better Schools
even of Pagan Philosophy contended.

PREFACE. .jv^ 'AfllA 115

3. To substantiate and set forth _at_large the momentous dis-^
tinclion between reason and understanding. "Whatever is achiev-
able^ by the understanding for the purposes of worldly interest,
private or public, has in the present age been pursued with an
activity and a success beyond all former experience, and to an
extent which equally demands my admiration and excites my
wonder. But likewise it is, and long has been, my conviction,
that in no age since the first dawning of science and philosophy
in this island have the truths, interests, and studies which espej
cially belong to the reason, contemplative or practical, sunk intd
such utter neglect, not to say contempt, as during the last cer/-
tjury. It is therefore one main object of this volume to establisfi
the position, that whoever transfers to the understanding the pri-
macy due to the reason, loses the one and spoils the other.

4. To exhibit a full and consistent scheme of the Christian
Dispensation, and more largely of all the peculiar doctrines of the
Christian Faith ; and to answer all the objections to the same,
which do not originate in a corrupt will rather than an erring
judgment ; and to do this in a manner, intelligible for all who,
possessing the ordinary advantages of education, do in good ear-
nest desire to form their religious creed in the light of their own
convictions, and to have a reason for the faith which they pro-
fess. There are indeed mysteries, in evidence of which no rea-
sons can be brought. But it has been my endeavor to show, that
the true solution of this problem is, that these mysteries are rea-
son, reason in its highest form of self-affirmation.

Such are the special objects of these Aids to Reflection. Con-
cerning the general character of the work, let me be permitted
to add the few following sentences. St. Augustine, in one of his
Sermons, discoursing on a high point of theology, tells his audi-
tors— Sic accipite, ut mereamini intelligere. Fides enirti debet
prcecedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidci premium. Now
without a certain portion 'of gratuitous and (as it were) experi-
mentative faith in the writer, a reader will scarcely give that de-
gree of continued attention, without which no didactic work
worth reacmig^carr be read to any wise or profitable purpose. In
this sense, therefore, and to this extent, every author, who is
competent to the office he has undertaken, may without arro-
gance repeat St. Augustine's words in his own right, and advance
a similar claim on similar grounds. But I venture no further

116 PREFACE.

than to intimate the sentiment at a humble distance, by avow*
ing my belief that he, who seeks instruction in the following
pages, will not fail to find entertainment likewise ; but that
whoever seeks entertainment only will find neither.

Reader ! — You have been bred in a land abounding with men,
able in arts, learning, and knowledges manifold, this man in one.
this in another, few in many, none in all. But there is onejirt,
of which every man should be master, the art of reflection. If
you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at
all ? In like manner, there is one knowledge, which it is every
min's interest and duty to acquire, namely, self-knowledge ; or
to what end was man alone, of all animals, endued by the Crea-
tor with the faculty of self-consciousness ? Truly said the Pagan. .
moralist,

e ccelo descendit, Tvtidi aeavrov.

But you are likewise born in a Christian land : and Revelation
has provided for you new subjects for reflection, and new treas-
ures of knowledge, never to be unlocked by him who remains
self-ignorant. Self-knowledge is the key to this casket ; and by
reflection alone can it be obtained. Reflect on your own thoughts,
actions, circumstances, and — which will be of especial aid to you
in forming a habit of reflection, — accustom yourself to reflect on
the words you use, hear, or read, their birth, derivation and his-
tory^ For if words are not things, they are living powers, by
which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated,
combined, and humanized. Finally, by reflection you may draw
from the fleeting facts of your worldly trade, art, or profession, a
science permanent as your immortal soul ; and make even these
subsidiary and preparative to the reception of spiritual truth,
" doing as the dyers do, who having first dipt their silks in coiors
of less valu?, then give them the last tincture of crimson in
grain."

AIDS TO REFLECTION,

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS.
APHORISM I.

IN philosophy equally as in poetry, it is the highest and most
useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions
of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect
caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and inter-
esting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the
power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul,
side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.

APHORISM II.

There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance to
',he most common-place maxims — that of reflecting on them in
direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past
and future being.

APHORISM III.

To restore a common-place truth to its first uncommon lus
you need only translate it into action. But to do this, you
have reflected on its truth. -Ul

APHORISM IV.

Leighton and Coleridge.

It is the advice of the wise man, " Dwell at home," or, with
yourself ; and though there are very few that do this, yet it is

118 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

surprising that the greatest part of mankind can not be prevailed
upon, at least to visit themselves sometimes ; but, according to
the saying of the wise Solomon, The eyes of the fool are in the
ends of the earth.

A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and
source of every good thing. " Omnis boni principium intellectus
cogitabundus." It is at once the disgrace and the misery of men,
that they live without fore-thought. Suppose yourself fronting a
mirror. Now what the objects behind you are to their images
at the same apparent distance before you, such is reflection to
fore-thought. As a man without fore-thought scarcely deserves
the name of a man, so fore-thought without reflection is but a
metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.

APHORISM V.

As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its fruits singly,
or even than all its fruits of a single season, so the noblest object
of reflection is the mind itself, by which we reflect :

And as the blossoms, the green and the ripe fruit of an orange-
tree are more beautiful to behold when on the tree and seen as
one with it, than the same growth detached and seen successively,
after their importation into another country and different clime ;
so it is with the manifold objects of reflection, when they are
considered principally in reference to the reflective power, and as
part and parcel of the same. No object, of whatever value our

Rissions may represent it, but becomes foreign to us as soon as it
altogether unconnected with our intellectual, moral, and spirit-^
il life. To_be ours, it must be referred to the mind, either as a
.otive, or consequence, or symptom.

V-

APHORISM VI.

• Leighton.

He who teaches men the principles and precepts of spiritual
wisdom, before their minds are called oft' from foreign objects, and
turned inward upon themselves, might as well write his instruc-
tions, as the Sibyl wrote her prophecies, on the loose leaves of
trees, and commit them to the mercy of the inconstant winds.

APHORISM VH.
In order to learn, we must attend : in order to .profit by what

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 119

we have learnt, we must think — that is, reflect. He only thinks
who reflects.*

APHORISM VIII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordinary skill
and address, to fix the attention of men on the world within them,
to induce them to study the processes and superintend the works
which they are themselves carrying on in their own minds ; in
short, to awaken in them both the^/aculty of thoughtf and the
inclination to exercise it. For, alas ! the largest part of mankind
are nowhere greater strangers than at home.

APHORISM IX.

Life is the one universal soul, which by virtue of the enliven-
ing Breath, and the informing Word, all organized bodies have in
common, each after its kind. This, therefore, all animals possess,
and man as an animal. But, in addition to this, God transfused
into man a higher gift, and specially imbreathed ; — even a living
(that is, self-subsisting) soul, a soul having its life in itself. And

* The indisposition, nay, the angry aversion to think, even in persons
who are most willing to attend, and on the subjects to which they are giving
studious attention, as political economy, Biblical theology, classical antiqui-
ties, and the like, — is the fact that forces itself on my notice afresh, every
time I enter into the society of persons in the higher ranks. To assign a
feeling and a determination of will, as a satisfactory reason for embracing
or rejecting this or that opinion or belief, is of ordinary occurrence, and sure
to obtain the sympathy and the suffrages of the company. And yet to me
this seems little less irrational than to apply the nose to a picture, and to
decide on its genuineness by the sense of smell.

f Distinction between Thought and Attention. — By Thought is here
meant the voluntary reproduction in our minds of those stafesoTconscious-
ness, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the teacher of
moral or religious truth refers us. ^^gSiiSPj we keep the mind passive :
in thought, we rouse it into activity. Tn the former, we submit to an im-
pression— we keep the mind steady, in order to receive the stamp. In the
latter, we seek to imitate the artist, while we ourselves make a copy or
duplicate of his work. We may learn arithmetic or the elements ofgeome
try by continued attention alone ; but self-knowledge, or an insight into th»
laws and constitution of the human mind and the grounds of religion and
true morality, in addition to the effort of attention, requires tbe energy of
thought.

120 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Jtnan became a living soul. He did not merely possess it, he be-
came it. It was his proper being, his truest self, the man in the
man. None then, not one of humarTkind, so poor and destitute,
but there is provided for him, even in his present state, a^ house
nqtliuilt with hands ; ay, and spite of the philosophy (falsely so
called) which mistakes the causes, the conditions, and the occa-
sions of our becoming conscious of certain truths and realities for
the truths and realities themselves — a house gloriously furnished.
Nothing is wanted but the eye, which is the light of this house,
the light which is the eye of this soul. This seeing light, this
enlightening eye, is reflection.* It is more, indeed, than is
ordinarily meant by that word ; but it is what a Christian ought
to mean by it, and to know too, whence it first came, and still
continues to come — of what light even this light is but a reflec-
\ tion. This, too, is thought ; and all thought is but unthinking
that does not flow out of this, or tend towards it.

APHORISM X.

| Self-Superintendence^ that any thing should overlook itself!
Is not this a paradox, and hard to understand ? It is, indeed,
difficult, and to the imbruted sensualist a direct contradiction :
and yet most truly does the poet exclaim,

Unless above himself he can

Erect himself, how mean a thing is man !

APHORISM XL

An hour of solitude passed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the
conflict with, and conquest over a single passion or ' subtle bosom
sin,' will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken
the faculty, and form the habit, of reflection, than a year's study
in the Schools without them.

APHORISM XII.

In a world, the opinions of which are drawn from outside
shows, many things may be paradoxical (that is, contrary to the

* The diavoia of St. John i. v. 20, inadequately rendered understanding
in our translation. To exhibit the full force of the Greek word, we must
say, a power of discernment by reason.

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 12i

common notion), and nevertheless true : nay, because they are
true. How should it be otherwise, as long as the imagination of
the worldling is wholly occupied by surfaces, while the Christian's
thoughts are fixed on the substance, that which is and abides, and
which, because it is the substance,^ the outward senses can not
recognize. Tertullian had good reason for his assertion, that the
simplest Christian (if indeed a Christian) knows more than tho
most accomplished irreligious philosopher.

COMMENT.

Let it not, however, be forgotten, that tho powers of Ihe.uiA ]
derstanding and the intellectual graces^ are precipus gifts pf_God ;
and that every Christian, according to the opportunities vouch-
safed to him, is bound to cultivate the one and to acquire the
other. Indeed, he is scarcely a Christian who wilfully neglects
BO to do. What says the Apostle ? Add to your faith knowledges
and to knowledge manly energy, — (xoe'n/.f /*

APHORISM XIII.

Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by
whom light, as well as immortality, was brought into the world),
which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart ; —
which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understand-
ing, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions. $

* Quod stat subtus, that which stands beneath, and (as it were) supports,
the appearance. In a language like ours, so many words of which are de-
rived from other languages, there are few modes of instruction more useful
or more amusing than that of accustoming young people to seek for the
etymology, or primary meaning of the words they use. There are cases, in
which more knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a
word, than by the history of a campaign.

f 2 Pet. i. 5.— Ed.

\ The effects of a zealous ministry on the intellects and acquirements of
the laboring classes are not only attested by Baxter, and the Presbyterian
divines, but admitted by Bishop Burnet, who during his mission in the west
of Scotland, was ' amazed to find a poor commonalty so able to argue,' <fec.
But we need not go to a sister church for proof or example. The diffusion
of light and knowledge through this kingdom, by the exertions of the bish-
ops and clergy, by Episcopalians and Puritans, from Edward VL to the
Restoration, was as wonderful as it is praiseworthy, and may be justly
placed arrioru1; the most remarkable facts in history

VOL. I. F

122 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

COMMENT.

If acquiescence without insight ; if warmth without light ; il
an immunity from doubt, given and guaranteed by a resolute ig-
norance ; if the habit of taking for granted the words of a cate-
chism, remembered or forgotten ; if a mere sensation of positive-
ness substituted — I will not say for the sense of certainty, but —
for that calm assurance, the very means and conditions of which
it supersedes ; if a belief that seeks the darkness, and yet strikes
no root, immovable as the limpet from the rock, and, like the
limpet, fixed there by mere force of adhesion : — if these suffice
to make men Christians, in what sense could the Apostle affirm
that believers receive, not indeed worldly wisdom, which comes to
naught, but the wisdom of God, that ive might know and com-
prehend the things that are freely given to us of God ? On
what grounds could he denounce the sincerest fervor of spirit as
defective, where it does not likewise bring forth fruits in the un-
derstanding ?

APHORISM XIV.

In our present state, it is little less than impossible that the
affections should be kept constant to an object which gives no
employment to the understanding, and yet can not be made
manifest to the senses. The exercise of the reasoning and re-
flecting powers, increasing insight, and enlarging views, are re-
jquisite to keep alive the substantial faith in the heart.

APHORISM XV.

In the state of perfection, perhaps, all other faculties may be
swallowed up in love, or superseded by immediate vision ; but
it is on the wings of the cherubim, that is (according to the in-
terpretation of the ancient Hebrew doctors), the intellectual pow-
ers and energies, that we must first be borne up to the " pure
empyrean." It must be seraphs, and not the hearts of imperfect
mortals, that can burn unfuelled and self-fed. Give me under-
standing (is the prayer of the Royal Psalmist), and I shall ob-
serve thy law with my whole heart. — Thy law is exceeding broad
— -that is, comprehensive, pregnant, containing far more than the

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 123

apparent import of the words on a first perusal. It is my medi-
tation all the day*

COMMENT.

It is worthy of special observation, that the Scriptures are
distinguished from all other writings pretending to inspiration, by
the strong and frequent recommendations of knowledge, and a
spirit of inquiry. Without reflection, it is evident that neither the
onxTcah Fe acquired nor the other exercised.

APHORISM XVI.

The word rational has been strangely abused of late times.
This must not, however, disincline us to the weighty consideration,
that thoughtfulness, and a desire to bottom all our convictions on
grounds of right reason, are inseparable from the character of a
Christian.

APHORISM XVII.

A reflecting rnind is not a flower that grows wild, or conies up
of its own accord. The difficulty is indeed greater than many, who
mistake quick recollection for thought, are disposed to admit ; but
how much less than it would be, had we not been born and bred
in a Christian and Protestant land, few of us are sufficiently aware.
Truly may we, and thankfully ought we to, exclaim with the
Psalmist : The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth
understanding to the simple^

APHORISM XVIII.

Examine the journals of our zealous missionaries, I will not
say among the Hottentots or Esquimaux, but in the highly civ-
ilized, though fearfully uncultivated, inhabitants of ancient India
How often, and how feelingly, do they describe the difficulty of
rendering the simplest chain of thought intelligible to the ordi-
nary natives, the rapid exhaustion of their whole power of at-
tention, and with what distressful effort it is exerted while it
lasts ! Yet it is among these that the hideous practices of self-
torture chiefly prevail. 0 f folly were no easier than wisdom, it
* Ps. cxix.— Ed. \ Ps. cxix.— Ed.

124 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

being often BO very much more grievous, how certainly might
these unhappy slaves of superstition be converted to Christianity !
But, alas ! to swing by hooks passed through the back, or to walk
in. shoes with nails of iron pointed upwards through the soles —
all this is so much less difficult, demands so much less exertion
of the will than to reflect, and by reflection to gain knowledge
and tranquillity !

COMMENT.

It is not true that ignorant persons have no notion of the ad-
vantages of truth and knowledge. They confess, they see and
bear witness to these advantages, in the conduct, the immunities,
and the superior powers of the possessors. Were they attainable
by pilgrimages the most toilsome, or penances the most painful,
we should assuredly have as many pilgrims and self-tormentors
in the service of true religion, as now exist under the tyranny of
Papal or Brahmin superstition.

APHORISM XIX.

/ In countries enlightened by the Gospel, however, the most for-
midable and (it is to be feared) the most frequent impediment to
men's turning their minds inwards upon themselves, is that they
are afraid of what they shall find there. There is an aching
hollowness in the bosom, a dark cold speck at the heart, an ob-
scure and boding sense of a somewhat, that must be kept out of

/sight of the conscience : some secret lodger, whom they can
neither resolve to eject or retain.1*

* The following Sonnet from Herbert's Temple, may serve as a forcible
comment on the words in the text :

Graces vouchsafed in a Christian laftd.
Lord ! with what care hast thou begirt us round !
Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws. They send us bound
To rules of reason. Holy messengers ;
Pulpits and Sundays ; sorrow dogging sin ;
Afflictions sorted ; anguish of all sizes ;
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in ;
Bibles laid open ; millions of surprises ;
Blessings beforehand ; ties of gratefulness ;
The sound of glory ringing in our ears ;

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 125

COMMENT.

Few are so obdurate, few have sufficient strength of character,
to be able to draw forth an evil tendency or immoral practice
into distinct consciousness, without bringing- it in the same mo-
ment before an awaking conscience. But for this very reason it
becomes a duty of conscience to form the mind to a habit of dis-
tmct consciousness. An unreflecting Christian walks in twilight
among snares and pitfalls ! He entreats the heavenly Father not
to lead him into temptation, and yet places himself on the very
edge of it, because he will not kindle the torch which his Father
had given into his haids, as a mean of prevention, and lest he
should pray toe late.

APHORISM XX.

Among the various undertakings of men, can there be men-
tioned one more important, can there be conceived one more sub-
lime, than aja_intentipn to form the human mind anew after the
Divine Image ? The very intention, if it be sincere, is a ray of
its dawning. The requisites for the execution of this high intent
may be comprised under three heads ; the prudential, the moral,
and the spiritual.

APHORISM XXI.

First, Religious Prudence. — "What this is, wrill be best ex-
plained by its effects and operations. Prudence, in the service
of religion, consists in the prevention or abatement of hindrances
and distractions ; and consequently in avoiding, or removing, all
such circumstances as, by diverting the attention of the work-
man, retard the progress and hazard the safety of the work. It
is likewise (I deny not) a part of this unworldly prudence, to
place ourselves as much and as often as it is in our power so to
do, in circumstances directly favorable to our great design ; and
to avail ourselves of all the positive helps and furtherances which
these circumstances afford. But neither dare we, as Christians,

Without, our shame ; within, our consciences
Angels and grace ; eternal hopes and fears !
Yet all these fences, and their whole array,
One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.

126 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

forget whose and under what dominion the things arc, quce no*
circumstant, that is, which stand around us. "We are to remem-
ber, that it is the world that constitutes our outward circum-
stances ; that in the form of the world, which is evermore at va-
riance with the divine form or idea, they are cast and moulded ;
and that of the means and measures which prudence requires in
the forming anew of the divine image in the soul, the greatest
part supposes the world at enmity with our design. We are to
avoid its snares, to repel its attacks, to suspect its aids and suc-
cors, and even when compelled to receive them as allies within
our trenches, yet to commit the outworks alone to their charge,
and to keep them at a jealous distance from the citadel. The
powers of the world are often christened, but seldom Christian-
ized. They are but proselytes of the outer gate ; or, like the
Saxons of old, enter the land as auxiliaries, and remain in it as
conquerors and lords.

APHORISM XXII.

The rules of prudence in general, like the laws of the stone
tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou shalt not is
their characteristic formula : and it is an especial part of Chris-
tian prudence that it should be so. Nor would it be difficult to
bring under this head all the social obligations that arise out of
the relations of the present life, which the sensual understanding
(TO cpQovypa TTJ£ aaQxbs, Rom. viii. 6), is of itself able to discover,
and the performance of which, under favorable circumstances,
the merest worldly self-interest, without love or faith, is sufficient
to enforce ; but which Christian prudence enlivens by a higher
urinciple, and renders symbolic and sacramental. (Eph. v. 32.)

COMMENT.

This then, under the appellation of prudential requisites, corncs
first under consideration : and may be regarded as the shrino and
frame-work for the divine image, into which the worldly human
is to be transformed. "VVe are next to bring out the divine por-
trait itself, the distinct features of its countenance, as a sojourner
among men ; its benign aspect turned towards its fellow-pilgrims,
the extended arm, and the hand that blesseth and healeth.

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 127

APHORISM XXIIL

The outward service (dgyaxela*) of ancient religion, the rites,
ceremonies and ceremonial vestments of the old law, had moral-
ity for their substance. They were the letter, of which morality
was the spirit ; the enigma, of which morality was the meaning.
But morality itself is the service and ceremonial (cultus exterior,
Ogyaxela) of the Christian religion. The scheme of grace and
truth that becamef through Jesus Christ, the faith that looks$
down into the perfect law of liberty, has light for its garment ;
its very robe is righteousness.

* See the epistle of St. James, i. 26, 27, where, in the authorized version,
the Greek word dprjcKeia is rendered religion. This is, or at all events, for
the English reader of our times, has the effect of an erroneous translation.
•It not only obscures the connection of the passage, and weakens the pecu-
liar force and sublimity of the thought, rendering it comparatively flat and
trivial, almost indeed tautological, but has occasioned this particular verse
to be perverted into a support of a very dangerous error : and the whole
epistle to be considered as a set-off against the epistles and declarations of
St: Paul, instead of (what in fact it is) a masterly comment and confirmation
of the same. I need not inform the reader, that James i. 27, is the favorite '
text and most boasted authority of those divines who represent the Re-
deemer of the world as little more than a moral reformer, and the Christian
faith as a code of ethics, differing from the moral system of Moses and the
Prophets by an additional motive, or rather by the additional strength and i
clearness which the historical fact of the resurrection has given to the same
motive.

f The Greek word iyevero unites in itself the two senses of began to
exist and was made to exist. It exemplifies the force of the middle voice,
in distinction from the verb reflex. The same word is used in the same
sense by Aristophanes in that famous parody on the cosmogonies of the
mythic poets, or the creation of the finite, as delivered, or supposed to be
delivered, in the Cabiric or Samothracian mysteries, in the Comedy of the
Birds.

yever Ovpavog 'Q/ceavof re

Kat Trj.

\ James i. 25. 'O 6s napa/tv-tyae dg vopov reheiov rbv 7% thevftepcac.
UlapaKinpa? signifies the incurvation or bending of the body in the act of
looking down into ; as, for instance, in the endeavor to see the reflected
image of a star in the water at the bottom of a well. A more happy or
forcible word could not have been chosen to express the nature and ultimate
object of reflexion, and to enforce the necessity of it, in order to discover the
li ving fountain and spring-head of the evidence of the Christian faith in the
believer himself, and at the same time to point out the seat and region

128 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

COMMENT.

Herein the Apostle places the pre-eminence, the peculiar and
distinguishing excellence, of the Christian religion. The ritual
is of the same kind (6/u.ooixjtov) though not of the same order,
with the religion itself — not arbitrary or conventional, as types
and hieroglyphics are in relation to the things expressed by
them ; but inseparable, consubstantiated (as it were), and par-

| taking therefore of the same life, permanence, and intrinsic worth

( with its spirit and principle.

APHORISM XXIV.

Morality is the body, of which the faith in Christ is the soul
— so far indeed its earthly body, as it is adapted to its state of
warfare on earth, and the appointed form and instrument of its-
communion with the present world ; yet not ' terrestrial,' nor of
the world, but a celestial body, and capable of being transfigured
from glory to glory, in accordance with the varying circum-
stances and outward relations of its moving and informing spirit.

APHORISM XXV.

"Woe to the man, who will believe neither power, freedom, nor

morality, because he nowhere finds either entire, or unmixed

with sin, thraldom and infirmity. In the natural and intellec-

j tual realms, we distinguish what we can not separate ; and in

the moral world, we must distinguish in order to separate. Yea,

where alone it is to be found. Quantum sumus scimus. That which we
I find within ourselves, which is more than ourselves, and yet the ground of
I whatever is good and permanent therein, is the substance and life of all
I other knowledge.

K B. The Familists of the sixteenth century, and similar enthusiasts of
later date, overlooked the essential point, that it was a law, and a law that
involved its own end (reAof), a perfect law (reAefOf) or law that per-
fects or completes itself; and therefore its obligations are called, in refer-
ence to human statutes, imperfect duties, that is, incoercible from without.
They overlooked that it was a law that portions out (vofio^ from vi-fiu
to allot, or make division of) to each man the sphere and limits, within
which it is to be exercised — which, as St. Peter notices of certain profound
passages in the writings of St. Paul (2 Pet. iii. 16), ol fya&Ele tat darypiK
TOL OTO£(3hovaivt d)f nai ruf %oi7raf ypatyas, Trpdf TTJV Ifiiav avruv diru/.eiav.

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. liJ9

in the clear distinction of good from evil the process of separation
commences.

COMMENT.

It was customary with religious men in former times, to make
a rule of taking every morning some text, or aphorism,* for
their occasional meditation during the day, and thus to fill up
the intervals of their attention to business. I do not point it out
for imitation, as knowing too well, how apt these self-irnposed
rules are to degenerate into superstition or hollo wness ; other-
wise I would have recommended the following as the first ex-
ercise.

APHORISM XXVL

It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to dis
tinguish ; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to
divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of super-
stition and idolatry ;f in the latter, of schism, heresy, and a sedi-
tious and sectarian spirit.^

APHORISM XXVII.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest
portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms : and the greatest
and best of men is but an aphorism.

* A^^i^^eisnm^iS-jpQS^>ri, from djiopjfevjx) bound, or limit ;
whence our horizon. — In order to get the full sense of a word, we should
first present to our minds the visual image that forms its primary meaning.
Draw lines of different colors round the different counties of England, and
then cut out each separately, as in the common play-maps that children
take to pieces and put together — so that each district can be contemplated
apart from the rest, as a whole in itself. This twofold act of circumscrib- u
ing, and detaching, when it is exerted by the mind on subjects of reflection I1
and reason, is to aphorize, and the result an aphorism.

•j- To vorjrov dtrjpqKaoiv elf 7ro/l/lwi> 6e&v idiorjjrfi^. — Damasc. de Myst.
Egypt ; that is, They divided the intelligible into many and several indi-
vidualities.

^ I mean these words in their large and philosophic sense in relation to
the spirit, or originating temper and tendency, and not to any one mode
under which, or to any one class in or by which, it may be displayed. A
seditious spirit may (it is possible, though not probable) exist in the coun-
cil-chamber of a palace as strongly as in a mob in Palace- Yard ; and a seo
tarian spirit in a cathedral, no less than in a conventicle.

130 AIDS TO KEFLECTIOtf.

APHORISM XXVm.

On the prudential influence which the fear or foresight of the consequences
of his actions, in respect of his own loss or gain, may exert on a newly
converted believer.

PRECAUTIONARY REMARK.

I meddle not with the dispute respecting conversion, whether
and in what sense, necessary in all Christians. It is sufficient*
for my purpose, that a very large number of men, even in Chris-
tian countries, need to be converted, and that not a few, I trust,
have been. The tenet becomes fanatical and dangerous, only
when rare and extraordinary exceptions are made to be the gen-
eral rule ; — when what was vouchsafed to the Apostle of the
Gentiles by especial grace, and for an especial purpose, namely,
a conversion1* begun and completed in the same moment, is de-
manded or expected of all men, as a necessary sign and pledge
of their election. Late observations have shown, that under
many circumstances the magnetic needle, even after the disturb-
ing influence has been removed, will continue wavering, and re-
quire many days before it points aright, and remains steady to
the pole. So is it ordinarily with the soul, after it has begun to
free itself from the disturbing forces of the flesh, and the world,
and to convertf itself towards God.

APHORISM XXIX.

Awakened by the cock-crow — (a sermon, a calamity, a sick-
bed, or a providential escape) — the Christian pilgrim sets out in
the morning twilight, while yet the truth (the *6,uo£ te'Aeto? 6 TTJS

* " In this sense, especially, doth St. Paul call himself abortivum, a per-
son born out of season, that whereas Christ's other disciples and apostles
had a breeding under him, and came first ad discipulatwn, and then, ad
apostolatum, first to be disciples, and after to be apostles, St. Paul was
b)/n a man, an apostle: not carved out as the rest, in time, but a fusile
apostle, an apostle poured out and cast in a mould. As Adam was a per-
fect man in an instant, so was St. Paul an apostle as soon as Christ took
him in hand." Donne's Serin, (vol. ii. p. 299. Alford's edit. Ed.) The same
spirit was the lightning that melted, and the mould that received and
shaped him.

f That is, by an act of the will to turn towards the true pole, at the
same time that the understanding is convinced and made aware of its ex-
istence and direction

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 131

) is below the horizon. Certain necessary consequences
of his past life and his present undertaking will be seen by the
refraction of its light : more will be apprehended and conjec-
tured. The phantasms, that had predominated during the long
hours of darkness, are still busy. Though they no longer present
themselves as distinct forms, they yet remain as formative mo-
tions in the pilgrim's soul, unconscious of its own activity and
over-mastered by its own workmanship. Things take the signa-
ture of thought. The shapes of the recent dream become a
mould for the objects in the distance, and these again give an
outwardness and sensation of reality to the shapings of the
dream. The bodings inspired by the long habit of selfishness,
and self-seeking cunning, though they are now commencing the
process of their purification into that fear which is the beginning
of wisdom, and which, as such, is ordained to be oirtjguide and
safeguard, till the sun of love., the perfect law of liberty, is fully
arisen — these bodings will set the fancy at work, and haply, for
a time, transform the mists of dim and imperfect knowledge into
determinate superstitions. But in either case, whether seen
clearly or dimly, whether beholden or only imagined, the con-
sequences contemplated in their bearing on the individual's in-
herent* desire of happiness and dread of pain become motives ;

* The following extract from the second of Leighton's Theological Lec-
tures may serve as a comment on this sentence :

" Yet the human mind, however stunned and weakened by so dreadful a
fall, still retains some faint idea, some confused and obscure notions, of the
good .it has lost, and some remaining seeds of its heavenly original. It has
also still remaining a kind of languid sense of its misery and indigence, with
affections suitable to those obscure notions. This at least is beyond all
doubt and indisputable, that all men wish well to themselves ; nor can the
mind of man divest itself of this jgropensity, without divesting itself of its
being. This is what the Schoolmen mean when in their manner of expres-
sion they say, that ' the will (voluntas not arbitrium) is carried towards
happiness, not simply as will, but as nature.' "

I venture to remark that this position, if not more certainly, would be
more evidently, true, if instead of beatitudo, the word indolentia (that is,
freedom from pain, negative happiness) had been used. But this depends
on the exact meaning attached to the term self, of which more in another
place. One conclusion, however, follows inevitably from the preceding po-
sition ; namely, that this propensity can never be legitimately made the
principle of morality, even because it is no part or appurtenance of the
moral will- and because the proper object of the moral principle is to limit

132 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

and, unless all distinction in the words be done away with, and
either prudence or virtue be reduced to a superfluous synonyme,
a redundancy in all the languages of the civilized world, these
motives arid the acts and forbearances directly proceeding from
them fall under the head of Pmdence, as belonging to one or
other of its four very distinct species.

I. It may be prudence, that stands in opposition to a higher
inoral life, and tends to preclude it, and to prevent the soul from
i>ver arriving at the hatred of sin for its own exceeding sinful-
ness (Rom-, vii. 13) : and this is an evil prudence.

II. Or it may be a neutral prudence, not incompatible with
spiritual growth : and to this we may, with especial propriety,
apply the words of our Lord, What is not against us is for us.
It is therefore an innocent, and (being such) a proper, and com-
mendable prudence.

III. Or it may lead and be subservient to a higher principle
than itself. The mind and conscience of the individual may be
reconciled to it, in the foreknowledge of the higher principle, and
with yearning towards it that implies a foretaste of future free-
dom. The enfeebled convalescent is reconciled to his crutches,
and thankfully makes use of them, not only because they are
necessary for his immediate support, but likewise, because they
are the means and conditions of exercise, and by exercise, of es-
tablishing, gradatim paulatim, that strength, flexibility, and al-
most spontaneous obedience of the muscles, which the idea and
cheering presentiment of health hold out to him. He finds their
value in their present necessity, and their worth as they are the
instruments of finally superseding it. This is a jkilhful, a wise
prudence, having, indeed, its birth-place in the world, and the
wisdom of this world for its father ; but naturalized in a better
land, and having the wisdom from above for its sponsor and
spiritual parents. To steal a dropt feather from the spicy nest
of the phoBiiix (the fond humor, I mean, of the mystic divines
and allegorizers of Holy Writ) — it is the son of Terah from Ur
of the Chaldees, who gives a tithe of all to the King of Right-

HU d control this propensity, and to determine in what it may be, and what
it ought to be, gratified ; while it is the business of philosophy to instruct
the understanding, and the office of religion to convince the whole man,
that otherwise than as a regulated, and of course therefore subordinate, end,
this propensity, innate and inalienable though it be, can never be realized
or fulfilled.

INTEODUCTOKY APRORISMS. 133

eousness, without father, without mother, without descent (t*6tuo$
ute6votuo$), and receives a blessing on the remainder.

IV. Lastly, there is ajmidence that co-exists with morality, as
morality co-exists with the spiritual life : a prudence that is the
organ of both, as the understanding is to the reason arid the will,
or as the lungs are to the heart and brain. This is a holy: pru-
dtnco, the steward faithful and discreet (olxovoftos niaios xai
ifQoriftof, Luke xii. 42) the eldest servant in the family of faith,
born in the house, and made the ruler over his lord's household.

Let not then, I entreat you, my purpose be misunderstood ; as
if. in distinguishing virtue from prudence I wished to divide the
one from the other. True morality is hostile to that prudence
only, which is preclusive of true morality. The teacher, who
subordinates prudence to virtue, can not be supposed to dispense
with virtue ; and he, who teaches the proper connection of the
one with the other, does not depreciate the lower in any sense ;
while by making it a link of the same chain with the higher,
and receiving the same influence, he raises it.

In general, morality may be compared to the consonant ; pru-
dence to the vowel. The former can not be uttered (reduced to
practice) but by means of the latter.

APHORISM XXX.

WHAT the duties of morality are, the Apostle instructs the be-
liever in full, comprising them under the two heads of negative
and positive ; negative, to keep himself pure from the world ; and
positive, beneficence from loving-kindness, that is, love of his fel-
low-men (his kind) as himself.

APHORISM XXXI.

LAST and highest come the spiritual, comprising all the truths,
acts, and duties, that have an especial reference to the timeless,
the permanent, the eternal, to the sincere love of the true as
truth, of the good as good, and of God as both in one. It com-
prehends the whole ascent from uprightness (morality, virtue, in-
ward rectitude) to godlikeness, with all the acts, exercises, and
disciplines of mind, will, and affection, that are requisite or con-
ducive to the jrreat design of our redemption from the form of

134 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

the evil One, and of oar second creation or birth in the divino
image.^

APHORISM XXXII.

It may be an additional aid to reflection, to distinguish the
three kinds severally, according to the faculty to which each cor-
responds, the part of our human nature which is more particu-
larly its organ. Thus : the prudential corresponds to the sense
and the understanding ; the moral to the heart and the conscience ;
the spiritual to the will and the reason, that is, to the finite will
reduced to harmony with, and in subordination to, the reason, as
a ray from that true light which is both reason and will, univer-
sal reason, and will absolute.

* It is worthy of observation, and may furnish a fruitful subject for fu-
ture reflection, how nearly this Scriptural division coincides with the Pla-
tonic, which commencing with the prudential or the habit of act and pur-
pose proceeding from enlightened self-interest [qui animi itnperio, corporis
servilio, rerum auxilio, -in proprium sui commodum ft sibi providus utitur,
hunc esse prudentem statuimus], ascends to the moral, that is, to the puri
fying and remedial virtues ; and seeks its summit in the imitation of the di-
vine nature. In this last division, answering to that which we have called
the spiritual, Plato includes all those inward acts and aspirations, waitings,
and watchings, which havs a growth in godlikeness for their immediate pur-
pose, and the union of the human soul with the supreme good as their ulti-
mate object. Nor was it altogether without grounds that several of the
Fathers ventured to believe that Plato had some dim conception of the ne-
cessity of a divine Mediator ; — whether through some indistinct echo of the
Patriarchal faith, or some rays of light refracted from the Hebrew Prophets
through the Phoenician medium (to which he may possibly have referred in
his phrase -fremrapadoTos <jo<j)ia, the wisdom delivered from God), or by his
own sense of the mysterious contradiction in human nature between the
will and the reason, the natural appetences and the not less innate law of
conscience (Romans ii. 14, 16), we ehall in vain attempt to determine. It is
not impofisible that all three may have co-operated in partially unveiling
these awful truths to this plank from the wreck of Paradise thrown on the
idolatrous Greece, to this divine philosopher,

Che'n quella schiera ando piu presso al segno
A.I quxl aggiunge, a chi dal cielo e dato.

Petr wch. Trionfo della Fama, cap. iii. 5, ft.

E E F L E C T I O IS" S

INTRODUCTORY TO

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS,

ON SENSIBILITY.

IF Prudence, though practically inseparable from morality, is
not to be confounded with the moral principle ; still less may
Sensibility, that is, a consthu^nLajL_gmckness L^f sympathy with
pain and pleasure, and a keen sense of the gratifications that ac-
company social intercourse, mutual endearments, and reciprocal
preferences, be mistaken, or deemed a substitute, for either. Sen
Bibility is not even a sure pledge of a good heart, though among
the most common meanings of that many-meaning and too com
monly misapplied expression.

So far from being either morality, or one with the moral prin-
ciple, it ought not even to be placed in the same rank with pru-
dence. For prudence is at least an offspring of the understand-
ing ; but sensibility (the sensibility, I mean, here spoken of), is
for the greater part a quality of the nerves, and a result of indi-
vidual bodily temperament.

Prudence is an active principle, and implies a sacrifice of self,
though only to the same self projected, as it were, to a distance.
But the very term sensibility marks its passive nature ; and in
its mere self, apart from choice and reflection, it proves little
more than the coincidence or contagion of pleasurable or painful
sensations in different persons.

Alas ! how many are there in this over-stimulated age, — -in
which the occurrence of excessive and unhealthy sensitiveness is
BO frequent, as even to have reversed the current meaning of the

136 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

word, nervous, — Low many are there whose sensibility prompts
them to remove those evils alone, which by hideous spectacle 01
clamorous outcry are present to their senses and disturb their
selfish enjoyments ! Provided the dunghill is not before their
parlor window, they are well contsnted to know that it exists,
and perhaps as the hotbed on which their own luxuries ary
reared. Sensibility is not necessarily benevolence. Nay, be
rendering usTlremblingly alive to trifling misfortunes, it fre-
quently prevents it, and induces an effeminate selfishness instead,

pampering the coward heart

With feelings all too delicate for use.

Sweet are the tears, that from a Howard's eye
Drop on the cheek of one, he lifts from earth :
And he, who works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half: he chills rne, while he aids,
My benefactor, not my brother man.
But even this, this cold benevolence,
. Seems worth, seems manhood, when there rise before me
The sluggard pity's vision-weaving tribe,
"Who sigh for wretchedness yet shun the wretched,
Nursing in some delicious solitude
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies.*

"Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming at-
tire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to
become f virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities
may likewise become, and too often have become, the pandars
of vice, and the instruments of seduction.

So must it needs be with all qualities that have their rise only
in parts and fragments of our nature. A man of warm passions
may sacrifice half his estate to rescue a friend from prison ; for he
is naturally sympathetic, and the more social part of his nature
happened to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards ex-

* Poet. Works, VII. p. 150.— Ed.

\ There sometimes occurs an apparent play on words, which not only to
the moralizer, but even to the philosophical etymologist, appears more than a
mere play. Thus in the double sense of the word, become. I have known
persons so anxious to have their dress become them, as to convert it at
length into their proper self, and thus actually to become the dress. Such
a one (safeliest spoken of by the neuter pronoun), I consider as but a suit
of live finery. It is indifferent whether we say — it becomes he, or, he b»
comes it.

SENSIBILITY. 137

hibit the same disregard ol money in an attempt to seduce that
friend's wife or daughter.

All the evil achieved by Ilobbes and the whole school of mate-
rialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with the mis-
chief effected and occasioned by the sentimental philosophy of
Sterne, and his numerous imitators. The vilest appetites and
the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired
the titles of the heart, the irresistible feelings, the too tender sen-
sibility : and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chains of human
law thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature,
who could help it ? It was an amiable weakness !

About this time, too, the profanation of the word, Love, rose to
its height. The French naturalists, Buffon and others, borrowed
it from the sentimental novelists : the Swedish and English phi-
losophers took the contagion ; and the Muse of science conde-
scended to seek admission into the saloons of fashion and frivolity,
rouged like a harlot, and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know
not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the ser-
vice of virtue, than by such a comment on the present paragraph,
as would be afforded by a selection from the sentimental corres-
pondence produced in courts of justice within the last thirty
years, fairly translated into the'true meaning of the words, and
the actual object and purpose of the infamous writers.

Do you in good earnest aim at dignity of character ? By all
the treasures of a peaceful mind, by all the charms of an oper.
countenance, I conjure you, 0 youth ! turn away from those who
live in the twilight between vice and virtue. Are not reason,
discrimination, law, and deliberate choice, the distinguishing
characters of humanity^ ? Can aught then worthy of a human
being proceed from a habit of soul, which would exclude all
these and (to borrow a metaphor from paganism) prefer the den
of Trophonius to the temple and oracles of the God of light ? Can
any thing manly, I say, proceed from those, who for law and
light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses,
which as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute
animals owe the difference to their former connection with the
proper virtues of humanity ; as dendrites derive the outlines, that
constitute their value above other clay-stones, from. the casual
neighborhood and pressure of the plants, the names of which they
assume. Remember, that love itself in its highest earthly bear-

138 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

ing, as the ground of the marriage union,* becomes love by an
inward fiat of the will, by a completing and sealing act of moral
election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of
duty.f

* It might be a mean of preventing many unhappy marriages, if the
youth of both sexes had it early impressed on their minds, that marriage
contracted between Christians is a true and perfect symbol or mystery
that is, the actuali^ingj:aitli. being supposed to exist in the receivers, it is
an outward sign co-essential with that which it signifies, or a living part of
that, the whole of which it represents. Marriage, therefore, in the Chris
tian sense (Ephesians v. 22, 23), as symbolical of the union of the soul with
Christ the Mediator, and with God through Christ, is perfectly a sacra-
mental ordinance, and not retained at the Reformation as one of the sacra
ments, for two reasons : first, that the sign is not distinctive of the Church
of Christ, and the ordinance not peculiar, nor owing its origin to the Gos-
pel dispensation; secondly, that it is not of universal obligation, nor a
means of grace enjoined on all Christians. In other and plainer words,
marriage does not contain in itself an open profession of Christ, and it is
not a sacrament of the Church, but only of certain individual members of
the Church. It is evident, however, that neither of these reasons affects or
diminishes the religious nature and dedicative force of the marriage vow,
or detracts from the solemnity in the Apostolic declaration : This is a great
mystery.

The interest, which the State has in the appropriation of one woman to
one man, and the civil obligations therefrom resulting, form an altogether
distinct consideration. When I meditate on the words of the Apostle, con--
firmed and illustrated as they are, by so many harmonies in the spiritual
structure of our proper humanity — (in the image of God, male and female
created he the man), — and then reflect how little claim so large a number
of legal cohabitations have to the name of Christian marriages — I feel in-
clined to doubt, whether the plan of celebrating marriages universally by
the civil magistrate, in the first instance, and leaving the religious covenant
and sacramental pledge to the election of the parties themselves, adopted
during the Commonwealth in England, and in our own times by the French
legislature, was not in fact, whatever it might be in intention, reverential
to Christianity. At all events, it was their own act and choice, if the par-
ties made bad worse by the profanation of a Gospel mystery.

f See the beautiful passages Poet. Works, VII. pp. 302, 306.— Ed.

PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS.

APHORISM I.

Leighton and Coleridge.

WITH respect to any final aim or end, the greater part of man-
kind live at hazard. They have no certain harbor in view, nor
direct their course by any fixed star. But to him that knoweth
not the port to which he is bound, no wind can be favorable ;
neither can he, who has not yet- determined at what mark he
is to shoot, direct his arrow aright.

It is not, however, the less true that there is a proper object to
aim at ; and if this object be meant by the term happiness
(though I think that not the most appropriate term for a state,
the perfection of which consists in the exclusion of all hap, that
is, chance), I assert that there is such a thing as human happi-
ness, a summum bonum, or ultimate good. What this is, the
Bible alone shows clearly and certainly, and points out the way
that leads to the attainment of it. This is that which prevailed
with St. Augustine to study the Scriptures, and engaged his
affection to them. ' In Cicero, and Plato, and other such writers,'
says he, ' I meet with many things acutely said, and things that
excite a certain warmth of emotion, but in none of them do I
find these words, Come unto me, all ye that labor, and ,irn
heavy laden, and I ivill give you rest*

COMMENT.

Felicity, in its proper sense, is but another word for fortunate-
ness, or happiness ; and I can see no advantage in the improper

* Apud Ciceronem et Platonem, aliosque ejusmodi scriptorcs, muUa sunt
acute dicta, et leniter calentia, sect in Us omnibus hoc non invenio, Veniie ad
me, &c. [Matt. xi. 28.] (See Confess, vii. xxi. N.—Ed.)

140 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

use of words, when proper terms are to be found, but, on the cou
trary, much mischief. For, by familiarizing the mind to equivo-
cal expressions, that is, such as may be taken in two or more
different meanings, we introduce confusion of thought, and furnish
the sophist with his best and handiest tools. For the juggle of
sophistry consists, for the greater part, in using a word in one
sense in the premiss, and in another sense in the conclusion. We
should accustom ourselves to think, and reason in precise and
steadfast terms, even when custom, or the deficiency, or the cor-
ruption of the language will not permit the same strictness in
speaking. The mathematician finds this so necessary to the
truths which he is seeking, that his science begins with, and is
founded on, the definition of his terms. The botanist, the chem-
ist, the anatomist, feel and submit to this necessity at all costs,
even at the risk of exposing their several pursuits to the ridicule
of the many, by technical terms, hard to be remembered, and
alike quarrelsome to the ear and the tongue. In the business of
moral and religious reflection, in the acquisition of clear and dis-
tinct conceptions of our duties, and of the relations in which we
stand to God, our neighbor, and ourselves, no such difficulties
occur. At the utmost we have only to rescue words, already
existing and familiar, from the false or vague meanings imposed
on them by carelessness, or by the clipping and debasing mis-
usage of the market. And surely happiness, duty, faith, truth,
and final blessedness, are matters of deeper and dearer interest
for all men, than circles to the geometrician, or the characters of
plants to the botanist, or the affinities and combining principle of
the elements of bodies to the chemist, or even than the mechan-
ism (fearful and wonderful though it be !) of the perishable taber-
nacle of the soul can be to the anatomist. Among the aids to
reflection, place the following maxim prominent : let distinctness
in expression advance side by side with distinction in thought.
For one useless subtlety in our elder divines and moralists, I wil]
produce ten sophisms of equivocation in the writings of our mod-
ern preceptors : and for one error resulting from excess in dis-
tinguishing the indifferent, I could show ten mischievous delusions
from the habit of confounding the diverse.

Whether you are reflecting for yourself, or reasoning with an-
other, make it a rule to ask yourself the precise meaning of the
word, on which the point in question appears to turn ; and if it

PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. Ml

may be (that is, by writers of authority has been) used in several
senses, then ask which of these the word is at present intended
to convey. By this mean, and scarcely without it, you will at
length acquire a facility in detecting the quid pro quo. And be-
lieve me, in so doing you will enable yourself to disarm and ex-
pose four-fifths of the main arguments of our most renowned irre-
ligious philosophers, ancient and modern. For the quid pro quo
is at once the rock and quarry, on and with which the strong-
holds of disbelief, materialism, and (more pernicious still) Epicu-
rean morality, are built.

APHORISM II.

Leighton.

If we seriously consider what religion is, we shall find the
saying of the wise king Solomon to be unexceptionably true : Her
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace*

Doth religion require any thing of us more than that we live
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world ? Now
what, I pray, can be more pleasant or peaceable than these ?
Temperance is always at leisure, luxury always in a hurry ; the
latter weakens the body and pollutes the soul ; the former is the
sanctity, purity, and sound state of both. It is one of Epicurus's
fixed maxims, ' That life can never be pleasant without virtue.'

COMMENT.

In the works of moralists, both Christian and Pagan, it is often
asserted — (indeed there are few common-places of more frequent
recurrence) — that the happiness even of this life consists solely,
or principally, in virtue ; that virtue is the only happiness of this
life ; that virtue is the truest pleasure, and the like.

I doubt not that the meaning, which the writers intended to
convey by these and the like expressions, was true and wise.
But I deem it safer to say, that in all the outward relations of
this life, in all our outward conduct and actions, both in what we
should do, and in what we should abstain from, the dictates of
virtue are the very same with those of self-interest ; tending to,
though they do not proceed from, the same point. For the out' »
ward object of virtue being the greatest producible sum of happi- !
ness of all men, it must needs include the object of an intelligent
* Prov. Hi. 17.— Ed.

142 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

self-love, which is the greatest possible happiness of one individ-
ual ; for what is true of all must be true of each. Hence, you
can not become better, that is, more virtuous, but you will be-
come happier : and you can not become worse, that is, more vi-
cious, without an increase of misery, or at the best a proportional
loss of enjoyment as the consequence. If the thing were not in-
consistent with our well-being, and known to be so, it would not
have been classed as a vice. Thus what in an enfeebled and
disordered rnind is called prudence, is the voice of nature in a
healthful state : as is proved by the known fact, that the pru-
dential duties, that is, those actions which are commanded by
virtue because they are prescribed by prudence, brute animals
fulfil by natural instinct.

The pleasure that accompanies or depends on a healthy and
vigorous body will be the consequence and reward cf a temperate
life and habits of active industry, whether this pleasure were or
were not the chief or only determining motive thereto. Virtue
may, possibly, add to the pleasure a good of another kind, a
higher good, perhaps, than the worldly rnind is capable of under-
standing, a spiritual complacency, of which in your present sen-
sualized state you can form no idea. It may add, I say, but it
can not detract from it. Thus the reflected rays of the sun that
give light, distinction, and endless multiformity to the mind, give
at the same time the pleasurable sensation of warmth to th<
body.

If then the time has not yet come for any thing higher, act or
the maxim of seeking the most pleasure with the least pain : and,
if only you do not seek where you yourself know it will not be
found, this very pleasure and this freedom from the disquietude
of pain may produce in you a state of being directly and indi-
rectly favorable to the germination and up-spring of a nobler
seed. If it be true, that men are miserable because they are
wicked, it is likewise true, that many are wicked because they
are miserable. Health, cheerfulness, and easy circumstances,
the ordinary consequences of temperance and industry, will at
least leave the field clear and open, will tend to preserve the
scales of the judgment even : while the consciousness of possess-
ing the esteem, respect, and sympathy of your neighbors, and the
sense of your own increasing power and influence, can scarcely
fail to give a tone of lignity to your mind, and incline you to

PRUDENTIAL APHOKISM3. 143

hcpe nobly of your own being. And thus they may prepare and
predispose you to the sense and acknowledgment of a principle
differing, not merely in degree but in kind, from the faculties and
instincts of the higher and more intelligent species of animals (the
ant, the beaver, the elephant), and which principle is therefore
your_jp_roper_ humanity. And on this account and with this view
alone may certain modes of pleasurable or agreeable sensation,
without confusion of terms, be honored with the title of refined,
intellectual, ennobling pleasures. For pleasure — (and happiness
in its proper sense is but the continuity and sum total of the
pleasure which is allotted or happens to a man, and hence by
the Greeks called euru^ta, that is, good hap, or more religiously,
evdui/uoi'la, that is, favorable providence) — pleasure, I say, con*
sists in the harmony between the specific excitability of a living
creature, and the exciting causes correspondent thereto. Consid-
ered therefore exclusively in and for itself, the only question is
quantum, not quale ? How much on the whole ? the contrary,
that is, the painful and disagreeable, having been subtracted.
The quality is a matter of taste : et de gustibus non est dispu*
tandum. No man can judge for another.

This, I repeat, appears to me a safer language than the sen-
tences quoted above — (that virtue alone is happiness : that happi-
ness consists in virtue, and the like) — -sayings which I find it hard
to reconcile with other positions of still more frequent occurrence
in the same divines, or with the declaration of St. Paul : If in
this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable*

At all events, I should rely far more confidently on the con-
verse, namely, that to be vicious is to be miserable. Few men
are so utterly reprobate, so imbruted by their vices, as not to have
some lucid, or at least quiet and sober, intervals ; and in such a
moment dum desceviunt irce, few can stand up unshaken against
the appeal to their own experience — What have been the wages
of sin ? What has the devil done for you ? What sort of master
have you found him ? Then let us in befitting detail, and by a
series of questions that ask so loud, and are secure against any
false answer, urge home the proof of the position, that to be vi-
cious is to be wretched ; adding the fearful corollary, that if even
in the body, which as long as life is in it can never be wholly
bereaved of pleasurable sensations, vice is found to be misery.
* 1 Cor. xv. 19.— Ed.

144 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

what must it not be in the world to come ? There, where even
the crime is no longer possible, much less the gratifications that
once attended it ; — where nothing of vice remains but its guilt
and its misery — vice must be misery itself ; all and utter misery.
So best, if I err not, may the motives of prudence be held forth,
and the impulses of self-love be awakened, in alliance with truth,
and free from the danger of confounding things — (the laws of
duty, I mean, and the maxims of interest) — which it deeply con-
cerns us to keep distinct ; inasmuch as this distinction and the
faith therein are essential to our moral nature, and this again the
ground- work and pre-condition of the spiritual state, in which tho
humanity strives after godliness, and in the name and power, and
through the prevenient and assisting grace, of the Mediator, will
not strive in vain.

The advantages of a life passed in conformity with the precepts
of virtue and religion, and in how many and various respects
they recommend virtue and religion even on grounds of prudence,
form a delightful subject of meditation, and a source of refreshing
thought to good and pious men. Nor is it strange if, transported
with the view, such persons should sometimes discourse on the
charm of forms and colors to men whose eyes are not yet couched ,
or that they occasionally seem to invert the relations of cause and
effect, and forget that there are acts and determinations of the
will and affections, the consequences of which may be plainly
foreseen, and yet can not be made our proper and primary motives
for such acts and determinations, without destroying or entirely
altering the distinct nature and character of the latter. Sophron
is well informed that wealth and extensive patronage will be the
consequence of his obtaining the love and esteem of Constantia
But if the foreknowledge of this consequence were, and were found
out to be, Sophron's main and determining motive for seeking this
love and esteem ; and if Constantia were a woman that merited,
or was capable of feeling, either the one or the other ; would not
Sophron find (and deservedly too) aversion and contempt in their
stead ? Wherein, if not in this, differs the friendship of worldlings
from true friendship ? Without kind offices and useful services,
wherever the power and opportunity occur, love would be a
hollow pretence. Yet what noble mind would not be offended,
if he were thought to value the love for the sake of the services,
and not rather the services for the sake of the love ?

PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 145

APHORISM IIL

Though prudence in itself is neither virtue nor spiritual holi-
ness, yet without prudence, or in opposition to it, neither virtue
nor holiness can exist.

APHORISM IV.

Art thou under the tyranny of sin — a slave to vicious habits —
at enmity with God, and a skulking fugitive from thine own con-
science ? 0, how idle the dispute, whether the listening to the
dictates of prudence from prudential and self-interested motives be
virtue or merit, when the not listening is guilt, misery, madness,
and despair ! The best, the most Christianlike, pity thou canst
show, is to take pity on thy own soul. The best and most ac-
ceptable service thou canst render, is to do justice and show mercy
to thyself.

VOL. i. G

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS.

APHORISM L

Leightou.

WHAT the Apottles were in an extraordinary way, befitting the
first annunciation of a religion for all mankind, this all teachers
of moral truth, who aim to prepare for its reception by calling
the attention of men to the law in their own hearts, may, with-
out presumption, consider themselves to be under ordinary gifts
and circumstances : namely, ambassadors for the greatest of
kings, and upon no mean employment, the great treaty of peace
and reconcilement betwixt him and mankind.

APHORISM II.

«VF THE FEELINGS NATURAL TO INGENUOUS MINDS TOWARDS THOSE
WHO HAVE FIRST LED THEM TO REFLECT.

Leigliton.

Though divine truths are to be received equally from every
minister alike, yet it must be acknowledged that there is some-
thing (we know not what to call it) of a more acceptable recep-
tion of those which at first were the means of bringing men to
God, than of others ; like the opinion some have of physicians
whom they love.

APHORISM III

Leigliton and Coleridge.

The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the
worth and value of its object. What, then, is the best knowl-
edge ?

The exactest knowledge of things is, to know them in their
causes ; it is then an excellent thing, and worthy of their en-

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 147

deavors who are most desirous of knowledge, to know the best I
things in their highest causes ; and the happiest way of attain- n
ing to this knowledge is, to possess those things, and to know them '
in experiece.

APHORISM IV.

Leighton.

It is one main point of happiness, that he that is happy doth j
know and judge himself to he so. This being the peculiar good
of a reasonable creature, it is to be enjoyed in a reasonable way.
It is not as the dull resting of a stone, or any other natural body
in its natural place ; but the knowledge and consideration of it ,
is the fruition of it, the very relishing and tasting of its sweetness.)

REMARK.

As in a Christian land we receive the lessons of morality in
connection with the doctrines of revealed religion, we can not too
early free the mind from prejudices widely spread, in part through
the abuse, but far more from ignorance, of the true meaning of
doctrinal terms, which, however they may have been perverted
to the purposes of fanaticism, are not only Scriptural, but of too
frequent occurrence in Scripture to be overlooked or passed by in
silence. The following extract, therefore, deserves attention, as
clearing the doctrine of salvation, in connection with the divine
foreknowledge, from all objections on the score of morality, by the
just and impressive view which the Archbishop here gives of
those occasional revolutionary moments, that turn of the tide in
the mind and character of certain individuals, which (taking a
religious course, and referred immediately to the Author of all
good) were in his day, more generally than at present, entitled
Effectual Calling. The theological interpretation, and the phi-
losophic validity of this Apostolic triad, election, salvation, and
effectual calling (the latter being the intermediate), will be found
among the comments on the Aphorisms of spiritual import. For
my present purpose it will be sufficient if only I prove that the
doctrines are in themselves innocuous, and may be both holden
and taught without any practical ill consequences, and without
detriment to the moral frame.

148 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

APHORISM V.

Leigbtoa.

Two links of the chain (namely, Election and Salvation) are
up in heaven in God's own hand ; but this middle one (that is,
Effectual Calling) is let down to earth, into the hearts of his
children, and they laying hold on it, have sure hold on the other
two : for no power can sever them. If, therefore, they can read
the characters of God's image in their own souls, those are the
counterpart of the golden characters of his love, in which their
names are written in the book of life. Their believing writes
their names under the promises of the revealed book of life (the
Scriptures) and thus ascertains them, that the same names are
in the secret book of life which God hath by himself from eter-
nity. So that finding the stream of grace in their hearts, though
they see not the fountain whence it flows, nor the ocean into
which it returns, yet they know that it hath its source in their
eternal election, and shall empty itself into the ocean of their
eternal salvation.

If Election, Effectual Calling, and Salvation, be inseparably
linked together, then, by any one of them a man may lay hold
upon all the rest, and may know that his hold is sure ; and this
is the way wherein we may attain, and ought to seek, the com-
fortable assurance of the love of God. Therefore, make your
calling sure, and by that your election ; for that being done, this
follows of itself. We are not to pry immediately into the decree,
but to read it in the performance. Though the mariner sees not
the pole-star, yet the needle of the compass which points to it,
tells him which way he sails : thus the heart that is touched
with the loadstone of divine love, trembling with godly fear, and
yet still looking towards God by fixed believing, interprets the
fear by the love in the fear, and tells the soul that its course is
heavenward, towards the haven of eternal rest. He that loves,
may be sure he was loved first ; and he that chooses God for
his delight and portion, may conclude confidently, that God hath
chosen him to be one of those that shall enjoy him, and be happy
in him forever : for that our love and electing of him is but
the return and repercussion of tho beams of his love shining upon
us.

Although froro present unsanctification, a man can not infej

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 149

that he is not elected ; for the decree may, for the part of a man's
life, run (as it were) underground ; yet this is sure, that that es-
tate leads to death, and unless it be broken, will prove the black
line of reprobation. A man hath no portion amongst the children I
of God, nor can read one word of comfort in all the promises j
that belong to them, while he remains unholy.

* REMARK. #

In addition to the preceding, I select the following paragraphs,
as having nowhere seen the terms, Spirit, the Gifts of the Spirit,
and the like, so effectually vindicated from the sneers of the
sciolist on the one hand, and protected from the perversions of
the fanatic on the other. In these paragraphs the Archbishop at
once shatters and precipitates the only drawbridge between the
fanatical and the orthodox doctrine of grace, and the gifts of
the Spirit. In Scripture the term Spirit, as a power or property
seated in the human soul, never stands singly, but is always
specified by a genitive case following ; this being a Hebraism in-
stead of the adjective which the writer would have used if he
had thought, as well as written, in Greek. It is the spirit of
meekness (a meek spirit), or the spirit of chastity, and the like.
The moral result, the specific form and character in whichjthe
Spirit manifests its presence, is the only sure pledge and token
of its presence ; which is to be, and which safely may be, inferred
from its practical effects, but of which an immediate knowledge
or consciousness is impossible ; and every pretence to such knowl-
edge is either hypocrisy or fanatical delusion.

APHORISM VI.

Leighton.

If any pretend that they have the Spirit, and so turn away
from the straight rule of the Holy Scriptures, they have a spirit
indeed, but it is a fanatical spirit, the spirit of delusion and gid-
diness : but the Spirit of God, that leads his children in the way
of truth, and is for that purpose sent them from heaven to guide
thcia thither, squares their thoughts and ways to that rule whereof
it is author, and that word which was inspired by it, and sancti-
fies them to obedience. He that saith, I know him, and keep-
eth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in
him. Cl John ii. 4.)

150 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Now this Spirit which sanctifieth, and sanctifieth to obedience,
is within us the evidence of our election, and the earnest of OUT
salvation. And whoso are not sanctified and led by this Spirit,
the Apostle tells us what is their condition : If any man have
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his* The stones which
are appointed for that glorious temple above, are hewn, and pol-
ished, and prepared for it here ; as the stones were wrought and
prepared in the mountains, for building the temple at Jerusalem.

COMMENT.

There are many serious and sincere Christians who have not
attained to a fulness of knowledge and insight, but are well and
judiciously employed in preparing for it. Even these may study
the master- works of our elder divines with safety and advantage,
if they will accustom themselves to translate the theological
terms into their moral equivalents ; saying to themselves — This
may not be all that is meant, but this is meant, and it is that
portion of the meaning, which belongs to me in the present stage
of my progress. For example : render the words, sanctification
[of the Spirit, or the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, by purity
in life and action from a pure principle.

He needs only reflect on his own experience to be convinced,
that the man makes the motive, and not the motive the man.
"What is a strong motive to one man, is no motive at all to an-
other. If, then, the man determines the motive, what determines
the man — to a good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous
course of conduct ? The intelligent will, or the self-determining
power ? True, in part it is : and therefore jtjie_will3is pre-emi-
nently, the spiritual constituent in our being. But will any re-
flecting man admit, that his own will is the only and sufficient
determinant of all he is, and all he does ? Is nothing to be
attributed to the harmony of the system to which he belongs, and
to the pre-established fitness of the objects and agents, known and
unknown, that surround him, as acting on the will, though
doubtless, with it likewise? — a process, which the co-instanta
neous yet reciprocal action of the air and the vital energy of the
lungs in breathing, may help to render intelligible.

Again : in the world we see everywhere evidences of a unity
* Rom. viii. 9. — Ed.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 151

which the component parts are so far from explaining, that they
necessarily pre-suppose it as the cause and condition of their ex-
isting as those parts ; or even of their existing at all. This
antecedent unity, or cause and principle of each union, it has
since the time of Bacon and Kepler been customary to call a law.
This crocus, for instance, or any other flower, the reader may
have in sight, or choose to bring before his fancy. That the
root, stem, leaves, petals, &c. cohere to one plant, is owing to an
antecedent power or principle in the seed, which existed before a
single particle of the matters that constitute the size and visibility
of the crocus, had been attracted from the surrounding soil, air,
and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed ? Here too the same
necessity meets us. An antecedent unity — (I speak not of the
parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in the order of oper-
ance, yet remaining present as the conservative and reproductive
power) — must here too be supposed. Analyze the seed with the
finest tools, and let the solar microscope come in aid of youi
senses, — what do you find ? Means and instruments, a won-
drous fairy tale of nature, magazines of food, stores of various
sorts, pipes, spiracles, defences — a house of many chambers, and
the owner and inhabitant invisible ! Reflect further on the
countless millions of seeds of the same name, each more than
numerically differenced from every other : and further yet, reflect
on the requisite harmony of all surrounding things, each of
which necessitates the same process of thought, and the coher-
ence of all of which to a system, a world, demands its own ade-
quate antecederitunity, which must therefore of necessity be pres-
ent to all and in all, yet in no wise excluding or suspending the
individual law or principle of union in each. Now, will reason,
will common sense, endure the assumption, that it is highly rea-
sonable to believe a universal power, as the cause and pre-condi-
tion of the harmony of all particular wholes, each of which
involves the working principle of its own union — that it is reason-
able. I say, to believe this respecting the aggregate of objects,
which, without a subject (that is, a sentient and intelligent ex-
istence), would be purposeless ; and yet unreasonable and even
superstitious or enthusiastic to entertain a similar belief in rela-
tion to the system of inteUgent and self-conscious beings, to the
moral and"pefsonat world ? But if in this too, in the great com-
munity oTpersons, it is rational to infer a one universal presence,

152 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

a one present to all and in all, is it not most irrational to suppose
that a finite will can exclude it ?

Whenever, therefore, the man is determined (that is, impelled
and directed) to act in harmony of inter-communion, must not
something be attributed to this all-present power as acting in the
will ? And by what fitter names can we call this than THE LAW,
as empowering ; THE WORD, as informing ; and THE SPIRIT, as
actuating?

"What has been here said amounts, I am aware, only to a neg-
ative conception ; but this is all that is required for a mind at
that period of its growth which we are now supposing, and as
long as religion is contemplated under the form of morality. A
positive insight belongs to a more advanced stage : for spiritual
truths can only spiritually be discerned. This we know from
revelation, and (the existence of spiritual truths being granted)
philosophy is compelled to draw the same conclusion. But
though merely negative, it is sufficient to render the union of re-
ligion and morality conceivable ; sufficient to satisfy an unpreju-
diced inquirer, that the spiritual doctrines of the Christian re-
ligion are not at war with the reasoning faculty, and that if they
do not run on the same line, or radius, with the understanding
yet neither do they cut or cross it. It is sufficient, in short, to
prove, that some distinct and consistent meaning may be attached
to the assertion of the learned and philosophic Apostle, that the
Spirit beareth ivitness with our spirit* that is, with the will,
as the supernatural in man and the principle of our personality —
of that, I mean, by which we are responsible agents ; persons,
and not merely living things. f

It will suffice to satisfy a reflecting mind, that even at the
porch and threshold of revealed truth there is a great and worthy
sense in which we may believe the Apostle's assurance, that not

* Rom. viii. l&.—Ed.

\ Whatever is comprised in the chain and mechanism of cause and effect,
of coursejiecessitated, and having its necessity in some other thing,jmtece-
dent or concurrent — this is said toj)ejaatur^_an^y^^
ten^of^Tsuch things is NAiURE.~^Itls,therefore, a contradiction in terms
to include in this the free-will, of which the verbal definition is — that which
originates an act or state of being. In this sense, therefore, which is the
sense of St. Paul, and indeed of the New Testament throughout, spiritual
and supernatural are synonymous.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 153

only doth the Spirit lielp our infirmities;* that is, act on the
will by a predisposing influence from without, as it were, though
in a spiritual manner, and without suspending or destroying its
freedom — (the possibility of which is proved to us in the influ-
ences of education, providential occurrences, and, above all, of
example) — but that in regenerate souls it may act in the will ,
that uniting and becoming onef with our will or spirit it may
make intercession for us :$ nay, in this intimate union taking
upon itself the form of our infirmities, may intercede for us ivith
groanings that can not be uttered.*} Nor is there any danger
of fanaticism or enthusiasm as the consequence of such a belief,
if only the attention be carefully and earnestly drawn to the con
eluding words of the sentence ; if only the due force and the full
import be given to the term unutterable or incommunicable, —
<U«Arjro<£ — in St. Paul's use of it. In this the strictest and
most proper use of the term, it signifies that the subject, of which
it is predicated, is something which I can not, which from the
nature of the thing it is impossible that I should, communicate to
any human mind (even of a person under the same conditions
with myself) so as to make it in itself the object of his direct and
immediate consciousness. It can not be the object of my own
direct and immediate consciousness; but must be inferred. In-
ferred it may be from its workings ; it can not be perceived in
them. And thanks to God ! in all points in which the knowl-
edge is of high and necessary concern to our moral and religious
welfare, from the effects it may safely be inferred by us, from the
workings it may be assuredly known ; and the Scriptures furnish
the clear and unfailing rules for directing the inquiry, and for
drawing the conclusion.

If any reflecting mind be surprised that the aids of the Divine f
Spirit should be deeper than our consciousness can reach, it must
arise from the not having attended sufficiently to the nature and
necessary limits of human consciousness For the same impossi-

* Rom. viii. 1§.—Ed.

f Some distant and faint similitude of this, that merely as a similitude
may be innocently used to quiet the fancy, provided it be not imposed on
the understanding as an analogous fact, or as identical in kind, is presented
to us in the power of the magnet to awaken and strengthen the magnetic
power in a bar of iron, and (in the instance of the compound magnet) of its
acting in and with the latter.

\ Rom. viii. 2§.—Ed. g Ibid.

G*

154 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

bility exists as to the first acts and movements of our own will ;
— the farthest distance our recollection can follow back the traces
never leads us to the first foot-mark ; the lowest depth that the
light of our consciousness can visit even with a doubtful glimmer-
ing, is still at an unknown distance from the ground : and so.
indeed, must it be with all truths, and all modes of being, that
can neither be counted, colored, nor delineated. Before and af-
ter, when applied to such subjects, are but allegories, which the
sense or imagination supplies to the understanding. The position
of the Aristoteleans, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu,
on which Locke's Essay is grounded, is irrefragable : Locke erred
only in taking half the truth for a whole truth. Conception is
consequent on perception. What we can not imagine, we can
not, in the proper sense of the word, conceive, .

I have already given one definition of Nature) Another, and
differing from the former in words only, is this : Whatever is rep-
resentable in the forms of time and space, is Nature. But
whatever is comprehended in time and space, is included in the
mecTiariism of cause ancHeHect. And conversely, whatever^ by
whatever means, has its principle in itself, so far as to originate
its actions, can not be contemplated in any of the forms of space
and time ; it must, therefore, be considered as spirit or spiritual
by a mind in that stage of its development which is here sup-
posed, and which we have agreed to understand under the name
of morality or the moral state : for in this stage we are concerned
only with the forming of negative conceptions, negative convic-
tions ; and by spiritual I do not pretend to determine what the
will is, but what it is not — namely, that it is not nature. And
as no man who admits a will at all (for we may safely presume
that no man, not meaning to speak figuratively, would call the
shifting current of a stream the will* of the river), can suppose it
below nature, we may safely add, that it is supernatural ; and
this without the least pretence to any positive notion or insight.

Now Morality accompanied with convictions like these, I have
ventured to call Religious Morality. Of the importance I attach

" The river glideth at his own sweet will."

Wordsworth's exquisite Sonnet on Westminster Bridge at sunrise.
But who does not see that here the poetic charm arises from the known
and felt impropriety of the expression, in the technical sense of the word,
impropriety, among grammarians ?

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 155

to the state of mind implied in these convictions, for its own sake,
and as the natural preparation for a yet highe state and a more
substantive knowledge, proof more than sufficient, perhaps, has
been given in the length and minuteness of this introductory dis-
cussion, and in the foreseen risk which I run of exposing the
Volume at large to the censure which every work, or rather
which every writer, must be prepared to undergo, who, treating
of subjects that can not be seen, touched, or in any other way
made matters of outward sense, is yet anxious to convey a dis-
tinct meaning by the words he makes use of — the censure of
being dry, abstract, and — (of all qualities most scaring and op-
probrious to the ears of the present generation) — metaphysical :
though how it is possible that a work not physical, that is, em-
ployed on objects known or believed on the evidence of senses,
should be other than metaphysical, that is, treating on subjects,
the evidence of which is not derived from the senses, is a problem
which critics of this order find it convenient to leave unsolved.

I shall, indeed, have reason to think myself fortunate, if this
be all the charge. How many smart quotations, which (duly
cemented by personal allusions to the author's supposed pursuits,
attachments, and infirmities) would of themselves make up a
review of this Volume, might be supplied from the works of
Butler, Swift, and Warburton ! For instance : ' It may not be
amiss to inform the public, that the compiler of the Aids to Re-
flection, and commenter on a Scotch Bishop's Platonico-Calvin-
istic commentary on St. Peter, belongs to the sect of the ^Eolists,
whose fruitful imaginations led them into certain notions, which
although in appearance very unaccountable, are not without
their mysteries and their meanings : furnishing plenty of matter
for such, whose converting imaginations dispose them to reduce
all things into types ; who can make shadows, no thanks to the
sun ; and then mould them into substances, no thanks to philoso-
phy ; whose peculiar talent lies in fixing tropes and allegories to
the letter, and refining what is literal into figure and mystery.'

And would it were my lot to meet with a critic, who, in the
might of his own convictions, and with arms of equal point and
efficiency from his own forge, would come forth as my assailant ;
or who, as a friend to my purpose, would set forth the objections
to the matter and pervading spirit of these Aphorisms, and the
accompanying elucidations. "Were it my task to form the mind

156 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

of a young man of talent, desirous to establish his belief on solid
principles, and in the light of distinct understanding, I would
commence his theological studies, or, at least, that most impor-
tant part of them respecting the aid which religion promises in
our attempts to realize the ideas of morality, by bringing together
all the passages scattered throughout the writings of Swift and
Butler, that bear on enthusiasm, spiritual operations, and pre-
tences to the gifts of the spirit, with the whole train of new
lights, raptures, experiences, and the like. For all that the
richest wit, in intimate union with profound sense and steady
observation, can supply on these topics, is to be found in the
works of these satirists ; though unhappily alloyed with much
that can only tend to pollute the imagination.

Without stopping to estimate the degree of caricature in the
portraits sketched by these bold masters, and without attempting
to determine in how many of the enthusiasts brought forward
by them in proof of the influence of false doctrines, a constitu-
tional insanity, that would probably have shown itself in some
other form, would be the truer solution, I would direct my pupil's
attention to one feature common to the whole group — the pre-
tence, namely, of possessing, or a belief and expectation grounded
on other men's assurances of their possessing, ah immediate con-
sciousness, a sensible experience, of the Spirit in and during its
operation on the soul. It is not enough that you grant them a
consciousness of the gifts and graces infused, or an assurance of
the spiritual origin of the same, grounded on their correspondence
to the Scripture promises, and their conformity with the idea of
the divine Giver. No ! they all alike, it will be found, lay
claim, or at least look forward, to an inAvard perception of the
Spirit itself and of its operating.

Whatever must be misrepresented in order to be ridiculed, is
in fact not ridiculed ; but the thing substituted for it. It is a
satire on something else, coupled with a lie on the part of the
satirist, who knowing, or having the means of knowing the
truth, chose to call one thing by the name of another. The
pretensions to the supernatural, pilloried by Butler, sent to Bed-
lam by Swift, and (on their re-appearance in public) gibbeted
by Warburton, and anatomized by Bishop Lavington,* one and

* " A Comparison between th*; enthusiasm of Methodists and of
Papists."— #c/.

MOEAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 157

all, have this for their essential character, that the Spirit is made
the immediate object of sense or sensation. Whether the spir-
itual presence and agency are supposed cognizable by indescrib-
able feeling or unimaginable vision by some specific visual en-
ergy ; whether seen or heard, or touched, smelt, and tasted — for
in those vast store-houses of fanatical assertion, — the volumes
of ncclesiastical history and religious auto-biography, — instances
are not wanting even of the three latter extravagancies ; — this
vaiiety in the mode may render the several pretensions more or
less offensive to the taste ; but with the same absurdity for the
reason, this being derived from a contradiction in terms common
and radical to them all alike, — the assumption of a something
essentially super sensual, which is nevertheless the object of sense,
that is not supersensual.

Well then ! — for let me be allowed still to suppose the Reader
present to me, and that I am addressing him in the character of
companion and guide — the positions recommended for your ex- \
animation not only do not involve, but exclude, this inconsistency.
And for aught that hitherto appears, we may see with compla-
cency the arrows of satire feathered with wit, weighted with
sense, and discharged by a strong arm, fly home to their mark.
Our conceptions of a possible spiritual communion, though they
are but negative, and only preparatory to a faith in its actual
existence, stand neither in the level nor the direction of the
shafts.

If it be objected that Swift and Warburton did not choose
openly to set up the interpretations of later and more rational
divines against the decisions of their own Church, and from pru-
dential considerations did not attack the doctrine in tolo : that is
their concern (I would answer), and it is more charitable to think
otherwise. But we are in the silent school of reflection, in the
secret confessional of thought. Should we lie for God, and that
to our own thoughts ? — They, indeed, who dare do the one, will
Boon be able to do the other. So did the comforters of Job : and
to the divines, who resemble Job's comforters, we will leave both
attempts.

But, it may be said, a possible conception is not necessarily a
true one ; nor even a probable one, where the facts can be other-
wise explained. In the name of the supposed pupil I would
reply — That is the very question I am preparing myselt to «Y

158 AIDS TO EEFLECTION

amine ; and am now seeking the vantage-ground where I may
best command the facts. In my own person, I would ask the
johjector, whether he counted the declarations of Scripture
jamong the facts to be explained. But both for myself and my
pupil, and in behalf of all rational inquiry, I would demand that
the decision should not be such, in itself or in its effects, as
would prevent our becoming acquainted with the most impor-
tant of these facts ; nay, such as would for the mind of the de-
cider, preclude their very existence. Unless ye believe, says the
prophet, ye can not understand. Suppose (what is at least pos-
sible) that the facts should be consequent on the belief, it is clear
that without the belief the materials, on which the understand-
ing is to exert itself, would be wanting.

The reflections that naturally arise out of this last remark, are
those that best suit the stage at which we last halted, and from
which we now recommence our progress — the state of a moral
man, who has already welcomed certain truths of religion, and is
inquiring after other and more special doctrines : still, however,
as a moralist, desirous, indeed, to receive them into combination

I with morality, but to receive them as its aid, not as its substitute.
Now, to such a man I say ; — Before you reject the opinions and
doctrines asserted and enforced in the following extract from Leigh-
ton, and before you give way to the emotions of distaste or ridicule,
which the prejudices of the circle in which you move, or your
own familiarity with the mad perversions of the doctrine by
fanatics in all ages, have connected with the very words, spirit,
grace, gifts, operations, and the like, re-examine the arguments

| advanced in the first pages of this introductory comment, and the
simple and sober view of the doctrine, contemplated in the first
instance as a mere idea of the reason, flowing naturally from the

i admission of an infinite omnipresent mind as the ground of the
universe. Reflect again and again, and be sure that you under-
stand the doctrine before you determine on rejecting it. That
no false judgments, no extravagant conceits, no practical ill-con-
sequences need arise out of the belief of the Spirit, and its possi-
ble communion with the spiritual principle in man, or can arise
out of the right belief, or are compatible with the doctrine truly
and Scripturally explained, Leighton, and almost every single
period in the passage here transcribed from him, will suffice to
convince you.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 159

On the other hand, reflect on the consequences of rejecting it.
For surely it is not the act of a reflecting mind, nor the part of a
man of sense, to disown and cast out one tenet, and yet persevere
in admitting and clinging to another that has neither sense noi
purpose, but what supposes and rests on the truth and reality of
the former. If you have resolved that all belief of a divine Com-
forter present to our inmost being and aiding our infirmities, is
fond and fanatical, — if the Scriptures promising and asserting
such communion are to be explained away into the action of cir-
cumstances, and the necessary movements of the vast machine, in
one of the circulating chains of which the human will is a petty
link ; — in what better light can prayer appear to you, than the
groans of a wounded lion in his solitary den, or the howl of a dog
with his eyes on the moon ? At the best, you can regard it only
as a transient bewilderment of the social instinct, as a social
habit misapplied. Unless, indeed, you should adopt the theory
which I remember to have read in the writings of the late Bishop
Jebb, and for some supposed beneficial re-action of praying on
Ihe prayer's own mind, should practise it as a species of animal-
magnetism to be brought about by a wilful eclipse of the reason,
and a temporary make-believe on the part of the self-magnetizer !

At all events, do not pre-judge a doctrine, the utter rejection
of which must oppose a formidable obstacle to your acceptance
of Christianity itself, when the books, from which alone we can
learn what Christianity is and what it teaches, are so strangely
written, that in a series of the most concerning points, including
(historical facts excepted) all the peculiar tenets of the religion,
the plain and obvious meaning of the words, that in which they
were understood by learned and simple, for at least sixteen cen-
turies, during the larger part of which the language was a living
language, is no sufficient guide to their actual sense or to the
writer's own meaning ! And this too, where the literal and re-
ceived sense involves nothing impossible, or immoral, or contrary
to reason. With such a persuasion, Deism would be a more con-
sistent creed. But, alas ! even this will fail you. The utter re-
jection of all present and living communion with the universal
Spirit impoverishes Deism itself, and renders it as cheerless as
Atheism, from which indeed it would differ only by an obscure
impersonation of what the atheist receives unpersonined under
the name of Fate or Nature.

160 AIDS TO INFLECTION.

APHORISM VII

Leighton and Coleridge.

The proper and natural effect, and in the absence of all dis-
turbing or intercepting forces, the certain and sensible accompani-
ment of peace or reconcilement with God, is our own inward peace,
a calm and quiet temper of mind. And where there is a conscious
ness of earnestly desiring, and of having sincerely striven after
the former, the latter may be considered as a sense of its presence.
In this case; I say, and for a soul watchful and under the disci
pline of the Gospel, the peace with a man's self may be the me-
dium or organ through which the assurance of his peace with
God is conveyed. We will not, therefore, condemn this mode of
speaking, though we dare not greatly recommend it. Be it, that
there is, truly and in sobriety of speech, enough of just analogy
in the subjects meant, to make this use of the words, if less than
proper, yet something more than metaphorical ; still we must be
cautious not to transfer to the object the defects or the deficiency
of the organ, which must needs partake of the imperfections of
the imperfect beings to whom it belongs. Not without the co-
assurance of other senses and of the same sense in other men,
dare we affirm that what our eye beholds is verily there to be
beholden. Much less may we conclude negatively, and from the
inadequacy, or the suspension, or from any other affection of sight
infer the non-existence, or departure, or changes of the thing itself.
The chameleon darkens in the shade of him that bends over it to
ascertain its colors. In like manner, but with yet greater cau-
tion, ought we to think respecting a tranquil habit of the inward
life, considered as a spiritual sense, — a medial organ in and by
which our peace with God, and the lively working of his grace
on our spirit, are perceived by us. This peace which we have
with God in Christ is inviolable ; but because the sense and per-
suasion of it may be interrupted, the soul that is truly at peace
with God may for a time be disquieted in itself, through weak-
ness of faith, or the strength of temptation, or the darkness of
i desertion, losing sight of that grace, that love and light of God's
i countenance, on which its tranquillity and joy depend. Thou
didst hide thy face, saith David, and I was troubled. But when
these eclipses are over, the soul is revived with new consolation,
a* the face of the earth is renewed and made to smile with the

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 161

return of the sun in the spring ; and this ought always to uphold
Christians in the saddest times, namely, that the grace and love
of God towards them depend not on their sense, nor upon any
thing in them, but is still in itself, incapable of the smallest al-
teration.

A holy heart that gladly entertains grace, shall find that it
and peace can not dwell asunder ; while an ungodly man mar
sleep to death in the lethargy of carnal presumption and impeni
tency; but a true, lively, solid peace, he can not have. There
is no peace, saitk my God, to the wicked. Isa. Ivii. 21.

APHORISM VIIL

WORLDLY HOPES.

Leightau.

Worldly hopes are not living, but lying hopes ; they die ofter
before us, and we live to bury them, and see our own folly and
infelicity in trusting to them ; but at the utmost, they die with
us when we die, and can accompany us no further. But the
lively hope, which is the Christian's portion, answers expecta-
tion to the full, and much beyond it, and deceives no wny but in
that happy way of far exceeding it.

A living hope, living in death itself ! The world dares say no
more for its device, than Dum spiro spero ; but the children of
God can add, by virtue of this living hope, Dum exspiro spero.

APHORISM IX:

THE WORLDLING'S FEAR.

Leighton.

It is a fearful thing when a man and all his hopes die together.
Thus saith Solomon of the wicked, Prov. xi. 7, — "When he dieth,
then die his hopes (many of them before, but at the utmost then,
all of them) ; but the righteous liath hope in his death. Prov
xiv. 32.*

* One of the numerous proofs against those who, with a strange incon-
sistency, hold the Old Testament to have been inspired throughout, and yet
deny that the doctrine of a future state is taught therein.

162 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

APHORISM X.

WORLDLY MIRTH.

Leighton and Coleridge.

As he that taketh aiuay a garment in cold u-eather, and as
vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.
Prov. xxv. 20. Worldly mirth is so far from curing spiritual
grief, that even worldly grief, where it is great and takes deep
root, is not allayed but increased by it. A man who is full of in-
ward heaviness, the more he is encompassed about with mirth,
it exasperates and enrages his grief the more ; like ineffectual
weak physic, which removes not the humor, but stirs it and
makes it more unquiet. But spiritual joy is seasonable for all
estates ; in prosperity, it is pertinent to crown and sanctify all
other enjoyments, with this which so far surpasses them ; and in
distress, it is the only Nepenthe, the cordial of fainting spirits :
so Psal. iv. 7, He hath put joy into my heart. This mirth
makes way for itself, which other mirth can not do. These
songs are sweetest in the night of distress.

There is something exquisitely beautiful and touching in the
first of these similes : and the second, though less pleasing to the
imagination, has the charm of propriety, and expresses the trans-
lation with equal force and liveliness. A grief of recent birth is
a sick infant that must have its medicine administered in its milk,
arid sad thoughts are the sorrowful heart's natural food. This is
a complaint that is not to be cured by opposites, which for the
most part only reverse the symptoms while they exasperate the
disease — or like a rock in the mid channel of a river swollen by a
sudden rain-flush from the mountain, which only detains the ex-
cess of waters from their proper outlet, and makes them foam,
roar, and eddy. The soul in her desolation hugs the sorrow close
to her, as her sole remaining garment : and this must be drawn
off so gradually, and the garment to be put in its stead so gradu-
ally slipt on and feel so like the former, that the sufferer shall be
sensible of the change only by the refreshment. The true spirit
of consolation is well content to detain the tear in the eye, and
finds a surer pledge of its success in the smile of resignation that
dawns through that, than in the liveliest shows of a forced and
alien exhilaration.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 163

APHORISM XL

Leighton.

Plolinus thanked God, that his soul was not tied to an immor-
tal body.

APHORISM XII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

What a full confession do we make of our dissatisfaction with
the objects of our bodily senses, that in our attempts to express
\\hat we conceive the best of beings, and the greatest of felicities
to bev we describe by the exact contraries of all that we experi-
ence here — the one as infinite, incomprehensible, immutable ; the
other as incorruptible, undefiled, and that passeth not away. At
all events, this coincidence, say rather, identity of attributes, is
sufficient to apprize us, that to be inheritors of bliss, we must be-
come the children of God.

This remark of Leighton' s is ingenious and startling. Another,
and more fruitful, perhaps more solid, inference from the fact
would be, that there is something in the human mind which
makes it know (as soon as it is sufficiently awakened to reflect
on its own thoughts and notices), that in all finite quantity there
is an infinite, in all measure of time an eternal ; that the latter
are the basis, the substance, the true and abiding reality of the
former ; and that as we truly are, only as far as God is with us,
so neither can we truly possess — that is, enjoy — our being or any
other real good, but by living in the sense of his holy presence.

A life of wickedness is a life of lies ; and an evil being, or the
being of evil, the last and darkest mystery.

APHORISM XIII.

THE WISEST USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

Leighton.

It is not altogether unprofitable, — yea, it is great visdom in
Christians to be arming themselves against such ^.nptations as
may befall them hereafter, though they have not as yet met with
them ; to labor to overcome them beforehand, to suppose the
hardest things that may be incident to them, and to put on the
strongest resolutions they can attain unto. Yet all that is but
an imaginary effort ; and therefore there is no assurance that the
victory is any more than imaginary too, till it come to action,

164 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

and then, they that have spoken and thought very confidently,
may prove hut (as one said of the Athenians) fortes in tabula,
patient and courageous in picture or fancy ; and, notwithstand-
ing all their arms, and dexterity in handling them by way of ex-
ercise, may be foully defeated when they are to fight in earnest.

APHORISM XIV.

THE LANGUAGE OF SCRIPTURE.

The word of God speaks to men, and therefore it speaks the
language of the children of men. This just and pregnant thought
was suggested to Leighton by Gen. xxii. 12. The same text has
led me to unfold and expand the remark. — On moral subjects, the
Scriptures speak in the language of the affections which they
excite in us ; on sensible objects, neither metaphysically, as they
are known by superior intelligences ; nor theoretically, as they
would be seen by us were we placed in the sun ; but as they are
represented by our human senses in our present relative position.
Lastly, from no vain, or worse than vain, ambition of seeming to
walk on the sea of mystery in my way to truth, but in the hope
of removing a difficulty that presses heavily on the minds of many
who in heart and desire are believers, and which long pressed on
my own mind, I venture to add : that on spiritual things, and
allusively to the mysterious union or conspiration of the divino
with the human in the spirits of the just, spoken of in Rom. viii.
27, the word of God attributes the language of the spirit sancti-
fied to the Holy One, the Sanctifier.

Now the spirit in man (that is, the will, knows its own state
in and by its acts alone : even as in geometrical reasoning the
mind knows its constructive faculty in the act of constructing,
and contemplates the act in the product (that is, the mental
figure or diagram) which is inseparable from the act and co-
instantaneous.

Let the reader join these two positions : first, that the divine
Spirit acting in the human will is described as one with the will
so filled and actuated : secondly, that our actions are the means,
by which alone the will becomes assured of its own state : and
he will understand, though he may not perhaps adopt my sug-
gestion, that the verse, in which God speaking of himself, says to
Abraham, Noiv I know that thoufearest God, seeing thou hast

MOKAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 165

not withheld thy son, thy only son, from me — may be more than
merely figurative. An accommodation I grant ; but in the thing
expressed, and not altogether in the expressions. In arguing
with infidels, or with the weak in faith, it is a part of religious
prudence, no less than of religious morality, to avoid whatever
looks' like an evasion. To retain the literal sense, wherever
the harmony of Scripture permits, and reason does not forbid, is
ever the honester, and, nine times in ten, the more rational
and pregnant interpretation. The contrary plan is an easy
and approved way of getting rid of a difficulty ; but nine times
in ten a bad way of solving it. But alas ! there have been
too many commentators who are content not to understand a text
themselves, if only they can make the reader believe they do.

Of the figures of speech in the sacred Volume, that are only
figures of speech, the one of most frequent occurrence is that
which describes an effect by the name of its most usual and best
known cause : the passages, for instance, in which grief, fury,
repentance, and the like, are attributed to the Deity. But these
are far enough from justifying the (I had almost said, dishonest)
fashion of metaphorical glosses, in as well as out of the Church ;
and which our fashionable divines have carried to such an extent,
as in the doctrinal part of their creed, to leave little else but
metaphors.

APHORISM XY.

THE CHRISTIAN NO STOIC.

Leighton and Coleridge.

Seek not altogether to dry up the stream of sorrow, but to
bound it and keep it within its banks. Religion doth not de-
stroy the life of nature, but adds to it a life more excellent ; yea,
it doth not only permit, but requires some feeling of afflictions.
Instead of patience, there is in some men an affected pride of
spirit, suitable only to the doctrine of the Stoics as it is usually
taken. They strive not to feel at all the afflictions that are on
them ; but where there is no feeling at all, there can be no pa-
tience.

Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic is, perhaps, the
nearest to Christianity. Yet even to this sect Christianity is fun-

166 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

damentally opposite. For the Stoic attaches the highest honoi
(or rather attaches honor solely) to the person that acts virtuously
in spite of his feelings, or who has raised himself above the con-
flict by their extinction; while Christianity instructs us to place
small reliance on a virtue that does not begin by bringing the
feelings to a conformity with the commands of the conscience.
Its especial aim, its characteristic operation, is to moralize the af-
fections. The feelings, that oppose a right act, must be wrong
feelings. The act, indeed, whatever the agent's feelings might
be, Christianity would command : and under certain circumstan-
ces would both command and commend it — commend it, as a
healthful symptom in a sick patient ; and command it, as one of
the ways and means of changing the feelings, or displacing them
by calling up the opposite.

COROLLARIES TO APHORISM XV.

I. The more consciousness in our thoughts and words, and the
less in our impulses and general actions, the better and more
healthful the state both of head and heart. As the flowers from
an orange-tree in its time of blossoming, that burgeon forth, ex-
pand, fall, and are- momently replaced, such is the sequence of
hourly and momently charities in a pure and gracious soul. The
modern fiction which depictures the son of Cytherea with a ban-
dage round his eyes, is not without a spiritual meaning. There
is a sweet and holy blindness in Christian love even as there is
a blindness of life, yea, and of genius too, in the moment of pro-
ductive energy.

II. Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for
the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let

i them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which
the strongest and best balanced natures must feel themselves de-
ficient, and where humility, no less than prudence, prescribes de-
liberation. "We find a similitude of this, I had almost said a re-
mote analogy, in organized bodies. The lowest class of animals
or protojzoa, the polypi for instance, have neither brain nor
nerves. Their motive powers are all from without. The sun,
light, the warmth, the air are their nerves and brain. As life
ascends, nerves appear ; but still only as the conductors of an ex-
ternal influence ; next arc seen the knots or ganglions, as so many
Ivci of instinctive agency, which imperfectly imitate the yet

MOKAL AND KELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 167

wanting centre. And now the promise and token of a true indi-
viduality are disclosed ; both the reservoir of sensibility and the
imitative power that actuates the organs of motion, (the muscles)
with the network of conductors, are all taken inward and appro-
priated ; the spontaneous rises into the voluntary, and finally
after various steps and long ascent, the material and animal means
and conditions are prepared for the manifestations of a free wil1,
having its law within itself, and its motive in the law — and thi 3
bound to originate its own acts, not only without, but even
against, alien stimulants. That in our present state we have
only the dawning of this inward sun (the perfect law of liberty)
will sufficiently limit and qualify the preceding position, if only
it have been allowed to produce its two-fold consequence — the ex-
citement of hope and the repression of vanity.*

APHORISM XVI.

Leighton.

As excessive eating or drinking both makes the body sickly and
lazy, fit for nothing but sleep, and besots the mind, as it clogs up
with crudities the way through which the spirits should pass,f
bemiring them, and making them move heavily, as a coach in a
deep way ; thus doth all immoderate use of the world and its de-
lights wrong the soul in its spiritual condition, makes it sickly
and feeble, full of spiritual distempers and inactivity, benumbs
the graces of the Spirit, and fills the soul with sleepy vapors,
makes it grow secure and heavy in spiritual exercises, and ob-
structs the way and motion of the Spirit of God in the soul.
Therefore, if you would be spiritual, healthful and vigorous, and
enjcy much of the consolations of Heaven, be sparing and sober
in those of the earth, and what you abate of the one, shall be
certainly made up in the other.

* The reader is referred, upon the subject of this remarkable paragraph,
to Mr. Joseph Henry Green's Recapitulatory Lecture, p. 110, Vital Dync,rr.-
ict, 1840 ; — a volume of singular worth and importance. — Ed.

f Technical phrases of an obsolete system will yet retain their places j
nay, acquire universal currency, and become sterling in the language, when
they at once represent the feelings, and give an apparent solution of them
by visual images easily managed by the fancy. Such are many terms and
phrases from the humoral physiology long exploded, but which are far
more popular than any description would be from the theory that baa
taken its place.

168 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

APHORISM XVIL

INCONSISTENCY.

Leighton and Coleridge.

It is a most unseemly and unpleasant thing, to see a man's life
full of ups and downs, one step like a Christian, and another like
a worldling ; it can not choose but both pain himself and mar
Hie edification of others.

The same sentiment, only with a special application to the
maxims and measures of our cabinet statesmen, has been finely
expressed by a sage poet of the preceding generation, in lines
which no generation will find inapplicable or superannuated.

God and the world we worship both together,

Draw not our laws to Him, but His to ours ;
Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither,

The imperfect will brings forth but barren flowers 1

Unwise as all distracted interests be,

Strangers to God, fools in humanity :
Too good for great things, and too great for good,

While still " I dare not" waits upon " I wou'd."

APHORISM XVIL CONTINUED.

THE ORDINARY MOTIVE TO INCONSISTENCY.

Leightuw.

What though the polite man count thy fashion a little odd arid
too precise, it is because he knows nothing above that model of
goodness which he hath set himself, and therefore approves of
nothing beyond it : he knows not God, and therefore doth not
discern and esteem what is most like Him. When courtiers come
down into the country, the common home-bred people possibly
think their habit strange ; but they care not for that, it is the
fashion at court. What need, then, that Christians should be so
tender foreheaded, as to be put out of countenance because the
world looks on holiness as a singularity ; it is the only fashion in
the highest court, yea, of the King of kings himself

MORAL AND KELIGIOUS APHOEISMS. 169

APHORISM XVIII.

SUPERFICIAL RECONCILIATIONS, AND SELF-DECEIT IN FORGIVING.

Leighton.

When, after variances, men are brought to an agreement, they
are much subject to this, rather to cover their remaining malices
with superficial verbal forgiveness, than to dislodge them and
free the heart of them. This is a poor self-deceit. As tho phi-
losopher said to him, who being ashamed that he was espied by
him in a tavern in the outer room, withdrew himself to the
inner, c That is not the way out ; the more you go that way, you
will be the further in :' — so when hatreds are upon admonition
not thrown out, but retire inward to hide themselves, they grow
deeper and stronger than before ; and those constrained sem-
blances of reconcilement are but a false healing, do but skin the
wound over, and therefore it usually breaks forth worse again.

APHORISM XIX.

OF THE WORTH AND THE DUTIES OF THE PREACHER.

LeightoiL

The stream of custom and our profession bring us to the
preaching of the Word, and we sit out our hour under the sound ;
but how few consider and prize it as the great ordinance of God
for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer of the
divine life of grace within us ! And certainly, until we have
these thoughts of it, and seek to feel it thus ourselves, although
we hear it most frequently, and let slip no occasion, yea, hear it
with attention, and some present delight, yet still we miss the
right use of it, and turn it from its true end, while we take it not as
that ingrafted word which is able to save our souls. (Jas. i. 21.)

Thus ought they who preach to speak the word ; to endeavor
their utmost to accommodate it to this end, that sinners may be
converted, begotten again, and believers nourished and strength-
ened in their spiritual life ; to regard no lower end, but aim
steadily at that mark. Their hearts and tongues ought to be set
on fire with holy zeal for God and love to souls, kindled by the
Holy Ghost, that came down on the Apostles in the shape of
fiery tongues.

VOL. i. H

170 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

And those that hear should remember this as the end of their
hearing, that they may receive spiritual life and strength by tho
word. For though it seems a poor despicable business, that a
frail sinful man like yourselves should speak a few words in your
hearing, yet, look upon it as the way wherein God communicates
happiness to those who believe, arid works that believing unto
happiness, alters the whole frame of the soul, and makes a new
creation as it begets it again to the inheritance of glory, — con-
sider it thus, which is its true notion ; and then what can be so
precious !

APHORISM XX.

Leighton.

The difference is great in our natural life, in some persons
especially ; that they who in infancy were so feeble, and wrap-
ped up as others in swaddling-clothes, yet afterwards come to
excel in wisdom and in the knowledge of sciences, or to be com-
manders of great armies, or to be kings : but the distance is far
greater and more admirable betwixt the small beginnings of
grace, and our after perfection, that fulness of knowledge that we
look for, and that crown of immortality, which all they are born
to who are born to God.

But as in the faces or actions of some children, characters and
presages of their after-greatness have appeared — as a singular
beauty in Moses' face, as they write of him, and as Cyrus was
made king among the shepherds' children with whom he was
brought up, — so also, certainly, in these children of God, there be
some characters and evidences that they are born for Heaven by
their new birth. That holiness and meekness, that patience and
faith which shine in the actions and sufferings of the saints, are
characters of their Father's image, and show their high original,
and foretell their glory to come ; such a glory as doth not only
surpass the world's thoughts, but the thoughts of the children of
God themselves. 1 John iii. 2.

COMMENT.

This Aphorism would, it may seem, have been placed more
fitly in the Chapter following. In placing it here, I have been
determined by the following convictions : 1. Every state, and
consequently that Avhich we have described as the state of reli-

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS, 1Y1

gious morality, which is not progressive, is dead or retrograde.
2. As a pledge of this progression, or, at least, as the form in
which the propulsive tendency shows itself, there are certain
hopes, aspirations, yearnings, that with more or less of conscious-
ness rise and stir in the heart of true morality as naturally as
the sap in the full-formed stem of a rose flows towards the bud,
within which the flower is maturing. 3. No one, whose owr
experience authorizes him to confirm the truth of this statement,
can have been conversant with the volumes of religious biogra
phy, can have perused for instance the lives of Cranmer, Ridley,
Latimer, Wishart, Sir Thomas More, Bernard Gilpin, Bishop
Bedel, or of Egede, Swartz, and the missionaries of the frozen
world, without an occasional conviction, that these men lived \\
under extraordinary influences, which in each instance and in all |
ages of the Christian sera bear the same characters, and both in
the accompaniments and the results evidently refer to a common
origin. And what can this be ? is the question that must needs
force itself on the mind in the first moment of reflection on a fact
so interesting and apparently so anomalous. The answer is as
necessarily contained in one or the other of two assumptions .
These influences are either the product of delusion — insania am-
abilis, and the reaction of disordered nerves — or they argue the
existence of a relation to some real agency, distinct from what is \
experienced or acknowledged by the world at large, for which as j
not merely natural on the one hand, and yet not assumed to be ''
miraculous* on the other, we have no apter name than spiritual.
Now, if neither analogy justifies, nor the moral feelings permit,
the former assumption, and we decide therefore in favor of the
reality of a state other and higher than the mere moral man,
whose religionf consists in morality, has attained under these
convictions ; can the existence of a transitional state appeal-
other than probable ; or that these very convictions, when ac-

* In check of fanatical pretensions, it is expedient to confine the terra
miraculous, to cases where the senses are appealed to, in proof of something
that transcends the experience derived from the senses.

f For let it not be forgotten, that Morality, as distinguished from Pru-
dence, implying (it matters not under what name, whether of honor, or
duty, or conscience, still, I say, implying), and being grounded in, an awe
of the invisible and a confidence therein beyond (nay, occasionally in appa-
rent contradiction to) the inductions of outward experience, is essentially
religious.

172 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

companied by correspondent dispositions and stirrings of the
heart, are among the marks and indications of such a state?
And thinking it not unlikely that among the readers of this Vol-
ume, there may be found some individuals, whose inward state,
though disquieted by doubts and oftener still perhaps by blank
misgivings, may, nevertheless, betoken the commencement of a
transition from a not irreligious morality to a spiritual religion,—
with a view to their interests I placed this Aphorism under th
present head.

APHORISM XXL

Leighton,

The most approved teachers of wisdom, in a human way, have
required of their scholars, that to the end their minds might be
capable of it, they should be purified from vice and wickedness.
And it was Socrates' custom, when any one asked him a ques-
tion, seeking to be informed by him, before he would answer
them, he asked them concerning their own qualities and course
of life.

APHORISM XXII.

KNOWLEDGE NOT THE ULTIMATE END OF RELIGIOUS PURSUITS.

Leighton and Coleridge.

The hearing and reading of the word, under which I comprise
theological studies generally, are alike defective when pursued
without increase of knowledge, and when pursued chiefly for in-
crease of knowledge. To seek no more than a present delight,
that evanishes with the sound of the words that die in the air, is
not to desire the word as meat, but as music, as God tells the
prophet Ezekiel of his people, Ezek. xxxiii. 32> And lo, thou
art unto them as a very lovely so?zg of one that hath a pleasant
voice, and can play ivell upon an instrument; for they hear
thy words, and they do them not. To desire the word for the
increase of knowledge, although this is necessary and commend-
able, and, being rightly qualified, is a part of spiritual accretion,
yet. take it as going no further, it is not the true end of the woid,
Nor is the venting of that knowledge in speech and frequent dis-
course of the word and the divine truths that are in it ; which,
where it is governed with Christian prudence, is not to be de-
spised, but commended ; yet, certainly, the highest knowledge,

MOKAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 17a

and the most frequent and skilful speaking of the word severed
from the growth here mentioned, misses the true end of the word.
If any one's head or tongue should grow apace, and all the rest
stand at a stay, it would certainly make him a monster ; and
they are no other, who are knowing and discoursing Christians,
and grow daily in that respect, but not at all in holiness of heart
and life, which is the proper growth of the children of God. Ap-
posite to their case is Epictetus's comparison of the sheep ; they
return not what they eat in grass, but in wool.

APHORISM XXIII.

THE SUM OF CHURCH HISTORY.

Leightoii.

In times of peace, the Church may dilate more, and build as it
were into breadth, but in times of trouble, it arises more in
height ; it is then built upwards ; as in cities where men are
straightened, they build usually higher than in the country.

APHORISM XXIV.

WORTHY TO BE FRAMED AND HUNG UP IN THE LIBRARY OE EVERY
THEOLOGICAL STUDENT.

Leighton and Coleridge.

Where there is a great deal of smoke and no clear flame, it
argues much moisture in the matter, yet it witnesseth certainly
that there is fire there ; and therefore dubious questioning is a
much better evidence, than that senseless deadness which most
take for believing. Men that know nothing in sciences, have no
doubts. He never truly believed, who was not made first sensi-
ble and convinced of unbelief.

Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to
believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the
truth. I will venture to add in my own name and from my own
conviction the following :

APHORISM XXV.

He, who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will
proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity,
and end in loving himself better than all.

174 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

APHORISM XXVI.

THE ABSENCE CF DISPUTES, AND A GENERAL AVERSION TO RE-
LIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES NO PROOF OF TRUE UNANIMITY.

Leighton and Coleridge. .

The boasted peaceableness about questions of faith too often
proceeds from a superficial temper, and not seldom from a
supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or
value, and from indifference to religion itself. Toleration is a
herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of indifference ; but the
weed has none of the virtues of the medicinal plant, reared
by humility in the garden of zeal. Those who regard religions
as matters of taste, may consistently include all religious dif-
ferences in the old adage, De gustibus nan est disputandum.
And many there be among these of Gallio's temper, who care for
none of these things, and who account all questions in religion,
as he did, but matter of words and names. And by this all re-
ligions may agree together. But that were not a natural union
produced by the active heat of the spirit, but a confusion rather,
arising from the want of it ; not a knitting together, but a freez-
ing together, as cold congregates all bodies how heterogeneous
soever, sticks, stones and water ; but heat makes first a separation
of different things, and then unites those that are of the same nature.

Much of our common union of minds, I fear, proceeds from no
other than the aforementioned causes, want of knowledge, and
want of affection to religion. You that boast you live conform-
ably to the appointments of the Church, and that no one hears of
your noise, we may thank the ignorance of your minds for that
kind of quietness.

The preceding extract is particularly entitled to our serious re-
flections, as in a tenfold degree more applicable to the present
times than to the age in which it was written. We all know,
that lovers are apt to take offence and wrangle on occasions that
perhaps are but trifles, and which assuredly would appear such to
those who regard love itself as folly. These quarrels may, in-
deed, be no proof of wisdom ; but still, in the imperfect state of
our nature the entire absence of the same, and this too on far
more serious provocations, would excite a strong suspicion of a
comparative indifference in the parties who can love so coolly
where they profess to love so well. I shall believe our present

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 175

religious tolerancy to proceed from the abundance of our charity
and good sense, when I see proofs that we are equally cool and
forbearing as litigants and political partisans.

APHORISM XXVII.

THE INFLUENCE OF WORLDLY VIEWS (OR WHAT ARE CALLED A
MAN'S PROSPECTS IN LIFE), THE BANE OF THE CHRISTIAN MIN-
ISTRY.

Leighton.

It is a base, poor thing for a man to seek himself : far below
that royal dignity that is here put upon Christians, and that
priesthood joined with it. Under the law, those who were
squint-eyed were incapable of the priesthood : truly, this squinting
toward our own interests, the looking aside to that, in God's af-
fairs especially, so deforms the face of the soul, that it makes it
altogether unworthy the honor of this spiritual priesthood. Oh !
this is a large task, an infinite task. The several creatures bear
their part in this ; the sun says somewhat, and moon and stars,
yea, the lowest have some share in it ; the very plants and herbs
of the field speak of God ; and yet, the very highest and best, yea
all of them together, the whole concert of heaven and earth can
not show forth all His praise to the full. No, it is but a part, the
smallest part of that glory, which they can reach.

APHORISM XXVIIL

DESPISE NONE I DESPAIR OF NONE.

Leighton.

The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece
of paper in their way, but took it up : for possibly, said they, the
name of God may be on it. Though there was a little supersti-
tion in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if
we apply it to men. Trample not on any ; there may be some
work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God
may be written upon that soul thou treadest on ; it may be a soul
that Christ thought so much of, as to give his precious blood for
it ; therefore despise it not.

176 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

APHORISM XXIX.

MEN OF LEAST MERIT MOST APT TO BE CONTEMPTUOUS BECAUSE
MOST IGNORANT AND MOST OVERWEENING OF THEMSELVES.

Leighton.

Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves ; for
they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of others,
and scarcely give their good qualities half an eye, while, on the
contrary, in themselves, they study to the full their own advan-
tages, and their weaknesses and defects (as one says), they skip
over, as children do their hard words in their lesson, that are
troublesome to read : and making this uneven parallel, what
wonder if the result be a gross mistake of themselves '

APHORISM XXX.

VANITY MAY STRUT IN RAGS, AND HUMILITY BE ARRAYED IN
PURPLE AND FINE LINEN.

Leighton.

It is not impossible that there may be in some an affected
pride in the meanness of apparel, and in others, under either
neat or rich attire, a very humble unaffected mind : using it
upon some of the aforementioned engagements, or such like, and
yet, the heart not at all upon it. Magnus qui fictilibus utitur
tanquam argento, nee ille minor qui argento tanquam fictilibus,
says Seneca : Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it
were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate
is ho more than earthenware.

APHORISM XXXI.

OF DETRACTION AMONG RELIGIOUS PROFESSORS.

Leighton and Coleridge.

They who have attained to a self-pleasing pitch of civility or
formal religion, have usually that point of presumption with it,
that they make their own size the model and rule to examine all
by. What is below it, they condemn indeed as profane ; but
what is beyond it, they account needless and affected precisenees :
and therefore are as ready as others to let fly invectives or bitter
taunts against it, which are the keen arid poisoned shafts of the
tongue, and a persecution that shall be called to a strict account

MORAL AND KELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 177

The slanders, perchance, may not be altogether forged or un-
; they may be the implements, not the inventions, of malice.
3ut they do not on this account escape the guilt of detraction,
father, it is characteristic of the evil spirit in question, to work
by the advantage of real faults ; but these stretched and aggra-
vated to the utmost. IT is NOT EXPRESSIBLE HOW DEEP A WOUND

A TONGUE SHARPENED TO THIS WORK WILL GIVE, WITH NO NOISE

AND A VERY LITTLE WORD. This is the true white gunpowder,
which the dreaming projectors of silent mischiefs and insensible
poisons sought for in the laboratories of art and nature, in a
world of good ; but which was to be found in its most destructive
form, in the ivorld of evil, the tongue.

APHORISM XXXII.

THE REMEDY.

Leighton.

All true remedy must begin at the heart ; otherwise it will be
but a mountebank cure, a false imagined conquest. The weights
and wheels are there, and the clock strikes according to their
motion. Even he that speaks contrary to what is within him,
guilefully contrary to his inward conviction and knowledge, yet
speaks conformably to what is within him in the temper and
frame of his heart, which is double, a heart and a heart, as the.
Psalmist hath it, PsaL xii. 2.

APHORISM XXXIII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

It is an argument of a candid ingenuous mind, to delight in
the good name and commendations of others ; to pass by their
defects and take notice of their virtues ; and to speak and hear
of those willingly, and not endure either to speak or hear of the
other ; for in this indeed you may be little less guilty than the
evil speaker, in taking pleasure in it, though you speak it not.
lie that willingly drinks in tales and calumnies, will, from the
delight he hath in evil hearing, slide insensibly into the humoi
of evil speaking. It is strange how most persons dispense with
themselves in this point, and that in scarcely any societies shall
we find a hatred of this ill, but rather some tokens of taking
pleasure in it ; and until a Christian sets himself to an inward

H*

178 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

watchfulness over his heart, not suffering in it any thought that
is uncharitable, or vain self-esteem, upon the slight of others'
frailties, he will still be subject to somewhat of this, in the tongue
or ear at least. So, then, as for the evil of guile in the tongue,
a sincere heart, truth in the imvard parts, powerfully redresses
it; therefore it is expressed, Psal. xv. 2, TJiat speaketh the
truth from his heart ; thence it flows. Seek much after this,
to speak nothing with God, nor men, but what is the sense of a
single unfeigned heart. 0 sweet truth ! excellent but rare sin-
cerity ! He that loves that truth ivithin, and who is Himself
at once THE TRUTH and THE LIFE, He alone can work it there !
Seek it of him.

It is characteristic of the Roman dignity and sobriety, that, in
the Latin, to favor ivith the tongue (favere lingua) means, to
*>e silent. We say, Hold your tongue ! as if it were an injunc-
tion, that could not be carried into effect but by manual force, or
the pincers of the forefinger and thumb ! And verily — I blush
to say it — it is not women and Frenchmen only that would
rather have their tongues bitten than bitted, and feel their souls
in a strait- waistcoat, when they are obliged to remain silent.

APHORISM XXXIV.

ON THE PASSION FOR NEW AND STRIKING THOUGHTS.

Leighton.

In conversation seek not so much either to vent thy knowl-
edge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually and effectually
what thou dost know. And in this way those mean despised
truths, that every one thinks he is sufficiently seen in, will have
a new sweetness and use in them, which thou didst not so well
perceive before — (for these flowers can not be sucked dry) ; and
in this humble sincere way thou shalt groiv in grace and in
knowledge too.

APHORISM XXXV.

THE RADICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GOOD MAN AND THE
VICIOUS MAN.

Leigliton and Coleridge.

The godly man hates the evil he possibly by temptation hath
been drawn to do, and loves the good he is frustrated of, and.

MORAL AND KELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 179

having intended, hath not attained to do. The sinner, who hath
his denomination from sin as his course, hates the good which
sometimes he is forced to do, and loves that sin which many times
he does not, either wanting occasion and means, so that he can
not do it, or through the check of an enlightened conscience pos-
sibly dares. not do ; and though so bound up from the act, as a
dog in a chain, yet the habit, the natural inclination and desire
in him is still the same, the strength of his affection is carried to
sin. So in the weakest sincere Christian, there is that predomi-
nant sincerity and desire of holy walking, according to which he
is called a righteous person : the Lord is pleased to give him that
name, and account him so. being upright in heart though often
failing.

Leighton adds, " There is a righteousness of a higher strain."
I do not ask the reader's full assent to this position : I do not sup-
pose him as yet prepared to yield it. But thus much he will
readily admit, that here, if anywhere, we are to seek the fine
line which, like stripes of light in light, distinguishes, not divides,
the summit of religious morality from spiritual religion.

" A righteousness" Leighton continues, " that is not in him,
but upon him. He is clothed with it." This, Reader ! is the
controverted doctrine, so warmly asserted and so bitterly decried
under the name of IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS. Our learned arch-
bishop, you see, adopts it ; and it is on this account principally,
that by many of our leading churchmen his orthodoxy has been
more than questioned, and his name put in the list of proscribed
divines, as a Calvinist. That Leighton attached a definite sense
to the words above quoted, it would be uncandid to doubt ; and
the general spirit of his writings leads me to presume that it was
compatible with the eternal distinction between things and per-
sons, and therefore opposed to modern Calvinism. But what it
was, I have not, I own, been able to discover. The sense, how-
ever, in which I think he might have received this doctrine, and
in which I avow myself a believer in it, I shall have an oppor-
tunity oi showing in another place. My present object is to open
out the road by the removal of prejudices, so far at least as to
throw some disturbing doubts on the secure taking-for-gr anted,
that the peculiar tenets of the Christian faith asserted in the Ar-
ticles and Homilies of our national Church are in contradiction to
the common sense of mankind. And with this* view (and not

180 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

in the arrogant expectation or wish, that a mere ipse dixit should
be received for argument) — I here avow my conviction, that the
doctrine of IMPUTED righteousness, rightly and Scripturally inter-
preted, is so far from being either irrational or immoral, that
reason itself prescribes the idea in order to give a meaning and
an ultimate object to morality ; and that the moral law in the
conscience demands its reception in order to give reality and sub-
el antive existence to the idea presented by the reason.

APHORISM XXXVI.

Leighton.

Your blessedness is not, — no, believe it, it is not where most of
you seek it, in things below you. How can that be ? It must be
a higher good to make you happy.

COMMENT.

[Every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation,
leaves death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of
being seems a mute prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a
mimic semblance of which it crystallizes. The blossom and
flower, the acme of vegetable life., divides into correspondent or-
gans with reciprocal functions, and by instinctive motions and
approximations seems impatient of that fixure, by which it is
differenced in kind from the flower-shaped Psyche, that flutters
with free wing above it. And wonderfully in the insect realm
doth the irritability, the proper seat of instinct, while yet the
nascent sensibility is subordinated thereto — most wonderfully, I
say, doth the muscular life in the insect, and the musco-arterial
in the bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive under-
standing, yea, and the moral affections and charities, of man.
Let us carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious week, the
teeming work-days of the Creator ; as they rose in vision before
the eye of the inspired historian of the generations of the heavens
and of the earth, in the day that the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens* And who that hath watched their ways with
an understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving still ad-
vanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal Bee ; the
hoine-building, wedded, and divorceless Swallow ; and above all

* Gen. ii. 4.— Ed.

MORAL AND EELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 181

the manifoldly intelligent* Ant tribes, with their commonwealths
and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husband-folk,
that fold in their tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, and the virgin
sisters with the holy instincts of maternal love, detached and in
selfless purity — and not say to himself, Behold the shadow of ap-
proaching humanity, the sun rising from behind, in the kindling
morn of creation ! Thus all lower natures find their highest good
in semblances g.nd seekings of that which is higher and better.
All things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And
shall man alone stoop ? Shall his pursuits and desires, the re-
flections of his inward life, be like the reflected image of a tree
on the edge of a pool, that grows downward, and seeks a mock
heaven in the unstable element beneath it, in neighborhood with
the slim water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that are yet better
than itself and more noble, in as far as substances that appear as
shadows are preferable to shadows mistaken for substance. No !
it must be a higher good to make you happy. "While you labor \
for any thing below your proper humanity, you seek a happy life 1
in the region of death. Well saith the moral poet —

Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man !

APHORISM XXXVII.

Leighton.

There is an imitation of men that is impious and wicked,
which consists in taking the copy of their sins. Again, there is
an imitation which though not so grossly evil, yet is poor and ser-
vile, being in mean things, yea, sometimes descending to imitate
the very imperfections of others, as fancying some comeliness in
them : as some of Basil's scholars, who imitated his slow speak-
ing, which he had a little in the extreme, and could not help.
But this is always laudable, and worthy of the best minds, to be
imitators of that which is good, wheresoever they find it ; for
that stays not in any man's person, as the ultimate pattern, but
rises to the highest grace, being man's nearest likeness to God,
His image and resemblance, bearing His stamp and superscrip-
tion, arid belonging peculiarly to Him, in what hand soever it be
found, as carrying the mark of no other owner than Him

* See Huber on Bees, and on Ants.

182 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

APHORISM XXXVIII.

Leighton.

Those who thiiiK themselves high-spirited, and will bear least,

as they speak, are often, even by that, forced to bow most, or to

burst under it; while Jiumility and meekness escape many a

/ burden, and many a blow, always keeping peace within, and

often without too.

f

APHORISM XXXIX.

Leightoii.

Our condition is universally exposed to fears and troubles, and
no man is so stupid but he studies and projects for some fence
against them, some bulwark to break the incursion of evils, and
so to bring his rnind to some ease, ridding it of the fear of them.
Thus, men seek safety in the greatness, or multitude, or supposed
faithfulness, of friends ; they seek by any means to be strongly
underset this way, to have many, and powerful, and trustworthy
friends. But wiser men, perceiving the unsafety and vanity of
these and all external things, have cast about for some higher
course. They see a necessity of withdrawing a man from exter-
nals, which do nothing but mock and deceive those most who
trust most to them ; but they can not tell whither to direct him.
The best of them bring him into himself, and think to quiet him
so, but the truth is, he finds as little to support him there ; there
is nothing truly strong enough within him, to hold out against the
many sorrows and fears which still from without do assault him.
So then, though it is well done, to call off a man from outward
things, as moving sands, that he build not on them, yet this is
not enough ; for his own spirit is as unsettled a piece as is in all
the world, and must have some higher strength than its own, to
fortify and fix it. This is the way that is here taught, Fear not
their fear, but sanctify the Lord your God in your hearts : and
if you can attain this latter, the former will follow of itself.

APHORISM XL.

WORLDLY TROUBLES IDOLS.

Leighton.

The too ardent love or self-willed desire of power, or wealth,
ov credit in the world, is (an Apostle has assured us) idolatry.
Now among the words or synonymes for idols in the Hebrew Ian-

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 183

guage, there is one that in its primary sense signifies trouble*
(tegirim), other two that signify terrors (niiphletzeth and enim).
And so it is certainly. All our idols prove so to us. They fill
us with nothing but anguish and troubles, with cares and fears,
that are good for nothing but to be fit punishments of the folly,
out of which they arise.

APHORISM XLL

ON THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF INFIDELS.

Leighton and Coleridge.

A regardless contempt of infidel writings is usually the fittest
answer : Sprcfai vilescerent. But where the holy profession of
Christians is likely to receive either the main or the indirect blow,
and a word of defence may do any thing to ward it off, there we
ought not to spare to do it.

Christian prudence goes a great way in the regulating of this.
Some are not capable of receiving rational answers, especially in
divine things ; they were not only lost upon them, but religion
dishonored by the contest.

Of this sort are the vulgar railers at religion, the foul-mouthed
beliers of the Christian faith and history. Impudently false and
slanderous assertions can be met only by assertions of their impu-
dent and slanderous falsehood : and Christians will not, must not,
condescend to this. How can mere railing be answered by them
who are forbidden to return a railing answer ? Whether, or on
what provocations, such offenders may be punished or coerced on
the score of incivility, and ill-neighborhood, and for abatement of
a nuisance, as in the case of other scolds and endangerers of the
public peace, must be trusted to the discretion of the civil magis-
trate. Eren then there is danger of giving them importance,
and flattering their vanity, by attracting attention to their works,
if the punishment be slight ; and if severe, of spreading far and
wide their reputation as martyrs, as the smell of a dead dog at a
distance is said to change into that of musk. Experience hith-
erto seems to favor the plan of treating these betes puantes and
enfam de Diable, as their four-footed brethren, the skink and
squash, are freated* by American woodmen, who turn their backs

* " About the end of the same year," (says Kalni), " another of these an-
imals (Mephitis Americana) orept into our cellar; but did not exhale the

184 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

upon the fetid intruder, and make appear not to see him, even at
the cost of suffering him to regale on the favorite viand of these
animals, the brains of a stray goose or crested thraso of the dung-
hill. At all events, it is degrading to the majesty, and injurious
to the character, of religion, to make its safety the plea for their
punishment, or at all to connect the name of Christianity with
the castigation of indecencies that properly belong to the beadle,
and the perpetrators of which would have equally deserved hia
lash, though the religion of their fellow-citizens, thus assailed by
them, had been that of Fo or of Juggernaut.

On the other hand, we are to answer every one that inquires
a reason, or an account ; which supposes something receptive of
it. "We ought to judge ourselves engaged to give it, be it an en-
emy, if he will hear ; if it gain him not, it may in part convince
and cool him ; much more, should it be one who ingenuously in-
quires for satisfaction, and possibly inclines to receive the truth,
but has been prejudiced by misrepresentations of it.

APHORISM XLIL

PASSION NO FRIEND TO TRUTH.

Leightou.

Truth needs not the service of passion ; yea, nothing so disserves
it, as passion when set to serve it. The Spirit of truth is
withal the Spirit of meekness. The Dove that rested on that
great champion of truth, who is The Truth itself, is from Him
derived to the lovers of truth, and they ought to seek the partici-
pation of it. Imprudence makes some kind of Christians lose
much of their labor in speaking for religion, and drive those fur-
ther off, whom they would draw into it.

The confidence that attends a Christian's belief makes the be-
liever not fear men, to whom he answers, but still he fears his
God, for whom he answers, and whose interest is chief in those
things he speaks of. The soul that hath the deepest sense of

smallest scent, because it was not disturbed. A foolish old woman, however,
who perceived it at night, by the shining, and thought, I suppose, that it would
set the world on fire, killed it ; and at that moment its stench began to spread."
I recommend this anecdote to the consideration of sundry old women, on
this side of the Atlantic, who, though they do not wear the appropriate
garment, are worthy to sit in their committee-room, like Bickerstaff in th«
Tatler, under the canopy of their grandam's hoop-petticoat.

MOKAL AND KELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 185

spiritual things, and the truest knowledge of God, is most afraid
to miscarry in speaking of Him, most tender and wary how to
acquit itself when engaged to speak of and for God.1*

APHORISM XLIII.

ON THE CONSCIENCE.

Leighton.

It is a fruitless verbal debate, whether Conscience be a faculty
or a habit. When all is examined, conscience will be found to be
no other than the mind of a man, under the notion of a particu-
lar reference to himself and his own actions.

COMMENT.

I rather think that conscience is the ground and antecedent
of human (or self-) consciousness, and not any modification of the
latter. I have selected the preceding extract as an exercise for
reflection; and because I think that in too closely following
Thomas a Kempis, the Archbishop has strayed from his own
judgment. The definition, for instance, seems to say all, and in
fact says nothing ; for if I asked, How do you define the human
mind ? the answer must at least contain, if not consist of, the
words, " a mind capable of conscience." For conscience is no
synonyme of consciousness, nor any mere expression of the same
as modified by the particular object. On the contrary, a con-
sciousness properly human (that is, self-consciousness), with the
sense of moral responsibility, pre-supposes the conscience as its
antecedent condition and ground. — Lastly, the sentence, " It is a
fruitless verbal debate," — is an assertion of the same complexion
with the contemptuous sneers at verbal criticism by the contem-
poraries of Bentley. In questions of philosophy or divinity that

* To the same purpose are the two following sentences from Hilary :
Etiam qucc pro religione dicimns, cum grandi metu et disciplina dicevc
debemus. — Hilarius de Trinit. Lib. 7.

Non relictus est hominum eloquiis de Dei rebus alius qitam Dei sermo. — Il>
The latter, however, must be taken with certain qualifications and excep-
tions : as when any two or more texts are in apparent contradiction, and it
is required to state a truth that comprehends and reconciles both, and which,
of course, can not be expressed in the words of either : — for example, the
Filial subordination (My Father is greater than 1], in the equal Deity f J/V
Father and I are one).

186 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

have occupied the learned and been the subjects of many succes-
sive controversies, for one instance of mere logomachy I could
bring ten instances of logodsedaly, or verbal legerdemain, which
have perilously confirmed prejudices, and withstood the advance-
ment of truth, in consequence of the neglect of verbal debate, that is,
strict discussion of terms. In whatever sense, however, the term
Conscience may be used, the following Aphorism is equally true and
important. It is worth noticing, likewise, that Leightoii himself
in a following page, tells us, that a good conscience is the root of .a
good conversation : and then quotes from St. Paul a text, Titus i. 1 5,
in which the Mind and the Conscience are expressly distinguished.

APHORISM XLIV.

THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE A NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENT OF A
GOOD CONSCIENCE.

Leighton.

If you would have a good conscience, you must by all means
have so much light, so much knowledge of the will of God, as
may regulate you, and show you your way, may teach you how
to do, and speak, and think, as in His presence.

APHORISM XLV.

YET THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULE, THOUGH ACCOMPANIED BY AN
ENDEAVOR TO ACCOMMODATE OUR CONDUCT TO THIS RULE, WILL
NOT OF ITSELF FORM A GOOD CONSCIENCE.

Leightoii.

To set the outward actions right, though with an honest in-
tention, and not so to regard and find out the inward disorder
of the heart, whence that in the actions flows, is but to be still
putting the index of a clock right with your finger, while it is
foul or out of order within, which is a continual business and
does no good. Oh ! but a purified conscience, a soul renewed
and refined in its temper and affections, will make things go right
without, in all the duties and acts of our calling.

APHORISM XLVI.

THE DEPTH OF THE CONSCIENCE

How deeply seated the Conscience is in the human soul, is seen
in the effect which sudden calamities produce on guilty men, even

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 187

when unaided by any determinate notion or fears of punishment
after death. The wretched criminal, as one rudely awakened
from a long sleep, bewildered with the new light, and half rec-
ollecting, half striving to recollect, a fearful something, he knows
not what, but which he will recognize as soon as he hears the
name, already interprets the calamities into judgments, executions
of a sentence passed by an invisible judge ; as if the vast pyre
of the last judgment were already kindled in an unknown dis-
tance, and some flashes of it, darting forth at intervals beyond
the rest, were flying and lighting upon the face of his soul. The
calamity may consist in the loss of fortune, or character, or repu-
tation ; but you hear no regrets from him. Remorse extinguishes
all regret ; and remorse is the implicit creed of the guilty.

APHORISM XLVII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

God hath suited every creature He hath made with a conve-
nient good to which it tends, and in the obtainment of which it
rests and is satisfied. Natural bodies have all their own natural
place, whither, if not hindered, they move incessantly till they
be in it ; and they declare, by resting there, that they are (as I
may say) where they would be. Sensitive creatures are carried
to seek a sensitive good, as agreeable to their rank in being, and,
attaining that, aim no further. Now in this is the excellency
of man, that he is made capable of a communion with his Maker,
and, because capable of it, is unsatisfied without it : the soul, be-
ing cut out (so to speak) to that largeness, can not be filled with
less. Though he is fallen from his right to that good, and from
all right desire of it, yet not from a capacity of it, no, nor from a
necessity of it, for the answering and filling of his capacity.

Though the heart once gone from God turns continually fur-
ther away from Him, and moves not towards Him till it be re-
newed, yet, even in that wandering, it retains that natural rela-
tion to God, as its centre, that it hath no true rest elsewhere, nor
can by any means find it. It is made for Him, and is therefore
still restless till it meet with Him.

It is true, the natural man takes much pains to quiet his heart
by other things, and digests many vexations with hopes of con-
tentment in the end and accomplishment of some design he hath :
but Btill the heart misgives. Many times he attains not the

188 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

thing he seeks ; but if he do, yet he never attains the satisfaction
he seeks and expects in it, but only learns from that to desire
something further, and still hunts on after a fancy, drives his own
shadow before him, and never overtakes it ; and if he did, yet it
is but a shadow. And so, in running from God, besides the sad
end, he carries an interwoven punishment with his sin, the natu-
al disquiet and vexation of his spirit, fluttering to and fro, and
finding no rest for the sole of his foot : the waters of inconstancy
and vanity covering the whole face of the earth.

These things are too gross and heavy. The soul, the immortal
soul, descended from heaven, must either be more happy or re-
main miserable. The highest, the uncreated Spirit, is the proper
good, the Father of spirits, that pure and full Good which raises
the soul above itself; whereas all other things draw it down be-
low itself. So, then, it is never well with the soul, but when it
is near unto God, yea, in its union with Him, married to Him ;
mismatching itself elsewhere it hath never any thing but shame
and sorrow. All that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, says the
Prophet Jer. xvii. 13 ; and the Psalmist, They that are far off
from Thee shall perish. Psal. Ixxiii. 27. And this is indeed
our natural miserable condition, and it is often expressed this
way, by estrangedness and distance from God.

The same sentiments are to be found in the works of Pagan
philosophers and moralists. Well then may they be made a sub-
ject of reflection in our days. And well may the pious Deist, if
such a character now exists, reflect that Christianity alone both
teaches the way, and provides the means, of fulfilling the obscure
promises of this great instinct for all men, which the philosophy
of boldest pretensions confined to the sacred few.

APHORISM XLVIIL

A CONTRACTED SPHERE, OR WHAT IS CALLED RETIRING FROM
THE BUSINESS OF THE WORLD, NO SECURITY FROM THE SPILIT
OF THE WORLD.

Leighton,

The heart may be engaged in a little business as much, if thou
watch it not, as in many and great affairs. A man may drown
in a little brook or pool, as well as in a great river, if he be down
and plunge himself into it, and put his head under water. Some
care thou must have, that thou mayest not care. Those things

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. Ib9

that are thorns indeed, thou must make a hedge of them, to keep
out those temptations that accompany sloth, and extreme want
that waits on it ; but let them be the hedge : suffer them not
to grow within the garden.

APHORISM XLIX.

ON CHURCH-GOING, AS A PART OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY, WHEN
NOT IN REFERENCE TO A SPIRITUAL RELIGION.

Leighton.

It is a strange folly in multitudes of us, to set ourselves no
mark; to propound no end in the hearing of the Gospel. The
merchant sails not merely that he may sail, but for traffic, and
traffics that he may be rich. The husbandman plows not merely
to keep himself busy, with no further end, but plows that he may
sow. and sows that he may reap with advantage. And shall we
do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitlessly — hear, only to
hear, and look no further ? This is indeed a great vanity and a
great misery, to lose that labor, and gain nothing by it, which,
duly used, would be of all others most advantageous and gainful ;
and yet all meetings are full of this ! ,

APHORISM L.

ON THE HOPES AND SELF-SATISFACTION OF A RELIGIOUS MORALIST,

INDEPENDENT OF A SPIRITUAL FAITH ON WHAT ARE THEY

GROUNDED ?

Leighton.

There have been great disputes one way or another, about the
merit of good works ; but I truly think they who have laboriously
engaged in them have been very idly, though very eagerly, em-
ployed about nothing, since the more sober of the Schoolmen
themselves acknowledge there can be no such thing as meriting
from the blessed God, in the human, or, to speak more accurate-
ly, in any created nature whatsoever ; nay so far from any possi-
bility of merit, there can be no room for reward any otherwise
than of the sovereign pleasure and gracious kindness of God ; and
the more ancient writers, when they use the word merit, mean I
nothing by it but a certain correlate to that reward which God |
both promises and bestows of mere grace and benignity. Other-
wise, in order to constitute what is properly called merit, many

190 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

things must concur, which no man in his senses will presume to
attribute to human works, though ever so excellent ; particularly,
that the thing done must not previously be matter of debt, and
that it be entire, or our own act, unassisted by foreign aid ; it
must also be perfectly good, and it must bear an adequate pro-
portion to the reward claimed in consequence of it. If all these
things do not concur, the act can not possibly amount to merit.
Whereas I think no one will venture to assert, that any one of
these can take place in any human action whatever. But why
hould I enlarge here, when one single circumstance overthrows
all those titles ? The most righteous of mankind would not be
able to stand, if his works were weighed in the balance of strict
justice; how much less then could they deserve that immense
glory which is now in question ! Nor is this to be denied only
concerning the unbeliever and the sinner, but concerning the
righteous and pious believer, who is not only free from all the
guilt of his former impenitence and rebellion, but endowed with
the gift of the Spirit For the time is come that judgment must
begin at the house of God ; and if it first begin at us, ivhat
shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God ? And
if the righteous scarcely be saved, ^vhere shall the ungodly and
the sinner appear? 1 Peter iv. 17, 18. The Apostle's interro-
gation expresses the most vehement negation, and signifies that
no mortal, in whatever degree he is placed, if he be called to the
strict examination of divine justice, without daily and repeated
forgiveness, could be able to keep his standing, and much less
could he arise to that glorious height. ' That merit,' says Ber-
/ nard, ' on which my hope relies, consists in these three things ;
j the love of adoption, the truth of the promise, and the power of
/ its performance.' This is the three-fold cord which can not be
broken.

COMMENT.

Often have I heard it said by advocates for the Socinian

| scheme — True ! we are all sinners ; but even in the Old Testa-

,' ment God has promised forgiveness on repentance. One of the

Fathers (I forget which) supplies the retort — True ! God has

promised pardon on penitence ; but has he promised penitence on

sin ? — He that repenteth shall be forgiven ; but where isHTsaid,

He that sinneth shall repent ? But repentance, perhaps, the re-

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 191

penlance required in Scripture, the passing into a new and con-
trary principle of action, this METANOIA, is in the sinner's own
power ? at his own liking ? He has but to open his eyes to the
sin, and the tears are close at hand to wash it away ? — Verily,
the tenet of Transuhstantiation is scarcely at greater variance
with the common sense and experience of mankind, or borders
more closely on a contradiction in terms, than this volunteer
transmentation, this self-change, as the easy means of self-salva
tion ! But the reflections of our evangelical Author on this sub-
ject will appropriately commence the Aphorisms relating to
Spiritual Religion.

ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY.

PRELIMINARY TO THE APHORISMS ON
SPIRITUAL RELIGION.

PJtilip saith unto him : Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus

saith unto him, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father : and how sayesi

t/iou then, Show us the father / Believest thou not that I am in the

Father and the Father in me? And I will pray the Father and he shall

give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth : whom the world can

not receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know

; him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. And in that day ye shall

; know that 1 am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you. John xiv. 8, 9..

10, 16, 17, 20.

PRELIMINARY.

IF there be aught spiritual in man, the Will must be such.

If there be a Will, there must be a spirituality in man.

I suppose both positions granted. The Reader admits the
reality of the power, agency, or mode of being expressed in the
term, Spirit ; and the actual existence of a Will. He sees clearly
that the idea of the former is necessary to the conceivability of
the latter ; and that, vice versa, in asserting the fact of the latter
he presumes and instances the truth of the former ; — -just as in
our common and received systems of natural philosophy, the
being of imponderable matter is assumed to render the lode-stone
intelligible, and the fact of the lode-stone adduced to prove the
reality of imponderable matter.

In short, I suppose the Reader, whom I now invite to the_third
and last division of this Work, already disposed to reject for him-
self and his human brethren the insidious title of " Nature's
I noblest animal," or to retort it as the unconscious irony of the
Epicurean poet on the amrnalizing tendency of his own philoso-

ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 193

phy. I suppose him convinced, that there is more in man than
can be rationally referred to the life of nature and the mechanism •
of organization ; that he has a will not included in this mechan-
ism ; and that the will is in an especial and pre-eminent senst
the spiritual part of our humanity.

Unless, then, we have some distinct notion of the Will, and
some acquaintance with the prevalent errors respecting the same,
an insight into the nature of spiritual religion is scarcely possible ;
and our reflections on the particular truths and evidences of a
spiritual state will remain obscure, perplexed, and unsafe. To
place my Reader on this requisite vantage-ground, is the purpose
of the following exposition.

We have begun, as in (geometry, yith definingjour terms ; and
we proceed, like the geometricians, with stating our postulates ;
the difference being, that the postulates of geometry no man can
deny, those of moral science as such as no good man will deny.
For it is not in our power to disclaim our nature as sentient
beings ; but it is in our power to disclaim our nature a§ moral
beings. It is possible — (barely possible, I admit) — that a man
may have remained ignorant or unconscious of the moral law
within him ; and a man need only persist in disobeying the law
of conscience to make it possible for himself to deny its existence,
or to reject and repel it as a phantom of superstition. Were it
otherwise, the Creed would stand in the same relation to morality
as the muliplication table.

This then is the distinction of moral philosophy — not that I
begin with one or more assumptions ; for this is common to all
science ; but — that I assume a something, the proof of which no
man can give to another, yet every man may find for himself.
If any man assert that he can not find it, I am bound to disbe-
lieve him. I can not do otherwise without unsettling the very
foundations of my own moral nature. For I either find it as an
essential of the humanity common to him and me : or I have not
found it at all, except as a hypochondriast finds glass legs. If, on
the other hand, he will not find it, he excommunicates himself.
He Forfeits his personal rights, and becomes a thing : that is, one
who may rightfully be employed or used, as* means to an end,
against his will, and without regard to his interest.

* On this principle alone is it possible to justify capital or ignominious
punishments, or indeed any punishment not having the reformation of the
VOL. I. I

194 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

All the significant objections of the Materialist and Necessita-
rian are contained in the term, Morality, ail the objections of the
Infidel in the term, Religion. The very terms, I say, imply a
something granted, which the objection supposes not granted.
The term presumes what the objection denies, and in denying
presumes the contrary. For it is most important to observe, that
the reasoners on both sides commence by taking something for
granted, our assent to which they ask or demand : that is, both
set off with an assumption in the form of a postulate. But the
Epicure ajL assumes what according to himself he neither is nor
can be under any obligation to assume, and demands what he can
have no right to demand : for he denies the reality of all moral
obligation, the existence of any right. If he use the words, right
and obligation, he does it deceptively, and means only power and
compulsion. To overthrow the faith in aught higher or othei
than nature and physical necessity, is the very purpose of his
argument. He desires you only to take for granted, that all
reality is included in nature, and he may then safely defy you to
ward off his conclusion — that nothing is excluded !

But as he can not morally demand, neither can he rationally
expect, your assent to this premiss : for he can not be ignorant,
that the best and greatest of men have devoted their lives to the
enforcement of the contrary ; that the vast majority of the human
race in all ages and in all nations have believed in the contrary ;
and that there is not a language on earth, in which he could
argue, for ten minutes, in support of his scheme, without sliding
into words and phrases that imply the contrary. It has been
said, that the Arabic has a thousand names for a lion ; but this
would be a trifle compared with the number of superfluous words
and useless synonymes that would be found in an index expurga-
torius of any European dictionary, constructed on the principles
of a consistent and strictly consequential Materialism.

criminal as one of its objects. Such punishments, like those inflicted on
suicides, must be regarded as posthumous : the wilful extinction of the
moral and personal life being, for the purposes of punitive justice, equiva-
lent to a -\vilful destruction of the natural life. If the speech of Judge Bur-
net to the horse-stealer, — (You are not hanged for stealing a horse ; but, that
horses may not be stolen) — can be vindicated to all, it must be on this prin-
ciple; and not on the all-unsettling scheme of expedience, which is the
anarchy of morals.

ELEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 195

The Christian likewise grounds his philosophy on assertions ;
but with the best of all reasons for making them — namely, that
he ought so to do. He asserts what he can neither prove, nor
account for, nor himself comprehend ; but with the strongest in-
ducements, that of understanding thereby whatever else it most
concerns him to understand aright. And yet his assertions have
nothing in them of theory or hypothesis ; but are in immediate
reference to three ultimate facts ; namely, the reality of the lav/
of CONSCIENCE ; the existence of a responsible WILL, as the sub-
ject of that law ; and lastly, the existence of EVIL — of evil es-
sentially such, not by accident of outward circumstances, not de
rived from its physical consequences, nor from any cause out of
itself. The first is a fact of consciousness ; the second a fact of
reason necessarily concluded from the first ; and the third a fact
of history interpreted by both.

Omnia exeunt in mysterium, says a Schoolman ; that is,
There is nothing, the absolute ground of which is not a mystery.
The contrary were indeed a contradiction in terms : for how can
that, which is to explain all things, be susceptible of an explana-
tion ? It would be to suppose the same thing first and second
at the same time.

If I rested here, j^should jmerely have jglacedjnoy creed in
direct opposition to that of the Necessitarians^ who assume — (foi
observe, both parties begin in an assumption and can not do
otherwise) — that motives act on the will, as bodies act on "bodies ;
and that whether^ mind and matter are essentially the same, 01
essentially different, they are both alike under one and the same
law of compulsory causation. But this is far from exhausting
my intention. Tjrman flt thft samo. fimp. to oppose the disciples
oj^haftesbur^ji^jthosejwho, substituting^ one faith for another,
have been well calledthe pious jDejsis_.of the last ggjvhiry, in
order to distinguish them from the infidels of the present age,
who persuade themselves — (for the thing itself is not possible)
— that they reject all faith. I declare my dissent from these too.
because they imposed upon themselves an idea for a fact : a
most sublime idea indeed, and so necessary to human nature,
that without it no virtue is conceivable ; but still an idea. In
contradiction to their splendid but delusory tenets, I profess a
deep conviction that man was and is a fallen creature, not by I
accidents of bodily constitution or any other cause, which human I

196 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

wisdom in a course of ages might be supposed capable of remov-
ing ; but as diseased in his will, in that will which is the true
and only strict synonyme of the wordjj^ or the intelligent Self.
Thus at each of these two opposite roads (the philosophy of
Hobbes and that of Shaftesbury), I have placed a directing post;
informing my fellow-travellers, that on neither of these roads can
they see the truths to which I would direct their attention.

But the place of starting was at the meeting of four roads
and one only was the right road. I proceed therefore to preclude
the opinion of those likewise, who indeed agree with me as to
the moral responsibility of man in opposition to Hobbes and the
anti-moralists, and that he is a fallen creature, essentially dir-
eased, in opposition to Shaftesbury and the misinterpreters ol
Plato ; but who differ from me in exaggerating the diseased
weakness of the will into an absolute privation of all freedom,
thereby making moral responsibility, not a mystery above com-
prehension, but a direct contradiction, of which we do distinctly
comprehend the absurdity. Among the consequences of this
doctrine, is that direful one of swallowing up all the attributes
of the Supreme Being in the one attribute of infinite jpqwer, and
thence deducing that things are good and wise because they were
created, and not created through wisdom and goodness. Thence
too the awful attribute of justice is explained away into a mere
right of absolute property ; the sacred distinction between things
and persons is erased ; and the selection of persons for virtue and
vice in this life, and for eternal happiness or misery in the next,
is represented as the result of a mere will, acting in the blind-
ness and solitude of its own infinity. The title of a work writ-
ten by the great and pious Boyle is, " Of the awe which the
human mind owes to the Supreme Reason." This, in the lan-
guage of these gloomy doctors, must be translated into — "The
honor, which a being capable of eternal pleasure or pain is com-
pelled to feel at the idea of an Infinite Power, about to inflict
the latter on an immense majority of human souls, without any
power on their part either to prevent it or the actions which are
(not indeed its causes but) its assigned signals, and preceding
links of the same iron chain '"

Against these tenets I maintain, that a will conceived separ-
ately from intelligence is a nonentity, and a mere phantasm of
abstraction ; and that a will, the state of which does in no sense

ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 197

originate in its own act, is an absolute contradiction. It might
be an instinct, an impulse, a plastic power, and, if accompanied
with consciousness, a desire ; but a will it could not be. And
this every human being knows with equal clearness, though
different minds may reflect on it with different degrees of distinct
ness ; for who would not smile at the notion of a rose willing to
put forth its buds and expand them into flowers ? That such a
phrase would be deemed a poetic license proves the difference in
the things : for all metaphors are grounded on an apparent like-
ness of things essentially different. I utterly disclaim the notion,
that any human intelligence, with whatever power it might
manifest itself, is alone adequate to the office of restoring health
to the will : but at the same time I deem it impious and absuH
to hold that the Creator would have given us the faculty of rea-
son, or that the Redeemer would in so many varied forms of argu-
ment and persuasion have appealed to it, if it had been either
totally useless or wholly impotent. Lastly, I find all these
several truths reconciled and united in the belief, that the imper-
fect human understanding can be effectually exerted only in sub-
ordination to, and in a dependent alliance with, the means and
aidances supplied by the All-perfect and Supreme Reason ; but
that under these conditions it is not only an admissible, but a
necessary instrument of bettering both ourselves and others.

We may now proceed to our reflections on the Spirit of Religion
The first three or four Aphorisms I have selected from the theo-
logical works of Dr. Henry .More , a contemporary of Archbishop
Leighton, and, like him, held in suspicion by the Calvinists of that
time as a Latitudinarian and Platonizing divine, and who proba-
bly, like him, would have been arraigned as a Calvinist by the
Latitudinarians (I can not say, Platonists) of this day, had the
suspicion been equally groundless. One or two I have ventured
to add from my own reflections. The purpose, however, is the
same in all — that of declaring, in the first place, what spiritual
religion is not, what is not a religious spirit, and what are not to
be deemed influences of the Spirit. If after these disclaimers I
shall without proof be charged by any with renewing or favoring
the errors of the Familists, Yanists, Seekers, Behmenists, or by
whatever other names Church history records the poor bewildered
enthusiasts, who in the swarming time of our Republic, turned
the facts of the Gospel into allegories, and superseded the written

198 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

ordinances of Christ by a pretended teaching and sensible presence
of the Spirit, I appeal against them to their own consciences as
wilful slanderers. But if with proof, I have in these Aphorisms
signed and sealed my own condemnation.

" These things I could not forbear to write. For the light
within me, that is, my reason and conscience, does assure me, that
the ancient and Apostolic faith, according to the historical mean-
ing thereof, and in the literal sense of the Creed, is solid and true :
and that Familism^ in its fairest form and under whatever dis-
guise, is a smooth tale to seduce the simple from their allegiance
to Christ."

HENRY

* The Family of Love, a sect founded by Henry Nicholas in Holland in
1655.— Ed.
f Myut. of Godliness, vi.— Ed.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION.

Aud here it will not be impertinent to observe, that what the eldest Greek
philosophy entitled the Reason (NOY2) and ideas, the philosophic Apos-
tle names the Spirit and truths spiritually discerned : while to those who,
in the pride of learning or inlhe overweening meanness of modern meta-
physics, decry the doctrine of the Spirit in man and its possible commu-
nion with the Holy Spirit as vulgar enthusiasm, I submit the following
sentences from a Pagan philosopher, a nobleman and a minister of state — •
" Ita dico, Lucili, sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nos-
trorum observator et custos. Hie prout a nobis tractatus est, ita nos ipse
tractat. Bonus vir sine Deo nemo est" SENECA. Epist. xli.

APHORISM I.

H. More.

EVERY one is to give a reason of his faith; but priests and
ministers more punctually than any, their province being to make
good every sentence of the Bible to a rational inquirer into the
truth of these oracles. Enthusiasts find it an easy thing to heat
the fancies of unlearned and unreflecting hearers ; but when a
sober man would be satisfied of the grounds from whence they
speak, he shall not have one syllable or the least tittle of a perti-
nent answer. Only they will talk big of the Spirit, and inveigh
against reason with bitter reproaches, calling it carnal or fleshly,
though it be indeed no soft flesh, but enduring and penetrant steel,
even the sword of the Spirit, and such as pierces to the heart.

APHORISM II

H. More.

There are two very bad things in this resolving of men's faith
and practice into the immediate suggestion of a Spirit not acting
on our understandings, or rather into the illumination of such a
Spirit as they can give no account of, such as does not enlighten
their reason or enable them to render their doctrine intelligible

200 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

to others. First, it defaces and makes useless that part of the
image of God in us, which we call reason : and secondly, it takes
away that advantage, which raises Christianity above all other
religions, that she dares appeal to so solid a faculty.

APHORISM III.

It is the glory of the Gospel charter and the Christian consti-
tution, that its author and head is the Spirit of truth, essential
Reason as well as absolute and incomprehensible Will. Like a
just monarch, he refers even his own causes to the judgment of
his high courts. — He has his King's Bench in the reason, his
Court of Equity in the conscience ; that the representative of his
majesty and universal justice, this the nearest to the king's heart,
and the dispenser of his particular decrees. He has likewise his
Court of Common Pleas in the understanding, his Court of Ex-
chequer in the prudence. The laws are his laws. And though
j by signs and miracles he has mercifully condescended to interline
i here and there with his own hand the great statute-book, which
he had dictated to his amanuensis, Nature ; yet has he been gra-
ciously pleased to forbid our receiving as the king's mandates
1 aught that is not stamped with the Great Seal of the Conscience,
and countersigned by the Reason.

APHORISM IV.

ON AN UNLEARNED MINISTRY, UNDER PRETENCE OF A CALL OF THE
SPIRIT, AND INWARD GRACES SUPERSEDING OUTWARD HELPS.

II. More.

Tell me, ye high-flown perfectionists, ye boasters of the light
within you, could the highest perfection of your inward light ever
show to you the history of past ages, the state of the world at
present, the knowledge of arts and tongues, without books or
teachers ? How then can you understand the providence of God,
or the age, the purpose, the fulfilment of prophecies, or distinguish
such as have been fulfilled from those to the fulfilment of which
we are to look forward ? How can you judge concerning the au-
thenticity and uncorruptedness of the Gospels, and the other sa-
cred Scriptures ? And how, without this knowledge, can you
support the truth of Christianity ? How can you either have, 01

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 201

give a reason_for, the faith which you profess ? This light within,
that loves darkness, and would exclude those excellent gifts of
God to mankind, knowledge and understanding, what is it but a
sullen self-sufficiency within you, engendering contempt of supe-
riors, pride and a spirit of division, and inducing you to reject for
yourselves, and to undervalue in others, the helps without, which
the grace of God has provided and appointed for his Church —
nay, to make them grounds or pretexts of your dislike or suspi-
cion of Christ's ministers who have fruitfully availed themselves
of the helps afforded them ?

APHORISM V.

H. More.

There are wanderers, whom neither pride nor a perverse hu-
mor have led astray ; and whose condition is such, that I think
few more worthy of a man's best directions. For the more im-
perious sects having put such unhandsome vizards on Christian-
ity, and the sincere milk of the word having been everywhere
so sophisticated by the humors and inventions of men, it has
driven these anxious melancholists to seek for a teacher that -can
not deceive, the voice of the eternal Word within them ; to which
if they be faithful, they assure themselves it will be faithful to
them in return. Nor would this be a groundless presumption, if
they had sought this voice in the reason and the conscience, with
the Scripture articulating the same, instead of giving heed to their
fancy and mistaking bodily disturbances, and the vapors resulting
therefrom, for inspiration and the teaching of the Spirit.

APHORISM VI

Hacket.

When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad
end. Blessed were those days, when every man thought himself
rich and fortunate by the good success of the public wealth and
glory. We want public souls, we want them. I speak it with
compassion : there is no sin and abuse >'n the world that affects
my thought so much. Every man thinks, that he is a whole
commonwealth in his private family. Omnes qua sua sunt quce-
runt. All seek their own.

i*

202 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

COMMENT.

Selfishness is common to all ages and countries. In all ages
self-seeking is the rule, and self-sacrifice the exception. But if to
seek our private advantage in harmony with, and by the further-
ance of, the public prosperity, and to derive a portion of our hap-
piness'from sympathy with the prosperity of our fellow-men — if
this be public spirit, it would be morose and querulous to pretend
that there is any want of it in this country and at the present
time. On the contrary, the number of " public souls" and the
general readiness to contribute to the public good, in science and
in religion, in patriotism and in philanthropy, stand prominent*
among the characteristics of this and the preceding generation.
The habit of referring actions and opinions to fixed laws ; convic-
tions rooted in principles ; thought, insight, system ; — these, had
the good Bishop lived in our times, would have been his deside-
rata, and the theme of his complaints. " "We want thinking
souls, we want them."

This and the three preceding extracts will suffice as precau-
tionary Aphorisms. And here, again, the Reader may exemplify
the great advantages to be obtained from the habit of tracing the
proper meaning and history of words. "We need only recollect the
common and idiomatic phrases in which the word " spirit" occurs
in a physical or material sense (as, fruit has lost its spirit and
flavor), to be convinced that its property is to improve, enliven,
actuate some other thing, not constitute a thing in its own name.

* The very marked, positive as well as comparative, magnitude and
prominence of the bump, entitled BENEVOLENCE (see Spurzheim's map of the
human skull) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtel,.has wofully unset-
tled the faith of many ardent phrenologists, and strengthened the previous
doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On my mind this fact
(for a fact it is) produced the directly contrary effect ; and inclined me to
euspect, for the first tune, that there may be some truth in the Spurzheim-
lan scheme. Whether future craniologists may not see cause to new-name
this and one or two other of these convex gnomons, is quite a different ques-
tion. At present, and according to the present use of words, any such
change would be premature : and we must be content to say, that Mr. Thur-
tel's benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and unin-
dicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and common sense.
The organ of destructiveness was indirectly potentiated by the absence or
imperfect development of the glands of reason and conscience, in this " un
fortunate gentleman /"

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 203

The enthusiast may find one exception to this where the material
itself is called spirit. And when he calls to mind, how this spirit
acts when taken alone by the unhappy persons who in their first
exultation will boast that it is meat, drink, fire, and clothing to
them, all in one — when he reflects, that its properties are to in-
flame, intoxicate, madden, with exhaustion, lethargy, and atrophy
for the sequels ; — well for him, if in some lucid interval he should
fairly put the question to his own mind, how far this is analo-
gous to his own case, and whether the exception does not confirm
the rule. The letter without the spirit killeth ; but does it fol-
low, that the spirit is to kill the letter ? To kill that which it is
its appropriate office to enliven ?

However, where the ministry is not invaded, and the plain
sense of the Scriptures is left undisturbed, and the believer looks
for the suggestions of the Spirit only or chiefly in applying partic-
ular passages to his own individual case and exigencies ; though
in this there may be much weakness, some delusion and immi-
nent danger of more, I can not but join with Henry More in
avowing, that I feel knit to such a man in the bonds of a com-
mon faith far more closely, than to those who receive neither the
letter nor the Spirit, turning the one into metaphor and oriental
hyperbole, in order to explain away the other into the influence
of motives suggested by their own understandings, and realized
by their own strength.

APHORISMS

ON THAT WHICH IS INDEED SPIRITUAL RELIGION

IN the selection of the extracts that form the remainder of this
Volume, and of the comments affixed, I had the following objects
principally in view : — first, to exhibit the true and Scriptural
meaning and intent of several articles of faith, that are rightly
classed among the mysteries and peculiar doctrines of Christianity :
— secondly, to show the perfect rationality of these doctrines, and
their freedom from all just objection when examined by their
proper organ, the reason and conscience of man : — lastly, to exhibit
from the works of Leighton, who perhaps of all our learned Prot-
estant theologians best deserves the title of a spiritual divine, as
instructive and affecting picture of the contemplations, reflections,
conflicts, consolations, and monitory experiences of a philosophic
and richly-gifted mind, amply stored with all the knowledge that
books and long intercourse with men of the most discordant char-
acters could give, under the convictions, impressions, and habits
of a spiritual religion.

To obviate a possible disappointment in any of my Readers,
who may chance to be engaged in theological studies, it may ba
well to notice, that in vindicating the peculiar tenets of our Faith,
I have not entered on the doctrine of the Trinity, or the still pro-
founder mystery of the origin of moral Evil — and this for the rea-
sons following. 1. These doctrines are not, in strictness, subjects
of reflection, in the proper sense of this word : and both of then*
demand a power and persistency of abstraction, and a previous
discipline in the highest forms of human thought, which it would
be unwise, if not presumptuous, to expect from any, who require
aids to reflection, or would be likely to seek them in the present

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 205

Work. 2. In my intercourse with men of various ranks and ages,
I have found the far larger number of serious and inquiring per-
sons little, if at all, disquieted by doubts respecting articles of
faith simply above their comprehension. It is only where the
belief required of them jars with their moral feelings ; where a
doctrine, in the sense in which they have been taught to receive
it, appears to contradict their clear notions of right and wrong, or
to be at variance with the divine attributes of goodness and jus-
tice; that these men are surprised, perplexed, and alas ! not sel-
dom offended and alienated. Such are the doctrines of arbitrary
election and reprobation ; the sentence to everlasting torment by
an eternal and necessitating decree ; vicarious atonement, and
the necessity of the abasement, agony and ignominious death of a
most holy and meritorious person, to appease the wrath of God.
Now it is more especially for such persons, unwilling skeptics, who,
believing earnestly, ask help for their unbelief, that this Volume ~
was compiled, and the Comments written : and therefore, to the
Scripture doctrines intended by the above-mentioned, my princi-
pal attention has been directed.

APHORISM I.

Leighton.

Where, if not in Christ, is the power that can persuade a sin-
ner to return, that can bring home a heart to God ?

Common mercies of God, though they have a leading faculty
to repentance (Rom. ii. 4), yet the rebellious heart will not be
led by them. The judgments of God, public or personal, though
they ought to drive us to God, yet the heart, unchanged, runs the
further from God. Do we not see it by ourselves and other sin-
ners about us ? They look not at all towards Him who smites,
much less do they return ; or if any more serious thoughts of re-
turning arise upon the surprise of an affliction, how soon vanish
they, either the stroke abating, or the heart, by time, growing
hard and senseless under it ! Leave Christ out, I say, and all
other means work not this way ; neither the works nor the word
of God sounding daily in his ear, Return, return. Let the noise
of the rod speak it too, and both join together to make the cry
the louder, yet the wicked will do wickedly. Dan. xii )<»

206 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

COMMENT

By the phrase " in Christ," I understand all the supernatural
aids vouchsafed and conditionally promised in the Christian dis
pensation : and among them the spirit of truth, which the world
can not receive, were it only that the knowledge of spiritual truth
is of necessity immediate and intuitive ; and the world or natural
man possesses no higher intuitions than those of the pure sense,
which are the subjects of mathematical science. But aids, ob-
serve : — therefore, not by the will of man alone ; but neither
without the will. The JJfoctrine of modern Calvinismjas laid
down by Jonathan Edwards and the late Dr. Williams, which
represents a will absolutely passive, clay in the hands of a potter,
destroys all will, takes away its essence and definition, as effec-
tually as in saying — This circle is square — I should deny the
figure to be a circle at all. It was in strict consistency, there-
fore, that these writers supported the Necessitarian scheme, and
made the relation of cause and effect the law of the universe,
subjecting to its mechanism the moral wrorld no less than the
material or physical. It follows that all is nature. Thus,
though few writers use the term Spirit more frequently, they in
effect deny its existence, and evacuate the term of all its proper
meaning. With such a system not the wit of man nor all the
theodices ever framed by human ingenuity, before and since the
attempt of the celebrated Leibnitz, can reconcile the sense of re-
sponsibility, nor the fact of the difference in kind between regret
and remorse. The same compulsion of consequence drove the
fathers of modern (or pseudo) Calvinism to the origination of ho-
liness in power, of justice in right of property, and whatever other
outrages on the common sense and moral feelings of mankind
they have sought to cover under the fair name 'of Sovereign
Grace.

I will not take on me to defend sundry harsh and inconvenient
expressions in the works of Calvin. Phrases equally strong, and
assertions not less rash and startling, are no rarities in the writ-
ings of Luther : for catachresis was the favorite figure of speech
in that age. But let not the opinions of either on this most fun-
damental subject be confounded with the New-England system,
now entitled Calvinistic. The fact is simply this. Luther con-
sidered the pretensions to free-will boastful, and better suited tc

APHOEISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 207

the "budge doctors of the Stoic Fur/' than to the preachers of
the Gospel, whose great theme is the redemption of the will from
slavery ; the restoration of the will to perfect freedom being the
end and consummation of the redemptive process, and the same
with the entrance of the soul into glory, that is, its union with
Christ : " g/oqy" (John xvii. 5) being one of the names or tokens
or symbols of the spiritual Messiah. Prospectively to this we
are to understand the words of our Lord, At that day ye shall
know that I am in my Father, and ye in me (John xiv. 20) :
the freedom of a finite will being possible under this condition
only, that it has become one with the will of God. Now as the
difference of a captive and enslaved will, and no will at all, such
is the difference between the Lutheranism of Calvin and the
Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards.

APHORISM II.

Leighton.

There is nothing in religion farther out of nature's reach, and
more remote from the natural man's liking and believing, than
the doctrine of redemption by a Saviour^ and by a crucified Sa-
viour. It is comparatively easy to persuade men of the necessity
of an amendment of conduct ; it is more difficult to make them
see the necessity of repentance in the Gospel sense, the necessity
of a change in the principle of action ; but to convince men of
the necessity of the death of Christ is the most difficult of all
And yet the first is but varnish and whitewash without the sec-
ond ; and the second but a barren notion without the last.
Alas ! of those who admit the doctrine in words, how large a
number evade it in fact, and empty it of all its substance and
efficacy, making the effect the efficient cause, or attributing their
election to salvation to supposed foresight of their faith and obe-
dience. But it is most vain to imagine a faith in such and such
men, which, being foreseen by God, determined him to elect them
for salvation : were it only that nothing at all is future, or can
have this imagined futurition, but as it is decreed, and because
it is decreed, by God so to be.

COMMENT.

!No impartial person, competently acquainted with the history
of the Reformation, and the works of the earlier Protestant di-

208 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

vines at home and abroad, even to the close of Elizabeth's reign
will deny that the doctrines of Calvin on redemption and thf
natural state of fallen man, are in all essential points the same
as those of Luther, Zuinglius, and the first Reformers collec-
tively. These doctrines have, however, since the re-establish-
ment of the Episcopal Church at the return of Charles II., been
as generally* exchanged for what is commonly entitled Armin
ianism, but which, taken as a complete and explicit scheme ot
belief, it would be both historically and theologically more accu-
rate to call Grotmnism, or Christianity according to Grotius. The
change was not, we may readily believe, effected without a
struggle. In the Romish Church this latitudinarian system, pa-
tronized by the Jesuits, was manfully resisted by Jarisenius, Ar-
nauld, and Pascal ; in our own Church by the Bishops Davenant,
Sanderson, Hall, and the Archbishops Ussher and Leighton : and
in the latter half of the preceding Aphorism the Reader has a
specimen of the reasonings by which Leighton strove to invalidate
or counterpoise the reasonings of the innovators.

* At a period in which Bishop Marsh and Dr. Wordsworth have, by the
zealous on one side, been charged with Popish principles on account of
their anti-bibliolatry, and, on the other, the sturdy adherents of the doc-
trines common to Luther and Calvin, and the literal interpreters of the
Articles and Homilies, are — (I wish I could say, altogether without any
fault of their own) — regarded by the Clergy generally as virtual schismat-
ics, dividers of, though not from, the Church, — it is serving the cause of
charity to assist in circulating the following instructive passage from the
/ Life of Bishop Hacket, respecting the disputes between the Augustinians,
] or Luthero-Calvinistic divines, and the Grotians of his age : in which con-
" troversy (says his biographer) he, Hacket, " was ever very moderate."

" But having been bred under Bishop Davenant and Dr. Ward in Cam-
bridge, he was addicted to their sentiments. Archbishop Ussher would
say, that Davenant understood those controversies better than ever any
man did since St. Augustine. But he (Bishop Hacket) used to say, that he
was sure he had three excellent men of his opinion in this controversy; 1.
Padre Paolo (Father Paul) whose letter is extant in Heinsius, anno 1604.
2. Thomas Aquinas. 3. St. Augustine. But besides and above them all,
he believed in his conscience that St. Paul was of the same mind likewise.
Yet at the same time he would profess that he disJiked no Arminians but
such aa revile and defame every one who is not so : and he would often
commend Armiuius himself for his excellent wit and parts, but only tax his
want of reading and knowledge in antiquity. And he ever held, it was the
foolishest thing in the world to say the Arminians were Popishly inclined,
when so many Dominicans and Jansenists were rigid followers of Augustine

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED 209

Passages of this sort are, however of rare occurrence in
Leighton's works. Happily for thousands, he was more usefully
employed in making his readers feel that the doctrines in ques-
tion, Scripturally treated and taken as co-organized parts of a
great organic whole, need no such reasonings. And better still
would it have been, had he left them altogether for those, who,
severally detaching the great features of Revelation from the
living context of Scripture, do by that very act destroy their life
and purpose. And then, like the eyes of the Indian spider,*
they become clouded microscopes, to exaggerate and distort all
the other parts and proportions. No offence then will be occa-
sioned, I trust, by the frank avowal that I have given to the pre-
ceding passage a place among the spiritual Aphorisms for the
sake of comment : the following remarks having been thejirst
marginal note I had pencilled on Leighton's pages, and thus (re-
motely, at least), the occasion of the present Work.

Leighton, I observed, throughout his inestimable Work, avoids
all metaphysical views of Election, relatively to God, and con-
fines himself to the doctrine in its relation to man ; and in that
sense too, in which every Christian may judge of it who strives
to be sincere with his own heart. The following may, I think,
be taken as a safe and useful rule in religious inquiries. Ideas,
that derive their origin and substance from the moral being, and
to the reception of which as true objectively (that is, as corres-
pondingjto a reality^out of th^human jnind) we are determined
by a practical interest exclusively, may not, like theoretical posi-
tions, be pressed onward into all their logical consequences. f

in these points : and no less foolish to say that the Anti-Arminians were
Puritans and Presbyterians, whei^Ward, and Davenant, and Prideaux, and
Browning, those stout champions for Episcopacy, were decided Anti-Armin-
ians: while Arminius himself was ever a Presbyterian. Therefore he
greatly commended the moderation of our Church, which extended equal
communion to both."

* Aranea prodigiosa. See Baker's Microscopic Experiments.

f Perhaps this rule may be expressed more intelligibly (to a mathemati-
cian at least) thus : — Reasoning from finite to finite on a basis of truth ; also,/
reasoning from infinite to infinite on a basis of truth, — will always 1<
to truth as intelligibly as the tasis on which such truths respectively
While reasoning from finite to infinite, or from infinite to finite, will lead
apparent absurdity although the basis be true : and is not such apparer
absurdity, another expression for "truth unintelligible by a finite mind?"

210 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

The law oj^ conscience, and not the canons of discursive reason
ing, must decide in such cases. At least, the latter haveTno
validity, which the single veto'of the former is not sufficient to
nullify. The most pious conclusion is here the most legitimate.

It is too seldom considered, though most worthy of considera-
tion, how far even those ideas or theories of pure speculation,
that bear the same name with the objects of religious faith, aro
indeed the same. Out of the principles necessarily presumed hi
all discursive thinking, and which being, in the first place, uni-
versal, and secondly, antecedent to every particular exercise of
the understanding, are therefore referred to the reason, the hu-
man mind (wherever its powers are sufficiently developed, and
its attention strongly directed to speculative or theoretical in-
quiries) forms certain essences, to which for its own purposes it
gives a sort of notional subsistence. Hence they are called entia
rationalia : the conversion of which into entia real [a, or real
objects, by aid of the imagination, has in all times been the fruit-
ful stock of empty theories and mischievous superstitions, of sur-
reptitious premisses and extravagant conclusions. For as these
substantiated notions were in many instances expressed by the
same terms as the objects of religious faith ; as in most instances
they were applied, though deceptively, to the explanation of real
experiences ; and lastly, from the gratifications which the prido
and ambition of man received from the supposed extension of
his knowledge and insight ; it was too easily forgotten or over-
: looked, that the stablest and most indispensable of these notional
( beings were but the necessary forms of thinking, taken abstract-
i edly : and that like the breadthless lines, depthless surfaces, and
perfect circles of geometry, they subsist wholly and solely in and
for the mind that contemplates tTiem. Where the evidence of
the senses fails us, and beyond the precincts of sensible experi-
eiice, there is no reality attributable to any notion, but whatjs
given to it by Revelation, or the law of conscience, or the neces-
sary interests of morality.
Take an instance :

It is the office, and as it were, the instinct of reason, to bring
a unity into all our conceptions and several knowledges. On this
all system depends ; and without this we could reflect connect-
edly neither on nature nor our own minds. Now this is possible
only on the assumption or hypothesis of a One as the ground and

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 211

cause of th) universe, and which, in all succession and through
alFchanges, is the subject neither of time nor change. The One
must be contemplated as eternal and immutable.

Well ! the idea, which is the basis of religion, commanded by
the conscience and required by morality, contains the same
truths, or at least truths that can be expressed in no other terms ;
but this idea presents itself to our mind with additional attri-
butes, and those too not formed by mere abstraction and negation
— with the attributes of holiness, providence, love, justice, and
mercy. It comprehends, moreover, the independent (extra-mun-
"cfane) existence and personality of the Supreme One, as our
Creator, Lord, and Judge.

The hypothesis of a one ground and principle of the universe
(necessary as an hypothesis, but having only a logical and con-
ditional necessity), is thus raised into the idea of the Living God,
the supreme object of our faith, love, fear, and adoration. Re-
ligion and morality do indeed constrain us to declare him eternal
and immutable. But if from the eternity of the Supreme Being
a reasoner should deduce the impossibility of a creation ; or con-
clude with Aristotle, that the creation was co-eternal ; or, like
the later Platonists, should turn creation into emanation, and
make the universe proceed from the Deity, as the sunbeams from
the solar orb ; — or if from the divine immutability he should
infer that all prayer and supplication must be vain and super-
stitious ; then however evident and logically necessary such con-
clusions may appear, it is scarcely worth our while to examine,
whether they are so or not. The positions must be false. For
were they true, the idea would lose the sole ground of its reality
It would be no longer the idea intended by the believer in his
premiss — in the premiss, with which alone religion and morality
are concerned. The very subject of the discussion would be
changed. It would no longer be the God, in whom we believe ;
but a stoical Fate, or the superessential One of Plotinus, to whom
neither intelligence, nor self-consciousness, nor life, nor even being
can be attributed ; or lastly, the World itself, the indivisible one
and only substance (substantia una et unica) of Spinoza, of
which all phenomena, all particular and individual things, lives,
minds, thoughts, and actions are but modifications.

Let the believer never be alarmed by objections wholly specula/ /'
tive, however plausible on speculative grounds such objections:'

i!2 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

may appear, if he can'but satisfy himself, that the result is repug-
nant to the dictates of conscience, and irreconcilable with the in-
terests of morality. For to baffle the objector we have only tc
demand of him, by what right and under what authority he con-
verts a thought into a substance, or asserts the existence of a real
somewhat corresponding to a notion not derived from the experi-
ence of his senses. It will be to no purpose for him to answer
fjhat it is a legitimate notion. The notion may have its mould in
the understanding ; but its realization must be the work of the
fancy.

A reflecting reader will easily apply these remarks to the sub-
ject of Election, one of the stumbling stones in the ordinary con-
ceptions of the Christian Faith, to which the Infidel points in
scorn, and which far better men pass by in silent perplexity.
Yet, surely, from mistaken conceptions of the doctrine. I suppose
the person, with whom I am arguing, already so far a believer,
as to have convinced himself, both that a state of enduring bliss
is attainable under certain conditions ; and that these conditions
consist in his compliance with the directions given and rules pre-
scribed in the Christian Scriptures. These rules he likewise ad
mits to be such, that, by the very law and constitution of the
human mind, a full and faithful compliance with them can not
but have consequences of some sort or other. But these conse-
quences are moreover distinctly described, enumerated, arid prom-
ised in the same Scriptures, in which the conditions are recorded ;
and though some of them may be apparent to God only, yet the
greater number of them are of such a nature that they can not
exist unknown to the individual, in and for whom they exist. A,(
little possible is it, that he should find these consequences ir
himself, and not find in them the sure marks and the safe pledges
that he is at the time in the right road to the life promised undei
these conditions. Now I dare assert that no such man, however
fervent his charity and however deep his humility may be, can
peruse the records of history with a reflecting spirit, or look round
the world with an observant eye, and not find himself compelled
to admit, that all men are not on the right road. He can not
help judging that even in Christian countries many, — a fearful
many, — have not their faces turned toward it.

This then is a mere matter of fact. Now comes the question.
Shall the believer, who thus hopes on the appointed grounds of

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 213

hope, attribute this distinction exclusively to his own resolves and
strivings, — or if not exclusively, yet primarily and principally ?
Shall he refer the first movements and preparations to his own will
and understanding, and bottom his claim to the promises on his
own comparative excellence ? If not, if no man dare take this
honor to himself, to whom shall he assign it, if not to that Being
in whom the promise originated, and on whom its fulfilment de-
pends ? If he stop here, who shall blame him ? By what argu-
ment shall his reasoning be invalidated, that might not be urged
with equal force against any essential difference between obedient
and disobedient, Christian and worldling ; — that would not imply
that both sorts alike are, in the sight of God, the sons of God by
adoption ? If he stop here, I say, who shall drive him from his
position ? For thus far he is practically concerned ; — this the
conscience requires ; this the highest interests of morality demand.
It is a question of facts, of the will and the deed, to argue against i
which on the abstract notions and possibilities of the speculative I
reason, is as unreasonable, as an attempt to decide a question of '
colors by pure geometry, or to unsettle the classes and specific
characters of natural history by the doctrine of fluxions.

But if the self-examinant will abandon this position, and ex-
change the safe circle of religion and practical reason for the
shifting sand-wastes and mirages of speculative theology ; if in-
stead of seeking after the marks of Election in himself, he under-
takes to determine the ground and origin, the possibility and mode
of Election itself in relation to God ; — in this case, and whether
he does it for the Satisfaction of curiosity, or from the ambition of
answering those, who would call God himself to account, why and
by what right certain souls were born in Africa instead of Eng-
land ; or why — (seeing that it is against all reason and goodness
to choose a worse, when, being omnipotent, He could have created
a better) — God did not create beasts men, and men angels ; — or
why God created any men but with foreknowledge of their obe-
dience, and left any occasion for Election ; — In this case, I say,
we can only regret that the inquirer had not been better instruct-
ed in the nature, the bounds, the true purposes and proper objects
of his intellectual faculties, and that he had not previously asked
himself, by what appropriate sense, or organ of knowledge, he
hoped to secure an insight into a nature which was neither an
object of his senses, nor a part of his self-consciousness ; and sn

214 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

leave him to ward off shadowy spears with the shadow of a shield,
and to retaliate the nonsense of blasphemy with the abracadabra
of presumption. He that will fly without wings must fly in his
dreams : and till he awakes, will not find out that to fly in a
dream is but to dream of flying.

Thus then the doctrine of Election is in itself a necessary in-
ference from an undeniable fact — necessary at least for all who
hold that the best of men are what they are through the grace
of God. In relation to the believer it is a hope, which if it spring
out of Christian principles, be examined by the tests and nourished
by the means prescribed in Scripture, will become a lively and an
assured hope, but which can not in this lii'e pass into knowledge,
much less certainty of fore-knowledge. The contrary belief does
indeed make the article of Election both tool and parcel of a mad
and mischievous fanaticism. But with what force and clearness
does not the Apostle confute, disclaim, and prohibit the pretence,
treating it as a downright contradiction in terms ! See Rom.
viii. 24.

But though I hold the doctrine handled as Leighton handles
it (that is pmclumllyr-Joaorally, humanly) rational, safe, and of
essential importance, I see reasons^ resulting from the peculiar
circumstances, under which St. Paul preached and wrote, why a
discreet minister of the Gospel should avoid the frequent use of
the term, and express the meaning in other words perfectly equiv-
alent and equally Scriptural ; lest in saying truth he may convey
error.

Had my purpose been confined to one particular tenet, an apol-

* For example : at the date of St. Paul's Epistles, the Roman world may
be resembled to a mass in the furnace in the first moment of fusion, here a
speck and there a spot of melted metal shining pure and brilliant amid the
scum and dross. To have received the name of Christian was a privilege,
a high and distinguishing favor. No wonder therefore, that in St. Paul's
writings the words, Elecjt and Election often, nay, most often, mean the
same as ittKahovfievoL, ecclesia, that is, those who have been called out of the
world : and it is a dangerous perversion of the Apostle's word to interpret
it in the sense, in which it was used by our Lord, viz. in opposition to the
called. (Many are called but few chosen.) In St. Paul's sense and at that
time the believers collectively formed a small and select number ; and every
Christian, real or nominal, was one of the elect. Add too, that this ambi-
j*uity is increased by the accidental circumstance, that the Kyriak, cedes Do
minicce, Lord's House, kirk ; and ecclesia, the sum total of the KKnaXov^svot^
cvocaii, called out ; are both rendered by the same word, Church.

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 215

ogy might be required for so long a comment. But the Header
will, I trust, have already perceived, that my_objee;L has^beenjto ^
establish a general rule of interpretation and vindication appli '
cable to all doctrinal tenets, and especially to the (so called) mys-
teries of the Christian Faith : to provide a safety-lamp for reli-
gi£usjnc|uirers_. Now this I find in the principle, that all re- j
vealed truths are to be judged of by us, so far only as they are j
possible subjects of human conception, or grounds of practice, or 1
in some way connected with our moral and spiritual interests. I
In order to have a reason for forming a judgment on any given 1
article, we must be sure that we possess a reason, by and accord- ^
ing to which a judgment may be formed. Now in respect of all
truths, to which a real independent existence is assigned, and
which yet are not contained in, or to be imagined under, any
form of space or time, it is strictly demonstrable, that the human
reason, considered abstractly, as the source of positive science and
theoretical insight, is not such a reason. At the utmost, it has
only a negative voice. In other words, nothing can be allowed
as true for the human mind, which directly contradicts this rea-
son. But even here, before we admit the existence of any such
contradiction, we must be careful to ascertain, that there is no
equivocation in play, that two different subjects are not con-
founded under one and the same word. A striking instance of
this has been adduced in the difference between the notional One
of the Ontologists, and the idea of the living God.

But if nol the abstract or speculative reason) and yet a reason
there must be in order to a rational belief — men it must be the,
practical reason of man, comprehending the will, the conscience J
the" 'moral being with its inseparable interests and affections — ,
that reason, namely, which is the orgajLof wisdom, and, as far!
as man is concerned, the source of living and actual truths.

From these premisses we may further deduce, that every doc-
trine is to be interpreted in reference to those, to whom it has
been revealed, or who have or have had the m^ans of knowing
or hearing the same. For instance : the doctrine that there is n)
name tinder heaven, by which a man can be saved, but the name
of Jesus. If the word here rendered name, may bo understood —
(as it well may, and as in other texts it must be) — as meaning
the power, or originating cause, I see no objection on tho part of
the practical reason to our belief of the declaration in ii

216 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

extent. It is true universally or not true at ail. If thert Lt
any redemptive power not contained in the power of Jesus, then
Jesus is not the Redeemer : not the Redeemer of the world, not
the Jesus, that is, Saviour of mankind. But if with Tertullian
and Augustine we make the text assert the condemnation and
misery of all who are not Christians by Baptism and explicit be
lief in the revelation of the New Covenant — then, I say, the doc-
trine is true to all intents and purposes. It is true, in every re-
spect, in which any practical, moral, or spiritual interest or end
can be connected with its truth. It is true in respect to every
man who has had, or who might have had, the Gospel preached
to him. It is true and obligatory for every Christian community
and for every individual believer, wherever the opportunity is
afforded of spreading the light of the Gospel, and making known
the name of the only Saviour and Redeemer. For even though
the uninformed Heathens should not perish, the guilt of their per-
ishing will attach to those who not only had no certainty of their
safety, but who are commanded to act on the supposition of the
contrary. But if, on the other hand, a theological dogmatist
should attempt to persuade me that this text was intended to
give us an historical knowledge of God's future actions and deal-
ings— and for the gratification of our curiosity to inform us, that
Socrates and Phocion, together with all the savages in the woods
and wilds of Africa and America, will be sent to keep company
with the Devil and his angels in everlasting torments — I should
remind him, that the purpose of Scripture was to teach us our
duty, riot to enable us to sit in judgment on the souls of our fel-
low-creatures.

One other instance will, I trust, prevent all misconception of
my meaning. I am clearly convinced, that the Scriptural and
only true* idea of God will, in its development, be found to in-
volve the ideajrf the Triumty. But I am likewise convinced that
previously to the promulgation of the Gospel the doctrine had no
claim on the faith of mankind : though it might have been a le-
gitimate contemplation for a speculative philosopher, a theorem
in metaphysics valid in the Schools.

* Or, I may add, any idea which does not either identify the Creator witb
the creation ; or else represent the Supreme Being as a mere impersonal
Law or ordo ordinans, differing frcm the law of gravitation only by its uni-
versality.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. -211

I form a certain notion in myjmnd, and say : This is what I
understand by the term, God. From books and conversation I
find that the learned generally connect the same notion with the
same word. I then apply the rules laid down by the masters of
logic, for the involution and evolution of terms, and prove (to as
many as agree with me in my premisses) that the notion, God,
involves the notion, Trinity. I now pass out of the^Schools, and
enter into discourse with some friend or neighbor, unversed in
the formal sciences, unused to the process of abstraction, neither
logician nor metaphysician ; but sensible and single-minded, an
Israelite indeed, trusting in the Lord God of his fathers, even
the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. If I speak of God
to him, what will he understand me to be speaking of? What
iocs he mean, and suppose me to mean, by the word ? An ac-
cident or product of the reasoning faculty, or an abstraction which
the human mind forms by reflecting on its own thoughts and
forms of thinking ? No. By God he understands me to mean
i -self-subsjsting^reality,^ a real and personal Being

In like manner, if I had to express my conviction that space was not itself
a thing, but a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward~ground and con-
dition in the percipient, in consequence of which things are seen as out-
ward and co-existing, I convey this at once by the words : — Space is sub-
jective, or space is real in and for the subject alone.

If I am asli ed, Why not say, in and for the mind, which every one woulu
understand ? I rppbj : We know indeed, that all minds are subjects ; but

VOL. T. K

* I have elsewhere remarked on the assistance which those that labor
after distinct conceptions would receive from the reintroduction of the terms
objective and subjective, objective and subjective reality, and the like, as sub-
btitutes for real and notional, and to the exclusion of the false antithesis
between real and ideal. For the student in that noblest of the sciences, the
ncire teipsum, the advantage would be especially great. The few sentences
that follow, in illustration of the terms here advocated, will not, I trust, be
a waste of the reader's time.

The celebrated Euler having demonstrated certain properties of arches,
adds : " All experience is in contradiction to this ; but this is no reason for 1
doubting its truth." The words sound paradoxical ; but mean no more than •
this — that the mathematical properties of figure and space are not less cer-
tainly the properties of figure and space because they canaeafir be perfectly
realized, in wood, stone, or iron. Now this assertion o^plaler's might be
expressed at once, briefly and simply, by saying, that the properties in ques-
tion were subjectively true, though not objectively — or that the mathemat-
ical arch possessed a subjective reality, though incapable of being realized

218 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

— even the Person, thelAM, who sent Moses to his forefathers in
Egypt. Of the actual existence of this Divine Being he has the
same historical assurance as of theirs ; confirmed indeed by the
book_of . Nature, as soon and as far as that stronger and better
light has taught him to read and construe it — confirmed by it, I

are by no means certain that all subjects are minds. For a mind is a sub-
ject that kuows itself, or a subject that is its own object. The inward prin-
ciple of growth and individual form in every seed and plant is a subject, and
without any exertion of poetic privilege, poets may speak of the soul of the
flower. But the man would be a dreamer, who otherwise than poetically
should speak of roses and lilies as self-conscious subjects. Lastly, by the
assistance of the terms, Object and Subject, thus used as correspondent op-
posites, or as negative and positive in physics, — (for example, negative and
positive electricity) — we may arrive at the distinct import and proper use
of the strangely misused word, Idea. And as the forms of logic are all bor-
rowed from geometry — (ratiocinatio discursiva forinas suas sive canonasre-
"•f\i ab intuitu) — I may be permitted thence to elucidate my present mean
ing. Every line may be, and by the ancient geometricians was, considered
as a point produced, the two extremes being its poles, while the point it-
self remains in, or is at least represented by, the mid point, the indifference
of the two poles, or correlative opposites. Logically applied, the two ex-
tremes or poles are named thesis and antithesis. Thus in the line,

I

T A

we have T=thesis, A=antithesis, and I=punctum indifferens sive ampho-
tericum, which latter is to be conceived as both in as far as it may be either
of the two former. Observe : not both at the same time in the same rela-
tion : for this would be the identity of T and A, not the indifference ; but
so, that relatively to A, I is equal to T, and relatively to T, it becomes =
A. For the purposes of the universal Noetic, in which we require terms
of most comprehension and least specific import, the Noetic Pentad might,
perhaps, be, —

1. Prothesis.

2. Thesis. 4. Mesothesis. 3. Antithesis

5. Synthesis.

Prothesis.

