NOTES, THEOLOGICAL, POLITICAL, AND MISCELLANEOUS. NOTES; THEOLOGICAL, POLITICAL, AND MISCELLANEOUS. BY SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE. EDITED BY THE REV. DERWENT COLERIDGE, M.A. LONDON : EDWAED MOXON, DOVEE STEEET. 1853. 4< ftt * ' > PREFACE. THE present volume completes the publication of Coleridge's Marginalia. The Notes on Luther, with some other articles of less extent, and the larger portion of the Omniana, have already appeared in the four volumes of literary Remains edited by the late H. N. Coleridge. The remainder, consti- tuting about two-thirds of the whole, is now pub- lished for the first time.* This portion of the Author's writings is now contained in five volumes, of which the two first, en- titled " Notes on Shakspere and other Dramatists," are exclusively critical. The two which followed, entitled " Notes on English Divines," are exclu- sively theological. The contents of the present volume are of a varied character, and present * The new matter is distinguished in the Table of Contents by an asterisk. apccimenB of the Author*! way ot -ophy, philology, and other topics, bearing in thin respect tome relation to his " Table Talk." motive* .\e led to the publication of the Theological Note* havo b,-en Miflii-irntly m-t bj the first Klit-r. in ih.- Preface t .in. I t nines of t rary Remains," to Notes on English Divines," .torical and Political Notes will be read the sentiments of the ; the latter period of his life. They make it evident that hi- iples, howerer adapted to the rarying phase of c-ircumstance, iiuflercil no n>al rhani;\ and that li rvin.iiru' /xo^oyeret, and thence on the individuity of the responsible creature ; that it is a perfection which, not indeed in my intellect, but yet in my habit of feeling, I have too much confounded with that complexus of visual ' images, cycles or customs of sensations, and fellow- travelling circumstances (as the ship to the mariner), y which make up our empirical self: thence to bring myself to apprehend livelily the exceeding merciful- ness and love of the act of the Son of God, in descending to seek after the prodigal children, and to house with them in the sty. Likewise by the relation of my own understanding to the light of reason, and (the most important of all the truths that have been vouchsafed to me !) to the will which is the reason, will in the form of reason I can * Doctoris Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia : or Dr. Martin Luther's Divine Discourses at his Table, &c. Collected first together by Dr. Antonius Lauterbach, and afterwards disposed into certain common-places by John Aurifaber, Doctor in Divinity. Translated by Capt. Henry Bell. Folio, London, 1652. B 2 i NOTES ON LTTHER'S TABLE TALE. it gleam of the possibility of the sub- sistence of the human soul in Jesus to the Eternal Word, and how it might perfect itself so as to merit glorification and abiding union with the Divinity ; and how this gave a humanity to our Lord's righteous- ness no less than to his sufferings. Doubtless, as God, as the absolute Alt' m Absolute, he could not suffer; l-ut that he could not lay aside the at* with the creature ly become aftV and a second, but spiritual Adam, and so as after- wards to be partaker of the absolute in the Absolute, even as the Absolute had partaken of passion (rot) iratr^ca') and infirmity in it, that is, the finite and i creature; this can be asserted only by one who (unconsciously perhaps), has accustomed himself f God as a thing. having a necesv ..it wills, or rather tends and inclines .is or that, because it is this or that, not as being that, which is tha \\ills to be. Booh a necessity is truly compulsion ; nor is it in the least altered in its nature by being assumed to be ue of an endless remotion or rctrusion I constituent cause, which being manifested by inderstanding becomes a foreseen despair of a cause. -Sunday binary, 1890. One argument strikes me in favour of the tenet of Apostolic succession, in the onlumtion of bishops presbyters, as taught by the Church of Rome. !in.l ty the hunger pan of the earlier divines of the England, which I have not seen in any <>f the books on this subject ; namely, that in strict analogy with other parts of Christian history, the lo itself contained a check upon the inconvenient consequences necessarily attached to all miracles, as miracles, narrowing the possible claims to any - not proveahle at the bar of universal reason NOTES ON LUTHEKS TABLE TALK. 5 and experience. Every man among the sectaries, however ignorant, may justify himself in scattering stones and fire-squibs by an alleged unction of the Spirit. The miracle becomes perpetual, still begin- ning, never ending. Now on the Church doctrine, the original miracle provides for the future recur- rence to the ordinary and calculable laws of the human understanding and moral sense ; instead of leaving every man a judge of his own gifts, and of his right to act publicly on that judgment. The initiative alone is supernatural ; but all beginning is necessarily miraculous, that is, hath either no ante- cedent, or one erepov yevovs, which therefore is not its, but merely an, antecedent, or an incausative alien co-incident in time ; as if, for instance, Jack's shout were followed by a flash of lightning, which should strike and precipitate the ball on St. Paul's cathedral. This would be a miracle as long as no causative nexus was conceivable between the ante- cedent, the noise of the shout, and the consequent, the atmospheric discharge. The Epistle Dedicatory. But this will be your glory and inexpugnable, if you cleave in truth and practice to God's holy service, worship and religion : that religion and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is pure and undefiled before God even the Father, which is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep yourselves unspotted from the world. James i. 27. Few mistranslations (unless indeed the word used by the translator of St. James meant differently from its present meaning), have led astray more than this rendering of Opqa-KtCa (outward or ceremonial wor- ship, cultus, divine service,) by the English religion. S TABLE lines sublimely says : What the cmmomi* of law were to moral itself is to the fiii tli in Christ, that is, its outward symU the substance itself. Chap. L pp. 1, 2. That the Bible U the word of God (Mid Luther) the Mine I prove as followeth : All things that have been and now are in the world ; also how it now goeth and standeth in the world, the same was written altogether particularly at the beginning, in the ant book of Moeei concerning the creation. And eren aa Qod made and created it, even ao it was, even <. and even ao doth it stand to this present day. And although King Alexander the Oreat^ the kingdom of Egypt, tapire of Babel, the Persian, OreeUn and Roman monarehs; the Emperors Julius and Augustus moat fiercely did rage and swell against this Book, utterly to suppress and destroy the same; yet notwithstanding they oould prevail nothing, they are all gone and vanished ; but this Book from time to time hath remained, and will remain unretuored hi full and ample manner as it was written at the first A proof worthy of the manly mind of 1 and compared with which the Grotian pretended demonstrations, from Grotius himself to Paler, are mischievous u ngs of the faith, pleadings illey thieves' counsellor th/t no. The true evidence of the i - Bible, of Christianity the living fact of as the manifest arcfotu or pre- dominant of the life of the planet The art of the School divines (said Luther) with their specu- lations in the Holy Scriptures, are merely rain and human cogitations, spun out of their own natural wit and under- NOTES ON LUTHEES TABLE TALK. 7 standing. They talk much of the union of the will and understanding, but all is mere fantasy and fondness. The right and true speculation (said Luther) is this, Believe in Christ ; do what thou oughtest to do in thy vocation, &c. This is the only practice in divinity. Also, Mystica Theo- logia Dionysii is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's fables. Omnia sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens ; all is something, and all is nothing, and so he leaveth all hanging in frivolous and idle sort. Still, however, du tlieure Mann Gottes, mein ve- rehrter Luther ! reason, will, understanding, are words, to which real entities correspond ; and we may in a sound and good sense say that reason is the ray, the projected disk or image, from the Sun of Righteousness, an echo from the Eternal Word the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world ; and that when the will placeth itself in a right line with the reason, there ariseth the spirit, through which the will of God floweth into and actuates the will of man, so that it willeth the things of God, and the understanding is enlivened, and thenceforward useth the materials supplied to it by the senses symbolically ; that is, with an insight into the true substance thereof. The Pope usurpeth and taketh to himself the power to expound and to construe the Scriptures according to his pleasure. What he saith, must stand and be spoken as from heaven. Therefore let us love and preciously value the divine word, that thereby we may be able to resist the Devil and his swarm. As often as I use in prayer the 16th verse of the 71st Psalm (in our Prayer-book version), my thoughts 8 NOTES OK LUTHER'S TABLE TAI especially revert to the subject of the right appre- hi what sens* may be called the word of God, and how and r what conditions the unity of translucent througi h, read as the a word of this and that pious hut f.illiM. Hii'l imperfect man. Alas ! for the super- iiiselves are made to be I live but to utter all my Ibid. p. 11 Bullinger Mid one* in my hearing (mid Luther) that he wm9*^99i***A*b+^m**m*mro the undoubtedly very strong probability of the former. If then not any book, much less the four books, now called the iospels, were meant by Paul, but the contents of those books, as far as they are veracious, and whatever else was known on equal authority at time, though not contained in those books ; , the whole sum of Christ's acts and discourses be what Paul meant by the Gospel ; then the argu- ment is circuitous, and returns to the first point, What if the Gospel ? Shall we believe you, an rather the companions of Christ, the eye and ear witnesses of his doings and sayings ? Now I should require strong inducements to make roe believe that St. Paul had been guilty of such palpably false logic ; and I therefore feel myself compelled to infer, that by the Gospel Paul intended the eternal t known ideally from the beginning, and historically realised in the manifestation of the Word in < NOTES ON LUTHEK'S TABLE TALK. 11 Jesus ; and that he used the ideal immutable truth as the canon and criterion of the oral traditions. For example, a Greek mathematician, standing in the same relation of time and country to Euclid as that in which St. Paul stood to Jesus Christ, might have exclaimed in the same spirit : " What do you talk to me of this, that, and the other intimate acquaintance of Euclid's ? My object is to convey the sublime system of geometry which he realised, and by that must I decide." " I," says St. Paul, " have been taught by the spirit of Christ, a teach- ing susceptible of no addition, and for which no per- sonal anecdotes, however reverendly attested, can be a substitute." But dearest Luther was a translator; he could not, must not, see this. Ibid. p. 32. That God's word, and the Christian Church is preserved against the raging of the world. The Papists have lost the cause ; with God's word they are not able to resist or withstand us. * * * The Icings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together, &c. God will deal well enough with these angry gentlemen, and will give them but small thanks for their labour, in going about to suppress his word and servants ; he hath sat in counsel above these five thousand five hundred years, hath ruled and made laws. Good Sirs ! be not so choleric ; go further from the wall, lest you knock your pates against it. Kiss the Son lest he be angry, &c. That is, take hold on Christ, or the Devil will take hold on you, &c. The second Psalm (said Luther) is a proud Psalm against those fellows. It begins mild and simply, but it endeth stately and rattling. * * * I have now angered the Pope about his images of idolatry. ! how the sow raiseth her bristles ! * * * The Lord saith : Ego suscitabo vos in novissimo die : and then he will call and say : ho ! Martin NOTES OX LrniKR's TAI1LB . Lather, Philip Melancthon, J**m Jonas, John Calrin, **. Ariee, come tap, * * :i on. (amid Luther), let m In. 1 -f v j-\ c 'i;.! -ft. A delicious paragraph. How our fine preacher* !i up their '1 aks axid Ilin with tails at it ! Hut this is the way in which tin- man of life, the man of power, seta the dry bones in motion. Chap, ii p. 87. forrdeecnii>g,Mnctiiyii^ soeh a seed, fruit, and godly child to the world. Oil, woe be Too true. Ibid. p. 54. That oat of the best eomss the wont Oat of the Patriarch, and holy Father* came the Jews that eracined Christ; out of the Apoetlee omme Jadaa the traitor; oat of the dty Alexandria (wherea&ir and famoua acnool waa, and from wbenc upright and godly learned men), omme Arias sad Origenea. Poor Origv n ! Surely Luther was put to it for an instance, and had never read the works of din: best of the old Fathers, and eminently upright and Mi The sparrow* are the lea** bird*, and yet they are very hurt fid. and have the best I mtuntwnmpmtcutwr*. Poor little Philip Sparrows I Luther did not know that they more NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 13 than earn their good wages by destroying grubs and other small vermin. Ibid. p. 61. He that without danger will know God, and will speculate of him, let him look first into the manger, that is, let him begin below, and let him first learn to know the Son of the Virgin Mary, born at Bethlehem, that lies and sucks in his mother's bosom ; or let one look upon him hanging on the Cross. * * But take good heed in any case of high climbing cogitations, to clamber up to heaven without this ladder, namely, the Lord Christ in his humanity. To know God as God (TOP ZTJVCL, the living God) we must assume his personality: otherwise what were it but an ether, a gravitation ? but to assume his personality, we must begin with his humanity, and this is impossible but in history ; for man is an historical not an eternal being. Ergo, Chris- tianity is of necessity historical and not philosophical only. lUd. p. 62. What is that to thee ? said Christ to Peter. Follow thou me me, follow me, and not thy questions, or cogitations. Lord ! keep us looking to, and humbly following, thee! Chap. vi. p. 103. The philosophers and learned heathen (said Luther) have described God, that he is as a circle, the point whereof in the midst is every where ; but the circumference, which on the outside goeth round about, is no where : herewith they would show that God is all, and yet is nothing 1 i NOTES oil urran's TABLE TALK. What a huge difference the absence of a blank space. Is nothing, or next to nothing, may make ! The words here should have been printed, " God is all, and jet is i ' * For what does 4* mean? Itself, that is, the ing, or inclosure which is contained within an ream- <1. So likewise to think is to inclose, to determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradict! 'i m terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German Ding, dsnJun ; in Latin rw, Chap, ril p. l Hclridiui alleged the mother of Chrot WM not a so Out according to bis wicked allsgrtjoa, Christ was bora in original sin. Oh what a tangle of impure whimsies has this i of an immaculate conception, an 'ion, as 1 brought into the Christian i hare sometimes suspected that Apostle John had a particular riew to thi rat half of the first chapter of his gospel. ;>pose our present Matthew then in exis- tence, or that, if -John had seen the gospel acc< ike, the Ckrittoptdia had been already prefixed o rumour might have been whispered about, and as the purport was to give a pstlanti explanation and solution of the phrases, Son of God nn.i Son of Man, so St. John n the solution, namely, the eternal Filiation of the * The . lfcmirltbe.Ulodtnti>eOerinio^ fll*i*i**tolMdM*tt*fiMita the reporter, not to the UmnftUtnr or printer Bat here. * ebewbere, the tnnotatcr may hT brought UM n*. NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 23 Ibid. p. 190. It is therefore most evident (said Luther), that the law can but only help us to know our sins, and to make us afraid of death. Now sins and death are such things as belong to the world, and which are therein. Both in Paul and Luther, (names which I can never separate,) not indeed peculiar to these, for it is the same in the Psalms, Ezekiel, and throughout the Scriptures, but which I feel most in Paul and Luther, there is one fearful blank, the wisdom or necessity of which I do not doubt, yet cannot help groping and straining after like one that stares in the dark ; and this is death. The law makes us afraid of death. What is death ? an unhappy life ? Who does not feel the insufficiency of this answer ? What analogy does immortal suffering bear to the only death which is known to us ? Since I wrote the above, God has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer light as to the true nature of the death so often mentioned in the Scriptures. Ibid. It is (said Luther), a very hard matter: yea, an impossible thing for thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance) that (at such a time when Moses setteth upon thee with his law, and fearfully affrighteth thee, accuseth and condemneth thee, threateneth thee with God's wrath and death) thou shouldest as then be of such a mind ; namely, as if no law nor sin had ever been at any time : I say, it is in a manner a thing impossible, that a human creature should carry himself in such a sort, when he is and feeleth himself assaulted with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with God, as then to think no other- wise, than that from everlasting nothing hath been, but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance. NOTES ON LLTHEB8 TABLE 1 Yea, verily, Amen and Amen .is short heroic paragraph contains the turn and substance, the philosophy. Host assuredly right < he intellectual pole, or the hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason, reason (lux idealti a*u spiritual*} shines down the understand h recognises the light, id f, it can only comprehend or describe to itself by attributes opposite to its own essential properties. Now these latter being contingor .ugh the immediate objects of the understanding are genera et specie*, still they are particular genera et specie*) particularity -_juishes the formal light (/um*ri)--not the substantial light, lux of reason by .-.t tributes of the necessary and the universal; anJ I'v irradiation of this lumen or thine the under- NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. '29 standing becomes a conclusive or logical faculty. As such it is Aoyoy Ibid. p. 206. When Satan saith in thy heart, God will not pardon thy sins, nor be gracious unto thee, I pray (said Luther) how wilt thou then, as a poor sinner, raise up and comfort thyself, especially when other signs of God's wrath besides do beat upon thee, as sickness, poverty, &c. And that thy heart beginneth to preach and say, Behold here, thou livest in sickness, thou art poor and forsaken of every one, &c. Oh ! how true, how affectingly true is this ! And when too Satan the tempter, becomes Satan the accuser, saying in thy heart : " This sickness is the consequence of sin, or sinful infirmity, and thou hast brought thyself into a fearful dilemma; thou canst not hope for salvation as long as thou continuest in any sinful practice, and yet thou canst not abandon thy daily dose of this or that poison without suicide. For the sin of thy soul has become the necessity of thy body, daily tormenting thee, without yielding thee any the least pleasurable sensation, but goading thee on by terror without hope. Under such evi- dence of God's wrath how canst thou expect to be saved ?" Well may the heart cry out, " Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, from this death that lives and tyrannises in my body?" But the Gospel answers " There is a redemption from the body promised ; only cling to Christ. Call on him continually with all thy heart and all thy soul, to give thee strength, and be strong in thy weakness ; and what Christ doth not see good to relieve thee from, suffer in hope. It may be better for thee to be kept humble and in self-abasement. The thorn in the flesh may remain and yet the grace of God HEB8 TABLE I ' prove sufficient for thee. Onlv to Christ, and do thy best In all love and well* doing gird thyself up to improve and use aright remains free in thee, ami if thou doest aught t, say and thankfully U-lieve that Christ hath done O what a miserable desj I become, if I believed the doctrines of Hishop Jeremy Taylor in his Treatise on Repent- iosc I heard preached by Dr. - ; if i gave up the fa nst would pre- 10 remaining dregs of sin in the crisis of death, and that I shall rise in purer capacity of Christ; 1-hii.l to be irradiated by his ligl to be pos- sessed by ins fullness, naked of merit to be clothed his righteousness ! The nobility, the gentry, citizens, and farmer*, Ac. are now become so haughty and ungodly, that they regard no ministers nor preacher* ; and (amid Luther) if we were not hoi pen somewhat by great princes and persons, we could not long subsist: therefore Isaiah saith well, And kiyi AaU U Cor; irses too often, that overlay the babe ; distempered nurses, that convey poison m Chap. xhL p. 208. P Mclancthon amid to Luther, The opinion of St. Austin of justification (as it eeemeth) wan more perttn and convenient when he disputed not, than it was when he used to speak and dispute; for thus he saith, We ought to censure and hold that we arc justified by faith, that is by generation, or by being made new creatures. Now if it be so, then we are not justified only by faith, but by all the irifta and virtues of God siren unto HA. Now v NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 31 your opinion, Sir? Do you hold that a man is justified by this regeneration, as is St. Austin's opinion ] Luther answered and said, I hold this, and am certain, that the true meaning of the Gospel and of the Apostle is, that we are justified before God gratis, for nothing, only by God's mere mercy, wherewith and by reason whereof, he imputeth righteousness unto us in Christ. True ; but is it more than a dispute about words ? Js not the regeneration likewise gratis, only by God's mere mercy ? We, according to the necessity of our imperfect understandings, must divide and distinguish. But surely justification and sanctifica- tion are one act of God, and only different perspec- tives of redemption by and through and for Christ. They are one and the same plant, justification the root, sanctification the flower ; and (may I not venture to add ?) transubstantiation into Christ the celestial fruit. 'Ibid. pp. 210-11. Melancthon's sixth reply. Sir ! you say Paul was justified, that is, was received to everlasting life, only for mercy's sake. Against which, I say, if the piece-meal or partial cause, namely, our obedience, followeth not, then we are not saved, according to these words, Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel. 1 Cor. ix. Luther s answer. No piecing or partial cause (said Luther) approacheth thereunto : for faith is powerful continually without ceasing ; otherwise, it is no faith. Therefore what the works are, or of what value, the same they are through the honour and power of faith, which undeniably is the sun or sun-beam of this shining. This is indeed a difficult question ; and one, I am disposed to think, which can receive its solution only by the idea, or the act and fact of justification by faith self-reflected. But humanly considered, this DOSltvion of T.ntVipr' r^vnvnlrpa flip, mind to ask. is 312 NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. there no receptivity of faith, considered as a free gift of God, prerequisite in the individual ? Does faith commence by generating the r< of itself ? If so, there is no difference eitlxT m i degree between the receivers and the rejectors word, at the moment preceding this reception or rejection ; and a stone is a subject as capable of ns a man. How can obedience exist, where disobedience was not possible ? Surely two or three texts from St. Paul, detached from the total organ- umi/> * asoning, ought not to out- weigh tin- plain fact, that the contrary po^r uplied in, or is an immediate consequent of. our Lord's own ions and assurances. Every where a some* tiling i- attributed to the will. N.B. I should not have written the above note in : resent stale of light; not that I timl it false, l>ut that it may have the effect of falsehood by not going deep enough. July, 1829. Chap. xiii. p. 'Jll. (include, a faithful peraoo i* a now creature, a new tree. Therefor* all theae speeches, which in the law are usual, belong not to thifl ca*e ; ai to aay J /atcA/nl pmcm must do good work* Neither were it rightly spoken, to a*y U ton thall ahine: a good tree shall bring forth good fruit. Ac. For the suij4a^ not thine, btHdoihtiui>e by iittow unbidden, it U thereunto created. [Dit 8o*m* tol ; -^ ^^f^ ' ' ' ' / tie tkutt mmgiltimm ton A'o^r, dem* m til AMI pe^Ae/ea.] if important paragraph is obscure by the trans- ' ignorance of the true import of the German soil, which does not answer to our thai I ; but : II niifjfit, that is, should do this or * inder NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 33 Ibid. p. 213. And I, my loving Brentius, to the end I may better under- stand this case, do use to think in this manner, namely, as if in my heart were no quality or virtue at all, which is called faith and love (as the Sophists do speak and dream thereof), but I set all on Christ, and say, my formalis justitia, that is, my sure, my constant and complete righteousness (in which is no want nor failing, but is, as before God it ought to be) is Christ my Lord and Saviour. Ay ! this, this is indeed to the purpose. In this doctrine my soul can find rest. I hope to be saved by faith, not by my faith, but by the faith of Christ in me. Ibid. p. 214. The Scripture nameth the faithful a people of God's saints. But here one may say ; the sins which daily we commit, do offend and anger God ; how then can we be holy? Answer. A mother's love to her child is much stronger than are the excrements and scurf thereof. Even so God's love towards us is far stronger than our filthiness and uncleanness. Yea, one may say again, we sin without ceasing, and where sin is, there the holy Spirit is not : therefore we are not holy, because the holy Spirit is not in us, who maketh holy. Answer. (John xvi. 14.) Now where Christ is, there is the holy Spirit. The text saith plainly, The, holy Ghost shall glorify me, &c. Now Christ is in the faithful (although they have and feel sins, do confess the same, and with sorrow of heart do complain thereover) ; therefore sins do not separate Christ from those that believe. All in this page is true, and necessary to be preached. But ! what need is there of holy pru- dence to preach it aright, that is, at right times to the right ears ! Now this is when the doctrine is necessary and thence comfortable ; but where it is NOTES ON LUTHER'S TAI necessary, but only very comfortable, in snob cases i be a narcotic poison, killing t lie soul -j a stupor or c> {>eace of conscience. ; o there are no sinkings of self-abasement, no ng sense of sin and worthlessoess, but perhaps the contrary, reckless confidence and self-valuing for good qualities supposed an overbalance for tin sins, there it is uot necessary. In short, these are not t it can be preached cvicalp*? dxai/< i *on and out of tea ton. In deolin or at anytime in the hour of sincere humiliation, these truths may be applied in reference to past sins collectively ; but a Christian must not, a true h tinn Christian will cannot, administer t uiiM-ll" immediate)} Miming; least of all immediately before, fervently to pray thus : Most holy and most merciful God ! by the grace of thy holy Spirit make these promises to me, to preserve me from despairing of thy forgiveness through Christ my Saviour ! But ! save me from presumptuously perverting :!., m into a pillow for a stupified con- science! Give me grace so to contrast my sin with thy transcendent goodness and long sut: love, as to hate it with an unfeigned hatred f own exceeding siufulness." Hid. pp. 219 20. Faith U, and coniinUjth in, a person's undenrtandiii onuUteth in Ui faith inditoth, difftiu- guiaheth and toocheth. and it U the knowledge and acknow- lodgement * * 1 iith fighteth against error and hernias, md judgetb the spirit* and doctrines. y U the wisdom and providence, and belongeth to the doctrine. * Faith La the dialect. NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK, 35 Luther in his Postills discoursed! far better and more genially of faith than in these paragraphs. Unfortunately, the Germans have but one word for faith and belief Glaube; and what Luther here says, is spoken of belief. Of faith he speaks in the next article but one. Ibid. p. 226. That regeneration only maketh God's children. The article of our justification before God (said Luther) is, as it useth to be with a son which is born an heir of all his father's goods, and cometh not thereunto by deserts. I will here record my experience. Ever when I meet with the doctrine of regeneration and faith and free grace simply announced " So it is ! " then I believe ; my heart leaps forth to welcome it. But as soon as an explanation or reason is added, such explanations, namely, and reasonings as I have any where met with, then my heart leaps back again, recoils, and I exclaim, Nay ! Nay ! but not so. '25th of September, 1819. Ibid. p. 227. Doctor Carlestad (said Luther) argueth thus : True it is that faith justifieth, but faith is a work of the first command- ment ; therefore it justifieth as a work. Moreover all that the Law commandeth, the same is a work of the Law. Now faith is commanded, therefore faith is a work of the Law. Again, what God will have, the same is commanded : God will have faith, therefore faith is commanded. St. Paul (said Luther) speaketh in such sort of the law, that he separateth it from the promise, which is far another thing than the law. The law is terrestrial, but the promise is celestial. God giveth the law to the end we may thereby be roused up and made pliant ; for the commandments do go and proceed against the proud and haughty, which :>fi THEB'S TABLE TALK. contemn Qodft gilts I now a &v ov presaot flaunt?! be a Therefore we must answer according to this rule, Paul calleth that the work of the law, which u done and acted through the knowledge of the law by a constrained will without the holy Spirit ; ao that the eame ia a work of the law, which the law earnestly requireth and atrictly will have done ; it ia not a voluntary work, but a forced work of the rod. i \\lien in did Carles tad and I :Ter? Not at all, or essentially and irreconcilably, according aa the feeling of Carles tad was. If he imant the particular deed, the lu the total act, the agent included, then the former. Chap, xi v. p. 280. The lore towards the neighbour (aaid Luther) like a pure chaste lore between bride and bridegr \ all faults are connived at, covered and borne with, and only the virtues regarded. In little escapes and comer-holes does the v fineness (that of which reftne- meut is but a counterfeit, at best but a reflex geniality of nature appear in this ton of thunder! resent age! Why, Charles ! * the very hand iices he would knock out the brains (nay, that ia impossible, but). - of our ( . translate uord aa you like : French Christiana, or coxcombs ! Ili'L pp.**!-* Let Witzell know, (said Luther) that David's wan and NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 37 battles, which he fought, were more pleasing to God than the fastings and prayings of the best, of the honestest, and of the holiest monks and friars : much more than the works of our new ridiculous and superstitious friars. A cordial, rich and juicy speech, such as shaped itself into, and lived anew in, the Gustavus Adol- phuses. Chap. xv. pp. 2934. God most certainly heareth them that pray in faith, and granteth when and how he pleaseth, and knoweth most profitable for them. We must also know, that when our prayers tend to the sanctifying of his name, and to the increase and honour of his kingdom (also that we pray according to his will) then most certainly he heareth. But when we pray contrary to these points, then we are not heard; for God doth nothing against his Name, his kingdom, and his will. Then (saith the understanding, TO crapKos) what doth prayer effect ? If A prayer = B, and A + prayer = B, prayer =0. The attempt to answer this argument by admitting its invalidity relatively to God, but asserting the efficacy of prayer relatively to the pray-er or precant himself, is merely staving off the objection a single step. For this effect on the devout soul is produced by an act of God. The true answer is, prayer is an idea, and ens spirituale, out of the cognisance of the under- standing. The spiritual mind receives the answer in the con- templation of the idea, life as deltas diffusa. We can set the life in efficient motion, but not contrary to the form or type. The errors and false theories of great men sometimes, perhaps most often, arise HOTES on LUTHER'S TABLE : : true ideas falsified bj degener con- I to action l.y nn in work- ing idea, the understanding works in the same direction ts kind, and produces a ooui which the mind rests. I Mieve to be the case with the scheme of emannti..n in I'l-.tinus. God is made a first and CODS*- ;i comparand intrn^ty. and i. tlie last; the \\li.d,- tin-no- Unite; and : But we in t :i gradation in n I ii governor* and mlem are anemias to God's word, then our duty i* to depart, to sell and (brake all we have, to fly from one place to another, M Christ commaodeth ; we i iako and prepare no uproan nor tumulU by reaeon of the Goflpol, but we muit suffer all things. it must be the lawful rulers; those in whom the sovereign or supreme po* lodged by i iws and constitution ..f the ry. Where the laws and const ties of the nation are trampled on, the subjects do 1 *e, and are not in conscience bound T.. forego, riu'lit of resistance, because they are Christians, or because it happens to be a matter of religi \\hir!.' its are violated. And tins u. Whether, if a popish Czar shall act as IBM > 1 1. M ' >ian Greekists would be him \vl -^lish Pro- testants jr. did with regard to James, is a ; not attempt to < guess the Russians would, by cutting their < throat. NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 39 Ibid. But no man will do this, except he be so sure of his doctrine and religion, as that, although I myself should play the fool, and should recant and deny this my doctrine and religion (which God forbid), he notwithstanding therefore would not yield, but say, " If Luther, or an angel from heaven, should teach otherwise, Let him be accursed." Well and nobly said, thou rare black swan ! This, this is the Church. Where this is found, there is the Church of Christ, though but twenty in the whole of the congregation ; and were twenty such in two hundred different places, the Church would be entire in each. Without this no Church. Ibid. p. 248. And he sent for one of his chiefest privy councillors, named Lord John Von Minkwitz, and said unto him ; " You have heard my father say (running with him at tilt), that to sit upright on horseback maketh a good tilter. If there- fore it be good and laudable in temporal tilting to sit upright; how much more is it now praiseworthy in God's cause to sit, to stand, and to go uprightly and just ! " Princely. So Shakspeare would have made a Prince Elector talk. The metaphor is so grandly in character. Chap. xvii. p. 249. Signa sunt subindefacta minora ; res autem et facto, subinde creverunt. A valuable remark. As the substance waxed, that is, became more evident, the ceremonial sign waned, till at length in the Eucharist the signum united itself with the significatum, and became consub- stantial. The ceremonial sign, namely, the eating 40 < TAHLE TALK. , became a BVI that is, a solemn instance ai. ticatiou of the y and hourly in every social duty and recreation. Tin* is indeed to re- rist. Sui extension of the 1 1 have preferred the perpetuation and application of the Incarnation. JMA A bare writing without a teal is of no force. Metaphors are sorry logic, especially metaphors >se too conventional usages to the cs of eternal wisdom. /bid, p. 260. A Christian is wholly tod altogether sanctified. * * We must take sure hold oo Baptism by .1.1 then we shall be, yea, already are, sanctified In this sort David nameth himself 1 A deep t Strong meat for men. It must not he offered for milk. chaj'. XXL ].. ::>. Then I will doclare him openly to the Church, and in this manner I will say : " Loving friends, I declare unto you how that N. N. hath been admonished : first, by myself in , afterwards also by two chaplains, thirdly, 1 urch wardens, and those of the assembly : .standing he will not desist from his sinful i earnestly desire you to assist and aid me, to kneel down with me, and let us pray against him, and deliver him over to the Devil" NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 41 Luther did not mean that this should be done all at once ; but that a day should be appointed for the congregation to meet for joint consultation, and according to the resolutions passed to choose and commission such and such persons to wait on the offender, and to exhort, persuade and threaten him in the name of the congregation : then, if after due time allowed, this proved fruitless, to kneel down with the minister, &c. Surely, were it only feasible, nothing could be more desirable. But alas ! it is not compatible with a Church national, the congrega- tions of which are therefore not gathered nor elected, or with a Church established by law ; for law and discipline are mutually destructive of each other, being the same as involuntary and voluntary penance. Chap. xxii. p. 290. Wicliffe and Huss opposed and assaulted the manner of life and conversation in Popedom. But I chiefly do oppose and resist their doctrine; I affirm roundly and plainly that they teach not aright. Thereto am I called. I take the goose by the neck, and set the knife to the throat. When I can maintain that the Pope's doctrine is false, (which I have proved and maintained), then I will easily prove and maintain that their manner of life is evil. This is a remark of deep insight : verum vere Luther anum. Ibid. p. 291. Ambition and pride (said Luther) are the rankest poison in the Church when they are possessed by preachers. Zuinglius thereby was misled, who did what pleased himself. * * * He wrote, "Ye honorable and good princes must pardon me, in that I give you not your titles ; for the glass windows are as well illustrious as ye." 42 (m HERS TABLE TALK. One raij: irza style all the angry, contemptuous, haughty expressions of good and zealous men, gallant staff-officers r army of < med a rick of straw and stubble, which at the last day is to be divided into more or fewer haycocks, according to the number of kind and .rnedly humble and charitable thoughts and speeches that had intervened, and that these were placed in a pile, leap-frog fashion, in the narrow road to the gate of paradise ; and burst into flame as the zeal of the individual approached, so that he must leap over and through tium. N..W 1 . annot help thinking, that this dear man of God, heroic r, will find more opportunities of showing his v, and reach the gate in a greater sweat and with more blisters a parte pott than his brother hero, Xuinglius. I gue- 10 comments of the latter on the prophets will be found almost sterile in these tiger-lilies and brimstone flowers of polemic 1 ic. compared with the controversy of the former i nr\ VIII., his replies to the Popes 1 and the like. By the joke of the "glass windows'* is lost in the n. The German for trious is durchl.m, /,// : /. that is, transparent or translucent /bid. When we leave to Ood hi* Dame, hU kingdom, and will. then will be abo give unto us our dally bread, and will remit our sins, and deliver u from the devil and all evil Only his honour be will bare to himself. A brief but most excellent comment on the Lord's rer. NOTES ox LUTHEE'S TABLE TALK. 43 Ibid. p. 297. There was never any that understood the Old Testament so well as St. Paul, except only John the Baptist. I cannot conjecture what Luther had in his mind when he made this exception .