Sum.

Tlusis. Mesothesis. Antithesis

Res. Agere. Ago, Patior.

Synthesis.
Agens.

1. Verb substantive^ Prothesis, as expressing the identity or co-inherence
of act and being.

2. Substantive=27tc*w, expressing being. 3. Verb= Antithesis, express'
ing act, 4. Infinitive =Mesothcsis, as being either substantive or verb, or

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 219

Jmt not derived from it. Now by what right can I require
this man — (and of such men the great majority of serious be-
lievers consisted previously to the light of the Gospel) — to re-
ceive a notion of mine, wholly alien from his habits of thinking
because it may be logically deduced from another notion, with
which he was almost as little acquainted, and not at all concern-
both at once, only injlifferent relations. 5. Participle =Synthesis. Thus,
in chemistry, sulphureted hydrogen is an acid relatively to the more pow-
erful alkalis, and an alkali relatively to a powerful acid. Yet one other
"emark, and I pass to the question. In order to render the constructions
of pure mathematics applicable to philosophy, the Pythagoreans, I imagine,
represents I the line as generated, or, as it were, radiated, by a point not con-
tained in the line, but independent, and (in the language of that School)
transcendent to all production, which it caused but did not partake in. Fa-
cit, non patitur. This was the punctum invisibile et prccsuppositum : and
in this way the Pythagoreans guarded against the error of Pantheism, into
which the later Schools fell. The assumption of this point I call the logical
prothesis, "We have now therefore forvr relations of thought expressed : 1.
Prothesis, or the identity of T and A, which is neither, because in it, as the
transcendent of both, both are contained and exist as one. Taken absolute-
ly, this finds its application in the Supreme Being alone, the Pythagorean
Tetractys ; the ineffable name, to which no image can be attached ; the point,
which has no (real) opposite or counterpoint. But relatively taken and in-
adequately, the germinal power of every seed might be generalized under
the relation of Identity. 2. Thesis, or position. 3. Antithesis, or opposi-
tion. 4. Indifference. To which when we add the Synthesis or composition,
in its several forms of equilibrium, as in quiescent electricity ; of neutrali-
zation, as of oxygen and hydrogen in water ; and of predominance, as of
hydrogen and carbon, with hydrogen predominant, in pure alcohol ; or of
carbon and hydrogen, with the comparative predominance of the carbon, in
oil ; we complete the five most general forms or preconceptions of con-
structive logic.

And now for the answer to the question, what is an Idea, if it mean
neither an impression on the senses, nor a definite conception, nor an ab-
stract notion ? (And if it does mean any one of these, the word is super-
fluous : and while it remains undetermined which of these is meant by the
word, or whether it is not which you please, it is worse than superfluous.)
But supposing the word to have a meaning of its own, what does it mean ?
What is an Idea ? In answer to this I commence with the absolutely Real
as the prothesis : the subjectively Real as the thesis; the objectively Real
as~the antithesis ; and I affirm, that Idea is the indifference of the two — so
namely, that if it be conceived as in the subject, the idea is an object, and
possesses objective truth ; but if in an object, it is then a subject, and is I
necessarily thought of as exercising the powers of a subject. Thus an idea !
conceived as subsisting in an object becomes a law : and a law contemplated
subjectively in a mind is an idea.

220 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

ed ? Grant for a moment, that the latter (that is, the notion
with which I first set out) as soon as it is combined with the as-
surance of a corresponding reality becomes identical with the true
and effective Idea of God ! Grant, that in thus realizing the no-
tion I am warranted by revelation, the law of conscience, and
the interests and necessities of my moral being ! Yet by what
authority, by wrhat inducement, am I entitled to attach the same
reality to a second notion, a notion drawn from a notion ? It is
evident, that if I have the same right, it must be on the same
grounds. Revelation must have assured it, my conscience re-
quired it — or in some way or other I must have an interest in
this belief It must concern me, as a moral and responsible be-
ing. Now these grounds were first given in the redemption^ of
mankind by Christ, the Saviour and Mediator : and by the utter
incompatibility of these offices with a mere creature. On the
doctrine of Redemption depends the faith, the duty, of believing
in the divinity of our Lord. And this again is the strongest
ground for the reality of that Idea, in which alone this divinity
can be received without breach of the faith in the unity of the
Godhead. But such is the Idea of the Trinity. Strong as the
motives are that induce me to defer the full discussion of this
great article of the Christian Creed, I can not withstand the re-
quest of several divines, whose situation and extensive services
entitle them to the utmost deference, that I should so far deviate
from my first intention as at least to indicate the point on which
I stand, and to prevent the misconception of my purpose : as if I
held the doctrine of the Trinity for a truth which men could be
called on to believe by mere force of reasoning, independently of
any positive Revelation. Now though it might be sufficient to
say, that I regard the very phrase, "Revealed Religion," as a
pleonasm, inasmuch as a religion not revealed is, in my judgment,
no religion at all ; I have no objection to announce more particu-
larly and distinctly what I do and what I do not maintain on this
point : provided that in the following paragraph, with this view
inserted, the Reader will look for nothing more than a plain state-
ment of my opinions. The grounds on which they rest, arid the ar-
guments by which they are to be vindicated, are for another place.
I hold then, it is true, that all the so called demonstrations
of a G od either prove too little, as that from the order and appa-
rent purpose in nature ; or too much, namely, that the World is

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 221

itself God : or they clandestinely involve the conclusion in
the premisses, passing off the mere analysis or explication of
an assertion for the proof of it, — a species of logical legerde-
main not unlike that of the jugglers at a fair, who putting
into their mouths what seems to be a walnut, draw out a score
yards of ribhon — as in the postulate of a First Cause. Andt
lastly, in all these demonstrations the demonstrators presuppose \
the idea or a conception of a God without being able to authenti- 1
cate it, that is, to give an account whence they obtained it. I
For it is clear, that the proof first mentioned and the most
natural and convincing of all — (the cosmological, I mean, or
that from the order in nature) — presupposes the ontological — •
that is, the proof of a God from the necessity and necessary ob-
jectivity of the Idea. If the latter can assure us of a God as an
existing reality, the former will go far to prove his power, wis-
dom, and benevolence. All this I hold. But I also hold, that,
this truth, the hardest to demonstrate, is the one which of all |
others least needs to be demonstrated ; that though there may
be no conclusive demonstrations of a good, wise, living, and per-
sonal God, there are so many convincing reasons for it, within
and without — a grain of sand sufficing, and a whole universe at
hand to echo the decision ! — that for every mind not devoid of
all reason, and desperately conscience-proof, the truth which it is
the least possible to prove, it is little less than impossible not to
believe ; — only indeed just so much short of impossible, as to leave
some room for the will and the moral election, and thereby to keep
it a truth of religion, and the possible subject of a commandment.*

* In a letter to a friend on the mathematical Atheists of the French Revo-
lution, La Lande and others, or rather on a young man of distinguished abil-
ities, but an avowed and proselyting partisan of their tenets, I concluded
•with these words : " The man who will believe nothing but by force of de-
monstrative evidence — (even though it is strictly demonstrable that the
demonstrability required would countervene all the purposes of the truth
in question, all that render the belief of the same desirable or obligatory)—
is not in a state of mind to be reasoned with on any subject. But if he fur
ther denies the fact of the law of conscience, and the essential difference be
tween right and wrong, I confess he puzzles me. I can not without gross
inconsistency appeal to his conscience and moral sense, or I should admonish
him that, as an honest man, he ought to advertise himself with a Cavete om-
nes! Seel us sum. And as an honest man myself, I dare not advise him on
prudential grounds to keep his opinions secret, lest I should make myself
his j'.ccomplice, and be helping him on with a wrap rascal"

222 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

On this account I do not demand of a Deist, that he should
adopt the doctrine of the Trinity. For he mighi very well be
justified in replying, that he rejected the doctrine not because it
could not be demonstrated, nor yet on the score of any incompre-
hensibilities and seeming contradictions that might be objected to
it, as knowing that these might be, and in fact had been, urged
with equal force against a personal God under any form capable
of loY6 and veneration ; but because he had not the same theo-
retical necessity, the same interests and instincts of reason for the
one hypothesis as for the other. It is not enough, the Deist might
justly say, that there is no cogent reason why I should not be-
lieve the Trinity ; you must show me some cogent reason why I
should.

But the case is quite different with a Christian, who accepts
the Scriptures as the word of God, yet refuses his assent to the
plainest declaiAtions of these Scriptures, and explains away the
most express texts into metaphor and hyperbole, because the lit-
eral and obvious interpretation is (according to his notions) ab-
surd and contrary to reason. He is bound to show, that it is so
in any sense, m>t equally applicable to the texts asserting the
being, infinity, and personality of God the Father, the Eternal
and Omnipresent One, who created the heaven and the earth.
And the more is he bound to do this, and the greater is rny right
to demand it of him, because the doctrine of Redemption from sin
supplies the Christian with motives and reasons for the divinity
of the Redeemer far more concerning and coercive subjectively,
that is, in the economy of his own soul, than are all the induce-
ments that can influence the Deist objectively, that is, in the in-
terpretation of nature.

Do I then utterly exclude the speculative reason from theology ?
No ! It is its office and rightful privilege to determine 011 the
negative truth of whatever we are required to believe. The doc-
trine must not contradict any universal principle : for this would
be a doctrine that contradicted itself. Or philosophy ? No. It
may be and has been the servant and pioneer of faith by con-
vincing the mind that a doctrine is cogitable, that the soul can
present the idea to itself; and that if we determine to contem-
plate, or think of, the subject at all, so and in no other form can
this be effected. So far are both logic and philosophy to be re-
ceived and trusted. But the duty, and in' some cases and foi

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 223

some persons even the right, of thinking on subjects beyond the
bounds of sensible experience ; the grounds of the real truth ; the
life, the substance, the hope, the love, in one word, the faith ; —
these are derivatives from the practical, moral, and spiritual na-
ture and being of man.

APHORISM III. *-

Burnet and Coleridge.

That Religion is designed to improve the nature and faculties
of man, in order to the right governing of our actions, to the
securing the peace and prjgress7"extemai" and internal, of indi-
viduals and of communities, and lastly, to the rendering us capa-
ble of a more perfect state, entitled the kingdom of God, to which
thlTpresent life is probationary — this is a truth, which all who
have truth oTily in view, will receive on its own evidence. If
such then be the main end of religion altogether (the improve-
ment namely of our nature and faculties), it is plain, that every
part of religion is to be judged by its relation to this main end.
And since the Christian scheme is religion in its most perfect and
effective form, a revealed religion, and, therefore, in a special
sense proceeding from that Being who made us and knows what
we are, of course therefore adapted to the needs and capabilities
of human nature ; nothing can be a part of this holy Faith that
is not duly proportioned to this end.

COMMENT.

This Aphorism should be borne in mind, whenever a theologi-
cal resolve is proposed to us as an article of faith. Take, for in-
stance, the determinations passed at the Synod of Dort, concern-
ing the absolute decrees of God in connection with his omnis-
cience and foreknowledge. Or take the decision in the Council
of Trent on Transubstantiation, founded on the difference between
its two kinds ; the one in which both the substance and the acci-
dents are changed, the same matter Remaining — as in the conver-
sion of water into wine at Cana : the other, in which the matter
and the substance are changed, the accidents remaining unaltered
as in the Eucharist — this latter being Transubstantiation par
eminence:* — and further that it is indispensable to a saving faith

* ideo persuasum semper in JZcclesia Dei fuit, idque mine dcnuo

vancta hcec Synodus declarat, per con seer ationem panis et vini conversion*™

224 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

carefully to distinguish the one kind from the other, and to believe
both, and to believe the necessity of believing both in order to
salvation ! For each of these extra-Scriptural articles of faith
the preceding Aphorism supplies a safe criterion. Will the belief
tend to the improvement of any of my moral or intellectual facul-
ties ? But before I can be convinced that a faculty will be im-
proved, I must be assured that it exists. On all these dark say-
ings, therefore, of Dort or Trent, it is quite sufficient to ask, by
what faculty, organ, or inlet of knowledge, we are to assure our-
selves that the words mean anything, or correspond to any object
out of our own mind or even in it : unless indeed the mere crav-
ing and striving to think on, after all the materials for thinking
have been exhausted, can be called an object. When a number
of trust-worthy persons assure me, that a portion of fluid which
they saw to be water, by some change in the fluid itself or in
their senses, suddenly acquired the 'color, taste, smell, and exhil-
arating property of wine, I perfectly understand what they tell
me, and likewise by what faculties they might have come to the
knowledge of the fact. But if any one of the number, not satis-
fied with my acquiescence in the fact, should insist on my believ-
ing that the matter remained the same, the substance and the
accidents having been removed in order to make way for a differ
ent substance with different accidents, I must entreat his permis-
sion to wait till I can discover in myself any faculty, by which
there can be presented to me a matter distinguishable from acci-
dents, and a substance that is different from both. It is true, I
have a faculty of articulation ; but I do not see that it can be
improved by my using it for the formation of words without

fieri totius substantive panis in substantiam corporis Christi Domini nostri,
et lotius subatantifE vini in substantiam sanguinis ejus. — Sess. xii. c. 4.

Totus — et integer C/iristus sub panis specie, et sub quavis ipsius speciei
parle, totus item sub vini specie, et sub ej us partibus existit. — Ib. c. 3.

Si quis dixerit, in sacrosancto Eucharistice Sacramento remanere substan-
tiam panis et vini una cum corpore et sanguine Domini nostri Jesu Christi,
negaveritque mirabilem ill am et sinyularcm conversionem totius substantia
panis in corpus, et totius substantial vini in sanffuinem, manentibus duntaxat
speciebus panis ei vini; quam quidem conversionem Catholica Ecclesia
Transsubstantiationem appellat — Anathema sit. — Ib. Can. 12.

Si quis negaverit, in venerabili Sacramento Eucharistia sub unaquaque
specie, ct sub singulis cujusque speciei partibus, separatione facta, totum
Christum contineri — Anathema sit. — Ib. Can. 8. — Ed.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 22£

meaning, or at best, for the utterance of thoughts, that mean only
the act of so thinking, or of trying so to think. But the end of
religion is the improvement of our nature and faculties. I sum
up the whole in one great practical maxim. The object of
religious contemplation, and of a truly spiritual faith, is " the /p
ways of God to man." Of the workings of the Godhead God
himself has told us, My ivays are not as your ways, nor my
hnughts as your thoughts.

APHORISM IV.

THE CHARACTERISTIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DISCIPLINE OF
THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS AND THE DISPENSATION OF THE
GOSPEL.

By undeceiving, enlarging, and informing the intellect, Phi-
losophy sought to purify and to elevate the moral character. Of
course, those alone could receive the latter and incomparably
greater benefit, who by natural capacity and favorable contingen-
cies of fortune were fit recipients of the former. How small the
number, we scarcely need the evidence of history to assure us.
Across the night of Paganism, Philosophy flitted on, like the lan-
tern-fly of the Tropics, a light to itself, and an ornament, but
alas ! no more than an ornament, of the surrounding darkness. „

Christianity reversed the order. By means accessible to all,
by inducements operative on all, and by convictions, the grounds
and materials of which all men might find in themselves, her
first step was to cleanse the heart. But the benefit did not stop
here. In preventing the rank vapors that steam up from the
corrupt heart, Christianity restores the intellect likewise to its
natural clearness. By relieving the mind from the distractions
and importunities of the unruly passions, she improves the quality
of the understanding : while at the same time she presents for its
contemplations objects so great and so bright as can not but en
large the organ, by which they are contemplated. The fears, the
hopes, the remembrances, the anticipations, the inward and out-
ward experience, the belief and the faith, of a Christian, form of
themselves a philosophy and a sum of knowledge, which a life
spent in the Grove of Academus, or the painted Porch, could not
have attained or collected. The result is contained in the fact of
a wide and still widening Christendom.

K*

226 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

Yet I dare not say that the effects have been proportionate to
the divine wisdom of the scheme. Too soon did the Doctors of
the Church forget that the heart, the moral nature, was the be-
ginning and the end : and that truth, knowledge, and insight
were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first
apostasy — when in council and synod the divine humanities of

• the Gospel_gave_ way to speculative systems, and religion became
a science of shadows under the name of theology, or at best a baro
skeleton of truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and
unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these therefore
there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows
and semblances. Thus among the learned the substance of things
hoped for (Heb. xi. 1) passed off into notions ; and for the un-
learned the surfaces of things became^ substance. The Christian
world was for centuries divided into the many, that did not think

fat all, and the few who did nothing but think — both alike unre-
flecting, the one from defect of the act, the other from the ab-

I sence of an object.

APHORISM V.

There is small chance of truth at the goal where there is not a
child-like humility at the starting-post.

COMMENT!

Humility is the safest ground of docility, and docility the surest
promise of docibility. Where there is no working of self-love in
the heart that secures a leaning beforehand ; where the great
magnet of the planet is not overwhelmed or obscured by partial
masses of iron in close neighborhood to the compass of the judg-
ment though hidden or unnoticed ; there will this great deside-
ratum be found of a child-like humility. Do I then say, that I
am to be influenced by no interest ? Far from it ! There is an

1 interest of truth : or how could there be a love of truth ? And
that a love of truth for its own sake, and merely as truth, is pos-
sible, my soul bears witness to itself in its inmost recesses. But

} there are other interests — those of goodness, of beauty, of utility.
It would be a sorry proof of the humility I am extolling, were I

* Virium et proprietatum, qua, non nisi de substantibus prtcdicari possunt,
formis super stantibus attributio, est Superstitio.

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 22T

to ask for angel's wings to overfly my own human nature. I ex
elude none of these. It is enough if the lene clinamen, the^geji-
tie bias, be given by no interest that concerns myself other than
as 1 am a man, and included in the great family of mankind ;
but which does therefore especially concern me, because being a
common interest of all men it must needs concern the^ very essen-
tials of my being, and because these essentials, as existing in me,
are especially intrusted to my particular charge.

Widely different from this social and truth-attracted bias, dif-
ferent both in its nature and its effects, is the interest connected
with the desire of distinguishing yourself from other men, in or-
der to be distinguished by them. Hoc revera est inter te et veri-
tatem. This interest does indeed stand between thee and truth.
I might add between thee and thy own soul. It is scarcely more
at variance with the love of truth than it is unfriendly to the at-
tainment of it. By your own act you have appointed the many
as your judges and appraisers : for the anxiety to be admired is
a loveless passion, ever strongest with regard to those by whom
we are least known and least cared for, loud on the hustings, gay
in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside. What
you have acquired by patient thought and cautious discrimina-
tion, demands a portion of the same effort in those who are to re-
ceive it from you. But applause and preference are things of
barter ; arid if you trade in them, experience will soon teach you
that there are easier and less unsuitable ways to win golden judg-
ments than by at once taxing the patience and humiliating the
self-opinion of your judges. To obtain your end, your words must
be as indefinite as their thoughts : and how vague and general
these are even on objects of sense, the few who at a mature age
have seriously set about the discipline of their faculties, and have
honestly taken stock, best know by recollection of their owrn state.
To be admired you must make your auditors believe at least that
they understand what you say ; which be assured, they never
will, under such circumstances, if it be worth understanding, or
if you understand your own soul. But while your prevailing mo-
tive is to be compared and appreciated, is it credible, is it possible,
that you should in earnest seek for a knowledge which is and must
remain a hidden light, a secret treasure ? Have you children, or
have you lived among children, and do you not know, that in all
things, in food, in medicine, in all their doings and abstainings

228 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

they must believe in order to acquire a reason for their belief ?
But so is it with religious truths for all men. These we must
all learn as children. The ground of the prevailing error on this
point is the ignorance, that in spiritual concernments to believe
and to understand are not diverse things, but the same thing in
different periods of its growth. Belief is the seed, received into
the will, of which the understanding or knowledge is the flower,
and the thing believed is the fruit. Unless ye believe ye can not
understand : and unless ye be humble as children, ye not only
will not, but yo can not believe. Of such therefore is the King-
dom of Heaven. Yea, blessed is the calamity that makes us
humble : though so repugnant thereto is our nature, in ^ur pres-
ent state, that after a while, it is to be feared, a second and
sharper calamity wrould be wanted to cure us of our pride in
having become so humble.

Lastly, there are among us, though fewer and less in fashion
than among our ancestors, persons who, like Shaftesbury, do not
belong to " the herd of Epicurus," yet prefer a philosophic pagan-
ism to the morality of the Gospel. Now it would conduce, me-
thinks, to the child-like humility we have been discoursing of, if
the use of the term, ^rtu& in that high, comprehensive, and no-
tional sense in which it was used by the ancient Stoics, were
abandoned, as a relic of Paganism, to these modern Pagans : and
if Christians restoring the word to its original import, namely,
manhood or manliness, used it exclusively to express the quality
of fortitude ; strength of character in relation to the resistance
opposed by nature and the irrational passions to the dictates of
reason : energy of will in preserving the line of rectitude tense
and firm against the warping forces and treacheries of tempta-
tion. Surely, it were far less unseemly to value ourselves on this
moraljrtreiigth than on strength of body, or even strength of in-
tellect. But we will rather value it for ourselves : and bearing
in mind the old query, — Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? — we will
value it the more, yea, then only will we allow it true spiritual
worth, when we possess it as a gift of grace, a boon of mercy un-
deserved, a fulfilment of a free promise (1 Cor. x. 13). What
more is meant in this last paragraph, let the venerable
say i".?r me in the following : —

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 229

APHORISM VI.

Hooker.

What is virtue but a medicine, and vice but a wound ? Tea,
we have so often deeply wounded ourselves with medicine, that
God hath been fain to make wounds medicinable ; to secure by
vice where virtue hath stricken ; to suffer the just man to fall,
that being raised he may be taught what power it was which
uphold him standing. I am not afraid to affirm it' boldly with
St. Augustine, that men puffed up through a proud opinion of
their own sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at the hands of
God, and are assisted with his grace when with his grace they
are not assisted, but permitted (and that grievously) to trans-
gress. Whereby, as they were through overgreat liking of them
selves supplanted (tripped up), so the dislike of that which did
supplant them may establish them afterwards the surer. Ask
the very soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly itself make you
this answer : My eager protestations made in the glory of my
spiritual strength I am ashamed of. But my shame and the
tears, with which my presumption and my weakness were be-
wailed, recur in the songs of my thanksgiving. My strength had
been my ruin, my fall hathjproved.jny^tay..

APHORISM VII.

The being and providence of One Living God, holy, gracious,
merciful, the Creator and Preserver of all things, and a Father
of the righteous ; the Moral Law in its1 utmost height, breadth
and purity ; a state of retribution after death ; the2 resurrection
of the dead ; and a day of Judgment — all these were known and
received by the Jewish people, as established articles of the na-
tional Faith, at or before the proclaiming of Christ by the Bap-
tist. They are the ground-work of Christianity, and essentials
in the Christian Faith, but not its characteristic and peculiar
doctrines : except indeed as they are confirmed, enlivened, real-
ized and brought home to the whole being of man, head, heart,
and spirit, by the truths and influences of the Gospel.

Peculiar to Christianity are :

I. The belief that a Mean of Salvation has been effected and
provided for the human race by the incarnation of the Son of
(rod in the person of Jesus_Christ_; and that his life on earth, his

230 AIDS TO KEFLECT10JS-.

sufferings, death, and resurrection, are not only proofs and mam
festations, but likewise essential and effective parts of the great
redemptive act, whereby also the obstacle from the corruption of
our nature is rendered no longer insurmountable.

II. The belief in the possible appropriation of this benefit by
repentance and faith, including the aids that render an effective
faitn and repentance themselves possible.

III. The belief in the reception (by as many as shall be heirs
of salvation) of a living and spiritual principle, a seed of life ca-
pable of surviving this natural life, and of existing in a divine
and immortal state.

IV. The belief in the awakening of the spirit in them that
truly believe, arid in the communion of the spirit, thus awakened,
with the Holy Spirit.

Y. The belief in the accompanying and consequent gifts,
graces, comforts, and privileges of the Spirit, which acting pri-
marily on the heart and will can not but manifest themselves in
suitable works of love and obedience, that is, in right acts with
right affections, frcftn right principles.

VI. Further, as Christians we are taught, that these Works
are the appointed signs and evidences of our Faith ; and that,
under limitation of the power, the means, and the opportunities
afforded us individually, they are the rule and measure, by which
we are bound and enabled to judge, of what spirit we are.

VII. All these, together with the doctrine of the Fathers re-
proclaimed in the everlasting Gospel, we receive in the full as-
surance, that God beholds and will finally judge us with a mer-
ciful consideration of our infirmities, a gracious acceptance of our
sincere though imperfect strivings, a forgiveness of our defects,
through the mediation, and a completion of our deficiencies by
the perfect righteousness, of the Man Christ Jesus, even the
Word that was in the beginning with God, and who, being God,
became man for the redemption of mankind.

COMMENT.

I earnestly entreat the Header to pause awhile, and to join
with me in reflecting on the preceding Aphorism. It has beer,
my aim throughout this Work to enforce two points : 1. That
Morality arising out of the reason and conscience of men, and

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 231

Prudence, which in like manner flows out of the understanding
and the natural wants and desires of the individual, are two_.dis-
tinct things. 2. That Morality with Prudence as its instrument
has, considered abstractedly, not only a value but a worth in it-
self. Now the question is (and it is a question which every man
must answejrjfor himself ) — From what you know of yourself ; of
your own heart and strength ; and from what history arid per-
sonal experience have led you to conclude of mankind generally ;
dare you trust to it ? Dare you trust to it ? To z'^jmd__to_ii

alone,? If so, wrell ! It is at your own risk. I judge you not.
Before Him, who can not be mocked, you stand or fall. But if
not, if you have had too good reason to know that your heart is
deceitful and your strength weakness : if you are disposed to ex
claim with Paul — The Law indeed is holy, just, good, spiritual ;
but I am carnal, sold under sin : for that which I do, I allow not,
and what I would, that I do not ! — in this case, there is a Voice
that says, Come unto me : and I will give you rest. This is the
voice of Christ : and the conditions, under which the promise was
given by him, are that you believe in him, and believe his words.
And he has further assured you, that if you do so, you will obey
him. You are, in short, to embrace the Christian Faith as your
religion — those truths which St. Paul believed after his conver-
sion, and not those only which he believed no less undoubtedly
while he was persecuting Christ and an enemy of the Christian
Religion. With what consistency could I offer you this Volume
as aids to reflection, if I did not call on you to ascertain in the
first instance what these truths are ? But these I could not lay
before you without first enumerating certain other points of be-
lief, which though truths, indispensable truths, and truths com-
prehended or rather pre-supposed in the Christian scheme, are
yet not these truths. (John i. 17.)

"While doing this, I was aware that the positions, in the first
paragraph of the preceding Aphorism, to which the numerical
marks are affixed, will startle some of my readers. Let the fol-
lowing sentences serve for the notes corresponding to the marks :

1 Ye shall be holy ; for I the Lord your God am holy.* He

hath showed thee, O man, what is good : and what doth the

Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and walk

humbly with thy God?\ To these summary passages from

* Lev. xix. 2.— Ed. f Micah vi. 8.— Ed.

232 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

Moses and the Prophet (the first exhibiting the closed, the second
the expanded, hand of the Moral Law) I might add the authori-
ties of Grotius and other more orthodox and not less learned di-
vines, for the opinion that the Lord's Prayer was a selection, and
the famous passage [ The hour is coming, fyc. John v. 28, 29] a
citation by our Lord from the Liturgy of the Jewish Church. But
it will be sufficient to remind the reader, that the apparent dif-
ference between the prominent moral truths of the Old and those
of the New Testament results from the latter having been writ-
ten in Greek ; while the conversations recorded by the Evangelists
took place in Syro-Chaldaic or Aramaic. Hence it happened
that where our Lord cited the original text, his biographers sub-
stituted the Septuagint Version, while our English Version is in
both instances immediate and literal — in the Old Testament from
the Hebrew Original, in the New Testament from the freer
Greek translation. The text, / give you a new commandment,
has no connection with the present subject.

There is a current mistake on this point likewise, though this
article of the Jewish belief is not only asserted by St. Paul, but is
elsewhere spoken of as common to the Twelve Tribes. The mis-
take consists in supposing the Pharisees to have been a distinct
sect in doctrine, and in strangely over-rating the number of the
Sadducees. The former were distinguished not by holding, as
matters of religious belief, articles different from the Jewish
Church at large : but by their pretences to a more rigid ortho-
doxy, a more scrupulous performance. They were the strict pro-
fessors of the day. The latter, the Sadducees, whose opinions
much more nearly resembled those of the Stoics than the Epicu-
reans— (a remark that will appear paradoxical to those only who
have abstracted their notions of the Stoic philosophy from Epic-
tetus, Mark Antonine, and certain brilliant inconsistencies of Sen-
eca),— were a handful of rich men, Romanized Jews, not more
numerous than Infidels among us, and hoi den by the people at
large in at least equal abhorrence. Their great argument was :
that the belief of a future state of rewards and punishments in*
jured or destroyed the purity of the Moral Law for the more en-
'lightened classes, and weakened the influence of the laws of the
land for the people, the vulgar multitude.

I will now suppose the reader to have thoughtfully reperused the

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INI EED. 233

paragraph containing the tenets peculiar to Christianity, and if
he have his religious principles yet to foirn, I should expect ta
orernear a troubled murmur : How can I comprehend this ?
How is this to be proved ? To the first question I should answer :
Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation ; but a life ;— ngta
philosoj hy of Iife3 but a life and a living process. To the second :
Tnv IT, It has been eighteen hundred years in existence : and
ha? cae individual left a record, like the following : — " I tried it,
ana it did not answer. I made the experiment faithfully accord-
ing to the directions : and the result has been, a conviction of my
own credulity?" Have you, in your own experience, met with
any one in whose words you could place full confidence, and who
has seriously affirmed : — " I have given Christianity a fair trial.
I was aware, that its promises were made only conditionally.
But my heart bears me witness, that I have to the utmost of my
power complied with these conditions. Both outwardly and in
the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have performed
the duties which it enjoins, and I have used the means which it
prescribes. Yet my assurance of its truth has received no in-
crease. Its promises have not been fulfilled : and I repent of
my delusion ?" If neither your own experience nor the history
of almost two thousand years has presented a single testimony to
this purport ; and if you have read and heard of many who have
lived and died bearing witness to the contrary : and if you have
yourself met with some one, in whom on any other point you
would place unqualified trust, who has on his own experience
made report to you, that He is faithful who promised, and what
He promised He has proved Himself able to perform : is it big-
otry, if I fear that the unbelief, which prejudges and prevents the
experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the uncorrupted
judgment ; that not the strong free mind, but the enslaved will,
is the true original infidel in this instance ? It would not be
the~first "time, that a treacherous bosom-sin had suborned the.
understandings of men to bear false witness against its avowed
enemy, the right though unreceived owner of the house, who had
long warned that sin out, and waited only for its ejection to enter
and take possession of the same.

I have elsewhere in the present Work explained the difference
between the Understanding and the Reason, by reason meaning
exclusively the speculative or scientific power so called, the *ov$

234 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

or wens of the ancients. And wid^r_stilLis_±lie jdistmction be-
tween the understanding and the spiritual mind. But no gift of
God does or can contradict any other gift, except by misuse or
misdirection. Most readily therefore do I admit, that there can
be no contrariety between revelation and the understanding ;
unless you call the fact, that the skin, though sensible of the
warmth of the sun, can convey no notion of its figure or its joy-
ous light, or of the colors which it impresses on the clouds, a con-
trariety between the skin and the eye ; or infer that the cutaneous
and the optic nerves contradict each othei

But we have grounds to believe, that there are yet other rays
or effluences from the sun, which neither feeling nor sight can
apprehend, but which are to be inferred from the effects. And
were it even so with regard to the spiritual sun, how would this
contradict the understanding or the reason ? It is a sufficient
proof of the contrary, that the mysteries in question are not in
the direction of the understanding or the (speculative) reason.
They do not move on the same line or plane with them, and
therefore can not contradict them. But besides this, in the mys-
tery that most immediately concerns the believer, that of the birth
into a new and spiritual life, the common sense and experience
of mankind come in aid of their faith. The analogous facts,
which we know to be true, not only facilitate the apprehension
of the facts promised to us, and expressed by the same words in
conjunction with a distinctive epithet : but being confessedly not
less incomprehensible, the certain knowledge of the one disposes
us to the belief of the other. It removes at least all objections
to the truth of the doctrine derived from the mysteriousness of its
subject. The life, we seek after, is a mystery ; but so both in it-
self and in its origin is* the life we have. In order to meet this
question, however, with minds duly prepared, there are two pre-
liminary inquiries to be decided ; the first respecting the purport,
the second respecting the language of the Gospel.

First then, of the purport, namely, wjubtahe Gospel does not,
and what it does profess to be. The Gospei^is not a system of
theology, nor a syntagma of theoreticalTpropositions and con elu-
sions for the enlargement of speculative knowledge, ethical 01
metaphysical. But it is a history, a series of facts and events
/ related or announced. These do indeed involve, or rather I

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 235

should say they at the same time are, most important doctrinal
truths ; but still facts andjleclaration of facts.

Secondly, of the language. This is a wide subject. But the
point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of thoroughly
understanding the distinction between analogous and metaphori-
cal language. Analogies are used in^L^of_cojrvictipn : meta-
phors, as tneans of illustration. The language is analogous,
wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher dignity is ex-
pressed by the same thing, power, or principle in a lower but
more known form. Such, for instance, is the language of John
iii. 6. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh,; that which is
bom of the Spirit, is Spirit. The latter half of the verse con-
tains the fact asserted ; the former half the analogous fact, by
which it is rendered intelligible. If any man choose to call this
metaphorical or figurative, I ask him whether with Hobbes and
Bolingbroke he applies the same rule to the moral attributes of
the Deity ? Whether he regards the divine justice, for instance,
as a metaphorical term, a mere figure of speech ? If he disclaims
this, then I answer, neither do I regard the phrase born again,
or spiritual life, as a figure or metaphor. I have only to add,
that these analogies are the material, or (to speak chemically)
the base, of symbols and symbolical expressions ; the nature of
which is always tautegorical, that is, expressing the same sub-
ject but with a difference, in contra-distinction from metaphors
and similitudes, which are always allegorical, that is, expressing
a different subject but with a resemblance.^

Of metaphorical language, on the other hand, let the following
be taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, we will
suppose, of an act, which in its own nature, and as a producing
and efficient cause, is transcendent ; but which produces sundry
effects, each of which is the same in kind with an effect produced
by aT cause well known and of ordinary occurrence. Now when
I characterize or designate this transcendent act, in exclusive
reference to these its effects, by a succession of names borrowed
from their ordinary causes ; not for the purpose of rendering the
act itself, or the manner of the agency, conceivable, but in order
to show the nature and magnitude of the benefits received from
it, and thus to excite the due admiration, gratitude, and love in
the receivers ; in this case I should be rightly described as speak
* See Works, I. p. 453, IV. p. 247, V. p. 224,— Ed.

236 AIDS TO KEFLECTIOK

ing metaphorically. And in this case to confound the similarity
in respect of the effects relatively to the recipients, with an iden-
tity in respect of the causes or modes of causation relatively to
the transcendent act or the Divine Agent, is a confusion of met-
aphor with analogy, and of figurative with literal ; and has been
and continues to be a fruitful source of superstition or enthusiasm
in believers, and of objections and prejudices to infidels and skep-
tics. But each of these points is worthy of a separate considera-
tion ; and apt occasions will be found of reverting to them sever-
ally in the following Aphorisms, or the comments thereto attached

APHORISM VIII

Leighton.

Faith elevates the soul not only above sense and sensible things,
but above reason itself. As reason corrects the errorn which
sense might occasion, so supernatural faith corrects the errors of
natural reason judging according to sense.

COMMENT.

My remarks on this Aphorism from Leighton can not be better
introduced, or their purport more distinctly announced, than by
the following sentence from Harrington, with no other change
than is necessary to make the words express, without aid of the
context, what from the context it is evident was the writer's
meaning. " The definition and proper character of man — that,
namely, which should contra-distinguish him from other animals —
is to be taken from his reason rather than from his understand-
ing : in regard that in other creatures there may be something
of understanding, but there is nothing of reason."

Sir Thomas Brown, in his Religio Medici, complains, that
there are not impossibilities enough in religion for his active faith ;
and adopts by choice and in free preference such interpretations
of certain texts and declarations of Holy Writ, as place them in
irreconcilable contradiction to the demonstrations of science and
the experience of mankind, because (says he) " I love to lose
myself in a mystery, and 'tis my solitary recreation to pose my
apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the
Trinity and Incarnation ;" — and because he delights (as thinking
it no vulgar part of faith) to believe a thing not only above but
contrary to reason, and against the evidence of our proper senses

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 237

For the worthy knight could answer all the objections of the
Devil and reason " with the old resolution he had learnt of Ter-
tullian : Cerium est quia impossibile est. It is certainly true
because it is quite impossible !" Now this I call Ultrafidian-
ism.*

* There is this advantage m the occasional use of a newly minted term or
title, expressing the doctrinal schemes of particular sects or parties, that it
avoids the inconvenience that presses on either side, whether we adopt the
name which the party itself has taken up by which to express its peculiar
tenets, or that by which the same party is designated by its opponents.
If we take the latter, it most often happens that either the persons are in-
vidiously aimed at in the designation of the principles, or that the name im-
plies some consequence or occasional accompaniment of the principles denied
by the parties themselves, as applicable to them collectively. On the other
hand, convinced as I am, that current appellations are never wholly in-
different or inert: and that, when employed to express the characteristic
belief or object of a religious confederacy, they exert on the many a great
and constant, though insensible, influence ; I can not but fear that in adopt-
ing the former I may be sacrificing the- interests of truth beyond what the
duties of courtesy can demand or justify. I have elsewhere stated my ob-
jections to the word Unitarians, as a name which in its proper sense can
belong only to the maiutainers of the truth impugned by the persons, who
have chosen it as their designation. For unity or uuition, and indistin-
guishable unicity or sameness, are incompatible terms. "We never speak of
the unity of attraction, or the unity of repulsion ; but of the unity of attrac-
tion and repulsion in each corpuscle. Indeed, the essential diversity of the
conceptions, unity and sameness, was among the elementary principles of
the old logicians ; and Leibnitz, in his critique on Wissowatius, has ably ex-
posed the sophisms grounded on the confusion of the two terms. But in
the exclusive sense, in which the name, Unitarian, is appropriated by the
Sect, and in which they mean it to be understood, it is a presumptuous
boast and an uncharitable calumny. No one of the Churches to which they
on this article of the Christian Faith stand opposed, Greek or Latin, ever
adopted the term, Trim — or Tri-uni-tarians as their ordinary and proper
name : and had it been otherwise, yet unity is assuredly no logical opposite
to Tri-unity, Avhich expressly includes it. The triple alliance is a fortiori
an alliance. The true designation of their characteristic tenet, and which
would simply and inoffensively express a fact admitted on all sides, is
Psilauthropism, or the assertion of the mere humanity of Christ.*

I dare not hesitate to avow my regret that any scheme of doctrines o?
tenets should be the subject of penal law : though I can easily conceive, that
any scheme, however excellent in itself, may be propagated, and however
false or injurious, may be assailed, in a manner and by means that would
make the advocate or assailant justly punishable. But then it is the
mnnncr, the means, that constitute the crime. The merit or demerit of the

See the sofioml Lay Sermon, Works, VI. p. 187.— Ed.

238 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Again, there is a scheme constructed on the principle of retain-
ing the social sympathies, that attend on the name of believer,
at the least possible expenditure of belief; a scheme of picking
and choosing Scripture texts for the support of doctrines, that
have been learned beforehand from the higher oracle of common

j opinions themselves depends on their originating and determining causes,
which may differ in every different believer, and are certainly known to

' Him alone, who commanded us, Judge not, lestj/cj)e judged. At all events,
in the present state of the law, I do not see where we can begin, or wher*
we can stop, without inconsistency and consequent hardship. Judging by
all that we can pretend to know or are entitled to infer, who among us will
take on himself to deny that the late Dr. Priestley was a good and benevo-
lent man, as sincere in his love, as he was intrepid and indefatigable in his
pursuit, of truth ? Now let us construct three parallel tables, the first con-
taining the articles of belief, moral and theological, maintained by the
venerable Hooker, as the representative of the Established Church, each
article being distinctly lined and numbered ; the second the tenets and per-
suasions of Lord Herbert, as the representative of the Platoniziug Deists
and the third, those of Dr. Priestley. Let the points, in which the secono
and third agree with or differ from the first, be considered as to the com-
parative number modified by the comparative weight and importance of the
several points — and let any competent and upright man be appointed the
arbiter, to decide according to his best judgment, without any reference to
the truth of the opinions, which of the two differed from the first more
widely. I say this, well aware that it would be abundantly more prudent
to leave it unsaid. But I say it in the conviction, that the adoption of ad-
mitted misnomers in the naming of doctrinal systems, if only they have
been negatively legalized, is but an equivocal proof of liberality towards
the persons who dissent from us. On the contrary, I more than suspect
that the former liberality does in too many men arise from a latent pre-dis-
position to transfer their reprobation and intolerance from the doctrines to
the doctors, from the belief to the believers. Indecency, abuse, scoffing on
subjects dear and awful to a multitude of our fellow-citizens, appeals to die
vanity, appetites, and malignant passions of ignorant and incompetent
judges — these are flagrant over-acts, condemned by the law written m the
heart of every honest man, Jew, Turk, and Christian. These are points
respecting which the humblest honest man feels it his duty to hold himself
infallible, and dares not hesitate in giving utterance to the verdict of his
conscience in the jury-box as fearlessly as by his fire-side. It is far other-
wise with respect to matters of faith and inward conviction: and with
respect to these I say — Tolerate no belief that you judge false and of injuri-

'ous tendency : and arraign no believer. The man is more and other than
his belief: and God only knows, how small or how large a part of him tin
belief in question may be, for good or for evil. Resist every false doctrine :
and call no man heretic. The false doctrine does not necessarily make the
man a heretic ; but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 239

sense ; which, as applied to the truths of religion, means the
popular part of the philosophy in fashion. Of course, the r.chemo
differs at different times and in different individuals in the num-
ber of articles excluded ; but, it may always be recognized by this
permanent character, that its object is to draw religion down to
the believer's intellect, instead of raising his intellect up to j
religion. And this extreme I call Minimi-fid ianisrn .

Actuated by these principles, I have objected to a false and deceptive
designation in the case of one system. Persuaded that the doctrines, enu-
merated in pp.229, 30 are not only essential to the Christian religion, but
those which centra-distinguish the religion as Christian, I merely repeat
this persuasion in another form, when I assert, that (in my sense of the
word, Christian) Unitarianism is not Christianity. But do I say, that those
who call themselves Unitarians are not Christians ? God forbid ! I would |
not think, much less promulgate, a judgment at once so presumptuous and
so uncharitable.* Let a friendly antagonist retort on my scheme of faith in
the like manner : I shall respect him all the more for his consistency as a
reasoner, and not confide the less in his kindness towards me as his neigh-
bor and fellow-Christian. This latter and most endearing name I scarcely
know how to withhold even from my friend, Hyman Hurwitz, as often as I
read what every reverer of Holy Writ and of the English Bible ought to
read, his admirable Vindicice Hebraicce. It has trembled on the verge, as
it were, of my lips, every time I have conversed with that pious, learned,
strong-minded, and single-hearted Jew, an Israelite indeed, and without
guile—

Cujus euro, sequi naturam, legibus uti,

Et mentem vitiis, ora ncgare dolis ;
Virtutes opibus, verum prceponere falso,

Nil vacuum sensu diccre, nil facer e.
Post obitum vivam secum,^ secum requiescam,
Nee fiat melior sors rnea sorte sua !

From a poem of Hildcbert on his Master, the
persecuted Berengarius.

Under the same feelings I conclude this aid to reflection by applying the
principle to another misnomer not less inappropriate and far more influen-
tial. Of those, whom I have found most reason to respect and value, many
have been members of the Church of Rome : and certainly I did not honor
those the least, who scrupled even in common parlance to call our Church

reformed Church. A similar scruple would not, methinks, disgrace a
Protestant as to the use of the words, Catholic or Roman Catholic; and if
(tacitly at least, and in thought) he remembered that the Romish anti-
Catholic Church would more truly express the fact. Romish, to mark that
the corruptions in discipline, doctrine, and practice do, for the larger part

* See Table Talk, Works VI. p. 387.—^
f I do not answer for the corrupt Latin.

240 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Now if there be one preventive of both these extremes more
efficacious than another, and preliminary to all the rest, it is the
being made fully aware of the diversity of Reason and the Un-
1 derstanding. And this is the more expedient, because though
there is no want of authorities ancient and modern for the dis-
tinction of the faculties, and the distinct appropriation of the terms,
yet our best writers too often coiilbund the one with the other.

owe both their origin and perpetuation to the Romish Court, and the local
tribunals of the City of Rome ; and neither are nor ever have been Catholic,
that is, universal throughout the Roman Empire, or even in the whole
Latin or Western Church — and anti-Catholic, because no other Church acts
on so narrow and excommunicative a principle, or is characterized by such
a jealous spirit of monopoly. Instead of a Catholic (universal) spirit, it
may be truly described as a spirit of particularism counterfeiting Catho-
licity by a negative totality, and heretical self-circumscription — in the first
instances cutting off, and since then cutting herself off from, all the other
members of Christ's body. For the rest, I think as that man of true catlio
lie spirit and apostolic zeal, Richard Baxter, thought ; and my readers will
thank me for conveying my reflections in his own words, in the following
golden passage from his Life, " faithfully published from his own original
MSS. by Matthew Silvester, 1696."

" My censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at
first. I then thought that their errors in the doctrines of faith were their
most dangerous mistakes. But now I am assured that their misexpressions
and misunderstanding of us, \vith our mis takings of them, and inconvenient
expressing of our own opinions, have made the difference in most points
appear much greater than it is ; and that in some it is next to none at all.
But the great and unreconcilable differences lie in their Church tyranny ;
in the usurpations of their hierarchy, and priesthood, under the name of
spiritual authority exercising a temporal lordship ; in their corruptions and
abasement of God's worship ; but above all in their systematic befriending
of ignorance and vice.

" At first I thought that Mr. Perkins well proved that a Papist can not

I go beyond a reprobate ; but now I doubt not that God hath many sanctified

j ones among them, who have received the true doctrine of Christianity so

practically, that their contradictory errors prevail not against them, to

hinder their love of God and their salvation : but that their errors are like

' a conquerable dose of poison, which a healthful nature doth overcome.

\And 1 can never believe that a man may not be saved by that religion, which

doth but bring him to a true love of God and to a heavenly mind and life :

nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell that truly loveth him. Also at

first it would disgrace any doctrine with me, if I did but hear it called

Popery and anti-Chriskian ; but I have long learned to be more impartial,

and to know that Satan can use even the names of Popery and Antichrist,

to bring » truth into suspicion and discredit." — Baxter's Life, Part I. p. 181

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 241

Even Lord Bacon himself, who in his Novuin Organum has so
incomparably set forth the nature of the difference, and the un-
fitness of the latter faculty for the objects of the former, does nev-
ertheless in sundry places use the term reason where he means
the understanding, and sometimes, though less frequently, under-
standing for reason.^ In consequence of thus confounding the
two terms, or rather of wasting both words for the expression of
one and the same faculty, he left himself no appropriate term for
the olher and higher gift of reason, and was thus under the D^-
cessity of adopting fantastical and mystical phrases, for example,
the dry light (lumen siccum), the lucific vision, and the like,
meaning thereby nothing more than reason in contradistinction
from the understanding. Thus too in the preceding Aphorism,
by reason Leighton means the human understanding, the expla-
nation annexed to it being (by a noticeable coincidence) word fo?
word, the very definition which the founder of the Critical Phi-
losophy gives of the understanding — namely, "the faculty judg-
ing according to sense."

ON THE DIFFERENCE IN KIND OF REASON AND THE UNDER-

SCHEME OF THE ARGUMENT.

On the contrary, Reason is the power of universal and neces- IA^~.
sary convictions, the source and substance of truths above sense,
and having their evidence in themselves. Its presence is always '
marked by the necessity of the position affirmed : this necessity
being conditional, when a truth of reason is applied to facts of
experience, or to the rules and maxims of the understanding ;
but absolute, when the subject matter is itself the growth or off-
spring of reason. Hence arises a distinction in reason itself,
derived from the different mode of applying it, and from the ob-
jects to which it is directed : accordingly as we consider one and
the same gift, now as the ground offormal principles, and now
as the origin of jdeas. Contemplatea^isHn^tiv^iyTn reference to
formal (or abstract) truth, it is the Speculative Reason ^ but in
reference to actual (or_rnpj^jjtmth, as the fountain of ideas and

* See The Friend, II pp. 146-1 50 ; Essays VIII. and IX., II pp. 437-448.— Ed.
VOL. i. L

242 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

the light pfjthe conscience, we name it the Practical

r'

hi

Whenever by self-subjection to this universal light, the will o^
the individual, the particular will, has become a will^of reason
the man isj-ggenerate : and reason is then the spirit of the re-
generated man, whereby the person is capable of a quickening"
intercommunion with the Divine Spirit. And herein consists the
mystery of Redemption, that this has been rendered possible for
us. And so it is written ; the first man Adam ivas made a
living soul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit. (1 Cor. xv.
45.) We need only compare the passages in the writings of the
Apostles Paul and John, concerning the Spirit and spiritual
gifts, with those in the Proverbs and in the Wisdom of Solomon
respecting Reason, to be convinced that the terms are synony-
mous.* In this at once most comprehensive and most appro
priate acceptation of the word, Reason is pre-eminently spiritual,
and a spirit, even our spirit, through an effluence of the same
grace by which we are privileged to say, Our Father !

On the other hand, the judgments of the Understanding arc
binding only in relation to the objects of our senses, which we
reflect under the forms of the understanding. It is, as Leighton
rightly defines it, " the faculty judging according to sense."
Hence we add the epithet human without tautology : and speak
of the human understanding in disjunction from that of beings
higher or lower than man. But there is, in this sense, no human
reason. There neither is nor can be but one reason, one and the
same ; even the light that lighteth every man's individual un-
derstanding (discursus), and thus maketh it a reasonable under-
standing, discourse of reason — one only, yet manifold : it goeth
through all understanding, and remaining in itself re gener-
ateth all other poiuers. The same writer calls it likewise an in-
fluence from the Glory of the Almighty, this being one of the
names of the Messiah^ as the Logos, or co-eternal Filial Word.
And most noticeable for its coincidence is a fragment of Hcra-
clitus, as I have indeed already noticed elsewhere ; — " To dis-
course rationally it behooves us to derive strength from that which
is common to all men : for all human understandings are nour-
ished by the one Divine Word."

Beasts, I have said, partake of understanding. If any man
this, there is a ready way of settling the question Let
* See Wisd. of Sol. c. vii. 22, 23, Vl.—Ed.

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL BELIGION INDEED. 243

him give a careful perusal to Hiiber's two small volumes on bees
and ants (especially the latter), and to Kirby and Spence's In-
troduction to Entomology : and one or other of two things must
follow. He will either change his opinion as irreconcilable with
the facts ; or he must deny the facts ; which yet I can not sup-
pose, inasmuch as the denial would be tantamount to the no less
extravagant than uncharitable assertion, that Haber, and the
several eminent naturalists, French and English, Swiss, German,
and Italian, by whom Hiiber's observations and experiments have
bsen repeated and confirmed, have all conspired to impose a
series of falsehoods and fairy-tales on the world. I see no way,
at least, by which he can get out of this dilemma, but by over-
leaping the admitted rules and fences of all legitimate discussion,
and either transferring to the word, Understanding, the definition
already appropriated to Reason, or defining understanding in
genere by the specific and accessional perfections which the hu-
man understanding derives from its co-existence with reason and
free-will in the same individual person ; in plainer words, from
its being exercised by a self-conscious and responsible creature.
And, after all, the supporter of Harrington's position would have
a right to ask him, by what other name he would designate the
faculty in the instances referred to ? If it be not understanding,
what is it ?

In no former part of this Volume have I felt the same anxiety
to obtain a pa.tient attention. For I do not hesitate to avow
that on my success in establishing the validity and importance |
of the distinction between Reason and the Understanding, rest
my hopes of carrying the Reader along with me through all that
is to follow. Let the student but clearly see and comprehend 1
the diversity in the things themselves, and the expediency of a
correspondent distinction and appropriation of the words will fol-
low of itself. Turn back for a moment to the Aphorism, and
having re-perused the first paragraph of this Comment thereon,
regard the two following narratives as the illustration. I do
not say proof : for I take these from a multitude of facts equally
striking for the one only purpose of placing my meaning out of
all doubt.

I. Hi'iber put a dozen humble-bees under a bell-glass along
with a comb of about ten silken cocoons so unequal in height as
not to be capable of standing steadily. To remedy this two ol

244 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

three of the humble-bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves
over its edge, and with their heads downwards fixed their fore-
feet on the table on which the comb stood, and so with their
hind feet kept the comb from falling. When these were weary
others took their places. In this constrained and painful posture,
fresh bees relieving their comrades at intervals, and each work-
ing in its turn, did these affectionate little insects support the
comb for nearly three days : at the end of which they had pre
pared sufficient wax to build pillars with. But these pillars
having accidentally got displaced, the bees had recourse again to
the same manoeuvre, till Hiiber pitying their hard case, &c.

II. " I shall at present describe the operations of a single ant
that I observed sufficiently long to satisfy my curiosity.

" One rainy day I observed a laborer digging the ground near
the aperture which gave entrance to the ant-hill. It placed in
a heap the several fragments it had scraped up, and formed them
into small pellets, which it deposited here and there upon the
nest. It returned constantly to the same place, and appeared to
have a marked design, for it labored with ardor and persever-
ance. I remarked a slight furrow, excavated in the ground in a
"straight line, representing the plan of a path or gallery. The
laborer, the whole of whose movements fell under my immediate
observation, gavs it greater depth and breadth, and cleared out
its borders : and I saw at length, in which I could not be de-
ceived, that it had the intention of establishing an avenue which
vas to lead from one of the stories to the underground chambers.
This path, which was about two or three inches in length, and
formed by a single ant, was opened above and bordered on each
side by a buttress of earth; its concavity en forme de goutiere
was of the most perfect regularity, for the architect had not left
an atom too much. The work of this ant was so well followed
and understood, that I could almost to a certainty guess its next
proceeding, and the very fragment it was about to remove. At
the side of the opening where this path terminated, was a sec-
ond opening to which it was necessary to arrive by some road.
The same ant engaged in and executed alone this undertaking.
It furrowed out and opened another path, parallel to the first,
leaving between each a little wall of three or four lines in height.
Those ants who lay the foundation of a wall, chamber, or gal-
lery, from working separately occasion, now and then, a want of

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 245

coincidence in the parts of the same or different objects. Such
examples are of no unfrequent occurrence, but they by no means
embarrass them. What follows proves that the workman, on
discovering his error, knew how to rectify it. A wall had been
erected with the view of sustaining a vaulted ceiling, still incom-
plete, that had been projected from the wall of the opposite
chamber. The workman who began constructing it, had given
it too little elevation to meet the opposite partition upon which
it was to rest. Had it been continued on the original plan, it
must infallibly have met the wall at about one half of its height,
and this it was necessary to avoid. This state of things very
forcibly claimed my attention, when one of the ants arriving 'at
the' place, and visiting the works, appeared to be struck by the
difficulty which presented itself; but this it as soon obviated, by
taking down the ceiling arid raising the wall upon which it re-
posed. It then, in my presence, constructed a new ceiling with
the fragments of the former one." — Hubers Natural History
of Ants, pp. 38-41.

Now I assert, that the faculty manifested in the acts here nar-
rated does not differ in kind from understanding, and that it does
so differ from reason. "What I conceive the former to be, physio- v
logically considered, will be shown hereafter. In this place I take
the understanding as it exists in men, and in exclusive reference
to its intelligential functions ; and it is in this sense of the word
that I am to prove the necessity of contra-distinguishing it from
reason.

Premising then, that two or more subjects having the same
essential characters are said to fall under the same general defi-
nition, I lay it down, as a self-evident truth — (it is, in fact, an
identical proposition) — that whatever subjects fall under one and
the same general definition are of one and the same kind : con-
sequently, that which does not fall under this definition, must
differ in kind from each and all of those that do. Difference in
degree does indeed suppose sameness in kind ; and difference in
kind precludes distinction from difference of degree. Heterogenea
non comparari, ergo nee distingui, possunt. The inattention to
this rule gives rise to the numerous sophisms comprised by Aris-
totle under the head of nier&fiuatg ei$ «Ho j'eVo?, that is, transition
into a new kind, or the falsely applying to X what had been truly
asserted of A, and might have been true of X, had it differed froir

246

AIDS TO REFLECTION.

A in its degree only. The sophistry consists in the omission to
notice what not being noticed will be supposed not to exist ; and
where the silence respecting the difference in kind is tantamount
to an assertion that the difference is merely in degree. But the
fraud is especially gross, where the heterogeneous subject, thus
clandestinely slipt in, is in its own nature insusceptible of degree :
such as, for instance, certainty or circularity, contrasted with
strength, or magnitude.

To apply these remarks for our present purpose, we have only
to describe Understanding and Reason, each by its characteristic
qualities. The comparison will show the difference. , j-C

UNDERSTANDING.

1. Understanding is discur-
ive.

2. The Understanding in all
judgments refers to some

>ther faculty as its ultimate au-
lority.

3. Understanding is the fac-
ility of reflection.

REASON.

1. Reason is fixed.

2. The Reason in all its de
cisions appeals to itself as the
ground and substance of their
truth. (Heb. vi. 13.)

3. Reason of contemplation.
Reason indeed is much nearer
to Sense than to Understanding :
for Reason (says our great Hook-
er) is a direct aspect of truth,
an inward beholding, having a
similar relation to the intelligi-
ble or spiritual, as Sense has to
the material or phenomenal.

The result is, that neither falls under the definition of the other.
They difier_m kind : and had my object been confined to the
establishment of this fact, the preceding columns would have su-
perseded all further disquisition. But I have ever in view the
especial interest of my youthful readers, whose reflective power
is to be cultivated, as well as their particular reflections to be
called forth and guided. Now the main chance of their reflect-
ing on religious subjects aright, and of their attaining to the con-
' templation of spiritual truths at all, rests on their insight into
the nature of this disparity still more than on their conviction of
its existence I now, therefore, proceed to a brief analysis of

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 247

the Understanding, in elucidation of the definitions already
given.

The Understanding then, considered exclusively as an organ
of human intelligence, is the faculty hy which we reflect and gen-
eralize. Take, for instance, any object consisting of many parts,
a house, or a group of houses : and if it be contemplated, as a
whole, that is, as many constituting a one, it forms what, in the
technical language of psychology, is called a total impression.
Among the various component parts of this, we direct our at-
tention especially to such as we recollect to have noticed in other
total impressions. Then, by a voluntary act, we withhold our
attention from all the rest to reflect exclusively on these ; and
these we henceforward use as common characters, by virtue of
which the several objects are referred to one and the same sort.*"
Thus, the whole process may be reduced to three acts, all de-
pending on and supposing a previous impression on the senses :
first, the appropriation of our attention ; second (and in order to
the continuance of the first) abstraction, or the voluntary with-
holding of the attention ; and, third, generalization. And these
are the proper functions of the Understanding : and the power
of so doing, is what we mean, when we say we possess under-
standing, or are created with the faculty of understanding. f

* Accordingly as we attend more or less to the differences, the sort be-
comes, of course, more or less comprehensive. Hence there arises for the
systematic naturalist the necessity of subdividing the sorts into orders,
classes, families, cfec. : all which, however, resolve themselves for the mere
logician into the conception of genus and species, that is, the comprehending
and the comprehended.

f It is obvious, that the third function includes the act of comparing
one object with another. The act of comparing supposes in the comparing
faculty certain inherent forms, that is, modes of reflecting not referable to
the objects reflected on, but pre-determined by the constitution and mechan-
ism of the understanding itself. And under some one or other of these
forms, the resemblances and differences must be subsumed in order to be
conceivable, and a fortiori therefore in order to be comparable. The senses
do not compare, but merely furnish the materials for comparison.

Were it not so, how could the first comparison have been possible ? It
would involve the absurdity of measuring a thing by itself. But if we think
on some one thing, the length of our own foot, or of our hand and arm from
the elbow-joint, it is evident that in order to do this, we must have the con-
ception of measure. Now these antecedent and most general conceptions
are what is meant by the constituent forms of the understanding : we call
them constituent because they are not acquired by the understanding, but

248 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Now when a person speaking to us of any particular object ot
appearance refers it by means of some common character to a
known class (which he does in giving it a name), we say, that
we understand him ; that is, we understand his words. The
name of a thing, in the original sense of the word name (nonien,

are implied in its constitution. As rationally might a circle be said to ac-
quire a centre and circumference, as the understanding to acquire these its
inherent forms or ways of conceiving. This is what Leibnitz meant, when
to the old adage of the Peripatetics, Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in
sensu — there is nothing in the understanding not derived from the senses
or — there is nothing conceived that was not previously joerceived, — he re-
plied— prceter intcllectum ipsum, except the misunderstanding itself.
I And here let me remark for once and all : whoever would reflect to any
purpose — whoever is in earnest in his pursuit of self-knowledge, and of one
of the principal means to this, an insight into the meaning of the words he
; uses, and the different meanings properly or improperly conveyed by one
and the same word, accordingly as it is used in the schools or the market,—
accordingly as the kind or a high degree is intended (for example, heat,
weight, and the like, as employed scientifically, compared with the same
word used popularly) — whoever, I say, seriously, proposes this as his ob-
ject, must so far overcome his dislike of pedantry, and his dread of being
sneered at as a pedant, as not to quarrel with an uncouth word or phrase,
till he is quite sure that some other and more familiar one would not only
have expressed the precise meaning with equal clearness, but have been as
likely to draw attention to this meaning exclusively. The ordinary lan-
guage of a philosopher in conversation or popular writings, compared with
the language he uses is. strict reasoning, is as his watch compared with the
chronometer in his observatory. He sets the former by the town-clock, or
even, perhaps, by the Dutch clock in his kitchen, not because he believes it
right, but because his neighbors and his cook go by it. To afford the reader
an opportunity for exercising the forbearance here recommended, I turn
back to the phrase, " most general conceptions," and observe, that in strict
and severe propriety of language, I should have said generalise or generic
rather than general, and concipiences or conceptive acts rather than con-
ceptions.

It is an old complaint, that a man of genius no sooner appears, but the
host of dunces are up in arms to repel the invading alien. This observation
would have made more converts to its truth, I suspect, had it been worded
more dispassionately and with a less contemptuous antithesis. For " dunces,"
let us substitute " the many," or the " ovroe ic6o//of" (this world) of the Apos-
tle, and we shall perhaps find no great difficulty in accounting for the fact.
To arrive at the root, indeed, and last ground of the problem, it would be
j necessary to investigate the nature and effects of the sense of difference on
j the human mind where it is not holden in check by reason and reflection,
• We need not go to the savage tribes of North America, or the yet ruder na-
tives of the Indian Isles, to learn how slight a degree of difference will, ID

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 249

, TO intelligible, id quod intelligitur), expresses that which
is understood in an appearance, that which we place (or make
to stand) under it, as the condition of its real existence, and in
proof that it is not an accident of the senses, or affection of the
individual, riot a phantom or apparition, that is, an appearance

uncultivated minds, call up a sense of diversity, and inward perplexity and
contradiction, as if the strangers were, and yet were not, of the same kind
with themselves. Who has not had occasion to observe the effect which the
sresticulations and nasal tones of a Frenchman produce on our own vulgar ?
Here we may see the origin and primary import of our unkindness. It is
a sense of wnkind, and not the mere negation but the positive opposite of
the sense of kind. Alienation, aggravated now by fear, now by contempt,
and not seldom by a mixture of both, aversion, hatred, enmity, are so many
successive shapes of its growth and metamorphosis. In application to the
present case, it is sufficient to say, that Pindar's remark on sweet music
holds equally true of genius : as many as are not delighted by it are dis-
turbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a pro
jected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its
head, Or recoils from it as from a spectre. But this speculation would lead
me too far ; I must be content with having referred to it as the ultimate
ground of the fact, and pass to the more obvious and proximate causes.
And as the first, I would rank the person's not understanding what yet he
expects to understand, and as if he had a right to do so. An original mathe
matical work, or any other that requires peculiar and technical marks and
symbols, will excite no uneasy feelings — not in the mind of a competent
reader, for he understands it ; and not with othei ss, because they neither
expect nor are expected to understand it. The second place we may assign
to the misunderstanding, which is almost sure to follow in cases where the
incompetent person, finding no outward marks (diagrams, arbitrary signs,
and the like) to inform him at first sight, that the subject is one which he
does not pretend to understand, and to be ignorant of which does not de-
tract from his estimation as a man of abilities generally, will attach some
meaning to what he hears or reads ; and as he is out of humor with the au-
thor, it will most often be such a meaning as he can quarrel with and ex-
hibit in a ridiculous or offensive point of view.

But above all, the whole world almost of minds, as far as we reg-ard in-
tellectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the busy-indolent and
lazy-indolent. To both alike all thinking is painful, and all attempts to
rouee thorn to think, whether in the re-examination of their existing convic-
tions, or for the reception of new light, are irritating. " It may all be very
deep and clever ; but really one ought to be quite sure of it before one
wrenches one's brain to find out what it is. I take up a book as a compan-
ion, with whom I can have an easy cheerful chitchat on what we both know
beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure hours wo have a right
to relaxation and amusement."

Well ! but in their studious hours, when their bow is to be beat, when

T *

250 AIDS TO KEFLECTICXN'.

which is only an appearance. (See Gen. ii. 19, 20, and in Psalm
xx. 1, and in many other places of the Bible, the identity of no-
men with numen, that is, invisible power and presence, the no-
men substantivum of all real objects, and the ground of theii
reality, independently of the affections of sense in the percipient.)
In like manner, in a connected succession of names, as the speake*
passes from one to the other, we say that we understand his dis~

they are apud Musas, or amidst the Muses ? Alas ! it is just the same,
The same craving for amusement, that is, to be away from the Muses ; for
relaxation, that is, the unbending of a bow which in fact had never been
strung ? There are two ways of obtaining their applause. The first is :
enable them to reconcile in one and the same occupation the love of sloth
and the hatred of vacancy. Gratify indolence, and yet save them from ennui
— in plain English, from themselves. For, spite of their antipathy to dry
reading, the keeping company with themselves is, after all, the insufferable
annoyance : and the true secret of their dislike to a work of thought and in-
quiry lies in its tendency to make them acquainted with their own perma-
nent being. The other road to their favor is, to introduce to them their
own thoughts and predilections, tricked out in, the fine language, in which
it would gratify their vanity to express them in their own conversation, and
with which they can imagine themselves showing off: and this (as has been
elsewhere remarked) is the characteristic difference between the second-rate
writers of the last two or three generations, and the same class under Eliza-
beth and the Stuarts. In the latter we find the most far-fetched and singu-
lar thoughts in the simplest and most native language ; in the former, the
most obvious and common-place thoughts in the most far-fetched and motley
language. But lastly, and as the sine qua non of their patronage, a suffi-
cient arc must be left for the reader's mind to oscillate in — freedom of
choice,

To make the shifting cloud be what you please,

save only where the attraction of curiosity determines the line of motion.
The attention must not be fastened down : and this every work of genius,
not simply narrative, must do before it can be justly appreciated.

In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of
studious meditation or scientific research to the capacity of the people, pre-
senting in the concrete, by instances and examples, what had been ascer-
tained in the abstract and by discovery of the law. Now, on the other hand,
that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and
prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them under the title of-THE~
PUBLIC, into a supreme and inappellable tribunal of intellectual excellence.

P.S. In a continuous work, the frequent insertion and length of notes
; would need an apology : in a book like this, of aphorisms and detached
I comments, none is necessary, it being understood beforehand that the sauce
and the garnish are to occupy the greater part of the dish.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 251

course, discvrsio intellects s, discursus, his passing from one thing
to another. Thus, in all instances, it is words, names, or, if
images, yet images used as words or names, that are the only
and exclusive subjects of understanding. In no instance do we
understand a thing in itself; but only the name to which it is
referred. Sometimes indeed, when several classes are recalled
conjointly, we identify the words with the object — though by
courtesy of idiom rather than in strict propriety of language.
Thus we may say that we understand a rainbow, when recall-
ing successively the several names for the several sorts of colors,
\ve know that they are to be applied to one and the same phce-
nomenon, at once distinctly and simultaneously ; but even in
common speech we should not say this of a single color. No
one would say he understands red or blue. He sees the color,
and had seen it before in a vast number and variety of objects ;
and he understands the word red, as referring his fancy or mem-
ory to this his collective experience.

If this be so, and so it most assuredly is — if the proper func-
tions of the imderstanding be that of generalizing the notices re-
ceived from the senses in order to the construction of names : of
referring particular notices, that is, impressions or sensations, to
their proper names ; and, vice versa, names to their correspondent
class or kind of notices — then it follows of necessity, that the
Understanding is truly and accurately denned in the words of
Leighton and Kant, a faculty judging according to sense.

Now whether in defining the speculative Reason, — (that is, the
reason considered abstractedly as an intellective power)— we call
it " the source of necessary and universal principles, according to
which the notices of the senses are either affirmed or denied ;"
or describe it as " the power by which we are enabled to draw
from particular and contingent appearances universal and neces-
sary conclusions :"# it is equally evident that the two definitions

* Take a familiar illustration. My sight and touch convey to me a cei
tain impression, to which my understanding applies its pre-conceptions
(conceptus antecedentes et generalissimi) of quantity and relation, and thus
refers it to the class and name of three-cornered bodies — we will suppose
it the iron of a turf-spade. It compares the sides, and finds that any two
measured as one are greater than the third ; and according to a law of th«
imagination, there arises a presumption that in all other bodies of the samo
figure (that is, three-cornered and equilateral) the same proportion exists.
After this, the senses have been directed successively to a number of three-

•252 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

differ in their essential characters, and consequently the subjects
differ in kind.

The dependence of the Understanding on the representations
of the senses, and its consequent posteriority thereto, as contrasted
with the independence and antecedency of Reason, are strikingly

cornered bodies of unequal sides — and in these too the same proportion lias
been found without exception, till at length it becomes a fact of experience,
that in all triangles hitherto seen, the two sides together are greater than
the third and there will exist no ground or analogy for anticipating an ex-
ception to a rule, generalized from so vast a number of particular instances.
So far and no farther could the understanding carry us : and as far as this
"the faculty, judging according to sense," conducts many of the inferior
animals, if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent.

The reason supersedes the whole process, and on the first conception pre-
sented by the understanding in consequence of the first sight of a triangular
figure, of whatever sort it might chance to be, it affirms with an assurance
incapable of future increase, with a perfect certainty, that in all possible
triangles any two of the inclosing lines will and must be greater than the
third. In short, understanding in its highest form of experience remains
commensurate with the experimental notices of the senses from which it is
generalized. Reason, on the other hand, either predetermines experience, .
or avails itself of a past experience to supersede its necessity in all future
time ; and affirms truths which no sense could perceive, nor experiment v" ->
verify, nor experience confirm.

Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that in its own
proper form it is inconceivable. For to conceive is a function of the under-
standing, which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And
yet to the forms of the understanding, all truth must be reduced, that is to
be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered expressible. And
here we have a second test and sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can come
forth out of the moulds of the understanding only in the disguise of two cou-
tradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the conjunction
of both conceptions becomes the representative or expression (the exponent)
of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. Examples : Before Abra-
ham was, I am. — God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere, and
circumference nowhere. The soul is all in every part.

If this appear extravagant, it is an extravagance which no man can indeed
learn from another, but which, (were this possible,) I might have learnt
from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon ; from Luther, Hooker, Pascal, Leibnitz, and
Fenelou. But in this last paragraph I have, I see, unwittingly overstepped
my purpose, according to which we were to take reason as a simply intellec-
! tual power. Yet even as such, and with all the disadvantage of a technica1
and arbitrary abstraction, it has been made evident: — 1. that there is ao
intuition or immediate beholding, accompanied by a conviction of theneces
sity and universality of the truth so beholden, net derived from the senses,
winch intuition, when it is construed by pure sense, gives birth to tJv-

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 253

exemplified in the Ptolemaic system — that truly wonderful product
and highest boast of the faculty, judging according to the senses —
compared with the Newtonian, as the offspring of a yet higher
power, arranging, correcting, and annulling the representations of
the senses according to its own inherent laws and constitutive ideas

science of mathematics, and when applied to objects supersensuous or spir-
itual is the organ of theology and philosophy : — and 2. that there is likewise
a i efleotive and discursive faculty, or mediate apprehension which, taken
b} itself and uninfluenced by the former, depends on the senses for the ma-
tOxJals on which it is exercised, and is contained within the sphere of the
senses. And this faculty it is, which in generalizing the notices of the sen-
ses constitutes sensible experience, and gives rise to maxims or rules which
may become more and more general, but can never be raised into universal
verities, or beget a consciousness of absolute certainty ; though they may
be sufficient to extinguish all doubt. (Putting revelation out of view, take
our first progenitor in the 50th or 100th year of his existence. His expe-
rience would probably have freed him from all doubt, as the sun sank in the
horizon, that it would re-appear the next morning. But compare this state
of assurance with that which the same man would have had of the 47th
proposition of Euclid, supposing him like Pythagoras to have discovered the
demonstration.) Now is it expedient, I ask, or conformable to the laws and
purposes of language, to call two so altogether disparate subjects by one
and the same name ? Or, having two names in our language, should we call
each of the two diverse subjects by both — that is, by either name, as caprice
might dictate ? If not, then as we have the two words, reason and under-
standing (as indeed what language of cultivated man has not ?) — what should
prevent us from appropriating the former to the power distinctive of
humanity ? We need only place the derivatives from the two terms in op-
position (for example, " A and B are both rational beings ; but there is no
comparison between them in point of intelligence," or " She always con-
cludes rationally, though not a woman of much understanding") to see that
we can not reverse the order — that is, call the higher gift understanding,
and the lower reason. What should prevent us ? I asked. Alas ! that
which has prevented us — the cause of this confusion in the terms — is only
too obvious ; namely, inattention to the momentous distinction in the things,
and generally, to the duty and habit recommended in the fifth introductory
Aphorism of this Volume. But the cause of this, and of all its lamentable
effects and subcauses, false doctrine, blindness of heart, and contempt of the
word, is best declared by the philosophic Apostle : they did not like to re-
tain God in their knowledge (Rom. i. 28), and though they could not extin-
guish the light that lighteth every wan, and which shone in the darkness:
yet because the darkness could not comprehend the light, they refused to
bear witness of it and worshiped, instead, the shaping mist, which the
light had drawn upward from the ground (that is, from the mere animal
nature and instinct), and which that light alone had made visible, that is, by
superinducing on the animal instinct the principle of self-consciousness

254 AIDS TO KEFLECTIOJJ.

^APHORISM IX.

Iii wonder all philosophy began ; in wonder it ends ; and ad-
miration fills up the interspace. But the first wonder is the off-
spring of ignorance : the last is the parent of adoration. The
first is the birth-throe of our knowledge : the last is its euthanasy
and apotheosis.

SEQUELAE : OR THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE PRECEDING
APHORISM.

As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level,
how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be
the privilege of a few ? The most obvious reason is this. The
wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the
great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of
directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or
even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which
the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not
precluded, by custom and familiarity. So is it with the objects
of the senses, and the ways and fashions of the world around us ;
even as with the beat of our own hearts, which we notice only in
moments of fear and perturbation. But with regard to the con-
cerns of our inward being, there is yet another cause that acts in
concert with the power in custom to prevent a fair and equal ex-
ertion of reflective thought. The great fundamental truths and
doctrines of religion, the existence and attributes of God and the
life after death, are in Christian countries taught so early, under
such circumstances, and in such close and vital association with
whatever makes or marks reality for our infant minds, that the
words ever after represent sensations, feelings, vital assurances,
sense of reality — rather than thoughts, or any distinct conception.
Associated, I had almost said identified, with the parental voice,
look, touch, with the living warmth and pressure of the mother,
on whose lap the child is first made to kneel, within whose palms
its little hands are folded, and the motion of whose eyes its eyes
follow and imitate — (yea, what the blue sky is to the mother, the
mother's upraised eyes and brow are to the child, the type and
symbol of an invisible heaven !) — from within and without these
great first truths, these good and gracious tidings, these holy arid

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 255

Humanizing spells, in the preconformity to which our very hu-
manity may be said to consist, are so infused that it were but a
tame and inadequate expression to say, we all take them for
granted. At a later period, in youth or early manhood, most of
us, indeed (in the higher and middle classes at least), read or
hear certain proofs of these truths — which we commonly listen
to, when we listen at all, with much the same feelings as a pop-
ular prince on his coronation day, in the centre of a fond and re-
joicing nation, may be supposed to hear the champion's chal-
lenge to all the non-existents, that deny or dispute his rights and
royalty. In fact, the order of proof is most often reversed or
transposed. As far at least as I dare judge from the goings on
in my own mind, when with keen delight I first read the works
of Derham, Nieuweritiet, and Lyonet, I should say that the full
and life-like conviction of a gracious Creator is the proof (at all
events, performs the office and answers all the purposes of a
proof) of the wisdom and benevolence in the construction of the
creature.

Do I blame this? Do I wish it to be otherwise ? God forbid !
It is only one of its accidental, but too frequent, consequences, of
which I complain, and against which I protest. I regret noth-
ing that tends to make the light become the life of men, even as
the life in the eternal Word is their only and single true light.
But I do regret, that in after-years — when by occasion of some
new dispute on some old heresy, or any other accident, the atten-
tion has for the first time been distinctly attracted to the super-
structure raised on these fundamental truths, or to truths of later
revelation supplemental of these and not less important — all the
doubts and difficulties, that can not but arise where the under-
standing, the mind of the flesh, is made the measure of spiritual
things ; all the sense of strangeness and seeming contradiction in
terms ; all the marvel and the mystery, that belong equally to
both, are first thought of and applied in objection exclusively to
the latter. I would disturb no man's faith in the great articles
of the (falsely so called) religion of nature. But before a man
rejects, and calls on other men to reject, the revelations of the
Gospel and the religion of all Christendom, I would have him
place himself in the state and under all the privations of a Si-
monides, when in the fortieth day of his meditation the sage and
philosophic poet abandoned the problem in despair. Ever and

256' AIDS TO REFLECTION.

anon he seemed to have hold of the truth ; but when he asked
himself what he meant by it, it escaped from him, or resolved
itself into meanings, that destroyed each other. I would have
the skeptic, while yet a skeptic only, seriously consider whether a
doctrine, of the truth of which a Socrates could obtain no other
assurance than what he derived from his strong wish that it
should be true ; and which Plato found a mystery hard to dis-
cover, and when discovered, communicable only to the fewest of
men ; can, consonantly with history or common sense, be classed
among the articles, the belief of which is insured to all men by
their mere common sense ? Whether without gross outrage to
fact, they can be said to constitute a religion of nature, or a nat-
ural theology antecedent to revelation, or superseding its neces-
sity ? Yes ! in prevention (for there is little chance, I fear, of a
cure) of the pugnacious dogmatism of partial reflection, I would
prescribe to every man who feels a commencing alienation from
the Catholic faith, and whose studies and attainments authorize
him to argue on the subject at all, a patient and thoughtful peru-
sal of the arguments and representations which Bayle supposes
to have passed through the mind of Simonides. Or I should be
fully satisfied if I could induce these eschewers of mystery to give
a patient, manly, and impartial perusal to the single treatise of
Pomponatius, De Fato*

"When they have fairly and satisfactorily overthrown the ob-
jections and cleared away the difficulties urged by this sharp-
witted Italian against the doctrines which they profess to retain,
then let them commence their attack on those which they reject.
As far as the supposed irrationality of the latter is the ground of
argument, I am much deceived if, on reviewing their forces, they
would not find the ranks wofully thinned by the success of their
own fire in the preceding engagement — unless, indeed, by pure
heat of controversy, and to storm the lines of their antagonists,
they can bring to life again the arguments which they had them-
selves killed off in the defence of *heir own positions. In vain

* The philosopher, whom the Inquisition would have burnt alive as an
atheist, had not Leo X. and Cardinal Bembo decided that the work might
be formidable to those semi-pagan Christians who regarded revelation as a
mere make-weight to their boasted religion of nature ; but contained noth-
ing dangerous to the Catholic Church or offensive to a true believer. (Ho
was born at Mantua in 1462 and died in 1525. — Ed)

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 257

shall we seek for any other mode of meeting the broad facts of
the scientific Epicurean, or the requisitions and queries of the all-
analyzing Pyrrhonist, than by challenging the tribunal to which
they appeal, as incompetent to try the question. In order to
nonsuit the plaintiff, we must remove the cause from the faculty,
that judges according to sense, and whose judgments, therefore,
ars valid only on objects of sense, to the superior courts of con-
science and intuitive reason. The words I speak unto you, are
Spirit, and such only are life, that is, have an inward and ac-
t .ia. power abiding in them.

But the same truth is at once shield and bow. The shaft of
Atheism glances aside from it to strike and pierce the breast-plate
of the heretic. Well for the latter, if, plucking the weapon from
the wound, he recognizes an arrow from his own quiver, and aban
dons a cause that connects him with such confederates ! An in
sight into the proper functions and subaltern rank of the under-
standing may not, indeed, disarm the Psilanthropist of his meta-
phorical glosses, or of his versions fresh from the forge, with no
other stamp than the private mark of the individual manufac-
turer ; but it will deprive him of the only rational pretext for
having recourse to tools so liable to abuse, and of such perilous
example. •

COMMENT.

Since the preceding pages were composed, and during an in-
terim of depression and disqualification, I heard with a delight
and an interest which I might without hyperbole call medicinal,
that the contradistinction of the understanding from reason, — for
which during twenty years 1 have been contending, casting my
bread upon the waters with a perseverance which in the existing
state of the public taste, nothing but the deepest conviction of
its importance could have inspired — has been lately sanctioned by
the present distinguished Professor of Anatomy, in the course of
lectures given by him at the Royal College of Surgeons, on the
zoological part of natural history ; and, if I am rightly informed
in one of the eloquent and impressive introductory discourses.*
In explaining the nature of Instinct, as deduced from the actions

* The allusion is to Mr. Green ; and the passage to which the Author re-
fers, will be found in an Appendix, reprinted from the ': Vital Dynamics/

258 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

and tendencies of animals successively presented to the observa
tion of the comparative physiologist in the ascending scale ot
organic life — or rather, I should have said, in an attempt to de-
termine that precise import of the term, which is required by the
facts* — the Professor explained the nature of what I have else-
where called the adaptive power, that is, the faculty of adapting
means to a proximate end. I mean here a relative end — that
which relatively to one thing is an end, though relatively to some
other it is in itself a mean. It is to be regretted that we have
no single word to express those ends, that are not the end : for
the distinction between those and an end in the proper sense of
the term, is an important one. The Professor, I say, not only
explained, first, the nature of the adaptive power in genere, and,
secondly, the distinct character of the same power as it exists
specifically and exclusively in the human being, and acquires the
name of understanding ; but he did it in a way which gave the
whole sum and substance of my convictions, of all I had so long
wished, and so often, but with such imperfect success, attempted
to convey, free from all semblance of paradoxy, and from all oc-
casion of offence — omnem offendiculi ansam prcecidens.-f It is,

* The word, Instinct, brings together a number of facts into one class
by the assertion of a common ground, the nature of which ground it deter-
mines negatively only, — that is, the word does not explain what this com-
mon ground is ; but simply indicates that there is such a ground, and that
it is different in kind from that in which the responsible and consciously
voluntary actions of men originate. Thus, in its true and primary import,
Instinct stands in antithesis to Reason ; and the perplexity and contradic-
tory statements into which so many meritorious naturalists and popular
writers on natural history (Priscilla Wakefield, Kirby, Spence, Hiiber, and
even Reimarus) have fallen on this subject, arise wholly from their taking
the word in opposition to Understanding. I notice this, because I would
not lose any opportunity of impressing on the mind of my youthful readers
the important truth that language, as the embodied and articulated spirit
of the race, as the growth and emanation of a people, and not the work of
any individual wit or will, is often inadequate, sometimes deficient, but
never false or delusive. We have only to master the true origin and ori-
ginal import of any native and abiding word, to find in it, if not the solu
tion of the facts expressed by it, yet a finger-mark pointing to the road on
which this solution is to be sought.

f Neque qulcquam addubito, guinea candidis omnibus facial satis. Quid
autem facias istis gui vel ob ingenii pertinaciam sibi satisfieri nolint vel stu-
pidiores sint guam ut satisfactionem intelligant ? Nam quemadmodum Si-
monides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores esse quam ut possint a se decipi, ita gucs*

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 259

indeed, for the fragmentary reader only that I have any sciuple,
In those who have had the patience to accompany me so far on the
up-hill road to manly principles, I can have no reason to guard
against that disposition to hasty offence from anticipation of con-
sequences— that faithless and loveless spirit of fear which plunged
Galileo into a prison ;* — a spirit most unworthy of an educated
man, who ought to have learnt that the mistakes of scientific
men have never injured Christianity, while every new truth dis-
covered by them has either added to its evidence, or prepared
the mind for its reception

ON INSTINCT IN CONNECTION WITH THE UNDERSTANDING.

It is evident, that the definition of a genus or class is an ade-
quate definition only of the lowest species of that genus : for each
higher species is distinguished from the lower by some additional
character, while the general definition includes only the charac-
ters common to all the species. Consequently it describes the
lowest only. Now I distinguish a genus or kind of powers under

dam videas stiipidiores quam ut placari queant. Adhuc non mirum eat in-
venire quod calumnietur qui nihil aliud qu&rit nisi quod calumnietur.
(Erasmi Epist. ad Dorpium.) At all events, the paragraph passing through
the medium of my own prepossessions, if any fault be found with it, the
fault probably, and the blame certainly, belongs to the reporter.

* And which (I may add) in a more enlightened age, and in a Protestant
country, impelled more than one German University to anathematize Fr.
Hoffman's discovery of carbonic acid gas, and of its effects on animal life,
as hostile to religion, and tending to atheism ! Three or four students at
the University of Jena, in the attempt to raise a spirit for the discovery of
a supposed hidden treasure, were strangled or poisoned by the fumes of the
charcoal they had been burning in a close garden-house of a vineyard near
Jena, while employed in their magic fumigations and charms. Oae only was
restored to life : and from his account of the noises and spectres (in his ears
and eyes) as he was losing his senses, it was taken for granted that the bad
spirit had destroyed them. Frederick Hoffman admitted that it was a very
bad spirit who had tempted them, the spirit of avarice and folly ; and that
a very noxious spirit (gas, or Geist) was the immediate cause of their death.
But he contended that this latter spirit was the spirit of charcoal, which
would have produced the same effect, had the young men been chanting
psalms instead of incantations : and acquitted the Devil of all direct concern
in the business. The theological faculty took the alarm : even physicians pre-
tended to be horror-stricken at Hoffman's audacity. The controversy and
its appendages embittered several years of this great and good man's life.

260 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

the name of adaptive power, and give as its generic definition— «
the power of selecting and adapting means to proximate ends ;
and as an instance of the lowest species of this genus, I take th«3
stomach of a caterpillar. I ask myself, under what words I can
generalize the action of this organ ; and I see, that it selects and
adapts the appropriate means (that is, the assimilable part of the
vegetable congesta) to the proximate end, that is, the growth or
reproduction of the insect's body. This we call Vital Power, or
•vita propria of the stomach ; and this being the lowest species,
its definition is the same with the definition of the kind.

Well ! from the power of the stomach I pass to the power
exjrted by the whole animal. I trace it wandering from spot to
spot, and plant to plant, till it finds the appropriate vegetable ;
and again on this chosen vegetable, I mark it seeking out and
fixing on the part of the plant, bark, leaf, or petal, suited to its
nourishment : or (should the animal have assumed the butterfly
form), to the deposition of its eggs, and the sustentation of the
future larva. Here I see a power of selecting and adapting
means to proximate ends according to circumstances : and this
! higher species of adaptive power we call Instinct.

Lastly, I reflect on the facts narrated and described in the pre-
ceding extracts from H fiber, and see a power of selecting and
adapting the proper means to the proximate ends, according to
varying circumstances. And what shall we call this yet higher
species ? "fre name the former, Instinct : we must call thisjn_-
stinctive Intelligence.

Here then we have three powers of the same kind ; life, in-
stinct, and instinctive intelligence : the essential characters that
define the genus existing equally in all three. But in addition
to these, I find one other character common to the highest and
lowest : namely, that the purposes are all manifestly predeter-
mined by the peculiar organization of the animals ; and though
it may not be possible to discover any such immediate depend
ency in all the actions, yet the actions being determined by the
purposes, the result is equivalent : and both the actions and the
purposes are all in a necessitated reference to the preservation
and continuance of the particular animal or the progeny. There
jo selection, but not choice ; volition rather than will. The pos-
sible knowledge of a thing, or the desire to have that thing repre-
sentable by a distinct correspondent thought, does not, ID the ani-

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL KELIGION INDEED. 261

mal, suffice to render the thing an object, or the ground of a
purpose. I select and adapt the proper means to the separation
of a stone from a rock) which I neither can, nor desire to use for
food, shelter, or ornament : because, perhaps, I wish to measure
the angles of its primary crystals, or, perhaps, for no better reason
than the apparent difficulty of loosening the stone — sit pro ra
tione voluntas — and thus make a motive out of the absence of
all motive, and a reason out of the arbitrary will to act without
any reason.

Now what is the conclusion from these premisses ? Evidently
this : that if I suppose the adaptive power in its highest species,
or form of instinctive, intelligence, to co-exist with reason, free-
will, and self-consciousness, it instantly becomes Understanding *
in other words, that understanding differs indeed from the noblest
form of instinct, but not in itself or in its own essential properties,
but in consequence of its co-existence with far higher powers of a
diverse kind in one and the same subject. Instinct in a rational,
responsible, and self-conscious animal, is Understanding.

Such I apprehend to be the true view and exposition of In
stinct ; and in confirmation of its truth, I would merely request
my readers, from the numerous well-authenticated instances on
record, to recall some one of the extraordinary actions of dogs for
the preservation of their masters' lives, and even for the aveng-
ing of their deaths. In these instances we have the third species
of the adaptive power in connection with an apparently moral
on(]_ — with an end in the proper sense of the word. Here the
adaptive power co-exists with a purpose apparently voluntary,
and the action seems neither pre-determined by the organization
of the animal, nor in any direct reference to his own preserva-
tion, nor to the continuance of his race. It is united with an
imposing semblance of gratitude, fidelity, and disinterested love.
We not only value the faithful brute ; we attribute worth to him.
This, I admit, is a problem, of which I have no solution to offer.
One of the wisest of uninspired men has not hesitated to declare
the dog a great mystery, on account of this dawning of a moral
nature, unaccompanied by any the least evidence of reason, in
whichever of the two senses we interpret the word — whether as
the practical reason, that is, the power of proposing an ultimate
end, the determinability of the will by ideas ; or as the sciential
reason, that is, the faculty of concluding universal and necessary

262 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

truths from particular and contingent appearances. But in a
question respecting the possession of reason, the absence of all
proof is tantamount to a proof of the contrary. It is, however,
by no means equally clear to me, that the dog may not possess
an analogon of words, which I have elsewhere shown to be the
proper objects of the "faculty, judging according to sense."

But to return to my purpose : I entreat the Reader to reflect
on any one fact of this kind, Avhether occurring in his own experi-
ence, or selected from the numerous anecdotes of the Dog pre-
served in the writings of zoologists. I will then confidently ap-
peal to him, whether it is in his power not to consider the faculty
displayed in these actions as the same in kind with the under-
standing, however inferior in degree. Or should he even in these
instances prefer calling it instinct, and this in contra-distinction
from understanding, I call on him to point out the boundary be-
tween the two, the chasm or partition- wall that divides or sepa-
rates the one from the other. If he can, he will have done what
none before him have been able to do, though many and eminent
men have tried hard for it : and my recantation shall be among
the first trophies of his success. If he can not, I must infer that
he is controlled by his dread of the consequences, by an appre-
hension of some injury resulting to religion or morality from this
opinion ; and I shall console myself with the hope, that in the
sequel of this Work he will find proofs of the directly contrary
tendency. ^Not only is this view of the Understanding, as differ-
ing in degree from Instinct, and in kind from Reason, innocent in
its possible influences on the religious character, but it is an in-
dispensable preliminary to the removal of the most formidable
obstacles to an intelligent belief of the peculiar doctrines of the
Gospel, of the characteristic articles of the Christian Faith, with
which the advocates of the truth in Christ have to contend ; —
the evil heart of unbelief alone excepted.

REFLECTIONS INTRODUCTORY TO APHORISM X.

The most momentous question a man can ask is, Have I a
Saviour ? And yet as far as the individual querist is con-
cerned, it is premature and to no purpose, unless another ques'
tion has been previously put and answered, (alas ! too generally
put after the wounded conscience has already given the answer !)