* Chap, xxvii. p. 335. I could wish (said Luther) that the Princes and States of the Empire would make an assembly, and hold a council and a union both in doctrine and ceremonies, so that every one might not break in and run on with such inso- lency and presumption according to his own brains, as already is begun, whereby many good hearts are offended. Strange heart of man ! Would Luther have given up the doctrine of justification by faith alone, had the majority of the Council decided in favour of the Arminian scheme ? If not, by what right could he expect Oecolampadius or Zuinglius to recant their convictions respecting the Eucharist, or the Baptists theirs on infant Baptism, to the same authority ? In fact, the wish expressed in this passage must be considered as a mere flying thought shot out by the mood and feeling of the moment, a sort of conversa- tional flying-fish that dropped as soon as the moisture of the fins had evaporated. The paragraph in p. 336, of what Councils ought to order, should be considered Luther's genuine opinion. Ibid. p. 337. The Council of Nice, held after the Apostles' time (said Luther) was the very best and purest; but soon after in * Probably the text (John i. 29) : "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world ! "the sum and substance of the Old Testament dispensation, gathered from the Old Testament itself, previous to the publication of the Gospel. ED. 11 NOTES OX LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. the time of the Emperor CuiiltMAJBl, it mm weakened by thtArbn*. What Anus himself meant, I do not know : what the modern Arians teach, I utterly cond> that the great Couu innum was either Arian or heretical I could never discover, or descry any eeeentinl difference between its decisions and the Nicene ; though I seem to find a serious difference of the paeudo-Athanaaian Creed from both i: there he a difference between the councils of Nicea linn, it perhaps consists in this ; that the Nicene was the more anxious to assert the equal ifd subordination; the Ariminian to maintain the Filial sutx in the equal I n l>oth there are three self-subsistent and ne self-originated : which is the substance of the idea of the Trinity, as faithfully worded as is compatible with the necessary inadequacy of words to the expression of ideas, that is, " spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned/'* )8th August, 1846. Chmp. nriii. p. 347. God's word a Lord of all Lords. her every where identifies t God with the written word, and rages against Bui- linger, who contended that the latter is the word of God only as far as and for whom it is the vehicle of the i I.uther replies: "My voice, the vehicle of my words, does not cease to be my voice, because it is ignorantly or maliciously mis- nit of the number of 400, there were but SO Ariuos mt the utmost Th other 330 sad more were rssAy orthodox men, Induced by artifices to sobecribe Creed which they understood in a good M*r\M i f^J*^ ^MHlW " " ^rvcrt.>l t aUi-i -uc " H\ NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 45 understood." Yea! (might Bullinger have rejoined) the instance were applicable and the argument valid, if we were previously assured that all and every part of the Old and New Testament is the voice of the divine Word. But, except by the Spirit, whence are we to ascertain this? Not from the books them- selves ; for not one of them makes the pretension for itself, and the two or three texts, which seem to assert it, refer only to the Law and the Prophets, and no where enumerate the books that were given by inspiration : and how obscure the history of the formation of the Canon, and how great the difference of opinion respecting its different parts, what scholar is ignorant ? Chap. xxix. p. 349. Patres, quamquam scepe errant, tamen venerandi propter testimonium fidei. Although I learn from all this chapter, that Luther was no great Patrician (indeed he was better em- ployed), yet I am nearly, if not wholly of his mind respecting the works of the Fathers. Those which appear to me of any great value are valuable chiefly for those articles of Christian Faith which are, as it were, ante Christum JESUM, namely, the Trinity, and the primal Incarnation spoken of by John, i. 10. But in the main I should perhaps go even farther than Luther ; for I cannot conceive any thing more likely than that a young man of strong and active intellect, who has no fears, or suffers no fears of worldly prudence to cry, Halt ! to him in his career of consequential logic, and who has been innutritus et juratus in the Grotio-Paleyan scheme of Christian evidence, and who has been taught by the men and books, which he has been bred up to regard as authority, to consider all inward experiences as 40 KUTES OX LUTHER 8 TABLE TALK. al delusions; I say. I am scarcely conceive such a young man to make a serious study of the r fi?a centuries without becoming either a Humanist or a Debt Let ivius and the different Patriotic and Ecdeaiaatioo-historical tracts of Scrnler, and have no better philosophy than that of Locke, no better theology than that of Arminius and Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and I should tremble for his b< remble for a belief which is the very antipode iih? Better for such a man to precipitate self on to the utmost goal : for then perhaps be may in the repose of intellectual activity feel the ugness of his prize, or the wretchedness < and then perhaps the inward yearning after a religion may make him ask; "Have I not mistaken the road at tii' Mtsjttf Am 1 sure that the Reformer!, I.uihtr mi i tho rest collectively, were fanatic*?" /6* p. 351. IVifa no cor* tatal ye AaU tut. AM though th ment did not binder the carping and caring for tbe cbuly bnad read ' tint, mm K vn to it WM with AmhnMS : be wrote Indeed well and purely, WM mar* ssffkms in writing than Austin, who was amiable and mill ' ' ' Fulgntiitt i* tbe U*t poet and far above Horace, both with aeoteooea. fair apeechea sod good actions ; be is well worthy to be ranked and numbered iiid among the poeta. DC i e epithets bhould be NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 47 reversed. Austin's mildness the durus pater infan- tum ! And the sitp0r-Horatian effulgence of Master Foolgentius ! Swan ! thy critical cygnets are but goslings. N.B. I have, however, since I wrote the above, heard Mr. J. Hookham Frere speak highly of Fulgentius. Ibid. p. 352. For the Fathers were but men, and to speak the truth, their reputes and authorities did undervalue and suppress the books and writings of the sacred Apostles of Christ. We doubtless find in the writings of the Fathers of the second century, and still more strongly in those of the third, passages concerning the Scriptures that seein to say the same as we Protestants now do. But then we find the very same phrases used of writings not Apostolic, or with no other difference than what the greater name of the authors would naturally produce ; just as a Platonist would speak of Speusippus's books, were they extant, compared with those of later teachers of Platonism ; ' He was Plato's nephew had seen Plato was his appointed successor, &c.' But in inspiration the early Chris- tians, as far as I can judge, made no generic difference, let Lardner say what he will. Can he disprove that it was declared heretical by the Church in the second century to believe the written words of a dead Apostle in opposition to the words of a living Bishop, seeing that the same spirit which guided the Apostles dwells in and guides the Bishops of the Church ? This at least is certain, that the later the age of the writer, the stronger the expression of com- parative superiority of the Scriptures ; the earlier, on the other hand, the more we hear of the Symbolum, the Bey ula Fidel, the Creed. 48 NOTES ox LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. Chap, mil p. MS. The history of the Prophet Jonae U to great that it U almost incredible : yea, it Boundeth more strange than any of the poets* fables and (eaid Luther) if it stood not in the Bible, I ahould take it for a lie. It is quite wonderful that I -vho could see so plainly thut the book of Judith was an allegoric poem, should have been blind to the book of Jonas being an apologue, in which Jonah means the Israelitish nation. /Kip. 364. they enUred into the garden about the hour at noon- day, and having appetites to eat, ahe took delight in the apple; then about two of the dock, according to our aooooai, was the fall Milton has adopted t' the Paradise Lost not improbably from this book. /Net p. 505. David made a Psalm of two and twenty parts, in each of which are eight verses, and yet in all is but one kind of meaning namely, he will only aay, Thy law or word is good. I have conjectured that the 110th Psalm r have been a form of 01 > a series of candidates made their prayers and profees: the open Temple before they went to the several synagogues in the coutr lit* r) I say, he did well and right thereon : office of a magistrate is to punish the guilty and wicked malefactors. He made a vow, indeed, not to punish him, but that U to be understood, so long as David lived. NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 49 Luther ! Luther ! ask your own heart if this is not Jesuit morality. Chap, xxxiii. v. 367. 1 believe (said Luther) the words of our Christian belief were in such sort ordained by the Apostles, who were together, and made this sweet Symbolum so briefly and comfortable. It is difficult not to regret that Luther had so superficial a knowledge of Ecclesiastical antiquities : for example, his belief in this fable of the Creed having been a picnic contribution of the twelve Apostles, each giving a sentence. Whereas nothing is more certain than that it was the gradual product of three or four centuries. Chap, xxxiv. p. 369. An angel (said Luther) is a spiritual creature created by God without a body for the service of Christendom, espe- cially in the office of the Church. What did Luther mean by a body ? For to me the word seemeth capable of two senses, universal and special : first, a form indicating to A. B. C. &c., the existence and finiteness of some one other being demonstrative as hie, and disjunctive as hie et non ille ; and in this sense God alone can be without body : secondly, that which is not merely hie distinctive, but divisive ; yea, a product divisible from the producent as a snake from its skin, a precipitate and death of living power ; and in this sense the body is proper to mortality, and to be denied of spirits made perfect as well as of the spirits that never fell from perfection, and perhaps of those who fell below mortality, namely, the devils. 1 to hold that the Devil has no one body, nay, no body easelesalr > the coloured shadow of thr substance that intercepts the truth. /bid. p. 370. The devil* are in wood*, in wafers, in wildmsssa* and in dark pooly places, ready to hurt and prejudice people, Ac. I he angels like a flea, The devil is a bore ; " 11 tli. loiter therefore. Ye.s love thee even when thou gabbiest like a goose ; for thy geese helped to save the Capitol. verily believe (said Luther) that the day of judgment draweth near, and that the angel* prepare themselves for the fight and combat, and that within the space of a few hundred yean they will strike down both Turk and Pops into the bottosalssspitofhalL Yea ! two or three more such angels as thyself, )>y prediction would be, or i.'ips would now have been, accomplished. -. x Cogitations of the understanding do produce no melancholy, hut the cogitations of the will cams sadness ; as, when one is 1 at a thing, or when one doth sigh and complain, there are melancholy and aad cogitations, but the understanding is not melancholy. NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 51 Even in Luther's lowest imbecilities what gleams of vigorous good sense ! Had he understood the nature and symptoms of indigestion together with the detail of subjective seeing and hearing, and the existence of mid-states of the brain between sleeping and waking, Luther would have been a greater philo- sopher ; but would he have been so great a hero? I doubt it. Praised be God whose mercy is over all his works ; who bringeth good out of evil, and mani- festeth his wisdom even in the follies of his servants, his strength in their weakness ! Ibid. p. 389. Whoso prayeth a Psalm shall be made thoroughly warm. Expert us credo. 19th August, 1826. I have learnt to interpret for myself the impre- cating verses of the Psalms of my inward and spiritual enemies, the old Adam and all his corrupt menials ; and thus I am no longer, as I used to be, stopped or scandalised by such passages as vindictive and and- Christian. Ibid. The Devil (said Luther) oftentimes objected and argued against me the whole cause which, through God's grace, I lead. He objecteth also against Christ. But better it were that the Temple brake in pieces than that Christ should therein remain obscure and hid. Sublime ! Ibid. In Job are two chapters concerning Behemoth the whale, that by reason of him no man is in safety. * * These are colored words and figures whereby the Devil is signified and showed. E 2 -. MOTES OX UMUEB'S TABLE I A take of brother Martin's. The Bh* moth whale nor devil. jKitarnus; who is indeed as ugly as the devil, a ;iy the he rice-grounds; hut though n respect a devil of a t on the whole he is too honest a monster to be a fellow of devils. Chap, xxx vl p. 800. OfWMxrv/L presses on my mind as a weighty argu- ment in proof of at least a negative inspiration, an especial restraining grace, in the composition < nical books, that though the writers imlmilimlly did (the greater number at least) most probably believe in the objective reality of wit. direct assertions as these of Luther s, which would with the vast i ins have raised an article of faith, are to be f -u:. i m cither Testa That the Ob and Oboih of Moses are no authorities for this absurd superstition, has been unanswerably shown by Webster.* Chap, xxxvil p. 398. perplexed man, thai WM right in hit own wiu. A sound observation of great practical u Edward Irving should be aware of this in ov) and the superstitious fancy of d< antifiMt objective* domination*** in rov Ei+d affect***; otroy ro /iery of it, that so many wed and so few are Christianly married ! But even in this the analogy of matrimony to the religion of NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 57 Christ holds good : for even such is the proportion of nominal to actual Christians ; all christened, how few baptised ! But in true matrimony it is beautiful to consider, how peculiarly the marriage state har- monises with the doctrine of justification by free grace through faith alone. The little quarrels, the imperfections on both sides, the occasional frailties, yield to the one thought, there is love at the bottom. If sickness or other sorer calamity visit me, how would the love then blaze forth ! The faults are there, but they are not imprinted. The prickles, the acrid rind, the bitterness or sourness, are trans- formed into the ripe fruit, and the foreknowledge of this gives the name and virtue of the ripe fruit to the fruit yet green on the bough. Ibid. p. 447. The causers and founders of matrimony are chiefly God's commandments, &c. It is a state instituted by God himself, visited by Christ in person, and presented with a glorious present ; for God said, It is not good that the man should be alone : therefore the wife should be a help to the husband, to the end that human generations may be increased, and children nurtured to God's honour, and to the profit of people and countries ; also to keep our bodies in sanctifi- cation. (Add) and in mutual reverence, our spirits in a state of love and tenderness ; and our imaginations pure and tranquil. In a word, matrimony not only preserveth human generations so that the same remain continually, but it preserveth the generations human. Ibid. p. 450. In the synod at Leipzig the lawyers concluded that secret contractors should be punished with banishment, and be 58 NOTES OH LUTHER'S TABLE TAI diainheriUd. Whereupon (Mid Luther) I MB! them word Ac. But oereftheleat I hold it fitting, thai tho*e which In uch sort do eacretly contract themeelTea, ought aharply to What a sweet union of prudence and kind nature ! Scold them sharply, and perhaps let them smart a v,h:l. i" r thrir bdimstioa and disobedience; and then kiss and make it up, remembering that young folks will be young folks, and that lore has its own law and logic. Chap. lii. p. 4S1. The preemption and bold neai of the aophfeto and School - dirin ia a very ungodly thing, which tome of the Father, alao approved of and extolled ; namely, of epiHtual aigniSoa. * in the Holy Sen pture, wherehy the U pi tif ul ly tattatiJ ami torn in pieoo*. It i< fin upi-h w.,rk in Mich nort t joggle with Holy Scripture: it U no otherwise th should dittourw of phyric in this manner: the fcrer b a dflkaeja, rhubarb in the phyaie, The ferer rignifieth the dm rhubarb U Jeeue Chriat, Ac, Who teeth not here (amid Luther) that sm are mere juggling triekil Ai M amf after the i are they deoeired that amj, Children ought to be ngtun. IH^II^ they hiul nut Uith. the life of me, I cannot find the eren so * in this sentence. The watchman cries, 'half-past three n so, and after the same manner, the great Cham of Tartary has a carbuncle on In- MM, NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 59 Chap. lx. p. 483. George in the Greek tongue is called a builder, that buildeth countries and people with justice and righteous- ness, &c. A mistake for a tiller or boor, from Bauer, bauen. The latter hath two senses, to build and to bring into cultivation. Chap. Ixx. p. 503. I am now advertised (said Luther) that a new astrologer is risen, who presumeth to prove that the earth moveth and goeth about, not the firmament, the sun and moon, nor the stars ; like as when one who sitteth in a coach or in a ship and is moved, thinketh he sitteth still and resteth, but the earth and the trees go, run, and move themselves. There- fore thus it goeth, when we give up ourselves to our own foolish fancies and conceits. This fool will turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down, but the Scripture shewethand teacheth him another lesson, when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth. There is a similar, but still more intolerant and contemptuous anathema of the Copernican system in Sir Thomas Brown, almost two centuries later than Luther. Though the problem is of no difficult solution for reflecting minds, yet for the reading many it would be a serviceable work, to bring together and exemplify the causes of the extreme and universal credulity that characterises sundry periods of history (for example, from A.D. 1400 to A.D. 1650) : and credulity involves lying and delusion for by a seeming paradox liars are always credulous, though credulous persons are not always liars ; although they most often are. It would be worth while to make a collection of nentsof' on i n their generation respe Copernican or Pythagorean scheme. One writer (I forget the name) inveighs against it as Popery, and a Popish stratagem to reconcile the is of men to Transubstn Matt. f we may con; evidence of our senses in a matt. ml philosophy, aj< much more, may we be expected to do so in a matter of In my Noetic, or Doctrine and Disci \ I leas =k>:/ I purpose to select some four, five or more instances of the sad effects of the absence use of words and in the understand- ing <: in the different department* of life; for example, the word body, in connect resur- recuon-m< 10 last instances. \\\\\ (please God !) be the sad effects on the whole system I must remember A book.* Religion necessarily, as to its main and proper doctrines, consists of ideas, that is, spirit that can only be spiritually discerned, and to the >*ion of which words are necessarily inadequate, and must be used by accomrocul il-: absolute in dispensability of a Christian life, wit inward experiences. ilone can make a man to answer to an opponent, who charges one doctrine as contradictory to a is a r terms ; but nevertheless so aii'l both arc true, nay, parts of the same truth." besides other evils there is this, th Gospel is prear tgments, and what the hearer \n argument pcwrtng that, aooonimg to the oorwiant of eternal without pftMing througfa death. Although the human nature of Chnst himself could not be thus translated till he had pawed through NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK. 61 can recollect of the sum total of these is to be his Christian knowledge and belief. This is a grievous error. First, labour to enlighten the hearer as to the essence of the Christian dispensation, the ground- ing and pervading idea, and then set it forth in its manifold perspective, its various stages and modes of manifestation. In this as in almost all other qualities of a preacher of Christ, Luther after Paul and John is the great master. None saw more clearly than he, that the same proposition, which addressed to a Christian in his first awakening out of the death of sin was a most wholesome, nay a necessary, truth, would be a most condernnable Antinomian falsehood, if addressed to a secure Christian boasting and trusting in his faith yes, in his own faith, instead of the faith of Christ communicated to him. I cannot utter how dear and precious to me are the contents of pages 197 199, to line 17, of this work, more particularly the section headed How we ought to carry ourselves towards the Law's accusations. Add to these the last two sections of p. 201,* the last touching St. Austin's opinion f especially. Like- wise, the first half of p. 202.]: But indeed the whole of the twelfth chapter * Of the Law and the Gospel ' is of inestimable value to a serious and earnest minister of the Gospel. Here he may learn both the orthodox faith, and a holy prudence in the time and manner of preaching the same. July, 1829. * We must preach the Law (said Luther) for the sakes of the evil and wicked, &c. t The opinion of St. Austin is (said Luther) that the Law which through human strength, natural understanding and wisdom is fulfilled, justifieth not, is ground waa already gained. It is the first law in Justinian's code, made by Theodoaiua when he came to the Empire, that all should, everywhere, under severe pains, follow that fa MIS received by Dama- BUS, Bishop of Rome, and Peter of Alexandria. And why ngand laws of England give the like au- o Archbiahopa of Canterbury and York f r so very thin lefeuce of our ! ction imber of m so sensible and powerful a reasoner as Buraet gen appears. most dangerously : for, first, the Parliam< almost sneukin^ly insinn.it> o asserted, as a joini-uutl: hat even 1 laments were 'i-e period frni linirv \li. are false H >, and those relai ' .tural, the excellence of the result ideutal cuinridenc- HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 67 the actions of individuals, the Church representing Truth, as its own evidence. But if the contrary be the case, if the Reformation was an heretical depra- vation, then it should be acknowledged that the enforcement of the same on the majority of the clergy and the kingdom by the minority, is an aggra- vation of the crime. Therefore till this point be decided, the objection is premature ; and, when it is decided, superfluous. For the crime needs no aggravation, and the merit no addition. Book i. 80. The belief of Christ's corporal presence was yet uuder consideration. And they observing wisely how the Germans had broken, by their running too soon into contests about that, resolved to keep up still the old general expressions, of the Sacraments being the whole and true Body of Christ, without corning to a more particular explanation of it. Wisely ? Keep up ? This may have been very prudent, but it looks very like 'YMBTF, alias, No, sir ! Yes, sir ! y-y-y-yes, sir ! N-n-n-no, sir ! pretty, when prettily minced and stammered by a young lady with downcast eye, askance ; but not quite so becoming in the mouth of a grave theological Reformer. Eh ! Master Burnet ? Ibid. p. 113. The Germans soon saw the ill effects of this doctrine, [of Predestination] Luther changed his mind about it, and Melanc- thon openly writ against it ; and since that time the whole stream of the Lutheran Churches has run the other way. But both Calvin and Bucer were still for maintaining the doctrine of these Decrees ; only they warned the people not p 2 '.-> SOTKS ox nrnxrr's ik much of them, since they were secrets which men could not penetrate into ; but they did not to clearly show how theee coosequeoces did not flow from such opinions, . that Bumet did not inform us, how the doc- trine is to be put down ! or on what i to br d of falsehood ! And if not, how could do lian to declare above the human faculties, and un: frequent meditation, it being so likely that we should err, and the errors being so perilous ! above all, that design of his [Cardinal Poles] to have seminaries in every cathedral for the planting of the diocese, shows what a wise prospect he had of the right methods of recovering a Church which wss overrun, a* he judged, with heresy. It was the same that Cramncr had formerly designed, but never took effect Certainly. persona formed from their childhood with other notions and another method of living, must be much better fltttd for a holy character than those that have lived in the pleasures .:'. v, : i : v. ..'.<..._..-.:.-, change is wrought in them, still keep some of their old customs about them, and so (all short of that gravity and decency that becomes so spiritual a function, mge ignorance of human nature! And .1 Whig bishop ! To sever a body of men from all living sympathy with mankind at large, was an exc* x for the keeping up of superstition. HISTOEY OF THE REFORMATION. 69 Ibid. p. 345. I. First, that there is but one living and true God, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, &c. Amen. ii. I believe also whatsoever is contained in the Holy Canonical Scriptures. 'E7re'x<:o. Lege, I believe that in the holy Canonical Scriptures are contained, &c. &c. Then I answer, Amen. In the which Scriptures all things necessary to salvation ; by the which also all errors and heresies may sufficiently be reproved and convicted; and all doctrine and articles necessary to salvation established. Amen. Ibid. p. 366. I do also most firmly believe and confess all the articles contained in the three Creeds the Nicene Creed, Athanasius* Creed, and our common Creed, called the Apostles' Creed ; for these do briefly contain the principal articles of our Faith, which are at large set forth in the Holy Scriptures. Amen ! not taking the damnatory preface as part of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, or understanding the faith required to be implicit only and not explicit. I hold the (so-called) Athanasian Creed to be, not false, but imperfect, but yet unfit to be a public Creed because the whole truth in a doctrine setting forth a one idea, is necessary to the perfection of each and every of the truths therein contained, or of the XOTF.S o: es contemplated in the untroubled unity of the Idea. N*>" this Creed :este the < ad ; hut !, n,,t confesa the subordination of III I do acknowledge also that Church to be the spouse of wherein the Word of God is truly taaght, the Saera- menu orderly ministered according to Christ's institution, and the Authority of the Key* duly uaed ; and thai every urticular Church hath authority to institute, to change, dean to put away ceremonies and other eooUriatrktl ritea, , ;,'-., :.:':; : . .- \. -.- . \ t '..'.'. .' ' : making more to eemlintM, to order, or edification. III. does not admit of an answer, it not being here defined, who the < is, as an eze power : equivocal, or hi like manner, the term i that of Inland be two Churches, why not ' Moreover, I confeei that it to not lawful for any man to take upon him any office or ministry, either ecdotiMttol or secular, but tuch only at are lawfully thereunto cal high authorities according to the ordinances of this ri ...... same faith and no other, as I thinj? is white that is not white. HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 71 Furthermore, I do acknowledge the Queen's Majesty's prerogative and superiority of government of all estates, and in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, within this realm, &c., to be agreeable to God's Word, and of right to appertain to her Highness, &c. Negatively understood ; i.e. that the things of Caesar to be not cease to be Caesar's by being in and for a Church, Amen. Moreover, touching the Bishop of Rome, I do acknowledge and confess that, by the Scriptures and Word of God, he hath no more authority than other bishops have in their provinces and dioceses, &c. Amen. Furthermore, I do grant and confess, that the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Holy Sacra- ments set forth by the authority of Parliament, is agreeable to the Scriptures, and that it is Catholic, Apostolic, &c., &c. Amen ; as far as the knowledge of its fallible origin is not contradicted by this assent. Moreover, I do not only acknowledge, that Private Masses were never used among the Fathers of the Primitive Church, &c. But also that the doctrine that maintaineth the Mass to be a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead, and a mean to deliver souls out of purgatory, is neither agreeable to Christ's ordinance, nor grounded upon Doctrine Apostolic. But contrary, c. Amen. I: MIVTOI.- I am of that mind aUo that the Holy ought to be ministered unto the people under both kind*, Ac, :en. Lait Of all Aa I do utterly diaallow the extolling of imagea, reliquee, and feigned miracle*, and also all kind of expreaaing Ood invisible, Ac. Ac, ; o I do exhort all men to the obedience i'a law, and to the worka of faith, M chanty, mercy, ilui*. devout and fervent prayer, Ac. Amen. 8. T. Colerid^, J-tli December. 1- Book iii, Appendix, pp. S8-7. there waa.no occasion for Bucer'a laying this, atnee he nerer declared againat the corporeal pieaeoct; but waa for Ukiug up that controversy . the App- ^trype*i Life of Cranni to bo ;it paper of Ducer's on th ie nietAphyaict o liody u .IP- (I.-- orpm imffiiyop of Mtad :n. 1 --.i ; >:.tnt!.il body, and therefor' M Corpus (fxu- it in the former or universal sense the doctrine of the real (as opposed to pheno- esence is agreeable in/A reasoi OVTOS &prov 73 NOTES ON CHILLINGWORTH. < Answer to the Preface, " Charity maintained by Catholics" p. 41. 20 Ad. 13, p. 41. To the third Whether, seeing there cannot be assigned any visible true Church distinct from ike Eoman, it follows not that she erred not fundamentally ? I say, in our sense of the word fundamental, it does follow ; for if it be true, that there was then no Church distinct from the Roman, then it must be, either because there was no Church at all, which we deny; or, because the Roman Church was the whole Church, which we also deny ; or, because she was a part of the whole, which we grant. And if she were a true part of the Church, then she retained those truths which were simply necessary to salvation, and held no errors which were inevitably and unpardonably destructive of it; for this is precisely necessary to constitute any man or any church a member of the Church Catholic. In our sense therefore of the word fundamental, I hope she erred not fundamentally; but in your sense of the word, I fear she did ; that is, she held something to be Divine Revelation, which was not something not to be, which was. If idolatry in both its kinds (i.e. worshipping the supreme God under an image, and worshipping sub- ordinate gods) ; if asserting the merits of creatures so as, though not avowedly, to deny, yet, effectively to make vain the sole redemption by, and mediation * The Works of William Chillingworth, M.A., of the University of Oxford, containing his Book, intituled, "The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation." London, 1742. great ve of the Gospel. img out I ilness) by doctrines of att as operant in $*, and not merely declaratory; finally, if a general cor moral sens*, produced and fav< whole compages of its di*tingm*hing doctrines and cere- -3, added to a bold alien repeal of commands, and additions equally bold as in i>t in on.- ,. dogma> N what can be? If they be, the I ton i lamentally erroneous, there- .lingworth seems to play at fast and loose. Indeed I cannot but regard it as a of] Low-Church Lockian Fac- uthor is extolled as the 'Apxatnfurrip i eel's moat masterly u IK A Battioa*] A.-.-- mt, A,-. ; ffgOttl R M M /'. ' *i 26A*L|18. /ML p. 43. To U* dghthlTo^ h A. should believe and B. disbelieve the poesessu < iospel to be demoniacal. <>r tin* ' !. 383. Appended to tic Cone (cr. I hnve been disappointed in tins work, \\i however, has confirmed my convictions conc< Mr Locke's taste and judgm< I have st:i , < 'billing great inferiority to same -it is pvat imlt'nl. I pears to me prolix, heavy, full >ns, and t and that mode of logical iii, -h regards the conveyance of arguments. Secondly, I do not .: that a man of sound -1 mini could scarcely read this boo! . or rather Romanist; but tin- same must be said of twti r works before ('hillin-u-rrli. Un: 1 do affirm tl more probable o Popery he would be ! ism at least, than to regular Protestantism, Arminian or Cnl the -,.nr, MI in made t.. th.- i;. mmiit, in i t ( -i otrinai laid down concerning fundamentals, breathe a ; ciple of Latitu . with a tiresome rep hoininem, and retortions, there is a deficient and affirmative evidences and of lean uirul and froi, :iers. 81 NOTES ON THE BOOK OF COMMON PEAYEE. PRAYER. A MAN may pray night and day, and yet deceive himself; but no man can be assured of his sincerity, who does not pray. Prayer is faith passing into act; a union of the will and the intellect realising in an intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is wishing, or lip-work ; a charm or a mummery. Pray always, says the Apostle ; that is, have the habit of prayer, turning your thoughts into acts by connecting them with the idea of the redeeming God, and even so reconverting your actions into thoughts. THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST. The best preparation for taking this sacrament, better than any or all of the books or tracts composed for this end, is, to read over and over again, and often on your knees at all events with a kneeling and praying heart the Gospel according to St. John, till your mind is familiarised to the contem- plation of Christ, the Redeemer and Mediator of mankind, yea, and of every creature, as the living and self-subsisting Word, the very truth of all true being, and the very being of all enduring truth ; the reality, which is the substance and unity of all reality ; the light which lighteth every man, so that what we call reason is itself a light from that light, NOTES ON THE lumen a luce, as the Latin more distil rc*MW not merely light, but there life ; and it is the life of Christ, the co-eternal Son the only true life-giving light of We are assured, and we believe that Christ is God ; God manifested in the flesh. As God, He must be present entire in every creature; (for how can God, leed any ^t in part- - said to dwell in the regenerate, to come to them who receive Him by faith in His name, that is, in power and influence ; for this is the meaning of the word name" \ ire when applied to God or \Vherc true belief exist> s not only present with or among us; for so He every man, even the most wicked , but to us and for us I i.. i fa, i ,/if, \t Inch li'ihteih every man that cometh int.. ;/i<- (///. that is, less remote from salvation. TWENTY -FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TK! that they, plenteoiwly bringing forth the fruit of good t hoc bo plenfeomlj rewmrded. that with that enlarged capacit without thee we cannot acquire, there may likewise he an increase of the gift, which from thee alone we can wholly receive." PftALM Vltt. Ver. 2. Out of tAf mo*tk of my baU$ and tucVimp katt tko* ordained *rt*(fa btca** of Aim mmkt; that tho* miykUtt Ml tke enemy vnd tke avra^r. To the dispensations of \\\> twilight dawn, t messengers of the redeeming word, tl lisping utterers of light and life, a strength and BOOK OF COMMON PEAYER. 87 a power were given because of the enemies, greater and of more immediate influence, than to the seers and proclaimers of a clearer day : even as the first re-appearing crescent of the eclipsed moon shines for men with a keener brilliance, than the following larger segments, previously to its total emersion. Ibid. Ver. 5. Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship. Power + idea = angel. Idea power = man, or Prometheus. PSALM LXVIII. Ver. 34. Ascribe ye the power to God over Israel : his worship and strength is in the clouds. The " clouds " in the symbolical language of the Scriptures mean the events and course of things, seemingly effects of human will or chance, but over- ruled by Providence. PSALM LXXII. This Psalm admits no other interpretation but of Christ, as the Jehovah incarnate. In any other sense, it would be a specimen of more than Persian or Moghul hyperbole and bombast, of which there is no other instance in Scripture, and which no Chris- tian would dare to attribute to an inspired writer. We know, too, that the elder Jewish Church ranked it among the Messianic Psalms. N.B. The Word in St. John, and the Name of the Most High in the Psalms, are equivalent terms. MOTES OX THE *tJub* 9 *yj*ut first I must collate it word by word with the original Hebrew. It seems clearly Messianic. Acoordinir to Btohop H*th. Does this allude to the periodical rains ? " As a transparency ou some night of j rejoicing, seen by common day, with the lamps from removed- even such would the Psalms be preted by the Gospel. honoured Mr : Could I but make you feel what grandeur, what magnificence, what an everlasting significance and import Christianity gives to every fact of y. :il history to every page of your x-nT. i m ordfl : KTLESOFREU< is mournful to think how many recent rs have criminated our Church in consequence of tl ignorance and inadv* M not knowing, or not noticing, the contra-distinction * See Home in loc. not*. NOTES ON THE LIFE OF ST. TERESA. 91 meant between power and authority. Rites and ceremonies the Church may ordain jure proprio : on matters of faith her judgment is to be received with reverence, and not gainsaid but after repeated inquiries, and on weighty grounds. xxxvn. It is lawful for Christian men, at the command- ment of the magistrate, to wear weapons, and to serve in the wars. This is a very good instance of an unseemly matter neatly wrapped up. The good men recoiled from the plain words " It is lawful for Christian men at the command of a king to slaughter as many Christians as they can ! " Well ! I could most sincerely subscribe to all these articles. September, 1831. NOTES ON THE LIFE OF ST. TEEESA. 1812.* Pref. Part i. p. 51. Letter of Father Avila to Mother Teresa de Jesu. Persons ought to beseech our Lord not to conduct them by the way of seeing ; but that the happy sight of him and of his saints be reserved for heaven ; and that here he would conduct them in the plain, beaten road, &c. * * But if, doing all this, the visions continue, and the soul reaps profit thereby, &c. In what other language could a young woman check while she soothed her espoused lover, in his * The works of the Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus, Foundress of the Reformation of the Discalced Carmelites. Divided into two parts. Translated into English, MDCLXXV. ED. NOTES OX THE too eager demonstrations of his passion ? And jet the an of the Roman priests, to keep up the delu- sion as serviceable, yet keep off those forms of it most liable to detection, by medical commentary ! Parti. Chap. IT. p. 15. Bat our Lord began to regale me so much by thi way, that he vouchsafed me the favour to give me quiet prayer ; and sometimes it came so far as to arrive at union ; though I understood neither the one nor the other, nor how much they both deserve to be prized. But I believe it would have been a great deal of happiness for mo to have understood them. True it is, that this union rested with me for so short a time, that perhaps it might arrive to be but ae of an A w Maria ; yet I remained with to very great effect* thereof that with not being then so much as twenty year* O ld methought I found the whole world under my feet Dreams, the soul herself forsaking ; Fearful raptures ; chiKllike mirth. Silent adorations, making A blessed shadow of this earth ! /fcttCbap.v.p.24. I received also the bleated Sacrament with many tears ; though yet, in my opinion, they were not shed with that sense and grie( for only my having offended God, which might have served to save my soul ; if the error into which I was brought by them who told me that some things were not mortal sins (which afterwards I saw plainly that they were) might not somewhat bestead me. Methmks, that without doubt my soul might have run a hazard of not being saved, if I had died then. Can we wonder that some poor hypochondriasts LIFE OF ST. TEEESA. 93 and epileptics have believed themselves possessed by, or rather to be the Devil himself, and so spoke in this imagined character, when this poor afflicted spotless innocent could be so pierced through with fanatic pre-conceptions, as to talk in this manner of her mortal sins, and their probable eternal punish- ment ; and this too, under the most fervent sense of God's love and mercy ! Ibid. p. 43. True it is, that I am both the most weak and the most wicked of any living. What is the meaning of these words, that occur so often in the works of great saints ? Do they believe them literally ? Or is it a specific suspension of the comparing power and the memory, vouchsafed them as a gift of grace ? a gift of telling a lie without breach of veracity a gift of humility indemnifying pride. Ibid. Chap. viii. p. 44. I have not without cause been considering and reflecting upon this life of mine so long, for I discern well enough, that nobody will have gust to look upon a thing so very wicked. Again ! Can this first sentence be other than madness or a lie ? For observe, the question is not, whether Teresa was or was not positively very wicked ; but whether according to her own scale of virtue she was most and very wicked comparatively. See post Chap, x., p. 57 8. That relatively to the command Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect, and before the eye of his own pure reason, the best of men may NOTES OX THE deem himself mere folly and imperfection, I can easily conceive ; but this is not the case in question. here a comparison of one man with all others of whom he has known or heard ; ergo, a experience ; and in this sense it is impossiU* . \\ith- is of memory and judgment on the one hm of veracity and simplicity on the other. Besides, -o is it ? To draw off our conscience from the relation between ourselves and the perfect ideal appointed for our . to the Tain comparison of one individual self with other men ! Will lessen mine, though they were greater? Does not every man stand or (all to his own Maker ace- to his own being ? Ibid. p. 45. I ate not what one thing there it of so many u are to be found in the whole world, wherein there u need of a greater ..;- . '....:.'.:.....: .'.'-. and to know that he knows it well, and yet never to go out pretence. For howtoever it be very true that we are always in tiMptMOt of God; yet methinka that they who oonverte with him in prayer are in hit pretence after a more particular manner; for they are teeing then that he tea* them; whereat other* may, perhaps, remain tome dayi in ok pretence, yet without remembering that he lookt upon A very pretty and sweet remark : truth in new v incomparably educated was Teresa i v saint, a mother of transports and fusions of spirit ! 1. A woman ; 2. Of rank, and reared LIFE OF ST. TEEESA. 95 delicately; 3. A Spanish lady; 4. With very pious parents and sisters ; 5. Accustomed in early childhood to read " with most believing heart " all the legends of saints, martyrs, Spanish martyrs, who fought against the Moors ; 6. In the habit of pri- vately (without the knowledge of the superstitious Father) reading books of chivalry to her mother, and then all night to herself. 7. Then her Spanish sweet-hearting, doubtless in the true Oroondates style and with perfect innocence, as far as appears ; and this giving of audience to a dying swain through a grated window, on having received a lover's mes- sages of flames and despair, with her aversion at fifteen or sixteen years of age to shut herself up for ever in a strict nunnery, appear to have been those mortal sins, of which she accuses herself, added, perhaps, to a few warm fancies of earthly love ; 8. A frame of exquisite sensibility by nature, rendered more so by a burning fever, which no doubt had some effect upon her brain, as she was from that time subject to frequent fainting fits and deliquia ; 9. Frightened at her Uncle's, by reading to him Dante's books of Hell and Judgment, she confesses that she at length resolved on nunhood because she thought it could not be much worse than Purgatory and that purgatory here was a cheap expiation for Hell for ever; 10. Combine these (and I have pro- ceeded no further than the eleventh page of her life) and think, how impossible it was, but that such a creature, so innocent, and of an imagination so heated, and so well peopled, should often mistake the first not painful, and in such a frame, often plea- surable approaches to deliquium for divine raptures ; and join the instincts of nature acting in the body of a mind unconscious of them, in the keenly sensi- tive body of a mind so loving and so innocent, and 'JO NOTES ON THE LIFE OF T. TERESA. what remains to be solved which the st most and the roguery of a few would not &: explain ' II. One source it is almost criminal to him- r.Tp.tMi. an- 1 mUA }'. 1", !" th- !:rM !':irt, brought back to my reo I mean, the effects so super-sensual that they may easily and most Tenially pass for supernatural, so very glorious to human i it. though in truth they are humanity itself in the contradistinguishing sense of that awful word, it is yet no wonder that, conscious of the sore weaknesses united in one person this one nobler nature we attribute them to a di out of us, (a mistake of the sensuous ima<: its misapplication of space and place, rather than a misnomer of the thing itself, for it is verily 6 0cot ir ///air, '. OIMIO? 0co'?,) the effects, I mean, <:" moral force after conquest, the state of the whole being aft. >rious struggle, in which the will has preserved its perfect freedom by a veb energy of perfect obedience to the pure or practical reason, or conscience. Thence flows in upon and fills the soul that peace which paueth undt a state affronted and degraded by the name of of happiness, the very corner-stone of that morality i cannot even in thought be distinguished from religion, and which seems to mean religion as long as the instinctive craving, dim and dark though it ie, of the moral sense after this unknown state n only l.y tho i-itterness where it is not) shall remain in human I'nder all forms of positive or philos< v,. it has developed too glorious an at man to be confined :ue or set-: hut truth and fact to say, is more especially fostered and favoured 1 .uity; and its frequent appearance THOMAS FULLER. 97 even under the most selfish and unchristian forms of Christianity is a stronger evidence of the divinity of that religion, than all the miracles of Brahma and Veeshnou could afford, even though they were supported with tenfold the judicial evidence of the Gospel miracles.' 1 ' NOTES ON A TEIPLE EECONCILED BY THOMAS FULLEK, B.D. 1654. Page 7. Doctrine. God's ministers ought without fear or favour to perform their office, neither to be frighted nor flattered. It is ob- served that Moses first hanselled this law 011 his sister Miriam, Numb. xii. 15. Secondly, we find it served by subjects on their sovereign in the case of king Uzziah, 2 Ckron. xxvi. 20. Five years later this would have cost Fuller a rap on his knuckles from his Bishop. Ibid. p. 8. Sad and sorrowful the condition of a sequestered Leper. Indeed some of us have been sequestered ; and, blessed be * In one of the volumes of this work used by the' Editor for ascer- taining the references, the following note is written by a former owner : " October 12, 1788. Begged of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to take my salvation on herself, and obtain it for Saint Hyacinthe's sake ; to whom she has promised to grant any thing, or never to refuse any tiling begged for his sake." It would be very interesting to know how far the feeling expressed in this artless effusion coexisted with a faith in the atonement and mediation of the one Lord Jesus Christ. ED. H > s MAS FULLER. God, we hire bom our yoke in our youth, hoping thai mot* freedom is reserved for our old age. A hope amounting to an anticipation of the fast approaching Restoration, while Cromwell was jet alive. But there were men who hoped for a restora- tion of the Established Church under a moderate Episcopacy from Cromwell himself, and had he dared take the name of King, he probably would not have disappointed them. Ibid. pp. 43, 44. Pint, for Barnabas his title wae, by hi* extinction, being a Lerite, AcU xir. 86, to whom it belonged by their pro- fession to teach the people Secondly, ho had an eKmonttMiy from God in the eeoond verse of thii chapter; bcaidea, at thii time, a ciril mviution from the miutfrt of the jynepopm. Thus hie threefold cable cannot be broken, nor any unlawful inrading of the minieteriel oAoe be charged upon him. lly, St. Paul's nnnmhilim to preach doth appear both by hie ability and authority for the earn* Hie ability (AcU udi. S)-brought up at the feet of Gamaliel O^aot We oonfeei his ability, bat deny hii authority, *c, Ac. Am. All is oonfisMci, but let the impartial reader con- sider, first, that Paul was a Pkan**, the eon of a PAorietr, xiii 0; eeoondly, let him also weigh the word* of oar Amour, U 3. Tkt Soribm md Pkan*m j./ in Mt9ttf cS4Hf* / ou Mep^feiv eMMHsesNv caejf ses yNi eoeerpfp csev otter* amd do ; 6l do not oj*r l&eir wort*, for Oxy ssy omd do not - here trying to support a plain truth on a false or very questionable pediment, v wonder that he fa r those who admitted that miracles had ceased in the < -n vincing arguments might have been brought. For those who THOMAS FULLEE. 99 believed immediate calls, no arguments could have been convincing. NOTES ON LIFE OUT OF DEATH, A SERMON BY THOMAS FULLEE, B.D. Page 4. Was not Hezekiah assured that the setting of his sun here in a mortal life should be the rising thereof in a blessed immortality ? Noticeable even in the sensible Fuller this dispo- sition to consider the Bible, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, one book, so as to antedate the Gospel, and attribute to the good men under the Law, not only the Faith, but the clear and distinct belief and assurance of Christians. Bishop War burton fell into the contrary extreme. Ibid. p. 6. Well, the Prophet Isaiah is sent with a welcome counter- message, that Hezekiah's prayer was heard, and a longer lease of life indulged unto him, confirmed with miracles from Heaven of the going back of the sun. Was not the recovery itself a sufficient sign ? The sun of his life had gone backward, if at sixty he was carried back and reimplaced in the strength and health of fifty. Query, a figurative expression of a fact, interpreted by the hearers for a distinct fact in itself? a 2 lii'.M M K- I ! 1 i. :, 11. Sickness U a time to suffer, not to do in : patienU are like beea in winter, no flying abroad to find fresh flowers; either they miiat starve, or live on that stock of honey which they have |iruvitlcil in the Huiiiiticr time. inprovcment might be made of this i rough Christ does sup] his wisest bees a power of making fresh honey by patience and acknowledgment David therefore allegeth thk M an argument to bo con turned in the land of the living, Mail tk di* prai* Tim, O Lord! that God's service might still be preserved so in him, that his body might not be altogether useless, ss in dead ut have a |H,rtioa of praising of God, conjoint his soul (ss the opposite part of the quire) in lauding the Lord. With an ingenuity worthy of Fuller ; but more ingenious than ingenuous. Better say : it was a question to wh 1 man might through Gods mercy hope, but c. his own merits expect, an affirmative answer. Compare with Kxekiel. thrxr r/ri/ fames lire / 101 NOTES ON WORTHIES OF ENGLAND, BY THOMAS FULLER, B.D. Preface by the Editor, John Nichols, F.A.S. Even Bishop Nicolson, fastidious as in this instance he is, admits that the work at least " pretends to give an account of native commodities, manufactures, buildings, proverbs, &c., of all the counties of England and Wales, as well as of the great men in Church and State, though the latter looks like the principal design, and makes up the greatest part of the volume." -Much might be said, if it were necessary, in vindication of the language of Dr. Fuller. N. Fuller's language ! Grant me patience, Heaven ! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap for a whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson ! a painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern ! The venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not worth an ounce of Fuller's earth ! Memoirs of the Author. Dr. Thomas Fuller, son of the Rev. Thomas Fuller, rector of Aldwinkle St. Peter, in the county of Northampton, was born in 1608. N. Shakspeare ! Milton ! Fuller ! De Foe ! Hogarth ! As to the remaining mighty host of our great men, other countries have produced something like them but these are uniques. England may challenge the world to show a correspondent name to either of the five. I do not say that, with exception of the .first, names of equal glory may not be produced, in a different kind. But these are genera, containing each only one individual. 10Q NOTKS ON IIOHKKS'S LKVIATIIAN. Chap. L p. 4. Of Seme, But the philoaophy-echoola, through all the uniiafsitiai el Chratendom, grounded upon certain text* of Ariaftotta, teach another doctrine, and aay, for the causa of mmm, that the thing aeen aeodeth forth on erery side a vMofa tj***. The Schoolmen taught in other words the very same doctrines that are now taught They gave to the external a power of calling the sense into action, some affirming that they did so formalittr, i. e. as a dog impresses reflection on a mirror; others mi- fwitltr, as the painter's brush impresses the figure of the dog on a canvass, or rather as a magnet will arrange steel filings into a circle. Ibid. Chap. ni p. 197. For those worda, Rerolt from the Lord your God, are in lace equivalent to. Revolt from your king. ng be meant God only, or such as teach and do the will of the true God, this is not only true, but a mere truism. But if by King be meant any constituted authority, as the Emperor of Japan, or - a wicked lie, and all the miracles of Prophets and Apostles must have been sent by God not to be believed, but merely to try the allegiance of subjects to their Tyrant. Folio Edition. 1651. 103 NOTES ON ASGILL'S TEEATISES. AsgiWs Argument. That according to the covenant of eternal life revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence into that eternal life, without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through death. Edit. 1715. IF I needed an illustrative example of the distinc- tion between the reason and the understanding, between spiritual sense and logic, this treatise of Asgill's would supply it. Excuse the defect of all idea, or spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff or defendant into a common- law court, and then I cannot conceive a clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here given. The language is excellent idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, that the inherent contradiction in the thought renders possible. It is of minor importance how a man represents to himself his redemption by the Word Incarnate, within what scheme of his understanding he concludes it, or by what supposed analogies (though actually no better than metaphors) he tries to conceive it, pro- vided he has a lively faith in Christ, the Son of the living God, and his Redeemer. The faith may and must be the same in all who are thereby saved ; but NOTES ON every man, more or less, construes it into an intelligible lir. .ugh the shaping and colouring optical glass udiwl understanding. Mr. Asgillhas given a very ingenious common-law scheme. Valtat quantum rakre potest! It would make a figure before the Benchers ot idle Temple, myself, 1 prefer the belief that man was made to know that a finite free agent could not stand but by the coincidence, and independent harmony, of a separate will with the will of God. For only by the f God can he obey God's will. Man fell as a to rise a spirit The first Adam was a 1 soul ; the last a 1 In the Word was life, and that life is the ligl. men. And as long as the light abides within its own sphere, that is, appears as reason, so long commensurate with the life, and is its adequate representative. But not so, when this light shines downward into the understanding; for there always, more or less, refracted, and differently in every different b I ; and it must be re-converted into life to rectify itself, and regain its universality, or all-commonne$$, AUgemtinhtit, as the German more expressively says. il- not, m faith nml <' the Church is catholic : so likewise in the funda- mental articles of belief, which constitute the reason of i t in the minor dogmata, in modes of exposition, and the vehicles of faith and reason to 'standings, imaginations, and affections of . and in this diflV y one object for charity to exercise itself on by mutual forbearance. O ! there is a deep philosophy in the proverbial phra> heart sets his head right ! " In our ie TOO with heaven, we must east our local coins and tokens into the melting-pot of love, to pass by ASGILL'S TREATISES. 105 weight and bullion. And where the balance of trade is so immensely in our favour, we have little right to complain, though they should not pass for half the nominal value they go for in our own market, Ibid. p. 46. And I am so far from thinking this covenant of eternal life to be an allusion to the forms of title amongst men, that I rather adore it as the precedent for them all, from which our imperfect forms are taken : believing with that great Apostle, that the things on earth are but the patterns of things in the Jieavens, where the originals are Tcept. Aye ! this, this is the pinch of the argument, which Asgill should have proved, not merely asserted. Are these human laws, and these forms of law, absolutely good and wise, or only conditionally so the limited powers and intellect, and the corrupt will of men being considered ? Ibid. p. 64. And hence, though the dead shall not arise with the same identity of matter with which, they died, yet being in the same form, they will not know themselves from themselves, being the same to all uses, intents, and purposes. * * * But then as God, in the resurrection, is not bound to use the same matter, neither is he obliged to use a different matter. The great objection to this part of Asgill's scheme, which has had, and still, I am told, has, many advocates among the chief dignitaries of our church, is that it either takes death as the utter extinction of being, or it supposes a continuance, or at least a renewal, of consciousness after death. The former 100 s ox vi s all the irrational, and all the immoral, ooogaqoeocai of materialism. But if the latt he proportionality, adhesion, and symmetry, <>f the whole scheme are gone, and the ii quantity, that is, immortality under th<> < urse of estrangement from God, is rendered a mere supple- ment tacked on t and compam inaigf T n.t : nil's views and reasoning everywhere else, that it is / / pro- bable, thai the apparent exception in s i.> chapter is only apparent And this the hypothesis I have here advanced would enable one to show, and to true bearing of the texts. Aagillcoi himself with maintaining thai translation \v death is one, and the liest, mode of passing to the heavenly state. // '" i is earliest cessors contended -as the only mode, It Paul .] "/'/;/ ice have hope, we are of all men the most miser- able I- NOTES ON ASGILL'S DEFENCE, ETC. 109 INTRODUCTION TO ASGILL'S DEFENCE UPON HIS EXPUL- SION FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. EDIT. 1712. Ibid. p. 28. For as every faith, or credit, that a man hath attained to, is the result of some knowledge or other ; so that whoever hath attained that knowledge, hath that faith (for whatever a man knows, he cannot but believe) : So this all faith being the result of all knowledge, 'tis easy to conceive that whoever had once attained to all that know- ledge, nothing could be difficult to him. THIS whole discussion on faith is one of the very few instances in which Asgill has got out of his depth. According to all usage of words, science and faith are incompatible in relation to the same object ; while, according to Asgill, faith is merely the power which science confers on the will. Asgill says, What we know, we must believe. I retort, What we only believe, we do not know. The minor here is excluded by, and not included in, the major. Minors by dif- ference of quantity are included in their majors ; but minors by difference of quality are excluded by them, or superseded. Apply this to belief and science, or certain knowledge. On the confusion of the second, that is, minors by difference of quality, with the first, or minors by difference of quantity, rests Asgill 's erroneous exposition of faith.* * An argument proving, that according to the covenant of eternal life, revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated, till he had passed through death. (Title of Asgill's 110 NOTE OX THE TRKATISK DE CULTU ET AMORE DEI" OF EMMA N I "KL SWEDENBORG. THIS would of itself serve to mark Swedenborg as a man of philosophic genius, indicative and inv. Much of what is most valuable in the philosophic works of Schelling, Schubert, and Eschermayei be found anticipated in this supposed Dementato, or madman. Oh ! thrice happy should we be if the learned and the teachers of the present age gifted with a similar madness. A madness indeed celestial, and flowing from a divine mind ! Sej> 1821. pamphlet) Asgill died In the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner f<>: years. Bd. Mr. Coleridge speaks thus of Asgill in the TabU Talk: July 80, 1881. " Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is literally immortal ; or, rather, that any given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as was pretended ; I really suspect because he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snariings of an infidel ; whereas I found the very soul of Swift an intense half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. Each of its paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and following ; so that the entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a diamond in itself." Vol. L p. 245, 1st edit : 2nd edit. April 30, 1832. " I know no genuine Saxon English superior to Asgill 'a. I think his and Defoe's irony often finer than Swift's. " VoL ii. p. 48, 1st edit, p. 164, 2nd edit. S. C. Ill NOTES ON A DISCOURSE OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE BY THOMAS WHITFIELD, MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL. Page 16. To the first argument, that it belongs to God alone to make laws to bind conscience, &c., the answer is, That the magistrate doth make no laws to bind conscience, but only enjoins men to do that which the law of God requires, and restrains them from doing that which the law and word of God forbids ; and this is his duty to do, namely, to punish sin, all sin and breaches of God's laws, whether it be in matters of doctrine or practice. To the second, &c. Answers unanswerable under the condition of an infallible magistrate ; but, as magistrates are fallible, and because this is the one case in which the being actually mistaken is the most likely to happen, and the mistake is of most pernicious consequences ; therefore the unanswerable arguments are not worth answering. Ibid. pp. 16, 17. This may be further cleared by an instance or two ; sup- pose the magistrate should enjoin a superstitious Papist to take the image which usually he prays before, and break it in pieces or cast it into the fire, this would go against the conscience of the Papist, but it would be no sin in the magistrate ; because it is the command of God, that images being instruments of idolatry should be destroyed, &c. n this is a sophism. The magistrate might ROBERT RODIKSOK. break ^e himself or bj his beadles ; '.ij-i-t himself to do it is gratuitous, usaUe brutal r NOTES ON THE WORKS OF ROB1 ROBINS- A PLEA for the divinity of our Lord JOSUA Christ Let us take a single pMiage of the Old Testament, and lei us see what the application of it to Jesus Christ pram. John the Baptist send* two of hia dwciploi to Jesus Christ to sak him whether he were the expected Messiah, ftc. I scarcely miss any dttulentn.l in this fine treatise, ti occasional reply to, ' pat ion of. ns, not from th m> 1-ui from the sincere searchers after truth A case is very imperfectly stated by givin arguments on one side. An>n altcrum jwrtfm. ill the arguments ostensibly in : of 8" \vouM. if proved and real, be to me proofs of Deism or rejection of Revelation. There- fore those not grounded on verbal criticisms and ort, but on plain common sense, ought to be nv -ipated. Such is tbe pres : . Jobn bad baptised Christ, his own r of \\\ miracles must have beer m both s aunt Mary and bis m ibeth. At the baptism he recognised him as tbe Messiah from Miscellaneous Works of Bobert Robinaon. 4 vola. 8vo. ; ^07. EGBERT ROBINSON. 113 Heaven ; yet now he sends to inquire as of one unknown. Ibid. p. 69. We will illustrate this remark by two passages from the worthy and reverend Mr. Lindsey. These are his words : Rev. v. 13. Messing and honour be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever. The blessing and honour is tendered to the object PRESENT and VISIBLE. But we have observed in St. Stephen's case, that idolatry doth not consist in worshipping an invisible object. The visibility and the invisibility of the object have nothing to do with the nature of the act. In this paragraph, as likewise in pages 27, 28, Robinson has fallen into an unintentional sophism ; first in making " worship " a specific, whereas it is a general term to be specified by its object. " The people fell on their faces, and worshipped God and the King." (David). Chronicles. Secondly (herein perhaps misled by Lindsey 's lax phraseology), in confining the words " seen " and " unseen " to the sight, whereas the word was meant to imply the knowledge of actual, yet contingent, presence, however obtained. Surely a blind man (see p. 27) may discover that such a one is in the room as certainly as one with eyes. Expressed philosophically, Lindsey 's argument would run thus : Worship is either of God or of a creature ; but the former is distinguished from the latter by always implying the acknowledgment of necessary presence (i.e. omni- presence ;) while in the latter an accidental presence (ergo absence elsewhere) only is attributed. The people worshipped, i. e. adored religiously, the omnipresent Jehovah, and they likewise worshipped, i.e. honoured and did homage to, King David, who 1 1 i ROBERT ROBINSON. happened then to be present Now the ewnc* of TV consists in destroying the essence of all religion, viz. the sense of necessary presence, by accidental and creaturely presence to the Creator. I agree therefore with Lindsey, that the divin* we nst cannot be certainly deduced from i may be explained as xpun-odorAcia and not X/>40ToAarpux ; though the words ' and would mrline me to the Christ was visually present to St Stephen at the moment of his death, is a mere presumption of the I. Besides, are we not commanded to pray . our Lord and J/>ssible for me to pray to A. through lying that B. hears my pm Whatever presence is attributed t< mally applied to B. In tlic present instance this is omnipresence. Therefore . who obeys .[-uire, adores The Lord Jesus encouraged his followers to believe, that the Spirit of truth should abide with them for ever: yet it appears by the event, Jesus Christ did n .-> th.- promise that first great tr n which all the rest are founded, the doctrine of his jxrwm, Jkc. there is doubtless a certain degree of weight in this argument, yet, I think, Rol rests too much upon it, and repeats it too often ; for >t less c in melancholy an immense majority of Christians Jl the Ebnrians, all the t. I of Asia, and of Africa, and of S. America, the larger and more populous ROBERT ROBINSON. 