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 263

namely, Have I any need of a Saviour ? For him who needs
none, (0 bitter irony of the evil Spirit, whose whispers the proud
soul takes for its own thoughts, and knows not how the tempter
is scoffing the while !) there is none, as long as he feels no need.
On the other hand, it is scarcely possible to have answered this
question in the affirmative, and not ask — first, in what the neces-
sity consists — secondly, whence it proceeded — and, thirdly, how
far the answer to this second question is or is not contain od in
the answer to the first. I entreat the intelligent Reader, who ;,
has taken me as his temporary guide on the straight, but yet, ||
from the number of cross roads, difficult way of religious inquiry, jj
to halt a moment, and consider the main points which, in this |,
last division of my Work, have been already offered for his re-
flection, l^have attempted, then, to fix the^pxmejLJiie^Jiing of
the words, Naturejmd Spirit, the oue^bem^ih^antithesis to the
other : so that the most genejraljmdjiegative definition of nature
is,^ whatever is not spiritjandj^g verm "f spirit, that whi^h is
iiat^conmrehended._in nature ; or in the language ^Q£_aur— elder
divines^hat which jranscendsnature. But Nature is the term •
ya. whjch we comprehend^all things that^are representable in the
forms of ^im^^juLspace,and subjected to thej-elatioris of cause
and effecjL; and the cause of the existence of^ which, therefore, is
to be sought for perpetually in something antecedent. The word
itself expresses this in tlie~?trongesFrrianner possible : Natura,
that which is about to be born, that which is always becoming.
It follows, therefore, that whatever originates its own acts, or in
any sense contains in itself the cause of its own state, must be
spiritual, and consequently supernatural ; yet not on that account-
necessarily miraculous. And such must the responsible Will in
us be, if it be at all.

A prior step has been to remove all misconceptions from the
subject ; to show the reasonableness of a belief in the reality and
real influence of a universal and divine Spirit ; the compatibility
and possible communion of such a spirit with the spiritual in
principle ; and the analogy offered by the most undeniable truths
of natural philosophy.*

* It has in its consequences proved no trifling evil to the Christian world,
that Aristotle's definitions of Nature are all grounded on the petty and
rather rhetorical than philosophical antithesis of nature to art — a concep-
tion inadequate to the demands even of his philosophy. Hence in the

264 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

These views of the Spirit, and of the Will as spiritual, form the
ground- work of my scheme. Among the numerous corollaries or
appendents, the first that presented itself respects the question ; —
whether there is any faculty in man by which a knowledge of
spiritual truths, or of any truths not abstracted from nature, is
rendered possible ; — and an answer is attempted in the comment
on Aphorism VIII. And here I beg leave to remark, that in this
comment the only novelty, and if there be merit, the only merit
is — that there being two very different meanings, and two differ-
ent words, I have here and in former works appropriated one
meaning to one of the words, and the other to the other — instead
of using the words indifferently and by hap-hazard : a confusion,
the ill effects, of which in this instance are so great and of such
frequent occurrence in the works of our ablest philosophers and
divines, that ,1 should select it before all others in proof of Hobbes'
maxim : that it is a short downhill passage from errors in words
or errors in things. The difference of the Reason from the Un-
derstanding, and the imperfection and limited sphere of the latter,
have been asserted by many both before and since Lord Bacon ;*
but still the habit of using reason and understanding as syno-

ress of his reasoning, he confounds the natura naturata (that is, the sum total
of the facts and phenomena of the senses) with an hypothetical natura nat-
urans, a Goddess Nature, that has no better claim to a place in any sober
system of natural philosophy than the Goddess Afaltitudo ; yet to which
Aristotle not rarely gives the name and attributes of the Supreme Being.
The result was, that the idea of God thus identified with this hypothetical
nature becomes itself But an hypothesis, or at best but a precarious infer-
ence from incommensurate premisses and on disputable principles : while in
other passages, God is confounded with (and everywhere, in Aristotle's gen-
uine works), included in the universe : which most grievous error it is the
great and characteristic merit of Plato to have avoided and denounced.

* Take one passage among many from the Posthumous Tracts (1660) of
John Smith, not the least star in that bright constellation of Cambridge
men, the contemporaries of Jeremy Taylor. " While we reflect on our own
idea of Reason, we know that our souls are not it, but only partake of it :
and that we have it Kara fj.t'6e^Lv and not /car' ovaitfv. Neither can it be
called a faculty, but far rather a light, which we enjoy, but the source of
which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual to be denominated
mine." This pure intelligence he then proceeds to contrast with the dis-
cursive faculty, that is, the Understanding. (See the notes on this remark-
able writer in the Author's " Literary Remains." V. p. 266. — JSd.)

Also see Cudworth's Immutable Morality, book iv. chap. 4, et passim.—
4»». Ed.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 265

nymes acted as a disturbing force. Some it led into mysticism,
others it set on explaining away a clear difference in kind into a
mere superiority in degree : and it partially eclipsed the truth
for all.

In close connection with this, and therefore forming the com-
ment on the Aphorism next following, is the subject of the legiti-
mate exercise of the Understanding, and its limitation to objects
of sense ; with the errors both of unbelief and of misbelief, which
result from its extension beyond the sphere of possible experience.
Wherever the forms of reasoning appropriate only to the natural
world are applied to spiritual realities, it may be truly said, that
the more strictly logical the reasoning is in all its parts, the more
irrational it is as a whole.

To the Reader thus armed and prepared, I now venture to pre-
sent the so-called mysteries of Faith, that is, the peculiar tenets
and especial constituents of Christianity, or religion in spirit and
in truth. In right order I must have commenced with the arti-
cles of the Trinity and Apostasy, including the question respec*-
ing the origin of Evil, and the Incarnation of the WORD. AnJ
could I have followed this order, some difficulties that now press
on me would have been obviated. But the limits of the present
Volume render it alike impracticable and inexpedient ; for the
necessity of my argument would have called forth certain hard
though most true sayings, respecting the hollowness and tricksy
sophistry of the so-called "natural theology," "religion of nature,"
" light of nature," and the like, which a brief exposition could not
save from innocent misconceptions, much less protect against
plausible misinterpretation. And yet both reason and experience
have convinced me, that in the greater number of our Alogi, who
feed on the husks of Christianity, the disbelief of the Trinity, the
divinity of Christ included, has its origin and support in the as-
sumed self-evidence of this natural theology, and in their igno-
rance of the insurmountable difficulties which on the same mode
of reasoning press upon the fundamental articles of their own
remnant of a creed. But arguments, which would prove the
falsehood of a known truth, must themselves be false, and can
prove the falsehood of no other position in eodem gencre.

This hint I have thrown out as % spark that may perhaps fall

where it will kindle. And worthily might the wisest of me:

make inquisition into the three momentous points here

VOL. i. M

266 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

of, for the purposes of speculative insight, and for the formation
of enlarged and systematic views of the destination of Man, and
the dispensation of God. But the practical Inquirer — (I speak
not of those who inquire for the gratification of curiosity, and
.still less of those who labor as students only to shine as dispu-
tants ; but of one, who seeks the truth, because he feels the want
of it), — the practical inquirer, I say, hath already placed his
foot on the rock, if he have satisfied himself that whoever needs
not a Redeemer is more than human. Remove from him the
difficulties and objections that oppose or perplex his belief of a
crucified Saviour ; convince him of the reality of sin, which is
.impossible without a knowledge of its true nature and inevitable
consequences ; and then satisfy him as to the fact historically,
.and as to the truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom by
Christ ; do this for him, and there is little fear that he will permit
either logical quirks or metaphysical puzzles to contravene the
.plain dictate of his common sense, that the sinless One who re-
deemed mankind from sin, must have been more than man ; and
that He who brought light and immortality into the world, could
not in his own nature have been an inheritor of death and dark-
ness. It is morally impossible that a man with these convictions
should suffer the objection of incomprehensibility, and this on a
subject of faith, to overbalance the manifest absurdity and con-
tradiction in the notion of a Mediator between God and the hu-
man race, at the same infinite distance from God as the race for
whom he mediates.

The origin of Evil, meanwhile, is a question interesting only
to the metaphysician, and in a system of moral and religious
philosophy. The man of sober mind who seeks for truths that
possess a moral and practical interest, is content to be certain,
first, that evil must have had a beginning, since otherwise it
must either be God, or a co-eternal and co-equal rival of God ;
both impious notions, and the latter foolish to boot : — secondly,
that it could not originate in God ; for if so, it would be at once
evil and not evil, or God would be at once God, that is, infinite
goodness, and not God — both alike impossible positions. Instead,
therefore, of troubling himself with this barren controversy, he
more profitably turns his inquiries to that evil which most con-
cerns himself, and of which he may find the origin.

The entire scheme of necessary Faith may be reduced to two

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 267

heads ; first, the object and occasion, and secondly, the fact and
effect, — of our redemption by Christ : and to this view does the
order of the following Comments correspond. I have begun with
Original Sin, and proceeded in the following Aphorism to the
doctrine of Redemption. The Comments on the remaining
Aphorisms are all subsidiary to these, or written in the hope of
making the minor tenets of general belief be believed in a spirit
worthy of these. They are, in short, intended to supply a febri-
fuge against aguish scruples and horrors, the hectic of the soul ;
— and, in Milton's words, " for servile and thrall-like fear, to
substitute that adoptive and cheerful boldness, which our new
alliance with God requires of us as Christians." ]N"ot the origin
'of evil, not the chronology of sin, or the chronicles of the original
sinner ; but sin originant, underived from without, and no pas-
sive link in the adamantine chain of effects, each of which is in
its turn an instrument of causation, but no one of them a cause ;
— not with sin inflicted, which would be a calamity ; — not with
sin (that is, an evil tendency) implanted, for which let the
planter be responsible ; — but I begin with original sin. And for
this purpose I have selected the Aphorism from the ablest and
most formidable antagonist of this doctrine, Bishop Jeremy Tay-
lor, and from the most eloquent work of this most eloquent of
divines.^ Had I said, of men, Cicero would forgive me, and
Demosthenes nod assent If

* See the notes on J. Taylor, Lit. Rem. T. p. 194-218. — Ed.

f It does not appear that the Church of England demands the literal
understanding of the document contained in the second (from verse 8) and
third chapters of Genesis as a point of faith, or regards a different inter-
pretation as affecting the orthodoxy of the interpreter :* divines of the
most unimpeachable orthodoxy and the most averse to the allegorizing of
Scripture history in general, having from the earliest ages of the Christian
Church adopted or permitted it in this instance. And indeed no unpreju-
diced man can pretend to doubt, that if in any other work of Eastern ori-
gin he met with trees of life and of knowledge ; or talking and conversable
snakes :

Inque rei signum serpenlem serpere jussum ;

he would want no other proofs that it was ar: allegory he was reading, and
intended to be understood as such. Nor, if we suppose him conversant
with Oriental works of any tiling liko the same antiquity, could it surprise
him to find events of true history in connection with, or historical person

* See Bp. Horeley's Sermon xvi. 2 Peter i. 20, 21.— Ed.

268 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

APHORISM X.

ON ORIGINAL SIN.

Jeremy Ta) lr.»r

The question is not whether there be any such thing as ori-
ginal Sin : for it is certain, and confessed on all hands almost.
For my part I c«.n not but confess that to be, which I feel and
groan under, and by which all the world is miserable.

ages among the actors and interlocutors of, the parable. In the temple
language of Egypt the serpent was the symbol of the understanding in its
twofold function, namely, as the faculty of means to proximate or medial
ends, analogous to the instinct of the more intelligent animals, ant, beo>
beaver, and the like, and opposed to practical reason, as the determinant
of the ultimate ffld ; and again, as the discursive and logical faculty pos-
sessed individually by each individual — the 'Loyoq kv ^KUCTTGJ, in distinction
from the vovg, ib it is, intuitive reason, the source of ideas and absolute
truths, and the principle of the necessary and the universal in our affirma-
tions and conclusions. Without or in contravention to the reason — (that
is, the spiritual mind of St. Paul, and the light that lighteth every man of
St. John) — this understanding (<j>povTjfj,a crap/cdf, or carnal mind) becomes the
sophistic principle, the wily tempter to evil by counterfeit good ; the pan-
dar and advocate of the passions and appetites : ever in league with, and
always first applying to, the desire, as the inferior nature in man, the wo-
man in our humanity ; and through the desire prevailing on the will (the
manhood, virtus) against the command of the universal reason, and against
the light of reason in the will itself. This essential inherence of an intel-
ligential principle (0wf voepov) in the will (dpxy OSATJTLKT/), or rather the
Will itself thus considered, the Greeks expressed by an appropriate word,
Povhrj. This, but little differing from Origen's interpretation or hypothesis,
is supported and confirmed by the very old tradition of the homo andro
gynus, that is, that the original man, the individual first created, was bi
sexual ; — a chimaora, of which, and of many other mythological traditions,
the most probable explanation is, that they were originally symbolical
glyphs or sculptures, and afterwards translated into words, yet literally,
that is, into the common names of the several figures and images composing
the symbol ; while the symbolic meaning was left to be deciphered as be-
fi >re, and sacred to the initiate. As to the abstruseness and subtlety of the
conceptions, this is so far from being an objection to this oldest gloss on
this venerable relic of Semitic, not impossibly ante-diluvian, philosophy,
that to those who have carried their researches farthest back into Greek,
Egyptian, Persian, and Indian antiquity, it will seem a strong confirmation.
Or if I chose to address the skeptic in the language of the day* I might re-
mind him that as alchemy went before chemistry, and astrology before a(s-
tronomy, so in all countries of civilized men have metaphysics outrun com-
uion sense. Fortunately for us that they have so ! For from nil we know

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 269

Adam turned his back upon the sun, and dwelt in the dark ana
the shadow. He sinned, and fell into God's displeasure, and was
made naked of all his supernatural endowments, was ashamed
and sentenced to death, and deprived of the means of long life,
and of the sacrament and instrument of immortality, I mean the

of the uumetaphysical tribes of New Holland and elsewhere, a common
sense not preceded by metaphysics is no very enviable possession. O be
not cheated, my youthful Reader, by this shallow prate ! The creed of
true common sense is composed of the results of scientific meditation, ob-
servation, and experiment, as far as they are generally intelligible. It dif-
fers therefore in different countries, and in every different age of the same
country. The common sense of a people is the movable index of its aver-
age judgment and information. Without metaphysics science could have
had no language, and common sense no materials.

But to return to my subject. It can not be denied, that the Mosaic
narrative thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the birth
and parentage and successive moments of phenomenal sin (pcceatum phe-
nomenon ; crimen primarium et commune), that is, of sin as it reveals itself
in time, and is an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense most
truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam AVC all fell. The first human
sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. And with no
less truth may it be said, that it is the same Adam that falls in every man.
and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and undivorceable
Eve : and the same Eve tempted by the same serpentine and perverted un-
derstanding, which, framed originally to be the interpreter of the reason
und the ministering angel of the spirit, is henceforth sentenced and bound
over to the service of the animal nature, its needs and its cravings, depen-
dent on the senses for all its materials, with the world of sense for its ap-
pointed sphere : Upon thy belly shaft t/iou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the
days of thy life. I have shown elsewhere, that as the instinct of the mere
intelligence differs in degree not in kind, and circumstantially, not essen-
tially, from the vis vita;, or vital power in the assimilative and digestive
functions of the stomach and other organs of nutrition, even so the Under-
standing in itself, and distinct from the Reason and Conscience, differs in
degree only from the instinct in the animal. It is still but a beast of the
field, though more subtle than any beast of the field, and therefore in its cor-
ruption and perversion cursed above any ; — a pregnant word ! of which if
the Reader wants an exposition or paraphrase, he may find one more than
two thousand years old among the fragments of the poet Menander. This
is the understanding which in its every thought is to be brought under obe-
dience to faith ; which it can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected
to the reason, of which spiritual faith is even the blossoming and the fructi-
fying process. For it is indifferent whether I say that Faith 13 the inter-
penetration of the Reason and the Will, or that it is at once the ussuranco
and the commencement of the approaching union between the reason and

270 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

tree of life.* He then fell under the evils of a sickly body, and
a passionate, ignorant, and uninstructed soul. His sin made
him sickly, his sickness made him ^)eevi$h : his sin left him igno-
rant, .his ignorance made him foolish and unreasonable. His sin
left him to his nature : and by his nature, whoever was to be
bom at all, was to be born a child, and to do before he could un-
derstand, and to be bred under laws to which he was always
bound, but which could not always be exacted ; and he was to
choose when he could not reason, and had passions most strong

• the intelligible realitieaj the living and substantial truths, that are even iu

/ this life its most proper objects.

y I have thus put the Reader in'possession of my own opinions respecting

the narrative in Gen. ii. and iii. 'Eariv ovv 6r/, <jf tyoiye doxel, l

akriQicrarov /cat upxaiorarov QiTioaotyTjjua, evc£J3eoi p.£v a£J3aa/ita, av-
re Quvuv eg 6e~ TO TTUV ipfUJveoArariZet. Ojj.I^might ask witlf Augus-
tine, why not both ? Why not at once symbol and history ? Or ratl)er
how should it be otherwise ? Must not of necessity the first man be a sym-
I bol of mankind in the fullest force of the word symbol, rightly defined ; — a
I sign included in the idea which it represents ; — that is, an actual part chosen
to represent the whole, as a lip with a chin prominent is a symbol of man;
or a lower form or species of a higher in the same kind ; thus magnetism is
the symbol of vegetation, and of the vegetative and reproductive power in
animals ; the instinct of the ant-tribe or the bee is a symbol of the human
understanding. Aid this definition of the word is of great practical impor-
tance, inasmuch as the symbolical is hereby distinguished Mo genere from
the allegoric and metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, and
allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scrip-
ture ! The writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet I
readily acknowledge that allegorical applications are one thing, and alle-
gorical interpretation another : and that where there is no ground for sup-
posing such a sense to have entered into the intent and purpose of the sacred
penman, they are not to be commended. So far indeed am I from enter-
taining any predilection for them, or any favorable opinion of the Rabbini-
cal commentators and traditionists, from whom the fashion was derived, that
in carrying it as far as our own Church has carried it, I follow her judg-
•rnent, not my own. Indeed I know but one other part of the Scriptures not
universally hild to be parabolical, which, not without the sanction of great
authorities, I am disposed to regard as an apologue or parable, namely, the
book of Jonah ; the reasons for believing the Jewish Nation collectively to
be therein impersonated seeming to me unanswerable. And it is my delib-
erate and conscientious conviction, that the proofs of such interpretation
having been the intention of the inspired writer or compiler of the book of
Genesis lie on the face of the narrative itself.

* Rom. v. 14. — Who were they who had not sinned after the similitude
*f Adam's transgression ; and over \\hom notwithstanding, death reigned !

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 271

when lie had his understanding most weak ; and the more need
he had of a curb, the less strength he had to use it ! And this
being the case of all the world, what was every man's evil be-
came all men's greater evil ; and though alone it was very bad,
yet when they came together it was made much worse. Like
ships in a storm, every one alone hath enough to do to outride it ;
but when they meet, besides the evils of the storm, they find the
intolerable calamity of their mutual concussion ; and every ship
that is ready to be oppressed with the tempest, is a worse tempest
to every vessel against which it is violently dashed. So it is in
mankind. Every man hath evil enough of his own, and it is
hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own reason and con-
science. But when he hath parents and children,. friends and
enemies, buyers and sellers, lawyers and clients, a family and a
neighborhood — then it is that every man dashes against another,
and one relation requires what another denies ; and when one
speaks another will contradict him ; and that which is well spo-
ken is sometimes innocently mistaken ; and that upon a good
cause produces an evil effect ; and by these, and!" ten thousand
other concurrent causes, maiv/s made more than most miserable *

COMMENT.

The first question we should put to ourselves, when we have
to read a passage that perplexes us in a work of authority, is :
What does the writer mean by all this ? And the second ques-
tion should be, What does he intend by all this ? In the passage
before us, Taylor's meaning is not quite clear. A sin is an evil
which has its ground or origin in the agent, and not in the com-
pulsion of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory from
the absence of a power to resist or control them : and if this ab-
sence likewise be the effect of circumstance (that is, if it have
been neither directly nor indirectly caused by the agent himself),
the evil derives from the circumstances ; and therefore (in the
Apostle's sense of the word, sin, when he speaks of the exceeding
sinfulness of sin) such evil is not sin ; and the person who suffers
it, or who is the compelled instrument of its infliction on others,
may feel regret, but can not feel remorse. So likewise of the
word origin, original, or originant. The Reader can not too early

* Deus Justificatus, with some slight omissions and alterations. — Ed.

272 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

be warned that it is not applicable, and, without ab-.ise of lan-
guage, can never be applied, to a mere link in a chain of effects,
where each, indeed, stands in the relation of a cause to those that
follow, but is at the same time the effect of all that precede
For in these cases a cause amounts to little more than an antece-
dent. At the utmost it means only a conductor of the causative
influence; and the old axiom, causa causes causa cauziii, ap-
plies with a never-ending regress to each several link, up the
whole chain of nature. But this is Nature : and no natural
thing or a£Lcan be called originant,* or be truly said to have an
origmfin any other. Tjig moment we assume an origin in na-

* * * * wherein they are not guilty,

Since Nature can not choose his origin.

Hamlet, Act I. sc. iv. — Am. Ed.

\ This sense of the word is implied even in its metaphorical or figurative
use. Thus we may say of a river that it originates in such or such a foun-
tain ; but the water of a canal is derived from such or such a river. The
power which we call Nature, may be thus denned : a power subject to the
ln.w_of continuity (lex continui ; nam in natura non datur saltus] which law
f.hftjhnmnn understanding, by a necessity arising out of its own constitution,
can conceive only under the form of cause and effect, That this form or
law of cause and effect is, relatively to the world without, or to things as
they subsist independently of our perceptions, only a form or mode of think-
ing ; that it is a law inherent in the understanding itself just as the sym-
metry of the miscellaneous objects seen by the kaleidoscope inheres in, or
results from, the mechanism of the kaleidoscope itself — this becomes evi-
dent as soon as we attempt to apply the preconception directly to any ope-
ration of nature. For in this case we are forced to represent the cause as
being at the same instant the effect, and vice versa the effect as being the
cause — a relation which we seek to express by the terms action and re-ac-
tion ; but for which the term reciprocal action, or the law of reciprocity
( Wechselwirkung), would be both more accurate and more expressive.

These are truths which can scarcely be too frequently impressed on the
mind that is in earnest in the wish to reflect aright. Nature is a line in
constant and continuous evolution. Its beginning is lost in the supernat-
ural : and for our understanding therefore it must appear as a continuous
line without beginning or end. But where there is no discontinuity there
can be no origination, and every appearance of origination in nature is but
a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our own will or spirit.
Herein, indeed, the will consists. This is the essential character by which
Will isjjpposed to JjTature,jas spirit, and raised above nature as self-deter-
inining^epirit — this namely^thatit js a power of originating _an. act or
state.

A young friend, or as he was pleaded to describe himself, a pupil of mine^

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 273

ture. a true beginning, an actual first — that moment we^ r i se
above nature, and are compelled to assume a supernatural power.
(Gen. i. 1.)

It v/ill be an equal convenience to myself and to my Reader, to
let it be agreed between us, that we will generalize the word

who is beginning to learn to think, asked me to explain by an instance what
is meant by " originating an act or state." My answer was — This morning
I awoke with a dull pain, which I knew from experience the getting up
would remove : and yet by adding to the drowsiness and by weakening or
depressing the volition (volnntas sennorialis sen mechanica), the very paiu
seemed to hold me back, to fix me, as it were, to the bed. After a peevish
ineffectual quarrel with this painful disinclination, I said to myself: Let me
count twenty, and the moment I come to nineteen I will leap out of bed
So said, and so done. Now should you ever find yourself in the same or in
a similar state, and should attend to the goings-on within you, you will
learn what I mean by originating an act. At the same time you will see
that it belongs exclusively to the will (arbilrium) ; that there is nothing
analogous to it in outward experiences ; and that I had, therefore, no way
of explaining it but by referring you to an act of your own, and to the pe-
culiar self-consciousness preceding and accompanying it. As we know what
life is by being, so we know what will 'is by acting. That in willing, re-
plied my friend, we appear to ourselves to constitute an actual beginning, j.
and that this seems unique, and without any example in our sensible ex-
perience, or in the phenomena of nature, is an undeniable fact. But may it
not be an illusion arising from our ignorance of the antecedent causes ?
You may suppose this, I rejoined : — that the soul of every man should im-
pose a lie on itself ; and that this lie, and the acting on the faith of its being
the most important of all truths, and the most real of all realities, should
form the main contra-distinctive character of humanity, and the only basis
of that distinction between things and persons on which our whole moral
and criminal law is grounded ; — you may suppose this ; — I can not, as I
could in the case of an arithmetical or geometrical proposition, render it
impossible for you to suppose it. Whether you can reconcile such a suppo-
sition with the belief of an all-wise Creator, is another question. But, taken j
singly, it is doubtless in your power to suppose this. Were it not, the be-
lief of the contrary would be no subject of a command, no part of a moral
or religious duty. You would not, however, suppose it without a reaeon
But all the pretexts that ever have been or ever can be offered for this
supposition, are built on certain notions of the understanding that have been
generalized from conceptions ; which conceptions, again, are themselves
generalized or abstracted from objects of sense. Neither the one nor the
other, therefore, have any force except in application to objects of sense,
and within the sphere of sensible experience. What but absurdity can fol-
low, if you decide on spirit by the laws of matter ; — if you judge that,
which if it be at all must be supersensual, by that faculty of your mind,
the very definition of which is "the faculty judging according to sense?'

M*

274 AIDS TO INFLECTION.

circumstance, so as to understand by it, as often as it occurs in
this Comment, al) and every thing not connected with the Will,
past or present, of a free agent. Even though it were the blood
in the chambers of his heart, or his own inmost sensations, we
will regard them as circumstantial, extrinsic, cr from without.

In this sense of the word, original, and in the sense before given
of sin, it is evident that the phrase, Original Sin, is a pleonasm,
the epithet not adding to the thought, but only enforcing it. For
if it be sin, it must be original ; and a state or act. that has not
its origin in the will, may be calamity, deformity, disease, or mis-
[ chief; but a sin it can not be. It is not enough that the act
appears voluntary, or that it is intentional ; or that it has the
most hateful passions or debasing appetite for its proximate cause

These then ure unworthy the name of reasons : they are only pretexts.
But without reason to contradict your own consciousness in defiance of your
own conscience, is contrary to reason. Such and such writers, you say, have
made a great sensation. If so, I am sorry for it ; but the fact I take to be
this. From a variety of causes the more austere sciences have fallen into
discredit, and impostors have taken advantage of the general ignorance to
give a sort of mysterious and terrific importance to a parcel of trashy so-
phistry, the authors of which would not have employed themselves more
irrationally in submitting the works of Raftaelle or Titian to canons of
criticism deduced from the sense of smell. Nay, less so. For here the ob-
jects and the organs are disparate : while in the other case they are abso-
lutely diverse. I conclude this note by reminding the Reader, that my
first object is to make myself understood. When he is in full possession of
my meaning, then let him consider whether it deserves to be received as
the truth. Had it been my immediate purpose to make him believe me as
well as understand me, I should have thought it necessary to warn him
that a finite will does indeed originate an act, and may originate a state of
being ; but yet only in and for the agent himself. A finite will constitutes
u true beginning; but with regard to the series of motions and changes by
which the free act is manifested and made effectual, the finite will gives &
beginning only by coincidence with that Absolute Will, which is at the
same time Infinite Power. Such is the language of religion, and of philos-
ophy too in the last instance. But I express the same truth in ordinary
language whan I say, that a finite will or the will of a finite free agent,
acts outwardly by confluence with the laws of nature.

(The student will find the fullest development that has yet been made of
this most fundamental and most important distinction between Nature anc.'
Spirit, or Will, in Kant's Kritik der practischen Vernunft, and in Jacobi's
Von gottlichen Dingen, pp. 388-428, vol. iii. Leipsic, 1816. See also Fichte's
Bestimrnung des Mcnschcn, p. 256, et seq. for many forcible statements re
specting the Will as originant in its ess«r*e. — Am. Ed.}

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 275

and accompaniment. All these may be found in a madhouse*
where neither law nor humanity permits us to condemn the actor
of sin. The reason of law declares the maniac not a free-agent ;
and the verdict follows of course — Not guilty. Now mania, as
distinguished from idiocy, frenzy, delirium, hypochondria, and de-
rangement (the last term used specifically to express a suspen-
sion or disordered state of the understanding or adaptive power),
is the occultation or eclipse of reason, as the power of ultimate
ends. The maniac, it is well known, is often found clever and
inventive in the selection and adaptation of means to his ends;
but his ends are madness. He has lost his reason. For though
reason in finite beings, is not the will — or how could the will be
opposed to the reason ? — yet it is the condition, the sine qua non J
of a free will.

We will now return to the extract from Taylor on a theme of
deep interest in itself, and trebly important from its bearings.
For without just and distinct views respecting the Article of
Original Sin, it is impossible to understand aright any one of the
peculiar doctrines of Christianity. Now my first complaint is,
that the eloquent Bishop, while he admits the fact as established
beyond controversy by universal experience, yet leaves us wholly
in the dark as to the main point, supplies us with no answer to
the principal question — why he names it Original Sin ? It can
not be said, We know what the Bishop means, and what matters
the name ? — for the nature of the fact, and in what light it t
should be regarded by us, depends on the nature of our answer to I
the question, whether Original Sin is or is not the right arid [
proper designation. I can imagine the same quantum of suffer-
ings, and yet if I had reason to regard them as symptoms of a
commencing change, as pains of growth, the temporary deformity
and rnisproportions of immaturity, or (as in the final sloughing of
the caterpillar) the throes and struggles of the waxing or evolv-
ing Psyche, I should think it no Stoical flight to doubt, how far
I was authorized to declare the circumstance an evil at all. Most
assuredly I would not express or describe the fact as an evil hav-
ing an origin in the sufferers themselves, or as sin.

Let us, however, waive this objection. Let it be supposed
that the Bishop uses the word in a different and more compre
hensive sense, and that by sin he understands evil of all kind
connected with or resulting from actions — though I do riot see

276 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

how we can represent the properties even of inanimate bodies
(of poisonous substances for instance) except as acts resulting
from the constitution of such bodies. Or if this sense, though not
unknown to the mystic divines, should be too comprehensive and
remote, I will suppose the Bishop to comprise under the term Sin,
the evil accompanying or consequent on human actions and pur-
poses : — though here, too, I have a right to be informed, for what
reason and on what grounds sin is thus limited to human agency ?
And truly, I should be at no loss to assign the reason. But then
this reason would instantly bring me back to my first definition ;
and any other reason, than that the human agent is endowed
with reason, and with a will which can place itself either in sub-
jection or in opposition to his reason — in other words, that man
is alone of all known animals a responsible creature — I neither
know nor can imagine.

Thus, then, the sense which Taylor — and with him the antag-
onists generally of this Article as propounded by the first Reform-
ers— attaches to the words, Original Sin, needs only be carried on
into its next consequence, and it will be found to imply the sense
which I have given — namely, that sin is evil having an origin.
But inasmuch as it is evil, in God it can not originate : and yet
, in some Spirit (that is, in some supernatural power) it must. For
j in nature there is no origin. Sin therefore is spiritual evil : but
the spiritual in man is the will. Now when we do not refer to
any particular sins, but to that state and constitution of the will,
which is the ground, condition, and common cause of all sins ;
and when we would further express the truth, that this corrupt
nature of the will must in some sense or other be considered as
its own act, that the corruption must have been self-orjgmated ; —
in this case and for this purpose we may, with no less propriety
than force, entitle this dire spiritual evil and source of all evil,
which is absolutely such, Original Sin. I have said, the corrupt
nature of the will. I might add, that the admission of a nature
into a spiritual essence by its own act is a corruption.

Such, I repeat, would be the inevitable conclusion, if Taylor's
sense of the term were carried on into its immediate conse-
quences. But the whole of his most eloquent Treatise makes it
certain that Taylor did not carry it on : and consequently Origi-
nal Sin, according to his conception, is a calamity, which being
common to all men must be supposed to result from their corn-

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 277

uion nature ; — in other words, the universal calamity of human
nature.

Can we wonder, then, that a mind, a heart, like Taylor's,
should reject, that he should strain his faculties to explain away
the belief that this calamity, so dire in itse]f, should appear tc
the All-merciful God a rightful cause and motive for inflicting on
the wretched sufferers a calamity infinitely more tremendous ; —
nay, that it should be incompatible with Divine Justice not to
punish it by everlasting torment ? Or need we be surprised if
he found nothing that could reconcile his mind to such a beiief,
in the circumstance that the acts now consequent on this calctm-
ity, and either directly or indirectly effects of the same, were,
five or six thousand years ago in the instance of a certain indi-
vidual and his accomplice, anterior to the calamity, arid the
cause or occasion of the same ; — that what in all other mbri is
disease, in these two persons was guilt ; — that what in L«J is
hereditary, and consequently nature, in them was original, and
consequently sin ? Lastly, might it not be presumed, that sc» en-
lightened, and at the same time so affectionate, a divine would
even fervently disclaim and reject the pretended justifications of
God grounded on flimsy analogies drawn from the imperfections
of human ordinances and human justice-courts — some of very
doubtful character even as human institutes, and all of them just
only as far as they are necessary, and rendered necessary chiefly
by the weakness and wickedness, the limited powers and corrupt
passions, of mankind ? The more confidently might this be pre-
sumed of so acute and practised a logician, as Taylor, in addition
to his other extraordinary gifts, is known to have been, when it
is demonstrable that the most current of these justifications rests
on a palpable equivocation : namely, the gross misuse of the word
Right.* An instance will explain my meaning. In as far as,

* It may conduce to the readier comprehenaion of this point if I say, that
the equivoque consists in confounding the almost technical sense of the noun
substantive, right (a sense most often determined by the genitive case fol-
lowing, as the right of property, the right of husbands to chastise their
wives, and so forth) with the popular sense of the adjective, right : though
this likewise has, if not a double sense, yet a double application ; — the first,
when it is used to express the fitness of a mean to a relative end ; for ex-
ample, " the right way to obtain the right distance at which a picture should
be examined," and the like ; and the other, when it expresses a perfect con
formity »ud commeiisurateness with the immutable idea of equity, 01 per

278 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

from the known frequency of dishonest or mischievous persons, it
may have been found necessary, in so far is the law justifiable in
giving landowners the right of proceeding- against a neighbor or
fellow-citizen for even a slight trespass on that which the law
has made their property : nay, of proceeding in sundry instances
criminally and even capitally. But surely, either there is no re-
ligion in the world, arid nothing obligatory in the precepts of the
Gospel, or there are occasions in which it would be very wrong
in the proprietor to exercise the right, which yet it may be highly
expedient that he should possess. On this ground it is, that reli-
gion is the sustaining opposite of the law.

That Taylor, therefore, should have striven fervently against
the Article so interpreted and so vindicated, is (for me at least) a
subject neither of surprise nor of complaint. It is the doctrine
which he substitutes ; it is the weakness and inconsistency be-
trayed in the defence of this substitute ; it is the unfairness with
which he blackens the established Article — for to give it, as it
had been caricatured by a few Ultra-Calvinists during the fever

feet rectitude. Hence the close connection between the words righteousness
and godliness, that is, godlikeness.

I should be tempted to subjoin a few words on a predominating doctrine
closely connected with the present argument — the Paleyan principle of
general consequences ; but the inadequacy of this principle as a criterion
of right and wrong, and above all its utter unfitness as a moral guide, havo
been elsewhere so fully stated (Friend, Essay xv, IT, p. 285), that even
iu again referring to the subject I must shelter myself under Seneca's rule,
that what we can not too frequently think of, we can not too often be made.
to recollect. It is, however, of immediate importance to the point in dis-
cussion, that the reader should be made to see how altogether incompatible
the principle of judging by general consequences is with the idea of an
Eternal, Omnipresent,, and Omniscient Being; — that he should be made
aware of the absurdity of attributing any form of generalization to the All-
perfect Mind. To generalize is a faculty and function of the human under-
standing, and from the imperfection and limitation of the understanding are
(he use and the necessity of generalizing derived. Generalization is a sub-
stitute for intuition, for the power of intuitive, that is, immediate knowl-
edge. Asa substitute, it is a gift of inestimable value to a finite intelli
geuce, such as man in his present state is endowed with and capable of ex
ercising ; but yet a substitute only, and an imperfect one to boot. To at-
tribute it to God is the grossest anthropomorphism : and grosser instances
of anthropomorphism than are to be found in the controversial writings on
Original Sin and Vicarious Satisfaction, the records of superstition do cot
supply.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 279

of the (so-called) Quinquarticular controversy, was in effect to
blacken it — and then imposes another scheme, to which the same
objections apply with even increased force, a scheme which seems
to differ from the former only by adding fraud arid mockery tc
injustice ; — these are the things that excite my wonder ; it is of
these that I complain. For what does the Bishop's scheme
amount to ? God, he tells us, required of Adam a perfect obedi-
ence, and made it possible by endowing him " with perfect recti-
tude arid supernatural heights of grace" proportionate to the obe-
dience which he required. As a consequence of his disobedience,
Adam lost this rectitude, this perfect sanity and proportionateness
of his intellectual, moral and corporeal state, powers and impulses ;
and as the penalty of his crime, he was deprived of all supernat-
ural aids and graces. The death, with whatever is comprised in
the Scriptural sense of the word, death, began from that moment
to work in him, and this consequence he conveyed to his offspring,
and through them to all his posterity, that is, to all mankind.
They were born diseased in mind, body and will. For what less
than disease can we call a necessity of error arid a predisposition
to sin arid sickness ? Taylor, indeed, asserts, that though perfect
obedience became incomparably more difficult, it was not, how- *
ever, absolutely impossible. Yet he himself admits that the con-
trary was universal ; that of the countless millions of Adam's
posterity, not a single individual ever realized, or approached to
the realization of, this possibility ; and (if my memory* does not
deceive me) Taylor himself has elsewhere exposed — and if he has
riot, yet common sense will do it for him — the sophistry in assert- j
ing of a whole what may be true of the whole, but is in fact true

* I have, since this page was written, met with several passages in the
Treatise on Repentance, the Holy Living and Dying, and the Worthy Com
municant, in which the Bishop asserts without scruple the impossibility of
total obedience ; and on the same grounds as I have given.

[See the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, c. I. s. 2, " — who — con
elude that is possible to keep the commandments, though as yet no man
ever did, but he that did it for us all." xv. " But in the moral sense, that
is, when we consider what man is, and what are his strengths, and how
many his enemies, and how soon he falls, and that he forgets when he
should remember, and his faculties are asleep when they should be awake,
and he is hindered by intervening accidents, and weakened and determined
by superinduced qualities, habits and necessities, — the keeping of the com
itaindments is morally impossible." xxxiv. — Ed^\

£80 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

I only of each of its component parts Any one may «iap a horse*
hair : therefore, any one may perform the same feat with the
horse's tail. On a level floor (on the hardened sand for instance,
of a sea-beach) I chalk two parallel straight lines, with a width
of eight inches. It is possible for a man, with a bandage over
his eyes, to keep within the path for two or three paces : there-
fore, it is possible for him to walk blindfold for two or three
leagues without a single deviation ! And this possibility would
suffice to acquit me of injustice, though I had placed man-traps
within an inch of one line, and knew that there were pit-falls
and deep wells beside the other !

This assertion, therefore, without adverting to its discordance
with, if not direct contradiction to, the tenth and thirteenth Arti-
cles of our Church, I shall not, I trust, be thought to rate below
its true value, if I treat it as an infinitesimal possibility that may
be safely dropped in the calculation : and so proceed with the ar-
gument. The consequence then of Adam's crime was, by a nat-
ural necessity, inherited by persons who could not (the Bishop
affirms) in any sense have been accomplices in the crime or par-
takers in the guilt : and yet consistently with the divine holiness,
it was not possible that tbe same perfect obedience should not be
required of them. Now what would the idea of equity, what
would the law inscribed by the Creator on the heart of man,
seem to dictate in this case ? Surely, that the supplementary
aids, the supernatural graces correspondent to a law above na-
ture, should be increased in proportion to the diminished strength
of the agents, and the increased resistance to be overcome by
them. But no ! not only the consequence of Adam's act, but the
penalty due to his crime, was perpetuated. His descendants
were despoiled or left destitute of these aids and graces, while the
obligation to perfect obedience was continued ; an obligation too,
the non-fulfilment of which brought with it death and the unut-
terable woe that cleaves to an immortal soul forever alienated
from its Creator.

Observe that all these results of Adam's fall enter into Bishop
Taylor's scheme of Original S'*i equally as into that of the first
Reformers. In this respect the Bishop's doctiine is the same
with that laid down in the Articles and Homilies of the English
Church. The only difference that has hitherto appeared, con-
sists in the aforesaid mathematical possibility of fulfil] ing tho

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 281

wnole law, which in the Bishop's scheme is affirmed to remain
still in human nature,^ or (as it is elsewhere expressed) in the na-
ture of the human will.f But though it were possible to grant
this existence of a power in all men, which in no man was ever
exemplified, and where the non-actualization of such power is, a
priori, so certain, that the belief or imagination of the contrary
in any individual is expressly given us by the Holy Spirit as a
test, whereby it may be known that the truth is not in him, as
an infallible sign of imposture or self-delusion ! — though it were
possible to grant this, which, consistently with Scripture and the
principles of reasoning which we apply in all other cases, it is no*
possible to grant; and though it were possible likewise to over-

* " There is a natural possibility and a moral : there are abilities in ever}
man to do any thing that is there commanded, and he that can do well to-
day, may do so to-morrow ; in the nature of things this is true : and sinct
every sin is a breach of law, which a man might and ought to have kept, it
is naturally certain, that whenever any man did break the commandment,
he might have done otherwise. In man, therefore, speaking naturally and of
the physical possibilities of things, there is by those assistances which are
given in the Gospel, ability to keep the commandments evangelical. But in
the voral sense," &c. ubi supra. — Ed.

\ Availing himself of the equivocal sense, and (I most readily admit) the
injudicious use of the word " free" in the — even on this account — faulty
phrase, " free only to sin," Taylor treats the notion of a power in the will
of determining itself to evil without an equal power of determining itself to
good, as a " foolery." I would this had been the only instance in his Deus
Justificatus of that inconsiderate contempt so frequent in the polemic trea-
tises of minor divines, who will have ideas of reason, spiritual truths that
can only be spiritually discerned, translated for them into adequate concep- '
tions of the understanding. The great articles of Corruption and Redemp-
tion are propounded to us as spiritual mysteries ; and every interpretation
that pretends to explain them into comprehensible notions, does by its very
success furnish presumptive proof of its failure. The acuteness and logical
dexterity, with which Taylor has brought out the falsehood, or semblance
of falsehood, in the Calvinistlc scheme, are truly admirable. Had he next
concentred his thoughts in tranquil meditation, and asked himself: what
then is the truth ? — if a Will be at all, what must a Will be ? — he might, J
think, have seen that a nature in a will implies already a corruption of that
will : that a nature is as inconsistent with freedom as free choice with an in
capacity of choosing aught but evil. And lastly, a free power in a nature to ful-
fil a law above nature ! — I, who love and honor this good and great man with
all the reverence that can dwell " on this side idolatry," dare not retort on this
assertion the charge of foolery ; but I find it a paradox as startling to my reason
as any of the hard sayings of tin Dort divines were to his understanding.

282 AIDS TO REFLECTION'.

look the glaiing sophistry of concluding in relation to a series of
indeterminate length, that whoever can do any one, can there-
fore do all ; a conclusion, the futility of which must force itself
on the common sense of every man who understands the proposi-
tion ; still the question will arise — Why, and on what principle
of equity, were the unoffending sentenced to be born with so fear-
ful a disproportion of their powers to their duties ? Why were
they subjected to a law, the fulfilment of which was all but im-
possible, yet the penalty on the failure tremendous ? Admit that
for those who had never enjoyed a happier lot, it was no punish-
ment to be made to inhabit a ground which the Creator had
cursed, and to have been born with a body prone to sickness, and
a soul surrounded with temptation, and having the worst tempta-
tion within itself in its own temptability ; — to have the duties of
a Spirit with the wants and appetites of an Animal ! Yet on
such imperfect creatures, with means so scanty and impediments
so numerous, to impose the same task-work that had been re-
quired of a creature with a pure and entire nature, and provided
with supernatural aids — if this be not to inflict a penalty ; yet to
be placed under a law, the difficulty of obeying which is infinite,
and to have momently to struggle with this difficulty, and to live
momently in hazard of these consequences — if this be no punish-
ment ; — words have no correspondence with thoughts, and
thoughts are but shadows of each other, shadows that own 110
substance for their antitype.

Of such an outrage on common sense Taylor was incapable.
He himself calls it a penalty ; he admits that in effect it is a
punishment : nor does he seek to suppress the question that so
naturally arises out of this admission ; — on what principle of
equity were the innocent offspring of Adam punished at all ? He
meets it, and puts in an answer. He states the problem, and
gives his solution — namely, that " God on Adam's account was
so exasperated with mankind, that being angry he would still
continue the punishment !" — " The case" (says the Bishop) " is
this : Jonathan and Michal were Saul's children. It came to
pass that seven of Saul's issue were to be hanged : all equally
innocent, equally culpable." [Before I quote further, I feel my-
self called on to remind the reader, that these last two words were
added by Taylor, without the least grounds in Scripture, accord-
ing to which (2 Sam. xxi.) no crime was laid to theii charge,

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 283

no blame imputed to them. Without any pretence of culpable con-
duct on their part, they were arraigned as children of Saul, and
sacrificed to a point of state-expedience. In recommencing- the
quotation , therefore, the reader ought to let the sentence conclude
with the words — ] " all equally innocent." David took the five
sons of Michal, for she had left him unhandsomely. Jonathan
was his friend : and therefore he spared his son, Mephibosheth.
Now here it was indifferent as to the guilt of the persons (bear in
mind, Reader, that no guilt was attached to any of them.')
whether David should take the sons of Michal, or Jonathan's ;
but it is likely that as upon the kindness that David had to
Jonathan, he spared his son : so upon the just provocation of
Michal, he made that evil fall upon them, which, it may be, they
should not have suffered, if their mother had been kind. Adam
was to God, as Michal to David."*

This answer, this solution, proceeding too from a divine so pre-
eminently gifted, and occurring (with other passages not less start-
ling) in a vehement refutation of the received doctrine, on the ex-
press ground of its opposition to the clearest conceptions and best
feelings of mankind — this it is that surprises me. It is of this
that I complain. The Almighty Father exasperated with those,
whom the Bishop has himself in the same Treatise described as
" innocent and most unfortunate" — the two things best fitted to
conciliate love and pity ! Or though they did not remain inno-
cent, yet those whose abandonment to a mere nature, while they
were left amenable to a law above nature, he affirms to be the
irresistible cause, that they one and all did sin ! And this de-
cree illustrated and justified by its analogy to one of the worst
actions of an imperfect mortal ! From such of my Readers as
will give a thoughtful perusal to these works of Taylor, I dare
anticipate a concurrence with the judgment which I here tran-
scribe from the blank space at the end of the Deus Justificatus
in my own copy ; and which, though twenty years have elapsed
since it was written, I have never seen reason to recant or mod-
ily. " This most eloquent Treatise may be compared to a statue
of Janus, with the one face, which we must suppose fronting the
Calvinistic tenet, entire and fresh, as from the master's hand ;
beaming with life and force, witty scorn on the lip, and a brow
lit once bright and weighty with satisfying reason : — the other,
* Vol. ix. p. 5, 6. Heber's edit.— -Ed.

284 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

looking toward the " something to be put in its pla;e," maimed,
featureless, and weather-bitten, into an almost visionary confusior
and indistinctness."^

y With these expositions I hasten to contrast the Scriptural
article respecting Original Sin, or the corrupt arid sinful nature
of the human "Will, and the belief which alone is required of us
as Christians. And here the first thing to be considered, and
which will at once remove a world of error, is ; that this is no
tenet first introduced or imposed by Christianity, and which, should
a man see reason to disclaim the authority of the Gospel, would
no longer have any claim on his attention. It is no perplexity
that a man may get rid of by ceasing to be a Christian, and which
has no existence for a philosophic Deist. It is a fact affirmed, in-
deed, in the Christian Scriptures alone with the force and fre-
quency proportioned to its consummate importance ; but a fact
acknowledged in every religion that retains the least glimmering

\ of the patriarchal faith in a God infinite, yet personal : — a fact
assumed or implied as the basis of every religion, of which any
relics remain of earlier date than the last and total apostasy of
the Pagan world, when the faith in the great I Am, the Creator,
was extinguished in the sensual Polytheism, which is inevitably
the final result of Pantheism, or the worship of Nature ; arid the
only form under which the Pantheistic scheme — that, according
to which the World is God, and the material universe itself the
one only absolute Being — can exist for a people, or become the
popular creed. Thus in the most ancient books of the Brahmins,
the deep sense of this fact, and the doctrines grounded on obscure
traditions of the promised remedy, are seen struggling, and now
gleaming, now flashing, through the mist of Pantheism, and pro-
ducing the incongruities and gross contradictions of the Brahmin
Mythology ; while in the rival sect — in that most strange phcenontr
enon, the religious Atheism of the Buddhists, with whom God is
only universal matter considered abstractedly from all particular
forms — the fact is placed among the delusions natural to man,
which, together with other superstitions grounded on a supposed
essential difference between right and wrong, the sage is to de-
compose and precipitate from the menstruum of his more refined
apprehensions ! Thus in denying the fact, they virtually ac
knowledge it.

* See Lit. Remains, V. pp. 213, 214.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 285

From the remote East, turn to the mythology of the Lesser
Asia, to the descendants of Javan, who dwelt in the tents of
Shem, and possessed the isles. Here, again, and in the usual
form of an historic solution, we find the same fact, and as char-
acteristic of the human race, stated in that earliest arid most
venerable mythus, or symbolic parable ofj£n]m4d^us— that trul
wonderful fable, in which the characters of the rebellious Spirit
and of the Divine Friend of mankind (0ft»; <jHA<i*#£umoc) are
united in the same person ;* thus in the most striking manner
noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal tradition -with
the incongruous scheme of Pantheism. This and the connected
tale of lo, which is but the sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone
in the Greek Mythology, in which elsewhere both gods and men
are mere powers arid products of nature. And most noticeable
it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel
had awakened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of
its wiser enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of
this great problem of the moral world, the beautiful parable of
Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a rival Fall of Man .
and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the human
race was again recognized. In the assertion of Original Sin the
Greek Mythology rose and set.

But not only was the fact acknowledged of a law in the nature v
of man resisting the law of God (and whatever is placed in ac-
tive and direct oppugnancy to the good is, ipso facto ', positive
evil) ; it was likewise an acknowledged mysteryfarid one which
by the nature of the subject must ever remain such — a problem,
of which any other solution than the statement of the fact itself
was demonstrably impossible. That it is so, the least reflection
will suffice to convince every man, who has previously satisfied
himself that he is a responsible being. It follows necessarily
from the postulate of a responsible will. Refuse to grant this,
arid I have not a word to say. Concede this, and you concede
all. For this is the essential attribute of a will, and contained ^
in the very idea, that whatever determines the will, acquires this
pc\ver from a previous determination of the will itself. The will
is ultimately self-determined, or it is no longer a will under tho
law of perfect freedom, but a nature under the mechanism of
cause and affect. And if by an act. to which it had determined
* See Lit. Remains, IV. pp. 344-365. — Ed.

286 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

itself, it has subjected itself to the determination of nature (in the
language of St. Paul, to the law of the flesh), it receives a nature
into itself, and so far it becomes a nature : arid this is a corrup-
tion of the will and a corrupt nature. It is also a fall of man,
inasmuch as his will is the condition of his personality ; the
ground and condition of the attribute which constitutes him man.
And the ground-work of personal being is a capacity of acknowl
edging the moral law (the law of the Spirit, the law of freedom ;
the Divine Will) as that which should, of itself, suffice to determine
the will to a free obedience of the law, the law working therein by
its own exceeding lawfulness.* This, and this alone, is positive
good ; good in itself, and independent of all relations. "Whatever
resists, and, as a positive force, opposes this in the will, is therefore
evil. But an evil in the will, is an evil will ; and as all moral
evil (that is, all evil that is evil without reference to its contiri
gent physical consequences) is of the will, this evil will must have
its source in the will. Arid thus we might go back from act to
act, from evil to evil, ad infinitum, without advancing a step.

We call an individual a bad man, not because an action of his
is contrary to the law, but because it has led us to conclude from
it some principle opposed to the law, some private maxim or by-
law in his will contrary to the universal law of right reason in the
conscience, as the ground of the action. But this evil principle
again must be grounded in some other principle which has been
made determinant of his will by the will's own self-determination.
For if not, it must have its ground in some necessity of nature,
in some instinct or propensity imposed, not acquired, another's
work not his own. Consequently neither act nor principle could
be imputed ; and relatively to the agent, not original, not sin.

Now let the grounds on which the fact of an evil inherent in
the will is affirmable in the instance of any one man, be supposed
equally applicable in every instance, and concerning all men : so
that the fact is asserted of the individual, not because he has
committed this or that crime, or because he has shown himself to
be this or that man, but simply because he is a man. Let the
evil be supposed such as to imply the impossibility of an individ-
ual's referring to any particular time at which it might be con-

* If the law worked on the will, it would be the working of an intrinsic
and al it'n force, find, as St. Paul profoundly argues, would prove the will

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. Ml

ceived to have commenced, or to any period of his existence at i-
which it was not existing. Let it be supposed, in short, .hat the
subject stands in no relation whatever to time, can neither be „_
called in time nor out of time ; but that all relations of time are
as alien and heterogeneous in this question, as the relations arid
attributes of space (north or south, round or square, thick orthiu)
are to our affections and moral feelings. Let the Reader suppose
this, and he will have before him the precise import of the Scrip- j
tural doctrine of Original Sin ; or rather of the fact acknowledged
in all ages, and recognized, but not originating, in the Christian
Scriptures.

In addition to this it will be well to remind the inquirer, that
the steadfast conviction of the existence, personality, and moral
attributes of God, is presupposed in the acceptance of the Gospel,
or required as its indispensable preliminary. It is taken for
granted as a point which the hearer had already decided for him-
self, a point finally settled and put at rest : not by the removal
of all difficulties, or by any such increase of insight as enabled
him to meet every objection of the Epicurean or the Skeptic, with
a full and precise answer ; but because he had convinced himself
that it was folly as well as presumption in so imperfect a crea-
ture to expect it ; and because these difficulties and doubts dis-
appeared at the beam, when tried against the weight and convio-
tive power of the reasons in the other scale. It is, therefore, ,
most unfair to attack Christianity, or any article which the
Church has declared a Christian doctrine, by arguments, which,
if valid, are valid against all religion. Is there a disputant who
scorns a mere postulate, as the basis of any argument in support
of the faith ; who is too high-minded to beg his ground, and will
take it by a strong hand ? Let him fight it out with the Atheists,
or the Manicheans ; but not stoop to pick up their arrows, and
then run away to discharge them at Christianity or the Church !

The only true way is to state the doctrine, believed as well by
Saul of Tarsus, yet breathing out threatening^ and slaughter
against the Church of Christ, as by Paul the Apostle, fully
preaching the Gospel of Christ. A moral evil is an evil that
has its origin in a will. An evil common to all must have a
ground common to all. But the actual existence of moral evij
we are bound in conscience to admit ; and that there is an evil
common to all is a fact ; and this evil must therefore have a

288 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

common ground. Now this evil ground can not originate in the
Divine Will : it must therefore be referred to the will of man.
And this evil ground we call original sin. It is a mystery, that
is, a fact, which we see, but can not explain ; and the doctrine
a truth which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor
communicate. And such by the quality of the subject (namely,
a responsible will) it must be, if it be truth at all.

A sick man, whose complaint was as obscure as his sufferings
were severe and notorious, was thus addressed by a humane stran-
ger : " My poor Friend ! I find you dangerously ill, and on this
account only, and having certain information of your being so,
and that you have not wherewithal to pay for a physician, I
have come to you. Respecting your disease, indeed, I can tell
you nothing that you are capable of understanding, more than
you know already, or can only be taught by reflection on your
own experience. But I have rendered the disease no longer ir-
remediable. I have brought the remedy witli me : and I now
offer you the means of immediate relief, with the assurance of
gradual convalescence, and a final perfect cure ; nothing more
being required on your part, but your best endeavors to follow
the prescriptions I shall leave with you. It is, indeed, too proba-
ble, from the nature of your disease, that you will occasionally
neglect or transgress them. But even this has been calculated
on in the plan of you? cure, and the remedies provided, if only
you are sincere arid in right earnest with yourself, and have your
heart in the work. Ask me not how such a disease can be con-
ceived possible. Enough for the present that you know it to be
real : and I come to cure the disease, not to explain it."

Now, what if the patient or some of his neighbors should
charge this good Samaritan with having given rise to the mis-
chievous notion of an inexplicable disease, involving the honor of
the king of the country, — should inveigh against him as the author
and first introducer of the notion, though of the numerous medi-
cal works composed ages before his arrival, and by physicians of
the most venerable authority, it was scarcely possible to open a
single volume without finding some description of the disease,
or some lamentation of its malignant and epidemic character ;— -
and, lastly, what if certain pretended friends of this good Samari-
tan, in their zeal to vindicate him against this absurd charge,
should assert that he was a perfect stranger to this disease, aiui

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 289

boldly deny that he had ever said or done any thing connected
with it, or that implied its existence ?

In this apologue or imaginary case, Reader ! you have the
true bearings of Christianity on the fact and doctrine of Original
Sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of a known fact)
Christianity has only in common with every religion, and with
every philosophy, in which the reality of a responsible will, and
the essential difference between good and evil, have been recog-
nized. Peculiar to the Christian religion are the remedy and
(for all purposes but those of a merely speculative curiosity) the
solution. By the annunciation of the remedy it affords all the
solution which our moral interests require ; and even in that
which remains, and must remain, unfathomable, the Christian
finds a new motive to walk humbly with the Lord his God.

Should a professed believer ask you, whether that which is the
ground of responsible action in your will could in any way be re-
sponsibly present in the will of Adam, — answer^him in these
words : " You, Sir ! can no more demonstrate the negative, than
I can conceive the affirmative. The corruption of my will may
very warrantably be spoken of as a consequence of Adam's fall,
even as my birth of Adam's existence ; as a consequence, a link
in the historic chain of instances, whereof Adam is the first.
But that it is on account of Adam ; or that this evil principle
was, a priori, inserted or infused into my will by the will of an-
other— which is indeed a contradiction in terms, my will in such
case being no will — this is nowhere asserted in Scripture ex-
plicitly or by implication." It belongs to the very essence of the
doctrine, that in respect of original sm every man is the adequate
representative of all men. What wonder, then, that where no
inward ground of preference existed, the choice should be deter-
mined by outward relations, and that the first in time should be
taken as the diagram ! Even in the book of Genesis the word
Axlam is distinguished from a proper name by an article before it.
It is the Adam, so as to express the genus, not the individual —
or rather, perhaps, I should say, as well as the individual. But
that the word with its equivalent, the old man, is used symboli-
cally and universally by St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 22, 45. Eph. iv. 22.
Col. iii. 9. Rom. vi. 6), is too evident to need any proof.

I conclude with this remark. The doctrine of Original Sin
concerns all men. But it concerns Christians in particular no

VOL. I. N

290 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

otherwise than by its connection with the doctrine of Redemp*
tion ; and with the divinity and divine humanity of the Re-
deemer, as a corollary or necessary inference from both mysteries.
Beware of arguments against Christianity, which can not stop
there, and consequently ought not to have commenced there.
Something I might have added to the clearness of the preceding
views, if the limits of the Work had permitted me to clear away
the several delusive and fanciful assertions respecting the state*
of our first parents, their wisdom, science, and angelic faculties,
assertions without the slightest ground in Scripture : — or, if con-
sistently with the wants and preparatory studies of those, for
whose use this Volume was especially intended, I could have
entered into the momentous subject of a spiritual fall or apostasy
antecedent to the formation of man — a belief the Scriptural
grounds of which are few and of diverse interpretation, but
which has been almost universal in the Christian Church.
Enough however has been given, I trust, for the Reader to see
and (as far as the subject is capable of being understood) to un-
derstand this long controverted article, in the sense in which
alone it is binding on his faith. Supposing him therefore to
know the meaning of Original Sin, and to have decided for him-
self on the fact of its actual existence, as the antecedent ground
and occasion of Christianity, we may now proceed to Christianity
itself, as the edifice raised on this ground, that is, to the great
constituent article of the faith in Christ, as the remedy of the dis-
ease— the doctrine of Redemption.

But before I proceed to this great doctrine, let me briefly re-
mind the young and friendly pupil, to whom I would still b©
supposed to address myself, that in the following Aphorisms the
word science is used in its strict and narrowest sense. By a
science I here mean any chain of truths which are either absolutely
certain, or necessarily true for the human rnind, from the laws
and constitution of the mind itself. In neither case is our con-
viction derived, or capable of receiving any addition, from out-
ward experience, or empirical data — that is, matters of fact
given to us through the medium of the senses — though these

* For a specimen of these Rabbinical dotages, I refer, not to the writ-
ings of mystics and enthusiasts, but to the shrewd and witty Dr. Sout^
one of whose most elaborate sermons stands prominent among the many
splendid extravaganzas on this subject. (See Sermons, II. Gen. i. 27. — Ed.}

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 291

data may have been the occasion, or may even be an indispen-
sable condition, of our reflecting on the former, arid thereby be-
coming conscious of the same. On the other hand, a connected
series of conclusions grounded on empirical data, in contra-dis-
tinction from science, I beg leave (no better term occurring) in
this place and for this purpose to denominate a scheme.

APHORISM XI.

In whatever age and country it is the prevailing mind and
character of the nation to regard the present life as subordinate
to a life to come, and to mark the present state, the world of
their senses, by signs, instruments, and mementos of its connection
with a future state and a spiritual world ; — where the mysteries
of faith are brought within the hold of the people at large, not
by being explained away in the vain hope of accommodating
them to the average of their understanding, but by being made
the objects of love by their combination with events and epochs
of history, with national traditions, with the monuments and
dedications of ancestral faith and zeal, with memorial and sym-
bolical observances, with the realizing influences of social devo-
tion, and, above all, by early and habitual association with acts
of the will, — ther^Religionjs. There, however obscured by the
hay and straw of human will-work, the foundation is safe. In
that country and under the predominance of such maxims, the
National Church is no mere State-institute. It is the state itself
in its intensest federal union ; yet at the same moment the
guardian and representative of all personal individuality. For
the Church is the shrine of morality : and in morality alone the
citizen asserts and reclaims his personal independence, his integ-
rity. Our outward acts are efijcient, and most often possible, only
by coalition. As an efficient power, the agent is but a fraction
of unity ; he becomes an integer only in the recognition and
performance of the moral law. Nevertheless it is most true (and
a truth which can not with safety be overlooked) that morality,
as morality, has no existence for a people. It is either absorbed
and lost in the quicksands of prudential calculus, or it is taken
up and transfigured into the duties and mysteries of religion
And no wonder : since morality (including the personal being,
the I am, as its subject) is itself a mystery, and the ground and
mppositum of all other mysteries, relatively to man.

292 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

APHORISM XII

PALEY NOT A MORALIST.

Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of self-inter est,
or on the average consequences of actions, supposed to be general,
form a branch of Political Economy, to which let all due honoi
be given. Their utility is not here questioned. But however
estimable within their own sphere such schemes, or any one of
them in particular, may be, they do not belong to moral science,
to which, both in kind and purpose, they are in all cases foreign,
and, when substituted for it, hostile. Ethics, or the science of
Morality, does indeed in no wise exclude the consideration of ac-
tion ; but it contemplates the same in its originating spiritual
source, without reference to space, or time, or sensible existence.
Whatever springs out of the perfect law of freedom, which exists
only by its unity with the will of God, its inherance in the
Word of God, and its communion with the Spirit of God — that
(according to the principles of moral science) is good — it is light
and righteousness and very truth. Whatever seeks to separate
itself from the divine principle, and proceeds from a false centre
in the agent's particular will, is evil — a work of darkness and
contradiction. It is sin and essential falsehood. Not the out-
ward deed, constructive, destructive, or neutral, — not the deed as
a possible object of the senses, — is the object of ethical science.
For this is no compost, collectorium or inventory of single duties ;
nor does it seek in the multitudinous sea, in the predetermined
wave, and tides and currents of nature, that freedom which is
exclusively an attribute of Spirit. Like all other pure sciences,
whatever it enunciates, and whatever it concludes, it enunciates
and concludes absolutely. Strictness is its essential character ;
and its first proposition is, Whosoever shall keep the ivhole law,
and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For as the will
or spirit, the source and substance of moral good, is one and all in
every part ; so must it be the totality, the whole articulated
series of single acts, taken as unity, that can alone, in the severity
of science, be recognized as the proper counterpart and adequate
representative of a good will. Is it in this or that limb, or not
rather in the whole body, the entire organismus, that the law of
Life reflects itself? Much less, then, can the law of the Spirit
work in fragments.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 293

APHORISM XIIL

Wherever there exists a permanent*1 learned class, having
authority, and possessing the respect and confidence of the coun-
try ; and wherever the science of ethics is acknowledged and
taught in this class, as a regular part of a learned education, to
its future members generally, but as the special study and indis-
pensable ground- work of such as are intended for holy orders ; —
there the article of Original Sin will be an axiom of faith in all
classes. Among the learned an undisputed truth, and with the
people a fact, which no man imagines it possible to deny : and
the doctrine, thus interwoven in the faith of all, and coeval with
the consciousness of each, will, for each and all, possess a reality,
subjective indeed, yet virtually equivalent to that which we in-
tuitively give to the objects of our senses.

With the learned this will be the case, because the article ia
the first — I had almost said spontaneous — product of the ^applica-
tion of modern science to history, of which it is the interpreter.
A. mystery in its own right, and by the necessity and essential
character of its subject — (for the will, like the life, in every act
and product pre-supposes to itself a past always present, a present
that evermore resolves itself into a past) — the doctrine of Original
Sin gives to all the other mysteries of religion a common basis, a
connection of dependency, an intelligibility of relation, and a total
harmony, which supersede extrinsic proof. There is here that
same proof from unity of purpose, that same evidence of symme-
try, which in the contemplation of a human skeleton flashed con-
viction on the mind of Galen, and kindled meditation into a hymn
of praise.

* A learned order must be supposed to consist of three classes. First,
those who are employed in adding to the existing sum of power and knowl-
edge. Second, and most numerous class, those whose office it is to diffuse
through the community at large the practical results of science, and that
kind and degree of knowledge and cultivation, which for all is requisite or
clearly useful. Third, the formers and instructors of the second — in schoola,
balls and universities, or through the medium of the press. The second
class includes not only the Parochial Clergy, and all others duly ordained to
the ministerial office ; but likewise all the members of the legal and medi-
cal professions, who have received a learned education under accredited find
responsible teachers. — (See the Church and State, VI. p. 51. — Ed.

294 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Meanwhile the people, not goaded into doubt by the lossond
and examples of their teachers and superiors ; not drawn away
from the fixed stars of heaven — the form and magnitude of
which are the same for the naked eye of the shepherd as for the
telescope of the sage — from the immediate truths, I mean of
Reason arid Conscience, to an exercise to which they have not
been trained, — of a faculty which has been imperfectly devel-
oped,— on a subject not within the sphere of the faculty, nor in
any way amenable to its judgment ; — the people will need nc
arguments to receive a doctrine confirmed by their own experience
from within and from without, and intimately blended with the
most venerable traditions common to all races, and the traces of
which linger in the latest twilight of civilization.

Among the revulsions consequent on the brute bewilderments
of a Godless revolution, a great and active zeal for the interests
of religion may be one. I dare not trust it, till I have seen what
it is that gives religion this interest, till 1 am satisfied that it is
not the interests of this world ; necessary and laudable interests,
perhaps, but which may, I dare believe, be secured as effectually
and more suitably by the prudence of this world, and by this
world's powers and motives. At all events, I find nothing in
the fashion of the day to deter me from adding, that the reverse
of the preceding — that where Religion is valued and patronized
as a supplement of Law, or an aid extraordinary of Police ;
where moral science is exploded as the mystic jargon of dark
ages ; where a lax system of consequences, by which every ini
quity on earth may be (and how many have been !) denounced
and defended with equal plausibility, is publicly and authorita-
tively taught as Moral Philosophy ; where the mysteries of reli-
gion, and truths supersensual, are either cut and squared for the
comprehension of the Understanding, the faculty judging accord-
ing to sense, or desperately torn asunder from the Reason, nay
fanatically opposed to it ; lastly, where private^ interpretation is

* The Author of the Statesman's Manual must be the most inconsistent
of men, if he can be justly suspected of a leaning to the Romish Church ; or
if it be necessary for him to repeat his fervent Amen to the wish and
prayer of our late good old king, that " every adult in the British Empire
should be able to read his Bible, and have a Bible to read !" Nevertheless,
it may not be superfluous to declare, that in thus protesting against the
license of private interpretation, I do not mean to condemn the exercise or
deny the right of individual judgment. I condemn only the pretended right

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 295

every thing, and the Church nothing — there the mystery of
Original Sin will be either rejected, or evaded, or perverted into
the monstrous fiction of hereditary sin, — guilt inherited ; in the
mystery of Redemption metaphors will be obtruded for the real-
ity ; and in the mysterious appurtenants and symbols of Redemp-l
tion (regeneration, grace, the Eucharist, and spiritual commu-
nion) the realities will be evaporated into metaphors.

APHORISM XIV.

Leighton.

As in great maps or pictures you will see the border decorated
with meadows, fountains, flowers, and the like, represented in it,
but in the middle you have the main design : so amongst the
works of God is it with the fore-ordained redemption of man.
All his other works in the world, all the beauty of the creatures,
the succession of ages, and the things that come to pass in them,
are but as the border to this as the mainpiece. But as a foolish
unskilful beholder, not discerning the excellency of the principal
piece in such maps or pictures, gazes only on the fair border, and
goes no farther — thus do the greatest part of us as to this great
work of God, the redemption of our personal being, and the re-
union of the human with the divine, by and through the divine
humanity of the Incarnate Word.

APHORISM XV.

Luther.

It is a hard matter, yea, an impossible thing, for thy human
strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance), at such

of every individual, competent and incompetent, to interpret Scripture in a
sense of his own, in opposition to the judgment of the Church, without
knowledge of the originals or of the languages, the history, customs, opin-
ions and controversies of the age and country in which they were written ;
and where the interpreter judges in ignorance or in contempt of uninter-
rupted tradition, the unanimous consent of Fathers and Councils, and the
universal faith of the Church in all ages. It is not the attempt to form a
judgment, which is here called in question ; but the grounds, or rather the
no-grounds on which the judgment is formed and relied on.

My fixed principle is : that a Christianity without a Church exercising
spiritual authority is vanity and delusion. And my belief is, that when
Popery is rushing in on us like an inundation, the nation will find it to be
so. I say Popery : for this too I hold for a delusion that Romanism or
Roman Catholicism is separable from Popery. Almost as readily could 1
wippose a circle without a centre.

296 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

a time when Moses setteth on thee with the Law (see Aphorism
XII.), — when the holy Law written in thy heart accuseth and
condemneth thee, forcing thee to a comparison of thy heart there-
with, and convicting thee of the incompatibleness of thy will and
nature with Heaven and holiness and an immediate God — that
then thou shouldst be able to be of such a mind as if no law nor
sin had ever been ! I say it is in a manner impossible that a,
human creature, when he feeleth himself assaulted with trials
and temptations, and the conscience hath to do with God, and
the tempted man knoweth that the root of temptation is within
him, should obtain such mastery over his thoughts as then to
think no otherwise than that from everlasting nothing hath been
but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance !

COMMENT.

In irrational agents, namely, the brute animals, the will is
hidden or absorbed in the law. The law is their nature. In the
original purity of a rational agent the uncorrupted will is iden-
tical with the law. Nay, inasmuch as a will perfectly identical
with the law is one with the Divine Will, we may say, that in
the unfallen rational agent, the will constitutes the law.* But
it is evident that the holy and spiritual power and light, which
by a prolepsis or anticipation we have named law, is a grace, an
inward perfection, and without the commanding, binding, and
menacing character which belongs to a law, acting as a master
or sovereign distinct from, and existing, as it were, externally for,
the agent who is bound to obey it. Now this is St. Paul's sense
of the word, and on this he grounds his whole reasoning. And
hence too arises the obscurity and apparent paradoxy of several
texts. That the law is a law for you ; that it acts on the Avill

* In fewer words thus : For the brute animals, their nature is thtir law ,
—for what other third law can be imagined, in addition to the law of na-
ture, and the law of reason ? Therefore : in irrational agents the law con-
stitutes the will. In moral and rational agents the will constitutes, or
ought to constitute, the law : I speak of moral agents, unfallen. For the
personal will comprehends the idea as a reason, and it gives causative force
to the idea, as a practical reason. But idea with the power of realizing the
same is a law ; or say : — the spirit comprehends the moral idea, by virtue
of its rationality, ana it gives to the idea causative power, as a will. In
every sense, therefore, it constitutes the law, supplying both the elements
of which it consists, namely, the idea, find the realizing power.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 297

not in it ; that it exercises an agency from without, by fear and
coeroion ; proves the corruption of your will, and presupposes it.
Sin in this sense came by the law : for it has its essence, as sin,
in that counter-position of the holy principle to the will, which
occasions this principle to be a Law. Exactly (as in all other
points) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the assertion of
John, when — speaking of the re-adoption of the redeemed to bo
sons of God, and the consequent resumption (I had almost said
re-absorption) of the law into the will (vbuov itlsiov TO>- iv\5
ikevdsQlug, James i. 25) — he says, For the law 'was given by
Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ* That by
the law St. Paul meant only the ceremonial law, is a notion that
could originate only in utter inattention to the whole strain and
bent of the Apostle's argument.

APHORISM XVI

Leighton and Coleridge.

Christ's death was both voluntary and violent. There waa
external violence : and that was the accompaniment, or at most
the occasion, of his death. But there was internal willingness,
the spiritual will, the will of the Spirit, and this was the proper
cause. By this Spirit he was restored from death : neither in-
deed was it possible for him to be holden of it. Being put to
death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, says St. Peter.
But he is likewise declared elsewhere to have died by that same
Spirit, which here, in opposition to the violence, is said to quicken
him. Thus Heb. ix. 14, Through the eternal Spirit he offered
himself. And even from Peter's words, and without the epithet
eternal, to aid the interpretation, it is evident that the Spirit, j
here opposed to the flesh by body or animal life, is of a higher 8
nature and power than the individual soul, which can not of
itself return to reinhabit or quicken the body.

If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in doctrine,
is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, Peter, and Paul, with
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, v/ould have laid so
great a stress on them ? But the true life of Christians is to eye
Christ in every step of his life — not only as their rule but as
their strength : looking to him as their pattern both in doing and
in suffering, and drawing power from him forgoing through both .
* Jo/mi. 17.— Ed.

298 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

being without him able for nothing. Take comfort, then, thou
that believest ! It is he that lifts up the soul from the gates of
death ; and he hath said, 1 ivill raise thee up at the last day.
Thou that believest in him, believe him and take comfort. Yea,
when thou art most sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and he far
oft to thy thinking, then is he nearest to raise and comfort thee :
as sometimes it grows darkest immediately before day.

APHORISM XVII.

Leigbton and Coleridge.

~ Would any of you be cured of that common disease, the fear
of death ? Yet this is not the right name of the disease, as a
mere reference to our armies and navies is sufficient to prove :
nor can the fear of death, either as loss of life or pain of dying,
be justly held a common disease. But would you be cured of
the fear and fearful questionings connected with the approach
of death ? Look this way, and you shall find more than you
seek. Christ, the Word that was from the beginning, and was
made flesh and dwelt among men, died. And he, who dying
conquered death in his own person, conquered sin and death,
which is the wages of sin, for thee. And of this thou mayest
{ be assured, if only thou believe in him and love him. I need
not add, keep his commandments : since where faith and love
are, obedience in its threefold character, as effect, reward, and
criterion, follows by that moral necessity which is the highest
form of freedom. The grave is thy bed of rest, and no longer the
cold bed : for thy Saviour has warmed it, and made it fragrant.
If then it be health and comfort to the faithful that Christ
descended into the grave, with especial confidence may we
meditate on his return from thence, quickened by the Spirit : this
being to those who are in him the certain pledge, yea, the effec-
tual cause of that blessed resurrection for which they themselves
hope. There is that union betwixt them and their Redeemer,
that they shall rise by the communication and virtue of his rising :
not simply by his power — for so the wicked likewise to their
grief shall be raised : but they by his life as their life.

COMMENT ON THE THREE PRECEDING APHORISMS.

To the Reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my
temporary guidance, and who permits rne to regard him as my

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEEU. 299

pupil or junior fellow-student, I continue to address myself.
Should he exist only in my imagination, let the bread float on
the waters ! If it be the Bread of Life, h will not have been
utterly cast away.

Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have passed

* *_»-.- . - * *

over since the transit from Religious Morality to Spiritual Reli-
gion. My first attempt was to satisfy you, that there is a spir-
itual principle in man, and to expose the sophistry of the argu-
ments in support of the contrary. Our next step was to clear
the road of all counterfeits, by showing what is not the Spirit,
what is not spiritual religion. And this was followed by an at-
tempt to establish a difference in. kind between religious truths
and the deductions of speculative science ; yet so as to prove,
that the former are not only equally rational with the latter, but
that they alone appeal to reason in the fulness and living reality
of their power. This and the state of mind requisite for the for-
mation of right convictions respecting spiritual truths, afterwards
employed our attention. Having then enumerated the Articles
of the Christian Faith peculiar to Christianity, I entered on the
great object of the present Work : namely, the removal of all
valid objections to these articles on grounds of right reason
or conscience. But to render this practicable, it was necessary,
first, to present each article in its true Scriptural purity, by ex-
posure of the caricatures of rnisinterpreters ; and this, again,
could not be satisfactorily done till we were agreed respecting
the faculty entitled to sit in judgment on such questions. I early
foresaw that my best chance (I will not say, of giving an insight
into the surpassing worth and transcendent reasonableness of
the Christian scheme ; but) of rendering the very question in-
telligible, depended on my success in determining the true na-
ture and limits of the human Understanding, and in evincing its
diversity from Reason. In pursuing this momentous subject, I
was tempted in two or three instances into disquisitions, which
if not beyond the comprehension, were yet unsuited to the taste,
of the persons for whom the Work was principally intended.
These, however, I have separated from the running text, and
compressed into notes. The Reader will at worst, I hope, pass
them by as a leaf or two of waste paper, willingly given by him
to those for whom it may not be paper wasted. Nevertheless, I
can not conceal that the subject itself supposes, on the part of

300 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

the Reader, a steadiness in self-questioning, a pleasure in refei
ring to his own inward experience for the facts asserted by the
Author, which can only be expected from a person Avho has fairly
set his heart on arriving at clear and fixed conclusions in matters
of faith. But where this interest is felt, nothing more than a
common capacity, with the ordinary advantages of education, is
required for the complete comprehension both of the argument
and the result. Let but one thoughtful hour be devoted to the
pages 183-190. In all that follows, the Header will find no dif-
ficulty in understanding my meaning, whatever he may have in
adopting it

The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original
Sin and Redemption ; that the ground, this the superstructure
of our faith. The former I have exhibited, first, according to the
scheme of the Westminster Divines and the Synod of Dort ; then,
according to the* scheme of a contemporary Arminian divine ;

* To escape the consequences of this scheme, some Arminian divines nave
asserted that the penalty inflicted on Adam, and continued in his posterity,
was simply the loss of immortality — death as the utter extinction of personal
being : immortality being regarded by them (and not, I think, without good
reason) as a supernatural attribute, and its loss therefore involved in th«?
forfeiture of supernatural graces. This theory has its golden side : and, as
a private opinion, is said to have the countenance of more than one dignitary
of our Church, whose general orthodoxy is beyond impeachment. For here
the penalty resolves itself into the consequence, and this the natural and
naturally inevitable consequence of Adam's crime. For Adam, indeed, it
was a positive punishment : a punishment of his guilt, the justice of whicb
who could have dared arraign \ While for the offspring of Adam it wa?
simply a not super-adding to their nature the privilege by which the origi-
nal man was contra-distinguished from the brute creation — a mere negatioi?
of which they had no more right to complain than any other species of ani-
mals. God in this view appears only in his attribute of mercy, as averting
by supernatural interposition a consequence naturally inevitable. This is»
the golden side of the theory. But if we approach to it from the opposite
direction, it first excites a just scruple, from the countenance it seems to
give to the doctrine of Materialism. The supporters of this scheme do riot.
I presume, contend that Adam's offspring would not have been born mea
but have formed a new species of beasts ! And if not, the notion of a ra
tional and self-conscious soul, perishing utterly with the dissolution of the
organized body, seems to require, nay, almost involves, the opinion that the
soul is a quality or accident of the body, — a mere harmony resulting from
organization.

But let this pass unquestioned. Whatever else the descendants of Adam
might have been without the intercession of Christ, yet (this interceawon

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 301

and lastly, in contrast with both schemes, I have placed what I
firmly believe to be the Scriptural sense of this article, and vin-
dicated its entire conformity with reason and experience. I now
proceed to the other momentous article — from the necessitating
occasion of the Christian dispensation to Christianity itself. Foi
Christianity and Redemption are equivalent terms. And here
my comment will be comprised in a few sentences : for I confine
my views to the one object of clearing this awful mystery from
those too current misrepresentations of its nature and import, that
have laid it open to scruples and objections, not to such as shoot

having beea effectually made) they are now endowed with souls that .are
not extinguished together with the material body. — ISTow unless these di-
vines teach likewise the Romish figment of Purgatory, and to an extent
in which the Church of Rome herself would denounce the doctrine as an im-
pious heresy : unless they hold, that a punishment temporary and remedial
is the worst evil that the impenitent have to apprehend in a future state ;
and that the spiritual death declared and foretold by Christ, the death eter-
nal where the worm never dies, is neither death nor eternal, but a certain
quantum of suffering in a state of faith, hope, and progressive amendment —
unless they go these lengths (and the divines here intended are orthodox
Churchmen, men who would not knowingly advance even a step on the road
towards them) — then I fear that any advantage their theory might possess
over the Calvinistic scheme in the article of Original Sin, would be dearly
purchased by increased difficulties, and an ultra-Calvinistic narrowness in
the article of Redemption. I at least find it impossible, with my present
human feelings, not to imagine that even in heaven it would be a fearful
thing to know, that in order to my elevation to a lot infinitely more desi-
rable than by nature it would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had
been rendered infinitely more calamitous ; and that my felicity had been
purchased by the everlasting misery of my fellow-men, who, if no redemp-
tion had been provided, after inheriting the pains and pleasures of earthly
existence during the numbered hours, and the few and evil — evil yet few — •
days of the years of their mortal life, would have fallen asleep to wake no
more, — would have sunk into the dreamless sleep of the grave, and have
been as the murmur and the plaint, and the exulting swell and the sharp
scream, which the unequal gust of yesterday snatched from the strings of a
wind-harp.

In another place I have ventured to question the spirit and tendency of
Taylor's "Work on Repentance.* But I ought to have added, that to dis-
cover and keep the true medium in expounding and applying the efficacy
of Christ's Cross and Passion, is beyond comparison the most difficult and
delicate point of practical divinity — and that which especially needs a guid-
ance from above.

* See aho Literary Remains, V. pp. 194-212.— .#(/.

S02 AIDS TO 1EFLECTION.

forth from an unbelieving heart — (against these a sick bed will
be a more effectual antidote than all the argument in the world)
— but to such scruples as have their birth-place in the reason
and moral sense. Not that it is a mystery — not that itposseth all
understanding ; if the doctrine be more than a hyperbolical
phrase, it must do so ; — but that it is at variance with the law
revealed in the conscience ; that it contradicts our moral instincts
and intuitions — this is the difficulty which -alone is worthy of
an answer. And what better way is there of correcting the mis-
conceptions than by laying open the source and occasion of them ?
What surer way of removing the scruples and prejudices, to which
these misconceptions have given rise, than by propounding the
mystery itself- — namely, the Redemptive Act, as the transcendent
cause of salvation — in the express and definite words in which it
was enunciated by the Redeemer Himself?

But here, in addition to the three Aphorisms preceding, I in-
terpose a view of Redemption as appropriated by faith, coincident
with Leighton's, though for the greater part expressed in my own
words. This I propose as the right view. Then follow a few
sentences transcribed from Field (an excellent divine of the reign
of James I., of whose work on the Church,* it would be difficult
to speak too highly), containing the questions to be solved, and
which are numbered as an Aphorism, rather to preserve the uni-
formity of appearance, than as being strictly such. Then follows
the Comment : as part and commencement of which the Reader
will consider the two paragraphs of pp. 172-3, written for this
purpose, and in the foresight of the present inquiry : and I en-
treat him therefore to begin the Comment by re-perusing these.

APHORISM XVIIL

Steadfast by faith. This is absolutely necessary for resistance
to the evil principle. There is no standing out without some
firm ground to stand on : and this faith alone supplies. By faith
in the love of Christ the power of God becomes ours. When the
soul is beleaguered by enemies, weakness on the walls, treachery
at the gates, and corruption in the citadel, then by faith she says
— Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world ! Thou
art my strength ! I look to thee for deliverance ! And thus sh«

* See Literary Remains, V. pp. 52-73. — Ed.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 303

overcomes. The pollution (miasma) of sin is precipitated by his
blood, the power of sin is conquered by his Spirit. The Apostle
says not — steadfast by your own resolutions and purposes ; but—
steadfast by faith. Nor yet steadfast in your will, but steadfast
in the faith. "We are not to be looking to, or brooding over our-
selves, either for accusation or for confidence, or (by a deep yet
too frequent self-delusion) to obtain the latter by making a merit
to ourselves of the former. But we are to look to Christ and
him crucified. The law that is very nigh to thee, even in thy
heart : the law that condemneth and hath no promise ; that
stoppeth the guilty past in its swift flight, and maketh it disown
its name ; the law will accuse thee enough. Linger not in the
justice-court listening to thy indictment. Loiter not in waiting
to hear the sentence. No, anticipate the verdict. Appeal to
Caesar. Haste to the king for a pardon. Struggle thitherward,
though in fetters ; and cry aloud, and collect the whole remaining
strength of thy will in the outcry — I believe ; Lord, help my
unbelief ! Disclaim all right of property in thy fetters. Say that
they belong to the old man, and that thou dost but carry them to
the grave, to be buried with their owner ! Fix thy thought on
what Christ did, what Christ suffered, what Christ is — as if thou
wouldst fill the hollowness of thy soul with Christ. If he emptied
himself of glory to become sin for thy salvation, must not thou be
emptied of thy sinful self to become righteousness in and through
his agony and the effective merits of his Cross ?* By what other

* God manifested in the flesh is eternity in the form of time. But eternity
in relation to time is as the absolute to the conditional, or the real to the
apparent, and Redemption must partake of both ; — always perfected, for it
is a Fiat of the Eternal ; — continuous, for it is a process in relation to man ;
the former the alone objectively, and therefore universally, true. That Re-
demption is an opus perfectum, a finished work, the claim to which is con-
ferred in Baptism: that a Christian can not speak or think as if his re- \
demption by the blood, and his justification by the righteousness of Christ
alone, were future or contingent events, but must both say and think, I have
been redeemed, I am justified ; lastly, that for as many as are received into
his Church by Baptism, Christ has condemned sin in the flesh, has made it
dead in law, that is, no longer imputable as guilt, has destroyed the objec-
tive reality of sin : — these are truths, which all the Reformed Churches,
Swedish. Danish, Evangelical (or Lutheran), the Reformed (the Calvinistic
in mid-Germany, Holland, France, and Geneva, so called), lastly, the Church
of England, and the Church of Scotland — nay, the best and most learned
divines of the Roman Catholic Chinch have united in upholding as most

304 AIDS TO KEFLECTIOST.

means, in what other form, is it possible for thee to stand in the
presence of the Holy One ? With what mind wouldst thou come
before God, if not with the mind of Him, in whom alone God
loveth the world ? With good advice, perhaps, and a little
assistance, thou wouldst rather cleanse and patch up a mind of

certain and necessary articles of faith, and the effectual preaching of which
Luther declares to be the appropriate criterion stantis vel cadentis Ecclesicc.
The Church is standing or falling, accor ling as this doctrine is supported,
or overlooked, or countervened. Nor has the contrary doctrine, according
to which the baptized are yet each individually to be called, converted, and
chosen, with all the corollaries from this assumption, the watching for signs
and sensible assurances, the frames, and the states, and the feelings, and the
sudden conversions, the contagious fever-boils of the (most unfitly, so called)
Evangelicals, and Arminian Methodists of the day, been in any age taught
or countenanced by any known and accredited Christian Church, or by any
body and succession of learned divines. On the other hand, it has rarely
happened that the Church has not been troubled by Pharisaic and fanatical
individuals, who have sought, by working on the fears and feelings of the
weak and unsteady, that celebrity which they could not obtain by learning
and orthodoxy ; and alas ! so subtle is the poison, and so malignant in its
operation, that it is almost hopeless to attempt the cure of any person, once
infected, more particularly when, as most often happens, the patient is a
woman. Nor does Luther, in his numerous and admirable discourses on this
point, conceal or palliate the difficulties which the carnal mind, that works
under many and different disguises, throws in the way to prevent the lay-
ing firm hold of the truth. One most mischievous and very popular mis-
belief must be cleared away in the first instance — the presumption. I mean,
that whatever is not quite simple, and what any plain body can understand
at the first hearing, can not be of necessary belief, or among the fundamen
tal articles or essentials of Christian faith. A docile childlike mind, a defer-
ence to the authority of the Churches, a presumption of the truth of doc-
trines that have been received and taught as true by the whole Church in
all times ; reliance on the positive declarations of the Apostle — in short, all
the convictions of the truth of a doctrine that are previous to a perfect in-
sight into its truth, because these convictions, with the affections and dispo-
sitions accompanying thorn, are the very means and conditions of attaining
to that insight — and study of, and quiet meditation on, them with a gradual
growth of spiritual knowledge and earnest prayer for its increase ; all these,
to each and all of which the young Christian is so repeatedly and fervently
exhorted by St. Paul, are to be superseded, because, forsooth, truths needful
for all men must be quite simple and sasy, and adapted to the capacity of
all, even of the plainest and dullest understanding! What can not ba
poured all at once on a man, can only be supererogatory drops from the
emptied shower-bath of religious instruction ! But surely, the more rational
inference would be, that the faith, which is to save the whole man, must
have its roots and justifying grounds in the very depths of our being. And

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 305

thy own, and offer it as thy admission-right, thy qualification tc
Him who charged -his angels with folly ! Oh ! take counsel of
thy reason. It will show thee how impossible it is that even a
world should merit the love of eternal wisdom and all-sufficing
beatitude, otherwise than as it is contained in that all-perfect
Idea, in which the Supreme Spirit contemplateth himself and tho
plenitude of his infinity — the Only-Begotten before all ages, the
beloved Son, in ivhom the Father is indeed ivell pleased !

And as the mind, so the body with which it is to be clothed ,
as the indweller, so the house in which it is to be the abiding-
place.* There is but one wedding-garment, in which we can

he who can read the writings of the Apostles, John and Paul, without find-
ing in almost every page a confirmation of this, must have looked at them,
as at the sun in an eclipse, through blackened glasses.

* St. Paul blends both forms of expression, and asserts the same doctrine,
when speaking of the celestial body provided for the new man in the spiritual
flesh and blood, that is, the informing power and vivific life of the incarnate
Word : for the blood is the life, and the flesh the power) — when speaking,
I say, of this celestial body as a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens, yet brought down to us, made appropriable by faith, and ours — he
adds, for in this earthly house (that is, this mortal life, as the inward prin-
ciple or energy of our tabernacle, or outward and sensible body) we groan
earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven,
not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might bt
swallowed up of life. 2 Cor. v. 1-4.

The last four words of the first verse (eternal in the heavens') compared
with the conclusion of v. 2 (which is from heaven), present a coincidence
with John iii. 13, " And no man hath ascendedup to heaven, but he that came 'J
down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven" Would not the
coincidence be more apparent, if the words of John had been rendered word
for word, even to a disregard of the English idiom, and with what would
be servile and superstitious fidelity in the translation of a common classic 1
I can see no reason why the ovdeic., so frequent in St. John, should not be
rendered literally, no one ; and there may be a reason why it should. I
have some doubt likewise respecting the omission of the definite articles
TOI>, rov, TU — and a greater as to the 6v uv, both in this place and in John i.
18, being adequately rendered by our which is. What sense some of the
Greek Fathers attached to, or inferred from, St. Paul's in the heavens, the
theological student (and to theologians is this note principally addressed)
may find in Waterland's letters to a Country Clergyman — a divine, whose
judgment and strong sound sense are as unquestionable as Lis learning and
orthodoxy. A Clergyman, in full orders, who has never read the works of
Bull and Water land, has a duty yet to perform.

Let it not be objected, that, forgetful of my own professed aversion t«
allegorical interpretations. I have, in this note, fallen into the fond humoi

306 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

sit down at the marriage feast of Heaven : and that is the brida
groom's own gift, when he gave himself for us, that we might
live in him arid he in us. There is but one robe of righteousness,
even the spiritual body, formed by the assimilative power of faith,
for whoever eateth the flesh of the Son of Man, and drinketh his
blood. Did Christ come from Heaven, did the Son of God leave
the glory which he had ivith his Father before the world began,
only to show us a way to life, to teach truths, to tell us of i
resurrection ? Or saith he not, lam the way — lam the truth—
I am the resurrection and the life ?

APHORISM XIX.

Field.