115 portions of Poland and of Germany, nine-tenths of France, and all Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sicily, &c. &c.) have been given up to the most despicable and idolatrous superstitions. When Christ comes shall he find faith on the earth ? I say unto you, Nay. Ibid. p. 84. Thus far, my brethren, revelation conducts the plain Christian traveller ; here it stops ; and, as he who goes for- ward must travel either without a guide or with one who is ignorant of the road, we ought not to be astonished if he lose his way. Happy for Christians had they rested here without philosophical explications / Were this a proper place (but I am not writing on the doctrine of the Trinity), I believe it would be very easy to prove, that the primitive Christians received this simple testimony just as revelation gave it ; and that when, about 200 years after Christ, they began to practise the art of explaining what they did not understand, they produced a novel notion called a Trinity, and with it disputes, creeds, subscriptions, proscriptions, persecutions, wars, and other calamitous consequences, which have disgraced Christianity and Christians from that day to this. A Scripture Trinity undoubtedly there is : but our pre- sent concern is with our Lord's divinity. Is this not strange ? If not writing on the Trinity, how could he justify this harsh gratis dictum (" a novel notion called a Trinity") to plain unlearned people ? If there be " undoubtedly a Scripture Trinity," there must be a Scripture Triunity : and what other there can be than that of the Nicene Creed, or wherein this differs from Scripture, I am at a loss even to imagine. All Scripture from Genesis to the Apocalypse declares, there is but one God. In the New Testament three distinct Agents i 2 110 ROBERT BOBIXSOX. are spoke n r. th- Son. and the Paraaiat* :m i / will come and tr* will dwell v, - Sins agn ather and a Son may be expiated ; but not against the names, and incommunicable attributes of the Supreme Being are given. Ergo, there are three, and thess Three are One. This is the Scnptui ; and what other is contained in the Nicene Creed ? Of ;. authorised creed of the fierce individual, whom ignorance of his real name we may call Pseudo- :-. I agree with many learned and orthodox shing that \tt icrrc \cfll rid. P. 87. Q. 0o not the Chrintian (kith discard reason! A. God forbid t Rea*on asks and obtain. evidence that God speaks, and Faith believes what He my*. I it irrational to believe him who <*** Utf (TU*i 1 1) A believer admiu the cride** of tAimyt NOT BERN. By faith Noah, being warned of Oodoi > NOT SEEN AS YET. prepared an Ark. By faith Abraham, when he waa called, obeyed. and he wci, HITHER HE WENT. they had but obecnre and Imperfect tdeajL (UA. i philo^her ipecttlatee objecU with hi. own cy ; a believer beholde them, at it were, with the eye. of Qod himeeU A ian neither bides hit reaeon in a napkin, nor drives an illicit trad* , puU it into the hands of the beet exchanger, and receives his own with usury. ience: and unless this rest can but perplex the mind. Reas< Ience, that it is God who hath spoken, unless what is spoken is compatible with the EGBERT ROBINSON. 117 co-existence (or, if I dared coin such a phrase, with the sub-existence at least) of Eeason. As to the ground-work therefore of all positive proof, the negative condition must he pre-raonstrated, that the doctrine does not contradict, though it may and must transcend, the Eeason; that it is incompre- hensible but not absurd. Ibid. p. 89. Men mistake by not distinguishing objects of pure reve- lation from objects of natural reason, and therefore they confound believing with reasoning. I am not required to believe anything about the moon; it is a sensible object, and I am to look at it, and to reason about it. God requires me to believe the deity of Jesus Christ. Deity is an invisible object. I never saw nor ever conceived an object analogous to it. I cannot reason about it ; I believe it. This is strange ! We cannot believe without knowing what it is we believe, and this we cannot know but by distinguishing it from all other notions, at least by negatives and what is this but reasoning ? A. cannot be at once one and three, reasons the Socinian. Not in the same sense, reasons the Trinitarian; but A., which in one sense is three, in another sense maybe one. Both alike reason; or they could not believe. Were I to work a miracle, and then say to an illiterate Englishman, els olaivbs api(TTos, apjvo-0ai Tiept Trdrpris, is a divine truth, the man might have good reason to believe my veracity, and that something (what, I knew, though he did not) was true ; but that truth he could not believe. I dwell the more on this, because I am convinced by experience, that this mode of arguing is, and has been, the main occasion of Socinianism in liberal minds. It is one thing to apprehend, and 116 ROBERT ROB1K80X. another to compnktnd. Reason apprehends the existence - ; rerae Be :vjh that Being alone can comprehet Ibid. p. 98. There are many passages in the New Testament which express the , of Jeeus Christ to the Father. My Father u UREA TER than I t A LL power is QI VEN **to mt, 'hat day ktuwHk no sum, nonoitki a*gtU, NEITHER SON; b*l the Palter. If I embrace the doctrine of Christ's mere humanity, I meet with no difficulty in two of tbeae text*, and but a few in the middle one. lieve that the sense of this text, (which, in its seems equally hostile t urn uiul the Trinitarian, and therefore naturally the pet text of the Arians) is " no not the Angels T the Son i; as contra-dis- 1 from the Father, but as one with the Father or as ii Were the sense what the Arians suppose, the words should he oAAa poro; riip but the Father alone. This is confirmed the corresponding . Mark. r '^r^' KIPT Proofs and Illustrmtionn of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Ibid. p. ISO. may eiprees my meaning so) a real and a Heal infinity belongs to God alone. ReU- y may belong to one creature in regard to another. The real distinction is infinite improprit, i. e. prater numerum ; and inf:: contra numerwn, quicqmd numerum excludit. The one (as ROBERT KOBINSON. 119 the material Universe for instance) is the excess of number and measure the other (pure spirit) is the opposite, the contradiction, to number and measure. The immortality of the first created Angel may, or will hereafter, include the excess of time God's eternity the absence of time. Ibid. p. 124. Had I been born a Greenlander, I should have said " My kajak did not make itself. More skill is displayed in the structure of the meanest bird than in that of the best kajak, and more still in that of man than in the composition of either." Had Robinson been a Greenlander he would have thought thus : My kajak was made the bird grew and never have reasoned from one to the other. Ibid. p. 130. Plato, who travelled into Egypt to improve his knowledge, learnt the Jewish notion of Memra or Logos, and, affixing ideas to the term, of which the ancient Jews had never thought, returned it to the Jews in his writings, full of dark, pagan, enigmatical ideas. All things were new except the term. It was Moses Atticised indeed ! It became fashionable in time for men of science to speak and think as Plato spoke and thought ; and Philo the Jew, and after him many Christian divines, took up the Platonic Logos, and thus brought the Memra of the old Targumists, and the Logos of St. John, into obscurity and disgrace; although it does not appear that St. John knew anything about Plato's ideas of it. I suspect that Robinson had not studied Plato or Philo very profoundly. Horsley did not hesitate to pronounce the agreement of the Platonic with the Christian Trinity. |;o|l! liT IV. SERMON VI I. Tin SorncuHCT or THE HOLT SCRIPTURE*, on this principle we prize the understandings of thoee who give sailors Bibles o*/y, because the gift implies serersi just and honourable principles ; principles, I mem, wh. honour to the understanding! and hearts of those who admit First this donation implies that, in the opinion of the donor, the Bible is a pUtm, easy book; either that all the truths of revelation are simple, plain, and clear, or that such truths as are assfmtial 10 salvation are so. What if I were to call Newton's Princijria a plain, easy book because certain detached passages \ure axmnmtir. and l.r.-aii-r tli.- r.-uh- >M n rvuU-nt to common sense ? What ' The Pentateoch V Solomons Song? The Prophets in general, and Ezekiel in particular ? What ? The Eoclesiastes f The praise of Jael i Uavid? V St John's Gospel and his Revelations? The afpannt discordances of the Evangelist* in the moat important narrations, as that of the Kesurrc. What ties, declared bj a contem- porary Apostle, dark and hard ? are these proofs of a ii and easy book ? Tiu > preceding note reverences the Bible, he trusts, as much, and believes its contents stricter consistency with Protestant ortho- doxy (in the common received meaning of the word, loxy) than the amiable author of this discourse, as appears by bis own letters. But never can he believe, that tbe many and various writings of ROBERT ROBINSON. 121 so many various and distant ages, as brought together form the book ; that this book, or collectaneum, the interpretation of which has occupied, and will occupy, all the highest powers of the noblest and best intel - lects even to the consummation of all things can be called in toto, or even on the average, " a plain and easy book ! " That what is necessary for each man's salvation (in his particular state, he making the best use of the means in his power, and walking humbly with his God) is sufficiently plain for that his purpose, the writer of this note cheerfully acknowledges, and with thanks to the Author of all inspiration and of all good gifts ! Ibid. p. 18. The nature and perfections of God, the superintendence of Providence, the folly, the guilt, the misery of sin, the purity and perfection of the law, the depravity of human nature, the imperfection of unassisted knowledge and obedi- ence, the nature and offices of Christ, the place and use of Scripture, the influence of the Holy Spirit, the nature and necessity of faith and obedience, the promise of eternal life to the righteous, the threatening of endless punishments to the wicked, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judg- ment, how clear and explicit are the oracles of God on all these important subjects ! And yet on every one of these points have long and obstinate controversies been carried on by learned and by unlearned. And yet scarce one can be mentioned, which some one sect does not interpret in a sense different from, or opposite to, that of another. Ibid. Some pretended mysteries are not Scripture propositions at all, but mere creatures of the schools. Others called ROBERT RolflSSON. mysteries are contained in Scripture, but are not mysteries; the Lord's supper never was accounted a mystery till trail- substantiation made it so. Whoo! Totdp.19. Secondly : the donation of a Bible only, implies, that each reader hath a right of private judgment. This is another just notion, truly Scriptural, and entirely Protestant To give a man a book to read, and to deny him the right of judging of its meaning, seems the summit of absurdity. What pity that such absurdity should not be universally explode right founded in nature, attached inalienably by the God of nature to the very existence of mankind, openly avowed and confirmed by Scripture, constantly exercised by all, even by such as deny it, (for who does not think for himself I) this right, I say, cannot bo evaded he greatest Doubtless ! bat may there not be folly in giving n child (and an ignorant man is a child in know- ledge) a book he cannot understand, without any assistance to enable him so to do ? To an ignorant man I would not give Newton at all : for not he cannot understand it, but he may do very well without iu To the same man I would give the Bible, though a very large pan would be worse than unm telligiblc, for it would be n _'ible yet as it does concern him, I would give it, only with " all the means and appliances to boot," that would pr< a dangerous misinterpretation. ROBERT ROBINSON. 123 SERMON XI. ON SACRAMENTAL TESTS. Page 108. We suppose our Saviour in the text forbade the exercise of this parental dominion in his favour. It was to his honour that he did so, for had he directed, impose my name upon all your descendants without their knowledge or consent ; introduce the unjust and capricious patrice potestas of the Romans into my kingdom, and let the Christian church be the wise and the ignorant, the profligate and the pure ; he would have rendered his Gospel suspected. It would have seemed what it ought not to seem, as if it shrunk from a fair investigation. This dominion which hath been exercised for many ages, continues to be so. When children first begin to think, Christianity is not proposed to their examination, but they are informed they are Christians already disposed of by a contract made for them by proxies whom they are taught to call godfathers and godmothers, who promised and vowed three things in their name, that they should renounce Satan and the pomps of the world, that they should believe all the articles of the Christian faith, and that they should keep God's holy commandments all the days of their lives ; and when they are asked whether they hold themselves bound to perform these engagements of their proxies, each is taught to answer, yes verily, and by God's help so I will. I hope such of you, my brethren, as practise the baptism of infants, will not imagine I am censuring you. You baptise infants because you sincerely believe infant baptism is agreeable to Scripture, but you do not incorporate them into your churches. Who dare presume himself secure against pre- judice, when the Historian of Baptism could so merge in himself the rational common-sense Robert Robinson, as to call from his pen such Eousseau ROBERT ROBINSON. trash as is contained in this paragraph ! What pti.sU teach i long before they can understand -! them to read and write till the age of discretion has enabled them to have such a conviction of its advantages, as ret the spontaneous wish, produces a request to he tan'/:.: In the English Churvh fail Confirmation supply the same means as Baptism with thr ptist sa\>. attribute no saving importance to Baptism, no lost vine power to In 1 I think myself obliged to obey Christ scrupulously, and, belie \ he did not command Infant Baptism, contrary Baptism under coi ucom- patible with infancy (faith and repentance) therefore I cannot with innocence, because I cannot in faith, baptise an infant at all, or an adult, otherwise than " I honour the man, and in* his doctrine as the more Scriptural. But to declaim about offering Christianity to a child's choic* and judgment, and to treat the n of it on his docile and believing spirit as n truth and a dir being an instance of superstition rO this should have been in the Kmiliia of the sickly Genevan. : o sober sermon of Robert Robinson ! JUL* 11* When ConnUntinr entered into the Christian church he brought along with him all hit imperial title* and hi* abso- lute dominion. Like a true politician, he joined himself to the moat numerous and the most powerful party of Chris- tians ; and they being at the same time the least enlightened and the most depraved of all other parties of Christians, ROBERT ROBINSON. 125 taught him to exercise his pagan authority over all his subjects, both Pagan and Christian. This assertion should have been accompanied with proofs. Ibid. p. 118. In brief they refused to conform ; and for non-conformity they suffered fines and bonds, exile and death. I own it is not in my power to censure this numerous host of Christians. But these very non-conformists were, nine out of ten, equally eager and pitiless in imposing their Covenant Oath and the articles of Westminster, and as soon as they possessed the power in North America, began hanging and imprisoning and burning with more than episcopal glee. In short, Intolerance was the vice of the age, not of particular sects, though Toleration was the peculiar virtue and glory of the Quakers and Independents. Ibid. p. 122. Some complain of a profanation of a sacred institute. Whether we, sinful men, have any religion or not, surely there are some who have given unsuspected proofs of piety ; and they say, we always think of the Supreme Being with the most profound reverence; we consider the worship of Him with the deepest veneration, as the most serious and important business of life ; we adore the Father of mankind for all his works, and chiefly for sending his Son to enlighten our minds, and to regulate our actions ; and when we behold the holy institutes of a kingdom not of this world, now imposed upon the wicked and now refused to the good, diverted from the original end of their appointment, and prostituted to secular purposes, we blush and tremble at the sight. ROBEKT ROBINSON. I don't know exactly / t is, that the same phrases whirh in the New Testam read with awe and delight, luced a> are in this paragraph and a thousand others of like ther writings, shock me with the grossness of t)it- nn(liropomorphi*m. In the new Testament God assumes tin- HUHKHI Nature (vovptnn- In paragraphs like these the author seems to turn God man (fyairoptvov). But it is not this sort of men, it is not atheists, deist* and profligates, upon whom the test-law is intended to spend its force; but another, a clans ..* characters, exposed to so iginary offences called schism and heresy. Yet what have states to do with heresy ? They create the crime, and then punish it; but could statesmen be per. suaded to let religion alone, there would remain no such crime to be punished. Among the bravo an Goths, there was no such word in all codes of law ; and opinion* the mott prepotUrout do no injury to tAc stale, as daily experience proves, Where men's lives are innocent their speculations ought to be free. do the nits in n child's head nits become lice. Adders before hirth have no fangs, but we kill the young in the UK womb. 127 NOTE ON FENELON ON CHARITY.* Pp. 196, 197. THIS chapter is plausible, showy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the character of the whole work) " makes the amiable." To many, to myself formerly, it has appeared a mere dispute about words : but it is by no means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. What is the remedy ? What is the antidote ? Charity? Pshaw ! Charity in the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself, faith of grace, faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own ! Faith alone is the restorative. The Romish scheme is preposterous ; it puts the rill before the spring. Faith is the source, charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless, was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be : it is not faith, but utter repro- bate faithlessness, which may indeed very possibly co-exist with a mere acquiescence of the under- * Communicated by Mr. Gillman. ED. 1^ WALTER BIRCH. standing in certain farts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or Martin Luther, ever this barren belief \\ith the name of saving faith ? No. Little ones ! Be not deceived. Wear at jour bosoms that precious amulet against all the spells of i, the 20th verse of the 2nd 'T of Paul's Epistle to the (ialatians: Jam 'tate of Faith. Hence bt tolerates many, and those not !ig errors of belief, even while he exposes them. Be satisfied, each of you in his own mind, and exer- cise charity towards sucl as profess Itersuasini u to the bond of lovo in the unity of Faith. Yet how early the dangerous identification of the two words began, we learn from the Epistle of James, who, arguing ex assumption, that Faith means Belief, remarks The Devils believe, and s roughly too, that they believe and trembl. therefore, cannot be the proper and essential gr of Sal vu t ' soul. Hut Faith if, an Christ Himself is solemnly declared to be so. Therefore, Belief cannot be the same as 1 lief of the truths essential to the 1 in Christ is the necessary accompaniment and oonse- he Faith. sincerely trust love the Lord Jesus, without at the same time believing, first, that Hois, and, secondly, that He is most trust- and love-v*. 1 can love Him, ini-t and earnestly desire to obey his commands, without having even heard of the immaculate conception of the Y Mary, or having troubled my head respecting even .iei-partheny. Pp. 15*, 157. The unresisting nan put the water to her lip*, and stopped. The physician was urging her to proceed, when to his great amazement he found the content* of the glass reduced to one lump of ice. DON LETJCADTO DOBLADO. 133 I wonder that I never asked Mr. White what he really meant by the insertion of this thumper. Per- haps I had passed over this page and the opposite, the leaves sticking ; for I certainly read the volume when first sent to me by the author. Page 157. Continued from "lump of ice." We had the account of this wonder from the clergyman who introduced us to the nun. Of his veracity I can enter- tain no doubt : ( ! ! S. T. C.) while he on the other hand was equally confident of Doctor Carnero's. Pray, was Dr. Carnero put to his oath whether he had ascertained that it was water and not ice in the glass when the attendant brought it to him ? But the more probable solution is, that Dr. Carnero was humming the clergyman. Page 157. Our visit to the other convent made me acquainted with one of the most pitiable objects ever produced by super- stition a reluctant nun. Say rather a diseased. A sense of decorum, and the utter hopelessness of relief, keep the bitter regrets of many an imprisoned female a profound secret to all but their confessor. In the present case, however, the vehemence of the sufferer's feelings had laid open to the world the state of her harassed mind. She was a good-looking woman, of little more than thirty ; but the contrast between the monastic weeds, and an indescrib- able air of wantonness which, in spite of all caution, marked her every glance and motion, raised a mixed feeling of DOS LEUCADIO DOB LA DO. disgust and pity, that made as uncomfortable daring the rimt Kite, cases of nympho mania in the Nunneries are not rare. i.e intervals of the diwcc we were sometimes treated iramatlc scenes, of which the dialogue b compoeed on the spot by the actors. This amusement it not uncommon in country towns. It is known by the name of jwyos a word literally answering to pfeje. Qy. ? The same as the Venetian Fahas, to genius has given celebr The dispute on the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin began between the Dominicans and Franciscans aa early as <-nth century. cates of the authenticity of the Evangdium Infnnti* \od to the Gospel of Luke and ooneorporated the canonical revision of Matthew's whether inmaculate conception of the Virgin is not a mate corollary of the miraculous conception of our Lord, so far at least that the same reason. rendered it incompossible for him to have a maculate equally cogent for the necessity of an alas : in subjects of this sort we can <- i p>int in a circle; on v. remove from it, we' are sure to come round to it again. So here. 1 r gin's ancestors, paternal and maternal, from Adam and i. were all sinless; or her immediate JAHN. APPENDIX HEEMENEUTJC^l. 135 father and mother were not so, but like the rest of mankind, involved in original sin. But if a sin-stained father and mother could produce an immaculate offspring in one instance, why not in the other ? That the union of the Divine Word with the seed and nature of man should preclude the contagion of sin in the Holy Child, is as much to be expected on the one supposition of our Lord's birth as on the other. So far from being a greater miracle, it seems so necessarily involved in the miracle of the Incarnation, common to both, as scarcely to be worthy of being called an additional miracle. The accidental circumstance, that the Unitarian party, most palpably to their own * disadvantage, reject or question the chapter in question, is the chief cause of the horror with which our orthodox divines recoil from every free investiga- tion of the point. JAHN. APPENDIX HEEMENEUTIC^E. t Fasciculus i., p. 62. Caeterum si quseritur, qualem illi antiqui Hebrsei animo conceperint hunc legatum Jehovee et simul Jehovain : id unum responderi potest certum non credidisse duos Deos ; csetera conjecturis nituntur, &c. Translation. But if it be inquired what conception those * The conception by the over-shadowing of the Holy Spirit being the only plausible explanation, which a Socinian can give to the often repeated antithesis Son of God and Son of Man, of one and the same person. The believer in the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Filial God, and Redemption by the Blood of the divine Mediator, has an interest therefore in the removal, rather than in the up-propment, of this strongest, nay, only, buttress of the extreme Heresy. t Appendix Hermeneuticae, seu Exercitationes Exegeticae, auctore Johanne Jahn. Viennse, 1813. 1 '' I HERMBXEUTIC*. ancient Hebrews formed of Him who WM at ODOC the mee- aenger of Jchorah, and Jehovah himself, this only cmn bo replied with certainty, that they did not believe that there were two Ooda : all ebe reeU upon conjecture, fcc. \V ii Y is it fi4Ctft*iry, on what grounds of psychology > demand an answer to the question, in what Conceptions the more spiritual Israelite under the Law, and of the Prophetic JEra presented to themselves the idea of the Word of God f that iras (i. e. was not a mere verbal abstm and jet was not a creature contradistinguished from God ? The great idea possessed all the faithful, but before the coming of Jesus, few, perhaps not one, | .ss, -,>,,! til,- l 1, -i. M,irv;i|l,,jN, -|:. ; y. UI. bfJSjl !> believe with equal liveliness their moral responsii predestination how ninny thousands, iving once asked themselves, bow the two are to be reconciled? The Jehovah, the Jehovah Word, the Name, the Angel of the Pretend- inseparably present) was a sacred tradition, a treasured prophecy a mysterious cypK h all treasures of all knowledge were contained , H view of the Doctrine of the :is a Prophecy, and like the great Propher Redemption, proceeding from dim dawn to full noon- Take an acorn and consi.hr it in its successive growth as the object of watch : > 0n*, is becoming many 1 remains 11 at IOIIL' i of the oak is mastered the original i ecoming more and more intense as tl ccomes appar Hinc adventum Icgatidivini. Hebncis tederati, ad tempi um suum cogitabant talcm, quails locis aliis non paucia mcmoratur JAHN. APPENDIX HERMENEUTICJS. 137 adventus Jehovae, quo tamen non amplius significatur quam eminens qusedam operatic Jehovae Atque in hoc non errabant, sed id quod erat praecipuum, negligebant, de adventu Messiae esse sermonem, et Messiam dici Dominum templi et legatum faederis, atque venturum, ut alias Jehova venturus dicitur. Translation. Hence the coming of the divine messenger, covenanted to the Hebrews, to his temple, was thought of as similar to that which in not a few other places is mentioned as the coming of Jehovah, by which, however, no more is meant than some eminent operation of Jehovah And in this they erred not, but failed to discern what was of most im- portance, that the discourse was concerning the coming of Messiah, and that Messiah is called the Lord of the Temple, and the Messenger of the Covenant, and that he would come, as elsewhere it is said that Jehovah would come. They erred in this : that the one series of instances could be easily reconciled with, and received their full and legitimate explanation out of the other, viz : the Jehova-ship of the Messiah ; but the other not without the most outrageous laxity of interpretation reduced to the former. Ibid. p. 234. Zach. x. 12. Maccabseos prae reliquis omnibus in nomine Dei, seu ad tuendam religionem suam bella contra Syro-Macedonas gessisse, monitione non indiget. Translation. That the Maccabees beyond all others waged their wars against the Syro-Macedonians, in the name of the Lord, or to defend their religion, needs not to be called to ,mind. Et passim, imo, ubique the sad squint-eyed appli- cation of great absolute truths and assurances to particular (sometimes inappropriate, but when appro- priate, yet still particular) instances. As if one were 138 JAHN. APPENDIX HBBMBVEtmCJS. to apply the laws propounded by Alpinus, Franklin, Oersted. Sir H. Davy, Faraday, A*c. t as of exclusive application to the steeple of St Boniface's ( destroyed l\ li^htnmj, in the parish of Mudwork, in the county of Rutland, NOT. 0, 1819. Doubtless the Maccabean victories and defeats were in. In ir.l in the prophecy, as far as the prophecy included them : and no further. And verily, tln petty insurrection of a province against a despot overlord in defence of its own privileges or prejudices, are, when tolerably successful, matters worthy of recor i r, those of Biscay, and of Catalonia against the encroachment and faith-breach of th. Spanish Crovn was it necessary that each should have been antedated some three or red years by an especial Gazette in the future sense? Never can I attribute Jnith in the highest sense, viz., the union of the finite individual will the reason, and the willing subjection < individual UNDER* the Reason, as the representative of the absolute will (as such, therefore, the one UNIVERSAL reason) never can 1 attribute Christian FAITH in this, its only legitimate sense, to the man who confounds PROPHECY with PROONOS- ION, degrades the former into the latter, and places Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, on the same bench with Merlin and Nostradamus ! * Fa*ic*l** IL pp. 215, 228. Qm. UL, 9, 15. None eft in vidnia arborit dormienta ; aerpena more sod arborem conaoeodit, mtqua streptta et sibilo occaaionem somnio pnebuit ; evigilans mulier conspexit serpentem, to . . vox vcl tonitus Jehovw, poteat quidem See Arnold's two sennona on the interpretatian of Prophecy/-Ba NOTE ON SOUTHEY'S OMNIANA. 139 significare strepitum ambulantis, alias tamen denotat tonitrua, quse etiam h. 1. intelligenda esse videntur, imprimis cum mox timor hominum commemoretur. Translation. Now she sleeping near the tree, the serpent after its manner clomb the tree, and by its noise and hissing gave occasion to a dream ; the woman awaking saw the ser- pent, &c. . . . Kol, the voice or sound of Jehovah, may indeed signify the noise of one walking, yet elsewhere it denotes thunderings ; and this seems to be the meaning in these lines, especially since soon afterwards the fear of the man and woman is mentioned. o>5 /xotye 6oK6t, it is all over with a literal inter- pretation, when the interpreter is forced to play the interpolator ex. gr. to choose to assume, that Eve had selected the Forbidden Tree as the shady bower for her afternoon siesta fell asleep, and dreamt that she saw this, and heard that ! ! and then that all the awful catenation of words and thoughts from v. xi. to xx. was suggested to Adam and Eve by a peal of thunder acting on an alarmed conscience. No ! if an historical interpretation be any way practicable, it must still be as mythic history. Adam and Eve must represent, together with their Eden, the first race of mankind and the primeval state, viz., the horti- cultural or fruit-eaters and must comprehend an indefinite number of generations. NOTE ON SOUTHEY'S OMNIANA. GIFT OF TONGUES. Vol. i. p. 226. IN no instance is the love of the marvellous more strikingly exhibited than in the ordinary interpreta- WHEELER'S LECTURES. lions of this plain and simple narration of St. Lake's. On the inrush of the Spirit the new converts of Jesus from all parts of the Roman empire then met at Jerusalem, rushed out of the house, and addressed the crowd, each his own countrymen, and, to the scandal of some and surprise of all, in the vernacular dialects instead of the sacred ( Syro-Cimldaic) language, just as if a man should pray aloud in a Catholic Church in any other than Latin prayers. The Apostles sate still the while. At length, ohsc- the workings in the minds of the auditors, the twelve rose at once ; and Peter, as the Foreman, made the address recorded, and expressly tells them, that tho ">y had witnessed was a fulfilment of Joels prophecy, viz. that laymen should preach in th< Spirit in the common tongues.* NOTE ON THEOLOGICAL LECTURES or BENJAMIN WHEELER, D.D. Vol. : 77 A miracle, usually to termed, is the exertion of a euper- natural power in some act, and contrary to the regular course of nature, &c. WHERE is the proof of this as drawn from Serif from fact recorded, or from doctrine affirme-i roof of its logical possibility. that is, that ihn word has any representahle sense? Contra; < v> = 5, or that the same fire acting at the same moment on the same subject should bum it and not kirn it. * Sec a note at the end of the volume. S. C. WHEELEK'S LECTUKES. 141 The course of nature is either one with, or a reverential synonyme of, the ever-present Divine agency ; or it is a self-subsisting derivative from, and dependent on, the Divine will. In either case this author's assertion would amount to a charge of self-contradiction on the Author of all things. Before the spread of Grotianism, or the Old Bailey nolens volens Christianity, such language was unexampled. A miracle is either super naturam, or it is simply prater experientiam. If nature be a collective term for the sum total of the mechanic powers, that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the conductor A. arriving at Z. by the sensible chain of intermediate conductors, B, C, D, &c. ; then every motion of my arm is super naturam. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme of experience,- and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles. As erroneous as the author's assertions are logically, so false are they historically, in the effect which the miracles in and by themselves did produce on those who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye- witnesses of the miracles; and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three chapters of St. John's gospel ? There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle, namely, an immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its essence. Add the words, prater experientiam adhuc, or id temporis, and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term miracle.* * See the Friend, vol. iii. Essay 2. Ed. NOTES ON THE QUARTERLY RKY! 1813. Page**. ight hare been, this (that Priestley speak* only of sleeping in the grave, and not, like Paul, of Isopins, in Jesui) is a wicked misrepresentation of him: these writers know that when he spoke of a long steep, he alluded to his belief of the sleep of the soul till the resur- rection, * notion not peculiar to him; and they know that his belief in the resurrection was as sincere as their own, founded upon the same premier and producing the same WHICH said Priestley denied the existence of a soul, and whose fable of a Resurrection is neither more nor less than a system of creating B. in su iBjimnr as to force him to believe a L it he was A., in order to torment him with a show of justice! Lie supporting Lie! Injustice barricaded bj Injustice! a strange Positive of Right resulting from two negatives ! and these (korresco referent) attributed to the Holy One. Bigotry makes as dismal an effect upon the understanding I as upon the heart Makes for produces a Gallo-barbarism not less anti-logical than anti-Anglican. Ait 5. History of Dissenters, from the Revolution in 1888 to the mr 1808. By David Boguc and Junes Bennett, 4 void. London, i NOTES ON THE QUARTERLY BEVIEW. 143 Page 94. Even Milton has joined in this ill-deserved reproach. " I persuade myself" says he, " if our zeal to true religion, and the brotherly usage of our truest friends were as notorious to the world as our prelatical schism, and captivity to pocket apothegms, we had ere this seen our old conquerors, and afterwards liegemen, the Normans, together with the Britains, our proper colony, and all the Gascoins that are the rightful dowry of our ancient kings, come with cap and knee, desiring the shadow of the English sceptre to defend them from the hot persecutions and taxes of the French. But when they come hither and see a tympany of Spaniolised bishops, swaggering in the foretop of the state, and meddling to turn and dandle the royal ball with un- skilful and pedantic palms, no marvel though they think it as unsafe to commit religion and liberty to their arbitrating as to a synagogue of Jesuits," But against the opinion of those who think that we ought to have departed as widely as possible from all the forms and institutions of the Romish church, and that the general cause of Protestantism was injured because the change was not sufficiently broad and striking, there is the weighty testimony of Sully. When that distinguished statesman came over to congratulate James upon his accession, and saw our Church Service, he remarked, that if the French Protestants had retained the same advantages of order and decency, there would at that time have been thousands more Protestants in France. I will yield to no man in attachment to the Church of England, yet I dare justify this passage of Milton's, as equally wise and accurate as it is forcible. Had the Church adopted Usher's plan of moderate Episcopacy hy anticipation, all the Protestant Churches of Europe might have gathered under her winjs. There is nothing in the assertion of Sully at all irreconcilable with this. r: QUARTI By the by, what stronger proof can we desire than it Lauds and Hammonds tenet cone- : {, Ac. is o l*o- :it 1-;M. ffuofefi*/ So i lumbered with th- it the steam. I'AgO t5. he Utter yearn of bar reign, whan the Pope made use of religion to excite rebellion and conspiracies against her, Eliiaboth offered eonoeieions to the Puritans, which, had they been accepted, would have driven many of theaa men (the clergy, little curioua or conversant in disputed points of faith, but attached to the forma in which they had been bred ' - WM then eeen that concession which would have maUrially duuinuh- number of oon?erts from popery, would have done little toward- reclaiming thoee who had imbibed the temper ae well aa the doctrines of the Genevan eehooL For when Walaingham offered, in the queen's name, that if they would conform in other points, the three shocking ceremonies, as they accounted them, of kneeling at the communion, wearing the surplice, and the cross hi baptism, should be abolished, they replied in the language of Moses, * **y*tam me r&myttmdam they would not leave even a. kotf behind. A powerful mind states, first, all that can be wisely said on the one side of a qucv same on the other ; and, lastly, effects the process of comparison, and subtracts the result Now, there are vho catch up and carry off the first and the second par .1* that wl happened to hear, or as t h best suited their predilec- and publish it in their own names as the whole. NOTES ON THE QUAKTEKLY REVIEW. 