The Romanists teach that sins committed after Baptism (that
is, for the immense majority of Christians having Christian pa-

of the mystic divines, and allegorizers of Holy Writ. There is, believe me,
a wide difference between symbolical and allegorical. If I say that the flesh
and blood (corpus nournenon) of the Incarnate Word are power and life, I
say likewise that this mysterious power and life are verily and actually the
flesh and blood of Christ. They are the allegorizers who turn the sixth
chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, the hard saying — who can hear
it / — after which time many of Christ's disciples, who had been eye-wit-
nesses of his mighty miracles, who had heard the sublime morality of his
Sermon on the Mount, had glorified God for the wisdom which they had
heard, and had been prepared to acknowledge, This is indeed the Christ, —
went back and walked no more with him ! — the hard sayings, which even
the Twelve were not yet competent to understand farther than that they
were to be spiritually understood ; and which the chief of the Apostles was
content to receive with an implicit and anticipative faith ! — they, I repeat,
are the allegorizers who moralize these hard sayings, these high words of
mystery, into a hyperbolical metaphor per catachresin, which only means a
belief of the doctrine which Paul believed, an obedience to the law respect-
ing which Paul was blameless, before the voice called him on the road to
Damascus ! What every parent, every humane preceptor, would do when
a child had misunderstood a metaphor or apologue in a literal sense, we all
know. But the meek and merciful Jesus suffered many of his disciples to
fall off from eternal life, when, to retain them, he had only to say, — O ye
Bimple ones ! why are ye offended ? My words, indeed, sound strange ; but
I mean no more than what you have often and often heard from me before,
with delight and entire acquiea3ence ! — Credat Judceus ! Non ego. It is
sufficient for me to know that I have used the language of Paul and John,
as it was understood and interpreted by Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus,
anil (if he does not err) by the whole Christian Church then existing. [Sea
Table Talk. VI. 316, 317.— £tt]

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 307

rents, ail their sins from the cradle to the grave) are not so re-
mitted for Christ's sake, but that we must suffer that extremity
of punishment which they deserve : and therefore either we must
afflict ourselves in such sort and degree of extremity as may an-
swer the demerit of our sins, or be punished by God, here, or in
the world to come, in such degree and sort that his justice may
be satisfied. [As the encysted venom, or poison-bag, beneath the
adder's fang, so does this doctrine lie beneath the tremendous
power of the Romish Hierarchy. The demoralizing influence oi
this dogma, and that it curdled the very life-blood in the veins ot
Christendom, it was given to Luther, beyond all men since Paul,
to see, feel, and promulgate. And yet in his large Treatise on
Repentance, how near to the spirit of this doctrine — even to the
very walls and gates of Babylon — was Jeremy Taylor driven, in
recoiling from the fanatical extremes of the opposite error !] But
they that are orthodox, teach that it is injustice to require the
paying of one debt twice. * * # It is no less absurd to say, as
the Papists do, that our satisfaction is required as a condition,
without which Christ's satisfaction is not applicable unto us, than
to say, Peter hath paid the debt of John, and he to whom it was
due accepteth of the payment on the condition that John pay it
himself also. * # * The satisfaction of Christ is communicated
and applied unto us without suffering the punishment that sin
deserveth [and essentially involve th], upon the condition of oui
faith and repentance. [To which I would add : Without faith
there is no power of repentance : without a commencing repent-
ance no power to faith : and that it is in the power of the will
either to repent or to have faith in the Gospel sense of the words,
is itself a consequence of the redemption of mankind, a free gift
of the Redeemer : the guilt of its rejection, the refusing to avail
ourselves of the power, being all that we can consider as exclu-
sively attributable to our own act.]

COMMENT. (CONTAINING AN APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES LAID
DOWN IN PP. 235-6.)

Forgiveness of sin, the abolition of guilt, through the redemp-
tive power of Christ's love, and of his perfect obedience during
his voluntary assumption of humanity, is expressed, on account
of the resemblance of the consequences in both cases, by the pay

308 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

ment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not him
Belf incurred. Now the impropriation of this metaphor — (that
is, the taking it literally) — by transferring the sameness from the
consequents to the antecedents, or inferring the identity of the
causes from a resemblance in the effects — this is the point on
which I am at issue : and the view or scheme of Redemption
grounded on this confusion I believe to be altogether un-Scrip-
tural.

Indeed, I know not in what other instance I could better ex-
emplify the species of sophistry noticed in p. 245, as the Aristo-
telean peT&3aaig sis #Mo yeVoc, or clandestine passing over into a
diverse kind. The purpose of ajmgtaphpr is to illustrate a some-
thing less known by a partial identification of it with some other
thing better understood, or at least more familiar. Now the ar-
ticle of Redemption may be considered in a two-fold relation — in
relation to the antecedent, that is, the Redeemer's act, as the
efficient cause and condition of redemption ; and in relation to
the consequent, that is, the effects in and for the Redeemed.
Now it is the latter relation, in which the subject is treated of,
set forth, expanded, and enforced by St. Paul. The mysterious
act, the operative cause, is transcendent. Factum est : and be-
yond the information contained in the enunciation of the fact, it
can bo characterized only by the consequences. It is the conse-
quences of the act of Redemption, which the zealous Apostle
would bring home to the minds and affections both of Jews and
Gentiles. Now the Apostle's opponents and gainsayers were
principally of the former class. They were Jews : not only Jews
unconverted, but such as had partially received the Gospel, and
who, sheltering their national prejudices under the pretended au-
thority of Christ's original Apostles and the Church in Jerusalem,
Bet themselves up against Paul as followers of Cephas. Add too,
that Paul himself was a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; intimately
versed in ths Jews' religion above many his equals in his own
nation, and above measure zealous of the traditions of his fa-
thers. It might, therefore, have been anticipated that his rea-
soning would receive its outward forms and language, that it
would take its predominant colors, from his own past, and his op-
ponents' present, habits of thinking ; and that his figures, images,
analogies and references would be taken preferably from objects,
opinions, events, and ritual observances ever uppermost in 1hc

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 309

imaginations of hi^ own countrymen. And such we find them ;
— yet so judiciously selected, that the prominent forms, the fig-
ures of most frequent recurrence, are drawn from points of belief
aivd practice, forms, laws, rites and customs, which then prevailed
through the whole Roman world, and were common to Jew and
G entile ,

Now it would be difficult if not impossible to select points
better suited to this purpose, as being equally familiar to all, and
/et having a special interest for the Jewish converts, than those
tire from which the learned Apostle has drawn the four principal
metaphors, by which he illustrates the blessed consequences of
Christ's redemption of mankind. These are : 1. Sin offerings,
sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, atonement,

* This word occurs but once in the New Testament, Rom. v. 11, the mar-
ginal rendering being reconciliation. The personal noun, Kara/Ua/cTT/f, is
still in use with the modern Greeks for a money-changer, or one who takea
the debased currency, so general in countries under a despotic or other dis-
honest government, in exchange for sterling coin or bullion ; the purchaser
paying the icarahhay?}, that is, the difference. In tho elder Greek writers,
the verb means to exchange for an opposite, as, KaraXXaaaero rfv lx.Qpnv
rolg oraaitoTaig — He exchanged within himself enmity for friendship (that
is, he reconciled himself), with his party; — or, as we say, made it up with
them, an idiom which (with whatever loss of dignity) gives the exact force
of the word. He made up the difference. The Hebrew word, of very fre-
quent occurrence in the Pentateuch, which we render by the substantive
atonement, has its radical or visual image in copher, pitch. Gen. vi. 14,
Thou skalt pitch it within and without with pitch ; — hence to unite, to fill
up a breach or leak, the word expressing both the act, namely the bringing
together what had been previously separated, and the means, or material,
by which the re-union is effected, as in our English verbs, to caulk, to sol-
der, to poy or pay (from poix, pitch), and the French suiver. Thence, meta-
phorically, expiation, the piacula having the same root, and being grounded
on another property or use of gums and resins, the supposed cleansing
powers of their fumigation; Numb. viii. 21 : made atonement for the Lcvites
to cleanse them. — Lastly (or if we are to believe the Hebrew Lexicons, prop-
erly and most frequently) it means ransom. But if by proper, the inter-
preters mean primary and radical, the assertion' does not need a confutation:
all radicals belonging to one or other of three classes : — 1. Interjections, o*
sounds expressing sensations or passions. 2. Imitations of sounds, as splash,
roar, whiz, (fee. 3. and principally, visual images, objects of sight. But a*
to frequency, in all the numerous (fifty I believe) instances of the word in
the Old Testament, I have not found one in which it can, or at least need,
be rendered by ransom : though beyond all doubt ransom ie wed in tht
Epistle to Timothy as an equivalent term.

310 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

3. Ransom from slavery, redemption, the buying back again, or
being bought back. 4. Satisfaction of a creditor's claims by a
payment of the debt. To one or other of these four heads all
the numerous forms and exponents of Christ's mediation in St.
Paul's writings may be referred. And the very number and va-
riety of the words or periphrases used by him to express one and
the same thing, furnish the strongest presumptive proof that all
alike were used metaphorically. [In the following notation, let
the small letters represent the effects or consequences, and the
capitals the efficient causes or antecedents. Whether by causes
we mean acts or agents, is indifferent. Now let X signify a
transcendent, that is, a cause beyond our comprehension, and not
within the sphere of sensible experience ; and on the other hand,
let A, B, C, and D represent each one known arid familiar cause,
in reference to some single and characteristic effect : namely, A
in reference to k, B to 1, C to m, and D to n. Then I say X +
k 1 m n is in different places expressed by A + k ; B -fl ; C + m ;
D-f-n. Arid these I should call metaphorical exponents of X.]

Now John, the beloved disciple, who leaned on the Lord's
bosom, the Evangelist xaia Tivevfw, that is according to the spirit,
the inner and substantial truth of the Christian Creed — John,
recording the Redeemer's own words, enunciates the fact itself,
to the full extent in which it is enunciable for the human mind,
simply and without any metaphor, by identifying it in kind with
a fact of hourly occurrence — expressing it, I say, by a familiar
fact the same in kind with that intended, though of a far lower
dignity ; — by a fact of every man's experience, known to all, yet
, not better understood than the fact described by it. In the re.
deemed it is a re-generation, a birth, a spiritual seed impregnated
and evolved, the germinal principle of a higher and enduring life,
of a spiritual life — that is, a life the actuality of which is not
dependent on the material body, or limited by the circumstances
and processes indispensable to its organization and subsistence.
Briefly, it is the differential of immortality, of which the assimi-
lative power of faith and love is the integrant, and the life in
Christ the integration.

But even this Avould be an imperfect statement, if we omitted
the awful truth, that besides that dissolution of our earthly tab-
ernacle which we call death, there is another death, not the
mere negation of life, but its positive opposite. And as there is a

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 311

mystery of life, and an assimilati}n to the principle of life, even
to him who is the Life ; so is there a mystery of death, and an
assimilation to the principle of evil ; a fructifying of the corrupt
seed, of which death is the germination. Thus the regeneration
to spiritual life is at the same time a redemption from the spiritual
death.

Respecting the Redemptive Act itself, and the Divine Agent,
we know from revelation that he was made a quickening
(tyonotovv, life-making) S}yirit : and that in order to this it was
necessary that God should be manifested in the flesh ; that the
Eternal Word, through whom and by whom the world (xoapog,
the order, beauty, and sustaining law of visible natures) was and
is, should be made flesh, assume our humanity personally, fulfil
all righteousness, and so suffer and so die for us, as in dying to
conquer death for as many as should receive him. More than
this, the mode, the possibility, we are not competent to know.
It is, as hath been already observed concerning the primal act
of apostasy, a mystery by the necessity of the subject — a mystery
which at all events it will be time enough for us to seek and ex-
pect to understand, when we understand the mystery of our nat-
ural life, and its conjunction with mind and will and personal
identity. Even the truths that are given to us to know, we can J
know only through faith in the spirit. They are spiritual things,
which must be spiritually discerned. Such, however, being the
means and the effects of our redemption, well might the fervent
Apostle associate it with whatever was eminently dear and pre-
cious to erring and afflicted mortals, and (where no expression
could be commensurate, no single title be other than imperfect)
seek from similitude of effect to describe the superlative boon, by
successively transferring to it, as by a superior claim, the name
of each several act and ordinance, habitually connected in the
minds of all his hearers with feelings of joy, confidence, and
gratitude.

Do you rejoice when the atonement made by the priest has
removed the civil stain from your name, restored you to your
privileges as a son of Abraham, and replaced you in the respect
of your brethren ? — Here is an atonement which takes away a
deeper and worse stain, an eating canker-spot in the very heart
of your personal being. This, to as many as receive it, gives the
privilege to become sons of God (John I 12); this will admit

312 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

you to the society of angels, and insure to you the rights of broth
erhood with spirits made perfect (Heb. xii. 22). Here is a sac-
rifice, a sin-offering for the whole world : and a High Priest, who
is indeed a Mediator ; who, not in type or shadow, hut in very
truth, and in his own right, stands in the place of Man to God,
and of God to Man ; and who receives as a Judge what he of-
fered as an advocate.

Would you be grateful to one who had ransomed you from
slavery under a bitter foe, or who brought you out of captivity ?
Here is redemption from a far direr slavery, the slavery of sin
unto death ; and he who gave himself for the ransom, has taken
captivity captive.

Had you by your own fault alienated yourself from your best;
your only sure friend ; — had you, like a prodigal, cast yourself
out of your Father's house ; — would you not love the good Sa-
maritan, who should reconcile you to your friend ? Would you not
prize above all price the intercession, which had brought you back
from husks, and the tending of swine, and restored you to your
father's arms, and seated you at your father's table ?

Had you involved yourselves in a heavy debt for certain gew-
gaws, for high-seasoned meats, and intoxicating drinks, and glis-
tering apparel, and in default of payment had made yourself ovei
as a bondsman to a hard creditor, who, it was foreknown, would
enforce the bond of judgment to the last tittle ; — with what emo-
tions would you not receive the glad tidings that a stranger, or a
friend whom in the days of your wantonness you had neglected
and reviled, had paid the debt for you, had made satisfaction to
your creditor? But you have incurred a debt oC death to the
evil nature ; you have sold yourself over to sin ; and, relatively
to you, and to all your means and resources, the seal on the bond
is the seal of necessity. Its stamp is the nature of evil. But
the stranger has appeared, the forgiving friend has come, even
the Son of God from heaven : and to as many as have faith in
his name, I say — the debt is paid for you ; — the satisfaction has
been made.

Now, to simplify the argument, and at the same time to bring
the question to the test, we will confine our attention to the figure
last mentioned, namely, the satisfaction of a debt. Passing by
our modern Alogi, who find nothing but metaphors in either
A.postle, let us suppose for a moment, with certain divines, that

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 313

our Lord's words, recorded by John, and which in all places re
peat and assert the same analogy, are to be regarded as meta
phorical ; and that it is the varied expressions of St. Paul that
are to be literally interpreted : for example, that sin is, or in-
volves, an infinite debt (in the proper and law-court sense of the
word, debt) — a debt owing by us to the vindictive justice of God
the Father, which can only be liquidated by the everlasting mis-
ery of Adam and all his posterity, or by a sum of suffering equal
to this. Likewise, that God the Father, by his absolute decree,,
or (as some divines teach) through the necessity of his unchange-
able justice, had determined to exact the full sum : which must,
therefore, be paid either by ourselves or by some other in our
name and behalf. But besides the debt which all mankind con
tracted in and through Adam, as a homo publicus, even as a na-
tion is bound by the acts of its head or its plenipotentiary, every
man (say these divines) is an insolvent debtor on his own score.
In this fearful predicament the Son of God took compassion on
mankind, and resolved to pay the debt for us, and to satisfy the
divine justice by a perfect equivalent. Accordingly, by a strange
yet strict consequence, it has been holden, by more than one of
these divines, that the agonies suffered by Christ wore equal in
amount to the sum total of the torments of all mankind here and
hereafter, or to the infinite debt, which in an endless succession
of instalments we should have been paying to the divine justice,
had it not been paid in full by the Son of God incarnate !

It is easy to say — " 0 but I do not hold this, or we do not
make this an article of our belief!" The true question is : " Do
you take any part of it ; and can you reject the rest without be-
ing inconsequent ?" Are debt, satisfaction, payment in full,
creditor's rights, and the like, nomina propria, by which the very
nature of Redemption and its occasion are expressed ; — ^ are
they, with several others, figures of speech for the purpose of
illustrating the nature and extent of the consequences and effects
of the Redemptive Act, and to excite in the receivers a due sense
of the magnitude and manifold operation of the boon, and of the
love and gratitude due to the Redeemer ? If still you reply, the
former : then, as your whole theory is grounded on a notion of
justice, I ask you — Is this justice a moral attribute ? But mo-
rality commences with, and begins in, the sacred distinction be-
tween thing and person. On this distinction all law, human and

^/oiT T~ 0

314 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

divine, is grounded : consequently, the law of justice li'you at-
tach any meaning to the term justice, as applied to God, it must
be the same to which you refer when you affirm or deny it of
any other personal agent — save only, that in its attribution to
God, you speak of it as unmixed and perfect. For if not, what
do you mean ? And why do you call it by the same name ? 1
may, therefore, with all right and reason, put the case as between
man and man. For should it be found irreconcilable with the
justice which the light of reason, made law in the conscience,
dictates to man, how much more must it be incongruous with the
all-perfect justice of God ! Whatever case I should imagine
would be felt by the reader as below the dignity of the subject,
and in some measure jarring with his feelings ; and in other re
spects the more familiar the case, the better suited to the present
purpose.

A sum of £1000 is due from James to Peter, for which James
has given a bond. He is insolvent, and the bond is on the point
of being put in suit against him, to James's utter ruin. At this
moment Matthew steps in, pays Peter the thousand pounds, and
discharges the bond. In this case, no man would hesitate to ad-
mit, that a complete satisfaction had been made to Peter. Mat-
thew's £1000 is a perfect equivalent for the 'sum which James
was bound to have paid, and which Peter had lent. It is the
same thing, and this is altogether a question of things. Now
instead of James's being indebted to Peter in a sum of money
which (he having become insolvent) Matthew pays for him, let
me put the case, that James had been guilty of the basest and
most hard-hearted ingratitude to a most worthy and affectionate
mother, who had not only performed all the duties arid tender
offices of a mother, but whose whole heart was bound up in this
her only child — who had foregone all the pleasures and amuse-
ments of life in watching over his sickly childhood, had sacrificed
her health and the far greater part of her resources to rescue him
from the consequences of his follies and excesses during his youth
and early manhood ; and to procure for him the means of his
present rank and anluonce — all which he had repaid by neglect,
desertion, and open profligacy. Here the mother stands in the
relation of the creditor : and here too, I will suppose the same
generous friend to interfere, and to perform with the greatest
tenderness and constancy all those duties of a grateful and a flee

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 216

tionate son, which James ought to have performed. Will this
satisfy the mother's claims on James, or entitle him to her es-
teem, approbation, and blessing ? Or what if Matthew the vi-
carious son, should at length address her in words to this pur-
pose : " Now, I trust you are appeased, and will be henceforward
reconciled to James. I have satisfied all your claims on him.
I have paid his debt in full : and you are too just to require the
same debt to be paid twice over. You will therefore regard him
with the same complacency, and receive him into your presence
with the same love, as if there had been no difference between
him and you. For I have made it up." What other reply
could the swelling heart of the mother dictate than this : " 0
misery ! and is it possible that you are in league with my unnat-
ural child to insult me ? Must not the very necessity of your
abandonment of your propher. sphere form an additional evidence
of his guilt ? Must not the sense of your goodness teach me
more fully to comprehend, more vividly to feel, the evil in him ?
Must not the contrast of your merits magnify his demerits in his
mother's eye, and at once recall and embitter the conviction of
the canker-worm in his soul ?"

If indeed by the force of Matthew's example, by persuasion, or
by additional and more mysterious influences, or by an inward
co-agency, compatible with the existence of a personal will,
James should be led to repent ; if through admiration and love
of this great goodness gradually assimilating his mind to the
mind of his benefactor, he should in his own person become a
grateful and dutiful child — then doubtless the mother would be
wholly satisfied ? But then the case is no longer a question of
things, or a matter of debt payable by another. Nevertheless,
the effect, — and the Reader will remember that it is the effects
and consequences of Christ's mediation, on which St. Paul is di-
lating— the effect to James is similar in both cases, that is in
the case of James, the debtor, and of James, the undutiful son
In both cases, James is liberated from a grievous burthen : and
in both cases, he has to attribute his liberation to the act and
free grace of another. The only difference is, that in the former
case (namely, the payment of the debt) the beneficial act is,
singly and without requiring any reaction or co-agency on the
part of James, the efficient cause of his liberation ; while in
the latter case (namely, that of Redemption) the. benetic'al

316 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

act is #»e first, the indispensable condition, and then, the 20-
efficient.

The professional student of theology will, perhaps, understand
the different positions asserted in the preceding argument more
readily if they are presented synoptically, that is, brought at once
within his view, in the form of answers to four questions, com-
prising the constituent parts of the Scriptural doctrine of Redemp-
tion. And I trust that my lay readers of both sexes will riot al-
low themselves to be scared from the perusal of the following
short catechism, by half a dozen Latin words, or rather word.s
with Latin endings, that translate themselves into English, when
I dare assure them, that they will encounter no other obstacle to
their full and easy comprehension of the contents.

SYNOPSIS OF THE CONSTITUENT POINTS IN THE DOCTRINE OF REDEMP-
TION, IN FOUR QUESTIONS, WITH CORRESPONDENT ANSWERS.

QUESTIONS.

fl . A gens causator ?
2. Actuscartsativm?
3. Effectum causatum ?
4 Consequentia ab effecto ?

ANSWERS.

I. The Agent and personal Cause of the Redemption of man-
rind is — the co-external Word and only begotten Son of the Liv-
ing God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing (agonistes ttyw^o.a^os),
crucified, submitting to death, resurgent, communicant of his
Spirit, ascendent, and obtaining for his Church the descent and
communion of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

II. The Causative Act is — a spiritual and transcendent mys-
tery, that passelh all understanding.

III. The Effect Caused is — the being born anew ; as before in
the flesh to the world, so now born in the spirit to Christ.

IV. The Consequences from the Effect are — sanctification
from sin, and liberation from the inherent and penal consequen-
ces of sin in the world to come, with all the means and processes
of sanctification by the Word and the Spirit : these consequents
being the same for the sinner relatively to God and his own soul,
as the satisfaction of a debt for a debtor relatively to his creditor ;

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 3n

as the sacrificial atonement made by the priest for the transgres-
sor of the Mosaic Law ; as the reconciliation to an alienated pa-
rent for a son who had estranged himself from his father's house
and presence ; and as a redemptive ransom for a slave or captive.

Now I corrplain, that this metaphorical naming of the trans-
cendent causative act through the medium of its proper effects
from actions and causes of familiar occurrence connected with
the former by similarity of result, has been mistaken for an in-
tended designation of the essential character of the causative act
itself ; and that thus divines have interpreted de omni what was
spoken de singulo, and magnified a partial equation into a total
identity.

1 will merely hint to my more learned readers, and to the pro*
fessional students of theology, that the origin of this error is to be
sought for in the discussions of the Greek Fathers, and (at a later
period) of the Schoolmen, on the obscure and abysmal subject of
the divine A-seity, and the distinction between the Oily pa and
the fiovfa], that is, the Absolute Will, as the universal ground of
all being, and the election and purpose of God in the Personal
Idea, as the Father. And this view would have allowed me to
express what I believe to be the true import and Scriptural idea
of Redemption in terms much more nearly resembling those used
ordinarily by the Calvinistic divines, and with a conciliative
show of coincidence. But this motive was outweighed by the
reflection, that I could not rationally have expected to be under-
stood by those to whom I most wish to be intelligible : et si non
vis intelligi, cur vis legi ?

Not to countervene the purpose of a Synopsis, I have detached
the confirmative or explanatory remarks from the answers to
questions II. and III., and place them below as scholia. A single
glance of the eye will enable the reader to re-connect each with
the sentence it is supposed to follow.

SCHOLIUM TO ANS. II.

Nevertheless, the fact or actual truth having been assured to .
us by revelation, it is not impossible, by steadfast meditation on
the idea and supernatural character of a personal "Will, for a mind
spiritually disciplined to satisfy itself, that the redemptive Act
supposes (and that our redemption is even negatively conceivable

318 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

only on the supposition of) an Agent who can at once act on the
Will as an exciting cause, quasi ab extra ; and in the Will, as
the condition of its potential, and the ground of its actual, being.

SCHOLIUM TO ANS. III.

Where two subjects, that stand to each other in the relation of
antithesis or contradistinction, are connected by a middle term
common to both, the sense of this middle term is indifferently de-
terminable by either ; the preferability of the one or the other in
any given case being decided by the circumstance of our more
frequent experience of, or greater familiarity with, the term m
this connection. Thus, if I put hydrogen and oxygen gas, as
opposite poles, the term gas is common to both ; and it is a
matter of indifference by which of the two bodies I ascertain the
sense of the term. But if, for the conjoint purposes of connection
and contrast, I oppose transparent crystallized alumen to opaque
derb or uncrystallized alumen ; — it may easily happen to be far
more convenient for me to show the sense of the middle term, that
is alumen, by a piece of pipe-clay than by a sapphire or ruby ;
especially if I should be describing the beauty and preciousness of
the latter to a peasant woman, or in a district where a ruby was
a rarity which the fewest only had an opportunity of seeing.
This is a plain rule of common logic directed in its application by
common sense.

Now let us apply this to the case in hand. The two opposites
here are Flesh arid Spirit : this in relation to Christ, that in rela-
tion to the world ; and these two opposites are connected by the
middle term, Birth, which is of course common to both. But for
the same reason, as in the instance last-mentioned, the interpre-
tation of the common term is to be ascertained from its known
sense, in the more familiar connection — birth, namely, in relation
to our natural life and to the organized body, by which we belong
to the present world. Whatever the word signifies in this con-
nection, the same essentially in kind, though not in dignity and
value, must be its signification in the other. How else could it
;be (what yet in this text it undeniably is), the punctum indiffer-
ent, or nota communis of the thesis, Flesh or the World and the
antithesis Spirit or Christ ? We might therefore, upon the sup-
position of a writer having been speaking of river-water in dis

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 319

Unction from rain-water, as rationally pretend that in the latter
phrase, the term, water, was to be understood metaphorically, as
that the word, Birth, is a metaphor, and means only so and so in
the Gospel according to St. John.

There is, I am aware, a numerous and powerful party in our
Church, so numerous arid powerful as not seldom to be entitled
the Church, who hold and publicly teach, that " Regeneration is
only Baptism." Nay, the writer of the article on the lives of
Scott and Newton, in our ablest and most respectable Review, is
but one among many who do not hesitate to brand the contrary
opinion as heterodoxy, and schismatical superstition.* I trust
that I think as seriously as most men of the evil of schism ; but
with every disposition to pay the utmost deference to an acknowl-
edged majority, including, it is said, a very large proportion of the
present dignitaries of our Church, I can not but think it a
sufficient reply, that if Regeneration means Baptism, Baptism
must mean Regeneration ; and this too, as Christ himself has de-
clared, a regeneration in the Spirit. Now I would ask these
divines this simple question : Do they believingly suppose a
spiritual regenerative power and agency inhering in or accom-
panying the sprinkling of a few drops of water on an infant's
face ? They can not evade the question by saying that Baptism
is a type or sign. For this would be to supplant their own asser-
tion, that Regeneration means Baptism, by the contradictory ad-
mission, that Regeneration is the significatum, of which Baptism
is the significant. Unless, indeed, they would incur the absur-
dity of saying, that Regeneration is a type of Regeneration, and
Baptism a type of itself — or that Baptism only means Baptism !
And this indeed is the plain consequence to which they might be
driven, should they answer the above question in the negative.

But if their answer be, " Yes ! we do suppose and believe this
efficiency in the Baptismal act" — I have not another word to say.
Only, perhaps, I might be permitted to express a hope that, for
consistency's sake, they would speak less slightingly of the insuffla-
tion, and extreme unction, used in the Romish Church ; notwith-
standing the not easily to be answered arguments of our Christian
Mercury, the all-eloquent Jeremy Taylor, respecting the latter, —
" which, since it is used when the man is above half dead, when
he can exercise no act of understanding, it must needs be nothing.
* See Quart. Review, vol. xxxi. p. 26. — Ed,

320 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

For no rational man can think, that any cerei nony can make a
spiritual change without a spiritual act of him that is to be
changed ; nor that it can work by way of nature, or by charrn,
but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures."*

It is too obvious to require suggestion, that these words here
quoted apply with yet greater force and propriety to the point in
question ; as the babe is an unconscious subject, which the dying
man need not be supposed to be. My avowed convictions respect-
ing Regeneration Avith the spiritual Baptism, as its condition and
initiative (Luke iii. 16 ; Mark i. 7 ; Matt. hi. 11), and of which
the sacramental rite, the Baptism of John, was appointed by
Christ to remain as the sign and figure ; and still more, perhaps,
my belief respecting the mystery of the Eucharist, — concerning
which I hold the same opinions as Bucer,t Peter Martyr, and
presumably, Cranmer himself — these convictions and this belief
will, I doubt not, be deemed by the orthodox de more Grotii, who
improve the letter of Arminius with the spirit of Socinus, suffi-
cient data to bring me in guilty of irrational and superstitious
mysticism. But I abide by a maxim which I learned at an early
period of my theological studies, from Benedict Spinoza. Where
the alternative lies between the absurd and the incomprehensible,
no wise man can be at a loss which of the two to prefer. To be
called irrational, is a trifle : to be so, and in matters of religion,
is far otherwise : and whether the irrationality consists in men's
believing (that is, in having persuaded themselves that they be-
lieve) against reason, or without reason, I have been early in-
structed to consider it as a sad and serious evil, pregnant with
mischiefs, political and moral. And by none of my numerous in-
structors so impressively as by that great and shining light of our
Church in the sera of her intellectual splendor, Bishop Jeremy
Taylor : from one of whose works,$ and that of especial authority
for the safety as well as for the importance of the principle, inas-
much as it was written expressly ad populum, I will now, both
for its own intrinsic worth, and to relieve the attention, wearied,
perhaps, by the length and argumentative character of the pre«
ceding discussion, interpose the following Aphorism.

* Dedicat. to Holy Dying.— Ed.

f Strype — Cranmer, Append. — Ed.

j Worthy Communicant, c. iii. P. 5. — Ed.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 321

APHORISM XX.

Taylor

Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to
believe. For though reason is not the positive and affirmative
measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger than (spec-
ulative) reason, and take something into her heart, that reason
can never take into her eye ; yet in all our creed there can be
nothing against reason. If reason justly contradicts an article, it
is not of the household of faith. In this there is no difficulty, but
that in practice we take care that we do not call that reason,
which is riot so.* For although reason is a right judge,! yet it
ought not to pass sentence in an inquiry of faith, until all the in-
formation be brought in ; all that is within, and all that is with-
out, all that is above, and all that is below ; all that concerns it
in experience, and all that concerns it in act ; whatsoever is of
pertinent observation, and whatsoever is revealed. For else reason
may argue very well, and yet conclude falsely. It may conclude
well in logic, and yet infer a false proposition in theology. $ But
when our judge is fully and truly informed in all that whence she
is to make her judgment, we may safely follow her whithersoever
she invites us.

APHORISM XXI.

Taylor.

He that speaks against his own reason, speaks against his own
conscience : and therefore it is certain, no man serves God with a
good conscience, who serves him against his reason.

APHORISM XXII.

Taylor.

By the eye of reason through the telescope of faith, that is,
revelation, we may see what without this telescope we could
never have known to exist. But as one that shuts the eye hard,

* See ante, p. 241.— Ed.

\ Which it could not be in respect of spiritual truths and objects tmper-
sensuous, if it were the same with, and merely another name for the faculty
judging according to sense — that is, the understanding, or (as Taylor most
often calls it in distinction from reason) discourse (discursus sen fa^ultas
discursiva vel discursoria). The reason, so instructed and so actuated &a
Taylor requires in the sentences immediately following, is wha* 1
called the Spirit. [See ante, pp. 252, 253. — Ed.

\ See ante, p. 236.— #d

<>*

322 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

and with violence curls the eye-lid, forces a fantastic fire from the
crystalline humor, and espies a light that never shines, and sees
thousands of little fires that never burn ; so is he that blinds the
eye of reason, and pretends to see by an eye of faith. He makes
little images of notions, and some atoms dance before him ; but
he is not guided by the light, nor instructed by the proposition,
but sees like a man in his sleep. In no case can true reason and
a right faith oppose each other.

NOTE PREFATORY TO APHORISM XXIII.

Less on my own account, than in the hope of forearming rny
youthful friends, I add one other transcript from Bishop Taylor,
as from a writer to whose name no taint or suspicion of Calviri-
istic or schismatical tenets can attach, and for the purpose of
softening the offence which, I can not but foresee, will be taken
at the positions asserted in the first paragraph of Aphorism VII.
p. 229, and the documental proofs of the same in pp. 231, 232 ;
and this by a formidable party composed of men ostensibly of the
most dissimilar creeds, regular Church-divines, voted orthodox by
a great majority of suffrages, and the so-called free-thinking
Christians, and Unitarian divines. It is the former class alone
that I wish to conciliate : so far at least as it may be done by re-
moving the aggravation of novelty from the offensive article.
And surely the simple re-assertion of one of "the two great
things," which Bishop Taylor could assert as a fact, — which, he
took for granted, that no Christian would think of controverting,
— should at least be controverted without bitterness by his suc-
cessors in the Church. That which was perfectly safe and ortho-
dox in 1657, in the judgment of a devoted Royalist and Episco-
palian, ought to be at most but a venial heterodoxy in 1825. For
the rest, I am prepared to hear in answer — what has already
been so often and with such theatrical effect dropped as an ex-
tinguisher on my arguments — the famous concluding period of
the fourth book of Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, de-
clared by Dr. Parr to be the finest prose passage in English liter-
ature. Be it so. I bow to so great an authority. But if the
learned doctor would impose it on me as the truest as well as the
finest, or expect me to admire the logic equally with the rhetoric
i — I start off. As I have been un-English enough to

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 323

find Pope's tomb-epigram on Sir Isaac Newton nothing better
than a gross and wrongful falsehood, conveyed in an enormous
and irreverent hyperbole ; so with regard to this passage in ques
tion, free as it is from all faults of taste, I have" yet the hardihood
to confess, that in the sense in which the words " discover" and
" prove" are here used and intended, I am not convinced of the
truth of the principle (that he alone discovers who proves), and
T question the correctness of the particular case, brought as in-
stance and confirmation. I doubt the validity of the assertion as
a general rule ; and I deny it, as applied to matters of faith, to
the verities of religion, in the belief of which there must always
be somewhat of moral election, " an act of the will in it as well
as of the understanding, as much love in it as discursive power.
True Christian faith must have in it something of in-evidence,
something that must be made up by duty and by obedience."*1 —
But most readily do I admit, and most fervently do I contend
that the miracles worked by Christ, both as miracles and as ful-
filments of prophecy, both as signs and as wonders, made plain
discovery, and gave unquestionable proof, of his divine character
and authority ; that they were to the whole Jewish nation true
and appropriate evidences, that He was indeed come who had
promised and declared to their forefathers, Behold your God will
come ivith vengeance, even God with a recompense. He will come
and save you.\ I receive them as proofs, therefore, of the truth
of every word which he taught who was himself The Word ; and
as sure evidences of the final victory over death and of the life to
come, in that they were manifestations of Him, who said : I am
the resurrection and the life !

The obvious inference from the passage in question, if not its
express import, is : Miracula experimenta crucis esse, quibus so-
lis probandum erat, homines non,pecudum instar, omninoperi-
turos esse. Now this doctrine I hold to be altogether alien from
the spirit, and without authority in the letter, of Scripture. I
can recall nothing in the history of human belief that should in
duce me, I find nothing in my own moral being that enables me,
to understand it. I can, however, perfectly well understand, the
readiness of those divines in hoc Paleii dictum ore plena jurare.
qui nihil aliud in toto Evangelio invenire posse profitentur

* J. Taylor's Worthy Communicant. — Ed.

4 Isaiah xxxiv. compared with Matt. x. 34, and Luke xii. 49. — Ed.

324 AIDS TO REFLECTION

The most unqualified admiration of this superlative passage I find
perfectly in character for those, who while Socinianism and Ultra-
Socinianism, are spreading like the roots of an elm, on and just
below the surface, through the whole land, and here and there
at least have even dipped under the garden-fence of the Church,
and blunted the edge of the laborer's spade in the gayest parterres
of our Baalhamon, — who, — while heresies, to which the framers
and compilers of our Liturgy, Homilies, and Articles would have
refused the very name of Christianity, meet their eyes on the list
of religious denominations for every city and large town through-
out the kingdom — can yet congratulate themselves with Dr. Pa-
ley, in his book on the Evidences,* that the rent has not reached
the foundation ; — that is, that the corruption of man's will ; that
the responsibility of man in any sense in which it is not equally
predicable of dogs and horses ; that the divinity of our Lord, and
even his pre-existence ; that sin, and redemption through the
merits of Christ ; and grace ; and the especial aids of the Spirit ;
and the efficacy of prayer ; and the subsistency of the Holy Ghost ;
may all be extruded without breach or rent in the essentials of
Christian Faith ; — that a man may deny and renounce ll em all,
and remain a fundamental Christian, notwithstanding ! But
there are many who can not keep up with Latitudinarians of
such a stride ; and I trust that the majority of serious believers
are in this predicament. Now for all these it would seem more
in character to be of Bishop Taylor's opinion, that the belief in
question is presupposed in a convert to the truth m Christ — but
at all events not to circulate in the great whispering-gallery of
the religious Public suspicions and hard thoughts of those who,
like myself, are of this opinion ; who do not dare decry the reli-
gious instincts of humanity as a baseless dream ; who hold, that
to excavate the ground under the faith of all mankind, is a very
questionable method of building up our faith as Christians ; who
fear, that instead of adding to, they should detract from the
honor of the Incarnate Word by disparaging the light of the
Word, that was in the beginning, and which lighteth every man ;
and who, under these convictions, can tranquilly leave it to be
disputed, in some new Dialogues in the shades, between the
fathers of the Unitarian Church OIL the one side, and Maimonides,
Moses Mendelssohn, and Lessmg on the other, whethor the f&>
* Condition, Put IT. cb, 8.— Ed.

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RLLiGION INDEED. 325

mous passage in Paley does or does not contain the three dialectic
flaws, petit i o princijrii, argumentum in circulo, and argumentum
contra rem a premisso rein ipsam includente.

Yes ! fervently do I contend, that to satisfy the understanding
that there is a future state, was not the specific object of the
Christian Dispensation ; and that neither the belief of a future
state, nor the rationality of this belief, is the exclusive attribute
of the Christian religion. An essential, a fundamental, article of
all religion it is, and therefore of the Christian ; but otherwise
than as in connection with the salvation of mankind from the
terrors of that state, among the essential articles peculiar to the
Gospel Creed (those, for instance, by which it is contra-distin-
guished, from the creed of a religious Jew), I do not place it.
And before sentence is passed against me, as heterodox, on this
ground, let not my judges forget who it was that assured us, that
if a man did not believe in a state of retribution after death, pre-
viously and on other grounds, neither would he believe, though a
man should be raised from the dead.

Again, I am questioned as to my proofs of a future state by
men who are so far, and only so far, professed believers, that they
admit a God, and the existence of a law from God. I give them :
and the questioners turn from me with a scoff or incredulous
smile. Now should others of a less scanty creed infer the weak-
ness of the reasons assigned by rne from their failure in convin-
cing these men ; may I not remind them, who it was, to whom a
similar question was proposed by men of the same class ? But
at all events it will be enough for my own support to remember
it ; and to know that HE held such questioners, who could not
find a sufficing proof of this great all -concerning verity in the
words, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob unworthy of any other answer — men not to be satisfied by
any proof — by any such proofs, at least, as are compatible with
the ends and purposes of all religious conviction ; — by any proofs
that would not destroy the faith they were intended to confirm,
and reverse the whole character and quality of its effects and in-
fluences. But if, notwithstanding all here offered in defence of
my opinion, 1 must still be adjudged heterodox and in error,—
what can I say but that malo cum Platone errare, and take ref-
uge behind the ample shield of Bishop Jeremy Taylor ?

326 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

•• •

-» •

APHORISM XXIII.

Taylcr.

In order to his own glory, and for the manifestation of his
goodness, and that the accidents of this world might not over-
much trouble those good men who suffered evil things, God was
pleased to do two great things. The one was : that he sent his
Son into the world to take upon him our nature, that every man
might submit to a necessity, from which God's own Son was not
exempt, when it behooved even Christ to suffer, and so to enter
into glory. The other great thing was : that God did not only
by revelation and the sermons of the Prophets to his Church, but
even to all mankind competently teach, and effectively persuade,
that the soul of man does not die ; that though things were ill
here, yet to the good who usually feel most of the evils of this
life, they should end in honor and advantages. And therefore
Cicero had reason on his side to conclude, that there is a time
and place after this life, wherein the wicked shall be punished,
and .the virtuous rewarded ; when he considered that Orpheus
and Socrates, and many others, just men and benefactors of man-
kind, were either slain or oppressed to death by evil men. And
all these received not the promise. But when virtue made men
poor, and free speaking of brave truths made the wise to lose
their liberty : when an excellent life hastened an opprobrious
death, and the obeying reason and our conscience lost us our
lives, or at least all the means and conditions of enjoying them :
it was but time to look about for another state of things where
justice should rule, and virtue find her own portion. And there-
fore men cast out every line, and turned every stone, and tried
every argument : and sometimes proved it well, and when they
did not, yet they believed strongly ; and they were sure of the
thing, when they were not sure of the argument.*

COMMENT.

A fact may be truly stated, and yet the cause or reason as-
signed for it mistaken, or inadequate, or pars pro toto, — one only
or few of many that might or should have been adduced. The
preceding Aphorism is an instance in point. The phenomenon
here brought forward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion
* Sermon at the Funeral of Sir George Dalston.--.Ec?.

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 32T

of men's belief of a future state — namely, the frequent, not to
say ordinary, disproportion between moral worth and worldly
prosperity — must, indeed, at all times and in all countries of the
civilized world have led the observant and reflecting few, the
men of meditative habits and strong feelings of natural equity, to
a nicer consideration of the current belief, whether instinctive or
traditional. By forcing the soul in upon herself, this enigma of
Saint and Sage from Job, David arid Solomon, to Claudian and
Boetius, — this perplexing disparity of success and desert, — has, I
doubt riot, with such men been the occasion of a steadier and
more distinct consciousness of a something in man different in
kind, and which not merely distinguishes but contradistinguishes
him from brute animals — at the same time that it has brought
into closer view an enigma of yet harder solution — the fact, I
mean, of a contradiction in the human being, of which no traces
are observable elsewhere in animated or inanimate nature : — a
struggle of jarring impulses ; a mysterious diversity between the
injunctions of the mind and the elections of the will ; and (last
not least) the utter incommerisurateness and the unsatisfying
qualities of the things around us, that yet are the only objects
which our senses discover, or our appetites require us to pursue :
— hence for the finer and more contemplative spirits the ever-
strengthening suspicion, that the two phenomena must in some
way or other stand in close connection with each other, and that
the riddle of fortune and circumstance is but a form or effluence
of the riddle of man : — and hence again, the persuasion, that the
solution of both problems is to be sought for — hence the presenti-
ment, that this solution wrill be found — in the contra-distinctive
constituent of humanity, in the something of human nature which
is exclusively human : — and — as the objects discoverable by the
senses, as all the bodies and substances that we can touch, meas-
ure, and weigh, are either mere totals, the unity of which results
from the parts, and is of course only apparent ; or substances,
the unity of action of which is owing to the nature or arrange-
ment of the partible bodies which they actuate or set in motion
(steam for instance, in a steam-engine ;) — as on the one hand the
condition and known or conceivable properties of all the objects
which perish and utterly cease to be, together with all the prop
erties which we ourselves have in common with these perishable
things, differ in kind from the acts and properties peculiar to our

328 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

humanity, so that the former can not even be conceived, can not
without a contradiction in terms, be predicated, of the proper and
immediate subject of the latter — (for who would not smile at an
ounce of truth, or a square foot of honor?) — and as, on the other
hand, whatever things in visible nature have the character of
permanence, and endure amid continual flux unchanged like a
rainbow in a fast-flying shower (for example, beauty, order, har-
mony, finality, law), are all akin to the peculia of humanity, are
all congenera of mind and will, without which indeed they would
not only exist in vain, as pictures for moles, but actually not
exist at all ; — hence, finally, the conclusion that the soul of man,
as the subject of mind and will, must likewise possess a principle
of permanence, and be destined to endure. And were these
grounds lighter than they are, yet as a small weight will make
a scale descend, where there is nothing in the opposite scale, or
painted weights, which have only an illusive relief or prominence;
so in the scale of immortality slight reasons are in effect weighty,
and sufficient to determine the judgment, there being no counter-
weight, no reasons against them, and no facts in proof of the con-
trary, that would not^prove equally well the cessation of the eye
on the removal or diffraction of the eye-glass, and the dissolution
or incapacity of the musician on the fracture of his instrument or
its strings.

But though I agree with Taylor so far, as not to doubt that the
misallotment of worldly goods and fortunes was one principal oc-
casion, exciting well-disposed and spiritually awakened natures
by reflections and reasonings, such as I have here supposed, to
mature the presentiment of immortality into full consciousness,
into a principle of action and a well-spring of strength and conso-
lation ; I can not concede to this circumstance any thing like the

portance and extent of efficacy which he in this passage attrib-
utes to it. I am persuaded, that as the belief of all mankind, of
tribes, and nations, and languages, in all ages, and in all

^imp

I utes

all^

* I say all : for the accounts of one or two travelling French philoso-
phers, professed atheists and partisans of infidelity, respecting one or two
African hordes, Caffres, and poor outlawed Boschraen, hunted out of their
humanity, ought not to be regarded as exceptions. And as to Hearne's as-
sertion respecting the non-existence and rejection of the belief among the
Copper-Indians, it is not only hazarded on very weak and insufficient
grounds, but he himself, in another part of his work, unconsciously supplies

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 329

states of social union, it must be referred to far deeper -grounds,
common to man as man ; and that its fibres are to be traced to
the tap-root of humanity. I have long entertained, and do not
hesitate to avow, the conviction that the argument from univer-
sality of belief urged by Barrow and others in proof of the first
article of the Creed, is neither in point of fact — for two very dif-
ferent objects may be intended, and two or more diverse and even
contradictory conceptions may be expressed, by the same name —
nor in legitimacy of conclusion as strong and unexceptionable, as
the argument from the same ground for the continuance of our
personal being after death. The bull-calf butts with smooth and
unarmed brow. Throughout animated nature, of each charac-
teristic organ and faculty there exists a pre-assurance, an instinc-
tive and practical anticipation ; and no pre-assurance common to
a whole species does in any instance prove delusive.* All other
prophecies of nature have their exact fulfilment — in every other
ingrafted ivord of promise, Nature is found true to her word ;
and is it in her noblest creature that she tells her first lie ? — (The
Reader will, of course, understand, that I am here speaking in
the assumed character of a mere naturalist, to whom no light of
revelation had been vouchsafed ; one, who

•with gentle heart

Had worship'd Nature in the hill and valley,
Not knowing what he loved, but loved it all.)

Whether, however, the introductory part of the Bishop's argu-
ment is to be received with more or less qualification, the fact
itself, as stated in the concluding sentence of the Aphorism, re-
mains unaffected, and is beyond exception true.

data, from whence the contrary may safely be concluded. Hearne, perhaps,
put down his friend Motannabbi's Fort-philosophy for the opinion of his
tribe and from his high appreciation of the moral character of this mur-
derous gymnosophist, it might, I fear, be inferred, that Hearne himself was
not the very person one would, of all others, have chosen for the purposo
of instituting the inquiry.

* See Baron Field's Letters from New South Wales. The poor natives,
the lowest in the scale of humanity, evince no symptom of any religion, or
the belief of any superior power as the maker of the world ; but yet have
no doubt that the spirits of their ancestors survive in the form of porpoises,
and mindful of their descendants, with imperishable affection, drive th«
whales ashore for them to feast on.

330 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

If other argument and yet higher authority were required, 1
might refer to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and to the Epis-
tle to the Hebrews, which whether written by Paul, or, as Luther
conjectured, by Apollos, is out of all doubt the work of an Apos-
tolic man filled with the Holy Spirit, and composed while the
Temple and the glories of the Temple worship were yet in ex-
istence. Several of the Jewish and still Judaizing converts had
begun to vacillate in their faith, and to stumble at the stumb-
ling-stone of the contrast between the pomp and splendor of the
old Law, and the simplicity and humility of the Christian
Church. To break this sensual charm, to unfascinate these be-
dazzled brethren, the writer to the Hebrews institutes a compar
ison between the two religions, and demonstrates the superior
spiritual grandeur, the greater intrinsic worth and dignity of the
religion of Christ. On the other hand, at Rome where the Jews
formed a numerous, powerful, and privileged class (many of them,
too, by their proselyting zeal and frequent disputations with the
priests and philosophers trained and exercised polemics), the re-
cently-founded Christian Church was, it appears, in greater dan-
ger from the reasonings of the Jewish doctors and even of its own
Judaizing members, respecting the use of the new revelation.
Thus the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove the
superiority of the Christian religion ; the object of the Epistle to
the Romans to prove its necessity. Now there was one argu-
ment extremely well calculated to stagger a faith newly trans-
planted and still loose at its roots, arid which if allowed, seemed
to preclude the possibility of the Christian religion, as an especial
and immediate revelation from God — on the high grounds, at
least, on which the Apostle of the Gentiles placed it, and with
the exclusive rights and superseding character, which he claimed
for it. " You admit" (said they) " the divine origin and author-
ity of the Law given to Moses, proclaimed with thunders and
lightnings and the voice of the Most High heard by all the peo-
ple from Mount Sinai, and introduced, enforced, and perpetuated
by a series of the most stupendous miracles. Our religion, then,
was given by God : and can God give a perishable imperfect
religion ? If not perishable, how can it have a successor ? If
perfect, how can it need to be superseded ? The entire argument
is indeed comprised in the latter attribute of our law. We know,
from an authority which you yourselves acknowledge for divine,

APHOKISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 331

that our religion is perfect. He is the rock, and his work is per-
fect. (I)eut. xxxii. 4.) If then the religion revealed by God
himself to our forefathers is perfect, what need have we of
another ?" — This objection, both from its importance and from ita
extreme plausibility, for the persons at least to whom it was ad-
dressed, required an answer in both Epistles. And accordingly
the answer is included in the one (that to the Hebrews) and it is
the especial purpose and main subject of the other. And how
does the Apostle answer it ? Suppose — and the thing is not im-
possible^— a man of sense, who had studied the evidences of
Priestley and Paley with Warburton's Divine Legation, but who
should be a perfect stranger to the writings of St. Paul, and that
I put this question to him : — " What do you think, will St. Paul's
answer be ?" " Nothing," he would reply, " can be more ob-
vious. It is in vain, the Apostle will urge, that you bring your
notions of probability and inferences from the arbitrary interpre-
tation of a word in an absolute rather than a relative sense, to
invalidate a known fact. It is a fact, that your religion is (in
your sense of the word) not perfect : for it is deficient in one of
the two essential constituents of all true religion, the belief of a
future state on solid and sufficient grounds. Had the doctrine
indeed been revealed, the stupendous miracles, which you most
truly affirm to have accompanied and attested the first promul-
gation of your religion, would have supplied the requisite proof.
But the doctrine was not revealed ; and your belief of a future
state rests upon no solid grounds. You believe it (as far as you
believe it, and as many of you as profess this belief) without rev-
elation, and without the only proper arid sufficient evidence of

* The case here supposed actually occurred in my own experience in the
person of a Spanish refugee, of English parents, but from his tenth year
resident in Spain, and bred in a family of wealthy, but ignorant and big-
oted, Roman Catholics. In mature manhood he returned to England, dis-
gusted with the conduct of the priests and monks, which had indeed for
some years produced on his mind its so common effect among the better-
informed natives of the south of Europe — a tendency to Deism. The re-
sults, however, of the infidel system in France, with his opportunities of
observing the effects of irreligion on the French officers in Spain, on the one
hand , and the undeniable moral and intellectual superiority of Protestant
Britain on the other, had not been lost on him : and here he began to think
for himself and resolved to study the subject. He had gone through Bishop
Warburton's Divine Legation, and Paley's Evidences ; but had never read
the Gospels consecutively, and the Epistles not at all

332 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

its truth. Your religion, therefore, though of divine origin, is (it
taken in disjunction from the new revelation, which I am com-
missioned to proclaim) but a religio dimidiata ; and the main
purpose, the proper character, and the paramount object of
Christ's mission and miracles, is to supply the missing half by a
clear discovery of a future state; and (sinc3 " he alone discovers
who proves") by proving the truth of the doctrine now for the
first time declared with the requisite authority, by the requisite,
appropriate, and alone satisfactory evidences."

But is this the Apostle's answer to the Jewish oppugners, and
the Judaizing false brethren of the Church of Christ ? It is not
the answer, it does not resemble the answer, returned by the
Apostle. It is neither parallel nor corradial with the line of
argument in either of the two Epistles, or with any one line ;
but it is a chord that traverses them all, and only touches where
it cuts across. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the directly con-
trary position is repeatedly asserted : and in the Epistle to the
Romans, it is everywhere supposed. The death to which the
Law sentenced all sinners (and which even the Gentiles without
the revealed law had announced to them by their consciences,
the judgment of God having been made knoivn even to them)
must be the same death, from which they were saved by the
faith of the Son of God ; or the Apostle's reasoning would be
senseless, his antithesis a mere equivoque, a play on a word,
quod idem sonat, aliud vult. Christ redeemed mankind from
the curse of the law ; and we all know, that it was not from
temporal death, or the penalties and afflictions of the present
life, that believers had been redeemed. The Law of which the
inspired sage of Tarsus is speaking, from which no man can
plead excuse ; the Law, miraculously delivered in thunders from
Mount Sinai, which was inscribed on tables of stone for the
Jews, and written in the hearts of all men (Rom. ii. 15) the
law holy and spiritual ! What was the great point, of which
this law, in its own name offered no solution ; the mystery which
it left behind the veil, or in the cloudy tabernacle of types and
figurative sacrifices ? Whether there was a judgment to come,
and souls to suffer the dread sentence ? Or was it not far rather
— what are the means of escape ; where may grace be found
and redemption ? St. Paul says, the latter. The law brings
condemnation : but the conscience-sentenced transgressor's ques-

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 333

lion, " What shall I do to be saved ? Who will intercede for
me ?" it dismisses as beyond its jurisdiction and takes no cogni-
zance thereof, save in prophetic murmurs or mute out-shadow-
ings of mystic ordinances and sacrificial types. Not therefore,
that there is a life to come, and a future state ; but what each
individual soul may hope for itself therein : and on what grounds :
and that this state has been rendered an object of aspiration and
fervent desire, and a source of thanksgiving and exceeding great
joy ; and by whom, and through whom, and for whom, and by
what means, and under what conditions — these are the peculiar
and distinguishing fundamentals of the Christian Faith. These
are the revealed lights and obtained privileges of the Christian
Dispensation. Not alone the knowledge of the boon, but the
precious inestimable boon itself, is the grace and truth that came
by Jesus Christ. I believe Moses, I believe Paul ; but I believe
in Christ.

APHORISM XXIV.

ON BAPTISM.

LeightoQ.

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching. — It will
suffice for our present purpose, if by these^ words we direct the
attention to the origin, or at least first Scriptural record, of Bap-
tism, and to the combinement of preaching therewith ; their
aspect each to the other, and their concurrence to one excellent
end ; the word unfolding the sacrament, and the sacrament seal-
ing the word ; the word as a light, informing and clearing the
sense of the seal ; and this again as a seal, confirming and rati-
fying the truth of the word ; as you see some significant seals,
or engraven signets, have a word about them expressing their
sense.

But truly the word is a light, and the sacraments have in them
of the same light illuminating them. This sacrament of Bap-

* By certain Biblical philologists of the Teutonic school (men distin
guished by learning, but still more characteristically by hardihood in coil
jecture, and who suppose the Gospels to have undergone several successive
revisions and enlargements by, or under the authority of, the sacred his-
torians) these words are contended to have been, in the first delivery, the
common commencement of all the Gospels Kara vdpica (that is, according to
the flesh), in distinction from St. John's or the Gospel Kara Trvevfta (that ia.
according to the Spirit).

334 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

tisrn, the ancients do particularly express by light. Yet are they
both nothing but darkness to us, till the same light shine in our
hearts ; for till then we are nothing but darkness ourselves, and
therefore the most luminous things are so to us. Noonday is as
midnight to a blind man. And we see these ordinances, the
word and the sacrament, without profit or comfort ibr the most
part, because we have not that divine light within us. And we
have it not, because we ask it not.

COMMENT, OR AN AID TO REFLECTION IN THE FORMING OF A SOUM1>
JUDGMENT RESPECTING THE PURPORT AND PURPOSE OF THE BAP-
TISMAL RITE, AND A JUST APPRECIATION OF ITS VALUE AND IM-
PORTANCE.

A born and bred Baptist, and paternally descended from the
old orthodox Non-conformists, and both in his own and his father's
right a very dear friend of mine, had married a member of the
National Church. In consequence of an anxious wish expressed
by his lady for the baptism of their first child, he solicited mo
to put him in possession of my views respecting this controversy ;
though principally as to the degree of importance which I at-
tached to it. For as to the point itself, his natural prepossession
in favor of the persuasion in which he was born had been con-
firmed by a conscientious examination of the arguments on both
sides. As the comment on the preceding Aphorism, or rather as
an expansion of its subject-matter, I will give the substance of
the conversation : and amply shall I have been remunerated,
should it be read with the interest and satisfaction with which
it was heard. More particularly, should any of my Readers find
themselves under the same or similar circumstances.

Our discussion is rendered shorter and more easy by our per-
fect agreement in certain preliminary points. "We both disclaim
alike every attempt to explain any thing into Scripture, and every
attempt to explain any thing out of Scripture. Or if we regard
either with a livelier aversion it is the latter, as being the more
fashionable and prevalent. I mean the practice of both high and
low Grotian divines to explain away positive assertions of Scrip-
ture on the pretext, that the literal sense is not agreeable to
reason, that is, their particular reason. And inasmuch as (in iha
only right sense of the word) there is no such thing as a partic
ular reason, they must, and in fact they do, mean that the literal

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 335

sense is not accordant to their understanding, that is, to the no-
tions which their understandings have been taught and accus-
tomed to form in their school of philosophy. Thus a Platomst
who should become a Christian would at once, even in texts sus-
ceptible of a different interpretation, recognize., because he would
expect to find, several doctrines which the disciple of the Epicu-
rean or mechanic school will not receive on the most positive
declarations of the divine word. And as we agree in the opinion
that the Minimi-fidian party err grievously in the latter point,
so I must concede to you, that too many Psedo-baptists (assertors
of Infant Baptism) have erred, though less grossly, in the former.
I have, I confess, no eye for these smoke-like wreaths of inference,
this ever-widening spiral ergo from the narrow aperture of per-
haps a single text ; or rather an interpretation forced into it by
construing an idiomatic phrase in an artless narrative with the
same absoluteness as if it had formed part of a mathematical
problem. I start back from these inverted pyramids, where the
apex is the base. If I should inform any one that I had called
at a friend's house, but had found nobody at home, the family
having all gone to the play ; and if he on the strength of this
information should take occasion to asperse my friend's wife for
unmotherly conduct in taking an infant six months old to a
crowded theatre ; would you allow him to press on the words
"nobody" and "all the family," in justification of the slander?
Would you not tell him, that the words were to be interpreted by
the nature of the subject, the purpose of the speaker, and their
ordinary acceptation ; and that he must or might have known,
that infants of that age would not be admitted into the theatre ?
Exactly so, with regard to the words, -he and all his liomehold.
Had Baptism of infants at that early period of the Gospel been a
known practice, or had this been previously demonstrated, — then
indeed the argument, that in all probability there were infants or
young children in so large a family, would be no otherwise ob-
jectionable than as being superfluous, and a sort of anticlimax in
Jogic. But if the words are cited as the proof, it would be a clear
petitio principii, though there had been nothing else against it.
But when we turn back to the Scriptures preceding the narrative,
and find repentance and belief demanded as the terms arid indis-
pensable conditions of Baptism — then the case above imagined
applies in its full force. Equally vain is the pretended anal

336 AIDS TO EEFLECTION.

ogy from Circumcision, which was no Sacrament at all; but
the means and mark of national distinction. In the first in-
stance it was, doubtless, a privilege or mark of superior rank con-
ferred on the descendants of Abraham. In the Patriarchal times
this rite was confined (the first governments being theocracies) to
the priesthood, who were set apart to that office from their birth.
At a later period this token of the premier class was extended to
kings. And thus, when it was re-ordained by Moses for the
whole Jewish nation, it was at the time said — Ye are all priests
and kings ; ye are a consecrated people. In addition to this, or
rather in aid of this, Circumcision was intended to distinguish the
Jews by some indelible sign ; and it was no less necessary
that Jewish children should be recognizable as Jews than Jewish
adults — not to mention the greater safety of the rite in infancy.
Nor was it ever pretended that any grace was conferred with it,
or that the rite was significant of any inward or spiritual opera-
tion. In short, an unprejudiced and competent reader need only
peruse the first thirty-three paragraphs of the eighteenth section
of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying ; and then compare with these
the remainder of the section added by him after the Restoration :
those, namely, in which he attempts to overthrow his own argu-
ments. I had almost said, affects : for such is the feebleness, and
so palpable the sophistry, of his answers, that I find it difficult to
imagine that Taylor himself could have been satisfied with them.
The only plausible arguments apply with equal force to Baptist
and Paedo-baptist ; and would prove, if they proved any thing,
that both were wrong, and the Quakers only in the right.

Now, in the first place, it is obvious, that nothing conclusive
can be drawn from the silence of the New Testament respecting
a practice, which, if we suppose it already in use, must yet, from
the character of the first converts, have been of comparatively
rare occurrence ; and which, from the predominant and more
concerning objects and functions of the Apostolic writers (1 Cor.
i. 17), was not likely to have been mentioned otherwise than in
cidentally, and very probably therefore might not have occurred
to them to mention at all. But, secondly, admitting that the
practice wras introduced at a later period than that in which the
Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles were composed : I should
yet be fully satisfied, that the Church exercised herein a sound*

* That every the least permissible form and ordinance, which at different

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 337

discretion. On either supposition, therefore, it is never without
regret that I see a divine of our Church attempting to erect forts
on a position so evidently commanded by the stronghold of his
antagonists. I dread the use which the Socinians may make of
their example, and the Papists of their failure. Let me not, how-
ever, deceive you. (The Reader understands, that I suppose my
self conversing with a Baptist.) I am of opinion, that the di-
vines on your side are chargeable with a far more grievous mis-
take, that of giving a carnal and Judaizing interpretation to the
various Gospel texts in which the terms, baptism, and baptize,
occur, contrary to the express and earnest admonitions of the
Apostle Paul. And this I say without in the least retracting my
former concession, that the texts appealed to, as commanding or
authorizing Infant Baptism, are all without exception made to
bear a sense neither contained nor deducible ; and likewise that
(historically considered) there exists no sufficient positive evidence
that the Baptism of infants was instituted by the Apostles in the
practice of the Apostolic age.*

times it might be expedient for the Church to enact, are pre-enacted in the
New. Testament ; and that whatever is not to be found there, ought to be
allowed nowhere — this has been asserted. But that it has been proved, or
even rendered plausible ; or that the tenet is not to be placed among the re-
vulsionary results of the Scripture-slighting will-worship of the Romish
Church ; it will be more sincere to say I disbelieve, than that I doubfc. It
was chiefly, if not exclusively, in reference to the extravagances built on this
tenet, that the great Selden ventured to declare that the words, Scrutamini
Scripturas, had set the world in an uproar.

Extremes appear to generate each other ; but if we look steadily, then}
will most often be found some common error, that produces both as its posi-
tive and negative poles. Thus superstitions go by pairs, like the two Hun-
garian sisters, always quarrelling and iuveterately averse, but yet joined at
the trunk.

* More than this I do not consider as necessary for the argument. And
is to Robinson's assertion in his History of Baptism, that Infant Baptism
did not commence till the time of Cyprian, who, condemning it as a general
practice, allowed it in particular cases by a dispensation of charity : and
that it did not actually become the ordinary rule of the Church, till Augus-
tine, in the fever of his Anti-Pelagian dispute had introduced the Calvin-
istic interpretation of Original Sin, and the dire state of infants dying uu-
baptized — I am so far from acceding to them, that I reject the whole state-
ment as rash, and not only unwarranted by the authorities he cites, but un-
answerably confuted by Baxter, Wall, and many other learned Paedo-bap-
tists before and since the publication of his work. I confine myself to the

VOL . I. P

338 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

Lastly, we both coincide in the full conviction, that it is neithel
the outward ceremony of Baptism, under any form or circum-
stances, nor any other ceremony, but such a faith in Christ as
tends to produce a conformity to his holy doctrines and example
in heart and life, and which faith is itself a declared mean aud
condition of our partaking of his spiritual body, and of being
clothed upon with his righteousness, — that properly makes us
Christians, and can alone be enjoined as an article of faith neces-
sary to salvation, so that the denial thereof may be denounced as
a damnable heresy. In the strictest sense of essential, this alone
is the essential in Christianity, that the same spirit should be
growing in us which was in the fulness of all perfection in Christ
Jesus Whatever else is named essential, is such because, and
only as far as, it is instrumental to this, or evidently implied
herein. If the Baptists hold the visible right to be indispensable
to salvation, with what terror must they not regard every disease
that befalls their children between youth and infancy ! But if
they are saved by the faith of the parent, then the outward rite
is not essential to salvation, otherwise than as the omission should
arise from a spirit of disobedience : and in this case it is the
cause not the effect, the wilful and unbaptized heart, not the
unbaptizing hand, that perils it. And surely it looks very like
an inconsistency to admit the vicarious faith of the parents, and
the therein implied promise, that the child shall be Christianly
bred up, and as much as in them lies prepared for the commu-
nion of saints — to admit this, as safe and sufficient in their own
instance, and yet to denounce the same belief and practice as
hazardous and unavailing in the Church — the same, I say, essen-
tially, and only differing from their own by the presence of two
or three Christian friends as additional securities, and by the
promise being expressed !

But you, my filial friend ! have studied Christ under a better
teacher — the spirit of adoption, even the spirit that was in Paul,
and which still speaks to us out of his writings. You remember
and admire the saying of an old divine, that a ceremony dulj
instituted is a chain of gold around the neck of faith ; but if in
the wish to make it co-essential and consubstantial, you draw it
closer and closer, it may strangle the faith it was meant to deck

assertion — not that Infant Baptism was not — but that there oxist no aufft
cient proofs that it was — the practice of the Apostolic age.

AFHOKISMS ON SPIKITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 339

and designate. You are not so unretentive a scholar as to have
forgotten the pateris et auro of your Virgil : or if you were, you
are not so inconsistent a reasoner as to translate the Hebraism,
spirit and fire, in one place by spiritual fire, and yet refuse to
translate water and spirit by spiritual water in another place ; or
if, as I myself think, the different position marks a different sense,
yet that the former must be ejusdem generis with the latter —
the water of repentance, reformation in conduct ; and the spirit
that which purifies the inmost principle of action, as fire purges
the metal substantially, and not cleansing the surface only.

But in this instance, it will be said, the ceremony, the outward
and visible sign, is a Scripture ordinance. I will not reply that
the Romish priest says the same of the anointing of the sick with
oil and the imposition of hands. No, my answer is : that this is
a very sufficient reason for the continued observance of a cere-
monial rite so derived and sanctioned, even though its own
beauty, simplicity, and natural significancy had pleaded less
strongly in its behalf. But it is no reason why the Church should
forget that the perpetuation of a thing does not alter the nature
of the thing, and that a ceremony to be perpetuated is to be per-
petuated as a ceremony. It is no reason why, knowing and ex-
periencing even in the majority of her own members the prone-
ness of the human mind to superstition,* the Church might not
rightfully and piously adopt the measures best calculated to
check this tendency, and to correct the abuse to which it had led
in any particular rite. But of superstitious notions respecting the
Baptismal ceremony, and of abuse resulting, the instances were
flagrant and notorious. Such, for instance, was the frequent de-
ferring of the Baptismal rite to a late period of life, and even to
the deathbed, in the belief that the mystic water would cleanse
the baptized person from all sin, and (if he died immediately after
the performance of the ceremony), send him pure and spotless
into the other world.

Nor is this all. The preventive remedy applied by the Church
is legitimated as well as additionally recommended by the follow-
ing consideration. Where a ceremony answered and was in-

* Let me be permitted to repeat and apply the note in a former page
Superstition may be defined as superstantium (cujusmodi sunt ceremonive «
signa externa qua, nisi in siynificando, nihili sunt et pcene nihil) substan
tiatio.

340 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

tended to answer several purposes, which purposes at its first
institution were blended in respect of the time, but which after-
wards by change of circumstances (as when, for instance, a large
and ever-increasing proportion of the members of the Church, or
those who at least bore the Christian name, were of Christian
parents) were necessarily dis-uriited — then either the Church has
no power or authority delegated to her (which is shifting the
ground of controversy), or she must be authorized to choose and
determine, to which of the several purposes the ceremony should
be attached. Now one of the purposes of Baptism was — the
making it publicly manifest, first, what individuals were to be
regarded by the World (Phil. ii. 15) as belonging to the visible
communion of Christians : inasmuch as by their demeanor and
apparent condition, the general estimation of the city set on a hill
and not to be hid (Matth. v. 14) could not but be affected — the
city that even in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation was
bound not only to give no cause, but by all innocent means, to
prevent every occasion, of rebuke. Secondly, to mark out, for
the Church itself, those that were entitled to that especial dear-
ness, that watchful and disciplinary love and loving-kindness,
which over and above the affections and duties of philanthropy
and universal charity, Christ himself had enjoined, and with an
emphasis and in a form significant of its great and especial im-
portance,— A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love
me another. By a charity wide as sunshine, and comprehend-
ing the whole human race, the body of Christians was to be
placed in contrast with the proverbial misanthropy and bigotry
of the Jewish Church and people : while yet they were to be
distinguished and known to all men, by the peculiar love and
affection displayed by them towards the members of their own
community ; thus exhibiting the intensity of sectarian attachment,
yet by the no less notorious and exemplary practice of the duties
of universal benevolence, secured from the charge so commonly
brought against it, of being narrow and exclusive. " How kind
these Christians are to the poor and afflicted, without distinction
of religion or country ; but how they love each other !"

Now combine with this the consideration before urged — the
duty, I mean, and necessity of checking the superstitious abuse
of the Baptismal rite : and I then ask, with confidence, in what
way could the Church have exercised a sound discretion more

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 341

wisely, piously, or effectively, than by fixing, from among the
several ends and purposes of baptism, the outward ceremony to
the purposes here mentioned ? How could the great body of
Christians be more plainly instructed as to the true nature of all
outward ordinances ? What can be conceived better calculated
to prevent the ceremony from being regarded as other and more
than a ceremony, if not the administration of the same on an ob-
ject (yea, a dear and precious object) of spiritual duties, though
the conscious subject of spiritual operations and graces only by
anticipation and in hope ; — a subject unconscious as a flower of
the dew falling on it, or the early rain, and thus emblematic of
the myriads who (as in our Indian empire, and henceforward, I
trust, in Africa) are temporally and even morally benefited by
the outward existence of Christianity, though as yet ignorant of
its saving truth ? And yet, on the other hand, what more reve-
rential than the application of this the common initiatory rite of
the East sanctioned and appropriated by Christ — its application,
I say, to the very subjects, whom he himself commanded to be
brought to him — the children in arms, respecting whom Jesus
was much displeased ivith his disciples, who had rebuked those
that brought them ? What more expressive of the true charac-
ter of that originant yet generic stain, from which the Son of
God, by his mysterious Incarnation and Agony and Death and
Resurrection, and by the Baptism of the Spirit, came to cleanse
the children of Adam, than the exhibition of the outward element
to infants, free from and incapable of crime, in whom the evil
principle was present only as potential being, and whose outward
semblance represented the kingdom of Heaven ? And can it —
to a man, who would hold himself deserving of anathema ma-
ranatha (1 Cor. xvi. 22) if he did not love the Lord Jesus — can
it be nothing to such a man, that the introduction and commen-
dation of a new inmate, a new spiritual ward, to the assembled
brethren in Christ ( — and this, as I have shown above, was one
purpose of the Baptismal ceremony — ) does in the Baptism of an
infant recall our Lord's own presentation in the Temple on the
eighth day after his birth ? Add to all these considerations the
known fact of the frequent exposure and the general light regard
of infants, at the time when Infant Baptism is by the Baptists
supposed to have been first ruled by the Catholic Church, not
overlooking the humane and charitable motives, that influenced

342 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

Cyprian's decision in its favor. And then make present to yoiu
imagination, and meditatively contemplate the still continuing
tendency, the profitable, the beautiful effects of this ordinance
now and for so many centuries back, on the great mass of the
population throughout Christendom — the softening, elevating ex-
ercise of faith, and the conquest over the senses, while in the
form of a helpless crying babe the presence, and the unutterable
worth and value, of an immortal being made capable of everlast-
ing bliss are solemnly proclaimed and carried home to the mind
and heart of the hearers and beholders ! Nor will you forget the
probable influence on the future education of the child, the oppor-
tunity of instructing and impressing the friends, relatives, and
parents in their best and most docile mood. These are, indeed,
the mollia temporafandi.

It is true, that by an unforeseen accident, and through the
propensity of all zealots to caricature partial truth into total false-
hood— it is too true, that a tree the very contrary in quality of
that shown to Moses (Exod. xv. 25) was afterwards cast into the
sweet icatersfrom this fountain, and made them like the ivaters
of Marah, too bitter to be drunk. I allude to the Pelagian con-
troversy, the perversion of the article of Original Sin by Augus-
tine, and the frightful conclusions which this durus pater infan-
tum drew from the article thus perverted. It is not, however,
to the predecessors of this African, whoever they were that au-
thorized Psedo-Baptism, and at whatever period it first became
general — it is not to the Church at the time being, that these
consequences are justly imputable. She had done her best to
preclude every superstition, by allowing, in urgent cases, any and
every adult, man and woman, to administer the ceremonial part,
the outward rite of Baptism : but reserving to the highest func-
tionary of the Church (even to the exclusion of the co-presbyters)
the more proper and spiritual purpose, namely, the declaration
of repentance and belief, the free choice of Christ as his Lord,
and the open profession of the Christian title by an individual in
his own name and by his own deliberate act. This office of re-
ligion, the essentially moral and spiritual nature of which could
not be mistaken, this most solemn office the Bishop alone was to
perform.

Thus — as soon as the purposes of thf ceremonial rite were by
change, of circumstances divided, that i«, took place at different

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 343

periods of the believer's life — to the outward purposes, where the
effect was to be produced on the consciousness of others, the
Church continued to affix the outward rite ; while to the sub-
stantial and spiritual purpose, where the effect was to be pro-
duced on the individual's own mind, she gave its beseeming dig-
nity by an ordinance not figurative, but standing in the direct
cause and relation of means to the end.

In fine, there are two great purposes to be answered, each hav
ing its own subordinate purposes and desirable consequences.
The Church answers both, the Baptists one only. If, neverthe-
less, you would still prefer the union of the Baptismal rite with
the Confirmation, and that the presentation of infants to the
assembled Church had formed a separate institution, avowedly
prospective — I answer : first, that such for a long time and to a
late period was my own judgment. But even then it seemed to
me a point, as to which an indifference would be less inconsistent
in a lover of truth, than a zeal to separation in a professed lover
of peace. And secondly, I would revert to the history of the
Reformation, and the calamitous accident of the Peasants' War :
when the poor ignorant multitude, driven frantic by the intoler-
able oppressions of their feudal lords, rehearsed all the outrages
that were acted in our own times by the Parisian populace
headed by Danton, Marat, and Robespierre ; and on the same
outrageous principles, and in assertion of the same rights of brutes
to the subversion of all the duties of men. In our times, most
fortunately for the interest of religion and morality, or of their
prudential substitutes at least, the name of Jacobin was every-
where associated with that of Atheist and Infidel. Or rather,
Jacobinism and Infidelity were the two heads of the revolutionary
Geryon — connatural misgrowths of the same monster-trunk. In
the German convulsion, on the contrary, by a mere but most un-
fortunate accident, the same code of Caliban jurisprudence, the
same sensual and murderous excesses, were connected with the
name of Anabaptist. The abolition of magistracy, commu-
nity of goods, the right of plunder, polygamy, and whatever else
was fanatical, were comprised in the word Anabaptism. It is
not to be imagined that the Fathers of the Reformation could
without a miraculous influence, have taken up the question of
Infant Baptism with the requisite calmness and freedom of spirit.
It is not to be wished that they should have entered on the dis-

344 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

cussion. Nay, I will go farther. Unless the abolition of infant
Baptism can be shown to be involved in some fundamental ar-
ticle of faith, unless the practice could be proved fatal or immi-
nently perilous to salvation, the Reformers would not have been
justified in exposing the yet tender and struggling cause of Prot-
estantism to such certain and violent prejudices as this innova-
tion would have excited. Nothing less than the whole substance
a.id efficacy of the Gospel Faith was the prize, which they
had wrestled for, and won ; but won from enemies still in the
field, and on the watch to retake, at all costs, the sacred
treasure, and consign it once again to darkness and oblivion. If
there be a time for all things, this was not the time for an inno-
vation that would and must have been followed by the triumph
of the enemies of Scriptural Christianity, and the alienation of
the governments that had espoused and protected it.

Remember I say this on the supposition of the question's not
being what you do not pretend it to be, an essential of the Faith
by which we are saved. But should it likewise be conceded that
it is a disputable point — and that in point of fact it is and has
been disputed by divines whom no pious Christian of any denom-
ination will deny to have been faithful and eminent servants of
Christ ; should it, I say, be likewise conceded that the question
of Infant Baptism is a point, on which two Christians, who per-
haps differ on this point only, may differ without giving just
ground for impeaching the piety or competence of either ; in thi?
case I am obliged to infer that the person who at any time can
regard this difference as singly warranting a separation from a
religious community, must think of schism under another point
of view than that in which I have been taught to contemplate it
by St. Paul in his Epistles to the Corinthians.

Let me add a few words on a diversity of doctrme closely con-
nected with this ; — the opinions of Doctors Mant and D'Oyly as
opposed to those of the (so called) Evangelical clergy. " The
Church of England (says Wall*) does not require assent and con

* Conference between Two Men that had Doubts about Infant Baptism
By W. Wall, Author of the History of Infant Baptism, and Vicar of Shore
ham. in Kent. A very sensible little tract, and written in an excellent
spirit ; but it failed, I confess, in satisfying my mind as to the existence of
any decisive proofs or documents of Infant Baptism having been an Apos-
tolic usage, or speciallv intended in any -part of the New Testament ; though

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDE^IX 345

sent" to either opinion " in order to lay communion." But 1 will
suppose the person a minister : but minister of a Church which
has expressly disclaimed all pretence to infallibility ; a Church
which in the construction of its Liturgy and Articles is known to
have worded certain passages for the purpose of rendering them
subscribable by both A and Z — that is, the opposite parties as tc

deducible generally from many passages, and in perfect accordance with the
spirit of the whole.

A mighty wrestler in the cause of spiritual religion and Gospel morality,
in whom more than in any other contemporary I seem to see the spirit of
Luther revived, expressed to me his doubts whether we have a right to deny
that an infant is capable of a spiritual influence. To such a man I could not
feel justified in returning an answer ex tempore, or without having first sub-
mitted my convictions to a fresh revisal. I owe him, however, a deliberate
answer ; and take this opportunity of discharging the debt.

The objection supposes and assumes the very point which is denied, or at
least disputed — namely, that Infant Baptism is specially enjoined in the
Scriptures. If an express passage to this purport had existed in the New
Testament — the other passages, which evidently imply a spiritual opera-
tion under the condition of a preceding spiritual act on the part of the per-
son baptized, remaining as now — then indeed, as the only way of removing
the apparent contradiction, it might be allowable to call on the Anti-psedo-
baptist to prove the negative — namely, that an infant a week old is not a
subject capable or susceptible of spiritual agency. And, vice versa, should
it be made known to us, that infants are not without reflection and self-con-
sciousness— then, doubtless, we should be entitled to infer that they were
capable of a spiritual operation, and consequently of that which is signified
in the Baptismal rite administered to adults. But what does this prove for
those who not only can not show, but who do not themselves profess to believe
the self-consciousness of a new-born babe, but who rest the defence of Infant
Baptism on the assertion, that God was pleased to affix the performance of
this rite to his offer of salvation as the indispensable, though arbitrary, con-
dition of the infant's salvability ? — As kings, in former ages, when they con-
ferred lands in perpetuity, would sometimes, as the condition of the tenure,
ex*ct from, the beneficiary a hawk, or some trifling ceremony, as the putting
on or off of their sandals, or whatever royal caprice or the whim of the mo-
ment, might suggest. But you, honored Irving, are as little disposed as J
am, to favor such doctrine !

Friend pure of heart and fervent ! we have learnt
A different lore. We may not thus profane
The idea and name of Him whose absolute will
Is reason, truth supreme, essential order.*

* See Church and State, VI pp. 114, 115, note.— Ed.

346 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

the points in controversy. I suppose this person's contictions
those of Z, and that out of five passages there are three, the more
natural and obvious sense of which is in his favor ; and two of
which, though not absolutely precluding a different sense, yet the
more probable interpretation is in favor of A, that is, of those who
do not consider the Baptism of an infant as prospective, but hold
it to be sun.. opus operand et in prcesenti. Then I say, that if such
a person regards these two sentences or single passages as obliging
or warranting him to abandon the flock intrusted to his charge,
and either to join such as are the avowed enemies of the Church
on the double ground of its particular constitution and of its being
an establishment, or to set up a separate church for himself — I
can not avoid the conclusion, that either his conscience is mor-
bidly sensitive in one speck to the exhaustion of the sensibility in
a far larger portion ; or that he must have discovered some mode
beyond the reach of my conjectural powers, of interpreting the
Scriptures enumerated in the following excerpt from the popular
Tract before cited, in which the writer expresses an opinion to
which I assent with my whole heart, namely :

" That all Christians in the world that hold the same funda
mentals ought to make one Church, though differing in lesser
opinions ; and that the sin, the mischief, and danger to the souls
of men, that divide into those many sects and parties among us,
does (for the most of them) consist not so much in the opinions
themselves, as in their dividing and separating for them. And
in support of this tenet, I will refer you to some plain places of
Scripture, which if you please now to peruse, I will be silent the
while. See what our Saviour himself says, John x. 16. John
xvi. 11. And what the primitive Christians practised, Acts ii.
46, and iv. 32. And what St. Paul says, I Cor. i. 10, 11, 12,
and 2, 3, 4, also, the whole 12th chapter : Eph. ii. 17, &c. to
the end. "Where the Jewish and Gentile Christians are showed
to be one body, one household, one temple fitly framed together :
and these were of different opinions in several matters. Like-
wise chap. iii. 6, iv. 1-13, Phil- ii. 1, 2, where he uses the most
solemn adjurations to this purpose. But I would more especially
recommend to you the reading of Gal. v. 20, 21. Phil. iii. 15, 16;
the 14th chapter to the Romans, and part of the 15th, to verse 7,
and also Rom* xv. 17.

" Are not these passages plain, full, and earnest ? Do you

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 347

find any of the uncontro verted points to be determined by Scrip-
ture in words nigh so plain or pathetic ?"

If I had addressed the ministers recently seceded, I would have
first proved from Scripture and reason the justness of their doc-
trines concerning Baptism and conversion. 2. I would hava
shown, that even in respect of the Prayer-book and Homilies of
the Church of England, taken as a whole, their opponents were
comparatively as ill off as themselves, if not worse. 3. That
the few mistakes or inconvenient phrases of the Baptismal Ser-
vice did not impose on the conscience the necessity of resigning
the pastoral office. 4. That even if they did, this would by no I
means justify schism from lay-membership : or else there could
be no schism except from an immaculate and infallible Church.
Now, as our Articles have declared that no Church is or ever
was such, it would follow that there is no such sin as that of
schism, that is, that St. Paul wrote falsely or idly. 5. That the
escape through the channel of dissent is from the frying-pan to
the fire — or, to use a less worn and vulgar simile, the escape of
a leech from a glass-jar of water into the naked and open air.
But never, never, would I in one breath allow my Church to be
fallible, and in the next contend for her absolute freedom from all
error — never confine inspiration and perfect truth to the Scrip-
tures, and then scold for the perfect truth of each and every
word in the Prayer-book. Enough for me, if in my heart of
hearts, free from all fear of man and all lust of preferment, I
believe (as I do) the Church of England to be the most Apostolic
Church ; that its doctrines and ceremonies contain nothing
dangerous to righteousness or salvation ; and that the imperfec-
tions in its Liturgy are spots indeed, but spots on the sun, which
impede neither its light nor its heat, so as to prevent the good seed
from growing in a good soil, and producing fruits of redemption.

[# " 8 May, 1828. I see the necessity of greatly expanding
and clearing up the chapter on Baptism in the Aids to Reflec-
tion, and of proving the substantial accordance of my scheme
with that of our Church.

* The paragraphs which the Editor has, after some consideration, thought
it advisable to print within brackets in the text of this edition of the Aida
to Reflection, are taken from one of the deeply interesting Note Books,
kept by Mr. Coleridge with great care during the later years of his life.
The material contents of these Books are in process of publication. — Ed

348 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

" I still say that an assertion of an act of the Spirit in time-
that at the moment of the uttering of the words, I baptize thee
in the name, fyc., it may be declared, ' Now the Spirit begins to
act' — is false in philosophy, and contrary to Scripture ; and that
our Church Service needs no such hypothesis. Further, I still
say that the communication of the Spirit as of a power in prin-
ciple not yet possessed to an unconscious agent by human minis-
try, is without precedent or warrant in Scripture ; — that the
nature of the Spirit communicated by the Apostles by imposition
of hands, is a very difficult question ; and that the reasons for
supposing it to be certain miraculous gifts of the Spirit, peculiar
to the first age of Christianity, and during the formation of the
Church, are neither few nor insignificant.

" Further, I say that in itself it might be indifferent, whether,
the outward Kite of Baptism formed the initiation into the Bap-
tismal period, el? TO (pwTi&iv, or the finale and coronation : — that
from the necessity of the circumstances, that is, the non-existence
of the Church as the sponsor and security for the undertaking of
the enlightening 'process, and the adult age of the persons to be
baptized, the latter was, and could not but be, the practice of the
Apostolic age ; — but that in after-times both the commencement
and the close were ritually solemnized ; — in the first, the Church
conferring all the privileges of Christianity ; — in the second, the
donee acknowledging the gift, and declaring his consent to the
conditions, and the Church confirming the gift, and receiving the
individual as, r^ nEywiiafjivov, and no longer, iv TCO qDwr/£ea#ae,
as one being enlightened. Now it is notorious that during the
first two centuries, the catechumens generally were not baptized,
and that their baptism was immediately followed by admission
to the Eucharist. And such was the force of custom, that when
the baptism of infants became the rule of the Church, the
Eucharist was administered to them ; — a practice which greatly
obscured, if it did not destroy, the beautiful harmony and distinct
significancy of the two Rites as symbolic, — the one of the Light
of the Word, the other of the Life ; and therefore with great
reason was the practice discontinued.

" Observe, I do not deny — God forbid ! the possibility or the
reality of the influence of the Spirit on the soul of the infant.
His first smile bespeaks a reason — the Light from the Life of the
Word — as already existent ; and where the Word is, there will

APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION INDEED. 349

the Spirit act. Still less do I think lightly of the graces which
the child receives, as a living part of the Church, and whatever
flows from the Communion of Saints, and the TTSQIXW^I^CTIS of the
Spirit. Our Church most wisely and scripturally precludes all
the mischievous fanaticism of moments of conversion. Except
the time when the Church receives the subject into her own body,
and co-organizes the person therewith, no time can be specified
ibr the Spirit's descent and incoming. For the operations oi the
Spirit are as little referable to Time as to Space ; but in refer-
ence to our principles of conduct toward, and judgment concern-
ing, our neighbors, the Church declares, that before the time of
the Baptism, there is no authority for asserting, — and that since
the time there is no authority for denying, — that gift and regen-
erate presence of the Holy Spirit, promised by an especial cove-
nant to the members of Christ's mystical body ; and consequently,
no just pretence for expecting or requiring another new initiation
or birth into the state of Grace."]

CONCLUSION.

1 AM i'.ot so ignorant of the temper and tendency of the age in
which I live, as either to be unprepared for the sort of remarks
which the literal interpretation of the Evangelist will call forth,
or to attempt an answer to them. Visionary ravings, obsolete
whimsies, transcendental trash, and the like, I leave to pass at
the price current among those who are willing to receive abusive
phrases as substitutes for argument. Should any suborner of
anonymous criticism have engaged some literary bravo or buffoon
beforehand to vilify this Work, as in former instances, I would
give a friendly hint to the operative critic, that he may compile
an excellent article for the occasion, and with very little trouble,
out of Warburton's Tract on Grace and the Spirit, and the Pref-
ace to the same. There is, however, one objection, which will
so often be heard from men, whose talents and reputed modera-
tion must give a weight to their words, that I owe it both to my
own character and to the interests of my readers, not to leave it
unnoticed. The charge will probably be worded in this way : —
There is nothing new in all this. (As if novelty were any merit
in questions of revealed religion !) It is mysticism, all taken out
of William Law, after he had lost his senses in brooding over the
visions of a delirious German cobbler, Jacob Bdhme.

Of poor Jacob Bohme I have delivered my sentiments at large
in another work. Those who have condescended to look into his
writings must know that his characteristic errors are : first, the
mistaking the accidents and peculiarities of his own overwrought
mind for realities and modes of thinking common to all minds :
and secondly, the confusion of Nature, that is, the active powers
rommunicated to matter, with God the Creator. And if the
same persons hav3 done more than merely looked into the pres

CONCLUSION". 351

ent Volume, they must have seen, that to eradicate, and, if pos- I
sible, to preclude both the one ami the other, stands prominent /
among1 its avowed objects.

Of William Law's Works I am acquainted with the Serious
Call ; and besides this I remember to have read a small Tract
on Prayer, if I mistake not, as I easily may, it being at least six-
and-twenty years since I saw it. He may in this or in other
tracts have quoted the same passages from the fourth Gospel
which I have done. But surely this affords no presumption that
my conclusions <ire the same with his ; still less, that they are
drawn from the same premisses ; and least of all, that they were
adopted from his writings. Whether Law has used the phrase,
assimilation by faith, I know not ; but I know that I should ex-
pose myself to a just charge of an idle parade of my reading, if I
recapitulated the tenth part of the authors, ancient and modern,
Romish and Reformed, from Law to Clemens Alexandrinus and
Ireneeus, in whose works the same phrase occurs in the same
sense. And after all, on such a subject, how worse than child-
ish is the whole dispute !

. Is the fourth Gospel authentic ? And is the interpretation I
have given true or false ? These are the only questions which a
wise man would put, or a Christian be anxious to answer. I
not only believe it to be the true sense of the texts ; but I assert
that it is the only true, rational, and even tolerable sense. And
this position alone I conceive myself interested in defending. I
have studied with an open and fearless spirit the attempts of suiv
dry learned critics of the Continent to invalidate the authenticity
of this Gospel, before and since Eichorn's Vindication. The re-
sult has been a clearer assurance and (as far as this was possible)
a yet deeper conviction of the genuineness of all the writings
which the Church has attributed to this Apostle. That those,
who have formed an opposite conclusion, should object to the use
of expressions which they had ranked among the most obvious
marks of spuriousness, follows as a matter of course. But that
men, who with a clear and cloudless assent receive the sixth
chapter of this Gospel as a faithful, nay, inspired record of an
actual discourse, should take offence at the repetition of words
which the Redeemer himself, in the perfect foreknowledge that
they would confirm the disbelieving, alienate the unsteadfast,
and transcend the present capacity even of his own elect, had

352 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

chosen as the most appropriate ; and which, after the most deci-
sive proofs that they were misinterpreted by the greater number
of his hearers, and not understood by any, he nevertheless re-
peated with stronger emphasis and without comment as the only
appropriate symbols of the great truth he was declaring, arid to
realize Avhich eyivero aagS ;* — that in their own discourses these
men should hang back from all express reference to these words,
as if they were afraid or ashamed of them, though the earliest
recorded ceremonies and liturgical forms of the primitive Church
are absolutely inexplicable, except in connection with this dis-
course, and with the mysterious and spiritual, not allegorical and
merely ethical, import of the same ; and though this import is
solemnly and in the most unequivocal terms asserted and taught
by their own Church, even in her Catechism, or compendium of
doctrines necessary for all her members ; — this I may perhaps
understand ; but this I am not able to vindicate or excuse.

There is, however, one opprobrious phrase which it may be
profitable for my younger readers that I should explain, namely,
Mysticism. And for this purpose I will quote a sentence or two
from a dialogue which, had my prescribed limits permitted, I
should have attached to the present work ; but which with an
Essayf on the Church, as instituted by Christ, and as an estab-
lishment of the State, and a series of Letters^ on the right and
the superstitious use and estimation of the Bible, will hereafter
appear by themselves, should the reception given to the present
Volume encourage or permit the publication.

* Of which our he was made flesh, is a very inadequate translation. The
Church of England in this as in other doctrinal points has preserved the
golden mean between the superstitious reverence of the Romanists, and the
avowed contempt of the Sectarians, for the writings of the Fathers, and the
authority and unimpeached traditions of the Church during the first three
or four centuries. And how, consistently with this honorable characteristic
of our Church, a minister of the same could, on the Sacramentary scheme
now in fashion, return even a plausible answer to Arnauld's grea* work on
Tran substantiation (not without reason the boast of the Bomi^V
exceeds my powers of conjecture.

f See the Church and State, VI— Ed.