145 Hence arises a sort of perplexity in the mind of a philosophic reader, how being no better it should be so good. Ibid. A Puritan rampant, who calls himself P. S. Gent, who was evidently a man of learning, and might have been a man of genius if the disease of the times had not made him stark mad, gives, both in prose and verse, the feelings of his party respecting this appellation : Puritan (he says), the invention of hell, the language of profaneness, the blas- phemy of God, the evomition of a heart desperately wicked, a glorious defamation, an undermining of, an open thrust at, the very heart, life, and power of religion ; an evident preferring of Pharisaical forms and Laodicean neutrality; a Match-devillian device to kindle fire in Church and State ; a sly practice of the old serpent's maxim, " divide and reign," &c. In his crazy rhymes he says , A Puritan ! what's that ? an hypocrite. Nay, hold there, man, for so thou dost but fit The noose for thine own neck. I tell thee, man, Thou art an atheist, or a Puritan ; Thou art a devil or a Puritan, &c. &c. Soliloquies TJieologicall, 1641. The quotation at least is neither crazy prose nor crazy rhymes, but sound theology in spirited diction. Are not the Epistles of Peter and John equally decisive ? In short, the most important division, I had almost said, the only important one, inas- much as all others of importance are implied in this, or deducible from it, is, whether the essence of Christianity be to make us letter men only, or to make us other men " create in us a new heart." L 1 i'i NOTKS ( KRLY REVIEW. By whatever name the PuriUnn might have been denomi- nated, their hietory would hare been the Mine; their rite we* one of the tneritable oonaeqneooaa of a religious revo- lution, and the civil war wan a* inevitable an effect of their progre*-. I is an unthinking way- j. It U easy to talk of past events as having been inevitable, because we are forced by the forms of t standing* to review logical functions of Cause and Effect The writer did not consider that very same way we are obliged to reflect own past actions ; and that the very same if admitUM in as logical, would do awa\ free-agency. Endless are the errors, and not a few 'm most pernicious, from not shiog /Vim-l/.M /.-/// frnin tli,' Pp. N, 97. It u eaiy to talk of toleration, and eay that the Church should have tolerated these enhieniatfoe : they would not tolerate the Church. - We intended not," eaye Bait- dig down the banke or to pull up the hedge and lay all waote and common, when we deairod the prelate*' tyranny might oeaee. We mu.t either tolerate all men to do what they will, which they will make a matter of conscience or religion, and then eoae may offer their children in eacrifioe to the devil, and eome may think they do God eervice in killing his eervanta ; or elee you must tolerate no error or The ip* JmtrtBt** (ptr ^Mltttitmrn M ip* rvwIofM) of LefboIU n / w Mifi. 7orf *'Touha*aae>MdBM, at a Chrtotiaa ,:,, . ' ,-.- .:--. tkm Hat .. the Roman Cathottc aad theProtevtantT* There to am j Irtoh act againet aiaHaf gtayariaiai, which you cannot but be acquainted with, were It only AM- ita name'* mke; far a to called the *Butk*eboo Statute.' Ton ehoukt have remembered it. Sir, on ! thin occaaion, and hare enforced It against younelf . . . On which I aide doee the balanoe of pentcution tttfl Put the Inqntottion te j the scale. Sir. and nothing can be found to counterpotoe it untoas Hell be plucked up by the root. NOTES ON THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 149 saying, that he was brought to the block, and repeating the old and oft-confuted calumny, that, under his primacy, it was every day becoming more difficult and less important to distinguish between the Church of England and that of Rome. .... Laud had persecuted them, and persecution, as War- burton says, though it may strengthen or improve our faith, doth not so easily enlarge our charity. But it ought not utterly to extinguish charity ; and is it possible that they, being Christians themselves, and serious Christians as they would style themselves, can disbelieve the last solemn decla- ration of Laud himself? " I was born and baptized," said he, " in the bosom of the Church of England established by law; in that persuasion I have ever since lived, and in that I come now to die," &c. &c. And what is there in Laud's last confession (to attribute, by the by, to such confessions the weight Southey does, is what Wordsworth would not do) what is there in it that is incompatible with Bogue's and Bennett's affirmation? Laud was not a believer in those articles si faith in which the Komanists differed from the Reformers ; nay, he was one of the very ablest of the antagonists of those articles, Transubstantiation, Purgatory. But who ever suspected this ? It was the pomp, pride, vanity, and temporal tyranny of the Roman Church that Laud was suspected of being attached to ; and these, not mistakes in faith, are the poison-bag on which the Papal fang rests. Page 99. Will this convince those persons who still asperse the intentions of Laud ? Will they believe him, that in the bosom of the Church of England he lived and died ? But what did Laud mean by " the Church of England ? " v .. - . -, ,;; ; : ::-.:: In Mr. Parsons's new Mid coodeoeed edition of Seal's " History of the Puritan*." Laud's dying declaration, that k had nerer endeavoured the subversion of the la wt of the realm, nor any change of the Protestant religion into popish superstition, U printed in large capital letter* obrkmaljr for the purpose of ahowing that Mr. Keal oonaidered it a fcla* Who told Southey that ? JM* author, whose ooares, bold, self Mtufied at the beginning of this book may teach any one who can read the moat legible character, of nature, what kind of feeling he U to expect in it, says, that the Archbishop de- clared himself upon the scaffold a Protestant according to the Church of England, but with more charity to the Church of Rome than to the foreign Protestant* Which? Neal or Parsons? Not having the book, I cannot nay what was intended .H is most certain, that Laud lil think more charitably of the MO, while he was in power, than of the foreign non-episcopal congregations, whom he did not allow to he Churches. Pp. 101, 102. are not the apologists of Laud ; in some things he was erroneous! in some imprudent, in others culpable, which upon the great scale is erer made condudre to good, produces eril to thane by whom it comes. The bloody sentences of the Star-chamber brought down upon him a more tragic catastrophe than he attempted to avert by them ; a milder primate could not have raised the Church NOTES ON THE QUAETERLY REVIEW. 151 from her enemies, but he would not have perished by their hands. And in return, it cannot be doubted, that when the clergy regained their ascendancy, the severity with which they treated the Dissenters was in no slight degree exaspe- rated by the remembrance of his execution. " For though," as Fuller says, "the beholders on that day were so divided between bemoaners and insulters, it was hard to decide which of them made up the major part of the company;" the feeling of the country was not thus balanced : his love of letters, and the munificence of his bounty, were remem- bered ; and as the drama of life is usually judged of by the catastrophe, so that men are accounted good or ill, fortunate or unhappy, according to their end, it was from his death that the popular and general impression of his character derived its colour. God knows my heart, how bitterly I abhor all Intolerance how deeply I pity the actors when there is reason to suppose them deluded. But is it not clear that this theatrical scene of Laud's death, who was the victim of almost national indignation, is not to be compared with " bloody sentences " in the coolness of secure power? As well might you palliate the horrible atrocities of the Inquisition ; every one of which might be justified on the same grounds that Southey has here defended Laud, by detailing the vengeance taken on some one Inquisitor. Page 102. That which has happened may happen again ; the passions of men remain the same ; progressive as we are, we have often to go through the same lessons as the ages before us ; and therefore it especially behoves the historian to inculcate charity, and take part with the oppressed, whoever may have been the oppressors. Of all beasts the many-headed one is the most ferocious; and it is fearful to think how NOTES ON THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. HOOD and how surely the taste of Mood creates the appetite When men. aftor Ion* habits of blind ohedimc* in rtli- gion. be<^ to iieerch the Scriptures and to frame article* of belief for themselves, it was impossible that they ahould not differ; and as they were all agreed that any error upon theee points wan damnable, they all became in tome mi nun intolerant, and the dominant party persecuted both in duty and clMcfenoe. Here it wan that both partie* erred, but thai it was that both felt, and time in justice both ought to be represented. To write history in the true epirit of general good-will no suppression is needed, no fakiJJcatintt, no affectation of candour; it U but to represent men in their actions, as they have appeared to themselves, and, God be praised, there are lew characters so should then regard their i their errors without i tow well how imprudent and unworthy these my opinions are! The Dissenter* will give me no thanks, because I prefer and extol the prwmf Church of England; and the partisans of the Church will calumniate me, because I condemn particular members and regret particular eras of the former Church of England. .1-1 that Souther had written the whole of this review in the spirit of this beautiful page ! Page 103. The fanatic who, in this country, would drive the nervous part of hk hearers mad by railing at the sins of his neigh- bour*, was taught by the wist policy of the Romish Church to expend his fervour upon his own; he was furnished with knotted scourges, hair shirts, and drawers composed of wire and bristles; if this did not content him, he might add a nutmeg-grater waistcoat, and then he had put on the whole papistical armour of righteousness. NOTES ON THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 153 Pp. 104, 105. Three Protestants suffered under the six articles, and three Papists for denying the supremacy, at the same time and place. Insomuch that a certain stranger being there present, and seeing three on one side, and three on the other side to suffer, said in these words, "Deus bone! quomodo hie vivunt gentesf hie suspendantur Papistce, illic comburuntur Here again one of the bloody tyrannies of Henry VIII. is adduced as a fact of joint persecution by two parties. The Papists were burnt by the tyrant for treason ; the Protestants by the same tyrant, as a doctrinal Bomanist, for heresy. Page 105. Unquestionably error has had its martyrs as well as truth, but we may well acknowledge that the faith of him who gives his body to be burnt will atone for all the errors of his frail and fallible understanding. Errors of the understanding will never condemn us, but errors in the understanding from the heart. Faith is not in the Christian sense mere heat of con- viction, or why not canonise Ravaillac ? Page 106. George Fox was as confused in his writings as Cromwell in his speeches. Yet there is one passage in his journal which describes the state of his mind in one part of its progress more beautifully than the ablest psychologist could have done. " One morning," says he, " as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me, and I sate still. And it was said, all things come by I ' 1 KOTES ON THE QfARTEBLY XXYTEW. nature; and the elementa and etare came orer me, eo that I wme in a manner quite clouded with :iaamudi as I ate till and aaid nothing, the people of the DOOM per- oeived nothing. Aid ae I aate till under it and lt it alone, a bring hope arose in ma, which cried. Then te a living God who made all thing*. And immediately the cloud and temptation vantahod away, and life roae over it all, and my heart waa glad, and I pniead the tiring Ood !" *i passage I myself pointed out to Souther, who 1 is clear, understand it ; for what has it i<> do here ? And the Psychologist " is one words, only used in the very opposite sense th passage Pp. 10, 107. Oeorge Fox's oonveria wars two DM in their day. Silburne waa one ; a man (to borrow the ts> praaahre phnue of Captain Bearer) fit to draw a Uoo'a tooth, Ac. Jtc, Jamea Naylor waa the other. All our historians relate how this poor fenatic enterad Bristol with a aet of craty people hdbre him, ainging. Holy, holy, holy. Hoaannah in theHiKheatt CromweU would Ure remitted the bexbaroua to which he was condemned, but the public > Caryl. Hanson, Nye, Griffith and Reynolds, wm as inetorable at eo many Dominican frian. and, like all puniahmenta in thoaa daya, it waa inflicted with the rigour of inhumanity. He recovered hoih from hia i and hia ufleringe. and hia after-life waa a reproach to thoae in the hardneea of their hearts, and the hlindneai of No sooner are Puritan Divines concerned than Souther c. hardness of heart," and M i ness of understanding ; " while the Prelatic party, NOTES ON THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 155 sweet Lambs ! had only some errors common to their age ! And this is modern impartiality ! He does not tell us, which yet is most true, that at any former period poor Naylor would have been burnt alive ; and no hint that so saint-like a man as Keynolds might have been conscience-scared from the dread of not resenting blasphemy against the Saviour ; for Naylor declared himself God in the flesh. Page 108. Cromwell, indeed, was frequently favoured with their admonitions, and the old Quakers were firmly persuaded that the overthrow of his family was a judgment upon him for not interfering more authoritatively to stop the proceed- ings against them. There is much truth in this opinion. Cromwell's dynasty fell a sacrifice to indecision and cross- catching. Pp. 117, 118. Being on a journey, he (Flavel) set himself to improve the time by meditation, when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight of this world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving him- self faint through a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his horse and sat down at a spring, where he washed and refreshed himself, earnestly desiring if it were the will of God, that he might then leave the world. His spirits recovering, he finished his journey in the same de- lightful frame, &c. This is one of those facts, common in Komish biography, and not unfrequent in that of our own enthusiasts which clearly belong to nosology. That Flavel himself should not 150 NOTES ON THE QfARTEIlLT REVIEW. hare perceived how wonderfully he recovered from a fit of apoplexy in not extraordinary; remarkable that Calamy, and la. modern editor, ahould relate the eaet with- does any nosologist record an instance of exalted pleasurable tranquil ? the stupor of an apoplrv is of Havel's must have been apopUma utnguinta, the symptoms of which, as accurately detailed by Dr. W. Sainsbury, jur his " I ...-! riiuil Thes: 7, 8. are ST.. compatible with symptoms of voluptuous trnn<|uilhiy. 8 to conjecture that the hemorrhages, from intense thought, acted as opium is often known to do on persons new to its influence, wl- produces no disorder in its first action on the stomach. The loss of blood would be sedative, and the action of the reproductive sea-dories would balance the sedative effect in the nature of a .hint Now all pleasure rests on the equatorial uf satisfaction indifference at one, and r other pole, i. ., is a balance. I doubt not that by this law, applied to the lungs, we must aocoui the effects of the nitrous oxygen of Davy. IIVtoM at tht t*athtnU Ha, that to three jraan he dorat not ay "my God," and that hk cooeebnce mote him tor the ma*. tk*r> Memtin, p. . NOTES ON BIOGRAPHIA SCOTICANA. 161 the Faith ; and it is not the least among the causes of the prevailing indisposition to the mysteries of the Gospel the Trinity, the Personality of the WOKD, and his incarnation in the man Jesus, &c. The effects of the opposite error in this instance, viz. the too exclusive direction of the mind to the divine personality, the contemplation of the filial Godhead in the subjective only, without duly attending to that which he is objectively, as the WORD, the LIGHT that lighteth every man, the energic Reason and Law of the World present over all, are seen in the theology of the Scottish Confessors and Martyrs under the Stuarts, and at once constitute and explain its peculiar characters. Missing the objective in the highest, they cling to it more eagerly and in the same exclusive spirit in the visible Church ; and to the outward kingdom and its forms they attached all the moment and indispensability, all the deep interests of faith and conscience, which belong to the subjective or Spiritual Church, to the kingdom within ! Hence their Judaizing Sabbatarian principles, their predilection for the Old Testament, their equal readiness to suffer or to inflict martyrdom for points of Church Government : hence, lastly, their indecent familiarity in prayer, their anthropomorphic, yea, sarcomorphic notions of the Supreme, and their anile superstitions and devil-combats. Life of Mr. James Mitchell. P. 142. One time in conference concerning the sin in the godly, his father said to him, " I am sure you are not now troubled with corruption, being so near death." He answered, " Ye are altogether deceived, for as long as my foot remaineth on this earth, though the other were translated above the clouds, my mind could not be free of sinful motions." M I ''-.' VOTES ON BIOORAPHU ftCOTICANA. ; iave at sundry times been disturbed and assaulted by the que*t leased Ood to restore me to health and strength, bare I any soffi- ground of confidence, that the sense of the 1 neaa of sin. of the uu worthiness and baseness of the sins to which my constitutional softness, senei- v, and craving for sympathy, render me most prone, would either prevent or instantly suppress tile workings of sin in my members, or secure me ftg^Htl temptations, and opportunities of indulgence? The inward conviction of my weakness forces me to forego all hope of such a result from the power or strength of any principle or hal-:t of \\ill in myself, and to rest my only hope on the daily, hourly, nay, momently assistance of the free grace of the 8j Christ. And yet, according to Bp. Jer. Taylor (Tract on Repentance), less than such a Victory over Sin is delusion ; and even A ighton asserts the necessity of the same Holiness which the Redeemed have in Heaven, as the indispensable four ever getting thither. Of Taylor s book, I have elsewhere avowed my opinion, that it partakes of the worst characters of Romanism, and the salvation by works. Rut Leighton was a Divine of a better school, and concerning his judgment I would remark that if ha means by Holiness, the Righteousness of Christ, what disciple of John and Paul would hesitate to reoeivr t if by Holiness while yet in the perishable body, he means such a strength already / with the whole man, as to exclude all danger, so that Temptations no longer act as Temptations then he seems to me to make the Cross of ' < blood shed for us, and the medi- atorial efficacy of his perfected Righteousness < t and the Redemption from the Body for prayed with such fervent groans and taught us NOTES ON BIOGRAPHIA SCOTICANA. 163 to pray for, no deliverance at all, or a deliverance only from a few incommodities which to a soul fearing sin and feeling the root of weakness in himself, must appear nothing. Therefore, though this be not the only ID stance in which the ascetic power of Thomas a Kempis, joined with a platonising view of the beauty of Virtue, has somewhat tinged and refracted the Rays of the Faith, as it shines through the preaching of St. Paul, I am inclined to interpret this sentence of the Archbishop's by its immediate (the rousing of loose living believers from the lethargy of a false conscience) rather than as a universal proposition, to be received without limit or qualification. And doubtless, there is great need of guarding the Believer against turning the grace of God into wantonness or imagining that we can be saved without such a hatred of sin as will make the Soul deliberately prefer any loss of temporal and bodily pleasure or advantage to a return under its tyranny. I trust that I sincerely and with my whole spirit pray to God through Christ, that he will preserve me in that state, in which the temptations are not greater than my strength the state, in which the portion of Grace, which he has bestowed, shall be sufficient for me though it should be a continuance in weakness and languor of body, and an incapacity of all the enjoyments of this world. Yet it would follow from Jer. Taylor's doctrine, that this very prayer, supposing me to die immediately after, would be a presumption, that I had perished ! But no ! never, never can I receive a doctrine which forbids me to believe, that there is anything to be forgiven and supplied by and through Christ to my Soul, or that I shall leave behind in the deliverance from the Body of Death aught that I had not in fact and completion, and not only in firm principle and sincere M 2 MOTES ON HIOOIuriUA SCOTICAXA. desire, already been detached frou renuw generate each other. The s between the Judui igian and the presumptuous A; mian hard to he expressed in words, that maj not be understood, hut easily found by a soul that seeks a Saviour and prays earnestly for th<- is already given to whoever asks in faith by O. It seems to me as sufficient answer to .the scheme hrist has instructed us to pray. I*ead us not into Temptation; but deliver us <>ne. UfoofMr.JohoM'ClclUnd. I' made spectacle* to all nations for a broken covenant, when the living God swears. Ai I K~. * His aasartkm is a ground for (kith, his oath a full assurance of faith : if all England were as one man united in judgment and assertion, and if it had a wall round about reaching to the aun. and if it had aa many armies as it has men, and every aoldier bad the strength of Oolish, and if their navies could cover the ocean, and if there were none to peep out or move the tongue against them, yet I dare not doubt their destruction, whan the Lord hath sworn by his life that he will avenge the breach . .-.,:, .-.- It is to be hoped that Mr. McClelland did n confound comprehending with apprehending. I do ven because I cannot, believe what 1 do not Ui, aad oomparing thn with tiM Scri pt urw, Mr. H. conrinced him of the truth, Ac. A moat instructive instance of the delusion conse- quent on the logic of Dichotomy, or the antithesis of terms, precluding each other, or assumed so to do : ^eoesaity and Freedom ; Real and Unreal; and Body ; Cause and Effect, Ac. The do on the assumption, that the ; of the Terms implies a f the Things: a Divine Reason and the I NOTES ON MEMOIRS OF COL. HUTCHINSON. 171 Will. The former is arbitrarily taken as the ante- cedent and the cause the latter as the effect, as a passive clay receiving the impression of the former. Deny this, (or, as you safely may do,) affirm the contrary namely, that the Will is the antecedent, and the Reason the form or Epiphany of the Will ; and the whole argument of the Predestinarian is quashed. Ibid. p. 69. If any one object the fresh example of Queene Elizabeth, let them remember that the felicity of her reigne was the effect of her submission to her masculine and wise councellors. But what was the cause of that submission to men chosen? of that choice of men worthy to be sub- mitted to ? This is an old but just answer to an old detraction from Elizabeth's personal character. Ibid. p. 74. Yet the Parliament showed such a wonderfull respect to the King, that they never mentioned him, as he was, the sole author of all those miscarriages, but imputed them to evill councellors, &c., which flattery I feare they have to answer for; I am sure they have thereby exposed themselves to much scandall. Editor's Note. This is an oversight of Mrs. H.'s of which she is seldom guilty. Good policy required then, as it does now,* that the King should be held incapable of wrong, and the criminality fixed on Ministers, who are amenable to the law. I am yearly more and more inclined to question the expediency of falsehood of any kind ; and there- fore doubt the wisdom of Julius Hutchinson's censure * If the patriots of that day were the inventors of this maxim we arc highly obliged to them. S. C. NOTES ON MBMOIB8 OF o.i.. i led ancestress. Had the Parliament, as soon as the Kings own principles and passions were known to be prime movers of his Council. declared the same, it might have prevented the War; at all events, the apparent inconsistency of their own proceedings. . There was one Mr. Widmerpoole, a man of good extraction, but reduced to a small fortune, bad declined all the tplendor of an old house, and sunke into the way of the middlemen of the country ; yet had a perfect, honest heart to God, hit country, and hi* friend ; he had a good discretion, and though ha were elder then all the rest, yet was so humble to be content to come in the reare of them all, having, through the declining of his famely, the slendernesse of his esUte, and the parsimony of his nature, lease interest in the country. The ellipsis of the pronoun relative after the con- junction is a frequent, ami I think, a graceful idiom in our elder authors. " But reduced .: who was n-ciihv.i." As a portrait-painter. Mrs. H. unites the grace and tini-i! : Vundyke with the Life and substantive Reality v, among the numerous points that make up tint most notice- worthy contrast of the old English Republican, and the modern mongrel-bred Jacobin, one of the most striking is the reverential value of ancient family entertained by the f< with comparative contempt of the court-derived titles, while the latter hates, because he envies, both alike. Ibid., p. 196. Editor's Note. But probably Prince Rupert was too strong and too active to let the besiegers escape, &c, There is something almost fantastic in the thought, NOTES ON MEMOIRS OF COL. HUTCHINSON. 173 that this Prince Eupert, whose character of Temerity, Brutality, Insolence, Impetuosity, and Unreliableness, (ex. gr., the abandonment of Bristol,) is given almost in the same words by the Eoyalist and Parliamentary Historians, should have been the inventor of Mezzo Tinto Engraving. The superstition of Royal Blood, in its most exclusive intensity, acted on Charles's mind in the instance of this his nephew, most ruinously for his affairs. If Charles did not authorise, he passively sanctioned, and perhaps inwardly approved of Rupert's overly treatment of the Duke of Newcastle, and thus baffled and disgusted the chivalrous Loyalty and Devotion which nothing could alienate. Prince Rupert was the Evil Genius of Charles's military Enterprises. Ibid. p. 197. Indeed, such a blow was given to the Parliament interest in all these parts, that it might well discourage the ill- affected, when even the most zealous were cast downe, and gave all for lost ; but the Governor, who in no occasion ever lett his courage fall, but, when things were at the lowest, recollected all his force, that his owne despondency might not contribute aniething to his mallicious fortune, at this time animated all the honest men, and expresst such vigor and cheerfullnesse, and such stedfast resolution, as dis- appointed all the mallignants of their hopes. Beautiful ! A Woman only, though certainly a Woman, KCLT e^o^r, could have so appreciated the true grandeur of masculine virtue. One great moral benefit results from the study of History, that it tends to free the mind from the uncharitable, the calumniating spirit of party zeal. Take the warmest zealot of Charles the Martyr's Cause, and let lam be only an honest man, and 1 7 1 NOTES ON MEMOIRS OF COL. RITCniNSON. the feelings of a ( yet. Col. i n was a Regicide/' could not but attemper his heart, could not but Christianise hit antipathies. Ibid. p. 199. Editors note. It is proper here to state, that in the outlet all thoae sects which bare since taken to many various names, joined their force* to repel the encroachments of the Pn not be fair to say, of the Churck of England, whose < teristic is moderation itselfbut when they had almost crushed the Episcopalians, the Presbyterian Ministers began to rise pro-eminent in power, and to show that though they had changed the name, they by no means intended to dintjpk the dominion, of the hierarchy, ftc. It seems (and if it were so, it is much to be regretted,) that the editor had not read Bu\ own Life," published by Sylvester. The Rev. Julius Hut, h.!.- -M > an honour to the Church of England. O n sic omits* I > 1 Kindred soul would have ftU Baxter's veracity 01 his freer judgment would have discovered without difficulty the good old Church presbyters* unconscious declinations verity : and ho would not here or elsewhere have used the term Episcopalians as synonymous with the Prelatists. Even the phrase, Presbyterian ministers, and Presbyterian party, Mr, i I. would have found reason to place among the vulgar errors of history. The fingers of one hand would suffice to numl i roper Presbyterians in the Parliament at or among the London ministers. A large iiinnl'.-T >f those who were afterwards rejected on the :ious St Bartholomew's Day, would have been com* to retain the Prelates under the name of Patriarchs (Canterbury and York) and Archbishops : and as to the main characteristic of NOTES ON MEMOIRS OF COL. HUTCHINSON. 175 the Genevan, or true Presbyterian discipline, the introduction of laymen as Deacons and Ruling Elders, they were almost to a man against it. Let it not be forgotten, too, that their very intolerancy, to which Mr. H. does not attribute more than may be unanswerably laid to their charge, was the into- lerancy of the Established Church, inherited from the Re-founders of the Church- Prelatic and Anti- Parliamentary party of the same Church. Remember, that the Reformers in the Church, before the war, approached far more nearly to a majority, than the Protestants in the Western Church : and if the latter were not schismatics, neither were the former. Ibid. p. 203. To rayse this siege, Prince Rupert came with a greate armie out of the south ; the besiegers rise to fight with the Prince, and Newcastle drew all his force out of Yorke to joyne with him, when both armies, on a greate plaine called Marston Moor, had a bloody encounter. This appears to have been forced on Newcastle by Prince Rupert. Ibid. p. 253. Editor's note. The public is in possession of these [letters], they having been printed by the Parliament ; which some have thought a hardship, but surely without reason. I altogether agree with the editor, and regard the outcry raised by late writers against the indelicacy of publishing the King's correspondence, as sickly sentimental cant.* * See the Life of Thomas Lord Fairfax, by Hartley Coleridge, in the "Northern Worthies," with the note by S. T. C. vol. i. p. 341, of the new edition . ED. 176 NOTES ON MEMOIRS OK IUNSOX. Ibid. p. 270. If oat answered, to confonne to the general! pcmctiee of otherOimtUn,how(Uriie^Trritwrtothefn^lTi; but Mr. Foxeraft, one of the aaeembly.eayd that except they were eooTinoed of the warrant of that practiae from the Word, they ainn'd in doing it, whereupon thai infant waa not baptiaed. Si JVofe. Surely thia ahowt an unbecoming pro- penalty to speculate in religion ; the atony is, howcTi Surely this is the strangest note that ever came from a man of the editor's sense. Mrs. U. has been speculating in politics from the very commencement, and all to the editor's approbation and admiration. She and Colonel I late on the most unbe- comingly speculative part of theology, God's absolute decrees, and the editor Onds no fault. Now, as parents about to exercise a duty to their own they endeavour to square th< ii the com- mands of their Redeemer examine the Sacred to learn what they are and find them in apparent contradiction to the common practice. JWftptttL For ahe waa all thia while a apy for the King, Ac. Ail h were horrible lice, fto. These, and of this sort, were the two note ices, the disappointment, disgust,, and indig- lion for a time into a and apologist of Cromwell's viol of the Pa? and assumption of the dictat r the name of Protector. Good men bore too i ec ted too much : and even wise comparatively wise, were eager to have an oak, where NOTES ON MEMOIRS OF COL. HUTCHINSON. 177 they ought to have been content with planting an acorn. Oh that Colonel Hutchinson and his co-patriots throughout England could at this period have brought themselves to a conviction of the necessity of a king, under that, or some other name, and. have joined with Lord Brook and others in offering the throne to Cromwell, under a solemn national contract ! So ! and so only, might England have become a republican kingdom a glorious commonwealth with a king as the symbol of its majesty, and the key-stone of its unity ! Ibid. p. 344. It is believed that Richard himselfe was compounded with, to have resign'd the place that was too greate for him ; certaine it is that his poore spiritt was likely enough to doe any such thing. The army perceiving they had sett up a wretch who durst not reigne, &c. There is something delightful to me in this. The true woman in all the contra-distinctive womanhood breaking forth from the high, accomplished, and Christian-minded masculine intellect of Mrs. Hut- chinson ! But in a woman's soul, no virtues in a man can atone for pusillanimity, for either bodily or mental cowardice. Woman cannot look down and love. Even her children are angels to her, and she clasps her babe to her bosom with a participation of the feeling with which the Catholics describe the Holy Mother to embrace her God-enshrining Child. 178 1 ES ON PEPYS'S DIA VoL II. p. 13. Mm Turner do tell me very oddo stories how Mr*. 1 -ccive the application* of people, and hath tod the ia the band that receive* ail, while my Lord do the Most valuable on many, various, and important accounts, as 1 .is Diary to be, I deem it invaluable as a faithful j <.>( nut of enlightened (i.*. < a), u \o and self-interest in its peri- i to morality, its nearest possible neighbourhood to, or least possible distance from, honour and honesty. And yet what a cold and torpid Saturn, with what >ter and leaden shine, spotty as the moon, does <>f the regicide Col 1 Baxter (in the autobiography edited by Sylvester), both the contemporaries of Pepys ! He tella me the King of Prance hath hi* mistresses, but laughs at the foolery of our King, that make* hi* bastards prince*, and lows* hi* revenue upon them, and makes hi* mistresses hi* masters. Mem. Karl of Mui; with wit condt was all that was wanting to a [ * Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Bq., F.R.S. Edited by Richard, Lord Braybrook. 2 Tola. 4U>. 182&. NOTES ON PEPYS'S DIARY. 179 parallelism in the character of George IV. with that of Charles II. And this he left to be supplied by his worthy brother and successor. Ibid. p. 55. It is remarkable that this afternoon Mr. Moore came to me, and there among other things did tell me how Mr. Moyer the merchant, having procured an order from the King, and Duke of York, and Council, with the consent of my Lord Chancellor, and by assistance of Lord Arlington, for the releasing out of prison his brother, Samuel Moyer, who was a great man in the late times in Haberdashers' Hall, and was engaged under hand and seal to give the man that obtained it so much in behalf of my Lord Chancellor ; but it seems my lady Duchesse of Albemarle had before undertaken it for so much money, but hath not done it. And this is one of the three idols of our Church for Clarendon ever follows Charles the Martyr, and the martyr Laud ! Alas ! what a strange thing the conscience seems to be, when such actions and deliberate falsehoods as have been on strong grounds imputed to Lord Clarendon, among others, the suborning of assassination could be made compatible in his own mind with professions of religion and habitual religious meditations and exercises ! Ib id. p. 62. Among others, my good Mr. Evelyn, with whom, after dinner, I stepped aside and talked upon the present posture of our affairs ; which is, that the Dutch are known to be abroad with eighty sail of ships of war, and twenty fire-ships, and the French come into the Channell with twenty sail of men-of- war, and five fire-ships, while we have not a ship at sea to do them any hurt with, but are calling in all we can ; while our Embassadors are treating at Bredah, and the Dutch look upon them as come to beg peace, and use them accordingly ; and 180 NOTES OK PEPYS'S DIARY. through the negligence of our Prince, who had powtr. if he would, to matter all theee, with the money and men that he hath had the command of; and may now hare, if he would mind hia builnem There are good grounds for the belief that more, and yet worse, causes than sensuality and sensual sloth, were working in the King's mind and heart, the readiness to hare the Front h Kir master, and the disposer of his kingdom's power, as the means of becoming himself the uncontrolled master of its wealth. He would fain be a despot, cost of being another's underling. Charles II. was willing, nay anxious, to redu. crown and kingdom under the domination of th Grand Monarque, provided he himself might have the power to shear and poll his subjects without leave, Hiiry. Mi,* KB. To initiate a young Student into the mystery of appreciating tin* value of modem History, ci books -.0 hitherto passed for such, first, let )mu .Mivfully peruse this Diary; and thm. \\hilc it is fresh in h is niin.i, take up and read Humes >f Charles II Hume's Reign of 1 generally rated as the best and fullest of the work, I dare assert, t) omissions alone would form an Ap] twice the space allotted by him t > reign, and the necessary rectifications statements, half as much. What with omissions and what with perversions of the most important incidents, added to the false portraiture of the characters, the NOTES ON PEPYS'S DIARY. 181 work from the reign of Henry VII. is a mischievous romance. But alike as Historian and as Philosopher, Hume has, meo saltern, judicio, been extravagantly overrated. Mercy on the Age and the People, for whom Locke is profound, and Hume subtle. Ibid. p. 110. 1667. 12th. To my bookseller's, and did buy Scott's " Discourse of Witches ; " and do hear Mr. Cowley mightily lamented (his death) by Dr. Ward, the Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Bates, who were standing there, as the best poet of our nation, and as good a man. ! ! Yet Cowley was a Poet, which, with all my unfeigned admiration of his vigorous sense, his agile logical wit, and his high excellencies of diction and metre, is more than (in the strict use of the term, Poet) I can conscientiously say of DRYDEN. Only if Pope was a Poet, as Lord Byron swears, then Dryden, I admit, was a very great Poet.* Ibid. p. 125. 1667. 9th. To the Bear-garden, where now the yard was full of people, and those most of them seamen, striving by * This appears to be a question of terms. It would not be difficult to extend Mr. Coleridge's own definition of poetry, so as to cover both Pope and Dryden ; and surely it would be convenient to do so. The dispute, however, is of long standing, and is connected with a deep- lying instinct. Dryden has not much, except metre, of what is commonly understood to be poetry, as opposed to prose ; and if Horace looked upon his own moral essays as sermoni propriora, the more artificial style of Pope ought not of itself to place him in a different category. Yet Dryden and Pope were obviously "poets sown by nature ;" they were both impelled to write verse by the strongest natural impulse, and both wrote it with native power itself no doubtful proof of poetic genius. For a different, and, as the editor presumes to think, a juster estimate of the relative merits of Pope and Dryden, see "Essays and Marginalia " by Hartley Coleridge. NOTES OX PEPYS'S DUBT. force to got in. I got into the common pit ; and thcr- my cloak about my face, I stood and saw the priie fought, M of them, a shoemaker, WM eo ottt in both his wrists, that ho could not fight any longer, and then they broke off: his enemy wae a butcher. The sport very good, and radons an* to be seen among the rabble that is there. Certainly. Pepys was i h the queerest and most omnivorous taste, that ever fell to the lot of one man! / To the King's play-house, and there saw a silly play and an old one, " The Taming of a Shrew." nk. the fifth of Shakespeare's Plays \\hu-h iVj.ys t" -MI nl silly, stupid trash, and among Macbeth indeed he commends for the */mr and musi< . hit not to be compared with the " I iv. Bom I mugh of her physiological anatomy, bj h< lp of the solar microscope, I am sceptical. engravings instantly call up in my mind the suspicion of some kaleidoscopic delusion, from the ilar symmetry of all the forms. was an excellent and very remarkable woman, an contn .1. Magazine" worth stu for the s MR. KVKI.TX TO MIL PEI-Y*. Sir, with your excellent book.t I return you likewise my most humble thank* for your inducement of mo to read it ortr again; finding in it, as you told me, several things omitted in the Utin (which I had formerly read with greet delight), still new, .till surprising, and the whole hypothesis ao ingenious and so rational, that I both admire and Met* Hat< ! Strange ! Rurnet's book is a grand Milton ic romance ; but the contrast between the Tartarean fury aii'l turi ul. !;.- nf the Burn the almost supernatural tranquillity saic Deluge is little less than comic. nw. ia. HEXRT, SECOND EARL or CLAREXDOJI , to MR. PEPTS. After dinner, aa we were standing and talking toget : the room, aaya my Lord Newboroogh to the other Scotch gentleman (who waa looking very steadfastly upon my " What is the matter that thou hast had thine eyes fixed I could not find Uua.-S. C. t Burnct's Theory of the Earth. NOTES ON ALGERNON SYDNEY'S WORKS. 189 upon my Lady Cornbury ever since she came into the room ? Is she not a fine woman ? Why doest thou not speak ? " ' She's a handsome lady indeed," (said the gentleman,) " but I see her in blood." Whereupon my Lord Newborough laughed at him ; and all the company going out of the room, we parted ; and I believe none of us thought more of the matter ; I am sure I did not. My wife was at that time per- fectly well in health, and looked as well as ever she did in her life. In the beginning of the next month she fell ill of the small-pox : she was always very apprehensive of that disease, and used to say, if she ever had it she should dye of it. Upon the ninth day after the small-pox appeared, in the morning, she bled at the nose, which quickly stopt ; but in the after- noon the blood burst out again with great violence at her nose and mouth ; and about eleven of the clock that night she dyed, almost weltering in her blood. It would have been necessary to cross-examine this Scotch Deuteroptes, whether he had not seen the duplicate or spectrum of other persons in blood. It might have been the result of an inflammatory condition of his own brains, or a slight pressure on the region of the optic nerves. I have repeatedly seen the phantasm of the page I was reading all spotted with blood, or with the letters all blood. NOTES ON ALGEENON SYDNEY'S WOKKS.* Chap. ii. Sect. 5, p. 77. Ten men may as justly resolve to live together, frame a civil society, and oblige themselves to laws, as the greatest number of men that ever met together in the world. We must understand this with a pre-supposition * The Works of Algernon Sydney. 4to. 1772. ALGERNON SYDNEY'S WORKS. society has been dissolved, or that those ten men agree after a shipwreck to remain with such women as they can obtain, in a small island, rather than join a larger society in some other place, other- wise the arrangement would be hollow as t ground, and pernicious as to its consequences ; and would justify manifold and contradict imperio. The great and fundamental axiom of ethics is: So act that thou mayest be able to in//. that t "i should be the law of all rational beings. It may be A's maxim, that be will retain whatever has been entrusted to him without evidence, or legal power of being reclaimed ; but he cann this to be the universal law of con t his would be to annihilate the very condition of such a law, as then no man would so trust another. Consequently, u 1 be at once to will a thing and its opposite, the existence and non-existence of a thing at the same mom< mpossible. So, to form a so 10 maxim that s are owing to s< is to will the conditions of connexion and dissol The fault of Sydney's language (for it is more in expression than in meaning) is, that he dwells too ivcly on the r *ed to result from belief i vidual expedience, whereas he should have taken in the dutie* resulting from the greater good of a greater number; though I doubt not, that supposing mankind ttened as to their true good, the b< whole >uld be the best for t lual. roads lead to the same goal, but the latter road is more neighboured by false roads, is a right road through a lal suppose ' not born in a formed society capable of maintaining them, iing them due . and their rightful share of the fruits of NOTES ON ALGERNON SYDNEY'S WORKS. 191 society, such as education, and the other means and opportunities of developing their bodily, moral, and intellectual faculties, which is the final cause of human society ; because human faculties cannot be fully developed but by society and a man per se is a contradiction ; he is only potentially a man, not actually. Persecution in religion, and the absolute withholding of all withholdable knowledge, renders society to the injured persons not society, and does not 60 much dissolve their duties as preclude them ; even as absolute frigidity does not give divorce, but prove the non-existence of the marriage. Ibid. p. 84. The same author says, that Edward the Confessor " electus est in Regem ab omni populo," and another, "omnium electione in Edwardum concordatur." This is pushing the point too far. The very word acclamatio, applied to a country like England, and not to a city, implies that the " ab omnibus" includes only the assembly or populace present ; and in this way, even the wickedest tyrant has contrived to be " in magna exaltatione a clero et populo susceptus, et ab omnibus Rex acclamatus." The whole of William's laws and acts prove that he considered England as a conquest, and that he was King by the compelled acquiescence, not the free consent of the Saxon inhabitants. I think that A. Sydney lays too great a stress on these phrases of our old historians. Mock pillars to a Pantheon, when detected, throw a false suspicion on the noble edifice to which they had been idly attached. Sydney himself gives the proper answer, sect. 55, ]).' 86. 192 NOTES OX ALOERNOX STDXKY's WORKS Ibid. Sect 8, jx 09. 8almatius*s story of bees is onlj fit for old women to prate of in chimney corner* If it was worth \\lnl< to reason from such distant analogies, no stronger example in favour of a could be adduced than that of beet. Ibid. Sect 10, p. 108. Aristotle highly applauds monarchy, when the monarch hat more of those virtue* that tend to the good of a com- monwealth than all they who compote it. This is the king mentioned in hia Ethic*, and extolled in hu Politics : he is above all nature, and ought not by a municipal law to be made equal to others in power: he ought to govern, because I better for a people to be governed by him than to enjoy their liberty ; or rather do they enjoy their liberty, which is never more eafe than when it is defended by one who is a ;ig law to himself and others. Wheresoever such a man appears, he ought to reign. This is rather more than I would allow; Minj.lv because, let the monarch be as wise as 1 is not omnipresent; and if there exists an adequ number of wise and virtuous ministers, and a people disposed to sul'imt t<> them on a< and virtue ; then the people might be allowed choose both the wisest as supreme, and the others ns his helpers; and the same effect would be produ without the bad example, and without that lot* I ul' follows t passiveness of a people, and prepares a Com mod as successor to an A effect produc* the moral of a nation l.y tl ;^g puMii among the most important of a goovl ; and a people so circumstanced differs from another under a virtuous NOTES ON ALGERNON SYDNEY'S WORKS. 193 despot, as frorn a well-fed Lazarone differs a man presented by another with soil, seed, and plough, and so enabled to feed and clothe himself and family. Ibid. Sect. 11, Note, p. 110. Seneca blames Brutus for acting as if he imagined that the state could be instantly reformed at such a crisis : " Qui aut ibi speravit libertatem futuram, ubi tarn magnum prsemiuni erat et imperandi, et serviendi ; aut existimavit civitatem in priorem formam posse revocari, amissis pristinis moribus, futuramque ibi sequalitatem civilis juris, et staturas suo loco leges, ubi viderat tot millia hominum pugnantia, non an servirent, sed cui. Quanto vero ilium aut rerum naturae, aut urbis suse tenuit oblivio, qui uno interempto, defuturum credidit alium, qui idem vellet ; cum Tarquinius esset inventus post tot reges ferro ac fulminibus occisos?" Sen. de Benef., lib. ii. c. 20. This is profoundly conceived and beautifully expressed by Seneca ; but the wisdom of Brutus must be denied or admitted, accordingly as we solve the question, whether a number of good and wise men, possessing the political power of a state for a number of years can renovate the spirit, and recall the virtues of a fallen and corrupt people ; whether a state may not have more than one zenith and nadir of morals ! Surely the experiment was noble. Among the prime desiderata of philosophical literature, is a detailed history of the progress and revolutions of the morals of any given country ; Great Britain for instance. I have been induced to believe, though with abundant consciousness of uncertainty, that our morals rose progressively from Edward VI. to the restoration of Charles II., declined till the commencement of the present reign (George III.), and have been, and are on the whole, rising (spite of the counterbalance from the epidemic rage of glittering in the public eye). NOTES OK TRACTS ULATtXO TO NOTES WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF TRACTS RELATING TO THE TIMES OF CROMWELL. Mr. Recorder's Speech to the Lord Protector, upon Wednesday, the 8tfi of Feb., 1658. Query how long it has been since, and bow long it is likely to be before, a Mr. Recorder has made, or will make, such another speech, of equal solia the substance, and dignity in language ? HU Highness the Lori Protector's Speech to the Parlia- ment, in the Painted Chamber, on Monday, the 4th of September. Page 16. If. I say, they were bat notions, they were to be let alone. Notions will hurt none but them thai have them. But when they come to each practices, as to tell ua, that liberty and property are not the badges of the kingdom of Chrfat ; and tell ua that instead of regulating law* Uwi are to be abro- gated, indeed subverted; and perhape would bring in the JodAioalUw,Litft this is worthy of Notion* not punishable however erroneous; l>ut the drawing and publishing of contequtnct* from the same, that is, of practical consequences, incon- sistent with the social rights and obligations ; or with the fundamental laws of the Stale ; and tending to their subversion ; is an ortrt act, as rightfully within the sphere of the civil magistrate's office, as theft, forgery, or any other crime: though the degree of 'juilt, of which God alone is the competent Judge, may l>e very different. THE TIMES OF CROMWELL. 195 To this dictum of the Lord Protector I know of no sound objection in genere. There is, however, a practical difference, the annexment of which would render the principle at once more safe and more complete : namely, that in cases of the first kind (the publication of speculative opinions with unsafe consequences) the magistrate is, or should be, en- trusted with a larger discretional power, and in deciding the question, not only respecting the nature and quantum of the punishment, but likewise whether he shall interfere at all, he will in each case be determined by the greater or lesser probability of the consequences being acted on, or the public peace being disturbed by the attempt ; still more, perhaps, by the question, whether his interference may not do more harm than good, and aggravate the evil he wishes to remedy, both by spreading the contagion and increasing the susceptibility of the persons exposed to it. This last caution would apply particularly to the offence of questioning or denying the truth or the Divine authority of the Scriptures, or any main article of the Established Faith. In such cases it is ordinarily wiser to proceed (where the occasion is given) against the manner, as indecency, wanton outrage of the feelings of the community, for indvism, in short, and nuisance, than against the matter, had it been calmly and modestly worded, addressed to the reason and understanding, not to the passions or appetites of the readers and (as probable by the style, price, and circumstances of publication) intended for competent judges. !'.' i.S OX TRACTS REL Highness the Lord Protector's ment, in the I^ntod Chamber, o September, 1654. And that there was high cause for their dissolring, is moai erident, not only in regard there was a juei fear of the Parliament perpetuating themselves, but because it waa their design ; and had not their heela been trod upon by topor* from abroad, even to threat*, / believe there would new have been thoughts of riaing, or of going oat of that room, to the world's end. After reading this cloudy Tiberian Speech, and comparing these impudent assertions with the mea- sures and declared intuitions of the Republican Parliament, it should be impossible to doubt the baseness of Cronw u supposing some truth in *, jet what more can he wished from a Parliament than that they si. I to the desires from abroad? A Healing Question, Propounded by Harry Tana, Knt. IVo 4. For the first of these, that is to say, the natural right, which the whole party of honest men adhering to this cause are by success of their arms restored onto, fortified in, and may lay claim as their unmistakeable privilege, that right* ously cannot be taken from them, nor they debarred from bringing into exercise, it lies in this. y are to hare and enjoy .the freedom (by way of dutiful compliance and condescension from all the parts and members of this society) to set up meet persons in the place erne judicature and authority amongst them ; whereby they may have the use and benefit of the choicest light and wisdom of the nation that thev are capable to call fort THE TIMES OF CROMWELL. 197 the rule and government under which they live; and through the orderly exercise of such measure of wisdom and counsel as the Lord in this way shall please to give unto them, to shape and form all subordinate actings and administrations of rule and government, so as shall best answer the public welfare and safety of the whole. N.B. The Right is unquestionable ; the question is, in whom is it vested ? Sir H. Vane answers : the Honest Men, i. e., my own party. He, at that time, might do so without absurdity for he grounds this Right in part on the prior Right of conquest, and God's decision on an appeal to arms. But this judgment has been reversed, and what shall we sub- stitute ? The Nation? Who compose it? The people ? Whom do you mean ? The majority of convictions, i. e., convinced Understandings? How are these to be collected ? Of Wills ? What a right of Might ? An Humble Motion to the Parliament of England con- cerning the Advancement of Learning and Reformation of the Universities, by J. H. London, 1649. This Tract is a truly admirable memorial, opus- eulum vere Baconicum. J. H. is, I believe, John Hall, a young man of highest promise, who died in the 22nd year of his age. It would be desirable to reprint this " Motion," dedicated to the Founders of the London University. 1828. Ibid. pp. 16, 17. Nay that those present revenues whereupon they now surfeit, have choked abundance of active industries; nay, been a means to thrust into ecclesiastical or literary offices a many of persons, who, had they been suffered to obey their own inclinations, and followed some trade or handicraft, l' ls NOTES OK TRACTS RELATING TO might have ranked th empire* among the ablest of their Menia, whence menial, the set or whole number of slaves or inferior servants, attached to a menial Estate, 1 Query, a menia ? al set, a set of menial souls, who, Ac. ho first : I could never yet make no bad an idea of a true ri.iv.-n.ity, oa that it thould ienre for no nobler and than to nurture a few raw tripling* come out of earn* jry-echool, with a few shreds of Latin, that is I to a polite ear M the grunting of a tow, or the noise of a eawoan be to one who is acquainted with the laws of harmony ; and then poeaibly before they hare surveyed the Greek alphabet, to be racked and tortured with a tort of harsh abstracted logical notions, which their wiu are no more able to endure, than their bodies tbestrapedo; and to be delivered orer to a jejune, barren. Peripatetic Philosophy, suited only (as Monsieur Dos Cartes says) to wiu that are stated below mediocrity, which will furnish them with those rare imaginations of If alma prima, Privation, JMtcna/ta, and such trumpery, which they understand no more than their tutor*, and can make no more use of in the aflairs of ruiif 3000 years sines they had run through * hieroglyphical learning of the Egyptians, and had since thai time slept in their mummy, and were now awaken. And then as soon as they have done licking of this file, to be turned to graae in poor Ethics; which perhaps tell them as . in harder words, as they had beard their mothers talk by the fireside at home. Then are they turned loose, sad with their paper berks committed to the great ocean of learning; where if they be not torn, they return back so " desperation and contempt of their profession, and sad remembrance of their youth so trivially spent, that they hate all towardlv engagements that way, and suffer them- THE TIMES OF CEOMWELL. 199 selves to sink either in a quagmire of idleness, or to be snatched away in a whirlpool of vice. But in case some with much ado get ashore (for a long or a far voyage upon these terms they cannot make), and by the foresaid means stilt themselves into some profession, what deplorable things (unless it be those few which nature makes for ostentation, to be jewels in this earth) prove they, in filling the world with detestable quacking empirics, lewd and contentious gownsmen, or ignorant mercenary divines ? It would be thought unjust and calumnious to offer this paragraph to line 3rd, page 27, as a portrait of either of our two universities in their present state. Yet within three Decennia last past, a true expose of Oxford tuition would have differed from this only by substituting nothing for nothing's worth, nihil vice nihilorum. But at this very moment I will consent to take a hard student, and an average or ol TroAAot man of the Oxford of 1640, and of 1820, and, on a detailed statement of the schemes of study and of the kinds and quantum of the knowledge of the former two, and those of the latter two, after a fair comparison of the first with the first, and of the second with the second, in respect of intrinsic worth, and of (not adventitious and conventional, but) actual utility, to maintain the superiority of the Oxford of A.D. 1640. Some Animadversions upon the Declaration of, and the Plea for the Army. By Robert Chambre, 1659. Page 22. Oh that God would convince you, that sins against the first Table are greater, and more grievous in the sight of God, than against the second Table ; as being immediately against His majesty ! On the contrary, the vices against the Second *<'<) NOTES OX TBACT8, Table would therefore be greater, if that were possible aes), because they preclude obei le, nay, beap the crime of hypocrisy pretence to obedience. Written on th< Unnt r p at tK< mt dispensing (advising the King to dispense) with an existing st. NOTES ON LIVES OF BRITISH STATESMEN. 20? NOTES ON LIVES OF BEITISH STATESMEN.* Life of Sir T. More. Page 70, note K. Picus of Mirandola, whom he so much admired, was dis- tinguished for the freedom of his religious opinions. He was during his whole lifetime, persecuted * by the devotees of Rome, with charges of heresy, and saved from their hands probably by his rank. * Utterly false. He was, or suffered himself, owing to his own superstition, to be seized by some accusers of his nine-hundred Theses, and his explana- tion of them. But this endured for a few years only, and never amounted to persecution. Innocent VIII., who first approved and then prohibited the discussion, at the same time expressly preserved the reputation of Picus as a faithful and dear son of the Church, and Alexander VI. cleared him still more honourably. In fact Count Mirandola was the idol of his age and but for Savonarola's oath that, he had seen him in Purgatory, or rather that Picus clothed in flames had appeared to him and informed him that he was prevented from going immediately to Heaven by the crime of having delayed to become a Dominican Monk, he would probably have been beatified. Life of Burleigh. P. 162. Whitgift, the succeeding primate, taught by this example, proceeded to exercise severities which Parker would not have ventured to commit, nor the Queen, in the earlier part of her reign, have countenanced. * Lives of British Statesmen. By John Macdiarrtid. 4to. 1807. 208 NOTES OS LIVES OF BRITISH STATED Is it not then singular, thai Richard Baxter (in his Life) should have mentioned Whitgift among the good and wise prelates of the early Church in con- trast with their successors? ofThomMWentworth.EarlofStimffortl P. 26*. At no period WM the omnipotence of Parliament a more eiublwhed doctrine [than in the time of Henry VIII.]. It wan not enough that More confessed it* power to make or depose a king ; he offered for a treasonable offence, because he would not acknowledge iU right to confer a supreme control OTCT men's consciences. Is not this a contradiction, this very King being an essential part of this omnipotent Parliament ? And would Henry have endured such a doctrine as that his Vassals and Subjects had the right to depose him? /. p. tt. his conjuncture two expedients seem to hare been requisite for the prevention of violent civil dissensions ; the limitation of the royal prerogative by such accurate and insuperable barriers as would for ever guard the persons and property of the subject from arbitrary encroachments, and the separation of the Kings private expenditure from the disbursements of the public, Ac, But of these expedients, the separation of the King's expenditure from that of the nation, however simple and obvious it may now appear, does not seem to have then occurred either to the Prince or the people. Now this appears to me one of those plausibk silk remarks that even sensible men may sometimes fall on. At a second thought, however, a man of reflec- tion would see, that this " simple and obvious" expedient involves one or other of two cousequ NOTES ON LIVES OF BRITISH STATESMEN. 209 Either the two Houses of Parliament were to appoint, appropriate, and control the nation's expenditure ; or they were not. If the latter, the separation would be nominal only a mere powerless Act of Parliament ! If they were, it would itself be and constitute such a limitation as the boldest Patriot at that time would not have thought of. With no greater patronage than the Crown then possessed, it would have reduced the King to a mere Stadtholder. Ibid. p. 468. Strafford was aware that his life was in the hands of his enemies ; that no chance of escape remained ; but he was not prepared to expect so sudden a dereliction by his sove- reign, &c. &c., and when assured of the fatal truth, he raised his eyes to heaven, and, laying his hand on his heart, exclaimed, ' Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation/ Canting scoundrel a hypocrite in his very last act ! Nothing indeed can justify the measures of the House of Commons, nothing palliate the baseness of the House of Lords; unless it be the unvaried example of all their predecessors, and the faithful imitation of the same submission to the stronger party by all their successors spiritual and temporal. It was not this remorseless apostate that suffered unde- servingly; he deserved a thousand deaths; but England, but Law, and the everlasting principles and grounds of Law in the sense of public justice, that received a deadly wound : and every Bill of Pains and Penalties since then has been a fresh hydra- head sprouting from this wound. Thus is the cycle of retributive Providence completed. What the Gracchi begin, a Blue-beard and a Heliogabalus finish. IVES or i is a Tory tenet, w)> >uld be good policy in the \Yhigs to adopt ; if indeed any party ng the name of \Yhi defined : A patriot, who (con- sidering practical good sense, in distinction from a NOTES ON LIVES OF BRITISH STATESMEN. *21l theoristic predilection for strict logical consequence, as the characteristic of the English People and the only appropriate interpreter of the English Constitution) acts in the spirit of Compromise with the Monarchy and the Major Barons to the advantage on the whole, of the great mass of Proprietors, landed, mercantile, and professional ; and who giving its largest sense to the term, Property, so as to make it commensurate with its true ground and justifying definition, viz., a sphere of individual free-agency ; and, therefore extending it to the lowest kind and degree of Property compatible with the possessor's personal independence in the performance of his civic duties : judicial (i. e. as a jury-man) municipal, and elective, includes actually, or by probable reversion, the whole effective male adult population ; and yet so as that the accruing of civic (not natural) rights of the People, thus contra-distinguished from the Populace (as Populus a Plebe) should be formally and functionally realised in such times and ways, and under such circumstances, conditions, and limitations, as render the rights of the third class consistent with the co-existence of an effective Royalty and Aristocracy ; nay, an additional safeguard to each against the other ; and thus indirectly to both against its own encroach- ments. This is the Ideal, by the light of which the genuine Whig (the proper ENGLISH Publicola sed et Patriota nihilominus) guides and regulates his aims and efforts, corrective and perfective ; his regrets, fears, and wishes. And for the attainment of this by as close an approximation as wisdom dare expect from human imperfection, our Constitution had provided, and still prescribes, the sufficient means. Let onl^ the House of Lords consist exclusively of bond-fide Major Land-owners, of ancient families, or of men whose eminent merits and services entitle them to p 2 :i .' xona ox I.IVKB or BRITISH STATESMEX. become the Founders of Families, but who on being raised to the Peerage should, as an indispensable accompaniment have, or be put in possession of, Lund* proportional: and the House of Commons : classes, the one, constituting a powerful and respect- able minority in number, the representatives d Minor Barons, i. *., the landed Proprietors, free-hold or copy-hold, not sitting with the Major Barons proprio, nor jet included in thnr Estates and Depen- H; and of a majority (say two-thirds) the representatives of Cities, Towns, and Sea-Ports. The Cities and Boroughs, to whom the elective franchise is entrusted, need not be more numerous than at present if only (alas! the one oversight of our ancestors) the franchise adhered to the thing origi- nally meant, and not to the name (Old Sarum for instance) when the thing had ceased if from A C it passed to B + C, instead of rem because it was cird*vantA+C ! These are the three proper Ettatt* of the Realm, change of times I dis-estated the Church or identified it with tin first or second as they now exist namely, firv r Barons who sit jure proprio and form a House of their own ; second, the Minor Barons, who sit by representatives; and, thirdly, the Inhabitatr Towns, <&c., or the commercial, manufacturing, distri- , and professional interests, who sit by representatives in the same House with those of the r Barons. The two former estates forn elements of permanence in a nation, and bind the present with the past: the third is the elemei Progression and Improvement, the former sup] the main nutriment of the common-weal, the its requisite stimulus. Call th< i. Then, ver, as will oftenest happen, the interest- :r combined strength will suffice NOTES ON LIVES OF BRITISH STATESMEN. 213 to counteract any attempted encroachment on the part of I, though I is numerically the majority in the lower House : and when, as will sometimes happen, a real or supposed division of interest takes place between A and E, it is not less than a moral cer- tainty that I will join with E to the efficient protec- tion of E against any novelty attempted by A : and should (as in the case of Corn Laws and the like) A and E combine against I, I by its numerical majority has the power of protecting itself. To connect, there- fore, this long note with the text that occasioned it it is clear, I say, that the King is not an Estate of the Realm, but the Majesty of all three that is, the Crown in its legislative character represents the Nation, its ancient Laws and Customs, ante-Parlia- mentary as well as Parliamentary, and on his solemn oath alone (violent and extra-regular means not in question) does the Commonwealth depend for the continuance of its super-Parliamentary Rights : while as the Executive Power, the Crown is the Agent and Trustee for all, chosen by the Nation, not elected by the Estates; or, more truly , appointed by Providence,as the copula of all the complex causes, the grounds and acts and results of which constitute the National History. Thus, my dear G illman ! without intending it, I havlTy left on record for you the sum of my political religion, / or the Constitutional Creed of S. T. Coleridge. Ibid. p. 520. It is not to be concealed that even Hyde encouraged the attempts of Captain Titus and others to remove Cromwell by assassination. Nor ought it to be concealed that Hyde suborned assassins against an honester man than Cromwell, the patriot Ludlow. When to this detestable VE.H OF BRITISH STATES* EX. wickedness we add ning of Charles I. b prclatical super -, being an accomplice of the s in the three contradictory treaties with three ent parties at the same time, neither of which led to ful : s total abandonment of the religious rights of the subjects to the fu the Bishops after the Restoration, we must att Ji praise bestowed on Clarendon by historians, and the general respect attached to his memory to the infamy of the rest of the Caralier Faction canonising bad by incomparably worse. Ibid. p. 521 When the death of Cromwell, and the deposition of hi* on, enabled the active npiriU to resume the bmrniss of framing Constitutions, they thowed that their political aagadty had undergone no improretnent Without compre- hending the distribution of powers, by which the authority of rulers b rendered at one* effectual and innoxious their erode diacuationa turned upon the eligibility of mtii^ the supreme power in one man, in a few, or in the people at large; and men seemed ready to lose their live* for theoretical governments, which were either pernicious or impractkabl* < at least cannot be said of Harrington's scheme : nor should it be forgotten, that Cromwell's Scheme of Representation, eulogised by Clarendon himself, and ive more than superseded the Revolu- <>wed its failure not to the ambition of Cromwell, but the narrow s and persecuting bigotry of irtherrnore brought back Un- perjured popish Brotheller without conditions, and their due reward. NOTES ON LIVES OF BRITISH STATESMEN. 