\ See Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. 1840. V. — Ed

CONCLUSION. 353

MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM.

Antinaus. — " What do you call Mysticism ? And do you use
the word in a good or in a ba.d sense '?"

Nous. — "In the latter only ; as fa.r, at least, as we are now
concerned with it. When a man refers to inward feelings and
experiences, of which mankind at large are not conscious, as evi-
dences of the truth of any opinion — such a man I call a Mystic :
and the grounding of any theory or belief on accidents and anom-
alies of individual sensations or fancies, and the use of peculiai
terms invented, or perverted from their ordinary significations,
for the purpose of expressing these idiosyncracies and pretended
facts of interior consciousness, I name Mysticism. Where the
error consists simply in the Mystic's attaching to these anomalies
of his individual temperament the character of reality, and in
receiving them as permanent truths, having a subsistence in the
Divine Mind, though revealed to himself alone ; but entertains
this persuasion without demanding or expecting the same faith
in his neighbors — I should regard it as a species of enthusiasm,
always indeed to be deprecated, but yet capable of co-existing
with many excellent qualities both of head and heart. But when
the Mystic, by ambition or still meaner passions, or (as sometimes
is the case) by an uneasy and self- doubting state of mind which
seeks confirmation in outward sympathy, is led to impose his
faith, as a duty, on mankind generally : and when with such
views he asserts that the same experiences would be vouchsafed,
the same truths revealed, to every man, but for his secret wick-
edness and unholy will ; — such a Mystic is a fanatic, and in cer-
tain states of the public mind, a dangerous member of society.
And most so in those ages and countries in which fanatic^ of
elder standing are allowed to persecute the fresh competitor. For
under these predicaments, Mysticism, though originating in l/io
singularities of an individual nature, and therefore essentially
anomalous, is nevertheless highly contagious. It is apt to collect
a swarm and cluster circum fana, around the new fane ; and
therefore merits the name of fanaticism, or as the Germans say,
Schivarmerey, that is, swarm-making."

We will return to the harmless species, the enthusiastic Mys
tics; — a species that may again be subdivided into two i*nks

354 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

And it will not be other than germane to the subject, if I endeav-
or to describe them in a sort of allegory or parable. Let us
imagine a poor pilgrim benighted in a wilderness or desert, and
pursuing his way in the starless dark with a lantern in his hand.
Chance or his happy genius leads him to an oasis or natural
garden, such as in the creations of my youthful fancy I supposed
Enos,* the child of Cain, to have found. And here, hungry and
thirsty, the way- wearied man rests at a fountain ; and the taper
of his lantern throws its light on an over-shadowing tree, a boss
of snow-white blossoms, through which the green and growing
fruits peeped, and the ripe golden fruitage glowed. Deep, vivid,
and faithful are the impressions, which the lovely imagery com-
prised within the scanty circle of light makes and leaves on his
memory. But scarcely has he eaten of the fruits and drunk of
the fountain, ere scared by the roar and howl from the desert he
hurries forward : and as he passes with hasty steps through grove
and glade, shadows and imperfect beholdings and vivid fragments
of things distinctly seen blend with the past and present shapings
of his brain. Fancy modifies sight. His dreams transfer their
forms to real objects ; and these lend a substance and an outness

* Will the Reader forgive me if I attempt at once to illustrate aud re
lieve the subject by annexing the opening lines of a poem composed in the
game year in which I wrote the Ancient Mariner and the first Book (\f
Ohristabel ?

" Encinctur'd Avith a twine of leaves,

That leafy twine his only dress !

A lovely boy was plucking fruits

In a moonlight wilderness.

The moon was bright, the air was free,

And fruits and flowers together grew

On many a shrub and many a tree :

And all put on a gentle hue,

Hanging in the shadowy air

Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,

The night is more beloved than day.

But who that beauteous boy beguiled

That beauteous boy, to linger here ?

Alone, by night, a little child,

In pljvce so silent and so wild —

Has he no friend, no loving mother near ?"

WANDERINGS OF CAIN.
Poet. Works, VII. p. 292.— &L

CONCLUSION. 355

to his dreams. Apparitions greet him ; and when at a distance
from this enchanted land, and on a different track, the dawn of
dav discloses to him a caravan, a troop of his fellow-men, his
memory, which is itself half fancy, is interpolated afresh by every
attempt to recall, connect, and piece out his recollections. His
narration is received as a madman's tale. He shrinks from the
rude laugh and contemptuous sneer, and retires into himself!
Yet the craving for sympathy, strong in proportion to the inten-
sity of his convictions, impels him to unbosom himself to abstract
auditors ; and the poor quietist becomes a penman, and, all too
poorly stocked for the writer's trade, he borrows his phrases and
figures from the only writings to which he has had access, the
sacred books of his religion. And thus I shadow out the enthu-
siastic Mystic of the first sort ; at the head of which stands the
illuminated Teutonic theosopher and shoemaker, honest Jacob
Bohme, born near Grorlitz, in Upper Lusatia, in the 17th of our
Elizabeth's reign, and who died in the 22d of her successor's.

To delineate a Mystic of the second and higher order, we need
only endow our pilgrim with equal gifts of nature, but these de-
veloped and displayed by all the aids and arts of education and
favorable fortune. He is on his way to the Mecca of his ances-
tral and national faith, with a well-guarded and numerous pro-
cession of merchants and fellow-pilgrims, on the established track.
At the close of day the caravan has halted : the full moon rises
on the desert : and he strays forth alone, out of sight but to no
unsafe distance ; and chance leads him, too, to the same oasis or
islet of verdure on the sea of sand. He wanders at leisure in its
maze of beauty and sweetness, and thrids his way through the
odorous and flowering thickets into open spots of greenery, arid
discovers statues and memorial characters, grottos, and refresh-
ing caves. But the moonshine, the imaginative poesy of Nature,
spreads its soft shadowy charm over all, conceals distances, and
magnifies heights, and modifies relations ; and fills up vacuities
with its own whiteness, counterfeiting substance ; and where the
dense shadows lie, makes solidity imitate hollowness ; and gives
to all objects a tender visionary hue and softening. Interpret
the moonlight and the shadows as the peculiar genius and sensi-
bility of the individual's own spirit ; and here you have the other
sort ; a Mystic, an enthusiast of a nobler breed — a Fenelon. But
the residentiary, or the frequent visitor of the favored spot, who

356 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

has scanned its beauties by steady daylight, and mastered its truo
proportions and lineaments, — he will discover that both pilgrims
have indeed been there. He will know, that the delightful
dream, which the latter tells, is a dream of truth ; and that even
in the bewildered tale of the former there is truth mingled with
the dream.

But the source, the spring-head, of the charges which I antici-
pate, lies dsep. Materialism, conscious and avowed Materialism,
is in ill repute : and a confessed Materialist therefore a rare char-
acter. But if the faith be ascertained by the fruits : if the pre-
dominant, though most often unsuspected, persuasion is to be
learnt from the influences, under which the thoughts and affec-
tions of the man move and take their direction ; I must reverse
the position. Only not all are Materialists. Except a few indi-
viduals, and those for the most part of a single sect : every one
who calls himself a Christian, holds himself to have a soul as
well as a body. He distinguishes mind from matter, the subject
of his consciousness from the objects of the same. The former is
his mind : and he says, it is immaterial. But though subject
and substance are words of kindred roots, nay, little less than
equivalent terms, yet nevertheless it is exclusively to sensible ob-
jects, to bodies, to modifications of matter, that he habitually
attaches the attributes of reality, of substance. Real and tangi-
ble, substantial and material, are synonymes for him. He never
indeed asks himself, what he means by mind ? But if he did,
and tasked himself to return an honest answer — as to what, at
least, he had hitherto meant by it — he would find, that he had
described it by negatives, as the opposite of bodies, for example,
as a somewhat opposed to solidity, to visibility, and the like, as
if you could abstract the capacity of a vessel, and conceive of it
as a somewhat by itself, and then give to the emptiness the prop-
erties of containing, holding, being entered, and so forth. In
short, though the proposition would perhaps be angrily denied in
words, yet in fact he thinks of his mind, as a property, or acci-
dent of a something else, that he calls a soul .or spirit : though
the very same difficulties must recur, the moment he should at-
tempt to establish the difference. For either this soul or spirit ia
nothing but a thinner body, a finer mass of matter : or the at-
tribute of self-subsistency vanishes from the soul on the
grounds, on which it is refused to the mind.

CONCLUSION. 357

I am persuaded, however, that the dogmatism of the Corpus-
cular School, though it still exerts an influence on man's notions
and phrases, has received a mortal blow from the increasingly
dynamic spirit of the physical ^sciences now highest in public esti-
mation. And it may safely be predicted that the results will ex-
tend beyond the intention of those, who are gradually effecting
this revolution. It is not Chemistry alone that will be indebted
to the genius of Davy, Oersted, and their compeers : and not as
the founder of physiology and philosophic anatomy alone, will
mankind love and revere the name of John Hunter. These men
have not only taught, they have compelled us to admit, that the
immediate objects of our senses, or rather the grounds of the visi-
bility and tangibility of all objects of sense, bear the same rela
tion and similar proportion to the intelligible object — that is, to
the object which we actually mean when we say, " It is such or
such a thing," or "I have seen this or that," — as the paper, ink,
and differently combined straight and curved lines of an edition
of Homer bear to what we understand by the words, Iliad and
Odyssey. Nay, nothing would be more easy than so to construct
the paper, ink, painted capitals, and the like, of a printed disqui-
sition on the eye, or the muscles and cellular texture (that is, the
flesh) of the human body, as to bring together every one of the
sensible and ponderable stuffs or elements, that are sensuously
perceived in the eye itself, or in the flesh itself. Carbon and
nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and one or
two metals and metallic bases, constitute the whole. It can not
be these therefore, that we mean by an eye, by our body. But
perhaps it may be a particular combination of these ? Now here
comes a question : In this term do you or do you not include the
principle, the operating cause, of the combination ? If not, then
detach this eye from the body. Look steadily at it — as it might
lie on the marble slab of a dissecting-room. Say it were the eye
of a murderer, a Bellingham : or the eye of a murdered patriot,
a Sidney ! — Behold it, handle it, with its various accompaniments
or constituent parts, of tendon, ligament, membrane, blood-vesse],
gland, humors ; its nerves of sense, of sensation, and of motion.
Alas ! all these names, like that of the organ itself, are so many
anachronisms, figures of speech, to express that which has been :
as when the guide points with his finger to a heap of stones, and
tells the traveller, " That is Babvlon. or Persepolis." — Is this cold

858 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

jelly the light of the body ? Is this the micranthropos in the mar-
vellous microcosm ? Is this what you mean when you well de-
scribe the eye as the telescope and the mirror of the soul, the
seat and agent of an almost magical power ?

Pursue the same inquisition with every other part of the body,
whether integral or simply ingredient ; and let a Berzelius or a
Hatchett be your interpreter, and demonstrate to you what it is
that in each actually meets your senses. And when you have
heard the scanty catalogue, ask yourself if these are indeed the
living flesh, the blood of life ? Or not far rather — I speak of
what, as a man of common sense, you really do, not what, as a
philosopher, you ought to believe — is it not, I say, far rather tho
distinct and individualized agency that by the given combina-
tions utters and bespeaks its presence ? Justly and with strictest
propriety of language may I say, speaks. It is to the coarseness
of our senses, or rather to the defect and limitation of our percip-
ient faculty, that the visible object appears the same even for a
moment. The characters which I am now shaping on this paper,
abide. Not only the forms remain the same, but the particles
of the coloring stuff are fixed, and, for an indefinite period at
xeast, remain the same. But the particles that constitute the
size, the visibility of an organic structure, are in perpetual flux.
They are to the combining and constitutive power as the pulses
of air to the voice of a discourser ; or of one who sings a rounde-
lay. The same words may be repeated ; but in each second of
time the articulated air hath passed away, and each act of artic-
ulation appropriates and gives momentary form to a new and
other portion. As the column of blue smoke from a cottage
chimney in the breathless summer noon, or the steadfast-seeming
cloud on the edge point of a hill in the driving air-current, which
momently condensed and recomposed is the common phantom of
a thousand successors ; — such is the flesh, which our bodily eyes
transmit to us ; which our palates taste ; which our hands touch.

But perhaps the material particles possess this combining
power by inherent reciprocal attractions, repulsions, and elective
affinities ; and are themselves the joint artists of their own com-
binations ? I will not reply, though well I might, that this would
be to solve one problem by another, and merely to shift the mys-
tery. It will be sufficient to remind the thoughtful querist, that
even herein consists the essential difference, the contra-distirio

CONCLUSION. 3fi9

tion, of an organ from a machine ; that riot only the character-
istic shape is evolved from the invisible central power, but the
material mass itself is acquired by assimilation. The germinal
power of the plant transmutes the fixed air and the elementary
base of water into grass or leaves ; and on these the organific
principle in the ox or the elephant exercises an alchemy still
more stupendous. As the unseen agency weaves its magic eddies,
the foliage becomes indifferently the bone and its marrow, the
pulpy brain, or the solid ivory. That what you see is blood, is
flesh, is itself the work, or shall I say, the trarislucence, of the
invisible energy, which soon surrenders or abandons them to infe-
rior powers (for there is no pause nor chasm in the activities of
nature), which repeat a similar metamorphosis according to their
kind ; — these are not fancies, conjectures, or even hypotheses, but
facts ; to deny which is impossible, not to reflect on which is
ignominious. And we need only reflect on them Math a calm
and silent spirit to learn the utter emptiness and unmeaningness
of the vaunted Mechanico-corpuscular philosophy, with both its
twins, Materialism on the one hand, and Idealism, rightlier nam^d
subjective Idolism, on the other : the one obtruding on us a world
of spectres and apparitions ; the other a mazy dream.*

Let the Mechanic or Corpuscular scheme, which in its abso-
luteness and strict consistency was first introduced by Des Cartes,
be judged by the results. By its fruits shall it be known.

In order to submit the various phenomena of moving bodies to
geometrical construction, we are under the necessity of abstract-
ing from corporeal substance all its positive properties, and
obliged to consider bodies as differing from equal portions of spacef

* See the Author's Theory of Life, Appendix C.—Am. Ed.

•j- Such is the conception of body in Des Cartes' own system. Body is
everywhere confounded with matter, and might in the Cartesian sense be
defined space or extension, with the attribute of visibility. As Des Car tea
at the same time zealously asserted the existence of intelligent iul beings,
the reality and independent self-subsistence of the soul, Berkeleyanism or
Spinosism was the immediate and necessary consequence. Assume a plu-
rality of self-subsisting souls, and we have Berkeleyanism ; assume one only
(unam et unicam substantiairi), and you have Spinosisin, that is, the asser-
tion of one infinite Self-subsistent, with the two attributes of thinking and
appearing. Cogitatio infinita sine centro, et omniforr.iis afjparitio. How far
the Newtonian vis inertia; (interpreted any otherwise th.in as an arbitrary
term=x y z, to represent the unknown but necessary supplement or inie-

S60 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

only by figure and mobility. And as a fiction of science, it would
be difficult to overvalue this invention. It possesses the same
merits in relation to geometry that the atomic theory has in rela
tion to algebraic calculus. But in contempt of common sense,
and in direct opposition to the express declarations of the in-
spired historian (Gen. i.), and to the tone and spirit of the Scrip-
tures throughout, Des Cartes propounded it as truth of fact, and
instead of a world created and filled with productive forces by the
almighty Fiat, left a lifeless machine whirled about by the dusi
of its own grinding : as if death could come from the living foun-
tain of life ; nothingness and phantom from the plenitude of
reality, the absoluteness of creative will !

Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! let me be deemed mad by all men, if such
be thy ordinance : but, 0 ! from such madness save and preserve
me, my God !

When, however, after a short interval, the genius of Kepler,
expanded and organized in the soul of Newton, and there (if I
may hazard so bold an expression) refining itself into an almost
celestial clearness, had expelled the Cartesian vortices /* then the

gration of the Cartesian notion of body) has patched up the flaw, I leave for
more competent judges to decide. But should any one of niy Readers feel
an interest in the speculative principles of natural philosophy, and should
be master of the German language, I warmly recommend for his perusal the
earliest known publication of the great founder of the Critical Philosophy,
(written in the twenty-second year of his age !) on the then eager contro-
versy between the Leibnitzian and the French and English Mathematicians,
respecting the living forces — Gedanken von der wahren Schatzung der leben-
digen Krafte : 1747 — in which Kant demonstrates the right reasoning to be
with the latter ; but the truth of the fact, the evidence of experience, with
the former ; and gives the explanation, namely : body, or corporeal nature,
is something else and more than geometrical extension, even with the adcli
tion of a vis inertics. And Leibnitz, with the Bernouillis, erred in the at
tempt to demonstrate geometrically a problem not susceptible of geomet
rical construction. This tract, with the succeeding Himmcls- System, may
with propriety be placed, after the Principia of Newton, among the striking
instances of early genius ; and as the first product of the dynamic philos-
ophy in the physical sciences, from the time, at least, of Giordano Bruno,
whom the idolaters burned for an Atheist, at Rome, in the year 1600. — [See
The Friend, II. p. 1 1 0 note.— JSd.]

* For Newton's own doubtfully suggested ether or most subtle fluid, as
the ground and immediate agent in the phenomena of universal gravitation,
was either not adopted or soon abandoned by his disciples ; not only as in-
troducing, against his own canons of right reasoning, an ens imaginarium

CONCLUSION. 861

necessity of an active power, of positive forces present in the ma-
terial universe, forced itself on the conviction. For as a law
without a lawgiver is a mere abstraction ; so a law without an
agent to realize it, a constitution without an abiding executive,
is, in fact, not a law but an idea. In the profound emblem of
the great tragic poet, it is the powerless Prometheus fixed on a
barren rock. And what was the result ? How was this necessity
provided for ? God himself — my hand trembles as I write !
Rather, then let me employ the word, which the religious feel-
ing, in its perplexity, suggested as the substitute — the Leity
itself was declared to be the real agent, the actual gravitating
power ! The law and the lawgiver were identified. God (says
Dr. Priestley) not only does, but is every thing. Jupiter est quod-
cunque vides. And thus a system, which commenced by ex-
cluding all life and immanent activity from the visible universe,
and evacuating the natural world of all nature, ended by substi-
tuting the Deity, and reducing the Creator to a mere anima
Ktundi : a scheme that has no advantage over Spinosism but its
inconsistency, which does indeed make it suit a certain order of in-
tellects, who, like the 2^^uronectce (or flat fish) in ichthyology
which have both eyes on the same side, never see but half of a
subject at one time, and forgetting the one before they get to the
other are sure not to detect any inconsistency between them.

And what has been the consequence ? An increasing unwil-
lingness to contemplate the Supreme Being in his personal attri-
butes : and thence a distaste to all the peculiar doctrines of the
Christian Faith, the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God,
and Redemption. The young and ardent, ever too apt to mis-
take the inward triumph in the detection of error for a positive
love of truth, aro among the first and mo?t frequent victims to
this epidemic fastidium. Alas! even the si ucerest seekers after
light are not safe from the contagion. Some have I known, con-

iuto physical science, a Buffiction in the place of a legitimate supposition;
but because the substance (if assumed to exist) must itself form part of the
problem which it Tvas meant to solve. Meantime Leibnitz's pre-c&tabliohed
harmony, which originated in Spinosa, found no acceptance ; and, lastly, the
notion of a corpuscular substance, with properties put into it, like a pin-
cushion hidden by the pins, could pass with the unthinking only for any-
thing more tlwi a confession of ignorance, or technical terms expreaoing a
hiatus of scientific insight.

VOL. I. Q,

362 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

stitutionally religious — I speak feelingly ; for I speak of thai
which for a brief period was my own state — who under this un-
healthful influence have been so estranged from the heavenly
Father, the living God, as even to shrink from the personal pro-
nouns as applied to the Deity. But many do I know, and yearly
meet with, in whom a false and sickly taste co-operates with the
prevailing fashion : many, who find the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, far too real, too substantial ; who feel it more in har-
mony with their indefinite sensations

To worship Nature in the hill and valley,
Not knowing what they love : —

and (to use the language, but riot the sense or purpose, of the
great poet of our age) would fain substitute for the Jehovah of
their Bible

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air ;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things ! WOBDSWOKTH.

And this from having been educated to understand the Divinw
Omnipresence in any sense rather than the only safe and legiti-
mate one, the presence of all things to God !

Be it, however, that the number of such men is comparativelv
small ; and be it (as in fact it often is) but a brief stage, a tran-
sitional state, in the process of intellectual growth. Yet among
a numerous and increasing class of the higher and middle ranks,
there is an inward withdrawing from the life and personal being
of God, a turning of the thoughts exclusively to the so-called
physical attributes, to the omnipresence in the counterfeit form
.of ubiquity, to the immensity, the infinity, the immutability ; —
the attributes of space with a notion of power as their substratum^
• ~ a • Jfete^ m short, not a moral Creator and Governor. Let in-
telligence be imagined, and wherein does the conception of God
differ essentially from that of gravitation (conceived, as the cause
of gravity) in the understanding of those, who represent the Deity
not only as a necessary but as a necessitated being ; those, for
whom justice is but a scheme of general laws ; and holiness, arid
the divine hatred of sin, yea, and sin itself, are words without

CONCLUSION. 863

meaning, or accommodations to a rude and barbarous race ?
Hence, I more than fear the prevailing taste for books of natural
theology, physico-theology, demonstrations of God from Nature,
evidences of Christianity, and the like. Evidences of Christian-
ity ! I arn weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of
it ; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it ; '
and you may safely trust it to its own evidence, — remembering
only the express declaration of Christ himself: No man cometh
to me, unless the Father leadeth him. Whatever more is desir-
able— I speak now with reference to Christians generally, and
not to professed students of theology — may, in my judgment, be
far more safely and profitably taught, without controversy or the
supposition of infidel antagonists, in the form of Ecclesiastical
history.

The last fruit of the Mechanico-corpuscular philosophy, say
rather of the mode and direction of feeling and thinking produced
by it on the educated class of society — or that result, which as
more immediately connected with my present theme I have re-
served for the last — is the habit of attaching all our conceptions
and feelings, and of applying all the words and phrases express-
ing reality to the objects of the senses : more accurately speaking
to the images and sensations by which their presence is made
known to us. Now I do not hesitate to assert, that it was one
of the great purposes of Christianity, and included in the process
of our redemption, to rouse and emancipate the soul from this
debasing slavery to the outward senses, to awaken the mind to
the true criteria of reality, namel^jgermanence, power, will
manifested in act, and truth operating as life. My words, said
Chnst, are spirit : and they (that is, the spiritual powers ex
pressed by them) are truth ; that is, very being. For this end
ou.r Lord, who came from heaven to take captivity captive, chose
the words and names, that designate the familiar yet most impor-
tant objects of sense, the nearest and most concerning things and
incidents of corporeal nature ; water, flesh, blood, birth._ bread
But he used them in senses, that could lioTwithout absurdity be
supposed to respect the mere phenomena, water, flesh, and the like ;
in senses that by no possibility could apply to the color, figure, spe-
cific mode of touch or taste produced on ourselves, and by which
we are made aware of the presence of the things and understand
them — res, quce sub apparitionibus istis statuendce sunt. And

864 AIDS TO KEFLECTION.

this awful recalling of the drowsed soul from the dreams and
phantom world of sensuality to actual reality, — how has it been
evaded ! These words, that were spirit, — these mysteries, which
even the Apostles must wait for the Paraclete in order to com-
prehend— these spiritual things which can only be spiritually dis-
cerned,— were mere metaphors, figures of speech, oriental hyper-
boles ! " All this means only morality !" Ah ! how far nearci
to the truth would these men have been, had they said that mo
rality means all this !

The effect, however, has been most injurious to the best inter-
ests of our Universities, to our incomparably constituted Church,
and even to our national character. The few who have read my
two Lay Sermons are no strangers to my opinions on this head ;
and in my treatise on the Church and Churches, I shall, if Prov-
idence vouchsafe, submit them to the Public, with their ground?
and historic evidences in a more systematic form.

I have, I am aware, in this present Work furnished occasion
for a charge of having expressed myself with slight and irrever-
ence of celebrated names, especially of the late Dr. Paley. 0, if
I were fond and ambitious of literary honor, of public applause,
how well content should I be to excite but one third of the admi-
ration which, in my inmost being, I feel for the head and heart
of Paley ! And how gladly would I surrender all hope of con-
temporary praise, could I even approach to the incomparable
grace, propriety, and persuasive facility of his writings ! But on
this very account I believe myself bound in conscience to throw
» he whole force of my intellect in the way of this triumphal car,
oa which the tutelary genius of modern idolatry is borne, even at
the risk of being crushed under the wheels. I have at this mo-
ment before my eyes the eighteenth of his Posthumous Discourses :
the amount of which is briefly this, — that all the words and pas-
sages in the New Testament which express and contain the pecu-
liar doctrines of Christianity, the paramount objects of the Chris-
tian Revelation, all those which speak so strongly of the value,
benefit, and efficacy of the death of Christ, assuredly mean some-
thing : but what they mean, nobody, it seems, can tell ! But
doubtless we shall discover it, and be convinced that there is a
substantial sense belonging to these words in a future state ! Is
there an enigma or an absurdity in the Koran or the Vedas, which
might not be defended on the same pretence ? A similar impres

CONCLUSION. 365

gion, I confess, was left on my mind by Dr. Magee's statement
or exposition (ad normam Grotianam) of the doctrine of Redemp-
tion ; and deeply did it disappoint the high expectations, sadly
did it chill the fervid sympathy, which his introductory chapter,
his manly and masterly disquisition on the sacrificial rites of Pa-
ganism, had raised in my mind.

And yet I can not read the pages of Paley, here referred to
aloud, without the liveliest sense, how plausible and popular they
will sound to the great majority of readers. Thousands of sober,
and in other way pious, Christians will echo the words, together
with Magee's kindred interpretation of the death of Christ, and
adopt the doctrine for their make-faith ; and why ? It is feeble.
And whatever is feeble is always plausible : for it favors mental
indolence. It is feeble : and feebleness, in the disguise of con-
fessing and condescending strength, is always popular. It flatters
the reader by removing the apprehended distance between him ,
and the superior author ; and it flatters him still more by en-
abling him to transfer to himself, and to appropriate, this superi-
ority ; and thus to make his very weakness the mark and evidence
of his strength. Ay, quoth the rational Christian — or with a
sighing, self-soothing sound between an Ay and an Ah! — I arr
content to think with the great Dr. Paley, and the learned Arch-
bishop of Dublin —

Man of sense ! Dr. Paley was a great man, and Dr. Magee is
a learned and exemplary prelate ; but You do not think at all !

With regard to the convictions avowed arid enforced in my
own Work, I will continue my address to the man of sense in the
words of an old philosopher : — Tu vero crassis auribus et obsti-
nato corde respuis quceforsitan vere pcrhibeantur . Minus her-
cule calles pravissimis opinionibus ea putari mendacia, quce vel
anditu nova, vel visu rudia, vel certe supra captum cogitationis
(extemporanece tua) ardua videantur : quce si paulo accuratius
exploraris, non modocompertu evidentia, sed etiam factu facilia,
senties*

In compliance with the suggestion of a friend, the celebrated
conclusion of the fourth book of Paley's Moral and Political Phi-
losophy, referred to in p. 258, of this Volume, is here tiansprintec?
for the convenience of the Reader : —

* Apul Metam. I.— Ed.

866 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

" Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the foi
lowing — The hour is coining, in the which all that are in the
grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forlh : they that have
done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done
evil, unto the resurrection of damnation; — he had pronounced
a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that
splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mis-
sion was introduced and attested : a message in which the wisest
of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, arid
rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say, that a future state had
been discovered already ; — it had been discovered as the Coper-
riican system was ; — it was one guess among many. He alone
discovers, who proves ; and no man can prove this point, but the
teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from
God."

Psedianus says of Virgil, — Usque adeo expers invidice ut siquid
erudite dictum inspiceret alterius, non minus gauderet ac si suum
csset. My own heart assures me that this is less than the truth :
that Virgil would have read a beautiful passage in the work of
another widi a higher and purer delight than in a work of his
own, because free from the apprehension of his judgment being
warped by self-love, and without that repressive modesty akin to
shame, which in a delicate mind holds in check a man's own se-
cret thoughts and feelings, when they respect himself. The cor-
dial admiration with which I peruse the preceding passage as a
master-piece of composition would, could I convey it, serve as a
measure of the vital importance I attach to the convictions which
impelled me to animadvert on the same passage as doctrine.

APPENDIX A.

SUMMARY OF THE SCHEME OF THE ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE DIVER-
SITY IN KIND OF THE REASON AND THE UNDERSTANDING. SEE p. 188.

THE position to be proved is the difference in kind of the under-
standing from the reason.

The axiom, on which the proof rests, is : subjects, which require
essentially different general definitions, differ in kind and not merely
in degree. For difference in degree forms the ground of specific
definitions, but not of generic or general.

Now reason is considered either in relation to the will and moral
being, when it is termed the practical* reason = A : or relatively to
the intellective and sciential faculties, when it is termed theoretic
or speculative reason = a. In order therefore to be compared with
the reason, the understanding must in like manner be distinguished
into the understanding as a principle of action, in which relation I
call it the adaptive power, or the faculty of selecting and adapting
means and medial of proximate ends = B : and the understanding,
as a mode and faculty of thought, when it is called reflection = &.
Accordingly, I give the general definitions of these four : that is, I
describe each severally by its essential characters : and I find, that
the definition of A differs toto genere from that of B, and the defini-
tion of a from that of 5.

Now subjects that require essentially different definitions do them-
selves differ in kind. But Understanding and Reason require essen-
tially different definitions. Therefore Understanding and Reason
differ in kind.

* The Practical Reason alone is Reason in the full and substantive sense. It is Reason
in its own sphere of perfect freedom ; as the source of ideas, which ideas, in their con*
version to tho responsible Will, become ultimate ends. On the other hand, Theoretic
Reason, ao the ground of the universal and absolute in all logical conclusion, is rather
the light of Reason in the Understanding, and known to bo such by its contrast with the
contingency and particularity which characterise all the proper and indigenous growth*
of the Understanding.

APPENDIX B

WHAT is Instinct ?* As I am not quite of Bonnet's opinion " that
philosophers will in vain torment themselves to define instinct until
they have spent some time in the head of the animal without actually
being that animal," I shall endeavor to explain the use of the term.
I shall not think it necessary to controvert the opinions which havo
been offered on this subject, whether the ancient doctrine of Des-
cartes, who supposed that animals were mere machines ; or the mod-
ern one of Lamark, who attributes instincts to habits impressed upon
the organs of animals, by the constant efflux of the nervous fluid
to these organs to which it has been determined in their efforts to
perform certain actions, to which their necessities^have given birth.
And it will be here premature to offer any refutation of the opinions
of those who contend for the identity of this faculty with reason,
and maintain that all the actions of animals are the result of inven-
tion and experience ;— an opinion maintained with considerable
plausibility by Dr. Darwin.

" Perhaps the most ready and certain mode of coming to a conclu-
sion in this intricate inquiry will be by the apparently circuitous
route of determining first, what we do not mean by the word. Now
we certainly do not mean, in the use of the term, any act of the vital
power in the production or maintenance of an organ : nobody thinks
of saying that the teeth grow by instinct, or that when the muscles
are increased in vigor and size in consequence of exercise, it is from
such a cause or principle. Neither do we attribute instinct to the
direct functions of the organs in providing for the continuance and
sustentation of the whole co-organized body. No one talks of the
liver secreting bile, or of the heart acting for the propulsion of the
blood, by instinct. Some, indeed, have maintained that breathing,
even voiding the excrement and urine, are instinctive operations ;
but surely these, as well as the former, are automatic, or at least are
the necessary result of the organization of the parts in and by which
the actions are produced. These instances seem to be, if I may sc
say, below instinct. But again, we do not attribute instinct to any
actions preceded by a will conscious of its whole purpose, calculating

• Green's Vital Dynamics, Appendix F, p. 88. See ante, p 257.— Ed.

APPENDIX B. 869

its effects, and predetermining its consequences, nor to any exercise
of the intellectual powers, of which the whole scope, aim, and end
are intellectual. In other terms, no man who values his words will
talk of the instinct of a Howard, or of the instinctive operations of
a Newton or Leibnitz, in those sublime efforts, which ennoble and
cast a lustre, not less on the individuals than on the whole human
race.

" To what kind or mode of action shall we then look for the le-
gitimate application of the term ? In answer to this query, we may,
1 think, without fear of the consequences, put the following cases aa
exemplifying and justifying the use of the term, Instinct, in an appro-
priate sense. First, when there appears an action, not included
either in the mere functions of life, acting within the sphere of its
own organismus ; nor yet an action attributable to the intelligent
will or reason : yet at the same time, not referable to any particular
organ, we then declare the presence of an Instinct. We might illus-
trate this in the instance of a bull-calf butting before he has horus,
in which the action can have no reference to its internal economy,
to the presence of a particular organ, or to an intelligent will.
Secondly, likewise if it be not indeed included in the first, we attrib-
ute Instinct where the organ is present, if only the act is equally
anterior to all possible experience on the part of the individual agent,
as for instance, when the beaver employs its tail for the construction
of its dwelling ; the tailor-bird its bill for the formation of its pensile
habitation ; the spider its spinning organ for fabricating its artfully
woven nets, or the viper its poison fang for its defence. And lastly,
generally, where there is an act of the whole body as one animal, not
referable to a will conscious of its purpose, nor to its mechanism, nor
to a habit derived from experience, nor previous frequent use. Here
with most satisfaction, and without doubt of the propriety of the
word, we declare an Instinct ; as examples of which, we may adduce
the migratory habits of birds, the social instincts of the bees, the
construction of their habitations, composed of cells formed with
geometrical precision, adapted in capacity to different orders of the
society, and forming storehouses for containing a supply of provis-
ions ; not to mention similar instances in wasps, ants, termites ; and
the endless contrivances for protecting the future progeny.

" But if it be admitted that we have rightly stated the application
of the term, what we may ask is contained in the examples adduced,
or what inferences are we to make as to the nature of Instinct itself,
as a source and principle of action? We shall, perhaps, best aid our-
selves in the inquiry by an example, and let us take a very familiar
one of a caterpillar taking its food. The caterpillar seeks at once the
plant, which furuishes the appropriate aliment, and this even as sooc
as it creeps from the ovum ; and the food being taker, into the stom

Q*

870 APPENDIX B.

ach, the nutritious part is separated from the immtritious, and is dis-
posed of for the support of the animal. The question then is, what is
contained in this instance of instinct ? In the first place what does
the vital power in the stomach do, if we gonera!izv3 the account of the
process, or express it in its most general terms ? Manifestly it selects
and applies appropriate means to an immediate end, prescribed hy
the constitution ; first of the particular organ, and then of the whole
body or organisrnus. This we have admitted is not instinct. But
what does the caterpillar do ? Does it not also select and apply ap-
propriate means to an immediate end prescribed by its particular or-
ganization and constitution? But there is something more; it does
this according to circumstances ; and this we call Instinct. But may
there not be still something more involved ? "What shall we say of
Hiiber's humble-bees? A dozen of these were put under a bell glas^
along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons, so unequal in height
as not to be capable of standing steadily; to remedy this, two or
three of the humble-bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves
over its edge, and with their heads downwards, fixed their forefeet on
the table on which the comb stood, and so with their hindfeet kept
the comb from falling: when these were weary others took their
peaces. In this constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving
their comrades at intervals, and each working in its turn, did these
affectionate little insects support the comb for nearly three days ; at
the end of which time they had prepared sufficient wax to build pil-
lars with it. And what is still further curious, the first pillars having
got displaced, the bees had again recourse to the same manoeuvre.
What then is involved in this case ? Evidently the same selection
and appropriation of means to an immediate end as before ; but ob-
serve ! according to varying circumstances.

" And here we are puzzled ; for this becomes Understanding. At
least no naturalist, however predetermined to contrast and oppose
Instinct to Understanding, but ends at last in facts in which he him-
self can make out no difference. But are we hence to conclude that
the instinct is the same, and identical with the human understanding?
Certainly not; though the difference is not in the essential of the de-
finition, but in an addition to, or modification of, that which is essen-
tially the same in both. In such cases, namely, as that which we
have last adduced, in which instinct assumes the semblance of under-
standing, the act indicative of instinct is not clearly prescribed by the
constitution or laws of the animal's peculiar organization, but arises
out of the constitution and previo is circumstances of the animal, and
those habits, wants, and that ppedetermined sphere of action and
operation which belong to the race, and beyond the limits of which it
does not pass. If this be the case, I may venture to assert that I
have determined an appropriate sense for instinct : namely, that it is

APPENDIX B. 371

% power of selecting and applying appropriate means to an immediate
end, according to circumstances and the changes of circumstances,
these being variable and varying ; but yet so as to be referable to the
general habits, arising out of the constitution and previous circum-
stances of the animal considered not as an individual, but as a race.

"We may here, perhaps, most fitly explain the error of those who
contend for the identity of Reason and Instinct, and believe that the
actions of animals are the result of invention and experience. They
have, no doubt, been deceived, in their investigation of Instinct, by
an efficient cause simulating a final cause ; and the defect in their
reasoning has arisen in consequence of observing in the instinctive
operations of animals the adaptation of means to a relative end, from
the assumption of a deliberate purpose. To this freedom or choice
in action and purpose, instinct, in any appropriate sense of the word,
can not apply, and to justify and explain its introduction, we must
have recourse to other and higher faculties than any manifested in
the operations of instinct. It is evident, namely, in turning our at-
tention to tne distinguishing character of human actions, that there
is, as in the inferior animals, a selection and appropriation of means
to ends — buc it is (not only according to circumstances, not only ac-
cording to varying circumstances, but it is) according to varying pur-
poses. But this is an attribute of the intelligent will, and no longer
even mere understanding.

"And here let me observe that the difficulty and delicacy of this
investigation are greatly increased by our not considering the under-
standing (even our own) in itself, and as it would be were it not ac-
companied with and modified by the co-operation of the will, the
moral feeling, and that faculty, perhaps best distinguished by the
name of Reason, of determining that which is universal and neces-
sary, of fixing laws and principles whether speculative or practical,
and of contemplating a final purpose or end. This intelligent will, —
having a self-conscious purpose, under the guidance and light of the
reason, by which its acts are made to bear as a whole upon some end
in and for itself, and to which the understanding is subservient as an
organ or the faculty of selecting and appropriating the means — seems
best to account for that progressiveness of the human race, which so
evidently marks an insurmountable distinction and impassable barrier
between man and the inferior animals ; but wliich would be inexpli-
cable, were there no other difference than in the degree of their intel-
lectual faculties.

u Man doubtless Las his instincts, even in common with the inferior
animals, and many of these are tlte germs of some of the best feelings
of his nature. "What, amongst many, might I present as a better
illustration, or more beautiful instance, than the storge or maternal in-
stinct ? But man's instincts are elevated and ennobled by the moral

372 APPENDIX B.

ends and purposes of his being. He is not destined to be the slave of
blind impulses, a vessel purposeless, unmeant. He is constituted by
his moral and intelligent will, to be the first freed being, the master-
work and the end of nature ; but this freedom and high office can
only co-exist with fealty and devotion to the service of truth and vir-
tue. And though we rnay even be permitted to use the term instinct,
in order to designate those high impulses which in the minority of
man's rational being, shape his acts unconsciously to ultimate ends,
and which in constituting the very character and impress of the hu-
manity reveal the guidance of Providence ; yet the convenience of
the phrase, and the want of any other distinctive appellation for an
influence de supra, working unconsciously in and on the whole human
race, should not induce us to forget that the term instinct is only
strictly applicable to the adaptive power, as the faculty, even in its
highest proper form, of selecting and adapting appropriate means to
proximate ends according to varying circumstances, — a faculty which,
however, only differs from human understanding in consequence of
the latter being enlightened by reason, and that the principles which
actuate man as ultimate ends, and are designed for his conscious pos-
session and guidance, are best and most properly named Ideas."

APPENDIX C.

The following tract published in England under the title of Hint*
towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life, ly S.
T. Coleridge, is inserted here, because it contains a fuller and more
systematic development of the general views presented on pages
857-359 of the Aids to Reflection. This seems to be its most appro-
priate place in the collection, and the reader will find it both in matter
and form, one of the most profound and elegant exhibitions that have
yet been made of the Dynamic Theory of Life. — Am. Ed.

THEOKY OF LIFE.

WHEN we stand before the bust of John Hunter, or as we enter the
magnificent museum furnished by his labors, and pass slowly, with
meditative observation, through this august temple, which the genius
of one great man has raised and dedicated to the wisdom and uniform
working of the Creator, we perceive at every step the guidance, we
had almost said, the inspiration, of those profound ideas concerning
Life, which- dawn upon us indeed, through his written works, but
which he has here presented to us in a more perfect language than
that of words — the language of God himself, as uttered by Nature.

That the true idea of Life existed in the mind of John Hunter I do
not entertain the least doubt ; but it may, perhaps, be doubted whether
his incessant occupation, and his stupendous industry in the service,
both of his contemporaries and of posterity, added to his compara-
tively slight acquaintance with the arts and aids of logical arrange-
ment, permitted him fully to unfold and arrange it in distinct, clear,
and communicable conceptions. Assuredly, however, I may, without
incurring the charge of arrogance or detraction, venture to assert that,
in his writings the light which occasionally flashes upon us seems at
other times, and more frequently, to struggle through an unfriendly
medium, and even sometimes to suffer a temporary occultation. At
least, in order to dissipate the undeniable obscurities, and to reconcile
the apparent contradictions found in his works,— to distinguish, in

374 APPENDIX 0.

short, the numerous passages in which without, perhaps, losing sight
internally of his own peculiar belief, he yet falls into the phraseology
and mechanical solutions of his age, — we must distinguish such pas-
sages from those in which the form corresponds to the substance, and
in which, therefore, the nature and essential laws of vital action are
expressed, as far as his researches had unveiled them to his own
mind, without disguise. To effect this, we must, as it were, climb up
on his shoulders, -and look at the same objects in a distincter form,
because seen from the more commanding point of view furnished by
himself. This has, indeed, been more than once attempted already,
and, in one instance, with so evident a display of power and insight
as announces in the assertor and vindicator of the Hunterian Theory
a congenial intellect, and a disciple in whom Hunter himself would
have exulted. Would that this attempt had been made on a larger
scale, that the writer to whom I refer* had in consequence developed
his opinions systematically, and carried them yet further back, even
to their ultimate principle !

But this the scientific world has yet to expect; or it is more than
probable that the present humble endeavor would have been super-
seded, or confined, at least, to the task of restating the opinion of my
predecessor with such modifications as the differences that will always
exist between men who have thought independently, and each for
himself, have never failed to introduce, even on problems of far easier
and more obvious solution.

Without further preface or apology, therefore, I shall state at once
my objections to all the definitions that have hitherto been given of
Life, as meaning too much or too little, with an exception, however,
in favor of those which mean nothing at all; and even these last
must, in certain cases, receive an honor they do not merit, and be
confuted, or rather detected, on account of their too general accept-
ance, and the incalculable power of words over the minds of men in
proportion to the remoteness of the subject from the cognizance of
the senses.

It would be equally presumptuous and unreasonable should I, with
a late writer on this subject, "exhort the reader to be particularly on
his guard against loose and indefinite expressions ;" but I perfectly
agree with him that they are the bane of all science, and have been
remarkably injurious in the different departments of physiology.

The attempts to explain the nature ol.Life, which have fallen
within my knowledge, presuppose the arbitrary division of alljthat
surrounds us into thingsjwith life, and tilings w i t'h o u t li te— a division
grounded on a mere^ssumption. At the best, it can be regarded
only as a hasty deduction from the first superficial notices of the
objects that surround us, sufficient, perhaps, for the purpose of ordi-
* Mr. Aberneiby.

APPENDIX C. 375

nary discrimination, but far too indeterminate and diffluent to be
taken unexamined by the philosophic inquirer. The positions of
science must be tried in the jeweller's scales, not like the mixed com-
modities of the market, on the weigh-bridge of common opinion
and vulgar usage. Such, however, has been the procedure in the
present instance, and the result has been answerable to the coarseness
of the process. By a comprisal of the petitio principii with the
argumentum in circulo, — in plain English, by an easy logic, which
begins with begging the question, and then moving in a circle, comes
round to the point where it began, — each of the two divisions has
been made to define the other by a mere reassertion of their assumed
contrariety. The physiologist has luminously explained Y plus x by
informing us that it is a somewhat that is the antithesis of Y minus x ;
and if we ask, what then is Y — x? the answer is, the antithesis of
Y-|-X, a reciprocation of great service, that may remind us of the
twin sisters in the fable of the Lamise, with but one eye between
them both, which each borrowed from the other as either happened
to want it ; but with this additional disadvantage, that in the present
case it is after all but an eye of glass. The definitions themselves
will best illustrate our meaning. I will begin with that given by
Bichat. "Life is the sum of all the functions by which death ia
resisted," in which I have in vain endeavored to discover any other
meaning than that life consists in being able to live. This author,
with a whimsical gravity, prefaces his definition with the remark,
that the nature of life has hitherto been sought for in abstract con-
siderations ; as if it were possible that four more inveterate abstrac-
tions could be brought together in one sentence than are here assem-
bled in the words, life, death, function, and resistance. Similar
instances might be cited from Richerand and others. The word Life
is translated into other more learned words ; and this paraphrase of
the term is substituted for the definition of the thing, and therefore
(as is always the case in every real definition as contra-distinguished
from a verbal definition), for at least a partial solution cf the fact.
Such as those form the first class. — The second class takes some one
particular function of Life common to all living objects,— nutrition,
for instance; or, to adopt the phrase most in vogue at present, assim-
ilation, for the purposes of reproduction and growth. Now this, it is
evident, can be an appropriate definition only of the very lowest
species, as of a Fungus or a Mollusca; and just as comprehensive
an idea of the mystery of Life, as a Mollusca might give, can this
definition afford. But this is not the only objection. For, first, it is
not pretended that we begin with seeking for an organ evidently
appropriated to nutrition, and then infer that the substance in which
such an organ is found lives. On the contrary, in a number of cases
among the obscurer animals and vegetables we infer the organ from

876 APPENDIX C.

the pre-established fact of its life. Secondly, it identifies the process
itself with a certain range of its forms, those, namely, by which it is
manifested in animals and vegetables. For this, too, no less than the
former, presupposes the arbitrary division of all things into not living
and lifeless, on which, as I before observed, all these definitions are
grounded. But it is sorry logic to take the proof of an affirmative in
one thing as the proof of the negative in another. All animals that
have lungs breathe, but it would b6 a childish oversight to deduce the
converse, viz. all animals that breathe have lungs. The theory in
which the French chemists organized the discoveries of Black, Caven-
dish, Priestley, Scheele, and other English and German philosophers,
is stil', indeed, the reigning theory, but rather, it should seem, from
the absence of a rival sufficiently popular to fill the throne in its stead,
than from the continuance of an implicit belief in its own stability.
We no longer at least cherish that intensity of faith which, before
Davy commenced his briliant career, had not only identified it with
chemistry itself, but had substituted, its nomenclature, even in com-
mon conversation, for the far more philosophic language which the
human race had abstracted from the laboratory of- Nature. I may
venture to prophesy that no future Beddoes will make it the corival
of the mathematical sciences in demonstrative evidence. I think it a
matter of doubt whether, during the period of its supposed infallibility,
physiology derived more benefit from the extension, or injury from
the misdirection, of its views. Enough of the latter is fresh in recol-
lection to make it but an equivocal compliment to a physiological
position, that it must stand or fall with the corpuscular philosophy,
as modified by the French theory of chemistry. Yet should it happen
(and the event is not impossible, nor the supposition altogether ab-
Burd), that more and more decisive facts should present themselves in
confirmation of the metamorphosis of elements, the position that life
consists in assimilation would either cease to be distinctive, or fall
back into the former class as an identical proposition, namely, that
Life, meaning by the word that sort of growth which takes place by
means of a peculiar organization, consists in that sort of growth
which is peculiar to organized life. Thirdly, the definition involves
a still more egregious flaw in the reasoning, namely, that of cum hoc,
ergo propter hoc (or the assumption of causation from mere coexist-
ence) ; and this, too, in its very worst form. For it is not cum hoc
solo, ergo propter hoc, which would in many cases supply a presump-
tive proof by induction, but cum hoc, et plurimis aliis, ergo propter
IMC ! Shell, of some kind or other, is common to the whole order of
testacea, but it would be absurd to define the vis vita of testaceous
animals as existing in the shell, though we know it to be the constant
accompaniment, and have every reason to believe the constant effect,
of the specific life that acts in those animals. Were we (argumenli

APPENDIX C. 877

caus't) to imagine shell coextensive with the organized creation, this
would produce no abatement iu the falsity of the reasoning. Nor
does the Haw stop here ; for a physiological, that is, a real, definition,
as distinguished from the verbal definitions of lexicography, must
consist neither in any single property or function of the thing to be
defined, nor yet in all collectively, which latter, indeed, would be a
history, not a definition. It must consist, therefore, in the law of the
thing, or in such an idea of it, as being admitted, all the properties
and functions are admitted by implication. It must likewise be so
far causal, that a full insight having been obtained of the law, we
derive from it a progressive insight into the necessity and generation
of the phenomena of which it is the law. Suppose a disease in ques-
tion, which appeared always accompanied with certain symptoms in
certain stages, and with some one or more symptoms in all stages —
say deranged digestion, capricious alternation of vivacity and languor,
headache, dilated pupil, diminished sensibility to light, &c. — Neither
the men who selected the one constant symptom, nor he who enu-
merated all the symptoms, would give the scientific definition talem
scilicet, quali scientia fit vel datur, but the man who at once named
and defined the disease hydrocephalus, producing pressure on the
brain. For it is the essence of a scientific definition to be causative,
not by introduction of imaginary somewhats, natural. or supernatural,
under the name of causes, but by announcing the law of action in the
particular case, in subordination to the common law of which all the
phenomena are modifications or results.

Now in the definition on which, as the representative of a whole
class, we are now animadverting, a single effect is given as constituting
the cause. • For nutrition by digestion is certainly necessary to life,
only under certain circumstances, but that life is previously necessary
to digestion is absolutely certain under all circumstances. Besides,
what other phenomenon of Life would the conception of assimilation,
per se, or as it exists in the lowest order of animals, involve or ex-
plain ? How, for instance, does it include sensation, locomotion, or
habit ? or if the two former should be taken as distinct from life, toto
genere, and supervenient to it, we then ask what conception is given
of vital assimilation as contra-distinguished from that of the nucleus
of a crystal ?

Lastly, this definition confounds the Law of Life, or the primary
and universal form of vital agency, with the conception, Animals.
For the kind, it substitutes the representative of its degrees and mod-
ifications. But the first and most important office of science, physical,
or physiological, is to contemplate the power in kind, abstracted from
the degree. The ideas of caloric, whether as substance or property,
and the conception of latent heat, the heat in ice, &c., that excite the
wonder or the laughter of the vulgar, though susceptible of the most

878 APPENDIX C.

important practical applications, are the result of this abstraction ;
while the only purpose to which a definition like the preceding could
become subservient, would be in supplying a nomenclature with the
character of the most common species of a genus — its genus generalis-
simum, and even this would be useless in the present instance, inas-
much as it presupposes the knowledge of the things characterized.

The third class, and far superior to the two former, selects some
property characteristic of all living bodies, not merely found in all
animals alike, but existing equally in all parts of all living things,
both animals and plants. Such, for instance, is the definition of Life,
as consisting in anti-putrescence, or the power of resisting putrefac-
tion. Like all the others, however, even this confines the idea of Life
to those degrees or concentrations of it, which manifest themselves
in organized beings, or rather in those the organization of which is
apparent to us. Consequently, it substitutes an abstract term, or
generalization of effects, for the idea, or superior form of causative
agency. At best, it describes the vis mice by one only of its many
influences. It is however, as we have said before, preferable to the
former, because it is not, as they are, altogether unfruitful, inasmuch
as it attests, less equivocally than any other sign, the presence or
absence of that degree of the vis vitce which is the necessary condition
of organic or self-renewing power. It throws no light, however, on
the law or principle of action ; it does not increase our insight into
the other phenomena; it presents to us no inclusive form, out of
which the other forms may be developed, and finally, its defect as a
definition may be detected by generalizing it into a higher formula, as
a power which, during its continuance, resists or subordinates hetero-
geneous and adverse powers. Now this holds equally true of chemical
relatively to the mechanical powers ; and really affirms no more of
Life than may be equally affirmed of every form of being, namely,
that it tends to preserve itself, and resists, to a certain extent, what-
ever is incompatible with the laws that constitute its particular state
for the time being. For it is not true only of the great divisions or
classes into which we have found it expedient to distinguish, while
we generalize, the powers acting in nature, as into intellectual, vital,
chemical, mechanical; but it holds equally true of the degrees, or
species of each of these genera relatively to each other: as in the
decomposition of the alkalies by heat, or the galvanic spark. Like
the combining power of Life, the copula here resists for awhile the
attempts to dissolve it, and then yields, to reappear in new phe-
nomena.

It is a wonderful property of the human mind, that when once a
momentum has been given to it in a fresh direction, it pursues the
new path with obstinate perseverance, in all conceivable bearings, to
its utmost extremes. And by the startling consequences which arise

APPENDIX C. 879

jut of these extremes, it is first awakened to its error, and either
recalled to some former track, or receives some fresh impulse, which
it follows with the same eagerness, and admits to the same monopoly.
Thus in the 13th century the first science which roused the intellects
of men from the torpor of barbarism, was, as in all countries ever has
been, and ever must be the case, the science of Metaphysics and
Ontology. We first se%k what can be found at home, and what
wonder if truths, that appeared to reveal the secret depths of our own
souls, should take possession of the whole mind, and all truths appear
trivial which could not either be evolved out of similar principles, by
the same process, or at least brought under the same forms of thought,
by perceived or imagined analogies ? And so it was. For more than
a century men continued to invoke the oracle of their own spirits, not
only concerning its own forms and modes of being, but likewise con-
cerning the laws of external, nature. All attempts at philosophical
explication were commenced by a mere effort of the understanding,
as the power of abstraction ; or by the imagination, transferring its
own experiences to every object presented from without. By the
former, a class of phenomena were in the first place abstracted, and
fixed in some general term : of course this could designate only the
impressions made by the outward objects, and so far, therefore, having
been thus metamorphosed, they were effects of these objects; but
then made to supply the place of their own causes, under the name
of occult qualities. Thus the properties peculiar to gold, were ab-
stracted from those it possessed in common with other bodies, and
then 'generalized in the term Aureity : and the inquirer was instructed
that the Essence of Gold, or the cause which constituted the peculiar
modification of matter called gold, was the power of aureity. By the
latter, i. e. by the imagination, thought and will were superadded to
the occult quality, and every form of nature had its appropriate Spirit,
to be controlled or conciliated by an appropriate ceremonial. This
was entitled its SUBSTANTIAL FORM. Thus, physic became a sort of
dull poetry, and the art of medicine (for physiology could scarcely be
said to exist) was a system of magic, blended with traditional empiri-
cism. Thus the forms of thought proceeded to act in their own
emptiness, with no attempt to fill or substantiate them by the infor-
mation of the senses, and all the branches of science formed so many
sections of logic and metaphysics. And so it continued, even to the
time that the Reformation sounded the second trumpet, and the
authority of the schools sank with that of the hierarchy, under the
intellectual courage and activity which this great revolution had in-
spired. Power, once awakened", cannot rest in one object. All the
sciences partook of the new influences. The world of experimental
philosophy was soon mapped out for posterity by the comprehensive
and enterprising genius of Bacon, and the laws explained by which

880 APPENDIX C.

experiment could be dignified into experience.* But no sooner was
the impulse given, than the same propensity was made manifest of
looking at all things in the one point of view which chanced to be of
predominant attraction. Our Gilbert, a man of genuine philosophical
genius, had no sooner multiplied the facts of magnetism, and extended
our knowledge concerning the property of magnetic bodies, but all
things in heaven, and earth, and in the wafers beneath the earth,
were resolved into magnetic influences.

Shortly after a new light was struck by Harriott and Descartes,
with their contemporaries, or immediate predecessors, and the resto-
ration of ancient geometry, aided by the modern invention of algebra,
placed the science of mechanism on the philosophic throne, How
widely this domination spread, an oT how long it continued, if, indeed,
even now. it can be said to have abdicated its pretensions, the reader
need not be reminded. The sublime discoveries of Newton, and,
together with these, his not less fruitful than wonderful application,
of the higher mathesis to the movements of the celestial bodies, and
to the laws of light, gave almost a religious sanction to the corpuscu-
lar system and mechanical theory. It became synonymous with
philosophy itself. It was the sole portal at which truth was per-
mitted to enter. The human body was treated of as an hydraulic
machine, the operations *of medicine were solved, and alas! even
directed by reference partly to gravitation and the laws of motion,
and partly by chemistry, which itself, however, as far as its theory
was concerned, was but a branch of mechanics working exclusively
by imaginary wedges, angles, and spheres. Should the reader chance
to put his hand on the ' Principles of Philosophy,' by La Forge, an
immediate disciple of Descartes, he may see the phenomena of sleep
solved in a copper-plate engraving, with all the figures into which
the globules of the blood shaped themselves, and the results demon-
strated by mathematical calculations. In short, from the time of
Kejjlerf to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only
all things in External nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and
organization, and even of thejntellect and moral being, were conjured
^ within the magic circle of mathematical formulae. And now a new
light was struck by the discovery of electricity, and, in every sense
of the word, both playful and serious, both for good and for evil, it
may be affirmed to have electrified the whole frame of natural phi-
losophy. Close on its heels followed the momentous discovery of
the principal gases by Scheele and Priestley, the composition of water

* Experiment, as an organ of reason, not less distinguished from the blind or dreaming
industry of the alchemists, than it was successfully opposed to the bairen subtleties of the
•cb(io)rnen.

t Whoso own mind, however, was not comprehended in the vortex; where Keple?
ftrred it wus in the other extreme.

APPENDIX G. 381

by Cavendish, and the doctrine of latent heat by Black. Tie scientific
world was prepared for a new dynasty ; accordingly, as soon as La-
voisier had reduced the infinite variety of chemical phenomena to the
actions, reactions, and interchanges of a few elementary substances,
or at least excited the expectation that this would speedily be effected,
the hope shot up, almost instantly, into full faith, that it had been
effected. Henceforward the new path, thus brilliantly opened, be-
came the common road to all departments of knowledge : and, to thia
moment, it has been pursued with an eagerness and almost epidemic
enthusiasm which, scarcely less than its political revolutions, charac-
terize the spirit of the age. Many and inauspicious have been the
invasions and inroads of this new conqueror into the rightful territo-
ries of other sciences; and strange alterations have been made in less
harmless points than those of terminology, in homage to an art unset-
tled, in the very ferment of imperfect discoveries, and either without
a theory, or with a theory maintained only by composition and com-
promise. 'Yet this very circumstance has favored its encroachments,
by the gratifications which its novelty affords to our curiosity, and
by the keener interest and higher excitement which an unsettled and
revolutionary state is sure to inspire. He who supposes that science
possesses an immunity from such influences knows little of human
nature. How, otherwise, could men of strong minds and sound judg-
ments have attempted to penetrate by the clue of chemical experi-
ment, the secret recesses, the sacred adyta of organic life, without
being aware that chemistry must needs be at its extreme limits, when
it has approached the threshold of a higher power? Its own trans-
gressions, however, and the failure of its enterprises will become the
means of defining its absolute boundary, and we shall have to guard
against the opposite error of rejecting its aid altogether as analogy,
because we have repelled its ambitious claims to an identity with the
vital powers.

Previously to the submitting my own ideas on the subject of life,
and the powers into which it resolves itself, or rather in which it is
manifested to us, I have hazarded this apparent digression from the
anxiety to preclude certain nupicion^ which the subject itself is so
fitted to awaken, and while I anticipate the charges, to plead in an-
swer to each a full and unequivocal — not guilty !

In the first place, therefore, I distinctly disclaim all intention of
explaining life into an occult quality ; and retort the charge on those
who can satisfy themselves with defining it as the peculiar power by
which death is resisted.

Secondly. Convinced — by revelation, by the consenting authority
of all countries, and of all ages, by the imperative voice of my own
conscience, "nd by that wide chasm between man and the noblest

882 APPENDIX C.

animals o£-tbe brute creation, which no perceivable or conceivable
difference of organization is sufficient to overbridge — that I have a
rational and responsible soul, I think far too reverentially of the same
to degrade it into an hypothesis, and cannot be blind to the contra-
diction I must incur, if I assign that soul which I believe to constitute
the peculiar nature of man as the cause of functions and properties,
which man possesses in common with the oyster and the mushroom.*
Thirdly, while I disclaim the error of Stahl in deriving the phe-
nomena of life from the unconscious actions of the rational soul, I
repel with still greater earnestness the assertion and even the suppo-
sition that the functions are the offspring of the structure, and "Lifet
the result of organization," connected with it as effect with cause.
Nay, the position seems to me little less strange, than as if a man
should say, that building with all the included handicraft, of plaster-
ing, sawing, planing, &c. were the offspring of the house; and that
the mason and carpenter were the result of a suite of chambers, with
the passages and staircases that lead to them. To make A the off-
spring of B, when the very existence of B as B presupposes the exist-
ence of A, is preposterous in the literal sense of the word, and a con-
summate instance of the Jiysteron proteron in logic. But if I reject
the organ as the cause of that, of which it is the organ, though I
might admit it among the conditions of its actual functions ; for the
same reason I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical,
electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential thinness they
may be treble distilled, and (as it were) super-substantiated. With
these, I abjure likewise all chemical agencies, compositions, and de-
compositions, were it only that as stimulants they suppose a stimula-
bility sui generis, which is but another paraphrase for life. Or if they
are themselves at once both the excitant and the excitability. I miss
the connecting link between this imaginary ether and the visible body,
•which then becomes no otherwise distinguished from inanimate mat-
ter, than by its juxtaposition in mere space, with an heterogeneous
inmate, the cycle of whose actions revolves within itself. Besides
which I should think that I was confounding metaphors and realities
most absurdly, if I imagined that I had a greater insight into the
meaning and possibility of a living alcohol, than of a living quicksil-
ver. In short, visible SURFACE and power of any kind, much more the
power of life, are ideas which the very forms of the human under

* But still less would I avail myself of its acknowledged inappropriateness to tho pur-
poses of physiology, in order to cast a self-complacent sneer on the soul itself, and on al'
who believe in its existence. First, because in my opinion if would be impertinent; sec
ondly, because it would be imprudent and injurious to the character of my profession ;
and, la-stly, because it would argue an irreverence to the feelings of mankind, which I
deem scarcely compatible with a good he;irt, and a degree of arrogance and presmnpiioc
wliich I have never found, except in company wilh a corrupt taste and a shallow capacity.

t Vide Lawrence's Lecture.

APPENDIX C. 888

Branding make it impossible to identify. But whethei the powers
which manifest themselves to us under certain conditions in the forms
of electricity, or chemical attraction, have any analogy to the power
which manifests itself in growth and organization, is altogether a dif-
ferent question, and demands altogether a different chain of reason-
ing : if it be indeed a tree of knowledge, it will be known by its
fruits, and these will depend not on the mere assertion, but on the
inductions by which the position is supported, and by the additions
which it makes to our insight into the nature of the facts it is meant
to illustrate.

To account for Life is one thing : to explain Life another. In the
first we are supposed to state something prior (if not in time, yet in
the order of Nature) to the thing accounted for, as the ground or
cause of that thing, or (which comprises the meaning and force of
both words) as_ its sufficient cause, qua et facit, et subest. AndJ;o
this, in the question of Life, I know no possible answer, but GOD.
To account for a thing is to see into the principle of its possibility, and
from that principle to evolve its being. Thus the mathematician de-
monstrates the truths of geometry by constructing them. It is an
admirable remark of Joh. Bapt. a Vico, in a Tract published at Naples,
3710,* "Geometrica ide6 demonstramus, quia facimus ; physica si
demonstrare possimus, faceremus. Metaphysici veri claritas eadein
ac lucis, quam non nisi per opaca cognoscimus ; nain non lucem sed
lucidas res videmus. Physica sunt opaca, nempe formata et finita,
in quibus Metaphysici veri lumen videmus." The reasoner who
assigns structure or organization as the antecedent of Life, who names
the former a cause, and the latter its effect, he it is who pretends to
account for life. Now Euclid would, with great right, demand of
such a philosopher to malce Life ; in the same sense, I mean, in which
Euclid makes an Icosaedron, or a figure of twenty sides, namely, in
the understanding or by an intellectual construction. An argument
which, of itself, is sufficient to prove the untenable nature of Mate-
rialism.

To explain a power, on the other hand, is (the power itself being
assumed, though not comprehended, ut qui datur, non intelligitur) to
\mfold or spread it out: ex implicito planum facere. In the present
instance, such an explanation would consist in the reduction of the
idea of Life to jtsjsimplest and most comprehensive form or mode of
ajjtkm^.. that is, ^o solne characteristic instinct or tendency, evident in
all its manifestations, an i involved in the idea itself. This assumed
as existing in kind, it will be required to present an ascending series
of corresponding phenomena as involved in, procc'edingj^ww, and so
far therefore explained 5y, the supposition of its progressive in ten-

* Joh. Bapt. fi Vico, Neapol. Re?, eloq. Professor,, de aniiq'iissima Itallorum sap''iitU
ex lingiu; Laiina. originibus eruendi: libri Ires. Neap., J710.

884 APPENDIX C.

sity and of the gradual enlargement of its sphere, the necessity of
which again must be contained in the idea of the tendency itself. In
other words, the tendency having been given in kind, it is required
to render the phenomena intelligible as its different degrees and modi-
fications. Still more perfect will the explanation be, should the ne-
cessity of this progression and of these ascending gradations be con-
tained in the assumed idea of life, as thus defined by the general form
and common purport of all its various tendencies. This done, we
have only to add the conditions common to all its phenomena, ana
those appropriate to each place and rank, in the scale of ascent, and
then proceed to determine the primary and constitutive forms, i. 6.
the elementary powers in which this tendency realizes itself under
different degrees and conditions.*.

* The object I have proposed lo myself, and wherein its distinction exists, may be
thus illustrated. A complex machine is presented to the common view, the moving
power of which is hidden. Of those who are studying and examining it, one man fixes
Lis aUaniion on some ono application of that power, on certain effects produced by that
pailicular appl'cation, and on a certain part of the structure evidently appropriated '<>
the {adduction o! these effects, neither the one or other of which he had discovered in \
neighborlcg machine, which he at the same time asserts to be quite distinct from the
former, and to be moved by a power altogether different, though many of the works and
operations &re, he admits, common to both machines. In this supposed peculiarity be
places the essential character of the former machine, and defines it by the presence 04'
that which is, or which he supposes to be, absent in the latter. Supposing that a stranger
to both were about to visit the two machines, this peculiarity would be so far useful as
that it might enable him to distinguish the ono from the other, and thus to look in the
proper place for whatever else he had heard remarkable concerning either ; not that he
<,r lus informant would understand the machine any better or otherwise, than the com-
mon character of a whole class in the nomenclature of botany would enable a person to
understand all, or any one of the plants contained in that class. But if, on the other
hand, the machine in question were such as no man was a stranger to, if even the sup-
posed peculiarity, either by its effects, or by the construction of that portion of the works
which produced them, were equally well known to all men, in this case we" can conceive
no use at all of such a definition ; for at the best it could only be admitted as a definition
for the purposes of nomenclature, which never adds to knowledge, although it may oiler
facilitate its communication. But in this instance it would be nomenclature misplaced
and without an object. Such appears to me to be the case with all those definitions
?rh?ch place the essence of Life in nutrition, contractility, &.Q. As the second instance,
I Trill take the inventor and maker of the machine himself, who knows its moving power,
or perhaps himself constitutes it, who is, as it were, the soul of tho work, and in whoso
mind all its parts, with all their bearings and relations, had pre-existed long before the
machine itself had been put together. In him therefore there would reside, what it would
be presumption to attempt to acquire, or to pretend to communicate, the most perfect in-
sight, not only of the machine itself, and of all its various operations, but of its ultimate
principle and its essential causes. The mysterious ground, the efficient causes of vitality,
an.l whether different lives differ absolutely or only in degree, He alone can know who
not only said, " Let the earth bring forth the living creature, the beast of the earth after
his kind, and it was so ;" but who said, 'cLet us make man in our image, who himself
breathed into his nostrils the breach of Life, and man became a living soul."

Tbe third case which I would apply to my own attempt would be that of the inquirer,
who, {resuming to know nothing of the power that moves the whole machine, takes
those parts of it which are presented to his view, seeks to reduce its various movements
to ao lev ftivl simple laws of motion as possible, and out of their separate and conjoint
action proceeds to explain and appropriate the structure and relative position of Iho

APPENDIX C. 385

What is Life? Were such a question proposed, we should be
kenipted to answer, what is not Life that really is ? Our reason con-
vinces us that the quantities of things, taken abstractedly as qua.ntityj
exist only in the relations they bear to the percipient ; in plainer
words, they exist only in our minds, ut quorum esse est percipi. For
if the definite quantities have a ground, and therefore a reality, in
th<5 external world, and independent of the mind that perceives them,
this ground is ipso facto a quality ; the very etymon of this word
showing that a quality, not taken in its own nature but in relation to
another thing, is to be defined causa sufficiens, entia, de quibus loqui-
mur; esse talia, qualia sunt. Either the quantities perceived exist
only in the perception, or they have likewise a real existence. In the
former case, the quality (the word is here used in an active sense)
that determines them belongs to Life, per ipsam hypothesin ; and iji
the other case, since by the agreement of all parties Life may exist
in ocher forms than those of consciousness, or even of sensibility, tho
onus probandi falls on those who assert of any quality that it is not
Life. For the analogy of all that we know is clearly in favor of the
contrary supposition, and if a man would analyze the meaning of his
own words, and carefully distinguish his perceptions and sensations
from the external cause exciting them, and at the same time from the
quantity or superficies under which that cause is acting, he would
instantly find himself, if we mistake not, involuntarily identifying the
ideas of Quality and Life.(^Life, it is admitted on all hands, does not
necessarily imply consciousness or sensibility ; and we, for our parts,
can not see that the irritability which metals manifest to galvanism,
can be more remote from that which may be supposed to exist in
the tribe of lichens, or in the helvellse, pe2izee, &c., than the latter is
from the phenomena of excitability in the human body, whatever
name it may be called by, or in whatever way it may modify itself.*/'
That the mere act of growth does not constitute the idea of Life, or/
the^-absence of that act exclude it, we have a proof in every egg be-
fore ifis placed under the hen, and in every grain of corn before it is
put into the soil. All that could be deduced by fair reasoning would
amount to this only, that the life of metals, as the power which affects
and determines their comparative cohesion, ductility, &c., was yet
kwer on the scale than the Life which produces the first attempts of

works. In obedience to the canon,—" Principia non esse multiplicanda prater summsin
necessitatem cui suffragamur non ideo quia causalem in mundo unitatera vel ratione vel
experientia perspiciamus, sed illam ipsam indaguraus impulsu intellect^, qui tantundem
sibi in explicotaine phsenomenorum profecisse videtur quantum ab eodem principle ad
plurima rationata descendere ipsi concessum est."

* The arborescent forms on a frosty morning, to be seen on tho window and pave-
ment, must have some relation to the more perfect forms developed in tho vegetable
world.

VOL. I R

386 APPENDIX C.

organization, in the almost shapeless tremella, or in such fungi as
grow in the dark recesses of the mine.

If it were asked, to what purpose or with what view we should gen-
eralize the idea of Life thus broadly, I should not hesitate to reply
that, were there no other use conceivable, there would be some ad-
vantage in merely destroying an arbitrary assumption in natural phi-
losophy, and in reminding the physiologists that they could not hear
the life of metals asserted with a more contemptuous surprise than
they themselves incur from the vulgar, when they speak of the Life
in mould or mucor. But this is not the case. This wider view not
only precludes a groundless assumption, it likewise fills up the arbi-
trary chasm between physics and physiology, and justifies us in using
the former as means of insight into the latter, which would be con-
trary to all sound rules of ratiocination if the powers working in the
objects of the two sciences were absolutely and essentially diverse.
For as to abstract the idea of kind from that of degrees, which are
alone designated in the language of common use, is the first and in-
dispensable step in philosophy, so are we the better enabled to form
a notion of the kind, the lower the degree and the simpler the form is
in which it appears to us. "We study the complex in the simple ; and
only from the intuition of the lower can we safely proceed to the
intellection of the higher degrees. The only danger lies in the leap-
ing from low to high, with the neglect of the intervening gradations.
But the same error would introduce discord into the gamut, et db
abusu contra mum non valet consequentia. That these degrees will
themselves bring forth secondary kinds sufficiently distinct for all the
purposes of science, and even for common sense, will be seen in the
course of this inquisition : for this is one proof of the essenjjaLgiiality
of nature, that she does not ascendaslmks in a suspended chain, but
asjthe sterjsjn_a_ladder ; or rather she at one and the same time as-
cends as by a climax, and expands as tbe^ concentric circles on the
lake from the point to which the stone in its fall had_gJY£n the first
impulse. AtTall events, a contemptuous rejection of this mode of
reasoning would come with an ill grace from a medical philosopher,
who cannot combine any three phenomena of health or of disease
without the assumption of powers, which he is compelled to deduce
without being able to demonstrate ; nay, even of material substances
as the 'vehicles of these powers, which he can never expect to exhibit
before the senses.

Fromjthe preceding it should appear, that the mos^cornprehensive
formula to which life is reducible, would be that of the internal copula
of bodies, QJi fit' we may venture to borrow a phrase from the Platonic
school) the jwicer which djsclpses itself from within as a principle ojf
unity in the man]/. But that there is a physiognomy in words, which,
without reference to their fitness or necessity, make unfavorable as

APPENDIX C. 887

well as favorable impressions, and that every unusual term in an ab-
struse research incurs the risk of being denominated jargon, I should
at the same time have borrowed a scholastic term, and defined life
absolutely ) .a3_the..jjijnciple of .unity in multeity * as far as the former,
the unity to wit, is produced db intra ; but eminently (sensu eminenti),
Ijjefine life as the principle of indimduation* or the power which
miites a givenjffl into a tofofejfrat is presupposed by all its parts.
The link that combines the two, and acts throughout both, will, of
course, be defined by the tendency to mdivlcluation. Thus, from its
utmost latency, in which life is one with the elementary powers of
mechanism, that is, with the powers of mechanism considered as
qualitative and actually synthetic, to its highest manifestation (in
which, as the vis vitce vivida, or life as life, it subordinates and modi-
fies these powers, becoming contra-distinguished from mechanism,*
ab extra, under the form of organization), there is an ascending series
of intermediate classes, and of analogous gradations in each class. To \
a reflecting mind, indeed, the very fact that the powers peculiar to '
life in living animals include cohesion, elasticity, &c. (or, in the words
of a late publication, " that living matter exhibits these physical prop-
erties,"f) would demonstrate that, in the truth of things, they are ho-
mogeneous, and that both the classes are but degrees and different
dignities of one and the same tendency. Tor the latter are not sub-
jected to the former as a lever, or walking-stick to the muscles ; the
more intense the life is, the less does elasticity, for instance, appear
as elasticity. It sinks down into the nearest approach to its physical
form by a series of degrees from the contraction and elongation of
the irritable muscle to the physical hardness of the insensitive nail. (
The_Jower_rjowers are assimilated, not merely employed, and assimP""
lation presupposes the homogeneous nature of the thing assimilated ;
else it is a miracle, only not the same as that of a creation, because
it would imply that additional and equal miracle of annihilation. In
short, all the impossibilities which the acutest of the reformed Di •
vines have detected in the hypothesis of transubstantiation would
apply, totidem verbis et sylldbis, to that of assimilation, if the objects
and the agents were really heterogeneous. Unless, therefore, a thing
can exhibit properties which do not belong to it, the very admission
that living matter exhibits physical properties, includes the further
admission, that those physical or dead properties are themseves vital

* Thus we may say that whatever is organized from without, is a product of mechan
ism ; whatever is mechanized from within, is a production of organization.

t " The matter that surrounds us is divided into two greaf, classes, living and dead ; the
latter is governed by physical laws, such as attraction, gravitation, chemical affinity; and
it exhibits physical properties, such as cohesion, elasticity, divisibility, &c. Living mat-
ter also exhibits these properties, and is subject, in great measure, to physical laws. But
living bodies are endowed moreover with a set of properties altogether different from
these, and contrasting with them very remarkably." (Vide Lawrence's Lectures, p. 121.

388 APPENDIX C.

in^ essence^, really distinct but in appearance only different ; or in ab-
solute contrast with each other.

In all cases that which, abstractly taken, is the definition of the
kind, will, when applied absolutely, or in its fullest sense, be the defi
nition of the highest degree of that kind. If life, in general, be defined
vis db Intra, cujus proprium est coadunare plura in rem unlearn,
quantum est res unica ; the unity will be more intense in proportion
as it constitutes each particular thing a whole of itself; and yet more,
again, in proportion to thejmmber and interdependence of the parts,
which it unites as a whole. But a whole composed, ab intra, of dif-
ferent parts, so far interdependent that each is reciprocally means and
| end, is an individual, and the individuality is most intense where the
/ greatest dependence of the parts on the whole is combined with the
« greatest dependence of the whole on its parts ; the first (namely, the
dependence of the parts on the whole) being absolute ; the second
(namely, the dependence of the whole on its parts) being proportional
to the importance of the relation which the parts have to the whole,
that is, as their action extends more or less beyond themselves. For
this spirit of the whole is most expressed in that part which derives
its importance as an End from its importance as a Mean, relatively
to all the parts under the same copula.

Finally, of individuals, the livingjpower will be most intense in that
individual which^as a whole., has the greatest number of integral
parts presupposed in it; when, moreover, these integral parts, to-
gether wTtn a proportiojiaHncrease. of their interdependence, as parts,
havo themselves mosiLtha character of wholes in the sphere occupied
by them. A mathematical point, line, or "surface, is an ens rationis,
for it expresses an intellectual act; but a physical atom is ensfictitium,
which may be made subservient, as ciphers are in arithmetic, to the
purposes of hypothetical construction, per regulam falsi ; but trans-
ferred to Nature, it is in the strictest sense an absurd quantity ; for
extension, and consequently divisibility, orjmutteity* (for space can
not be divided), is the indispensable condition, under which alone
any thing can appear to us, or even be thought of, as a thing. But if
it should be replied, that the elementary particles are atoms not pos-
itively, but by such a hardness communicated to them as is relatively
invincible, I should remind the asserter that temeraria citatio super-
naturalium est pulmnar intellectus pigri, and that he who requires
me to believe a miracle of his own dreaming, must first work a inira-

* Much against my will I repeat this scholastic term, multeity, but I have sought in
vain for an unequivocal word of a less repulsive character, that would convey the notion
lii a positive and not comparative sense in kind, as opposed to the unum et simplex, not
In degree, as contracted with the few. We can conceive no reason that can be adduced
In justification of the word caloric, as invented to distinguish the external cause of the
sensation heat, which would not equally authorize the introduction of a technical term
in this instance.

APPENDIX C. 38$

cle to convince me that he had dreamt by inspiration. Add too, the
gross inconsistency of resorting to an immaterial influence in order to
complete a system of materialism, by the exclusion of all modes of
existence which the theorist cannot in imagination, at least, finger
and peep ail Each of the preceding gradations, as above defined,
might be represented as they exist, and are realized in Nature. But
each would require a work for itself, co-extensive with the science of
metals, and that of fossils (both as geologically applied) ; of crystalli-
zation; and of vegetable and animal physiology, in all its distinct
branches. The nature of the present essay scarcely permits the space
sufficient to illustrate our meaning. The proof of its probability (for
to that only can we arrive by so partial an application of the hypoth-
esis), is to be found in its powers of solving the particular class of
phenomena, that form the subjects of the present inquisition, more
satisfactorily and profitably than has been done, or even attempted
before.

Exclusively, therefore, for the purposes of illustration, I would take
as an instance of the first step, the metals, those, namely, that are
capable of permanent reduction. For, by the established laws of
nomenclature, the others (as sodium, potassium, calcium, silicium,
&c.) would be entitled to a class of their own, under the name of
bases. It is long since the chemists have despaired of decomposing
this class of bodies. They still remain, one and all, as elements or
simple bodies, though, on the principles of the'corpuscularian philos-
ophy, nothing can be more improbable than that they really are such ;
and no reason has or can be assigned on the grounds of that system,
why, in no one instance, the contrary has not been proved. But this
is at once explained, if we assume them as the simplest form of unity,
namely, the unity of powers and properties. For these, it is evident,
may be endlessly modified, but can never be decomposed. If I were
asked by a philosopher who had previously extended the attribute of
Life to the Byssus speciosa, and even to the crustaceous matter, or
outward bones of a lobster, &c., whether the ingot of gold expressed
life, I should answer without hesitation, as the ingot of gold assuredly
not, for its form is accidental and ab extra. It may be added to or
detracted from without in the least affecting the nature, state, or
properties in the specific matter of which the ingot consists. But as
gold, as that special union of absolute and of relative gravity, ductility,
and hardness, which, wherever they are found, constitute gold, 1
should answer no less fearlessly, in the affirmative. But I should
further add, that of the two counteracting tendencies _pf nature,
namely, t,hn.t.__nf dp.ta^mp.uL from the universal life, which universality
is represented to us by^gray^tation, and that of attachment or reduc-
tkmjnto it, this and the other noble metals represented the units in
which the latter tendency, namely, that of identity with the life of

890 APPENDIX C.

nature, subsisted in the greatest overbalance over the former. It is
the foriii_of unity with the least degree of tendency to individuajUiQii.

Rising in the ascent, I should take, as illustrative of the second sFep,
the various forms of crystals as a union, not of powers only, but of
parts, and as the simplest forms of composition in the next narrowest
sphere of affinity. Here the form, or apparent quantity, is manifestly
the result of the quality, and the chemist himself not seldom admits
them as infallible characters of the substances united in the whole of
a given crystal.

In the fjisLstep, we had Life, as the mere unity of pojmers ; in the
second, we have the simplest forms of jrttality evolved. The third
step is presented to us in those vast formations, the tracing of which
generically would form the science of Geology, or its history in the
strict sense of the word, even as their description and diagnostics
constitute its preliminaries.

Their claim to this rank I cannot here even attempt to support. It

will be sufficient to explain my reason for having assigned it to them,

/ by the avowal, that I regard them in a twofold point of view: 1st, as

\ the residue and product of vegetable and animal life ; 2d, as manifest-

, ing the tendencies of the Life of Nature to vegetation or animalization.

i And this process I believe — in one instance by the peat morasses of

the northern, and in the other instance by the coral banks of the

— southern hemisphere — to be still connected with the present order of

V vegetable and animal Life, which constitutes the fourth and last step

in these wide and comprehensive divisions.

In the lowest forms of the vegetable and animal world we perceive

totality dawning into individuation, while in man, as the highest of

the class, the individuality is not only perfected in its corporeal sense,

but begins a new series beyond the appropriate limits of physiology.

The tendency to individuation, more or less obscure, more or less

obvious, constitutes the common character of all classes, as far as 'they

maintain for themselves a distinction from the universal life of the

• planet ; while the degrees, both of intensity and extension, to which

i this tendency is realized, form the species, and their ranks in the great

scale of ascent and expansion.

In the treatment of a subject so vast and complex, within the limits
prescribed for an essay like the present, where it is impossible not to
say either too much or too little (and too much because too little), an
author is entitled to make large claims on the candor of his judges.
Many things he must express inaccurately, not from ignorance or
oversight, but because the more precise expression would have in-
/ volved the necessity of a further explanation, and this another, even
to the first elements of the science. This is an inconvenience which
presses on the analytic method, on however large a scale it may be
conducted, compared with the synthetic; and it must bear with a

A.PPENDIX C. 391

tenfold weight in the present instance, where we are not permitted to
avail ourselves of its usual advantages as a counterbalance to its in-
herent delects. I shall have done all that I dared propose to myself,
or that can be justly demanded of me by others, if I have succeeded
in conveying a sufficiently clear, though indistinct and inadequate
notion, so as of its many results to render intelligible that one which
I am to apply to my particular subject, not as a truth already demon-
strated, but as an hypothesis, which pretends to no higher merit than
that of explaining the particular class of phenomena to which it is
applied, and ask no other reward than a presumption in favor of the
general system of which it affirms itself to be a dependent though in-
tegral part. ( Bj_Li£e_i-ex£rywhere ineaiL-lhe^true Idea Qf Life, or
that niosJLgfiiiexalJ'orm under which Life manifests itself to us, which
includes all its other forms. This I have stated to be the tendency to
individuation, and the degrees or intensities of Life to consist in the
progressive realization of this tendency. The power which is ac-
knowledged to exist, wherever the realization is found, must subsist
wherever the tendency is manifested. The power which comes forth
and stirs abroad in the bird, must be latent in the egg. I have shown,
moreover, that this tendency to individuate can not be conceived
without the opposite tendency to connect, even as the centrifugal
power supposes the centripetal, or as the two opposite poles constitute
each other, and are the constituent acts of one and the same power
in the magnet. We might say that the life of the magnet subsists in
their union, but that it lives (acts or manifests itself) in their strife.
Again, if the tendency be at once to individuate and to connect, to
detach, but so as either to retain or to reproduce attachment, the
individuation itself must be a tendency to the ultimate production of
the highest and most comprehensive individuality. This must be the
onft great end of Nature, her ultimata production of the highest and
most comprehensive individuality. This must be the one great end
nf "KTfl.t.nrfl, Tier ultimate object, or by whatever other word we may
designate that something which bears to a final cause the same rela-
tion that Nature herself bears to the Supreme Intelligence.

According to the plan I have prescribed for this inquisition, we are
now to seek for the highest law, or most general form, under which
this tendency acts, and then to pursue the same process with this, as
we have already done with the tendency itself, namely, having stated
the law in its highest abstraction, to present it in the different forms
in which it appears and reappears in higher and higher dignities. I
restate the question. The tendency having been ascertained, what is
its most general law? I answer — polarity, or the essential dualism
of .Nature, arising out of its productive unity, and still tending to re-
affirm it, either as equilibrium, indifference, or identity. In ita pro-

392 APPENDIX C.

ductive power, of which the product is the only measure, consists its
incompatibility with mathematical calculus. For the full applicability
of an abstract science ceases, the moment reality begins.* Life, then,
we consider as the copula, or the unity of thesis and antithesis, posi-
tion and counterposition,- — Life itself being the positive of both ; as,
on the other hand, the two counterpoints are the necessary conditions
of the manifestations of Life. These, by the same necessity, unite in
a synthesis ; which again, by the law of dualism, essential to all actual
existence, expands, or produces itself, from the point into the line, in
order again to converge, as the initiation of the same productive pro-
cess in some intenser form of reality. Thus, in the identity of the
two counter-powers, Life sw&sists ; in their strife it consists : and in
their reconciliation it at once dies and is born again into a new form,
either falling back into the life of the whole, or starting anew in the
process of individuation.

Whence shall we take our beginning? From Space, istud litigium

* For abstractions are the conditions and only subject of all abstract sciences. Thua
the theorist (vide Dalton's Theory), who reduces the chemical process to the positions of
atoms, would doubtless thereby render chemistry calculable, but that he commences by
destroying the chemical process itself, and substitutes for it a mote dance of abstractions ;
for even the powers which he appears to leave real, those of attraction and repulsion, he
immediately unrealizes by representing them as diverse and separable properties. We
can abstract the quantities and the quantitative motion from masses, passing over or
leaving for other sciences the question of what constitutes the masses, and thus apply not
to the masses themselves, but to the abstractions therefrom,— the laws of geometry and
universal arithmetic. And where the quantities are the infallible signs of real powers,
and our chief concern with the masses is as SIGNS, sciences may be founded thereon of
the highest use and dignity. Such, for instance, is the sublime science of astronomy,
having for its objects the vast masses which " God placed in the firmament of the heaven
to be for signs and for seasons, for days and years." For the whole doctrine of physics
may be reduced to three great divisions: First, quantitative motion, which is proportioned
to the quantity of matter exclusively. This is the science of weight or statics. Secondly,
relative motion, as communicated to bodies externally by impact. This is the science of
mechanics. Thirdly, qualitative motion, or that which is accordant to properties of matter,
And this is chemistry. Now it is evident that the first two sciences presuppose that which
forms the exclusive object of the third, namely, quality ; for all quantity in nature is
either itself derived, or at least derives its powers from some quality, as that of weight,
specific cohesion, hardness, &c. ; and therefore the attempt to reduce to the distances or
impacts of atoms, under the assumptions of two powers, which are themselves declared
to be no more than mere general terms for those quantities of motion and impact (the
atom itself being a fiction formed by abstraction, and in truth a third occult quality for
the purpose of explaining hardness and density), amounts to an attempt to destroy chem-
istry itself, and at the same time to exclude the sole reality and only positive contents of
the very science into which that of chemistry is to be degraded. Now what qualities are
to chemistry, productiveness is to the science of Life ; and this being excluded, physiology
oTf zoonomy would sink into chemistry, chemistry by the same process into mechanics,
while mechanics themselves would lose the substantial principle, which, bending the
lower extreme towards its apex, produces the organic circle of the sciences, and elevates
them all into different arcs or stations of the one absolute science of Life.

This explanation, which in appearance only is a digression, was indispensably requisite
to prevent the idea of polarity, which has been given as the universal law of Life, from
being misunderstood as a mere refinement on those mechanical systems ol physiology
which it has been my main object to explode.

APPENDIX C. 893

philosop\orum, which leaves the mind equally dissatisfied, whether
we deny or assert its real existence. To make it wholly ideal, would
be at the same time to idealize all phenomena, and to undermine the
very conception of an external world. To make it real, would be
to assert the existence of something, with the properties of nothing.
It would far transcend the height to which a physiologist must con-
fine his flights, should we attempt to reconcile this apparent contra-
diction. It is the duty and the privilege of the theologian to demon-
strate, that space is the ideal organ by which the soul of man perceives
the omnipresence of the Supreme Keality, as distinct from the works,
whicMn him movej and live, and have their being ; while the equal
mystery of Time bears the same relation to his Eternity \ or what J8
fully equivalent, hja TTr^y -

Physiologically contemplated, Nature begins, proceeds, and ends in
a contradiction ; for the moment of absolute solution would be that
in which Nature would cease to be Nature, i. e. a scheme of ever-
varying relations ; and physiology, in the ambitious attempt to solve
phenomena into absolute realities, would itself become a mere web
of verbal abstractions.

But it is in strict connection with our subject, that we should make
the universal FORMS as well as the not less universal LAW of Life, clear
and intelligible in the example of Time and Space, these being both
the first specification of the principle, and ever after its indispensable
symbols. First, a single act of self-inquiry will show the impossibility
of distinctly conceiving the one without some involution of the other ;
either time expressed in space, in the form of the mathematical line,
or space within time, as in the circle. But to form the first concep-
tion of a real Uhing, we state both as one in the idea, duration. The
formula is : A^B+B=A=*A=:A, or the oneness of space and time, is
the predicate of all real being.

But as little can we conceive the oneness, except as the mid-point
producing itself on each side ; that is, manifesting itself on two op-
posite poles. Thus, from identity we derive duality, and from both
together we obtain polarity, synthesis, indifference, predominance.
The line is Time + Space, under the predominance of Time : Surface
is Space + Time, under the predominance of Space, while Line + Sur-
face as the synthesis of units, is the circle in the first dignity; to the
sphere in the second ; and to the globe in the third. In short, neither
can the antagonists appear but as two forces of one power, nor can.
the power be conceived by us but as the equatorial point of the two
counteracting forces ; of which the JiypomocJilion of the lever is as
good an illustration as any thing can be that is thought of mechanically
only, and exclusively of life. To make it adequate, we must substi-
tute the idea of positive production for that of rest, or mere neutral-
ization. To the fancy alone it is the null-point, or zero, but to the

R*

394 APPENDIX 0.

reason it is the punctum saliens, and the power itself in its eminence.
Even in these, the most abstract and universal forms of &11 thought
and perception — even in the ideas of time and space, we slip under
them, as it were, a substratum; for we can not think of them but as
far as they are co-inherent, and therefore as reciprocally the measures
of each other. Nor, again, can we finish the process without having
the idea of motion as its immediate product. Thus we say, that time
has one dimension, and imagine it to ourselves as a line. But the
line we have already proved to be the productive synthesis of time,
with space under the predominance of time. If we exclude space by
an abstract assumption, the time remains as a spaceless point, and
represents the concentered power of unity and active negation, i. e.
retraction, determination, and limit, ab intra. But if we assume the
time as excluded, the line vanishes, and we leave space dimensionless,
an indistinguishable ALL, and therefore the representative of abso-
lute weakness and formlessness, but, for that very reason, of infinite
capacity and formability.