215 Ibid. pp. 538-9. It would have been fortunate for the memory of Clarendon, if the same good sense and benevolence which guided his civil policy had governed his religious opinions. But in these prejudice triumphed over his better judgment ; and \ve find him breathing sentiments, which, in a darker age, would have led him to promote the most cruel persecution. From his early youth he had imbibed the maxim of No Bishop, no King, as an infallible truth ; and had conscientiously instilled into the mind of his sovereign the doctrine that Episcopacy is the only form of Church Government compatible with Monarchy. It is sad to think, how dangerous a poison the tone and general spirit of our modern historians instil into the public mind, and (still worse) into the souls of the young men, whose talents, rank, or connections destine them to a public life : a poison, slow indeed and lurking, and therefore the fittest to undermine the moral constitution. What an effect must not [be produced by] the mere attachment of the honours of virtue to wicked statesmen only because they were much less wicked than others ! " Conscientiously ! " What ? was Hyde a poor simple recluse ? must not the know- ledge, that this tenet was despised as absurd, and detested as base and ruinous by Falkland, Southampton, and a majority of the great and good men who lived and died for the monarchy, have at least so far influenced an honest mind as to prevent him from persecuting with remorseless cruelty thousands, nay, myriads, of men whose only charge was that of holding the same opinion respecting the prelates (for the quarrel was not concerning Episcopacy, such as Archbishop Usher supported, but Prelacy), as Falk- land ? If a conscience sered by party-passions, and the assumption of infallibility, is to be the sufficient 410 NOTES WRITTEN IS TIIK "LAW reason for calling actions conscientious, for Heaven's sake, saj not an unkind word against the Massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day, or the horrors of Bonuer and Gardner! The plausibility of the sophism, No Bisboj ' rests wholly on the circumstance, that there is 9omt truth in the converse, viz.: _r, no Prelate. NOTES WRITTEN IN T! 1 1 LAW MA< Fern JAXUAET AXD APRIL, 1830. VOL. Ill Life of Lord Hard wioke. P. 97. In framing hi* judgment*. Lord Hardwicke appears always to hare been anxious to bring the case within the scope of some broad general principle, Thin, however, he never effected by mean* of forced interpretation* or fcndral I am too well aware of my incompetence to set any value on my own opinion ; l*ui in n.i.imj. Home yean back, Atkyn's and Vesey's Keports (23 Vol.) and afterwards, Sir James Burrows, and (while I was at Malta) Robinson s Admiralty Reports, I was exceed- ingly impressed with the measureless superiority of Lords Hardwicke and Mansfield and of Sir W Scott to Lord Kldon, on the score of solid and comprehen- sive principle. />"V. p. 10* It in to no purpose to argue that none but weak and plastic minds suffer themselves to be influenced by habit , r r tiiic __nrmA lint cnff onrl firtil* minrlc vi/lrl NOTES WRITTEN IN THE "LAW MAGAZINE." 217 to the impressions of habit. Influences excite, modify, temper, contemper, &c., but can rarely be said to mould. Is there any authority for the use of this word ["plastic"] in a passive sense ? Qu. fictile ! " Soft " would have been better than " weak." Ibid. p. 108. Some obloquy has been cast upon Lord Hardwicke, because he disposed of the Church patronage belonging to his office with a view rather to increase his own political influence, than to forward obscure merit or to further the interests of religion. This accusation is undoubtedly just ; but whether the fault be a very venial, or a highly criminal one, is a question likely to be decided by different persons in very different ways ; no one, at all events, will deny that it is a very common one. by the Venialists, I presume, in Change- Alley, or in the Hells, or at Windsor. The denizens of Newgate would be ashamed of such a sentiment. But Lawyers are sorry moralists, and both they and the men in office are in whimsical wise contemptuously jealous of literary men. Ibid. p. 112. But unhappily his cupidity led him to regard the increase of his fortune as a primary object of ambition ; and though to accomplish it he never descended to employ means incon- sistent with the strictest integrity, there cannot be a doubt that he sacrificed to it a species of fame which it was in his power to earn, and which it was incumbent on him to deserve. Had he not been deterred by avarice from effect- ing the reform of the Court of Chancery, he might have left behind him a smaller inheritance to his children, but he Kite them the glory of being from a disinterested beoe&ctor of hu iMHUrtrji What? an infamous prostitution of mmense patronage to his own - rests, " not inconsistent," &c. I will even risk the scorn of Biographer hy asking linn, in vli.-it pterof the New Testament he found Avarice, a foible : or base breach of a sacred trust, a very venial fault : NOTES WRITTEN IN THE ENCYCLOPKl LONDINENSia In conformity with the jMtaffe tart* then prevailing among men of letter*, of Mtuming names of Greek or Latin etymology, he translated hU ftunily name of Gerard, signi- amiable, into the equivalent onea of Desiderfas in Latin, and Eraamua in Greek And why pedantic ? What man of the least taste would have preferred Mynheer Groot to Grotius. Reuchlin to Caprio, or Schwartrercht to Melan* While the Latin was the lingua communi* of Europe such translations were fit and graceful. He first lodged with Sir Thomas More, and amused him- self with writing his " Moriw Encomium." or Pnise of Folly, a facetious and satirical composition which became popular. ENCYCLOPEDIA LONDINENSTS. 219 most exquisite work of wit and wisdom extant ! In its kind certainly the most exquisite. LIBERTY. It were endless to enumerate all the affirmative acts of parliament wherein justice is directed to be done according to the law of the land ; and what that law is, every subject knows or may know if he pleases ; for it depends not upon the arbitrary will of any judge, but is permanent, fixed, and unchangeable, unless by authority of parliament. Mere declamation ! In a rich and populous, a commercial and manufacturing people, the practical Law exists in precedents, far more than in statutes, and every new judge furnishes new precedents. Hence the " glorious uncertainty of the Law." Ho wean it be truly affirmed that every man may know [the law], when it requires the study and practice of a life to be qualified even to give an opinion ; and when nothing is more common than for two men equally qualified to give opposite opinions? Not to mention the ruinous expenses of a law-suit to all but rich men ; so that the power of appeal from lower to higher courts, instead of protecting the poor man, enables a rich tyrant, such as the late Lord L. to ruin whom he chooses. I wrote this, not in complaint, for the evil is inevitable, and results from the very nature of Property in the present state of human nature ; but because the strongest arguments of Jacobinism are drawn from these rash assertions, and the actual state of things so opposite to them. These positions should be treated as the declared Ideal and ultimate object of Legislature, which every man is bound to hold in view in his administration of Law, not as the actual result of Law ; and men should NOTE OX THE " VOCATIOX OP OUB !.< be taught that the evils here stated are great indeed, yet cannot be removed without far greater evils ; and here are advantages on the other hand, res from those very evils, and, in some measure, counter- balancing them : such is the existence of a large and learned profession, a check [put] on Litigiousness. and twt a general sense of the insufficiency of Law, )0 consequent praise and value attached and is contradistinguished from Legality. LIBERTY OP CONSCIENCE, ChrUtian governments have no further concern than aa it tends to promote the practice of virtue. If this were once admitted, even ! might be defended. Not the practice of peace of Society and the Legality of U, are the objects of Law; these secured, we may safely trust to Ileligion, Education, VOCATION OF OUB ' ISLATJON AND JUKI -I 'i:i i< n on the blank leaf before the Title-page. ire of the ambition v agitates, like a />' ::,c natural the German of Frederick Chariea Von R. > NOTE ON A LETTER TO VISCOUNT GODEEICH. 221 boundary of France that the interspace between the Rhine and the Pyrenees cannot endure a divided sovereignty. Languages, manners, religion, historical recollections, even race, may be diverse. What are all these compared with a River ? though the said River never, for a short week, stopped the march of a superior force ! But alas ! incapable of the sense of duty, the French seek a substitute for it, by generalising their Self-lust in a demand for Rights. God and the Devil cannot be more strikingly con- trasted than in this different ordination of the two antitheta, Persons and Things, Duties and Rights. According to the will of God it is, Persons and Things in order to Persons, Duties, and thence Rights, as derived from the obligation to perform Duties. According to the Devil, the Cotton-factors and the West Indian Planters, and the Revolutionists it is, Persons as Things, and in order to Things, Rights, i. e., Desires, and other men's duty to submit to them. NOTE ON A LETTER TO VISCOUNT GODERICH, BY V1NDEX, ON THE CONDUCT OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT TOWARDS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN THE WEST INDIAN COLONIES. A vigorous, eloquent, and for the greater portion, wise and well-reasoned Remonstrance. My only objec- tion only important obj ect ion respects the ambiguity of the word " compatible" and "incompatible" in refer- ence to Christianity. That slavery is and ever was com- patible with the co-existence of the Christian Church, is fact of history ; but so is ingratitude, gaming, &c. .iTE OX A LETTER TO YISCOCXT GODKRICH. Hut surely what may CO-CXM iih the Preaching i nercs*arily consistent precepts and U the Sj !y the Passions, whence alone come Wart among men. ugh perbapt slow and very gradual removal of which, are among the Object* of a Religion, cannot be incompatible with its existence. let every remedy be Applied according i specific Power. The Gospel is a remedy for cor* ns in the will, and darkness in the Reason, noe proceed the only dangerous errors i- : standings) of Persons, of Individuals. It was ded as a raedy for -and rates of Society, &c.. are Thing*, and ided from a Spiritual agency. In directly indeed, and inasmuch as Causa causa), causa causati, the Gospel no doubt is an antidote t evil of Slavery, and to the evils of War of a bribed or a mob-managed Legislature, and what this one respect 01 : r equally from V index and and his confreres. Slavery is com- patible with ChriM nd therefore Parliament may protect it, argues V index. Slavery is u ipatible with Christianity, screams B< it down by an act of Parlia- ment ! Slav the perverricM >rson into a Thing, is contrary to the Spirit say 1 refore it is the dn labour (as far as it md lies v the sphere of ' removal from the Christian \V ! 1 i. 1 it that an act *..ul.l 1-- u lit or effectual means tOWnr believe the very contrary, ami ns give my conscientious vot NOTES ON DOGMAS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 223 recommended by Vindex as the right substitute for the fiery remedies prescribed by the Anti-Slavery Society. NOTES ON PAEK'S DOGMAS OF THE CONSTITUTION.* Page xi. If the theory of the Constitution turn out, upon close examination, to be fraught with the most invincible absurdities ; and if, notwithstanding, these absurdities have not been practically felt, the question must be by what means they have been escaped from ; and the answer can only be this, by a constant practical violation of the theory itself, although without an open or avowed renunciation of it, and with the cautious preservation of most of its forms. The theory of the Constitution ? Why, the Consti- tution itself is the idea, ultimate aim, and as such the moral actuating and plastic law of the government ? But even a theory of the government (government used sensu latissimo) where, Mr. Devil ! is it to be found ? In the dreams of Blackstone or De Lolme, or the yet shallower Locke ? A theory = 0ecopia contemplatio, i. e., such a subjective (mental) arrange- ment of all the parts or particulars, as far as they have hitherto been known, which appear to consti- tute a given thing, as enables us to reflect on that complex thing, as a unity of interdependents. Now, laws, rules, and customs of Parliament are the subjects of the synopsis, not its materials. The resolution of the Lower House read at the opening * Lectures on Dogmas of the Constitution. By J. J. Park, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. 1832. NOTLS OX PARKS DOGMAS of every session, I believe, against interference of Peers in Elections is, and was. a mere asinine : the Commons, that never had, and never could have (i.*., since the polygan-liy of the feudal Lords was sufficiently repressed to allow the existence of a House of Commons) any practical meaning. , in his criminatory letter to the Duke of against Mr. Fox, exposed this answer (argu- in. -in", Do beware, Henry,* of confounding the terms, theory and principle theory and law. A theory is ordinarily a mere piece-toy for the benefit of the memory a /irrj/ioYiKor r \riKoV, made like squibs or crackers, to be exploded by the first spark of a new fact or term. Of course mathematical theorems are iis very reason) an exception I'.ut in all real dge the account of the terms is as below. iKipoicsis = Suffiction, ex.gr. DCS Cartes* os. Hypothec . Oxygen ^en as water. Theory, ex. yr. Orrery, i ran ion. Law = 0bjective, *iw<0fw. The whole argument of the Conservative party House of Commons, t*lmti ft* it baa been in some reaped*, hs involved one grand and fetal error la logic. >, barbarous, vocable ' iaknttd ! * why not ihillinged, farthinged, tenpenoed, Ac. : >nna- tion of a participle passive from a noun, is a license *s some peculiar felicity to excuse it xv. either the theoretic right of the people to a "full and fair representation; in other words, to an exclusive occupe- tfco of the House of Commons by tWr own rtprassotativea, Ikurv NvVnToUr. U-r -F.o OF THE CONSTITUTION. 225 is a real right, or it is not ; while Lord Erskine, in effect, admitting it to be so, treats it in the same breath like the toy of a child, to be given out or withheld for the day, according as he is ill or well-behaved. A constitution which cannot weather an occasional fit of bad humour, must surely be a very faulty one ! Excellent ! But the Whig principle, like the devil, " was a liar from the beginning." Even its essence is a contradiction under the form or notion of a compromise. And as the devil is, per se, a mere ens non vere ens, that can appear only in co-existence with the product of the Logos, or God-fiat so Whiggism only by virtue of Toryism, or Republic- anism with a symbol of unity. Pp. xvi., xvii. It will be seen, from the following pages, that the writer is neither Whig nor Tory, that neither "Reformer" nor " Anti-Reformer " would define his school of politics ; but that he is a disciple or promoter, whichever the reader may choose, of the nascent school of inductive politics, or observa- tional political science ; a science which, leaving on the right hand and on the left all conventional principles which have hitherto been accredited, to be ultimately adopted or rejected, as scientific judgment and resolution alone shall decide, seeks first, and above all things, to elevate the vague and notional element of political philosophy to the rank of the certain sciences, or, as they are felicitously * denominated by French authors, "les sciences d' observation." ! ! i. e. no sciences at all. It grieves me to find this passage in a man of such very superior intellect and soundness of principle as Mr. Park so evidently is. I boldly affirm that my philosophy is the true * for an Act of Parliament for the transportation to America of Van Daemon's Land of this vile infelicissimous "felicitously !" Q NOTFS OK PARK'S DOGMAS inductirt logic. The " Science d'Observation " of the Celtic anthropoid is, if anything, dtdwcfa*. The general long-continued prevalence of exeat in the force or influence of the Crown or Government, as the con- stituent evil of the political world, an evil which, under various modal varieties, thU country has been struggling with few intervention*, from the period of the Norman Conquest, ftc. Has not Mr. Park in this instance confounded the evils of the Baronial Polyarchy, and the grinding insolence of a conquering race, aggravating polyarchy, with the excess of the royal power? in kings do more than enact the tyrannies . Norman borons on a somewhat larger scale ? Lecture 1. The prepositive or theoretic constitution of Great Britain (if it ever existed in a pure state, which is very doubtful) has oeased to have any existence for upwards of a century and a half hw for upwards of a century and a half been superseded by a totally different machinery; hot the feet hat never been publicly wx>giiised or recorded; the substituted constitution has never been formally reduced to proposition: no I>e Lolme, or Blackston* has descanted upon to virtues, or pointed out its defects : and a sufficient number of the forms n have been tenaciously observed, to satstfy til persons who think merely by rote, that a govern- moot by separate and independent estates of King. Lords, and Commons, was, with certain irregularities or cor- ruptions, still the government of the country. v doubtful! Yes, as it is very don that the moon is made of green cheese, and OF THE CONSTITUTION. 22 I the spirits of virtuous Welch men made perfect are transplanted thither in the shape of mites ! Black- stone's was the age of shallow law. Monarchy, aristo- cracy and democracy, as such, exclude each the other ; but if the elements are to interpenetrate, how absurd to call a lump of sugar hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon! nay, to take three lumps, and call the first hydro- gen, the second oxygen, and the third carbon ! The real government of this country unquestionably is, or has been, a commixture or combination of the three elements of the constitution in the Commons' House of Parliament, as the arena of Government. Never ! at no period. Ibid., p. 9. To contrast them with the instances in which the forma of the accredited constitution have been scrupulously preserved. More truly, nonsensically blaired. Ibid., p. 11. We shall be told, in the language of Paley, that the balance of power in the constitution consists in this : that there is no power possessed by one part of the legislature, the abuse or excess of which is not checked by some antagonist power residing in another part ; and that the power of the two Houses of Parliament to frame laws is checked by the King's negative ; and yet we should find so accomplished a con- stitutional writer as Mr. Hallam, describing that exercise of prerogative as one " which no ordinary circumstances can Q 2 228 NOTES OX DOGMAS Of THE tOKSTTP noosttOt Ur with prodeoea or with ft r Hanam'a Constit Hbt. uL 901 ertbelass the royal veto is and remain* an essential part of the constitution Thai, inthespihl of compromise, characteristic of England, it acta Jly and by prcTcnUon, does not evacuate the power itself. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. NOTES ON A NEW METHOD OF CHEMISTKY.* Page 43. Note. Bidding him, therefore, take a piece of a leaden spout fastened to the wall of the room, and melt it, the chemist threw in a little yellow powder; then pouring the whole upon the ground, the lead was all gold. What became of this gold ? Did the gold weigh six drachms ? Was it assayed ? It is verily a lame testimony. Had Frederick III. no political design in spreading the belief of the chiyso-poietic powers ? Ibid., p. 56. Q Gold. D Silver. $ Copper. $ Iron, &c. &c. Platinum might be marked Q $ Gold + Iron, or rather Gold -f (+ Iron); i. e., Iron acting positively, where + ( Iron) would signify, Iron acting priva- tively, by diminution of specific gravity. * A New Method of Chemistry ; including the Theory and Practice of that Art. By H. Boerhaave. Translated from the printed Edition, collated with the best Manuscript Copies. By P. Shaw, M.D., and E. Chambers, gent. 4to. London. 1727. NOTtS ON A NEW METHOD OK CIII.MlSTttY. QuiduUver evidently showa gold la the middle, or body ilver at top, or In the face, and a corrosive at bottom ; accordingly all the adcpta 017 of mercury thai it i gold at lieart, whence to heavineae; that it* outside is eflver, wheoee ita white colour; but that there fa a pemidotM corrwuv* -r adhering to it, denoted by the orae; that brightnce* and iU eorroai?e oonld be taken away, it would remain gold ; that the quantity of eulphnr fa here eo great, at to render it wholly combuattble by 6re ; that the more * burnt, the nearer it oomee to be gold; end that were it ; r'.'-'.y ...:. I ..:.: j ;.r. !.m/.. ,.. r;,,. NotO. Again, day does not ahow the lee* sign of any metal, work you will, without mixing ; but add linen 1 oil to it, and by fire you will have a metal, which fa no other than rral in .11. The clay of coarse contained the iron, the linseed oil s carbon for its separation. But regard to plants and to the blood, it is more doubtful, it would be so very difficult to weigh sufficient accuracy the various volatile products, with the oxygen used in the burning. NOTES ON A NEW METHOD OF CHEMISTRY. 233 Ibid., p. 72. The second character of mercury is to be the most fluid of all bodies, i. e. its parts separate and recede from each other by the smallest force ; consequently, of all bodies it is that whose parts cohere the least, or are the least tenacious, and therefore of all others the least ductile and malleable. Here is an instance from which we may learn the utility of a just definition. Mercury is e contra the least fluid of all bodies, under an equal specific portion of heat i. e., equally fused. For the only tenable definition of a fluid is a body the parts of which are not interdistinguishable by figure. Now mercury retains its globoseness ad infinitum. So I reasoned, but I see the defect of the logic (though I nevertheless retain my objection to the proper fluidity of quicksilver). Globoseness, is the //opc/)^ a/xop^os", the figure that necessarily results from the indiffer- ence or equilibrium of all dimensions. Schelling's definition of fluid is incorrect, because inadequate. An equilibrium of the whole, which prevents its being parts at all, but by accidental force, ab extra, not favoured, but counteracted by the essential character of the proper fluid. In short, melting is not fluidising. Ibid., p. 73. The parts of water do not divide so readily as those of quicksilver ; and' the parts of oil much less ; there is a certain tenacity even in the parts of spirits of wine, which resists a separation ; but there is scarce any cohesion at all in the parts of mercury. It is in vain to reason on these facts, till we have formed distinct conceptions of the difference between 34 NOTES ox A NEW METHOD OP CHEMISTBY. adhesion and cohesion, attraction and contraction, dila- tation and repulsion, and of centndity from them all. v ithstanding mercury recei vea such a degree of cold, iu great separability and fluidity prereott iu congealing. Mr. Hoy Ic tried Tarioua ways to bring it to free**. by making an extrearn cold, end exposing an exceedingly thin akin of mercury thereto, but without effect A warning against the use of the word " < whereas we now know, that even that degree of cold . is compatible with human life will freeze ksilver. A fluid teed seemi a contradiction. True, a eeed may be contained in a r we actually auppoee b the ca*o in animaU ; but the proper eeed or ttamen iUtlf, ineritably muit be a solid. Thin in obvioui from the very wherein all the parta of the future production are contained in mall; the production itself is only the teed enlarged, eo as to ahow iu aeveral parta to the eye, But fluidity i incoo- aieteot with any uchorganUm; a fluid U a body whoM paita are either aetually in continual motion, or at leant are liable to bo continually moved by the trnallett force ; and how can the structure and arrangement of parta, which constitute an animal or vegetable, persist in ao aUppery a thing, where the eUuatioo of the parta U continually interchangeablr no more possible for the eaed, . pr. of a tree, to be fluid, and yet rotnain a seed, than for the tree itself to be fluid while a tree ; so that the aominal origin of stonss does not NOTES ON A NEW METHOD OF CHEMISTRY. 235 controversy between the adherents of the justly celebrated John Hunter, and the no less deservedly celebrated Blumenbach, who has adopted this argument, viz., the inconsistency of fluidity with organisation, in the very conceptions of the two terms. But I doubt the validity of the argu- ment. The conception of a fluid is not a, or the, fluid ; but a logical abstract. First it must be inquired whether there exists in nature any substance adequate to the generic definition ? and if this were affirmed, yet secondly, whether the blood, semen, &c., nay, whether the whole of an organised body during life, be not gradative media between solid figure accurately (rigid) and fluid ? It is clear to me that nothing vital is properly either rigid or fluid, but mere approximations to the one or the other, either of which realised would be death. If a perfect fluid be defined as quantitative indifference, a fixed body or solid, as quantitative difference, a vital organism must be defined participially as a continuous differ- encing of the indifference, equal to a continued indifferencing of the difference. Without the former, no figure, without the latter, no life. The whole controversy, therefore, is resolved into a pseudological logomachy, or a dispute about words, from a misap- propriation of the words in dispute. Ibid., p. 125. It must be owned, however, that spirit of wine, which is a sulphur, is miscible with water ; but it is owing to this, that the sulphur in spirit of wine is so changed, and its parts so attenuated and divided, as to insinuate themselves among the parts of the water, where they would not otherwise be admitted. A good instance of a subjective and perhaps 236 MOTES OH A XBW METHOD OF CHCMISTBY. rary definition understood in a term with the concrete represented bj the same term : as sulphur with sulphur, i. < ., Brimstone. 41 The second U areeoic, the most faUl of the whole tribe, aa deatroymg all animala, both nian and beaat ; which the word ... ; : ' -. ! :..- : . . . ! i :.....:...-. .-. : . ;* . 1 Then it roust hare been andronicon. Even from ap(n]v maaculus. it would be arsenicum. not arsn- Tcum. Probably it is simply from j/xrqp the masculine, i. <., the active, penetrating. 12. Note. Sulphur contains aom part* which render it more i mable than either nitre or oil ; and yet abounda with add and vitriolic particlea, which atrongly raaiat the flame in several other bodiea; the fire of aolplmr, baaite Hi common ito acidity upon aome metal*, eapecially iron ; and alao on red roae-leavea, which are turned white by Ha fomea. BoyU, mce for Logic. Here Fumes are taken = Sulplr.ir. without proof. Now tM know that th- Fumes are Sulphur -h Oxygen ; and B. ought t seen that the Fumes MI^AI be Sulphur + x , or an unknown something. might e*a* aowao extend the oat of tfee word mlpkmrmmt, m to laelade oO aad aloobol. M the .--.. : .--.. . eoold he tod m eacevM to* Atomlft* a fMM by OM of to apeaia NOTES WRITTEN IN A JOURNAL, ETC. 237 Ibid., p. 236. Thus they who dig mines, wells, &c., constantly observe, that while they are yet but a little below the surface, they find it a little cool ; as they proceed lower, it grows much colder, as being then beyond the reach of the sun's heat ; insomuch that water will freeze almost instantaneously, and hence the use of ice-houses, &c. Excellent examples might be selected for my Practical Logic, de terminis hand adhuc exhaustis, or A = B C D taken as A=A. NOTES WRITTEN IN A JOURNAL OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, AND THE ARTS.* Vol. XXII. A Letter on the Basaltic Country in Ireland. By William Richardson, D.D. Page 162. Note. By the word Nature, which frequently occurs in the course of this memoir, I always mean, according to Ray's definition, the wisdom of God in the creation of the world. Far better and more reverential, as well as more correspondent to the phenomena, would the following definition of Nature be, Me saltern judice : The law, or constructive powers, excited in matter by the influence of God's Spirit and Logos. P.S. We have no other reason for continuing the inchoative acts of the Spirit and Word after the creative week, than as all existence is grounded in * Edited by William Nicholson. M8 NOTES WRITTEX IK A JOOTUUL OF the Abysmal Aseity, the Divine Nature as invisibly distinguished from the Divine Person A lx*ur cm Ccweta, addresetd to Mr. Royal at Berlin. Thote oyster ihella acquire different properties in this respect, according to the degree of calcination, or eome other I : . . . . and yellow light; but they never shine again, aaoh with te own colour, eio^t ftwn the imma MM cofoar having no advantage over the raat Hence. I infer that the rays of the ran produce a Acorn/*** MMI In theae aldaed rakMtanoaa, in oonetquenot of which they give out the IfeAf Ihul entered into thdf fKMnpffritton. In what way are we to conceive the matter of = solar rays) to produce a decomposition or ntion of matter of li^ht i=rays chemically combined with matter not li.-h- by homo- geneous attraction, for the extrication continues after the removal of the solar rays, i.*., the utir substancea. By the motion, then, of the solar ng correspondent n the calcined si and what else is meant by vibrations? U* \vith various instruments (musical) of glass :j ! ' :?:.- i: ' -. . ' :. .:. I . i . A, The partidss of the fluid of the tail, as they are detached from thecosasi, yosusi the saaejirejaaNfa movement^ mid in the tame direction. Accordingly tht7 muat continue to follow it But if they extend very far, that b to ety, if NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, AND THE ARTS. 239 the tail become very long, the particles that proceed the furthest, continuing to move with the same velocity, but in a larger orbit, must have a less angular movement. Bode, in this very ingenious speculation, assumes the absence of any perceptible action of gravity in this more refined and uncombining sort of electric fluid. If so, how can the particles, self-projected from the comet, in the direction opposite to that in which the comet is moving, possess the same pro- jectile movement? I ask forma pauperis, not ad confutandnm. A stone thrown from a coach in full motion, I know, will follow the coach, or rather accompany it. But would a body projected from a pistol do so ? i.e., supposing the earth's gravity removed. And the tail has been measured at a hundred millions of miles ! ! What a prodigious idea an outline of motion = A extending 100,000,000 of miles, and in the direction U, while all the area included, with exception of 500 or 1000 miles, is filled by particles moving in the opposite direction X ! Query would not the perpetual evolution of the phosphorescent vapour keeping up a continuum from the evaporating disc, sunfro, to the end of the tail like smoke issuing from the stern-holes of a vessel sailing against the wind supply a less startling hypothesis? The smoke of a steam-boat for instance. The expan- sive, or, more probably, the self-projective power of the cometary vapour =p would be instead of the window. p : vapour* \w : m. An Essay on Electrical Attractions and Repulsions. By Mr. . Ibid., p. 315. We see above, that the author requires the ball of glass to NOTES WRITTEN IN A JofRNAL OF beTerythin; thii U a ncc^^ary coodiUoo for producing th rotatory and rerol ring motion, for everything made of glass in this state is moved by the slight** sleetrio action : it kindly M H were, like charcoal before the biow.pipe ; and being moved in one point, the neighbouring potato tend by affinity to carry themselYes in succession to the centre of aotirity. s the most important of all, is so expressed m to be utterly unintelligible. What does " it " mean ? and tend by affinity to carry themselves? " Does the writer mean that what tack point would do sepa- rately, but which neither (no one) m do, manifests itself in the motion of the whoU as the representative of nil ' This would be something could it be proved. XXVL On the Heat produced by Friction. By Dr. Haldat Page SI. The property of friction to derelope heat had long been known; but this (act, to deeenring of attention, had not yet been subjected to proper etaminarinn Count Rumford baring made a blunt borer turn in a braai cylinder immeraed in water, obtained from it a quantity of heat so dispropor* tknate to anything the braat could hare lost, that he thooght himself warranted to infer, that this heat could not have arisen from any condensation of the metal, but must hare been produced by the agitation of the particles communi- cated to the water, in the manner of sound A striking and beautiful s *n!*iftrt of the theory of equation, arising in the attempt to objectionise f!m m i-v inbatkotfaig t ; ;.' MOM proda ta dMk representatifes. An hypothetic fluid, or an hypothetic motion, are really the same object in the mind -in the one, we borrow the Toid bj abstracting the act NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. CHEMISTRY, AND THE ARTS. 24 I from the image, in the other by abstracting the image from the act. Analysis of the Galvanic Pile. By J. A. De Luc, Esq. F.R.S. Parti. Hid., p. 131. I dare not doubt the substantial merits of a naturalist so highly admired as De Luc is, by so competent a judge as Blumenbach. But there is a complexity in all De Luc's experiments, with a multi- plicity in his data, rendered more hopeless by the absence of ideas (or first principles) that for me amounts in the effect to positive entanglement. If he means to prove that chemismus, or the power of composition and decomposition exercised by bodies on each other, is not the same as the electrical, he is right ; and Davy carried his anticipation too far. But if De Luc meant, as he does, that the electrical power is the property of a peculiar fluid, or rather but another word for the presence of that fluid, and therefore as diverse from chemical agency as from the ponderable bodies, the properties of which are denoted thereby, and that the chemical agency is as independent of the electrical as the electrical of it. he is far astray, and deduces a falsity from a fiction. For his electrical fluid is a mere picture- word of the fancy, a short-hand hieroglyphic mark or memento of a class and series of phenomena, a generic name for a certain set of changes substituted and passed off for their common cause. Chemismus is the third and synthetic power, magnetism being the tlietic and the + and electricity the antithetic : while gal- vanism is the transition of electricity into chemismus, or the co-aduration of magnetism and electricity. As depth to length and breadth, so chemismus to E wan : or magnetism and el* to bodies wh corporific power is to matter, the continuance . same, as the reproductive and conserving power analogous to the dogma of the Theologians, thai th- presertuti 10 material world is but the rnntiim u.fr f tii'- i i- ,it.