We have been thus full and express on this subject, because these
simple ideas of time, space, and motion ; of length, breadth, and
depth, are not only the simplest and universal, but the necessary sym-
bols of all philosophic construction. They will be found the primary
factors and elementary forms of every calculus and of every diagram
in the algebra and geometry of a scientific physiology. Accordingly,
we shall recognize the same forms under other names ; but at each
return more specific and intense; and the whole process repeated
with ascending gradations of reality, exempli gratia : Time -f space
=motion; Tm + space = line + breadth = depth ; depth + motion
= force; i/+ B/=D/; LD/+ BD/ = attraction -f repulsion = grav-
itation ; and so on, even till they pass into outward phenomena, and
form the intermediate link between productive powers and fixed
products in light, heat, and electricity. If we pass to the construction
of matter, we find it as the product, or tertium aliud, of antagonist
powers of repulsion and attraction. Eemove these powers, and the
conception of matter vanishes into space — conceive repulsion only,
and you have the same result. For infinite repulsion, uncounteracted
and alone, is tantamount to infinite, dimensionless diffusion, and this
again to infinite weakness ; viz., to space. Conceive attraction alone,
and as an infinite contraction, its product amounts to the absolute
point, viz., to time. Conceive the synthesis of both, and you have
matter as a fluxional antecedent, which, in the very act of formation,
passes into body by its gravity, and yet in all bodies it still remains
as their mass, which, being exclusively calculable under the law of
gravitation, gives rise, as we before observed, to the science of
statics, most improperly called celestial mechanics.

In strict Consistence with the same philosophy which, instead of

APPENDIX C. 395

considering the powers of bodies to have been miraculously stuck
into a prepare-! and pre-existing matter, as pins into a pin-cushion,
conceives the powers as the productive factors, and the body or phe-
nomenon as the fact, product, or fixture; we revert again to poten-
tiated length in the power of magnetism ; to surface in the power of
electricity; and to the synthesis of both, or potentiated depth, in
constructive, that is, chemical affinity. But while the two factors are
as poles to each other, each factor has likewise its own poles, and
thus in the simple cross —

jtd-

-CE

mm
M

AE M being the magnetic line, with //its northern pole, or pole ot
attraction ; and m m its south, or pole of repulsion, E E one of the
lines that spring from each point of M M, with its east, or pole of con-
traction, and d its west, or pole of diffluence and expansion — we have
presented to us the universal quadruplicity, or four elemental forms
of power; in the endless proportions and modifications of which, the
innumerable offspring of all-bearing Nature consist. Wisely docile to
the suggestions of Nature herself, the ancients significantly expressed
these forces under the names of earth, water, air, and fire ; not mean-
ing any tangible or visible substance so generalized, but the powers
predominant, and, as it were, the living basis of each, which no chemi-
cal decomposition can ever present to the senses, were it only that
their interpenetration and co-inherence first constitutes them sensible,
and is the condition and meaning of a — thing. Already our more
truly philosophical naturalists (Ritter, for instance) have begun to
generalize the four great elements of chemical nomenclature, carbon,
azote, oxygen, and hydrogen: the two former as the positive and
negative pole of the magnetic axis, or as the power of fixity and
mobility ; and the two latter as the opposite poles, or plus and minus
states of cosmical electricity, as the powers of contraction and dila-
tation, or of comburence and combustibility. These powers are to
each other as longitude to latitude, and the poles of each relatively
as north to south, and as east to west. For surely the reader will

396 APPENDIX C.

find no distrust in a system only because Nature, ever consistent with
herself, presents us everywhere with harmonious and accordant sym-
bols of her consistent doctrines. Nothing would be more easy than,
by the ordinary principles of sound logic and common sense, to demon-
strate the impossibility and expose the absurdity of the corpuscularian
or mechanic system, or than to prove the untenable nature of any inter-
mediate system. But wa can not force any man into an insight or in-
tuitive possession of the true philosophy, because we can not give Jiim
abstraction, intellectual intuition, or constructive imagination ; because
we can not organize ibr him an eye that can see, an ear that can listen
to, or a heart that can feel, the harmonies of JN ature, or recognize in
her endless forms, the thousandfold realization of those simple and
malesticlaws. which vet_injheir absoluteness can be discovered only

\ in theecesses or PIS owjspirit^not by that.

ers_have been ossified by the continual reaction and

s mind, ancwhp is a

risoner to his~own eye and its reflex, the passive fancy ! — not by him

in whom an unbroken familiarity with the organic world, as if it were
jinechanical, with the sensitive, but as if it were insensate, has engen-
jdered the coarse and hard spirit of a sorcerer. The former is unable,
the latter unwilling, to master the absolute prerequisites. There is
neither hope nor occasion for him " to cudgel his brains about it, he
has no feeling of the business." If he do not see the necessity from
without, if he have not learned the possibility from within, of inter-
penetration, of total intussusception, of the existence of all in each as
the condition of Nature's unity and substantiality, and of the latency
under the predominance of some one power, wherein subsists her life
and its endless variety, as he must be, by habitual slavery to the eye,
or its reflex, the passive fancy, under the influences of the corpuscu-
larian philosophy, he has so paralyzed his imaginative powers as to be
unable— or by that hardness and heart-hardening spirit of contempt,
which is sure to result from a perpetual commune with the lifeless,
he has so far debased his inward being — as to be unwilling to compre-
hend the pre-requisite, he must be content, while standing thus at the
threshold of philosophy, to receive the results, though he can not be
admitted to the deliberation — in other words, to act upon rules which
he is incapable of understanding as LAWS, and to reap the harvest
with the sharpened iron for which others have delved for him in the
mine.

It is not improbable that there may exist, and even be discovered,
higher forms and more akin to Life than those of magnetism, elec-
tricity, and constructive (or chemical) affinity appear to be, even in
their finest known influences. It is not improbable that we may
hereafter find ourselves justified in revoking certain of the latter, and
unappropriating them to a yet unnamed triplicity ; or that, being thu?

APPENDIX C. 397

assisted, we may obtain a qualitative instead of a quantitative insight
into vegetable animation, as distinct from animal, and that of the
insect world from both. But in the present state of science, the
magnetic, electric, and chemical powers are the last and highest of
inorganic nature. These, therefore, we assume as presenting them-
selves again to us, in their next metamorphosis, as reproduction (i. e.
growth and identity of the whole, amid the change or flux of all the
parts), irritability and sensibility ; reproduction corresponding to mag-
netism, irritability tr electricity, and sensibility to constructive chemi-
cal affinity.

But before we proceed further, it behooves us to answer the objec-
tions contained in the following passage, or withdraw ourselves in
time from the bitter contempt in which it would involve us. Acting
under such a necessity, we need not apologize for the length of the
quotation.

. 1. "If," says Mr. Lawrence, "the properties of living matter are
to be explained in this way, why should not we adopt the same plan
with physical properties, and account for gravitation, or chemical
affinity, by the supposition of appropriate subtle fluids ? Why does
the irritability of a muscle need such an explanation, if explanation
it can be called, more than the elective attraction of a salt ?"

2. " To make the matter more intelligible, this vital principle is
compared to magnetism, to electricity, and to galvanism ; or it is
roundly stated to be oxygen. 'Tis like a camel, or like a whale, or
like what you please."

3. " You have only to grant that the phenomena of the sciences*
just alluded to depend on extremely fine and invisible fluids, super'
added to the matters in which they are exhibited, and to allow further
that Life, and magnetic, galvanic, and electric phenomena correspond
perfectly ; the existence of a subtile matter of Life will then be a
very probable inference."

4. "On this illustration you will naturally remark, that the exist-
ence of the magnetic, electric, and galvanic fluids, which is offered
as a proof of the existence of a vital fluid, is as much a matter of
doubt as that of the vital fluid itself."

5. " It is singular, also, that the vital principle should be like both
magnetism and electricity, when these two are not like each other."

6. " It would have been interesting to have had this illustration
prosecuted a little further. We should have been pleased to learn
whether the human body is more like a loadstone, a voltaic pile, or an
electrical machine ; whether the organs are to be regarded as Leyden
jars, magnetic needles, or batteries."

7. " The truth is, there is no resemblance, no analogy, between
Electricity and Life ; the two orders of phenomena are completely

398 APPENDIX C.

distinct; they are incommensurable. Electricity illustrates life no
more than life illustrates electricity."*

To avoid unnecessary description, I shall refer to the passages by
the numbers affixed to them, for that purpose, in the margin.

In reply to No. 1, I ask whether, in the nature of the mind, illus-
tration and explanation must not of necessity proceed from the lower
to the higher? or whether a boy is to be taught his addition, sub-
traction, multiplication, and division, by the highest branches of alge-
braic analysis? Is there any better way of systematic teaching, than
that of illustrating each new step, or having each new step illustrated
to him by its identity in kind with the step the next below it ? though
it be the only mode in which this objection can be answered, yet it
seems affronting to remind the objector, of rules so simple as that the
complex must even be illustrated by the more simple, or the less
scrutible by that which is more subject to our examination.

In reply to No. 2, 1 first refer to the author's eulogy on Mr. Hunter,
p. 163, in which he is justly extolled for having "surveyed the whole
system of organized beings, from plants to man:" of course, there-
fore, as a system; and therefore under some one common law. Now
in the very same sense, and no other, than that in which the writer
himself by implication compares himself as a man to the dermestes
typographicus, or thefucus scorpioides, do I compare the principle of
Life to magnetism, electricity, and constructive affinity, — or rather to
that power to which the two former are the thesis and antithesis, the
latter the synthesis. But if to compare involve the sense of its ety-
mon, and involve the sense of parity, I utterly deny that I do at all
compare them ; and, in truth, in no conceivable sense of the word is
it applicable, any more than a geometrician can be affirmed to com-
pare a polygon to a point, because he generates the line out of the
point. The writer attributes to a philosophy essentially vital the bar-
renness of the mechanic system, with which alone his imagination

* I apprehend that by men of a certain school it would be deemed no demerit, even
though they should never have condescended to look into any system of Aristotelian
logic. It is enough for these gentlemen that they are experimentalists ! Let it not, how-
ever, be supposed that they make more experiments than their neighbors, who consider
'induction as a means and not an end ; or have stronger motives for making them, unless
it can be believed that Tycho Briihe must have been urged to repeat his sweeps of the
heavens with greater accuracy and industry than Herschel, for no better reason than that
the former flourished before the theory of gravitation was perfected. No, but they have
the honor of being mere experimentalists! If, however, we may not refer to logic, we
may to common sense and common experience. It is not improbable, however, that they
have both read and studied a book of hypothetical psychology on the assumptions of the
crudest materialism, stolen too without acknowledgment from our David Hartley's Essay
on Man, which is well known under the whimsical name of Condillac's Logic. But, as
Mr. Brand has lately observed, " The French are a queer people," and we should not be
at all surprised to hear of a book of fresh importation from Paris, on determinate pro-
portions in chemistry, announced by the author in his title-page as a new and improved
•lysiem either of arithmetic or geometry.

APPENDIX C. 399

has been familiarized, and which, as hath been justly observed by a
contemporary writer, is contra-distinguished from the former princi-
pally in this respect; that demanding for every mode and act of ex-
istence real or possible visibility, it knows only of distance and near-
ness, composition (or rather compaction) and decomposition, in short,
the relations of unproductive particles to each other; so that in every
instance the result is the exact sum of the component qualities, as in
arithmetical addition. This is the philosophy of Death, and only of
a dead nature can it hold good. In Life, and in the view of a vital
philosophy, the two component counter-powers actually interpenetrate
each other, and generate a higher third, including both the former,
" ita tamen ut sit alia et major."

As a complete answer to No. 3, 1 refer the reader to many passages
in the preceding and following pages, in which, on far higher and
more demonstrative grounds than the mechanic system can furnish, I
have exposed the unmeaniugness and absurdity of these finer fluids,
as applied even to electricity itself; unless, indeed, they are assumed
as its product. But in addition I beg leave to remind the author,
that it is incomparably more agreeable to all experience to originate
the formative process in the fluid, whether fine or gross, than in cor-
noreal atoms, in which we are not only deserted by all experience,
out contradicted by the primary conception of body itself.

Equally inapplicable is No. 4 : and of No. 5 I can only repeat, first,
that I do not make Life like magnetism, or like electricity ; that the
difference between magnetism and electricity, and the powers illus-
trated by them, is an essential part of my system, but that the ani-
mal Life of man is the identity of all three. To whatever other sys-
tem this objection may apply, it is utterly irrelevant to that which I
have here propounded : though from the narrow limits prescribed to me,
it has been propounded with an inadequacy painful to my own feelings.

The ridicule in No. 6 might be easily retorted ; but as it could
prove nothing, I will leave it where I found it, in a page where nothing
is proved.

A similar remark might be sufficient for the bold and blank asser-
tion (No. 7) with which the extract concludes ; but that I feel some
curiosity to discover what meaning the author attaches to the term
analogy. Analogy implies a difference in sort, and not merely in
degree; and it is the sameness of the end, with the difference of the
means, which constitutes analogy. No one would say the lungs of a
man were analogous to the lungs of a monkey, but any one might
say that the gills of fish and the spiracula of insects are analogous to
lungs. Now if there be any philosophers who have asserted that
electricity as electricity is the same as Life, for that reason they can
not be analogous to each other ; and as no man in his senses, philoso-
pher or not, is capable of imagining that the lightning which destroys

400 APPENDIX C.

a sheep, was a means to the same end with the principle of its organ-
ization ; for this reason, too, the two powers can not be represented
as analogous. Indeed I know of no system in which the word, as
thus applied, would admit of an endurable meaning, but that which
teaches us, that a mass of marrow in the skull is analogous to the
rational soul, which Plato and Bacon, equally with the " poor Indian,"
believe themselves to have received from the Supreme Reason.

It would be blindness not to see, or affectation to pretend not to
see, the work at which these sarcasms were levelled. The author of
that work is abundantly able to defend his own opinions ; yet I
should be ambitious to address Mm at the close of the contest in the
lines of the great Roman poet:

"Et nos tela, Pater, ferrumque baud debile dextrS,
Spargimus, et nostro seqxiitur, do vulnere sanguis."

In Mr. Abernethy's Lecture on the Theory of Life, it is impossible
not to see a presentiment of a great truth. He has, if I may so express
myself, caught it in the breeze: and we seem to hear the first glad
opening and shout with which he springs forward to the pursuit.
But it is equally evident that the prey has not been followed through
its doublings and windings, or driven out from its brakes and covers
into full and open view. Many of the least tenable phrases may be
fairly interpreted as illustrations, rather than precise exponents of
the author's meaning ; at least, while they remain as a mere sugges-
tion or annunciation of his ideas, and till he has expanded them over
a larger sphere, it would be unjust to infer the contrary. But it is
not with men, however strongly their professional merits may entitle
them to reverence, that my concern is at present. If the opinions
here supported are the same with those of Mr. Abernethy, I rejoice
in his authority. If they are different, I shall wait with an anxious
interest for an exposition of that difference.

Having reasserted that I no more confound magnetism with elec-
tricity, or the chemical process, than the mathematician confounds
length with breadth, or either with depth ; I think it sufficient to add
that there are two views of the subject, the former of which I do not
believe attributable to any philosopher, while both are alike disclaimed
by me as forming any part of my views. The first is that which is
supposed to consider electricity identical with life, as it subsists in
organized bodies. The other considers electricity as everywhere
present, and penetrating all bodies under the image of a subtile fluid
or substance, which, in Mr. Abernethy's inquiry, I regard as little
more than a mere diagram on his slate, for the purpose of fixing the
attention on the intellectual conception, or as a possible product (in
which case electricity must be a composite power), or at worst, as
words quce Jiumani incuria fudit. This which, injnaniinate Nature,

APPENDIX 0. 4(a

k manifested nmg-as magnetism^ now as electricity, and_now_jia
chemical agency, is supposed, on entering an organized body, to con-
stitute its vital principle, something in the same manner as the steam
becomes the mechanic power of the steam-engine, m consequence of
its~co repression by the_steam-engine ; or as the breeze that murmurs
indi^tinguisTiablyln ttie^forest~becornes the element^ the substratum,
of melody in thejjlolian harp, and of consummate harmony in the
organ. Kow~tEis~hypothesisis as directly opposed to my view as
supervention is to evolution, inasmuch as I hold the organized body
itself, in all its marvellous contoxture^ tojbe the PBODTTCT and repre-
sentant of the power which is here supposed to have supervened to
it! So far from admitting a transfer, I do not admit it even in elec-
tricity itself, or in the phenomena universally called electrical ; among
other points I ground my explanation of remote sympathy on the
directly contrary supposition.

But my opinions will be best explained by a rapid exemplification
in the processes of Nature, from the first rudiments of individualized
life in the lowest classes of its two great poles, the vegetable and ani-
mal creation, to its crown and consummation in the human body;
thus illustrating at once the unceasing polarity of life, as the form of
its process, and its tendency to progressive individuation as the law of
its direction.

Among the conceptions, of the mere ideal character of which the ;
philosopher is well aware, and which yet become necessary from the '.
necessity of assuming a beginning; the original fluidity of the planet
is the chief. Under some form or other it is expressed or implied in
every system of cosmogony and even of geology, from Moses to
Thales, and from Thales to Werner. This assumption originates in
the same law of mind that gave rise to the prima materia of the
Peripatetic school. In order to comprehend and explain the forms of
things, we must imagine a state antecedent to form. A chaos of hete-
rogeneous substances, such as our Milton has described, is not only an
impossible state (for this may be equally true of every other attempt),
but it is palpably impossible. It presupposes, moreover, the thing it
is intended to solve ; and makes that an effect which had been called
in as the explanatory cause. The requisite and only serviceable fiction,
therefore, is the representation of CHAOS as one vast homogeneous
drop ! In this sense it may be even justified, as an appropriate symbol
of the great fundamental truth that all things spring from, and subsist
in, the endless strife between indifference and difference. The whole \
history of Nature is comprised in the specification of the transitional
states from the one to the other. The symbol only is fictitious : the
thing signified is not only grounded in truth — it is the law and actu-
ating principle of all other truths, whether physical or intellectual.

Now, by magnetism in its widest sense, I mean the first and sim-

102 APPENDIX C.

plest differential act of Mature, as the power wlich works in length^
and produces the first distinction between the indistinguishable by
the generation of a line. Eelatively, therefore, to fluidity, that is, to
matter, the parts of which can not be distinguished from each other
by figure, magnetism is the power of fixity ; but, relatively to itself,
magnetism, like every other power in Nature, is designated by its op-
posite poles, and must be represented as the magnetic axis, the northern
pole of which signifies rest, attraction, fixity, coherence, or hardness;
the element of EARTH in the nomenclature of observation and the OAK
BONIO principle in that of experiment ; while the southern pole, as its
antithesis, represents mobility, repulsion, incoherence, and fusibility ;
the element of air in the nomenclature of observation (that is, of
Nature as it appears to us when unquestioned by art), and azote or
nitrogen in the nomenclature of experiment (that is, of Nature in the
state so beautifully allegorized in the Homeric fable of Proteus bound
down, and forced to answer by Utyssee, after having been pursued
through all his metamorphoses into his ultimate form*). That nothing !
real does or can exist corresponding to either pole exclusively, is in- »
volved in the very definition of a THING as the synthesis of opposing
energies. That_a_thing &T is owing to the co-inherence therein of any
two4^Qwers; but that it is that particular thing^arises from the pro-
portions inwhich these powers are c^-pr^sentreither as^ predominance
or as_reciprocaj_geutralization ; but under the modification ofjwofo] d
power to which magnetism itself is, as the thesis tojts antithesis.

The correspondent, in the wrorld of the senses, to the magnetic
axis, exists in the series of metals. The metalleity, as the universal
base of the planet, is a necessary deduction from the principles of the
Bystem. From the infusible, though evaporable, diamond to nitrogen
itself, the metallic nature of which has been long suspected by chem-
ists, though still under the mistaken notion of an oxyde, we trace a
series of metals from the maximum of coherence to positive fluidity,
in all ordinary temperatures, we mean. Though, in point of fact, cold
itself is but a superinduction of the one pole, or, what amounts to
the same thing, the subtraction of the other, under the modifications
afore described ; and therefore are the metals indecomposible, because
they are themselves the decompositions of the metallic axis, in all its
degrees of longitude and latitude. Thus the substance of the planet
from which it is, is metallic ; while that which is ever becoming, is in
like manner produced through the perpetual modification of the first
by the opposite forces of the second ; that is, by the principle of con-
traction and difference at the eastern extreme — the element of fire, or

* Such is the interpretation given by Lord Bacon. To which of the two gigantic in-
tellects, the poet's or philosophic commentator's, the allegory belongs, I shall not pre-
sume to decide. Its extraordinary beauty and appropriateness remains the same in either

v APPENDIX C. 403

the oxygen of the chemists ;**and by the elementary power of dilata-
tion, or universality at its western extreme — the vSug iv vdari of th<*
ancients, and the hydrogen of the laboratory.

It has been before noticed that the progress of Nature is more truly
represented by the ladder, than by the suspended chain, and that she
expands as by concentric circles. This is, indeed, involved in the very
conception of individuation, whether it be applied to the different
species or to the individuals. In what manner the evident interspace
is reconciled with the equally evident continuity of the life of Nature,
is a problem that can be solved by those minds alone, which have in-
tuitively learnt that the whole actual life of Nature originates in the
existence, and consists in the perpetual reconciliation, and as perpet-
ual resurgency of the primary contradiction, of which universal po-
larity is the result and the exponent. From the first moment of the
differential impulse — (the primeval chemical epoch of the Wernerian
school)— when Nature, by the tranquil deposition of crystals, pre-
pared, as it were, the fulcrum of her after-efforts, from this, her first,
and in part irrevocable, self-contraction, we find, in each ensuing pro-
duction, more and more tendency to independent existence in the in-
creasing multitude of strata, and in the relics of the lowest orders,
first of vegetable and then of animal life. In the schistous forma-
tions, which we must here assume as in great measure the residue ot
vegetable creations, that have sunk back into the universal life, and in
the later predominant calcareous masses, which are the caput mortuum
of animalized existence, we ascend from the laws of attraction and
repulsion, as united in gravity, to magnetism, electricity, and construc-
tive power, till we arrive at the point representative of a new and
far higher intensity. For from this point flow, as in opposite direc-
tions., the two streams of vegetation and animalization, the former
characterized by the predominance of magnetism in its highest power,
as reproduction, the other by electricity intensified- — as iiTJtabilityTjn
liEe manner. The vegetable and animal world are the thesis and an- \
tithesis, or the opposite poles of organic life. We are not, therefore,
to seek in either for analogies to the other, but for counterpoints. On
the same account, the nearer the common source, the greater the
likeness ; the farther the remove, the greater the opposition. At the
extreme limits of inorganic Nature, we may detect a dim and obscure
prophecy of her ensuing process in the twigs and rude semblances
that occur in crystallization of some of the copper ores, and in the
well-known arbor Diana, and arbor Veneris. These latter Ritter has
already al)ly explained by considering the oblique branches and their
acute angles as the result of magnetic repulsion, from the presentation
of the same poles, &c. In the CORALS and CONCHTLIA, the whole act
and purpose of their existence seems to be that of connecting the ani-
mal with the inorganic world by the perpetual formation of calcareous

4:04 APPENDIX C.

earth. For the corals are nothing but polypi, which are character-
ized by still passing away and dissolving into the earth, which they
had previously excreted, as if they were the first feeble effort of de-
tachment. The power seems to step forward from out the inorganic
world only to fall back again upon it, still, however, under a new
form, and under the predominance of the more active pole of mag-
netism. The product must have the same connection, therefore, with
O/zote, which, the first rudiments of vegetation have with carbon : the
ne and the other exist not for their own sakes, but in order to pro-
duce the conditions best fitted for the production of higher forms. In
the polypi, corallines, &c., individuality is in its first dawn ; there is
the same shape in them all, and a multitude of animals form, as it
were, a common animal. And as the individuals run into each other,
so do the different genera,L_They likewise pass into each othejLSQ in-
distinffuishablyT that, t.ha wbnlft order forms a very network.

As the corals approach the conchylia, this interramification de-
creases. The tubipora forms the transition to the serpula ; for the
characteristic of all zoophytes, namely, the star shape of their open-
ings, here disappears, and the tubiporse are distinguished from the
rest of the corals by this very circumstance, that the hollow calcareous
pipes are placed side by side, without interbranching. In the serpula
they have already become separate. How feeble this attempt is to
individuate, is most clearly shown in their mode of generation. Not-
withstanding the report of Professor Pallas, it still remains doubtful
whether there exists any actual copulation among the polypi. The
mere existence of a polypus suffices for its endless multiplication.
They may be indefinitely propagated by cuttings, so languid is the
power of individuation, so boundless that of reproduction. But the
delicate jelly dissolves, as lightly as it was formed, into its OWE
product, and it is probable that the Polynesia, as a future continent,
will be the gigantic monument, not so much of their life, as of the
life of Nature in them. Here we may observe the first instance of
that general law, according to which Nature still assimilates her ex-
treme points. In these, her first and feeblest attempts to animalize
organization, it is latent, because undeveloped, and merely potential ;
while, in the human brain, the last and most consummate of her com-
bined energies, it is again lost or disguised in the subtlety* and mul-
tiplicity of its evolution.

In the class immediately above (Mollusca) we find the individuals
separate, a more determinate form, and in the higher species, the ru-
diment of nerves, as the first scarce distinguishable impress and expo-
nent of sensibility ; still, however, the vegetative reproduction is the
predominant form ; and even the nerves " which float in the same

* The Anatomica Demonstrations of the Brain, by Dr. Spurzheim, which I have sewn
presented to me the most satisfactory proof of this.

APPENDIX C. 405

cavity with the other viscera," are probably subservient to it, and
extend their power in the increased intensity of the reproductive
force. Still prevails the transitional state from the fluid to the solid ;
and the jelly, that rudiment in which all animals, even the noblest,
have their commencement; constitutes the whole sphere of these ru-
dimental animals.

In the snail and muscle, the residuum of the coral reappears, but re-
fined and ennobled into a part of the animal. The whole class is char-
acterized by the separation of the fluid from the solid. On the one
side, a gelatinous semi-fluid ; on the other side, an entirely inorganic,
though often a most exquisitely mechanized, calcareous excretion!
Animalization in general is, we know, contra-distinguished from ve-
getables in general by the predominance of azote in the chemical
composition, and of irritability in the organic process. But in this
and the foregoing classes, as being still near the common equator, or
the punctum indifferentise, the carbonic principle still asserts its
claims, and the force of reproduction struggles with that of irritability.
In the unreconciled strife of these two forces consists the character
of the Vermes, which appear to be the preparatory step for the next \
class. Hence the difficulties which have embarrassed the naturalists, I I
who adopt the Linnaean classification, in their endeavors to discover' /
determinate characters of distinction between the vermes and the
insecta.

But no sooner have we passed the borders, than endless variety of
form and the bold display of instincts announce, that Nature has suc-
ceeded. She has created the intermediate link between the vegeta-
ble world, as the product of the reproductive or magnetic power, and
the animal as the exponent of sensibility. Those that live and are
nourished, on the bodies of other animals, are comparatively few, with
little diversity of shape, and almost all of the same natural family.
These we may pass by as exceptions. But the insect world, taken at
large, appears as an intenser life, that has struggled itself loose and
become emancipated from vegetation, Florae liberti, et libertini ! If
for the sake of a moment's relaxation we might indulge a Darwinian I
flight, though at the risk of provoking a smile, (not, I hope, a frown,) \
from sober judgment, we might imagine the life of insects an apothe-
osis of the petals, stamina, and nectaries, round which they flutter, or
of the stems and pedicles, to which they adhere. Beyond and above'
this step, Nature seems to act with a sort of free agency, and to have
formedthe_classes from choice and bountyT Had 'she "proceeded no
further^ yet tlie~whoTe^vegetable, together with the whole insect cre-
ation, would have formed within themselves an entire and independ-
ent system of Life. All plants have insects, most commonly each
genus of vegetables its appropriate genera of insects ; and so recipro-
cally interdependent and necessary to each other are they, that we

406 APPENDIX C.

can almost as little think of vegetation -without insects, as of insects
without vegetation. Though probably the mere likeness of shape, in
the papilio, and the papilionaceous plants, suggested the idea of the
former, as the latter in a state of detachment, to our late poetical and
theoretical brother ; yet a something, that approaches to a graver
plausibility, is given to this fancy of a flying blossom ; when we re-
flect how many plants depend upon insects for their fructification.
Be it remembered, too, that with few and very obscure exceptions,
the irritable power and an analogon of voluntary motion first dawn
on us in the vegetable world, in the stamina, and anthers, at the pe-
riod of impregnation. Then, as if Nature had been encouraged by
the success of the first experiment, both the one and the other appear
as predominance and general character. THE INSECT WOKLD is THE

EXPONENT OF IREITAB1LITY, AS THE VEGETABLE IS OF EEPKODTICTION.

With the ascent in power, the intensity of individuation keeps even
pace ; and from this we may explain all the characteristic distinctions
between this class and that of the vermes. The almost homogeneous
jelly of the animalcula infusoria became, by a vital oxydation, granu-
lar in the polypi. This granulation formed itself into distinct organs
in the mollusca} ; while for the snails, which are the next step, the an-
imalized lime, that seemed the sole final cause of the life of the polypi,
assumes all the characters of an ulterior purpose. Refined into a horn-
like substance, it becomes to the snails the substitute of an organ, and
their outward skeleton. Yet how much more manifold and definite,
the organization of an insect, than that of the preceding class, the
patient researches of Swammerdam and Lyonnet have evinced, to the
delight and admiration of every reflecting mind.

In the insect, for the first time, we find the distinct commencement
of a separation between the exponents of sensibility and those of irri-
tability ; i. e. between the nervous and the muscular system. The lat-
ter, however, asserts its pre-eminence throughout. The prodigal pro-
vision of organs for the purposes of respiration, and the marvellous
powers which numerous tribes of insects possess, of accommodating
the most corrupted airs, for a longer or shorter period, to the support
of their excitability, would of itself lead us to presume, that here the
vis irritdbilis is the reigning dynasty. There is here no confluence
of nerves into one reservoir, as evidence of the independent existence
of sensibility as sensibility ; — and therefore no counterpoise of a vas-
cular system, as a distinct exponent of the irritable pole. The wholo
muscularity of these animals is the organ of irritability ; and the
nerves themselves are probably feeders of the motory power. The
petty rills of sensibility flow into the full expanse of irritability, and
there lose themselves. The nerves appertaining to the senses, on. the
other hand, are indistinct, and comparatively unimportant. The mul-
titude of immovable eyes appear not so much conductors of light. a«

APPENDIX C. 407

its ultimate recipient. We are almost tempted to believe that they
constitute, rather than subserve, their sensorium.

These eye-facets form the sense of light, rather than organs of
seeing. Their almost paradoxical number at least, and the singu-
larity of their forms, render it probable that they impel the animal
by some modification of its irritability, herein likewise containing a
striking analogy to the known influence of light on plants, than as ex-
citements of sensibility. The sense that is nearest akin to irritability,
and which alone resides in the muscular system, is that of touch, or
feeling. This, therefore, is the first sense that emerges. Being con-
fined to absolute contact, it occupies the lowest rank ; but for that
very reason it is the ground of all the other senses, which act, ac-
cording to the ratio of their ascent, at still increasing distances, and
become more and more ideal, from the tentacles of the polypus, to
the human eye ; which latter might be defined the outward organ of
the identity, or at least of the indifference, of the real and ideal.
But as the calcareous residuum of the lowest class approaches to the
nature of horn in the snail, so 'the cumbrous shell of the snail has
been transformed into polished and movable plates of defensive armor
in the insect. Thus, too, the same power of progressive individua-
tion articulates the tentacula of the polypus and holothuria into an-
tenna? ; thereby manifesting the full emersion and eminency of irri-
tability as a power which acts in, and gives its own character to, that
of reproduction. The least observant must have noticed the light-
ning-like rapidity with which the insect tribes devour and eliminate
their food, as by an instinctive necessity, and in the least degree for
the purposes of the animal's own growth or enlargement. The same
predominance of irritability, and at the same time a new start in in-
dividuation, is shown in the reproductive power as generation. There
is now a regular projection, db intra ad extra, for which neither sprouts
nor cuttings can any longer be the substitutes. We have not space
for further detail ; but there is one point too strikingly illustrative and
even confirmative of the proposed system, to be omitted altogether.
We mean the curious fact, that the same characteristic tendenc}', ad
extra, which in the males and females of certain insect tribes is realized
in the functions of generation, conception, and parturiency, manifests
and expands itsejf in the sexless individuals (which are always in this
case the great majority of the species), as instincts of art, and in tLe
construction of works completely detached and inorganic ; while the
geometric regularity of these works, which bears an analogy to crys-
tallization, is demonstrably no more than the necessary result of uni-
form action in a compressed multitude.

Again, as the insect world, averaging the whole, comes nearest to
plants (whose very essence is reproduction), in the multitude of their
gorms ; so does it resemble plants in the sufficiency of a single im-

408 APPENDIX C.

pregnation for the evolution of myriads of detached lives. Even BO,
the metamorphoses of insects, from the egg to the maggot and cater-
pillar, and from these, through the nympha and aurelia into the perfect
insect, are but a more individuated and intenser form of a similar
transformation of the plant from the seed-leaflets, or cotyledons,
through the stalk, the leaves, and the calyx, into the perfect flower,
the various colors of which seem made for the reflection of light, as
the antecedent grade to the burnished scales, and scale-like eyes of
the insect. Nevertheless, with all this seeming prodigality of organic
power, the whole tendency is ad extra, and the life of insects, as elec-
tricity in the quadrate, acts chiefly on the superficies of their bodies,
to which we may add the negative proof arising from the absence of
sensibility. It is well known, that the two halves of a divided insect
have continued to perform, or attempt, each their separate functions,
the trunkless head feeding with its accustomed voracity, while the
headless trunk has exhibited its appropriate excitability to the sexual
influence.

The intropulsive force, that sends the ossification inward as to the
centre, is reserved for a yet higher step, and this we find embodied in
the class of fishes. Even here, however, the process still seems im-
perfect, and (as it were) initiatory. The skeleton has left the surface,
indeed, but the bones approach to the nature of gristle. To feel the
truth of this, we need only compare the most perfect bone of a
fish with the thigh-bones of the mammalia, and the distinctness with
which the latter manifest the co-presence of the magnetic power in
its solid parietes, of the electrical in its branching arteries, and of the
third greatest power, viz., the qualitative and interior, in its marrow.
The senses of fish are more distinct than those of insects. Thus, the
intensity of its sense of smell has been placed beyond doubt, and
rises in the extent of its sphere far beyond the irritable sense, or the
feeling, in insects. I say \hzfeeling, not the touch; for the touch
seems, as it were, a supervention to the feeling, a perfection given to
it by the reaction of the higher powers. As the. feeling of the insect,
in subtlety and virtual distance, rises above the solitary sense of
taste* in the mollusca, so does the smell of the fish rise above the
feeling of the insect. In the fish, likewise, the eyes are single and
movable, while it is remarkable that the only insect that possesses this
latter privilege, is an inhabitant of the waters. Finally, here first,
unequivocally, and on a large scale (for I pretend not to control the
freedom, in which the necessity of Nature is rooted, by the precise
limits of a system), — here first, Nature exhibits, in the power of sen-
sibility, the consummation of those vital forms (the nisusformativi)

* The remark on the feeling of the antennae, compared with the touch of man, or even
of the half-reasoning elephant, is yet more applicable to the taste, which in the seg«laic
•nous animal* might, perhaps not inappropriately, be entitled the gustric sense.

APPENDIX C. 409

the adequate and the sole measure of which is to be sought for in
their several organic products. But as if a weakness of exhaustion
had attended this advance in the same moment it was made, Nature
seems necessitated to fall back, and re-exert herself on the lower
ground which she had before occupied, that of the vital magnetism,
or the power of reproduction. The intensity of this latter power in
the fishes, is shown both in their voracity and in the number of their
eggs, which we are obliged to calculate by weight, not by tale. There
is an equal intensity both of the immanent and the protective repro-
duction, in which, if we take in the comparative number of individ-
uals in each species, and likewise the different intervals between the
acts, the fish (it is probable) would be found to stand in a similar
relation to the insect, as the insect, in the latter point, stands to the
system of vegetation. Meantime, the fish sinks a step below the insect,
in the mode and circumstances of impregnation. To this we will
venture to add, the predominance of length, as the form of growth in
so large a proportion of the known orders of fishes, and not less of
their rectilineal path of motion. In all other respects, the corres-
pondence combined with the progress in individuation, is striking in
the whole detail. Thus the eye, in addition to its movability, has
besides acquired a saline moisture in its higher development, as ac-
cordant with the life of its element. Add to these the glittering cov-
ering in both, the splendor of the scales in the one answering to the
brilliant plates in the other, — the luminous reservoirs of the fire-flies,
— the phosphorescence and electricity of many fishes, — the same
analoga of moral qualities, in their rapacity, boldness, modes of seizing
their prey by surprise, — their gills, as presenting the intermediate state
between the spiracula of the grade next below, and the lungs of the
step next above, both extremes of which seem combined in the struc-
ture of birds and of their quill-feathers; but above all, the convexity
of the crystalline lens, so much greater than in birds, quadrupeds, and
man, and seeming to collect, in one powerful organ, the hundredfold
microscopic facettes of the insect's light organs ; and it will not be
easy to resist the conviction, that the same power is at work in both,
and reappears under higher auspices. The intention of Nature is re-
peated ; but, as was to have been expected, with two main differences.
First, that in the lower grade the reproductions themselves seem
merged in those of irritability, from the very circumstance that the
latter constitutes no pole, either to the former, or to sensibility. The
force of irritability acts, therefore, in the insect world, in full pre-
dominance ; while the emergence of sensibility in the fish calls forth
the opposite pole of reproduction, as a distinct power, and causes
therefore the irritability to flow, in part, into the power of reproduc-
tion. The second result of this ascent is the direction of the organ-
izing power, ad intra, with the consequent greater simplicity of thf»
VOL. i. S

410 APPENDIX C.

exterior form, and the substitution of condensed and flexible force,
with comparative unity of implements, for that variety of tools,
almost as numerous as the several objects to which they are to be
applied, which arises from, and characterizes the superficial life of
the insect creation. This grade of ascension, however, like the for-
mer, is accompanied by an apparent retrograde movement. For from
this very accession of vital intensity we must account for the absence
in the fishes of till the formative, or rather (if our language will per-
mit it) fubricatixe instincts. How could it be otherwise? These in-
stincts are the surplus and projection of the organizing power in the
direction ad extra, and could not, therefore, have been expected in
the class of animals that represent the first intuitive effort of organ-
ization, and are themselves the product of its first movement in the
direction ad intra. But Nature never loses what she has once learnt,
though in the acquirement of each new power she intermits, or per-
forms less energetically, the act immediately preceding. She often
drops a faculty, but never fails to pick it up again. She may seem
forgetful and absent, but it is only to recollect herself with additional^
as well as recruited vigor, in some after and higher state ; as if the
sleep of powers, as well as of bodies, were the season and condition
of their growth. Accordingly, we find these instincts again, and
with them a wonderful synthesis of fish and insect, as a higher third,
in the feathered inhabitants of the air. Nay, she seems to have gone
yet further back, and having given B + o = Din the birds, so to have
sported with one solitary instance of B + D = A in that curious animal
the dragon, the anatomy of which lias been recently given to the
public by Tiedemann ; from whose work it appears, that this creature
presents itself to us with the wings of the insect, and with the nervous
system, the brain, and the cranium of the bird, in their several rudi-
ments.

The synthesis of fish and insect in the birds, might be illustrated
equally in detail with the former; but it will be sufficient for our
purpose, that as in both the former cases, the insect and the fish, so
here in that of the birds, the powers are under the predominance of
irritability; the sensibility being dormant in the first, awakening in
the second, and awake, but still subordinate, in the third. Of this
my limits confine me to a single presumptive proof, viz., the superi-
ority in strength and courage of the female in the birds of prey. For
herein, indeed, does the difference of the sexes universally consist,
wherever both the forces are developed, that the female is character-
ized by quicker irritability, and the male by deeper sensibility. How
large a stride has been now made by Nature in the progress of individ-
uation, what ornithologist does not know ? From a multitude of in-
stances we select the most impressive, the power of sound, with tho
first rudiments of modulation! That all languages designate the

APPENDIX 17. 411

melody of birds as singing (though according to Blumenbach man
only sings, while birds do but whistle), demonstrates that it has been
felt as, what indeed it is, a tentative and prophetic prelude of some-
thing yet to come. With this conjoin the power and the tendency to
acquire articulation, and to imitate speech; conjoin the building in-
stinct and the migratory, the monogamy of several species, and the
pairing of almost all ; and we shall have collected new instances of
the usage (I dare not say law) according to which Nature lets fall, in
order to resume, and steps backward the furthest, when she means to
leap forwards with the greatest concentration of energy.

For lo! in the next step of ascent the power of sensibility lias as-
sumed her due place and rank : her minority is at an end, and the
complete and universal presence of a nervous system unites absolute! j*,
by instanteity of time what, with the due allowances for the transi-
tional process, had before been either lost in sameness, or perplexed
by multiplicity, or compacted by a finer mechanism. But with this,
all the analogies with which Nature had delighted us in the preceding
step seem lost, and, with the single exception of that more than valu-
able, that estimable philanthropist, the dog, and, perhaps, of the horse
and elephant, the analogies to ourselves, which we can discover in
the quadrupeds or quadrumani, are of our vices, our follies, and our
imperfections. The facts in confirmation of both the propositions are
so numerous and so obvious, the advance of Nature, under the pre-
dominance of the third synthetic power, both in the intensity of life
and in the intenseness and extension of individuality, is so undeniable,
that we may leap forward at once to the highest realization and recon-
ciliation of both her tendencies, that of the most perfect detachment
with the greatest possible union, to that last work, in which Nature
did not assist as handmaid under the eye of her sovereign Master,
who made Man in his own image, by superadding self-consciousness
with self-government, and breathed into him a living soul.

The class of Vermes deposit a calcareous stuff, as if it had torn loose
from the earth a piece of the gross mass which it must still drag about
with it. In the insect class this residuum lias refined itself. In the
fishes and amphibia it is driven back or inward, the organic power
begins to be intuitive, and sensibility appears. In the birds the bones
have become hollow; while, with apparent proportional recess, but,
in truth, by the excitement of the opposite pole, their exterior pre-
sents an actual vegetation. The bones of the mammalia are filled up,
and their coverings have become more simple. Man possesses the
most perfect osseous structure, the least and most insignificant cover-
ing. The whole force of organic power has attained an inward and
centripetal direction. He has the whole world in counterpoint to
him, but he contains an entire world within himself. Now, for the
first time at the apex of the living pyramid, it is Mao and Nature, but

412 APPENDIX C.

Man himscff is a syllepsis, a compendium of Nature — tlio. Mip.rnnn.iM>, j
Naked and helpless cometh man into the world. Such has been the
complaint from eldest time ; but we complain of our chief privilege,
our ornament, and the connate mark of our sovereignty. Porphyri-
geniti sumus! In Man the centripetal and individualizing J
of all Nature is itself concentred and individualized — ho ia
lation of .Nature! Henceforward, he is referred to himself, delivered
up to his own charge ; and he who stands the most on himself, and
stands the firmest, is the truest, because the most individual, Man.
In social and political life this acme is inter-dependence ; in moral life
it is independence ; in intellectual life it is genius. Nor does the form
of polarity, which has accompanied the law of individuation up its
whole Tascent^ desert it here. As the height, so the depth. The in-
tensities must be at once opposite and equal. As the liberty^o_must
pe the reverence for law. As thejndependence, so must be the service
and_thersubmissionlo the SupremeJuT! As" the ideal genius' and
the originality, in the same proportion must be the resignation to the
reaT world, the sympathy'ancrtfie~inter-communion with Nature. In
the conciliating mTd-point, or~equator, does the Man live, and only
by its equal presence in both its poles can that life be manifested !

If it had been possible, within the prescribed limits of this essay,
to have deduced the philosophy of Life synthetically, the evidence
would have been carried over from section to section, and the quod
erat demonstrandum at the conclusion of one section would reappear
as the principle of the succeeding — the goal of the one would be the
starting-post of the other. Positions arranged in my own mind, as
intermediate and organic links of administration, must be presented
to the reader in the first instance, at least, as a mere hypothesis. In-
stead of demanding his assent as a right, I must solicit a suspension
of his judgment as a courtesy; and, after all, however firmly the hy-
pothesis may support the phenomena piled upon it, we can deduce no
more than a practical rule, grounded on a strong presumption. The
license of arithmetic, however, furnishes instances that a rule may bo
usefully applied in practice, and for the particular purpose may be
sufficiently authenticated by the result, before it has itself been duly
demonstrated. It is enough, if only it hath been rendered fully intel-
ligible.

In a system where every position proceeds from a scientific precon-
etruction, a power acting exclusively in length, would be magnetism
by virtue of our own definition of the term. In like manner, a surface
power would be electricity, as far as that system was concerned,
whether it accorded or not with the facts ordinarily so called. But
it is incumbent on us, who must treat the subject analytically, to show
by experiment that magnetism does in fact act longitudinally, am?

APPENDIX C. 413

electricity superficially ; and that, consequently, the former is distin-
guished from, and yet contained in, the latter, as a straight line is
distinguished from, yet contained in, a superficies.

First, that magnetism, in its conductors, seeks and follows length
only, and by the length is itself conducted, has been proved by Brug-
mans, in his philosophical Essay on the Matter of Magnetism, where
he relates that a magnet capable of supporting a body four times
heavier than itself, and which acted as a magnetic needle at the dis-
tance of twenty inches, was so weakened by the interposition of three
cast-iron plates of considerable thickness, as scarcely to move the
magnetic needle from its place at a distance of only three inches. A
similar experiment had been made by Descartes. I concluded, there-
fore, said Brugmans, that if the iron plates were interposed between
the magnet and the needle lengthways, instead of breadthways or
right across, the action of the magnet on the magnetic needle would,
in consequence of this great increase of resistance, become still
weaker, or perhaps evanescent. But not less to my surprise than my
admiration, I found that the power of the magnet was so far from
being diminished by this change in the relative position of the iron-
plates ; that, on the contrary, it now extended to a far greater dis-
tance than when no iron at all was interposed. Some time after the
same philosopher, out of several iron bars, the sides of which were
an inch broad each, composed a single bar of the length of more than
ten feet, and observed the magnetism make its way through the whole
mass. But, in order to try whether the action could be propagated
to any length indefinitely, after several experiments with bars of in-
termediate lengths, in all of which he had succeeded, he tried a four-
cornered iron rod, more than twenty feet long, and it was at this
length that the magnetic power first began to be diminished. So far
Brugmans.

But the shortest way for any one to convince himself of this rela-
tion of the magnetic power would be, in one and the same experi-
ment, to interpose the same piece of iron between the magnet and the
compass needle first breadthways; and in this case it will be found
that the needle, which had been previously deflected by the magnet
from its natural position at one of its poles, will instantly resume the
flame, either wholly or very nearly so — then to interpose the same
piece of iron lengthways ; in which case the position of the compass
needle will be scarcely or not at all affected.

The assertion of Bernoulli and others, that the absolute force of
the artificial magnet increases in the ratio of its superficies, stands
corrected in the far more accurate experiments of Coulomb (published
in his Treatise on Magnetism), which proves that the increase takes
place (in a far greater degree) in the ratio of its length. The same
naturalist even found means to determine that the directing powers

414: APPENDIX C.

of the needle, which he had measured by help of his balance de tortioiL
stand to the length of the needle in such a ratio as that, provided only
the length of the needle is from forty to fifty times its diameter, the
momenta of these directing powers will increase in the very same
direct proportion as the length is increased. Nor is this all that may
be deduced from the experiment last mentioned. If only the magnet
be strong enough, it will show likewise that magnetism seeks the
length. The proof is, contained in the remarkable tact, that the iron
interposed between the magnet and the magnetic needle breadthways
constantly acquires its two opposite poles at both ends lengthways.
Though the preceding experiments are abundantly sufficient to prove
the position, yet the following deserves mention for the beautiful
clearness of its evidence. If the magnetic power is determined ex-
clusively by length, it is to be expected that it will manifest no force,
where the piece of iron is of such a shape that no one dimension pre-
dominates. Bring a cube of iron near the magnetic needle and it will
not exert the slightest degree of power beyond what belongs to it as
mere iron. By the perfect equality of the dimension, the magnetism
of the earth appears, as it were, perplexed and doubtful. Now, then,
attach a second cube of iron to the first, and the instantaneous act of
the iron on the magnetic needle will make it manifest that with the
length thus given, the magnetic influence is given at the same mo-
ment.

That electricity, on the other hand, does not act in length merely,
is clear, from the fact that every electric body is electric over its whole
surface. But that electricity acts both in length and breadth, and only
in length and breadth, and not in depth ; in short, that the (so-called)
electrical fluid in an electrified body spreads over the whole surface
of that body without penetrating it, or tending ad intra, may be proved
by direct experiment. Take a cylinder of wood, and bore an indefi-
nite number of holes in it, each of them four lines in depth and four
in diameter. Electrify this cylinder, and present to its superficies a
small square of gold-leaf, held to it by an insulating needle of gum
lac, and bring this square to an electrometer of great sensibility. The
electrometer will instantly show an electricity in the gold-leaf, similar
to that of the cylinder which had been brought into contact with it.
The square of gold-leaf having thus been discharged of its electricity,
put it carefully into one of the holes of the cylinder, s0, namely, that
it shall touch only the bottom of the hole, and present it again to the
electrometer. It will be then found that the electrometer will exhibit
no signs of electricity whatsoever. From this it follows, that the
electricity which had been communicated to the cylinder had confined
itself to the surface. If the time and the limit prescribed would
admit, we could multiply experiments, all tending to prove the same
law ; but we must be content with the barely sufficient. But that

APPENDIX C. 41 C

the chemical process acts in depth, and first, therefore, realises and
integrates the fluxional power of magnetism and electricity, is involved
in the term composition ; and this will become still more convincing
when we have learnt to regard decomposition as a mere co-relative,
i. e. as decomposition relatively to the bo'dy decomposed, but compo-
sition actually and in respect of the substances, into which it was de-
composed. The alteration in the specific gravity of metals in tlieii
chemical amalgams, interesting as the fact is in all points, is decisive
in the present; for gravity is the sole inward of inorganic bodies — it
constitutes their depth.

I can now, for the first time, give to my opinions that degree of
intelligibility, which is requisite for their introduction as hypotheses ;
the experiments above related, understood as in the common mode
of thinking, prove that the magnetic influence flows in length, the
electric fluid by suffusion, and that chemical agency (whatever the
main agent may be) is qualitative and in intimis. Now my hypothesis
demands the converse of all this. I affirm that a power, acting ex-
clusively in length, is (wherever it be found) magnetism ; that a power
which acts both in length and in breadth, and only in length and
breadth, is (wherever it be found) electricity ; and finally, that a power
which, together with length and breadth, includes depth likewise, is
(wherever it be found) constructive agency. That is but one phe-
nomenon of magnetism, to which we have appropriated and confined
the term magnetism; because of all the natural bodies at present
known, iron, and one or two of its nearest relatives in the family of
hard yet coherent metals, are the only ones, in which all the condi-
tions are collected, under which alone the magnetic agency can appear
in and during the act itself. "When, therefore, I affirm the power of
reproduction in organized bodies to be magnetism, I must be under-
stood to mean that this power, as it exists in the magnet, and which
we there (to use a strong phrase) catch in the very act, is to the same
kind of power, working as reproductive, what the root is to the cube
of that root. We no more confound the force in the compass needle
with that of reproduction, than a man can be said to confound his
liver with a lichen, because he affirms that both of them grow.

The same precautions are to be repeated in the identification of
electricity with irritability ; and the power of depth, for which we
have yet no appropriated term, with sensibility. How great the dis-
tance is in all, and that the lowest degrees are adopted as the expo-
nent terms, not for their own sakes. but merely because they may be
used with less hazard of diverting the attention from the kind by
peculiar properties arising out of the degree, is evident from the third
instance, unless the theorist can be supposed insane enough to apply
sensation in good earnest to the effervescence of an acid or an alkali,
or to sympathize with the distresses of a vat of new beer when it i?

416 APPENDIX C.

working. In whatever way the subject could be treated, it must
have remained unintelligible to men who, if they think of space at
all, abstract their notion of it from the contents of an exhausted re-
ceiver. With this, and with an ether, such men may work wonders ;
as what, indeed, can not be done with a plenum and a vacuum, when
a theorist has privileged himself to assume the one, or the other, ad
libitum? — in all innocence of heart, and undisturbed by the reflection
that the two things can not both be true. That both time and space
are mere abstractions I am well aware ; but I know with equal cer-
tainty that what is expressed by them as the identity of both is the
highest reality, and the root of all power, the power to suffer, as well
as the power to act. However mere an ens logicum spa6e may be, the
dimensions of space are real, and the works of Galileo, in more than
one elegant passage, prove with what awe and amazement they fill
the rnind that worthily contemplates them. Dismissing, therefore, all
facts of degrees, as introduced merely for the purposes of illustration,
I would make as little reference as possible to the magnet, the charged
phial, or the processes of the laboratory, and designate the three
powers in the process of our animal life, each by two co-relative terms,
the one expressing the/or/ft, and the other the object and product of
the power. My hypothesis will, therefore, be thus expressed, that
the constituent forces of life in the human living body are — first, the
power of length, or EEPKODUCTION ; second, the power of surface
(that is, length and breadth), or IERITABILITY ; third, the power of
depth, or SENSIBILITY. "With this observation I may conclude these
remarks, only reminding the reader that Life itself is neither of these
separately, but the copula of all three — that Life, as Life, supposes a
positive or universal principle in Nature, with a negative principle in
every particular animal, the latter, or limitative power, constantly act-
ing to individualize, and, as it were, figure the former. Tims, then,
Life itself is not a thing — a self-subsistent hypostasis — but an act and
vrocess; which, pitiable as the prejudice will appear to the forts esprits,
is a great deal more than either my reason would authorize or my
conscience allow me to assert — concerning the Soul, as the principle
both of Reason and Conscience.

THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL

OR

THE BIBLE THE BEST GUIDE TO POLITICAL SKILL AND

FORESIGHT : A LAY SERMON, ADDRESSED TO

THE HIGHER CLASSES OF SOCIETY

WITH AN APPENDIX

CONTAINING COMMENTS AND ESSAYS CONNECTED WITH THE
STCDY OF THE INSPIRED WRITINGS

BY

SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE

WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS
AND NOTES BY

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ., M.A.

jAd isth&t quaso vos, qualiacunqut primo videantur aspectu, attenditet
ut qui vobis forsan insanire videar, saltern qitibus insaniam rationibus
ooynoscatis. — GIORDANO BRUNO.

A LAY SERMON, &c.

Fur he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel
which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to
their children : that the generation to come might know them, even the
children which should be born ; who should arise and declare them to
their children : that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the
works of God.— --PSALM: bcxviii. 5, 6, 7.

IF our whole knowledge and information concerning the Bible
nad been confined to the one i'act of its immediate derivation
from God, we should still presume that it contained rules and
assistances for all conditions of men under all circumstances ;
and therefore for communities no less than for individuals. The
contents of every work must correspond to the character and de-
signs of the work-master ; and the inference in the present case
is too obvious to be overlooked, too plain to be resisted. It re-
quires, indeed, all the might of superstition to conceal from a
man of common understanding the further truth, that the inter-
ment of such a treasure in a dead language must needs be con-
trary to the intentions of the gracious Donor. Apostasy itself
dared not question the premisses : and that the practical conse-
quence did not follow, is conceivable only under a complete sys-
tem of delusion, which from the cradle to the death-bed ceases
not to over-awe the will by obscure fears, while it pre-occupies
the senses by vivid imagery and ritual pantomime. But to such
a scheme all forms of sophistry are native. The very excellence
of the Giver has been made a reason for withholding the gift ; nay
the transcendent value of the gift itself assigned as the motive of
its detention. We may be shocked at the presumption, but need
not be surprised at the fact, that a jealous priesthood should have
ventured to represent the applicability of the Bible to all the
wants and occasions of men as a wax-like pliancy to all their
fancies and prepossessions. Faithful guardians of Holy "Writ,

*22 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

they are constrained to make it useless in order to guard it from
profanation ; and those, whom they have most defrauded, are the
readiest to justify the fraud. For imposture, organized into a
comprehensive and self-consistent whole, forms a world of its
own, in which inversion becomes the order of nature.

Let it not be forgotten, however (and I recommend the fact to
the especial attention of those among ourselves, who are disposed
to rest contented with an implicit faith and passive acquiescence)
that the Church of Rome never ceased to avow the profoundest
reverence for the Scriptures themselves, and what it forbids its
vassals to ascertain, it not only permits, but commands them to
take for granted.

Whether, and to what extent, this suspension of the rational
functions, this spiritual slumber, will be imputed as a sin to the
souls who are still under chains of Papal darkness, we are neither
enabled or authorized to determine. It is enough for us to know
that the land, in which we abide, has like another Goshen been
severed from the plague, and that we have light in our dwellings.
The road of salvation for us is a high road, and the wayfarers
though simple, need not err therein. The Grospel lies open in
the market-place and on every window-seat, so that (virtually at
least) the deaf may hear the words of the book. It is preached
at every turning, so that the blind may see them. (Isa. xxix.
18.) The circumstances then being so different, if the result
should prove similar, we may be quite certain that we shall not
be holden guiltless. The ignorance which may be the excuse of
others will be our crime. Our birth and denizenship in an en-
lightened and Protestant land will, with all our rights and fran-
chises to boot, be brought in judgment against us, and stand first
in the fearful list of blessings abused. The glories of our country
will form the blazonry of our own impeachment, and the very
name of Englishmen, of which we are almost all of us too proud,
and for which scarcely any of us are enough thankful, will be
annexed to that of Christians only to light up our shame and to
aggravate our condemnation.

I repeat, therefore, that the habitual unreflectingness, which
in. certain countries may be susceptible of more or less palliation
in most instances, can in this country be deemed blameless in
none. The humblest and least educated of our countrymen must
have wilfully neglected the inestimable privileges secured to ali

A LAY SERMON. 423

alike, if he has not himself found, if he has not from his own per-
sonal experience discovered, the sufficiency of the Scriptures* in
all knowledge requisite for a right performance of his duty as a
man and a Christian. Of the laboring classes, who in all coun-
tries form the great majority of the inhabitants, more than this
is not demanded, more than this is not perhaps generally de-
sirable. They are not sought for in public counsel, nor need
they be found where politic sentences are spoken. It is enough
if every one is wise in the working of his own craft : so best will
they maintain the state of the world.

But you, my friends, to whom the following pages are more
particularly addressed, as to men moving in the higher class of
society, — you will, I hope, have availed yourselves of the ampler
means intrusted to you by God's providence, for a more extensive
study and a wider use of his revealed will and word. From you
we have a right to expect a sober and meditative accommodation
to your own times and country of those important truths declared
in the inspired writings for a thousand generations, and of the
awful examples, belonging to all ages, by which those truths are
at once illustrated and confirmed. Would you feel conscious that
you had shown yourselves unequal to your station in society, —
would you stand degraded in your own eyes, — if you betrayed an
utter want of information respecting the acts of human sover-
eigns and legislators ? And should you not much rather be both
ashamed and afraid to know yourselves inconversant with the
acts and constitutions of God, whose law executeth itself, and
whose Word is the foundation, the power, and the life of the
universe ? Do you hold it a requisite of your rank to show your-
selves inquisitive concerning the expectations and plans of states-
men and state-councillors ? Do you excuse it as natural curios-
ity, that you lend a listening ear to the guesses of state-gazers,
to the dark hints and open revilings of our self-inspired state-for
tune-tellers, the wizards, that peep and mutter and forecast,
alarmists by trade, and malcontents for their bread ? And should
you not feel a deeper interest in predictions which are permanent
prophecies, because they are at the same time eternal truths ?
Predictions which in containing the grounds of fulfilment involve
the principles of foresight, and teach the science of the future in
its perpetual elements ?

* See App. (A.)— Ed.

424 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

But I will struggle to believe that of those whom I now sup-
pose myself addressing there are few who have not so employed
their greater leisure and superior advantages as to render these
remarks, if not wholly superfluous, yet personally inapplicable.
In common with your worldly inferiors, you will indeed have di-
rected your main attention to the promises and the information
conveyed in the records of the Evangelists and Apostles ; — prom-
ises, that need only a lively trust m them, on our own part, to
be the means as well as the pledges of our eternal welfare — in-
formation that opens out to our knowledge a kingdom that is not
of this world, thrones that can not be shaken, and sceptres that
can neither be broken nor transferred. Yet not the less on this
account will you have looked back with a proportionate interest
on the temporal destinies of men and nations, stored up for our
instruction in the archives of the Old Testament : not the less
will you delight to retrace the paths by which Providence has led
the kingdoms of this world through the valley of mortal life ; —
paths engraved with the footmarks of captains sent forth from the
God of armies ; — nations in whose guidance or chastisement the
arm of Omnipotence itself was made bare.

Recent occurrences have given additional strength and fresh
force to our sage poet's eulogy on the Jewish Prophets ; —

As men divinely taught and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government

In their majestic unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt

What makes a nation happy and keeps it so,

What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat. PAR. REG. iv. 354-

If there be any antidote to that restless craving for the wonders
of the day, which in conjunction with the appetite for publicity
is spreading like an efflorescence on the surface of our national
character ; if there exist means for deriving resignation from
general discontent, means of building up with the very materials
cf political gloom that steadfast frame of hope which aflbrds the
only certain shelter from the throng of self-realizing alarms, at
the same time that it is the natural home and workshop of all
the active virtues ; that antidote and these means must be sought
for in the collation of the present with the past, in the habit of
thoughtfully assimilating the events of our own age to those of

A LAY SERMON, 425

the time before us. If this be a moral advantage derivable from
history in general, rendering its study therefore a moral duty for
such as possess the opportunities of books, leisure arid education, it
would be inconsistent even with the name of believers not to recur
with pre-eminent interest to events and revolutions, the records
of which are as much distinguished from all other history by their
especial claims to divine authority, as the facts themselves were
from all other facts by especial manifestation of divine interfer-
ence. Whatsoever things, saith Saint Paul (Rom. xv. 4), were
written aforetime, were written for our learning ; that we
ihroys.li patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have
hope.

In the infancy of the world signs and wonders were requisite
in order to startle and break down that superstition, — idolatrous
in itself and the source of all other idolatry, — which tempts the
natural man to seek the true cause and origin of public calami-
ties in outward circumstances, persons, and incidents : in agents
therefore that were themselves but surges of the same tide, pas-
sive conductors cf the one invisible influence, under which the
total host of billows, in the whole line of successive impulse,
swell arid roll shoreward ; there finally, each in its turn, to
strike, roar, and be dissipated.

But with each miracle worked there was a truth revealed,
which thenceforward was to act as its substitute. And if we
think the Bible less applicable to us on account of the miracles,
\\e degrade ourselves into mere slaves of sense and fancy, which
are indeed the appointed medium between earth and heaven, but
for that very cause stand in a desirable relation to spiritual truth
then only, when, as a mere and passive medium, they yield a
free passage to its light. It was only to overthrow the usurpa-
tion exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were
miraculously appealed to ; for reason and religion are their own
evidence.* The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the
spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories arc still
under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping va-
pors of the night-season, and thus converts the air itself into the
minister of its own purification : not surely in proof or elucidation
of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception.

Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances co-exist with the
* See App. (B.)— Ed.

426 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL I

same moral causes, the principles revealed, and the examples
recorded, in the inspired writings render miracles superfluous :
arid if we neglect to apply truths in expectation of wonders, or
under pretext of the cessation of the latter, Ave tempt God, and
merit the same reply which our Lord gave to the Pharisees on a
like occasion. A ivicked and an adulterous generation seeketh
after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign
of the prophet Jonas (Matt. xvi. 4) : that is, a threatening call
to repentance.* Equally applicable arid prophetic will the fol-
lowing verses be. TJie queen of the South shall rise up in the
judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them :
for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wis-
dom of Solomon ; and, behold, a greater than Solomon' is here.
— The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment ivith this gen-
eration and shall condemn it ; for they repented at the preach-
ing of Jonas, ; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here (Luke xi.
31, 32). For have we not divine assurance that Christ is with
his Church even to the end of the world ? Arid what could the
queen of the South, or the men of Nineveh have beholden, that
could enter into competition with the events of our own times, in
importance, in splendor, or even in strangeness and significancy ?
The true origin of human events is so little susceptible of that
kind of evidence which can compel our belief; so many are the
disturbing forces which in every cycle of changes modify the mo-
tion given by the first projection ; and every age has, or imagines*
it has, its own circumstances which render past experience no
longer applicable to the present case ; that there will never be
wanting answers, and explanations, and specious flatteries of
hope to persuade a people and its government that the history of
the past is inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we read
history for the facts instead of reading it for the sake of the gen
era! principles, which are to the facts as the root and sap of a
tree to its leaves : and no wonder, if history so read should find
a dangerous rival in novels, nay, if the latter should be preferred
to the former on the score even of probability. I well remember,
that when the examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Ca3sar,
Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France and England at
the commencement of the French Consulate, it was ridiculed as
pedantry and pedant's ignorance to fear a repetition of usurpa
* See App. (C.)— Ed.

A LAY SERMON. 427

don and military despotism at the close of the enlightened eight-
eenth century ! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestu-
ous day. when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the
Reformers, Harms, Csesar, and the like, and the direful effects of
the levelling tenets in the Peasants' War in Germany, were urged
on the Convention, and its vindicators ; I well remember that
the Magi of the day, the true citizens of the world, the plus-
quam-perfecti of patriotism, gave us set proofs that similar re-
sults were impossible, and that it was an insult to so philosophi-
cal an age, to so enlightened a nation, to dare direct the public
eye towards them as to lights of warning! Alas ! like lights in
the stern of a vessel they illumined the path only that had been
past over !

The politic Florentine* has observed, that there are brains of
three races. The one understands of itself; the other under-
stands as much as is shown it by others ; the third neither un-
derstands of itself, nor what is shown it by others. In our times
there are more perhaps who belong to the third class from van-
ity and acquired frivolity of mind, than from natural incapacity.
It is no uncommon weakness with those who are honored with
the acquaintance of the great, to attribute national events to
particular persons, particular measures, to the errors of one man,
to the intrigues of another, to any possible spark of a particular
occasion, rather than to the true proximate cause (and which
alone deserves the name of a cause), the predominant state of
public opinion. And still less are they inclined to refer the
latter to the ascendency of speculative principles, and the scheme
or mode of thinking in vogue. I have known men, who with
significant nods and the pitying contempt of smiles have denied
all influence to the corruptions of moral and political philosophy,
and with much solemnity have proceeded to solve the riddle
of the French Revolution by Anecdotes ! Yet it would not be
difficult, by an unbroken chain of historic facts, to demonstrate
that the most important changes in the commercial relations
of the world had their origin in the closets or lonely walks of
uninterested theorists ; — th.it the mighty epochs of commerce,
that have changed the face of empires ; nay, the most irnpor-

* Sono dl tre yenerazioni cervelli : Vuno intende per se ; Valtro intends
quanta da altri yli e mostro : e il lerzo non intende ne per se stesso ne per
iimostrazione dl altri. II Principe, c. xxii.

428 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

tant of those discoveries and improvements in the mechanic arts,
which have numerically increased our population beyond what
the wisest statesmen of Elizabeth's reign deemed possible, and
again doubled this population virtually ; the most important, I
say, of those inventions that in their results

best uphold

War by l.er two main nerves, iron and gold —

had their origin not in the cabinets of statesmen, or in the prac-
tical insight of men of business, but in the visions of recluse
genius. To the immense majority of men, even in civilized
countries, speculative philosophy has ever been, and must ever
remain, a terra incognita. Yet it is not the less true, that all
the epoch-forming revolutions of the Christian world, the revo-
lutions of religion and with them the civil, social, and domestic
habits of the nations concerned, have coincided with the rise and
fall of metaphysical systems.* So few are the minds that really
govern the machine of society, and so incomparably more numer-
ous and more important are the indirect consequences of things,
than their foreseen and direct effects.

It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and
peaceable times we are quite practical. Facts only and .cool com-
mon sense are then in fashion. But let the winds of passion
swell, arid straightway men begin to generalize ; to connect by
remotest analogies ; to express the most universal positions of
reason in the most glowing figures of fancy ; in short, to feel
particular truths and mere facts, as poor, cold, narrow, arid in-
commensurate with their feelings.

With his wonted fidelity to nature, our own great poet has
placed the greater number of his profoundest maxims and gen-
eral truths, both political and moral, not in the mouths of men
at ease, but of men under the influence of passion, when the
mighty thoughts overmaster and become the tyrants of the mind
that has brought them forth. In his Lear, Othello, Macbeth,
Hamlet, principles of deepest insight and widest interest fly off
like sparks from the glowing iron under the loud forge-hammer. f

* This thought might also be applied to, and exemplified by, the succes-
fiive epochs in the history of the Fine Arts from the tenth century. 1827.

f It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none,
hi»t the unread in history, will deny, that in periods of pooular tumult Riid

A LAY SERMON. 429

A calm and detailed examination of the facts justifies me to
my own mind in hazarding the bold assertion, that the fearful
blunders of the late dread Revolution, and all the calamitous
mistakes of its opponents from its commencement even to the
sera of loftier principles and wiser measures (an sera, that began
with, and ought to be named from, the war of the Spanish arid
Portuguese insurgents) every failure with all its gloomy results
may be unanswerably deduced from the neglect of some maxim
or other that had been established by clear reasoning and plain
facts in the writings of Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavel, Bacon,
or Harrington. These are red-letter names even in the almanacs
of worldly wisdom : and yet I dare challenge all the critical
benches of infidelity to point out any one important truth, any one
efficient practical direction or warning, which did not pre-exist
(and for the most part in a sounder, more intelligible, and more
comprehensive form) in the Bible.

In addition to this, the Hebrew legislator, and the other in
spired poets, prophets, historians and moralists of the Jewish
Church have two peculiar advantages in their favor. First, their
particular rules and prescripts flow directly and visibly from uni-
versal principles, as from a fountain : they flow from principles and
ideas that are not so properly said to be confirmed by reasons as

innovation the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found
to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a peo-
ple and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement
of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was em-
ployed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the
physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded
with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the
people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal
constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man,
all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting. Turn over the fu-
gitive writings, that are still extant, of the age of Luther ; peruse the
pamphlets and loose sheets that came out in flights during the reign of
Charles I. and the Republic; and you will find in these one continued
comment on the aphorism of Lord Bacon (a man assuredly sufficiently ac-
quainted with the extent of secret and personal influence), that the knowl-
edge of the speculative principles of men in general between the age of
twenty and thirty, is the one great source of political prophecy. And Sir
Philip Sidney regarded the adoption of one set of principles in the Neth-
erlands, as a proof of the divine agency, and the fountain of all the events
and successes of that Revolution.

430 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

to be reason itself. Principles in act arid procession, disjoii.ed
from which, and from the emotions that inevitably accompany
the actual intuition of their truth, the widest maxims of prudencu
are like arms without hearts, muscles without nerves. Secondly,
from the very nature of those principles, as taught in the Bible,
they are understood in exact proportion as they are believed and
felt. The regulator is never separated from the main-spring.
For the words of the Apostle are literally and philosophically
true : We (that is the human race) live by faith. Whatever we
do or know that in kind is different from the brute creation, has
its origin in a determination of the reason to have faith and trust
in itself. This, its first act of faith, is scarcely less than identi-
cal with its own being. Implicite, it is the copula — it contains
the possibility — of every position, to which there exists any cor-
respondence in reality.* It is itself, therefore, the realizing prin-
ciple, the spiritual substratum of the whole complex body of
truths. This primal act of faith is enunciated in the word, God :
a faith not derived from, but itself the ground and source of, ex-
perience, arid without which the fleeting chaos of facts would no
more form experience, than the dust of the grave can of itself
make a living man. The imperative and oracular form of the
inspired Scripture is the form of reason itself in all things purely
rational and moral.

If Scripture be the word of Divine Wisdom, we might antxci
pate that it would in all things be distinguished from other books;
as the Supreme Reason, whose knowledge is creative, and ante-
cedent to the things known, as distinguished from the understand-
ing, or creaturely mind of the individual, the acts of which are
posterior to the things which it records and arranges. Man alone
was created in the image of God : a position groundless and in-
explicable, if the reason in man do not differ from the under-
standing. For this the inferior animals (many at least) possess
in degree : arid assuredly the divine image or idea is not a thing
of degree^

* I mean that, but for the confidence which we place in the assertions of
our reason and conscience, we could have no certainty of the reality and
actual outness of the material world. It might be affirmed that in what we
call " sleep" every one has a dream of his own ; and that in what we cal.
"awake," whole communities dream nearly alike. It is ! — is a sense of
reason : the senses can only say — It seems ! 1827.

A LAY SERMOK. 431

Hence it follows that what is expressel in the Scriptures ia
implied in all absolute science. The latter whispers what the
former utter as with the voice of a trumpet. As sure as God
liveth, is the pledge and assurance of every positive truth, that
is asserted by the reason. The human understanding musing on
many things snatches at truth, but is frustrated and disheartened
by the fluctuating nature of its objects ;* its conclusions there-
fore are timid and uncertain, and it hath no way of giving per-
manence to things but by reducing them to abstractions.
Hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth, and
with labor do we find the things that are before us; but all cer-
tain knowledge is in the power of God, and a presence from
above. So only have the ways of men been reformed, and every
doctrine that contains a saving truth, and all acts pleasing to
God (in other words, all actions consonant with human nature.
<n its original intention) are through wisdom ; that is, the rational
spirit of man.

This then is the prerogative of the Bible ; this is the privilege
of its believing students. With them the principle of knowledge
is likewise a spring and principle of action. And as it is the
only certain knowledge, so are the actions that flow from it the
only ones on which a secure reliance can be placed. The under-
standing may suggest motives, may avail itself of motives, and
make judicious conjectures respecting the probable consequences
of actions. But the knowledge taught in the Scriptures produces
the motives, involves the consequences ; and its highest formula
is still : As sure as God liveth, so will it be unto thee ! Strange
as this position will appear to such as forget that motives can be
causes only in a secondary and improper sense, inasmuch as the
man makes the motive, not the motives the man ; yet all history
bears evidence to its truth. The sense of expediency, the cau-
tious balancing of comparative advantages, the constant wake-
fulness to the Cui Itono ? — in connection with the Quid mihi ? —
all these are in their places in the routine of conduct, by which

K &GTLV ifj.[3?jvai 62? r<p avTti /ca$' 'HpuK.?*ei~ov,
dig aipaodaL Karct e%iv dhha O^VT^TI Kal

cvvuyei, ^a/l/lov 6£ ovd£ TtaKiv ovdc varepov uA/l' ujLta cvviararai Kal
i, Kal irpoaetcrc Kal aireLac 6&ev ovd' d$ TO elvai nepaivet TO ytyvo-
UEVOV avTris T£ nr)6inoTe Xtfyeiv firjd' laTdodat, T?)V yevsviv, K. T. /I.

PLUTARCH'S De El. apud Delphos c. xviii

432 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

the individual provides for himself the real or supposed wants ol
to-day and to-morrow : and in quiet times and prosperous circurn
stances a nation presents an aggregate of such individuals, a busy
ant-hill in calm and sunshine. By the happy organization of a
well-governed society the contradictory interests of ten millions of
such individuals may neutralize each other, and be reconciled in
the unity of the national interest. But whence did this happy
organization first come ? Was it a tree transplanted from Para-
dise, with all its branches in full fruitage ? Or was it sowed in
sunshine ? Was it in vernal breezes and gentle rains that it
fixed its roots, and grew and strengthened ? Let history answer
these questions. With blood was it planted ; it was rocked in
tempests ; the goat, the ass, and the stag gnawed it ; the wild
boar has whetted his tusks on its bark. The deep scars are stiil
extant on its trunk, and the path of the lightning may be traced
among its higher branches. And even after its full growth, in
the season of its strength, when.its height reached to the heaven,
and the sight thereof to all the earth, the whirlwind has more
than once forced its stately top to touch the ground : it has been
bent like a bow, and sprang back like a shaft. Mightier powers
were at work than expediency ever yet called up ; yea, mightier
than tho mere understanding can comprehend. One confirmation
of the latter assertion you may find in the history of our country,
written by the same Scotch philosopher who devoted his life to
the undermining of the Christian religion ; and expended his last
breath in a blasphemous regret that he had not survived it; — by
the same heartless sophist who, in this island, was the main
pioneer of that atheistic philosophy, which in France trans-
veriomed the natural thirst of truth into the hydrophobia of a
wild and homeless skepticism ; the Elias of that Spirit of Anti-
christ, which

still promising

Freedom, itself too sensual to be free,
Poisons life's amities and cheats the soul
Of faith, and quiet hope and all that lifts
And all that soothes the spirit !*

This inadequacy oi the mere understanding to the apprehen-
sion of moral greatness W3 may trace in this historian's cool sys-
tematic attempt to steal away every feeling of reverence for every

* Poet. Works, VII. pp. 110, 111.— .£&

A LAY SEKMON. 433

great name by a scheme of motives, in which as )ften as possible
the efforts and enterprises of heroic spirits are attributed to this
or that paltry view of the most despicable selfishness. But in
the majority of instances this would have been too palpably false
and slanderous : and therefore the founders and martyrs of our
Church and Constitution, of our civil and religious liberty, are
represented as fanatics and bewildered enthusiasts. But his-
tories incomparably more authentic than Mr. Hume's (nay, spite
of himself even his own history) confirm by irrefragable evidence
the aphorism of ancient wisdom, that nothing great was ever
achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the
oblivion and swallowing up of self in an object dearer than self,
or in an idea more vivid ? How this is produced in the enthu-
siasm of wickedness, I have explained in the second Comment
annexed to this Discourse. But in the genuine enthusiasm of
morals, religion, and patriotism, this enlargement and elevation
of the soul above its mere self attest the presence, and accom-
pany the intuition, of ultimate principles alone. These alone can
interest the undegraded human spirit deeply and enduringly, be-
cause these alone belong to its essence, and will remain with it
permanently.'

Notions, the depthless abstractions of fleeting phenomena, the
shadows of sailing vapors, the colorless repetitions of rainbows,
have effected their utmost when they have added to the distinct-
ness of our knowledge. For this very cause they are of them-
selves adverse to lofty emotion, and it requires the influence of a
light and warmth, not their own, to make them crystallize into a
semblance of growth. But every principle is actualized by an
idea ; and every idea is living, productive, partaketh of infinity,
and (as Bacon has sublimely observed) containeth an endless
power of semination. Hence it is, that science, which consists
wholly in ideas and principles, is power. Scientia et potentia
(saith the same philosopher) in idem coincidunt. Hence too it
is, that notions, linked arguments, reference to particular facts
and calculations of prudence, influence only the comparatively
few, the men of leisurely minds who have been trained up to
them : and even these few they influence but faintly. But for
the reverse, I appeal to the general character of the doctrines
which have collected the most numerous sects, and acted upon
the moral being of the converts with a force that might well
VOL. i. T

4:34 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

seem supernatural. The great principles of our religion, the sub*
lime ideas spoken out everywhere in the Old and New Testa-
ment, resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the same size to
the naked as to the armed eye ; the magnitude of \vhich the
telescope may rather seem to diminish than to increase. At the
annunciation of principles, of ideas, the soul of man awakes and
starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the unexpected
sounds of his native language, when after long years of absence,
and almost of oblivion, he is suddenly addressed in his own mother-
tongue. He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his
brother. How else can we explain the fact so honorable to Great
Britain, that the poorest* amongst us will contend with as much
enthusiasm as the richest for the rights of property ? These
rights are the spheres and necessary conditions of free agency.
But free agency contains the idea of the free will ; and in this he
intuitively knows the sublimity, and the infinite hopes, fear?
and capabilities of his own nature. On what, other ground but
the cognateness of ideas and principles to man as man does the
nameless soldier rush to the combat in defence of the liberties or
the honor of his country ? — Even men wofully neglectful of the
principles of religion will shed their blood for its truth.

Alas ! — the main hindrance to the use of the Scriptures, as
your manual, lies in the notion that you are already acquainted
with its contents. Something new must be presented to you,
wholly new and wholly out of yourselves ; for whatever is within
us must be as old as the first dawn of human reason. Truths
of all others the most awful and mysterious and at the same time
of universal interest are considered so true as to lose all the
powers of truth, arid lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul,
side by side with the most despised and exploded errors. But it
should not be so with you ! The pride of education, the sense
of consistency should preclude the objection : for would you not
be ashamed to apply it to the works of Tacitus, or of Shakspeare ?
Above all, the rank which you hold, the influence you possess,
the powers you may be called to wield, give a special unfitness
to this frivolous craving for novelty. To find no contradiction in

* The reader will remember the anecdote told with so much humor in
Goldsmith's Essay. But this is not the first instance where the mind in iti
hour of meditation finds matter of admiration and elevating thought in cir-
cumstances that in a different mood had excited his mirth.

A LAY SERMON. 43£

the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of days,
his words and his works, with a feeling as fresh as if they were
now first springing forth at his jto — this characterizes the minda
that feel the riddle of the world and may help to unravel it.
This, most of all things, will raise you above the mass of man-
kind, and therefore will best entitle and qualify you to guide and
control them. You say, you are already familiar with the Scrip-
tures. With the words, perhaps, but in any other sense you might
as wisely boast of your familiar acquaintance with the rays of
the sun, and under that pretence turn away your eyes from the
light of heaven.

Or would you wish for authorities, for great examples ? You
may find them in the writings of Thuanus, of Clarendon, of
More, of Raleigh ; and in the life and letters of the heroic Gus
tavus Adolphus. But these, though eminent statesmen, were
Christians, and might lie under the thraldom of habit and preju
dice. I will refer you then to authorities of two groat men, both
pagans ; but removed from each other by many centuries, and
not more distant in their ages than in their characters and situa-
tions. The first shall be that of Heraclitus, the sad and recluse
philosopher. JIokvpadiT] roo? ov did&axer 2lftvMa $e {iaivotuiv(a
xai dxaAAwTrtara x«t utuvQtaja (fdeyyopevr) %dlc»)v
7j cpwvr( dia, ibv deo*.* Shall we hesitate to apply
to the prophets of God, what could be affirmed of the Sibyls by
a philosopher whom Socrates, the prince of philosophers, vene-
rated for the profundity of his wisdom ?

For the other, I will refer you to the darling of the polished
court of Augustus, to the man whose works have been in all
ages deemed the models of good sense, and are still the pocket
companions of those who pride themselves on uniting the scholar

* Multiscience (or a variety and quantity of acquired knowledge) does
not teach intelligence. But the Sibyl with wild enthusiastic mouth ehril-
ling forth unmirthful, inornate, and unperfumed truths, reaches to a thou
sand years, with her voice through the power of God.

Not hers

To win the sense by words of rhetoric,
Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets ;
But by the power of the informing "Word
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years
Her deep prophetic bodements.

Lit. Rem. V. p. 268.— Sa

436 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL-

with the gentleman. This accomplished man of the world hat
given an account of the subjects of conversation between the
illustrious statesmen who govemed, and the brightest luminaries
who then adorned, the empire of the civilized world :

Scrmo oritur non de villis domibusve alienis
Nee, male nee ne Lepos saltet. Sed quod magis ad nos
Pertinct, et nescire malum est, agitamus : utrumne
Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beali ;
Et quod sit natura boni, summumque quid ejus.*

Berkeley indeed asserts, and is supported in his assertion by the
great statesmen, Lord Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh, that with-
out an habitual interest in these subjects a man may be a dexter-
ous intriguer, but never can be a statesman.

But do you require some one or more particular passage from
the Bible, that may at once illustrate and exemplify its applica-
bility to the changes and fortunes of empires ? Of the numerous
chapters that relate to the Jewish tribes, their enemies and allies,
before and after their division into two kingdoms, it would be
more difficult to state a single one from which some guiding light
might not be struck. And in nothing is Scriptural history more
strongly contrasted with the histories of highest note in the pres-
ent age, than in its freedom from the hollowness of abstractions.
While the latter present a shadow-fight of things and quantities,
the former gives us the history of men, and balances the impor-
tant influence of individual minds with the previous state of the
national morals and manners, in which, as constituting a specific
susceptibility, it presents to us the true cause both of the influence
itself, and of the weal or woe that were its consequents. How
should it be otherwise ? The histories and political economy of
the present and preceding century partake in the general conta-
gion of its mechanic philosophy, and are the product of an unen-
livened generalizing understanding. In the Scriptures they are
the living educts of the imagination ; of that reconciling and me-
diatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the
sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the
permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to
a system of symbols, Jiarri^Tim^JILJfe ^"d consubstan^

tial withthe truths of which they arc 1he conductors. These

* Hor. Serm. ii. t. 6, 71, &c.

A LAY SERMON. 437

are the wheels which Ezekiel beheld, when the hand of the Lord
was upon him, and he saw visions of God as he sate among the
captives by the river of Chebar. Whithersoever the Spirit was
to go, the wheels went, and thither ivas their spirit to go : — -for
the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also* The
truths and the symbols that represent them move in conjunction
and form the living chariot that bears up (for us) the throne of
the Divine Humanity. Hence, by a derivative, indeed, but not a
divided, influence, and though in a secondary yet in more than a
metaphorical sense, the Sacred Book is wortnily entitled the Word
of God. Hence too, its contents present to us the stream of time
continuous as life and a symbol of eternity, inasmuch as the past
and the future are virtually contained in the present. According
therefore to our relative position on the banks of this stream the
Sacred History becomes prophetic, the Sacred Prophecies histori-
cal, while the power and substance of both inhere in its laws, its
promises, and its comminations. In the Scriptures therefore both
facts and persons must of necessity have a twofold significance, a
past and a future, a temporary and a perpetual, a particular and
a universal application. They must be at once portraits and
ideals.

Eheu! paupertina philosophia in paupertinam religionem
ducit : — A hunger-bitten and idea-less philosophy naturally pro-
duces a starveling and comfortless religion. It is among the
miseries of the present age that it recognizes no medium between
literal and metaphorical. Faith is either to be buried in the
dead letter, or its name and honors usurped by a counterfeit pro-
duct of the mechanical understanding, which in the blindness of
self-complacency confounds symbols with allegories. Now an
allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-lan-
guage, which is itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of
the senses ; the principal being more worthless even than its phan-
. torn proxy, both alike unsubstantial, and the former shapeless to
boot. On the other hand a symbol (6 evnv uel TvtvirjyoQixov} is
characterized by a translucence of the special in the individual,
or of the goneral in the special, or of the universal in the general ;
above all by the translucence of the eternal through and in the
temporal. It always partakes of the reality which it renders in-
telligibls arid while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a
* Ezek. i. 20.

4-38 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

living part in that unity of which it is the representative. The.
other are but empty echoes which the fancy arbitrarily associates
with apparitions of matter, less beautiful but not less shadowy
than the sloping orchard or hill-side pasture-field seen in the
transparent lake below. Alas, for the flocks that are to be led
forth to such pastures ! It shall even be as when a hungry man
dreamcth, and behold, he eateth ; but lie awaketh and his soul
is empty : or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold he
diinketh ; but he awaketh and behold, he is faint!* 0 ! that
we would seek for the bread which was given from heaven, that
we should eat thereof and be strengthened ! 0 that we would
draw at the well at which the flocks of our forefathers had living
water drawn for them, even that water which, instead of mock-
ing the thirst of him to whom it is given, becomes a well within
himself springing up to life everlasting !

"When we reflect how large a part of our present knowledge
and civilization is owing, directly or indirectly, to the Bible ;
when we are compelled to admit, as a fact of history, that the
Bible has been the main lever by which the moral and intellec-
tual character of Europe has been raised to its present compara-
tive height ; we should be struck, methinks, by the marked and
prominent difference of this book from the works which it is now
the fashion to quote as guides and authorities in morals, politics,
and history. I will point out a few of the excellences by which
the one is distinguished, and shall leave it to your own judgment
and recollection to perceive and apply the contrast to the produc-
tions of highest name in these latter days. In the Bible every
agent appears and acts as a self-subsisting individual ; each has
a life of its own, and yet all are one life. The elements of neces-
sity and free-will are reconciled in the higher power of an omni-
present Providence, that predestinates the whole in the moral
freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible never suffers us
to lose sight. The root is never detached from the ground. It
is God everywhere : and all creatures conform to his decrees, the
righteous by performance of the law, the disobedient by the suf-
ferance of the penalty.

Suffer me to inform or remind you, that there is a threefold
necessity. There is a logical, and there is a mathematical r.e-
; but the latter is always hypothetical, and both subsist
* In. xxix %.—Ed.

A LAY SERMON. 439

formally only, not in any real object. Only by the intuition and
immediate spiritual consciousness of the idea of God, as the One
and Absolute, at once the ground arid the cause, who alone con-
taineth in himself the ground of his own nature, and therein of
all natures, do we arrive at the third, which alone is a real ob-
jective, necessity. Here the immediate consciousness decides :
the idea is its own evidence, and is insusceptible of all other. It
is necessarily groundless and indemonstrable ; because it is itself
the ground of all possible demonstration. The reason hath faith
in itself in its own revelations. 0 ttyos I'qpjy. Ipse dixit. So it
is : for it is so. All the necessity of causal relations (which the
mere understanding- reduces, and must reduce to co-existence and
regular succession* in the objects of which they are predicated,
and to habit and association in the mind predicating) depends on,
or rather inheres in, the idea of the omnipresent and absolute :
for this it is, in which the possible is one and the same with the
real and the necessary. Herein the Bible differs from all the
books of Greek philosophy, and in a two-fold manner. It doth
not affirm a divine nature only, but a God : and not a God only,
but the living God. Hence in the Scriptures alone is the jus
divimtm, or direct relation of the state and its magistracy to the
Supreme Being, taught as a vital and indispensable part of all
moral and of all political wisdom, even as the Jewish alone was
a true theocracy.

Were it my object to touch on the present state of public affairs
in this kingdom, or on the prospective measures in agitation
respecting our sister island, I would direct your most serious med-
itations to the latter period of the reign of Solomon, and to the
revolutions in the reign of Rehoboam, his successor. But I
should tread on glowing embers. I will turn to a subject on
which all men of reflection are at length in agreement — the
causes of the Revolution and fearful chastisement of France. We
have learned to trace them back to the rising importance of the
commercial and manufacturing class, and its incompatibility with
the old feudal privileges and prescriptions ; to the spirit of sensu
ality and ostentation, which from the court had spread through
all the towns and cities of the kingdom ; to the predominance of
a presumptuous and irreligious philosophy ; to the extreme over-

* See Hume's Essays. The sophist evades, as Cicero long ago remarked,
fche better half of the predicament, which is nob praire but efficienter prair*

440 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL!

rating of the knowledge and power given "by the improvements
of the arts and sciences, especially those of astronomy, mechanics,
and a wonder-working chemistry ; to an assumption of prophetic
power, and the general conceit that states and governments
might be and ought, to be constructed as machines, every move-
ment of which might be foreseen and taken into previous calcu-
lation ; to the consequent multitude of plans and constitutions,
of planners and constitution-makers, and the remorseless arro-
gance with which the authors and proselytes of every new pro-
posal were ready to realize it, be the cost what it might in the
established rights, or even in the lives, of men ; in short, to rest-
lessness, presumption, sensual indulgence, and the idolatrous reli-
ance on false philosophy in the whole domestic, social, and politi-
cal life of the stirring and effective part of the community : these
all acting, at once and together, on a mass of materials supplied
by the unfeeling extravagance and oppressions of the government,
which showed no mercy, and very heavily laid its yoke.

Turn then to the chapter from which the last words were
cited, and read the following seven verses ; and I am deceived
if you will not be compelled to admit that the Prophet revealed
the true philosophy of the French revolution more than two
thousand years before it became a sad irrevocable truth of history.
And thou saidst, I sJudl be a lady forever : so that thou didst
not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the
latter end of it. Therefore, hear now this, thou that art given
to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart,
I am, and none else beside me ! I slwll not sit as a widow,
neither shall Iknoiv the loss of children. But these two things
shall come to thee in a moment, in one day ; the loss of children,
and ividoivhood ; they shall come upon thee in their perfection,
for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance
of thine enchantments. For thou hast trusted in thy wicked-
ness ; thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy
knoivledge, it hath perverted thee ; and thou hast said in thine
heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come
upon thee, thou shalt not know* from whence it riseth : and

* The reader will scarcely fail to nnd in this verse a remembrancer of
the sudden setting-in of the frost, a fortnight before the usual time (in a
country too where the commencement of the two seasons is in general
•carcely less regular than that of the wet and dry seasons between the trop

A LAY SEKMON. 441

mischief shall fall upon thee, thou shall not be able to put it
off ; and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou
shalt not know. Stand noiv with thine enchantments, and
with the multitude of thy sorceries, ivherein thou hast labored
from thy youth ; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be
thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of
thy counsels. Let noiv the astrologers, the stargazers, the month-
ly prognosticators stand up, and save thee from these things
that shall come upon thee. (Is. xlvii. 7, &c.)

There is a grace that would enable us to take up vipers, and
the evil thing shall not hurt us : a spiritual alchemy which can
transmute poisons into a panacea. We are counselled by our
Lord himself to make unto ourselves friends of the Mammon of
unrighteousness : and in this age of sharp contrasts and gro-
tesque combinations it would be a wise method of sympathizing
with the tone and spirit of the times, if we elevated even our
daily newspapers and political journals into comments on the
Bible.

"When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought to prepare the
inquirers after it for the absence of all the usual softenings sug-
gested by worldly prudence, of all compromise between truth
and courtesy. But not even as a sermon would I have addressed
the present discourse to a promiscuous audience ; and for this
reason I likewise announced it in the title-page, as exclusively
ad clerum ; that is (in the old and wide sense of the word), to
men of clerkly acquirements of whatever profession. I would
that the greater part of our publications could be thus directed,
each to its appropriate class of readers. But this can not be.
For among other odd burs and kecksies, the misgrowth of our
luxuriant activity, we have now a Reading Public* — as strange

ics), which caused, and the desolation which accompanied, the flight from
Moscow. The Russians baffled the physical forces of the imperial Jacobin,
because they were inaccessible to his imaginary forces. The faith in St.
Nicholas kept off at safe distance the more pernicious superstition of the
destinies of Napoleon the Great. The English in the Peninsula overcame
the real, because they set at defiance, and had heard only to despise, the
imaginary powers of the irresistible Emperor. Thank Heaven ! the heart
of the country was sound at the core.

* Some participle passive in the diminutive form, Eruditulorum Natit
for instance, might seem at first sight a fuller and more exact designation
but the superior force and humor of the former become evident whenever

442 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

a phrase, methinks, as ever forced a splenetic smile on the staid
countenance of meditation ; and yet no fiction. For our readers
have, in good truth, multiplied exceedingly, and have waxed
proud. It would require the intrepid accuracy of a Colquhoun
to venture at the precise numher of that vast company only,
whose heads and hearts ate dieted at the two public ordinaries
cf literature, the circulating libraries and the periodical press.
But what is the result ? Does the inward man thrive on thh
regimen ? Alas ! if the average health of the consumers may
be judged of by the articles of largest consumption ; if the secre-
tions may be conjectured from the ingredients of the dishes that
are found best suited to their palates ; from all that I have seen,
either of the banquet or the guests, I shall utter my profaccla
with a desponding sigh. From a popular philosophy and a
philosophic populace, Good Sense deliver us !

At present, however, I am to imagine for myself a very differ-

the phrase occurs as a step or stair in a climax of irony. By way of ex-
ample take the following sentences, transcribed from a work demonstrating
that the New Testament was intended exclusively for the primitive con-
verts from Judaism, was accommodated to their prejudices, and is of no au-
thority, as a rule of faith, for Christians in general. " The Reading Public
in this enlightened age and thinking nation, by its favorable reception of
liberal ideas, has long demonstrated the benign influence of that profound
philosophy which has already emancipated us from so many absurd preju-
dices held in superstitious awe by our deluded forefathers. But the dark
age yielded at length to the dawning light of reason and common sense at
the glorious, though imperfect, Revolution. The people can be no longer
duped or scared out of their imprescriptible and inalienable right to judge
and decide for themselves on all important questions of government and
religion. The scholastic jargon of jarring articles and metaphysical creeds
may continue for a time to deform our Church-establishment ; and like the
grotesque figures in the niches of our old Gothic cathedrals, may serve to
remind the nation of its former barbarism ; but the universal suffrage of a
free and enlightened Public," (fee. <fec.

Among the revolutions worthy of notice, the change in the nature of the
introductory sentences and prefatory matter in serious books is not the
least striking. The same gross flattery which disgusts us in the dedications
to individuals in the elder writers, is now transferred to the nation at large
or the Reading Public : while the Jeremiads of our old moralists, and their
angry denunciations concerning the ignorance, immorality, and irreligion of
the People, appear (mutatis mutandis, and with an appeal to the worst
passions, envy, discontent, scorn, vindictiveness) in the shape of bitter libels
on ministers, parliament, the clergy : in short, on the State and Church,
and all per sons employed in them

A LAY SERMON, 443

ent audience. I appeal exclusively to men, from whose station
and opportunities I may dare to anticipate a respectable portion
of that sound book-learnedness, into which our old public schools
still continue to initiate their pupils. I appeal to men in whom
I may hope to find, if not philosophy, yet occasional impulses at
least to philosophic thought. And here, as far as my own ex-
perience extends, I can announce one favorable symptom. The
notion of our measureless superiority in good sense to our ances-
tors, so general at the commencement of the French Revolution,
and for some years before it, is out of fashion. We hear, at least,
less of the jargon of this enlightened age. After fatiguing itself,
as performer or spectator in the giddy figure-dance of political
changes, Europe has seen the shallow foundations of its self-com-
placent faith give way ; and among men of influence and prop-
erty, we have now more reason to apprehend the stupor of de-
spondence, than the extravagances of hope, unsustained by ex-
perience or of self-confidence not bottomed on principle.

In this rank of life the danger lies, not in any tendency to in-
novation, but in the choice of the means for preventing it. And
here my apprehensions point to two opposite errors ; each of
which deserves a separate notice. The first consists in a dispcg'
tion to think, that as the peace of nations has been disturbed
the diffusion of a false light, it may be re-established by exclude,
the people from all knowledge and all prospect of amelioration
0 ! never, never ! Reflection and stirrings of mind, with £
their restlessness, and all the errors that result from their impe,
fection, from the Too much, because Too little, are come into th
world. The powers that awaken and foster the spirit of cur
osity are to be found in every village : books are in every hove
The infant's cries are hushed with picture-books : and the cotta
ger's child sheds his first bitter tears over pages, which render it
impossible for the man to be treated or governed as a child.
Here as in so many other cases, the inconveniences that have
arisen from a thing's having become too general are best removed
by making it universal.

The other and contrary mistake proceeds from the assumption,
that a national education will have been realized whenever the
peopie at large have been taught to read and write. Now
among the many means to the desired end, this is doubtless one,
and not the least important. But neither is it the most so

444 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL I

Much less can it be considered to constitute education, which
consists in educing the faculties and forming the habits ; the
means varying according to the sphere in which the individuals
to be educated are likely to act and become useful. I do not
hesitate to declare, that whether I consider the nature of the dis-
cipline adopted,* or the plan of poisoning the children of the
poor with a sort of potential infidelity under the " liberal idea"
of teaching those points only of religious faith, in which all de-
nominations agree, I can not but denounce the so-called Lancas-
tori an schools as pernicious beyond all power of compensation
by the new acquirement of reading and writing. But take even
Dr. Bell's original and unsophisticated plan, which I myself re-
gard as an especial gift of Providence to the human race ; and
suppose this incomparable machine, this vast moral steam-engine,
to have been adopted and in free motion throughout the Empire ;
it would yet appear to me a most dangerous delusion to rely on it
as if this of itself formed an efficient national education. We
can not, I repeat, honor the scheme too highly as a prominent
and necessary part of the great process ; but it will neither super-
«ede nor can it be substituted for sundry other measures, that are
fch ast equally important. And these are such measures, too,
in nfortunately involve the necessity of sacrifices on the side of
h" rich and powerful more costly and far. more difficult than the
I* iy subscription of a few pounds ; — such measures as demand

* e self-denial than the expenditure of time in a committee or
'' jloquence in a public meeting.

pNay, let Dr. Bell's philanthropic end have been realized, and

a- proposed modicum of learning have become universal; yet

\dnced of its insufficiency to stem the strong currents set in

r >m an opposite point, I dare not assure myself that it may not

je driven backward by them and become confluent with the evils

which it was intended to preclude, f

* See Mr. Southey's Tract on the New or Madras system of education
especially toward the conclusion, where with exquisite humor as well as
with his usual poignancy of wit he has detailed Joseph Lancaster's disci-
plinarian inventions. But even in the schools, that used to be called Lan-
casterian, these are, I believe, discontinued. The true perfection of disci-
pline in a school is — the maximum of watchfulness with the minimum of
punishment.

f See the Report of the House of Commons' Committee on the increase

A LAY SERMON. 445

What other measures I had in contemplation, it has been my
endeavor to explain elsewhere. But I am greatly deceived, if
one preliminary to an efficient education of the laboring classes
be not the recurrence to a more manly discipline of the intellect
on the part of the learned themselves, in short a thorough re-
casting of the moulds, in which the minds of our gentry, the
characters of our future land-owners, magistrates and senator?
are to receive their shape and fashion. 0 what treasures of
practical wisdom would be once more brought into open day by
the solution of this problem ! Suffice it for the present to hint
the master- thought. The first man, on whom the light of an
idea dawned, did in that same moment receive the spirit and
credentials of a lawgiver : and as long as man shall exist, so long
will the possession of that antecedent knowledge (the maker and
master of all profitable experience) which exists only in the power
of an idea, be the one lawful qualification of all dominion in the
world of the senses. Without this, experience itself is but a Cy
clops walking backwards under the fascination of the past ; and
we are indebted to a lucky coincidence of outward circumstances
and contingencies, least of all things to be calculated on in times
like the present, if this one-eyed experience does not seduce its
worshipper into practical anachronisms.

But alas ! the halls of old philosophy have been so long desert-
ed, that we circle them at shy distance as the haunt of phan-
toms and chimeeras.^ The sacred grove of Academus is holden
in like regard with the unfoodful trees in the shadowy world of
Maro that had a dream attached to every leaf. The very terms
of ancient wisdom are worn out, or (far worse !) stamped on baser
metal : and whoever should have the hardihood to reproclaim its
solemn truths must commence with a glossary.

In reviewing the foregoing pages, I am apprehensive that they
'V may be thought to resemble the overflow of an earnest mind
~I rather than an orderly premeditated composition. Yet this im-
9 perfection of form will not be altogether uncompensated, if it
"J should be the means of presenting with greater liveliness the
It1 feelings and impressions under which they were written. Still
'^ less shall I regret this defect if it should induce some future

jta.

^eof crime ; — within the last twenty years quintupled over all England, and

a m several counties decupled. 28f h September, 1828.
* See App. (E.)— Ed.

446 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

traveller engaged in the like journey K> take the same station am;
to look through the same medium at the one main object which
amid all my discursions I have still kept in view. The more,
however, doth it behoove me not to conclude this address without
attempting to recapitulate in as few and as plain words as possi-
ble the sum and substance of its contents.

There is a state of mind indispensable for all perusal of the
Scriptures to edification, which must be learned by experience,
and can be described only by negatives. It is the direct opposite
of that which, if a moral passage of Scripture were cited, would
prompt a man to reply, " Who does not know this?" But if the
quotation should have been made in support of some article of
faith, this same habit of mind will betray itself in different indi-
viduals, by apparent contraries, which yet are but the two poles,
or plus and minus states, of the same influence. The latter, or
the negative, pole may be suspected, as often as you hear a com-
ment on some high and doctrinal text introduced with the words,
" It only means so and so !" For instance, I object to a professed
free-thinking Christian the following solemn enunciation of the
riches of the glory of the mystery hid from ages and from gen-
erations by the philosophic Apostle of the Gentiles : — Who
(namely, the Father) hath delivered us from the poiver of dark-
ness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son :
In ivhom ive have redemption through his blood, even the for-
giveness of sins : Who is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born* of every creature : For by him were all things crea-
ted, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and in-
visible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities,
or poiver s : all things were created by him, and for him : And
he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he
is the head of the body, the Church : who is the beginning, the
first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have the
pre-eminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all
fulness dwell : And, having made peace through the blood of
his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself ; by him, 1
say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. Col.
i. 13, &c. "What is the reply ? — Why, that by these words (very

* A mistaken translation. The words should be : Begotten before any
kind of creation ; and even this does not convey the full sense of the super-
lative, rpwroroKOf. (See Table Talk, VI. 478, (note.)— Ed.)

A LAY SERMON, 447

bold and figurative words it must be confessed, yet still) St. Paul
only meant that the universal and eternal truths of morality and
a future state had been reproclaimed by an inspired teacher and
confirmed by miracles !* The words only mean, Sir, that a state
of retribution after this life had been proved by the fact of
Christ's resurrection — that is all !

Of the positive pole, on the other hand, language to the follow-
ing purport is the usual exponent. " It is a mystery : and we
are bound to believe the words without presuming to inquire into
the meaning of them." Thai is, we believe in St. Paul's ve-
racity ; and that is enough. Yet St. Paul repeatedly presses on
his hearers that thoughtful perusal of the Sacred Writings, and
those habits of earnest though humble inquiry which, if the heart
only have been previously regenerated, would lead them to a full
assurance of understanding el* eniyrwaiv, (to an entire assent of
the mind ; to a spiritual intuition, or positive inward knowl-
edge by experience) of the mystery of God, and of the Father,
and of Christ, in which (nempe^vffiijQlw) are hid all the treas-
ures of wisdom and knowledge. Col. ii. 2, 3.

To expose the inconsistency of both these extremes, and by
inference to recommend that state of mind, which looks forward
to the fellowship of the mystery of the faith as a spirit of wis-
dom and revelation in the knowledge of God, the eyes of the
understanding being enlightened (Eph. i. 17-18) — this formed
my general purpose. Long has it been at my heart ! I consider
it as the contra-distinguishing principle of Christianity that in it
alone nns nloviog Trj* nkyQoyoQlag TTJJ avveaeug (the understand-
ing in its utmost power and opulence) culminates in faith, as in
its crown of glory, at once its light and its remuneration. On
this most important point I attempted long ago to preclude, if
possible, all misconception and misinterpretation of my opinions
Alas ! in this time of distress and embarrassment the sentiments
have a more especial interest, a more immediate application, than

* But I shall scarcely obtain an answer to certain difficulties involved in
this free and liberal interpretation : for example, that with the exception
of a handful of rich men considered as little better than infidels, the Jewa
were as fully persuaded of these truths as Christians in eeoeral are at the
present day. Moreover that this inspired teacher had himself declared thai
if the Jews did not believe on the evidence of Moses and the PropL«ts,
uwther \*,,uld they though a man should rise from the dead

448 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

when they were first written. If (I observed)* it be a truth at-
tested alike by common feeling and common sense, that the
greater part of human misery depends directly on human vices,
and the remainder indirectly, by what means can we act on men
so as to remove or preclude their vices and purify their principles
of moral election ? The question is not by what means each
man is to alter his own character ; — in order to this, all the
means prescribed, and all the aidances given by religion may be
necessary for him. Vain of themselves may be —

The sayings of the wise

In ancient and in modern books enroll'd

Unless he feel within

Some source of consolation from above,

Secret refreshings, that repair his strength,

And fainting spirits uphold. SAMSON AGONISTES.

This is not the question. Virtue would not be virtue could it
be given by one fellow-creature to another. To make use of all
the means and appliances in our power to the actual attainment
of rectitude, is the abstract of the duty which we owe to our-
selves : to supply those means as far as we can, comprises our
duty to others. The question then is, what are these means ?
Can they be any other than the communication of knowledge and
the removal of those evils and impediments which prevent its
reception ? It may not be in our power to combine both, but it
is in the power of every man to contribute to the former, who is
sufficiently informed to feel that it is his duty. If it be said, that
we should endeavor not so much to remove ignorance, as to make
the ignorant religious : religion herself through her sacred oracles
answers for me, that all effective faith pre-supposes knowledge
and individual conviction. If the mere acquiescence in truth,
uncomprehended and unfathomed, were sufficient, few indeed
would be the vicious and the miserable, in this country at least
where speculative infidelity is, Heaven be praised ! confined to a
small number. Like bodily deformity, there is one instance here
and another there ; but three in one place are already an undue
proportion. It is highly worthy of observation that the inspired
Writings received by Christians are distinguishable from all other
books pretending to inspiration, from the scriptures of the Bra-
* The Friend. II. p. 99.— Ed.

A LAY SERMON. 449

mins, and even from the Koran, in their strong and frequent rec-
ommendations of truth. I do not here mean veracity, which can
not but he enforced in every code which appeals to the religious
principle of man ; but knowledge. This is not only extolled as
the crown and honor of a man, but to seek after it is again and
again commanded us as one of our most sacred duties. Yea, the
very perfection and final bliss of the glorified spirit is represented
by the Apostle as a plain aspect or intuitive beholding of truth in
its eternal and immutable source. Not that knowledge can of
itself do all. The light of religion is not that of the moon, light
without heat ; but neither is its warmth that of the stove,
warmth without light. Religion is the sun whose warmth in-
deed swells, and stirs, and actuates the life of nature, but who at
the same time beholds all the growth of life with a master-eye,
makes all objects glorious on which he looks, and by that glory
visible to others.

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that he would grant you according to the riches
of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the
inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;
that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to com-
prehend with all saints wliat is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height ; and to know the love of Christ which
passeth all knowledge, that ye might be filled ivith the fulness
of God. (Eph. iii. 14-19.) For to know God is (by a vital and
spiritual act in which to know and to possess are one and indi-
visible)— to know God, I say, is — to acknowledge him as the in-
finite clearness in the incomprehensible fulness, and fulness in-
comprehensible with infinite clearness.

This, then, comprises my first purpose, which is in a two-fold
sense general : for in the substance, if not in the form, it belongs
to all my countrymen and fellow-Christians without distinction
of class, while for its object it embraces the whole of the inspired
Scriptures from the recorded first day of heaven and earth, ere
the light was yet gathered into celestial lamps or reflected from
their revolving mirrors, to the predicted Sabbath of the new
creation, when heaven and earth shall have become one city
with neither sun nor moon to shine in it ; for the glory of God
shall lighten it and the Lamb be the light thereof. My second
purpose is after the same manner in a two-fold sense specific : foi

450 THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL:

as this Sermon is nominally addressed to, so was it for the greater
part exclusively intended for-, the perusal of the learned: and its
object likewise is to urge men so qualified to apply their powers
and attainments to an especial study of the Old Testament as
teaching the elements of political science.

It is asked, in what sense I use these words ? 1 answer : in
the same sense as the terms are employed when we refer to Eu-
clid for the elements of the science of geometry, only with one
difference arising from the diversity of the subject. "With one
difference only ; but that one how momentous ! All other
sciences are confined to abstractions, unless when the term science
is used in an improper and flattering sense. — Thus we may speak
without boast of natural history ; but we have not yet attained
to a science of nature. The Bible alone contains a science of
realities : and therefore each of its elements is at the same time
a living germ, in which the present involves the future, and in
the finite the infinite exists potentially. That hidden mystery in
/ every the minutest form of existence, which contemplated under
I the relations of time presents itself to the understanding retro-
spectively, as an infinite ascent of causes, and prospectively as
an interminable progression of effects ; — that which contemplated
in space is beholden intuitively as a law of action and re-action,
continuous and extending beyond all bound ; — this same mystery
freed from the phenomena of time and space, and seen in the
depth of real being, reveals itself to the pure reason as the ac-
tual immanence or in-being* of all in each. Are we struck with
admiration at beholding the cope of heaven imaged in a dew-
drop ? The least of the animalcules to which that drop would
be an ocean, contains in itself an infinite problem of which God
omnipresent is the only solution. The slave of custom is roused
by the rare and the accidental alone ; but the axioms of tho
unthinking are to the philosopher the deepest problems as being
the nearest to the mysterious root, and partaking at once of its
larkness and its pregnancy.

0 what a mine of undiscovered treasures, what a new world
of power and truth would the Bible promise to our future medi-
tation, if in some gracious moment one solitary text of all its
inspired contents should but dawn upon us in the pure untroubled

* la-being is the word chosen by Bishop Sherlock to express this
See his Tract on the Athanasian Creed. 1827.

A LAY SERMON. 451

brightness of an idea, that most glorious birth of the God-like
within us, which even as the light, its material symbol, reflects
itself from a thousand surfaces, and flies homeward to its Parent
Mind enriched with a thousand forms, itself above form and
still remaining in its own simplicity and identity ! 0 for a Hash
of that same light, in which the first position of geometric
science that ever loosed itself from the generalizations of a groping
and insecure experience, for the first time revealed itself to a
human intellect in all its evidence and all its fruitfulness, trans-
parence without vacuum, and plenitude without opacity ! 0
that a single gleam of our own inward experience would make
comprehensible to us the rapturous Eureka, and the grateful
hecatomb, of the philosopher of Samos ; — or that vision which
from the contemplation of an arithmetical harmony rose to the
eye of Kepler, presenting the planetary world, and all its orbits
in the divine order of their ranks and distances ; — or which, in
the falling of an apple, revealed to the ethereal intuition of our
own Newton the constructive principle of the material universe.
The promises which I have ventured to hold forth concerning
the hidden treasures of the Law and the Prophets will neither
be condemned as paradox or as exaggeration by the mind that
has learned to understand the possibility, that the reduction of
the sands of the sea to number should be found a less stupendous
problem by Archimedes than the simple conception of the Par-
menidean ONE. "What however is achievable by the human un
derstanding without this light, may be comprised in the epithet,
xevoaTiadoi : and a melancholy comment on that phrase would
the history of human cabinets and legislators for the last thirty
years furnish ! The excellent Barrow, the last of the disciples
of Plato and Archimedes among our modern mathematicians,
shall give the description and state the value : and in his words
I shall conclude.

" Aliud agere, to be impertinently busy, doing that which
conduceth to no good purpose, is in some respect worse than to
do nothing. Of such industry we may understand that of the
Preacher, The labor of the foolish wearieth every one of them."

APPENDIX

APPENDIX,

CONTAINING COMMENTS AND ESSAYS.

(A.)

Ix this use of the word l sufficiency,' I pre-supposo on the part of
the reader or hearer an humhle and docile state of mind, and above
all the practice of prayer, as the necessary condition of such a state,
and the best if not the only means of becoming sincere to our own
hearts. Christianity is especially differenced from all other religions
by being grounded on facts which all men alike have the same means
of ascertaining with equal facility, and which no man can ascertain
for another. Each person must be herein querist and respondent to
himself ; Am I sick, and therefore need a physician ? — Am I in spirit
ual slavery, and therefore need a ransomer? — Have I given a pledge,
which must be redeemed, and which I can not redeem by my own
resources ? — Am I at one with God, and is my will concentric with
that holy power, which is at once the constitutive will and the su-
preme reason of the universe ? — If not, must I not be mad if I do not
seek, and miserable if I do not discover and embrace, the means of
atonement ?* To collect, to weigh, and to appreciate historical proofs
and presumptions is not equally within the means and opportunities
of every man. The testimony of books of history is one of the strong
and stately pillars of the Church of Christ ; but it is not the founda-
tion, nor can it without loss of essential faith be mistaken or substi-
tuted for the foundation. There is a sect, which in its scornful pride
of antipathy to mysteries (that is, to all those doctrines of the pure
and intuitive reason, which transcend the understanding, and can
never be contemplated by it, but through a false and falsifying per-
spective) affects to condemn all inward and preliminary experience as
enthusiastic delusion or fanatical contagion. Historic evidence, on
the other hand, these men treat, as the Jews of old treated the brazen

* This is a mistaken etymology, and consequently a dull, though unintentional, pun.
Our atone is, doubtless, of the same stock with the Teutonic aussoknen, versdknen, the
Anglo-Saxon taking the t for the s.

456 APPENDIX B.

serpent, wl.ich was the relic and evidence of the miracles worked by
Moses in the wilderness. They turned it into an idol : and therefore
Hezekiah (who claw to the Lord, and did right in the sight of the
Lord, so that after him was none like him, among all the Icings of
Judah, nor any that were before him) not only removed the high
places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves ; but likewise
brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made : for the chil-
dren of Israel did burn incense to it. (2 Kings xviii.)

To preclude an error so pernicious, I request that to the wilful neg-
lect of those outward ministrations of the word which all English-
men have the privilege of attending, the reader will add the setting
at naught likewise of those inward means of grace, without which
the language of the Scriptures, in the most faithful translation and in
the purest and plainest English, must nevertheless continue to be a
dead language, — a sun-dial by moonlight.

(B.)

Reason and Religion differ only as a two-fold application of the
same power. But if we are obliged to distinguish, we must ideally
separate. Ijn this sense I affirm that reason is the knowledge of the
laws of the whole considered as one ; and as such it is contra-dis-
tinguished from the understanding, which concerns itself exclusively
with the quantities, qualities, and relations of particulars in time and
space. The understanding, therefore, is the science of phenomena,
and of their subsumption under distinct kinds and sorts (genera and
species). Its functions supply the rules and constitute the possibility
of experience ; but remain mere logical forms except as far as mate-
rials are given by the sense or sensations. The reason, on the other
hand, is the science of the universal, having the ideas of oneness and
allness as its two elements or primary factorsTjfln the language of
the old Schools,

Unity -f- Ornneity = Totality.

The reason first manifests itself in man by the tendency to the com
prehension of all as one. "We can neither rest in an infinite that is
not at the same time a whole, nor in a whole that is not infinite.
Hence the natural man is always in a state either of resistance or of
captivity to the understanding and the fancy, which can not represent
totality without limit : and he either loses the one in the striving after
the infinite, that is, atheism with or without polytheism, or he loses
the infinite in the striving after the one, and then sinks into anthro-
pomorphic monotheism.

The rational intellect, therefore, taken abstractedly and unbalanced,
did, in itself (ye shall be as Gods, Gen. iii. 5), and in its consequences

APPENDIX B. 457

(tne lusts of the flesh, the eye, and the understanding, as in v. 5), form
the original temptation, through which men fell : and in all ages has
continued to originate the same, even from Adam, in whom we all
fell, to the atheists who deified the human reason in the person of a
harlot during the earlier period of the French Revolution.

To this tendency, therefore, religion, as the consideration of the
particular and individual (in which respect it takes up and identifies
with itself the excellence of the understanding), but of the individual,
as it exists and has its being in the universal (in which respect it is one
with the pure reason) — to this tendency, I say, religion assigns the due
limits, and is the echo of the voice of the Lord God walking in the
garden. Hence in all the ages and countries of civilization religion -
has been the parent and fosterer of the fine arts, as of poetry, music,
painting, and the like, the common essence of which consists in a
similar union of the universal and the individual. In this union,
moreover, is contained the true sense of the ideal. Under the old.
Law the altar, the curtains, the priestly vestments, and whatever use
was to represent the beauty of holiness, had an ideal character : and
the Temple itself was a master-piece of ideal beauty.

There exists in the human being, at least in man fully developed,
no mean symbol of tri-unity in reason, religion, and the will. For
each of the three, though a distinct agency, implies and demands the
other two, and loses its own nature at the moment that from distinc-
tion it passes into division or separation. The perfect frame of a man
is the perfect frame of a state : and in the light of this idea we must
read Plato's Republic.*

The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of reason (the
legislative of our nature) taken singly and exclusively, becomes mere
visionariness in intellect, and indolence or hard-heartedness in morals.
It is the science of cosmopolitism without country, of philanthropy
without neighborliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the impostures
of that philosophy of the French Revolution, which would sacrifice
each to the shadowy idol of all. For Jacobinism is monstrum Tiylri-
dum, made up in part of despotism, or the lust of rule grounded in
selfness ; and in part of abstract reason misapplied to objects that be-
long entirely to experience and the understanding. Its instinct and
mode of action are in strict correspondence with its origin. In all
places, Jacobinism betrays its mixed parentage and nature by applying
to the brute passions and physical force of the multitude (that is, to
man as a mere animal) in order to buildup government and the frame
of society on natural rights instead of social privileges, on the univer-
sals of abstract reason instead of positive institutions, the lights of
specific experience, and the modifications of existing circumstances.

• If I judge rightly, this celebrated work is to 'The History of the Town of Man-soul,'
what Plato was to John Bunyan.

VOL. I U

.158 APPENDIX B.

Right in its most proper sense is the creature of law and statute, and
only in the technical language of the courts has it any substantial and
independent sense. In morals, right is a word without meaning ex-
cept as the correlative of duty.

From all this it follows, that reason as the science of all as a whole
must he interpenetrated by a power, that represents the concentra-
tion of all in each — a power that acts by a contraction of universal
truths into individual duties, such contraction being the only form ia
which those truths can attain life and reality. Now this is religion,
which is the executive of our nature, and on this account the name
of highest dignity, and the symbol of sovereignty. To the same pur-
port I have elsewhere defined'' religion as philosophy evolved from
idea into act and fact by the superinduction of the extrinsic conditions
of reality.

Yet even religion itself, if ever in its too exclusive devotion to the
specific and individual it neglects to interpose the contemplation of
the universal, changes its being into superstition, and becoming more
and more earthly and servile, as more and more estranged from the
one in all, goes wandering at length with its pack of amulets, bead-
rolls, periapts, fetisches, and the like pedlery, on pilgrimages to Lo-
retto, Mecca, or the temple of Juggernaut, arm in arm with sensuality
on one side and self-torture on the other, followed by a motley group
of friars, pardoners, faquirs, gamesters, flagellants, mountebanks, and
harlots.

But neither can reason or religion exist or co-exist as reason and
religion, except as far as they are actuated by the will (the Platonic
Ov/ibf), which is the sustaining, coercive and ministerial power, the
functions of which in the individual correspond to the officers of war
and police in the ideal Republic of Plato. In its state of immanence
or indwelling in reason and religion, the will appears indifferently as
wisdom or as love : two names of the same power, the former more
intelligential, the latter more spiritual, the former more frequent in
the Old, the latter in the New, Testament. But in its utmost abstrac-
tion and consequent state of reprobation, the will becomes Satanic
pride and rebellious self-idolatry in the relations of the spirit to itself,
and remorseless despotism relatively to others ; the more hopeless aa
the more obdurate by its subjugation of sensual impulses, by its supe-
riority to toil and pain and pleasure ; in short, by the fearful resolve
to find in itself alone the one absolute motive of action, under which
all other motives from within and from without must be either sub-
ordinated or crushed.

This is the character which Milton has so philosophically as well aa
sublimely embodied in the Satan of his Paradise Lost. Alas ! too
often has it been embodied in real life. Too often has it given a dark
and savage grandeur to the historic page. And wherever it has ap

APPENDIX B. 459

peared, under whatever circumstances of time and country, the same
ingredients have gone to its composition ; and it has been identified
by the same attributes. Hope in which there is no cheerfulness ;
steadfastness within and immovable resolve, with outward restlessness
and whirling activity; violence with guile; temerity with cunning;
and, as the result of all, interminableness of object with perfect indif-
ference of means ; these are the qualities that have constituted the
commanding genius ; these are the marks, that have characterized the
masters of mischief, the liberticides, and mighty hunters of mankind,
from Nimrod to Bonaparte! And from inattention to the possibility
of such a character as well as from ignorance of its elements, even
men of honest intentions too frequently become fascinated. Nay,
whole nations have been so far duped by this want of insight and re-
flection as to regard with palliative admiration, instead of wonder and
abhorrence, the Molochs of human nature, who are indebted for the
larger portion of their meteoric success to their total want of princi-
ple, and who surpass the generality of their fellow-creatures in one
act of courage only, that of daring to say with their whole heart,
"Evil, be thou my good!" — All system so far is power; and a sys-
tematic criminal, self-consistent and entire in wickedness, who en-
trenches villany within villany, and barricadoes crime by crime, has
removed a world of obstacles by the mere decision, that he will have
no obstacles, but those of force and brute matter.

I have only to add a few sentences, in completion of this comment,
on the conscience* and on the understanding. The conscience is
neither reason, religion, or will, but an experience sui generis of the
coincidence of the human will with reason and religion. It might,
perhaps, be called a spiritual sensation ; but that there lurks a contra-
diction in the terms, and that it is often deceptive to give a common
or generic name to that, which being unique, can have no fair anal-
ogy. In strictness, therefore, the conscience is neither a sensation
nor a sense; but a testifying state, best described in the words of
Scripture, as the peace of God that passeth all understanding.

Of the latter faculty, namely, of the understanding, considered in
and of itself the Peripatetic aphorism, nihil in intellects, quod non
prius in sensu, is strictly true as well as the legal maxim, de rebus non
apparentibm et non existentibus eadem est ratio. The eye is not more
inappropriate to sound, than the mere understanding to the modes
and laws of spiritual existence. In this sense I have used the term ;
and in this sense I assert that the understanding or experiential fac-
ulty, unirradiated by the reason and the spirit, has no appropriate

* I have this morning read with high delight an admirable representation of what
men in general think, and what ought to be thought, concerning the conscience in th*
translation of Swedenborg's Universal Theology of the New Church. II. pp. 301-370.

6 January, 1821.

4:60 APPENDIX B.

object but the material world in relation to our worldly interests,
The far-sighted prudence of man, and the more narrow but at the
same time far less fallible cunning of the fox, are both no other than
a nobler substitute for salt, in order that the hog may not putrefy be-
fore its destined hour.

It must not, however, be overlooked that this insulation of the un-
derstanding is our own act and deed. The man of healthful and undi-
vided intellect uses his understanding* in this state of abstraction
only as a tool or organ ; even as the arithmetician uses numbers, that
is, as the means not the end of knowledge. Our Shakspeare in agree-
ment both with truth and the philosophy of his age names it " dis-
course of reason," as an instrumental faculty belonging to reason : and
Milton opposes the discursive to the intuitive, as the lower to the
higher,

Differing but in degree, in kind the same.

/ Of the discursive understanding, which forms for itself general no-
tions and terms of classification for the purpose of comparing and ar-
ranging phenomena, the characteristic is clearness without depth. It
contemplates the unity of things in their limits only, and is conse-
\ quently a knowledge of superficies without substance. So much so
\ indeed that it entangles itself in contradictions in the very effort of

* Perhaps the safer use of the term, understanding, for general purposes, is, to take it
as the mind, or rather as the man himself considered as a concipient as well as percipi-
ent being, and reason as a power supervening. The want of a clear notion respecting
the nature of reason may be traced lo the difficulty of combining the notion of an organ
of sense, or a new sense, with the notion of the appropriate and peculiar objects of that
sense, so that the idea evolved from this synthesis shall be the identity of both. By rea-
son we know that God is: but God is himself the Supremo Reason. And this is the
proper difference between all spiritual faculties and the bodily senses ; — the organs of
spiritual apprehension having objects consubstantial with themselves (o/^ootfcna), or being
themselves their own objects, that is, self-contemplative.

Reason may or rather must be used in two different yet correlative senses, which are
nevertheless in some measure reunited by a third. In its highest sense, and which is
the ground and source of the rest, reason is being, the Supreme Being contemplated
objectively, and in abstraction from the personality. The Word or Logos is life, and
communicates life ; is light and communicates light. Now this light contemplated in
abstracto is reason. Again as constituents of reason we necessarily contemplate unity
and distinctity. Now the latter as the polar opposite to the former implies plurality :
therefore I use the plural, distinctities, and say, that the distinctities considered apart
from the unity are the ideas, and reason is the ground and source of ideas. This is tha
first and absolute sense.

The second sense comes when we speak of ourselves as possessing reason ; and this
we can no otherwise define than as the capability with which God had endowed man of
beholding, or being conscious of, the divine light. But this very capability is itself that
light, not as the divine light, but as the life or indwelling of the living Word, which ia
our light ; that is, a life whereby we are capable of the light, and by which the light ia
present to us, aa a being which we may call ours, but which I can not call mine : for it
is the life that we individualize, while the light, as its correlative opposite, remains uni-
versal.

Most pregnant is the doctrine of opposite correlatives as applied to Deity, but onlyai
manifested in man, not to the Godhead absolutely. 1827.

APPENDIX B. 461

comprehending the idea of substance. The completing power which '
unites clearness with depth, the plenitude of the sense with tl/e com- j
prehensibility of the understanding, is the imagination, impregnated
with which the understanding itself becomes intuitive, and a living
power. The reason (not the abstract reason, not the reason as the
mere organ of science, or as the faculty of scientific principles and
schemes d priori; but reason), as the integral spirit of the regen-
erated man, reason substantiated and vital, one only, yet manifold,
overseeing all, and going through all understanding ; the breath of the
power of God, and a pure influence from the glory of the Almighty ;
which remaining in itself regenerateth all other powers, and in all
ages entering into holy souls makeih them friends of God and prophets ;
(Wisdom of Solomon, c. vii.) this reason without being either the
sense, the understanding, or the imagination, contains all three within
itself, even as the mind contains its thoughts, and is present in and
through them all ; or as the expression pervades the different features
of an intelligent countenance. Each individual must bear witness of
it to his own mind, even as he describes life and light : and with the
silence of light it describes itself, and dwells in us only as far as we
dwell in it. It can not in strict language be called a faculty, much
less a personal property, of any human mind. He, with whom it is
present, can as little appropriate it, whether totally or by partition,
as he can claim ownership in the breathing air or make an inclosure
in the cope of heaven.

The object of the preceding discourse was to recommend the Bible,
as the end and centre of our reading and meditation. I can truly
affirm of myself, that my studies have been profitable and availing to
me only so far as I have endeavored to use all my other knowledge
as a glass enabling me to receive more light in a wider field of vision
from the word of God. If you have accompanied me thus far,
thoughtful reader, let it not weary you if I digress for a few moments
to another book, likewise a revelation of God — the great book of his
servant Nature. That in its obvious sense and literal interpretation
it declares the being and attributes of the Almighty Father, none but
the fool in heart has ever dared gainsay. But it has been the music
of gentle and pious minds in all ages, it is the poetry of all human
nature, to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein
correspondences and symbols of the spiritual world.

I have at this moment before me, in the flowery meadow, on which
my eye is now reposing, one of its most soothing chapters, in which
there is no lamenting word, no me character of guilt or anguish.
For never can I look and meditate on the vegetable creation without
a feeling similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant that
has fed itself asleep at its mother's bosom, and smiles in its strange
dream of obscure yet happy sensatione. The same tender and genial

462 AFPENIIX B.

pleasure takes possession of me, and this pleasure is checked and
drawn inward by the like aching melancholy, by the same whispered
remonstrance, and made restless by a similar impulse of aspiration.
It seems as if the soul said to herself: From this state hast thou
fallen ! Such shouldst thou still become, thyself all permeable to a
holier power ! thyself at once hidden and glorified by its own trans-
parency, as the accidental and dividuous in this quiet and harmonious
object is subjected to the life and light of nature ; to that life and light
of nature, I say, which shines in every plant and flower, even as the
transmitted power, love and wisdom of God over all fills, and shines
through, nature! But what the plant is by an act not its own and
unconsciously — that must thou make thyself to become — must by
prayer and by a watchful and unresisting spirit, join at least with the
preventive and assisting grace to make thyself, in that light of con-
science which inflameth not, and with that knowledge which puffeth
not up !

But further, and with particular reference to that undivided reason,
neither merely speculative or merely practical, but both in one, which
I have in this annotation endeavored to contra-distinguish from the
understanding, I seem to myself to behold in the quiet objects, on
which I am gazing, more than an arbitrary illustration, more than a
mere simile, the work of my own fancy. I feel an awe, as if there
were before my eyes the same power as that of the reason — the same
power in a lower dignity, and therefore a symbol established in the
truth of things. I feel it alike, whether I contemplate a single tree or
flower, or meditate on vegetation throughout the world, as one of the
great organs of the life of nature. Lo!* — with the rising sun it
commences its ontward life and enters into open communion with all
the elements, At once assimilating them to itself and to each other.
At the same moment it strikes its roots and unfolds its leaves, absorbs
and respires, steams forth its cooling vapor and finer fragrance, and
breathes a repairing spirit, at once the food and tone of the atmos
phere, into the atmosphere that feeds it. Lo ! — at the touch of light
how it returns an air akin to light, and yet with the same pulse effec-
tuates its own secret growth, still contracting to fix what expanding
it had refined. Lo ! — how upholding the ceaseless plastic motion of
the parts in the profoundest rest of the whole it becomes the visible
organismus of the entire silent or elementary life of nature and, there-
fore, in incorporating the one extreme becomes the symbol of the

* The remainder of this paragraph might properly torm the conclusion of a disquisition
on the spirit, as suggested by meditative observation of natural objects, and of our own
thoughts and impulses without reference to any theological dogma, or any religious obli-
gation to receive it as a revealed truth, but traced to the law of the dependence of the
particular on the universal, the first being the organ of the second, as the lungs in rela-
tion to the atmosphere, the eye to light, crystal to fluid, figure to space, and the like.—
1822.

APPENDIX B. 463

other ; the natural symbol of that higher life of reason, in which the
whole series (known to us in our present state of being) is perfected,
in which, therefore, all the subordinate gradations recur, and are re-
ordained in more abundant honor. We had seen each in its own cast,
and we now recognize them all as co- existing in the unity of a higher
form, the crown and completion of the earthly, and the mediator of a
new and heavenly series.* Thus finally, the vegetable creation, in
the simplicity and uniformity of its internal structure symbolizing the
unity of nature, while it represents the omniformity of her delegated
functions in its external Variety and manifoldness, becomes the record
and chronicle of her ministerial acts, and enchases the vast unfolded
volume of the earth with the hieroglyphics of her history.

O ! — if as the plant to the orient beam, we would but open out our
minds to that holier light, which ' being compared with light is found
before it, more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars,'
(Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 29) — ungenial, alien, and adverse to our
very nature would appear the boastful wisdom which, beginning in
France, gradually tampered with the taste and literature of all the
most civilized nations of Christendom, seducing the understanding
from its natural allegiance, and therewith from all its own lawful
claims, titles, and privileges. It was placed as a ward of honor in the
courts of faith and reason ; but it chose to dwell alone, and became a
harlot by the way-side. The commercial spirit, and the ascendency
of the experimental philosophy which took place at the close of the
seventeenth century, though both good and beneficial in their own
kinds, combined to foster its corruption. Flattered and dazzled by

* It may be shown that the plus or universal, which man as the minus or individun,
finds his correlative pole, can only be God. I. This may be proved, exhaustively, that all
lower universals are already attached to lower particulars. II. It may be proved by the
necessity of harmonic correspondence. The principle of personal individuality being the
transcendent — (that is, the highest species of genus X, in which X rises, moritur, at dum
moritur resurgit, into the higher genus Y)— the personal principle, I say, being the
transcendent of all particulars, requires for its correspondent opposite the transcendent
of all universals: and this is God. The doctrine of the spirit thus generally conceived,
and without being matured into any more distinct conceptions by revealed Scripture, ia
the ground of theopathy, religious feeling, or devoutness : while the reason,— as contra-
distinguished from the understanding by logical processes, without reference to revela-
tion or to reason sensu eminenti, as the self-subsistent Reason or Logos, and merely con-
sidered as the endowment of the human will and mind, having two definitions according-
ly as it is exercised practically or intellectually,— is the ground of theology, or religious
belief. Both are good in themselves as far as they go, and productive— the former— of a
gensibility to the beautiful in art and nature, of imaginativeness and moral enthusiasm ; —
the latter— of insight, comprehension, and a philosophic mind. They are good in then -
selves, and the preconditions of the bettor ; and therefore these disquisitions woull form
nn appropriate conclusion to The Aids to Reflection. For as many as are wanting either
in leisure or inclination, or belief of their own competency to go further — from the
miscellaneous to the systematic — that volume is a whole, and for them the whole work.
While for others these disquisitions form the drawbridge, the connecting link, betweor
Ihe disciplinary and preparatory rule.? and exercises of reflection, and the system of faith
ind philosophy of S.T. C.— 1827.

464 APPENDIX B.

the real or supposed discoveries which it had made, the more the un-
derstanding was enriched, the more did it become debased ; till science
itself put on a selfish and sensual character, and immediate utility, in
exclusive reference to the gratification of the wants and appetites of
the animal, the vanities and caprices of the social, and the ambition
of the political, man was imposed as the test of all intellectual powers
and pursuits. Worth was degraded into a lazy synonyme of value ;
and value was exclusively attached to the interest of the senses. But
though the growing alienation and self-sufficiency of the understand-
ing was perceptible at an earlier period, yet it seems to have been
about the middle of the last century, under the influence of Voltaire,
D'Alembert, Diderot, say generally of the so-called Encyclopedists,
and alas! — of their crowned proselytes and disciples, Frederick, Joseph,
and Catherine, — that the human understanding, and this too in its
narrowest form, was tempted to throw off all show of reverence to
the spiritual and even to the moral powers and impulses of the soul ;
and usurping the name of reason openly joined the banners of Anti-
christ, at once the pander and the prostitute of sensuality, and whether
in the cabinet, laboratory, the dissecting room, or the brothel, alike
busy in the schemes of vice and irreligion. Well and truly might it,
thus personified in our fancy, have been addressed in the words of the
evangelical Prophet, which I have once before quoted. Thou hast
said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted
thee — and thou hast said in thy heart, I am, and there is none beside
me. (Isaiah xlvii. 10.)

Prurient, bustling, and revolutionary, this French wisdom has never
more than grazed the surfaces of knowledge. As political economy,
in its zeal for the increase of food it habitually overlooked the quali-
ties and even the sensations of those that were to feed on it. As
ethical philosophy, it recognized no duties which it could not reduce
into debtor and creditor accounts on the ledgers of self-love, where
no coin was sterling which could not be rendered into agreeable sen-
sations. And even in its height of self-complacency as chemical art,
greatly am I deceived if it has not from the very beginning mistaken
the products of destruction, cadavera rerum, for the elements of com-
position : and most assuredly it has dearly purchased a few brilliant
inventions at the loss of all communion with life and the spirit of na-
ture. As the process, such the result ; — a heartless frivolity alterna-
ting with a sentimentality as heartless ; an ignorant contempt of an-
tiquity ; a neglect of moral self- discipline ; a deadening of the religious
sense, even in the less reflecting forms of natural piety ; a scornful
reprobation of all consolations and secret refreshings from above, —
and as. the caput mortuum of human nature evaporated, a French na-
ture of rapacity, levity, ferocity, and presumption.

Man of understanding, canst thou command the stone to lie, cans\

APPENDIX B. 465

thou bid the flower bloom, where thou hast placed it in thy classifica-
tion?— Canst thou persuade the living or the inanimate to stand
separate even as thou hast separated them ? — And do not far rather
all things spread out before thee in glad confusion and heedless inter-
mixture, even as a lightsome chaos on which the Spirit of God is
moving? — Do not all press and swell under one attraction, and live
together in promiscuous harmony, each joyous in its own kind, and
in the immediate neighborhood of myriad others that in the system
of thy understanding are distant as the poles ? — If to mint and to re-
member names delight thee, still arrange and classify and pore and
pull to pieces, and peep into death to look for life, as monkeys put
their hands behind a looking-glass ! Yet consider in the first sabbath
which thou imposest on the busy discursion of thought, that all this
is at best little more than a technical memory : that like can only be
known by like : that as truth is the correlative of being, so is the act
of being the great organ of truth : that in natural no less than in moral
science, quantum sumus, scimus.

That which we find in ourselves is (gradu mutato) the substance
and the life of all our knowledge. "Without this latent presence of
the ' I am,' all modes of existence in the external world would flit
before us as colored shadows, with no greater depth, root, or fixure,
than the image of a rock hath in a gliding stream or the rainbow on
a fast-sailing rain-storm. The human mind is the compass, in which
the laws and actuations of all outward essences are revealed as the
dips and declinations. (The application of geometry to the forces and
movements of the material world is both proof and instance.) The
fact, therefore, that the mind of man in its own primary and constit-
uent forms represents the laws of nature, is a mystery which of itself
should suffice to make us religious : for it is a problem of which God
is the only solution, God, the one before all, and of all, and through
all ! — True natural philosophy is comprised in the study of the science
and language of symbols. The power delegated to nature is all in
every part : and by a symbol I mean, not a metaphor or allegory or
any other figure of speech or form of fancy, but an actual and essen-
tial part of that, the whole of which it represents. Thus our Lord
speaks symbolically when he says that the eye is the light of the ~body.
The genuine naturalist is dramatic poet in his own line : and such as
our myriad-minded Shakspeare is, compared with the Racines and
Metastasios, such and by a similar process of self-transformation would
the man be, compared with the doctors of the mechanic school, who
should construct his physiology on the heaven-descended, Know
Thyself.

Even the visions of the night speak to us of powers within us that
are not dreamt of in their day-dream of philosophy. The dreams,
which we most often remember, are produced by the nascent sensa

u*

466 APPENDIX B.

tions and inward motiunculce (the fluxions) of the waking state.
Hence, too, they are more capable of being remembered, because
passing more gradually into our waking thoughts they are more likely
to associate with our first perceptions after sleep. Accordingly, when
the nervous system is approaching to the waking state, a sort of under-
consciousness blends with our dreams, that in all we imagine as seen or
heard our own self is the ventriloquist, and moves the slides in the
magic-lantern. "We dream about things.

But there are few persons of tender feelings and reflecting habits
who have not, more or less often in the course of their lives, experi-
enced dreams of a very different kind, and during the profoundest
sleep that is compatible with after-recollection, — states, of -which it
would scarcely be too bold to say that we dream the things them-
selves: so exact, minute, and vivid beyond all power of ordinary
memory is the portraiture, so marvellously perfect is our brief mc-
tempsychosis into the very being, as it were, of the person who seems
to address us. The dullest wight is at times a Shakspeare in his
dreams. Not only may we expect that men of strong religious feel-
ings, but little religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to
regard such occurrences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought not
to surprise us, if such dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the
event, as though they had actually possessed a character of divination.
For who shall decide, how far a perfect reminiscence of past experi-
ences (of many perhaps that had escaped our reflex consciousness at
the time) — who shall determine, to what extent this reproductive
imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and undistracted by intru-
sions from the senses, may or may not be concentered and sublimed
into foresight and presentiment? — There would be nothing herein
either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemptu-
ous disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but credulity seen from be-
hind, bowing and nodding assent to the habitual and the fashionable.

To the touch (or feeling) belongs the proximate ; to the eye the
distant. Now little as I might be disposed to believe, I should be
still less inclined to ridicule, the conjecture that in the recesses of our
nature, and undeveloped, there might exist an inner sense (and there-
fore appertaining wholly to time) — a sense hitherto without a name,
which as a higher third combined and potentially included both the
former. Thus gravitation combines and includes the powers of at-
traction and repulsion, which are the constituents of matter, as dis-
tinguished from body. And thus, not as a compound, but as a higher
third, it realizes matter (of itself ensfluxionale et prcefluuni) and con-
stitutes it body. Now suppose that this nameless inner sense stood
to the relations of time as the power of gravitation to those of space ?
A priori, a presence to the future is not more mysterious or transcen-
dent than a presence to the distant, than a power equally immediate

APPENDIX B. 467

to the most remote objects, as it is to the central mass of its own
body, toward which it seems, as it were, enchanting them : for in-
stance, the gravity in the sun and moon to the spring-tides of our
ocean. The true reply to such an hypothesis would be, that as there
is nothing to be said against its possibility, there is, likewise, nothing
to be urged for its reality ; and that the facts may be rationally ex-
plained without it.

Tt has been asked why knowing myself to be the object of personal
slander (slander as unprovoked as it is groundless, unless acts of kind-
ness are provocation) I furnish this material for it by pleading in pal-
liation of so chimerical a fancy. With that half-playful sadness, which
at once sighs and smiles, I answered: why not for that very reason?
— namely, in order that my calumniator might have, if not a material,
yet some basis for the poison-gas of his invention to combine with ?
— But no, — pure falsehood is often for the time the most effective ;
for how can a man confute what he can only contradict ? — Our opin-
ions and principles can not prove an alibi. Think only what your
feelings would be if you heard a wretch deliberately perjure himself
in support of an infamous accusation, so remote from all fact, so
smooth and homogeneous in its untruth, such a round Robin of mere
lies, that you knew not which to begin with ? — What could you do,
but look round with horror and astonishment, pleading silently to
human nature itself,— and perhaps (as hath really been the case with
me) forget both the slanderer and his slander in the anguish inflicted
by the passiveness of your many professed friends, whose characters
you had ever been as eager to clear from the least stain of reproach
as if a coal of fire had been on your own skin ? — But enough of this
which would not have occurred to me at all, at this time, had it not
been thus suggested.

The feeling, which in point of fact chiefly influenced me in the pre-
ceding half apology for the supposition of a divining power in the
human mind, arose out of the conviction that an age or nation may
become free from certain prejudices, beliefs, and superstitious practices
in two ways. It may have really risen above them ; or it may have
fallen below them, and become too bad for their continuance. The
rustic would have little reason to thank the philosopher who should
give him true conceptions of ghosts, omens, dreams, and presentiments
at the price of abandoning his faith in Providence and in the continued
existence of his fellow-creatures after their death. The teeth of the
old serpent sowed by the Oadmuses of French literature under Lewis
XV. produced a plenteous crop of such philosophers and truth-trum-
peters in the reign of his ill-fated successor. They taught many facts,
historical, political, physiological, and ecclesiastical, diffusing their no-
tions so widely that the very ladies and hair-dressers of Paris became

468 APPENDIX B.

fluent encyclopedists ; and the sole price, which their scholars paid
for these treasures of new light, was to believe Christianity an impos-
ture, the Scriptures a forgery, the worship of God superstition, hell a
fable, heaven a dream, our life without providence, and our death
without hope. What can be conceived more natural than the result,
that self-acknowledged beasts should first act, and next suffer them-
selves to be treated, as beasts ?

Thank heaven ! — notwithstanding the attempts of Thomas Paine and
his compeers, it is not s) bad with us. Open infidelity has ceased to
be a means even of gratifying vanity : for the leaders of the gang
themselves turned apostates to Satan, as soon as the number of their
proselytes became so large that atheism ceased to give distinction.
Nay, it became a mark of original thinking to defend the Creed and
the Ten Commandments : so the strong minds veered round, and re-
ligion came again into fashion. But still I exceedingly doubt, whether
the superannuation of sundry superstitious fancies be the result of any
real diffusion of sound thinking in the nation at large. For instance,
there is now no call for a Picus Mirandula to write seven books
against astrology. It might seem, indeed, that a single fact like that
of the loss of Kempenfeldt and his crew, or the explosion of the ship
L1 Orient, would prove to the common sense of the most ignorant, that
even if astrology could be true, the astrologers must be false : for if
such a science were possible it could be a science only for gods. Yet
Erasmus, the prince of sound common sense, is known to have disap-
proved of his friend's hardihood, and did not himself venture be-
yond skepticism ; and the immortal Newton, to whom more than tc
any other human being Europe owes the purification of its general
notions concerning the heavenly bodies, studied astrology with much
earnestness, and did not reject it till he had demonstrated the false-
hood of all its pretended grounds and principles. The exit of two or
three superstitions is no more a proof of the entry of good sense, than
the strangling of a despot at Algiers or Constantinople is a symptom
of freedom. If, therefore, not the mere disbelief, but the grounds of
such disbelief must decide the question of our superior illumination, I
confess that I could not from my own observations on the books and
conversation of the age vote for the affirmative without much hesita-
tion. As many errors are despised by men from ignorance as from
knowledge. Whether that be not the case with regard to divination,
is a Query that rises in my mind (notwithstanding my fullest convic-
tion of the non-existence of such a power) as often as I read the
names of the great statesmen and philosophers, which Cicero enume-
rates in the introductory paragraphs of his work de Divinationc.—
Socrates, omnesque Socmtici, * * * plurimisque locis gravis auctof
Democritus, * * * Cratippusque, familiaris noster, quern ego parem
summis Peripateticis judico, * * * * prceseisionem rerum futurarwn

APPENDIX B. 469

wmprobarunt* Of all the theistic philosophers, Xenophanes was the
only one who wholly rejected it. A stoicis degeneravit Pancetius, nee
tamen ausus est negare vim csse divinandi, sed dubitare se dixit.j Nor
was this a mere outward assent to the opinions of the State. Many
of them subjected the question to the most exquisite arguments, and
supported the affirmative not merely by experience, but (especially
the Stoics, who of all the sects most cultivated psychology) by a
Minute analysis of human nature and its faculties: while on the mind
of Cicero himself (as on that of Plato with regard to a state of retri-
bution after death) the universality of the faith in all times and coun-
tries appears to have made the deepest impression. Gentem quidem
nullam video, neque tarn humanam atque doctam, neque tarn immanent
tamque "barbaram, quce non significari futura, et a quibusdam -intelligi
prcedicique posse censeat.\

I fear that the decrease in our feelings of reverence towards man-
kind at large, and our increasing aversion to every opinion not
grounded in some appeal to the senses, have a larger share in this ova1
emancipation from the prejudices of Socrates and Cicero, than reflec-
tion, insight, or a fair collation of the facts and arguments. For my-
self, I would much rather see the English people at large believe some-
what too much than merely just enough, if the latter is to be produced,
or must be accompanied, by a contempt or neglect of the faith and
intellect of their forefathers. For not to say, what yet is most cer-
tain, that a people can not believe just enough, and that there are
errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness, while there is a
probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth as ytt
below the horizon ; it remains most worthy of our serious considera-
tion, whether a fancied superiority to their ancestors' intellects must
not be speedily followed in the popular mind by disrespect for their
ancestors' institutions.- Assuredly it is not easy to place any confi-
dence in a form of Church or State, of the founders of which we have
been taught to believe that their philosophy was jargon, and their
feelings and notions rank superstition. Yet are we never to grow
wiser ? — Are we to be credulous by birthright, and take ghosts, omens,
visions, and witchcraft, as an heirloom ? — God forbid. A distinction
must be made, and sush a one as shall be equally availing and profit-
able to men of all ranks. Is this practicable ? — Yes ! — it exists. It
is found in the study of the Old and New Testament, if only it be
combined with a spiritual partaking of the Redeemer's Blood, of
which, mysterious as the symbol may be, the sacramental Wine is no
mere or arbitrary memento. This is the only certain, and this is the
universal, preventive of all debasing superstitions ; this is the true
Ha3mony (alpa, blood, olvor, wine) which our Milton has beautifully
allegorized in a passage strangely overlooked by all his commentators

• L. i. s 2.— Ed. t Ib.— K<1. * L. i. s. 1.- CJ

470 APPENDIX B.

Bear in mind, reader ! the character of a militant Christian, and the
results (in this life and the next) of the Redemption by the Blood of
Christ • and so peruse the passage : —

Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,

But of divine effect, he culled me out :

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,

But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil!

Unknown and like esteem'd, and the dull swain

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon ;

And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.

He called it Hfemony and gave it me,

And bade me keep it as of sovran use

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,

Or ghas:ly furies' apparition. COMUB.

These lines might be employed as an amulet against delusions : for
the man, who is indeed a Christian, will as little think of informing
himself concerning the future by dreams or presentiments, as for look-
ing for a distant object at broad noonday with a lighted taper in his
hand.

But whatever of good arid intellectual our nature worketh in us, it
is our appointed task to render gradually our own work. For all
things that surround us, and all things that happen unto us, have
(each doubtless its own providential purpose, but) all one common
final cause : namely, the increase of consciousness in such wise that
whatever part of the terra incognita of our nature the increased con-
sciousness discovers, our will may conquer and bring into subjection
to itself under the sovereignty of reason.

The leading differences between mechanic and vital philosophy may
all be drawn from one point : namely, that the former demanding for
every mode and act of existence real or possible visibility, knows only
of distance arid nearness, composition (or rather juxtaposition) and
decomposition, in short the relations of unproductive particles to each
other ; so that in every instance the result is the exact sum of the
component quantities, as in arithmetical addition. This is the philos-
ophy of death, and only of a dead nature can it hold good. In life,
much more in spirit, and in a living and spiritual philosophy, the two
component counter-powers actually interpenetrate each other, and
generate a higher third, including both the former, ita tamen ut sit
alia et major.

To apply this to the subject of this present comment. The elements
(the factors, as it were) of religion are reason and understanding. If
the composition stopped in itself, an understanding thus rationalized
would lead to the admission of the general doctrines of natural reli-
gion, the belief of a God, and of immortality ; and probably to an ac-
quiescence in the history and ethics of the Gospel. But still it would

APPENDIX B. 471

be a speculative faith, and in the nature of a theory; as if the main
object of religion were to solve difficulties for the satisfaction of the
intellect. Now this state of mind, which alas ! is the state of too
many among our self-entitled rational religionists, is a mere balance
or compromise of the two powers, not that living and generative in-
terpenetration of both which would give being to essential religion ; —
to the religion at the birth of which we receive tlie spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry Abba, Father; the Spirit itself hearing witness with
our spirit, that we are the children of God. (Rom. viii. 15, 16.) In
religion there is no abstraction. To the unity and infinity of the Di-
vine Nature, of which it is the partaker, it adds the fulness, and to
the fulness, the grace and the creative overflowing. That which in-
tuitively it at once beholds and adores, praying always, and rejoicing
always — that doth it tend to become. In all things and in each thing
— for the Almighty Goodness doth not create generalities or abide in
abstractions — in each, the meanest, object it bears witness to a mys-
tery of infinite solution. Thus beholding as in a glass the glory of the
Lord, it is changed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Cor.
iii. 18.) For as it is born and not made, so must it grow. As it is
the image or symbol of its great object, by the organ of this similitude,
as by an eye, it seeth that same image throughout the creation ; and
from the same cause sympathizeth with all creation in its groans to
be redeemed. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and tra-
vaileth in earnest expectation (Rom. viii. 20-23) of a renewal of its
forfeited power, the power, namely, of retiring into that image, which
is its substantial form and true life, from the vanity of self, which then
only is when for itself it hath ceased to be. Even so doth religion
finitely express the unity of the infinite Spirit by being a total act of
the soul. And even so doth it represent his fulness by its depth, by
its substantiality, and by an all-pervading vital warmth which — relax-
ing the rigid, consolidating the dissolute, and giving cohesion to that
which is about to sink down and fall abroad, as into the dust and
crumble of the grave — is a life within life, evermore organizing the
soul anew.

Nor doth it express the fulness only of the Spirit. It likewise rep-
resents his overflowing by its communicativeness, budding and blos-
soming forth in all earnestness of persuasion, and in all words of sound
doctrine : while, like the citron in a genial soil and climate, it bears a
golden fruitage of good-works at the same time, the example waxing
In contact with the exhortation, as the ripe orange beside the opening
orange-flower. Yea, even his creativeness doth it shadow out by its
own powers of impregnation and production (being such a one as
Paul the aged, and also a prisoner for Jesus Christ, who begat to a
lively hope his son Onesimus in his bonds) regenerating in and through
the Spirit the slaves of corruption, and fugitives from a far greater

472 APPENDIX B.

and harder master than Philemon. The love of God, and therefore
God himself who is love, religion strives to express by love, and meas-
ures its growth by the increase and activity of its love. For Chris-
tian love is the last and divinest birth, the harmony, unity, and god-
like transfiguration of all the vital, intellectual, moral, and spiritual
powers. Now it manifests itself as the sparkling and ebullient spring
of well-doing in gifts and in labors ; and now as a silent fountain of
patience and long-suffering, the fulness of which no hatred or perse-
cution can exhaust or diminish ; a more than conqueror in the per-
suasion, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate it from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. (Eom. viii. 38, 39.)

From God's love through his Son, crucified for us from the begin-
ning of the world, religion begins: and in love towards God and the
creatures of God it hath its end and completion. O, how heaven-like
it is to sit among brethren at the feet of a minister who speaks under
the influence of love and is heard under the same influence ! For all
abiding and spiritual knowledge, infused into a grateful and affection-
ate fellow-Christian, is as the child of the mind that infuses it. The
delight which he gives he receives ; and in chat bright and liberal
hour the gladdened preacher can scarce gather the ripe produce of to-
day without discovering and looking forward to the green fruits and
embryons, the heritage and reversionary wealth of the days to
come ; till he bursts forth in prayer and thanksgiving — The harvest
truly is plenteous, but the laborers few. 0 gracious Lord of the
harvest, send forth laborers into thy harvest! There is no difference
between Jew and Greek. Thou, Lord, over all, art rich to all that
call upon thee. But how shall they call on him in whom they have
not believed f and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not
heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher ? and how shall
they preach except they be sent? And Of how beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publixh-
eth peace, that bringeth glad tidings of good things, that publisheth
salvation ; that saith unto the captive soul, Thy God reigneth ! God
manifested in the flesh hath redeemed thee ! 0 Lord of the harvest, send
forth laborers into thy harvest.

Join with me, reader! in the fervent prayer that we may seek
within us what we can never find elsewhere, that we may find within
us what no words can put there, that one only true religion, which
elevateth knowing into being, which is at once the science of being,
and the being and the life of all genuine science.

APPENDIX C. 473

(C.)

Not without great hesitation should I express a suspicion concern-
ing the genuineness of any the least important passage in the New
Testament, unless I could adduce the most conclusive evidence from
the .earliest manuscripts and commentators, in support of its interpo-
lation : well knowing that such permission has already opened a door
to tile most fearful license. It is indeed, in its consequences, no less
than an assumed right of picking and choosing our religion out of the
Scriptures. Most assuredly I would never hazard a suggestion of this
kind in any instance in which the retention or the omission of the
words could make the slightest difference with regard to fact, mira-
cle, or precept. Still less would I start the question, where the hy-
pothesis of their interpolation could be wrested to the discountenan-
cing of any article of doctrine concerning which dissension existed :
no, not though the doubt or disbelief of the doctrine had been con-
fined to those, whose faith few but themselves would honor with the
name of Christianity ; however reluctant we might be, both from the
courtesies of social life and the- nobler charities of humility, to with-
hold from the persons themselves the title of Christians.

But as there is nothing in Matthew xii. 40, which would fall within
this general rule, I dare permit myself to propose the query, whether
there does not exist internal evidence of its being a gloss of some
unlearned, though pious, Christian of the first century, which has
slipt into the text ? The following are my reasons. 1. It is at all
events a comment on the words of our Saviour, and no part of his
speech. 2. It interrupts the course and breaks down the application
of our Lord's argument, as addressed to men who from their unwil-
lingness to sacrifice their vain traditions, gainful hypocrisy, and pride
both of heart and of demeanor, demanded a miracle for the confirma-
tion of moral truths that must have borne witness to their own divin-
ity in the consciences of all who had not rendered themselves con-
science-proof. 3. The text strictly taken is irreconcilable with the
fact as it is afterwards related, and as it is universally accepted. I at
least remember no calculation of time, according to which the inter-
space from Friday evening to the earliest dawn of Sunday morning,
could be represented as three days and three nights. As three days
our Saviour himself speaks of it (John ii. 19) and so it would be de-
scribed in common language as well as according to the use of the
Jews ; but I can find no other part of Scripture which authorizes the
phrase of three nights. This gloss is not found either in the repeti-
tion of the circumstances by Matthew himself (xvi. 4), nor in Mark
(viii. 12), nor in Luke (xii. 54). Mark's narration doth indeed most
strikingly confirm my second reason, drawn from the purpose of OUT

474 APPENDIX D.

Saviour's argument : for the allusion to the prophet Jonas is omitted
altogether, and the refusal therefore rests on the depravity of the ap-
plicants, as proved by the wantonness of the application itself. All
signs must have been useless to such men as long as the great sign of
the times, the call to repentance, remained without effect. 4. The
gloss corresponds with the known fondness of the earlier Jewish con-
verts, and indeed of the Christians in general of the first century, to
bring out in detail and into exact square every accommodation of the
Old Testament, which they either found in the Gospels, or made for
themselves. It is too notorious into what strange fancies (not always
at safe distance from dangerous errors) the oldest uninspired writers
of the Christian Church were seduced by this passion of transmuting
without Scriptural authority incidents, names, and even mere sounds
of the Hebrew Scriptures, into Evangelical types and correspondences.
An additional reason may perhaps occur to those who alone would
be qualified to appreciate its force : namely, to Biblical scholars fa-
miliar with the opinions and arguments of sundry doctors, Rabbinical
as well as Christian, respecting the first and second chapter of Jonah.

(D.)'

In all ages of the Christian Church, and in the later period of the
Jewish (that is, as soon as from their acquaintance first with tiie
Oriental, arid afterwards with the Greek, philosophy the precursory
and preparative influences of the Gospel began to work) there have
existed individuals (Laodiceans in spirit, minims in faith, and nomi-
nalists in philosophy) who mistake outlines for substance, and distinct
images for clear conceptions ; with whom, therefore, not to be a thing
is the same as not to be at all. The contempt in which such persons
hold the works and doctrines of all theologians before Grotius, and
of all philosophers before Locke and Hartley (at least before Bacon
and Hobbes), is not accidental, nor yet altogether owing to that epi-
demic of a proud ignorance occasioned by a diffused sciolism, which
gave a sickly and hectic showiness to the latter half of the last cen-
tury. It is a real instinct of self-defence acting offensively by antici-
pation. For the authority of all the greatest names of antiquity is
full and decisive against them ; and man, by the very nature ot his
birth and growth, is so much the creature of authority, that there is
no way of effectually resisting it, but by undermining the reverence
for the past in toto. Thus, the Jewish Prophets have, forsooth, a
certain degree of antiquarian value, as being the only specimens ex
tant of the oracles of a barbarous tribe ; the Evangelists are to be in-
terpreted with a due allowance for their superstitious prejudices
concerning evil spirits, and St. Paul never suffers them to forget that
he had been brought up at the feet of a Jewish Rabbi ! The Greeks

APPENDIX D. 475

indeed were a fine people in works of taste ; but as to their philoso-
phers— the writings of Plato are smoke and flash from the witch's
caldron of a disturbed imagination : — Aristotle's works a quickset
hedge of fruitless and thorny distinctions ; and all the philosophers
before Plato and Aristotle fablers and allegorizers !

But these men have had their day : and there are signs of the
times clearly announcing that that day is verging to its close. Even
now there are not a few, on whose convictions it will not be uninflu-
encive to know, that the power, by which men are led to the truth
of things, instead of their appearances, was deemed and entitled the
living and substantial "Word of God by the soundest of the Hebrew
Doctors ; that the eldest and most profound of the Greek philosophers
demanded assent to their doctrine, mainly as ao<f>ia deoTrapddo-oc, that
is, a traditionary wisdom that had its origin in inspiration ; that these
men referred the same power to the KVP uei&ov VTTO diotKovvrog Aoyov ;
and that they were scarcely less express than their scholar Philo Ju-
daeus, in their affirmations of the Logos, as no mere attribute or qual-
ity, no mode of abstraction, no personification, but literally and mys-
teriously Deus alter et idem.

When education has disciplined the minds of our gentry for aus-
terer study ; when educated men shall be ashamed to look abroad
for truths that can be only found within ; within themselves they
will discover, intuitively will they discover, the distinctions between
the light that lighteth every man that cometJi into the world ; and the
understanding, which forms the peculium of each man, as different in
extent and value from another man's understanding, as his estate may
be from his neighbor's estate. The words of St. John i. V-12, are in
their whole extent interpretable of the understanding, which derives
its rank and mode of being in the human race (that is, as far as it
may be contrasted with the instinct of the dog or elephant, in all,
which constitutes it human understanding) from the universal light.
This light comes therefore as to its own. Being rejected, it leaves
the understanding to a world of dreams and darkness : for in it alone
is life and the life is the light of men. What then but apparitions can
remain to a philosophy, which strikes death through all things vis-
ible and invisible ; satisfies itself then only when it can explain
those abstractions of the outward senses, which by an unconscious
irony it names indifferently facts and phamomena, mechanically —
that is, by the laws of death ; and brands with the name of mysti-
cism every solution grounded in life, or the powers and intuitions of
life?

On the other hand, if the light be received by faith, to such under-
standings it delegates the privilege (e^ovaiav) to become sons of God,
expanding while it elevates, even as the beams of the sun incorporate
with the mist, and make its natural darkness and earthly nature the

476 APPENDIX D.

bearer and interpreter of their own glory. 'Edv pi TriarevaijTe, ov p*

ffVVTJTE.

The very same truth is found in a fragment of the Ephesian Hera-
clitus, preserved by Stobseus. Zvv vou Myovra? iaxvptfrodai XPV TV
fuvw TrdvTuv rpetyovrai "yap Trdvrec ol dv&ptJTrtvoi voot VTTO evo£ TOV titiov
(Aoyof) Kparsl yap TOCOVTOV OKOOOV i'&s^et, KO.L i^apnel Tract aal KepiyivErai*
—To discourse rationally (if we would render the discursive under-
standing discourse of reason) it behooves us to derive strength from
that which is common to all men (the light that ligJiteth every man}.
For all human understandings are nourished by the one Divine Word,
whose power is commensurate with his will, and is sufficient for all
and overfloweth (shineth in darkness, and is not contained therein^ or
comprehended l)y the darkness).

This was Heraclitus, whose book is nearly six hundred years older
than the Gospel of St. John, and who was proverbially entitled the
Dark (6 aKo-eivog). But it was a darkness which Socrates would not
condemn,! and which would probably appear to enlightened Chris-
tians the darkness of prophecy, had the work, which he hid in the
temple, been preserved to us. But obscurity is a word of many
meanings. It may be in the subject ; it may be in the author ; or it
may be in the reader ; — and this again may originate in the state of
the reader's heart ; or in that of his capacity ; or in his temper ; or
in his accidental associations. Two kinds are especially pointed out
by the divine Plato in his Sophistes. The beauty of the original is
beyond my reach. On my anxiety to give the fulness of the thought,
I must ground my excuse for construing rather than translating. The
fidelity of the version may well atone for its harshness in a passage
that deserves a meditation beyond the ministry of words, even the
words of Plato himself, though in them, or nowhere, are to be heard
the sweet sounds, that issued from the head of Memnon at the touch
of light. — " One thing is the hardness to be understood of the sophist,
another that of the philosopher. The former retreating into the ob-
scurity of that which hath not true being (rov uf) ovrof), and by long
intercourse accustomed to the same, is hard to be known on account
of the duskiness of the place. But the philosopher by contemplation
of pure reason evermore approximating to the idea of true being
(TOV ovroc) is by no means easy to be seen on account of the splendor
of that region. For the intellectual eyes of the many flit, and are in-
capable of looking fixedly toward the God-like."J

* Serm. III.— Ed.

f Diogenes Laertius has preserved the characteristic criticism of Socra-
tes. <baal 6' ftvpnridijv avru 66vra rov 'HpanfaiTov cv-yYpafj.jua, IpeaOai, TV
; TOV 6£ (j>dvai, "A. uev ovvrjKa, yevvala" olfiai tfe, Kal u urj ovvrjKO.'

ye TLVOQ delrai, Ko'Avufirjrov. II. v. 7. — Ed.
t The passage is :—

£E. TOV u£v 6?) §L>MGQ§QV £V TOIOVTL) TlVi T07r(f. Kdl VVV Idl

APPENDIX D. 477

There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit, that not in
articles of faith alone, but in the heights of geometry, and even in
the necessary first principles of natural philosophy, there exist truths
of apodictic force in reason, which the mere understanding strives in
vain to comprehend. Take, as an instance, the descending series of
infinites in every finite, a position which involves a contradiction for
the understanding, yet follows demonstrably from the very definiticn
of body, as that which fills a space. For wherever there is a space
filled, there must be an extension to be divided. When therefore
maxims generalized from appearances (phenomena} are applied to
substances ; when rules, abstracted or deduced from forLs in time
and space, are used as measures of spiritual being, yea even of the
Divine Nature which can not be compared or classed (For my thoughts
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
Isaiah Iv. 8) ; such professors can not but protest against the whole
process, as grounded on a gross metdbasis elf u/t/lo yevog. Yet still
they are disposed to tolerate it as a sort of sanative counter-excite-
ment, that holds in check the more dangerous disease of Methodism.
But I more than doubt of both the positions. I do not think Meth-
odism, Calvinistic or Wesleyan, the more dangerous disease ; and
even if it were, I should deny that it is at all likely to be counteracted
by the rational Christianity of our modern Alogi (/loyof Trioreus u/loyof !)
who, mistaking unity for sameness, have been pleased, by a misnomer
not less contradictory to their own tenets than intolerant to those of
Christians in general, to entitle themselves Unitarians. The two con-
tagions attack each a wholly different class of minds and tempers.
and each tends to produce and justify the other, accordingly as the
predisposition of the patient may chance to be. If fanaticism be as
a fire in the flooring of the Church, the idolism of the unspiritualized
understanding is the dry rot in its beams and timbers. Tppiv xpv
o/3evvveiv paTCkov fj irvpKaiijv, says Heraclitus.* It is not the sect of
Unitarian Dissenters, but the spirit of Unitarianism in the members
of the Church that alarms me. To what open revilings, and to what
whispered slanders, I subject my name by this public avowal, I well

pr/ao/nev, eav fyrti/Ltev, idelv pev xa^ETrbv hap-ytig KOL TOVTOV, eTeoov p.rjv rpo~
KOV TJ re TOV GO^IOTOV ^a/lcTror^f rj re TOVTOV.

6EAI. Ilwf ;

HE. *O fj.lv uTroSiSpdaKuv el$ T/)V TOV JU.T/ ovTOf OK.OTEtvoTrjTa, TpifSy Trpo
ocTTTo/uevof avTTjs, dtu TO OKOTeivdv TOV TOTTOV KdTavorjaat ^a/leTrof . $ -yap ; '

6EAI. 'EotKcv.

SE. 'O de -ye ^kAoao^of, Ty TOV ovTog del dtil 2,0"ytajLtuiv Trp6afiei/j.(.vo(
Idea, 6cd TO Aa//7rpov av Ttjr xupas ovdaptig evTreTr/e d(j>6qvaf T& yap 7% T&V
TroA/lwv TJ)VX?/£ o/LtjitaTa napTepelv vrpdf TO delov dtiop&ny ddvvara. s. 84
-Ed.

Diog. Laert. ix. I.— Ed.

478 APPENDIX E.

know : UKIGTOVS -yap rivug elvat eTriaTixfxjv 'Hpdtchei rog , (jnjoiv, d/covaa/t oi>«
ov8' eiirslv uATici nal, KVVE^ <3f, (3av£ovaiv dv uv fj,r)

(E.)

The accomplished author of the Arcadia, the star of serenest bril-
liance in the glorious constellation of Elizabeth's court, our England's
Sir Philip Sidney, the paramount gentleman of Europe, the poet,
warrior, and statesman, held high converse with Spenser on the idea
of supersensual beauty ; on all " earthly fair and amiable," as the
symbol of that idea ; and on music and poesy as its living educts.
With the same genial reverence did the younger Algernon commune
with Harrington and Milton on the idea of a perfect State ; and in
what sense it is true, that the men (that is, the aggregate of the in-
habitants of a country at any one time) are made for the State, not
the State for the men. But these lights shine no longer, or for a few.
Exeunt : and enter in their stead Holofernes and Costard, masked as
Metaphysics and Common-Sense. And these too have their ideas.
The former has an idea that Hume, Hartley, and Condillac, have ex-
ploded all ideas, but those of sensation ; he has an idea that he was
particularly pleased with the fine idea of the last-named philosopher,
that there is no absurdity in asking What color virtue is of? inas-
much as the proper philosophic answers would be black, blue, or
bottle-green, according as the coat, waistcoat, and small clothes might
chance to be of the person, the series of whose motions had excited
the sensations, which formed our idea of virtue. The latter has no
idea of a better-flavored haunch of venison than he dined off at the
Albion. He admits that the French have an excellent idea of cook-
ing in general, but holds that their best cooks have no more idea of
dressing a turtle than the gourmands themselves, at Paris, have any
real idea of the true taste and color of the fat.

It is not impossible that a portion of the high value attached of late
years to the dates and margins of our old folios and quartos may be
transferred to their contents. Even now there exists a shrewd sus-
picion in the minds of reading men, that not only Plato and Aristotle,
but even Scotus Erigena,* and the schoolmen from Peter Lombardf
to Duns Scotus,t are not such mere blockheads, as they pass for with
those who have never perused a line of their writings. What the re-
sults may be, should this ripen into conviction, I can but guess. But
all history seems to favor the persuasion I entertain, that in every age
the speculative philosophy in general acceptance, the metaphysical
opinions that happen to be predominant, will influence the theology
of that age. Whatever is proposed for the belief, as true, must have

* He died at Oxford in 886.— Ed. t He died Bishop of Paris in 1164 .-'.Ed.

t He died in 1308.— Ed.

APPENDIX E. 479

been previously admitted by reason as possible, as involving no con- I
tradiction to the universal forms or laws of thought, no incompati- i
bility in the terms of the proposition ; and the determination on this I
head belongs exclusively to the science of metaphysics. In each article
of faith embraced on conviction, the mind determines, first intuitively
on its logical possibility ; secondly, discursively, on its analogy to
doctrines already believed, as well as on its correspondence to the
wants and faculties of our nature ; and thirdly, historically, on the
direct and indirect evidences. But the probability of an event is a part
of its historic evidence, and constitutes its presumptive proof, or the evi-
dence a, priori. Now as the degree of evidence a posteriori, requisite in
order to a satisfactory proof of the actual occurrence of any fact stands,
in an inverse ratio the strength or weakness of the evidence a priori
(that is, a fact probable in itself may be believed on slight testimony) ;
it is manifest that of the three factors, by which the mind is deter-
mined to the admission or rejection of the point in question, the last,
the historical, must be greatly influenced by the second, analogy, and
that both depend on the first, logical congruity, not indeed as their
cause or preconstituent, but as their indispensable condition ; so that
the very inquiry concerning them is preposterous (ffofiapa rov v?epov
nporepov) as long as the first remains undetermined. Again : the
history of human opinions (ecclesiastical and philosophical history)
confirms by manifold instances, what attentive consideration of the
position itself might have authorized us to presume, namely, that on
all such subjects as are out of the sphere of the senses, and therefore
incapable of a direct proof from outward experience, the question
whether any given position is logically impossible (incompatible with
reason) or only incomprehensible (that is, not reducible to the forms
of sense, namely, time and space, or those of the understanding,
namely, quantity, quality, and relation) in other words, the question,
whether an assertion be in itself inconceivable, or only by us un-
imaginable, will be decided by each individual according to the po-
sitions assumed as first principles in the metaphysical system which
he has previously adopted. Thus the existence of a Supreme Reason, .
the creator of the material universe, involved a contradiction for a
disciple of Epicurus, who had convinced himself that causative thought
was tantamount to something out of nothing or substance out of
shadow, and incompatible with the axiom, Nihil ex nihilo : While on
the contrary to a Platonist this position, that thought or mind essen-
tially, vel sensu eminent^ is causative, is necessarily pre-supposed in
every other truth, as that without which every fact of experience
would involve a contradiction in reason. Now it is not denied that
the framers of our Church Liturgy, Homilies and Articles, entertained
metaphysical opinions irreconcilable in their first principles with the
system of speculative philosophy which has been tauglit in this coun-

180 ^ APPENDIX E.

try, and only not universally received, since the asserted and gen-
erally believed defeat of the Bishop of Worcester (the excellent Stil-
Hngfleet) in his famous controversy with Mr. Locke. Assuredly
therefore it is well worth the consideration of our Clergy whether it
is at all probable in itself, or congruous with experience, that the dis-
puted Articles of our Church de revelatis et credendis should be
adopted with singleness of heart, and in the light of knowledge,when
the grounds and first philosophy, on which the framers themselves
rested the antecedent credibility (may we not add even the revelabil-
ity ?) of the Articles in question, have been exchanged for principles
the most dissimilar, if not contrary ? It may be said and truly, that
the Scriptures, and not metaphysical systems, are our best and ulti-
mate authority. And doubtless, on Revelation we must rely for the
truth of the doctrines. Yet what is considered incapable of being
conceived as possible, will be deemed incapable of having been re-
vealed as real : and that philosophy has hitherto had a negative voice,
as to the interpretation of the Scriptures in high and doctrinal points,
is proved by the course of argument adopted in the controversial
volumes of all the orthodox divines from Origen to Bishop Bull, as
well as by the very different sense attached to the same texts by
the disciples of the modern metaphysique, wherever they have been
at liberty to form their own creeds according to their own exposi
tions.

I repeat the question then : is it likely, that the faith of our ances-
tors will be retained when their philosophy is rejected, — rejected d
priori, as baseless notions not worth inquiring into, as obsolete errors
which it would be slaying the slain to confute? Should the answer
be in the negative, it would be no strained inference that the Clergy
at least, as the conservators of the national faith, and the accredited
representatives of learning in general amongst us, might with great
advantage to their own peace of mind qualify themselves to judge for
themselves concerning the comparative worth and solidity of the two
schemes. Let them make the experiment, whether a patient re-
hearing of their predecessor's cause, with enough of predilection for the
men to counterpoise the prejudices against their system, might not
induce them to move for a new trial ; — a result of no mean impor-
tance in my opinion, were it on this account alone, that it would re-
call certain ex-dignitaries in the book-republic from their long exile
on the shelves of our public libraries to their old familiar station on
the reading desks of our theological students. However strong the
presumption were in favor of principles authorized by names that
must needs be so dear and venerable to a minister of the Church in
England, as those of Hooker, Whitaker, Field, Donne, Selden, Stil-
lingfleet — (masculine intellects, formed under the robust discipline of
an age memorable for keenness of research, and iron industry) — yet no

APPENDIX E. 481

nndue preponderance from any previous weight in this scale will be
apprehended by minds capable of estimating the counter-weights,
which it must first bring to a balance in the scale opposite. The ob-
stinacy of opinions that have always been taken for granted, opinions
unassailable even by the remembrance of a doubt, the silent accrescence
of belief from the unwatched depositions of a general, never-contra-
dicted, hearsay; the concurring suffrage of modern books, all presup-
posing or re-asserting the same principles with the same confidence, and
with the same contempt for all prior systems ; — and among these, works
of highest authority, appealed to in our Legislature, and lectured on at
our Universities ; the very books, perhaps, that called forth our own
first efforts in thinking ; the solutions and confutations in which must
therefore have appeared ten-fold more satisfactory from their having
given us our first information of the difficulties to be solved, of the
opinions to be confuted. — Yerily, a clergyman's partiality towards the
tenets of his forefathers must be intense beyond all precedent, if it
can more than sustain itself against antagonists so strong in them-
eelves, and with such mighty adjuncts.

Nor in this enumeration dare I (though fully aware of the obloquy
to which I am exposing myself) omit the noticeable fact, that we have
attached a portion even of our national glory (not only to the system
itself, that system of disguised and decorous Epicureanism, which has
been the only orthodox philosophy of the last hundred years ; but
also, and more emphatically) to the name of the assumed father of
thesystem, whoraised it to its present pride of place, and almost uni-
versal acceptance throughout Europe. And how was this effected ?
Extrinsically, by all the causes, consequences, and accompaniments
of the Eevolution in 1688 : by all the opinions, interests, and passions,
which counteracted by the sturdy prejudices of the malcontents with
he Revolution ; qualified by the compromising character of its chief
conductors ; not more propelled by the spirit of enterprise and hazard
in our commercial towns, than kept in check by the characteristic vis
inertia, of the peasantry and landholders; both parties cooled and
Lessoned by the equal failure of the destruction, and of the restora-
tion, of monarchy ; — it was effected extrinsically, I say, by the same
influences, which — (not in and of themselves, but with all these and
sundry other modifications) — combined under an especial control of
Providence to perfect and secure the majestic temple of the British
Constitution : — but the very same which in France, without this prov
idential counterpoise, overthrew the motley fabric of feudal oppres-
sion to build up in its stead the madhouse of Jacobinism. Intrinsi-
cally, and as far as the philosophic scheme itself is alone concerned,
it was effected by the mixed policy and 'boiihommie, with which the
author contrived to retain in his celebrated work whatever the system
possesses of soothing tor the indolence, and of flattering for the vanitv,
VOL. i X

482 APPENDIX E.

of men's average understandings : while he kept out of sight all its
darker features which outrage the instinctive faith and moral feelings
of mankind, ingeniously threading-on the dried and shrivelled, yet
still wholesome and nutritious, fruits plucked from the rich grafts of
ancient wisdom, to the barren and worse than barren fig-tree of the
mechanic philosophy. Thus, the sensible Christians, the angels of the
church of Laodicea, with the numerous and mighty sect of their ad-
mirers, delighted with the discovery that they could purchase the de-
cencies and the creditableness of religion at so small an expenditure
of faith, extolled the work for its pious conclusions : while the infi-
dels, wiser in their generation than the children (at least than these
nominal children) of light, eulogized it with no less zeal for the sake
of its principles and assumptions, and with the foresight of those ob •
vious and only legitimate conclusions, that might and would be de-
duced from them. Great at all times and almost incalculable are the
influences of party spirit in exaggerating contemporary reputation ;
but never perhaps from the first syllable of recorded time were they
exerted under such a concurrence and conjunction of fortunate acci-
dents, of helping and furthering events and circumstances, as in the
instance of Mr. Locke.

I am most fully persuaded, that the principles both of taste, morals,
and religion taught in our most popular compendia of moral and po-
litical philosophy, natural theology, evidences of Christianity, and the
like, are false, injurious, and debasing. But I am likewise not less
deeply convinced that all the well-meant attacks on the writings of
modern infidels and heretics, in support either of the miracles or of
the mysteries of the Christian religion, can be of no permanent util-
ity, while the authors themselves join in the vulgar appeal to common
sense as the one infallible judge in matters, which become subjects of
philosophy only, because they involve a contradiction between this
common sense and our moral instincts, and require therefore an arbi-
ter, which containing both eminenter must be higher than either. We
but mow down the rank misgrowth instead of cleansing the soil, as long
as we ourselves protect and manure, as the pride of our garden, a tree
of false knowledge, which looks fair and showy and variegated with
fruits not its own, that hang from the branches which have at various
times been ingrafted on its stem ; but from the roots of which under
ground the runners are sent off, that shoot up at a distance and bring
forth the true and natural crop. I will speak plainly, though in so
doing I must bid defiance to all the flatterers of the folly and foolish
self-opinion of the half-instructed many. The articles of our Church,
and the true principles of government and social order, will never be
effectually and consistently maintained against their antagonists till
the champions have themselves ceased to worship the same Baal with
their enemies, till they have cast out the common idol from the re-

APPENDIX E. 483

of their own convictions, and with it the whole service and
ceremonial of idolism. While all parties agree in their abjuration ot
Plato and Aristotle, and in their contemptuous neglect of the School
men and the scholastic logic, without which the excellent Selden (that
genuine English mind whose erudition, broad, deep, and manifold as
it was, is yet less remarkable than his robust healthful common sense)
affirms it impossible for a divine thoroughly to comprehend or reputa-
bly to defend the whole nndiminished and unadulterated scheme of
Catholic faith, while all alike preassume, with Mr. Locke, that the
nind contains only the reliques of the senses, and therefore proceed
wifeh him to explain the substance from the shadow, the voice from
the echo, — they can but detect each the other's inconsistencies. The
champion of orthodoxy will victoriously expose the bald and staring
incongruity of the Socinian scheme with the language of Scripture,
and with the final causes of all revealed religion : — the Socinian will
retort on the orthodox the incongruity of a belief in mysteries with
his own admissions concerning the origin, and nature of all tenable
ideas, and as triumphantly expose the pretences of believing in a
form of words, to which the believer himself admits that he can at-
tach no consistent meaning. Lastly, the godless materialist, as the
only consistent because the only consequent reasoner, will secretly
laugh at both. If these sentiments should be just, the consequences
are so important that every well-educated man, who has given proofs
that he has at least patiently studied the subject, deserves a patient
hearing. Had I not the authority of the greatest and noblest intel-
•ects for at least two thousand years on my side, yet from the vital
Jnterest of the opinions themselves, and their natural, unconstrained,
and (as it were) spontaneous coalescence with the faith of the Catho-
lic Church (they being, moreover, the opinions of its most eminent
Fathers), I might appeal to all orthodox Christians, whether they ad-
here to the faith only or both to the faith and forms of the Church,
in the words of my motto : Ad isthcec quceso ws, qualiacunque primo
videantur aspectu attendite, ut qui vobisforsan insanire videar, saltern
quibus insaniam rationibus cognoscatis.

There are still a few, however, young men of loftiest minds, and
the very stuff out of which the sword and shield of truth and honor
0^ to be made, who will not withdraw all confidence from the writer,
r** hough r

Tis true, that passionate for ancient truths
And honoring with religious love the great
Of elder times, he hated to excess,
With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,
The hollow puppets of a hollow age
Ever idolatrous, and changing ever
Its worthless idols!*

* Poet. Works, VII. p 153.— *M

484 APPENDIX E.

a few there are, who will still less be indisposed to follow him in his
milder mood, whenever their Friend,

Piercing the long-neglecled holy cave,
The haunt obscure of Old Philosophy,
Shall bid with lifted torch its starry walls
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame
Of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage!*

I have hinted, above, at the necessity of a glossary, and I will cor
elude these supplementary remarks with a nomenclature of the prin-
cipal terms which occur in the elements of speculative philosophy, in
their old and rightful sense, according to my belief; at all events the
sense in which I have myself employed them. The most general term
(genus summum) belonging to the speculative intellect, as distinguished
from acts of the will, is Representation, or (still better) Presentation.

A conscious Presentation, if it refers exclusively to the subject, as
a modification of his own state of being, is = Sensation.

The same if it refers to an Object, is — Perception.

A Perception, immediate and individual, is = an Intuition.

The same, mediate, and by means of a character or mark common
to several things, is = a Conception.

A Conception, extrinsic and sensuous, is = a Fact, or a Cognition.

The same, purely mental and abstracted from the forms of the un-
derstanding itself = a Notion.

A notion may be realized, and becomes cognition; but that which
is neither a sensation nor a perception, that which is neither individual
(that is, a sensible intuition) nor general (that is, a conception), which
neither refers to outward facts, nor yet is abstracted from the forms
of perception contained in the understanding; but which is an eduot
of the imagination actuated by the pure reason, to which there neither
is nor can be an adequate correspondent in the world of the senses ; —
tbis and this alone is = an Idea. Whether ideas are regulative only,
according to Aristotle and Kant ; or likewise constitutive, and one
with the power and life of nature, according to Plato, and Plotinus
(ev /lo}v £«/) ?>, Kal rj farl yv TO tfxjf ruv uvdpuiruv) is the highest prob-
lem of philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature.!

* Poetical Works, VII. p. 154.— Et.

t See Table Talk, VI. p. 295.— Ed. See also Kant'u Kritik dcr reinen Vemunft; coi>

elusion of Jhn chapter Von dm Idem Hbcrhaupt.— Am. Ed.

END OF VOL. I.

INDEX TO AIDS TO REFLECTION.

26',, mte,
Allegory, 305, 300.
Annihilation, 300.
Atonement, 307-317.
Bnptism, 319, 333.
Belief, grounds of, 215, et seq.
Cause and effect, law of, 272, note.
Christianity, evidences of, 233, 263.

doctrines peculiar to, 229.

Conscience, 185, 186.

Election, 207-223.

Faith, 302, 307.

Fall of man, 195, 196.

God's existence, proofs of, 220, 221.

Instinct, 257, et seq.

Law, in Nature, 151, 157.

Life, in Nature, 357, Appendix C.

Meta]-*ior, 235.

Miracles, 322.

Morality, 127, et seq.
Nature and Free V"

263, 271-.271
Reason and Una

240, et seq., Appendix B.
Redemption, 307, et seq.
Regeneration, 242.
— baptismal, 319.

Repentance, 307.

Spirit and Nature. See Nature an>l

Free Will.

Subjective and Objective, 217, note.
Symbol, 270, note.
Sin, conquest of, 120.

original, 268-290.

Trinity, 216.

Understanding. See Reason and

Understanding.
Will. See Nature and Free Will

o

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