\r a. t. Theory of the Diurnal Motion of the Earth round its Asia, I im letter from Profeeeor Wood. Professor Wood supposes the stonee thai fall from the atmosphere, to be projected into it from volcano* ; and that, at the point from which they art thrown haa ita rotary velocity incnand or diminiahed, while the stones retain ipreeead on them at the time of their projection, they moat consequently reach the earth at a y eater or leai distance east or weat of the volcano. > hypothesis neitlier solves the heterogeneity of volcai onet, volcanic origin from any plui. able, and suggests their being pro*; uratmo| analogous to hail, snow re-aggrega ,- that continually efl9u?iate wherever exposed to the air and -t magnet* ' ctrically (or raU. 10 or constructive act) acct>: .e present natur-phHoiophcn, is to NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, AND THE ARTS. 243 Analysis of the Galvanic Pile. By J. A. De Luc, Esq. F.R.S. Part II. Ibid., p. 243. Must we, in the present state of our knowledge, be satisfied with electrical energies, which might be considered as essential properties of matter ? Or rather, in this very state of our knowledge, is it not already ascertained that a particular substance exists, namely, the electric fluid, which, beside the objects here in view, produces greater and more general effects on our globe ? No ! till De Luc tells what he means by a sub- stance, and how a particular substance is to be proved except by weight and vision. De Luc quotes Bacon. Pity he had not learned from him, that the notion of cause and effect belongs to logic to the arrange- ment of our thoughts, and dare not be supposed in nature, or rather cannot without contradiction in terms. And then a particular substance that exists everywhere ! (See p. 1 3 1 .) It remains clear that the utmost which De Luc's experiments prove, is that the electrical is not the same act or modification of power as the chemical, but different as A from A, or the power of % from that of 3, and this we grant on higher evidence than his experiments can afford. De Luc's predilection for subtle fluids, with his abuse of occult properties and essential powers, reminds me of Moore's anecdote. The cruelty of the mode being objected to the scheme of sweeping chimneys by dragging a goose down, the proposer replied, " Why it is rather cruel, but two ducks will do as well." Yet even this is not enough. To make it a full equivalent in absurdity, the proposer must have substituted the same goose, but tied to and R2 KOTES WBIT OF under the belly of a phcri. neveryct-seen-and-exhibited pbceou is a Cur parallel to these subtle fluids, with tjxafic each with the old goose undci The BakerUn Lecture for 1809. By Humphry Davy, Esq., Sec. R&, Ac, Experiments on the Metab from the fixed Alkalis, /Md.p.830. Mr. Rittor'i argument in favour of potaeiium and sodium being compounds of hidrogen* is their extreme lightness, Thw argument I bad in tome meeeure anticipated in my paper on the decomposition of the earths; no one is more easily .-....:; > : .: . : :.. .!..' <\ .'.:.; ' \ ';: and on the hypothesis of bidrogenation, must contain much more hidrogen ; yet, though soda is said to be lighter than potash in the proportion of IS to 17 nearly +, eodium is heavier than potassium in the proportion of 9 to 7 at least. I issingul r, since bis friend Steffens, -, had deduced the ineiallicity of soda and potash in very nearly the same proportions of metal .-I by Davy, frmn the polar theory nay, had answered by anticipation this objection to their metallic nature from the levity of the asserted bssei. Hi* ory which I have adopted, this circumstance Is what ought to be expected. Pctaatinm has a much stronger affinity for oxigen than sodium, and most condense H mneh more, and the resulting higher specific gravity of the combination is a necessary < '. . ,: . ;.. . . ' NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, AND THE ARTS. 245 Steffens would not have objected to Ritter, had he considered the two bases as metallic, no less than zinc or tin, yet as metals composed of carbon and hydrogen, the latter being the same as nitrogen, only under the state of positive electricity as nitrogen under that of -f magnetism X -f- pos. E. = H. X. -f pos. M. = N. But he would have contended that this must ever remain a speculative analysis, and the alkaline metals practically indecomponible equally with any other metal. The Bakerian Lecture for 1809. By H. Davy, Esq., Sec. R. S. (Continued from vol. xxvi., p. 339.) Vol. xxvii., p. 38. One of the queries that I advanced, in attempting to reason upon the singular phenomenon produced by the action of potassium upon ammonia, was that nitrogen might possibly consist of oxigen and hidrogen, or that it might be composed from water. For important reasons I should rather say that hydrogen is a modification of nitrogen by + E. But then it must not be forgotten that each of the four polar stuffs is composed of all, J -t and that this as their Ousia, must be dis- j c D | &c - tinguished from their after-modifications. On the Place of a Sound, produced by a Musical String. In a Letter from a Mr. John Gough. (Supplement to vol. xxx. p. 323.) This discoveiy points out a distant analogy connecting the thundering noise of a drum and the smooth sounds of a harp or lute. Smooth is not the appropriate term, I think. The 346 NOTE 09 DISEASES IK THE AR first difference is that of tlitcretf and continuous- . hut then comes another in th lattrr uhf hrurn) rix.. the want of all harmonic proportion between tbe last sound of th interval witb the renewed sound given bj tbe drum-stick t his changes the continuous into confused, while tbe tone or specific quality from tbe cavity make* it rumbling. VATIONS ON Till- DISEASES OF THE ARM \ Cbn In proportion to the coolnew of the leesoo, to the height and dryneae of tbe ground*, this fever in intermiU more freely, and reoedee further from tbe i of a continued putrid, or an ardent fever. But to judge from its woree elate, we most refer most of tbe aymptoma to a teptic origin. i 1'ringle's septic hypothesis is well worthy of :md is capable of a great cnlargemc distinction of species, t slmuM |>r>f wider and generic name necessarily narrow one of septic or \ '. There seems to me three distinct kinds, as the origin of the three genera of Fevers. I The Hydrosepttc or regeti-aqueous, originating agues, Ac., from the mild Intermittents of Es** tbe Fever of the Pontine Marshes, m uhi. h the ire of the poison prevents the reaction, or rather counteraction of the arterial system. 4lo ITU NOTE ON DISEASES IN THE AKMY. 247 2. The aero-septic, or cheraico-atmospheric Typhus and Plague, 3. Zooseptic Small-pox, and those Fevers which do not regularly recur to the same patient. The second, or aero-septic, may or may not derive its materials from animal corruption, which is then rendered poisonous by chemical combination ; but the third, or Zooseptic, is a Poison elaborated by the Life itself in the living Body, that is both its parent and its birth-place. Hence its greater affinity with the living Principle, and the fact, that it can be as it were familiarised and domesticated with the living Principle, as in the majority of inoculated variolous cases, with so little disturbance of the organs, and the Organic Functions. To these may be added, perhaps, the disputed Synocha, or pure inflammatory Fever from undue excitement of the Arteriality, or the Irritable system, from excessive exercise of the muscles, and respiratory organs, as in harvesting, running races, and so forth ; though it is to be expected, that if not removed by depletion, abstraction of Heat, et similibus, it will soon affect the other systems, and only in the earlier stages therefore exist and appear as pure inflammatory Fever. Thus, then, we should have four kinds of Fever, which may likewise be named in reference to the systems attacked, or the primary seats and objects of the disease. 1 . The Synocha or the Fever of Irritability. 2. The Remittent and Intermittent, from injury and disturbance of the skin and reproductive system, and the reactions set up by Nature to counterpoise this, and restore the balance of the Powers. 3. The Nervous, &c., Typhus, and Typhoid Fevers. 4. Affection of the Life or vital Principle, as the NOTE WRITTEN III QUARTERLY JOCRKAL, 1 Hoot, Unity, or Band of iho three constituent Powers, and jet subsisting ifiiranJfr Power, and under certain conditions ustances capable of being affected .* while neither the Systems nor the Organs > they are severally predominant, are aiTected, eitfsr functionally: or so slightly, at I** to bear no iTectioii or Change the Life or Yii.il Principle is undergoing. May 8IA, 1821. .VOTE WRITTKN IN THB QUART Kill. Y OF K KANDS VoLL1818 19. P. 89. Ucoffroi St Hilaire on the Opertrolum of Rahes. Nature constantly employs the name materials, and only .lUpUys her ingenuity in varying their form*. An if, in fa*, ahe had been confined to certain primary data, w see her alwajs bringing forward the same element*, in the samo number, under Ihe same circumstance*, and with the same oooDtiioBs. If one organ is found of an extraordinary tse, the neighbouring jiartjar lees dereloped; y el each of them janotthelesi preeerr^ although In A degree so minute as frequently to render them almost mil em They become eo if , -.j- M| >^l. * k ! anaai m . ^ -_ . y i . ! .: .:> :..-:..'.-;: crmenenoe of the general plan. the simplest living organism, ex. yr. the I powers of Life are potentially con- tained in the lowest ; but as productive power cannot be w uiuct, we must presume, even in the of energy, a correspondent minimum of NOTES ON DONNE'S POEMS. 249 Product and a production bearing the character of potentiality, answering to the potential state of the productivity viz., of no or obscure use to the animal, yet prophetic of an important function in some higher genus or species or again historic of a by-gone use. NOTES ON DONNE'S POEMS * Versification of Donne. ^ad Dryden, Pope, &c., you need only count syllables ; but to read Donne you must measure , and discover the Time of each word by the ^ense of Passion. Doubtless, all the copies I have ever seen of Donne's Poems are grievously misprinted. Wonder- ful that they are not more so, considering that not one in a thousand of his readers have any notion how his lines are to be read. To the many, five out of six appear anti-metrical. How greatly this aided the compositor's negligence or ignorance, and pre- vented the corrector's remedy, any man may ascer- tain by examining the earliest editions of blank verse plays, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, &c. Now Donne's rhythm was as inexplicable to the many as blank verse, spite of his rhymes ergo, as blank verse, misprinted. I am convinced that where no mode of rational declamation by pause, hurrying of voice, or apt and sometimes double emphasis, can at once make the verse metrical and bring out the sense of passion more prominently, that there we are entitled to alter the text, when it can be done by * Communicated by Mr. George T. Strong, of New York. NOIKS ON I.ONM'S omission, or addition of thA. and. and auch M small deer ; " or by mare new placing of the same word* I would venture nothing beyond. The Triple Fool. Vr. 15. And by delighUng many. OrUf which VMM did retrain. A good instance how Donne read hia own verses, We should write. " The grief, verse did restrain ; " i-^lily emphasised the two main worda, --. and therefore, made each the first syllable of a trochee or dactyl : "Oriftf. which | vine did ri | bain." * And w* join to ' t oftr itrtngth, And w U*ch It art ind length."- The anapeat judiciously used, in the eagerneaa and haste to confirm and aggrav , - U>autiful and perfect poem proves hy ita title 6 OK I.iriTKIJS < <>N< KKNIV, MINI-* At the time in which these letters were written, the haul ton philotopkitpu was ascendant, according to Pin to. Aristotle, and the rest of the ante-anti, who wrote before John Locke had thrown ihe/irif ray of on the nature of the human mind, and the true sources of all our ideas, were mere dreamers or word- '*rs. Tet still there were many of a better mould, who, retaining their love and veneration of the ancients, were anxious to combine it with the new orthodoxy by explaining Aristotle, and even Plato. down into John Locke. Such was that excellent man and genuine classic scholar, the poet Gray. Others there were Petvin appears to have been one of the number who, if they did not love the ancients more than the former class, understood them better, and yet wanted either will or courage to oppose the reigning dynasty. These men attempted to reconcile the old with the new authority by a double operation, now, like the former class, lowering down . and Aristotle to John Locke ; and now pu! Locko up to Plato and Aristotle. The result was, now a confusion in their own thoughts, and an incon- sistency in their several positions; now, and more frequently, an expression of the truth accu- rate, and inappropriate terms. Hut the general effect, a nearly universal neglect of metaphysics i of Cnl NOTES ON LETTERS CONCERNING MIND. '^63 altogether, and the substitution of a shallow semi- mechanical psychology, under the pretended law (but, in fact, no more than a vague generalisation) of association, in which a mode of causation is made the ground of cause, and explanation of causation itself. But the whole scheme of Locke is an Heterozetesis, by which the sun, rain, air, soil, &'c., are made to constitute the germs (as of wheat, oats, or rye) of the growth and manifestation, of which they are the effi- cient conditions. Instead of the words give, convey, and the like, wherever they occur, read excite, awaken, bring into consciousness, or words equivalent, and little will remain in Locke's Essay to be complained of but its dulness and superficiality its putting up of straw men to knock them down again in short, the making a fuss about nothing, and gravely con- futing nonsense which no man ever had asserted, and which, indeed, no man ever could believe ex. gr., (as Descartes says to the Jesuit Voetius, who had assailed him in the true Locke style, though before Locke's Essay) that men saw before they saw heard before they heard, and the like. S. T. Coleridge, Oxford, October 14, 1820, Saturday afternoon. The things that have been and shall be, have respect, as we said before, to present, past, and future. These, likewise, that now are, have, moreover, place ; that, for instance, which. is here, that which is to the west, that which is to the east. Pray did Petvin's love to his wife stand north-east or south-west of his esteem for his friend ? But here P. was misled by Aristotle, who has erroneously placed the ubi among the categories of the pure understanding. XOTE8 OX LCTTKKS CONCEBXIN.. v 'tits mistaken notion ... that has made UM imiiMdiataiy a Dtifr by bk idaa. Bj the moderns, the author can hare meant Descartes only, though the same notion occu Anselm and the anti-scholastic theologians. I am .in thinking it a mistaken attempt; nor baa H distinction of existence aa the position of .ttt.tr ',{,-. t,.,m attribute*, convinced me. The argument is briefly this : The absolute equi- distance of the radii from the centre of a circle is a necessary truth of reason, because it is contained in the theorem, or necessary contemplation of our \\hich is one with our reason itself. Even so is the existence of God a necessary truth of the reason, t'-.r it is contained in the necessary idea of God, which is one with reason itself. The only difference is. t < circle the reason creates a correspondent to the truth by an act of the pure nation, \\\ the other it doea and may not imagine i though the imagination is so prone* to do [so] own accord, that almost all the world are more H8 idolaters. Truth + Good = Wisdom. .tli + Love of Good = Philosophy, tophy is the wisdom of Love, aa well aa the lore Wiadosj He that knows how to porm truth in the way of induction, in the ways of *ynthiui and analyst* . . . & a Go i Hen the 6m shrewd knave I met 265 NOTES WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES AND MARGINS OF A COPY OF JOHN REYNOLDS'S " GOD'S REVENGE AGAINST MURTHER." * It is exceedingly entertaining to observe how absolutely and integrally J. Keynolds's heart and soul are swallowed up in the notion " murder," and in all other crimes only so far as they lead to murder. The most execrable wretch, about to be murdered, becomes " poor, innocent man," " worthy, harmless gentleman," &c., and the most heroic character, as that of chaste Perina, " execrable bloody lady," as soon as she forms the thought of punishing the horrible crimes to herself, and her poisoned lord and husband, and his mother, in the old monster who had perpetrated them. And then his never for a moment, nor for half a sentence, relaxing or elanguescing from the height and high top-gallant of sensibility and im- passioned moralising upon all and every act however often repeated, from p. 1 to p. 986 so flatly delicious so deliciously flat ! I like John Reynolds. P.S. Almost every tale in this folio is maimed, as a tale, through its being catastrophied by torture, and yet so totus in illis is J. R,., that it seems never once to have suggested itself to his mind though he was an Englishman, that the same horrible agonies which overpowered the guilty, spite of all their interests and strongest predetermination, would equally empower the innocent nay more so for the innocent and guilty would be the same in preferring death to such tortures, or else the guilty would not * Folio. 266 XOTES OX "OOD'S RBTEKOB AGAINST MUBXBKE." hare confessed, and the former would have hopes in another world which the latter would not have. But no snob notion occurred to the honest murthero- maniacal John Reynolds. And then the judges they are such glorious ahstnots one and a omnisciencj, iucorruptil-ilny. and firmness. They are not judges, but justice and judgment But the beauties of this work are endless. There is some- thing half celestial in that infantine combination of intense feeling with the rulgarest truisms, the merest mouldy scraps of generalising morality. "It is an excel! -y to grow from virtue to virtue, and a fatal misery to run from vice to rice. Love and chanty are always the sure marks of a Christian, and malice and revenge,*' Ac. Ac. The nicest feeling is that concerning duels* which verbally be always condemns as loss both of body and soul, of course, as leading to the same hell as murder bat yet this is all matter of course. In the author's feelings, as shown in the event of his stories, the duels are always innocent or virtuous. Oh, what a beautiful concordat (litcordantiuin is an unthinking, good- hearted man's soul ! hrough all these tales, and in the writings I 1 Sidney and many others, that the natural antipathy (as has been supposed) of to French- men had not commenced. E contra, our writ* general speak of the French with a manifest predilec* ; king] of all other nations we had the feeling of the great Commonwealth of Christendom predominant A king is a king, sacred though an enemy, a nobleman always a nobleman, the ranks common to all as yet outweighed the differences by which country was distinguished from country. ' NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE'S " RELIGIO MEDICI." 267 them the emphasis was laid on the last word, as with us on the first, in the phrase " French nobleman." There is something very amusing in this writer's sudden change of feeling as soon as a villain, a monster, or even a murderer himself, is about to be murdered. And the levis macula on the conscience, when these murders are effected by duels, however unfair and savage, is curious as a proof how much of what superstition calls conscience is mere love of reputation, character, admission into accustomed society, &c. Hence the utility of penal laws, death, [&c.J not so much as deterring to the crime when tempted to it, but as by prior blind horror precluding the temptation to the very thought. O Mr. Clarkson and Co., think how much of the guilt of murder, &c., in men's consciences originates in the gallows and the Newgate Calendar! NOTES ON SIE THOMAS BEOWNE'S EELIGIO MEDICI." 1802.* Strong feeling and an active intellect conjoined, lead almost necessarily, in the first stage of philoso- phising, to Spinozism. Sir T. Browne was a Spinozist without knowing it. If I have not quite all the faith that the author of the Religio Medici possessed, I have all the incli- nation to it ; it gives me pleasure to believe. The postscript at the very end of the book is well * Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth. ED. KS on SIB T. BROWNE'S RELJOIO MM.. worth reading. Sir K. Digby's observations, however, are those of a pedai >wn system and opinion. He ought to hate considered the H. M. in a dramatic, a metaphysical. view, as a sweet exhibition of character and passion, and not aa an eiprearioo, r investigation. of positive troth. The U. M. is a fine portrait of a handsome man in his best clothes ; it ;> much of what he was at all times, a good deal of what he was only in his best moments. 1 have never read a book in which I f. It greater similarity to my own mske of mind active in inquiry, and yet an appetite to believe in short sn affectionate visionary ! But thm I should tell a different tale of my own heart ; for I mould n lias swallowed for a Cact. Part IL 8*Jt 2. I give no alms to aatufjr the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and oommand of my Ood. We ought not to reliete a poor man merely because AH feelings impel us, but because these feelings are just and proper feelings. My feelings might impel me to revenge with the same forte with which they urge me to charily. I must therefore have soon by which I may judge my feelings, and this n God's will. NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE'S " RELIGIO MEDICI." 271 lUd. Sect. 5, 6. I never yet cast a true affection on a woman ; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God. We cannot love a friend as a woman ; but we may love a woman as a friend. Friendship satisfies the highest parts of our nature ; but a wife, who is capable of friendship, satisfies all. The great busi- ness of real unostentatious virtue is--not to eradicate any genuine instinct or appetite of human nature ; but to establish a concord and unity betwixt all parts of our nature, to give a feeling and a passion to our purer intellect, and to intellectualise our feelings and passions. This a happy marriage, blest with children, effectuates in the highest degree of which our nature is capable, and is therefore chosen by St. Paul as the symbol of the union of the church with Christ ; that is, of the souls of all good men with God. " I scarcely distinguish," said once a good old man, " the wife of my old age from the wife of my youth ; for when we were both young, and she was beautiful, for once that I caressed her with a meaner passion, I caressed her a thousand times with love and these caresses still remain to us. " Besides, there is another reason why friendship is of somewhat less value than love, which includes friendship, it is this we may love many persons, all very dearly ; but we cannot love many persons all equally dearly. There will be differences, there will be gradations. But our nature imperiously asks a summit, a resting-place ; it is with the affections in love as with the reason in religion, we cannot diffuse and equalise ; we must have a supreme, a one, the highest. What is more common than to say of a man in love, " he idolises her," " he makes a god of her?" Now, in order that a person should continue to love another better than all others, NOTES OK SIR T. BROWHIS " REI I it seems necessary that this feeling should be reci- procal. I r if it be not so, sympathy is broken off in the very highest us will say hj way of illustration) loves B. above all oth* fullest sense of the wonl above all ..tli. T-. .fore, A does not sympathise with H. in this most important feeling ; and then his love must necessarily be incomplete, and accompanied with a craving after something thru i* n.-t. and yet might be ; or he does sympathise with H. in loving C. above all others and then, of course, he loves 0. better than B. Now it is selfishness, at least it seems so to me, to desire that your friend should love yon better than all others but not to wish that a wife should. Ibid. Sect 6. Another misery there is in affection, that whom we truly love like ourselves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their bees;* and H is no wonder : y are ourselroB, and our affection makes their looks our own. A thought I have often had, and once expressed it in almost the same language. The fact is c the explanation here given is very unsatis- factory. For why do we never have an image of our own faces an image of fancy, 1 memo ? /bid. Sect. 7 I can hold there is no such thing as injury; that if there be, there is no snch injury ss revenge, and no wich revenge ss the contempt of ai. that to baU another, is to ek other. Wt NOTES ON STK T. BROWNE'S " RELIGIO MEDICI." 273 malign himself, and that the truest way to love another is to despise ourselves. I thank God that I can, with a full and unfeigning heart, utter Amen to this passage. Ibid. Sect. 10. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by itself, which is not truly one ; and such is only God. Reciprocity is that which alone gives stability to love. It is not mere selfishness that impels all kind natures to desire that there should be some one human being, to whom they are most dear. It is because they wish some one being to exist, who shall be the resting-place and summit of their love ; and this in human nature is not possible, unless the two affections coincide. The reason is, that the object of the highest love will not otherwise be the same in both parties. Ibid. Sect. 11. I thank God for my happy dreams, &c. I am quite different from Sir T. B. in this ; for all, or almost all, the painful and fearful thoughts that I know, are in my dreams ; so much so, that when I am wounded by a friend, or receive an unpleasant letter, it throws me into a state very nearly resembling that of a dream. Ibid. Sect. 13. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without any poverty, take away the object of our charity, not only not understanding the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecies of Christ. 0, for shame ! for shame ! Is there no fit object XOTES OX SIR T. UROWXE S " BKLIUIO MEDl .ntv t.ut abject poverty? And what tort of a i*t that be which wishes misery in order .t may have the credit of relieving a small part pulling down the comfortable cottages of independent in JiMry to t.uild alms-houses oat of the * book paints certain parts of my moral and ctual being, (the best parts, no doubt,) better than any other book I have ever met with ; and the style i* throughout delicious. IS ON SIB THOMAS BROWNE'S RELIG1O MADS DURI50 A SBCOXD PERUSAL 1801* Part I. Sect 1. For my religion, though there be several di niiinsHniBSS that might penwade the world I have none at all, ii*ians. about the close of the second fragment from the writings of the r has been presented by Photius, and such as I leave a painful regret for the loss of the work. had not the invaluable work of Sextos ! been still extant NOTES ON SIR T BROWNED " RELIGIO MEDICI." 275 Ibid. Sect. 7. A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise, but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c. Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature it belongs to a private aspiration ; and being con- ditional, like all religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish, an act of natural piety sublimed by Christian hope, that shares in the light, and meets the di- verging rays, of faith, though it be not contained in the focus. Ibid. Sect. 13. He holds no counsell, but that mysticall one of the Trinity, wherein, though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction, &c. Sir T. B. is very amusing. He confesses his part heresies, which are mere opinions, while his ortho- doxy is full of heretical errors. His Trinity is a mere trefoil, a 3 = 1, which is no mystery at all, but a common object of the senses. The mystery is, that one is three, that is, each being the whole God. Ibid. Sect. 18. 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables, &c. But a great profanation, methinks, and a no less T 2 276 NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE 8 " REUG1O absurdity. Would Sir T. Brown, before weighing two pigs of lead, A. and B. pray to God that A. might weigh the heavier f the result of the dice be at the time equally believed to be a settled and predetermined effect, where lies the difference? I apply against all petitionary prayer ? St. Paul's injunction involves the answer: Pray nj$. Ihid. Sect. 22. They who to salve this would make the deluge particular, proceed upon a principle that I can no way grant, Ac, But according to the Scripture, the deluge was so gentle as to leave uncrushed the green leaves olive tree. If, then, it was universal, and if (as with the longevity of the antediluvians it must have been) the earth was fully peopled, is it not strange that no buildings remain in the since then uninhabited parts in America for instance ? That no human skeletons are found may be solved from UK cumstance of the large proportion of phosphoric in human bones. But cities and traces of itinn. 1 I do not know what t mless we might be allowed to consider Noah a homo rqnw* untatiru*. or the last and nearest of a series taken for the whole. /Net. Sect 33. They that to refute the invocation of saints, have denied 1 icy have any knowledge of our affairs below, have pro- ceeded too Jarre, and must pardon my opinion, till I can thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture, At tkt K* rqoyce. Take any moral or religious book, and, instead of NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE'S " RELIGIO MEDICI." 277 understanding each sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a metaphysical verity, or historical fact : what a strange medley of doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are constantly in the habit of treating the books of the New Testament. Ibid. Sect. 34. And, truely, for the first chapters of Genesis I must con- fesse a great deal of obscurity ; though divines have to the power of humane reason endeavoured to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those allegorical interpretations are also probable, and perhaps, the mysticall method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphicall schooles of the Egyptians. The second chapter of Genesis from v. 4, and the third chapter are to my mind, as evidently symbolical, as the first chapter is literal. The first chapter is manifestly by Moses himself; but the second and third seem to me of far higher antiquity, and have the air of being translated into words from graven stones. Ibid. Sect. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms. Ibid. Sect. 49. Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyp- tians, committed a grosse absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his maker, that is, truth itself, to a contradiction. Bear in mind the Jehovah Logos, the e O 278 XOTEM ON SIB T. BBOWIUt's " RKLIGIO MEM tforpof the person ad rjrfm, and few m the Old Testament are more instructive, or of profoundcr import. Overlook Una, or d* and none so perplexing or so irreconcilabh the known character of the inspired wr HtfL8ssiML that myfticall metal! of grid, who* aolary and eels* Uall nature I admire, Ac. Rather anti-solar and terrene nature ! For gold, most of all metals, repelleth light, and resisted) that power and portion of the common air, which of nil jtonderahle bodies is most akin to light, and its surrogate in the realm of dmi* the bettailo of Letrantfti pession Mt rtattm a$ai** fail*, faith agaiiut the deril, and my < against all. It may appear whimsical, bri 1 really feel an impatient regret, that this good man had so miscon- cei?ed the nature both of faith and reason as to affirm their contrariety to each other. my originate sin, I hold it to bee washed away in my baptisme; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God. but from my last repentance, &c. > is most true as far as the imputation of the same is concerned. For where the means of nig its consequences have been afforded, each transgression is actual, by a neglect of those means. . Baoi H. Ood, being all goodneese, can lore nothing but himself; he loves us but for that part which H as it were, himeelfe, . trsduction of his Holy Spirit H recalls a sublime thought of Spinoza, . true virtue ia a pan of that love, with which loveth himself. 281 NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BEOWNE'S GAEDEN OF CYEUS, OR THE QUINCUNCIAL, ETC., PLANTATIONS OF THE ANCIENTS, ETC. Chap. iii. That bodies are first spirits, Paracelsus could affirm, &c. Effects purely relative from properties merely comparative, such as edge, point, grater, &c., are not proper qualities : for they are indifferently producible ab extra, by grinding, &c., and ab intra, from growth. In the latter instance, they suppose qualities as their antecedents. Now, therefore, since qualities cannot proceed from quantity, but quantity from quality, and as matter opposed to spirit is shape by modifi- cation of extension, or pure quantity, Paracelsus 's dictum is defensible. Ibid. The sequivocall production of things, under undiscerned principles, makes a large part of generation, &c. Written before Harvey's ab ovo omnia. Since his work, and Leuwenhoek's Microscopium, the question is settled in physics ; but whether in metaphysics, is not quite so clear. Chap. iv. And mint growing in glasses of water, until it arriveth at 382 NOTES OK 81H T. BROWXES " GARDEN Of CTRUS." the weight of MI ounce, in a ahady place, will exhaust a pound of wafer. v much did Browne allow for evaporation ? Things entering upon the intellect b y a pyramid from without, and thenee into the memory by another from within, the common dedication being in UK ,** This nearly resembles Kant's intellectual m*km nt-fii, . The Platonists held three knowledge! of God; first, Tro/xTvo-to, bis own incommunicable self- comprehension; second, icora roipru* by pare mind, unmixed with the sensuous; third, ar* v/ir/r by discursire intelligential act That a Greek philosopher: rovs ivumipoviKovt Arfyovt pvOovs ^yijcrrrai crvwiJa-a ry varpi ical so notions of God which we attain by processes he soul will consider as mythological allegories, when it exists in union with the Father, and is feasting with him in the truth of very being, and in the pure, unmixed, absolutely simple and ele- mentary, splendour. Thus expound Kxod T. 10. And he taut, thou can* not * my fact : for tktr* tkall no man a* m*, and fir*. By the " face of Moses meant the Ma roijnjrif, which declared incompatible implying < % 7ra?; T< or contact with the pars spirit. 283 NOTES ON SIE THOMAS BEOWNE'S VULGAR EEEOES. Address to the Eeader. DE. PKIMROSE, Is not this the same person as the physician mentioned by Mrs. Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband ? Book I. Chap. viii. Sect. 1. The veracity and credibility of Herodotus have increased and increase with the increase of our dis- coveries. Several of his relations deemed fabulous, have been authenticated within the last thirty years from this present 1808. Ibid. Sect. 2. Sir John Mandevill left a book of travels : herein he often attesteth the fabulous relations of Ctesias. Many, if not most, of these Ctesian fables in Sir J. Mandevill were monkish interpolations. Ibid. Sect. 13. Cardanus is of singular use unto a prudent reader ; but unto him that only desireth hoties, or to replenish his head with varieties, he may become no small occasion of error. Hoties ones " whatevers," that is, whatever ig written, no matter what, true or false, omniana ; 284 KOTO OX SIB T. I1ROWXE 8 " VULGAR ERRORS." " all sorts of varieties," as a dear young ladj once said to me. /ML Chap.ii. If Henclitus with hU adharviU will hold the mo is no bigger than it mppe*rth. It is not improbable that Heraclitus meant merely to imply that we perceive only our own sensations, and they of coarse are what they are ; that the image of the sun is an appearance, or sensation in our eyes, and, of course, an appearance can be neither more nor less than what it appears to be ; that the notion of the true size of the sun is not an image, or belonging either to the sense, or to the sensuous fancy, but is an imageless truth of the understanding obtained by intellectual deductions. uld not possibly mean what Sir T. B. supposes him to have meant ; for if he had believed the sun to be no more than a mile distant from us, every tree and house must have shown its absurd lie following books I have endeavoured, what- ever the author himself is in a vulgar error, as far as my knowledge extends, to give in the margin, either the demonstrated discoveries, or more probable >ns, of the present natural philosophy : so that, independently of the entartainingness of the thoughts and tales, and the force and splendour of i bomas Browne's diction and manner, you may at once learn from him the history of human fancies and superstitions, both when he detects them, and when he hims . them. and from my notes, the real tmt ;, or, at least, the highest degree of probability, at which human research has hitherto arrived. NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE'S " VULGAR ERRORS." 285 Book II. Chap. i. Production of crystal. Cold is the attractive or astringent power, comparatively uncounteracted by the dilative, the diminution of which is the pro- portional increase of the contractive. Hence the astringent, or power of negative magnetism, is the proper agent in cold, and the contractive, or oxygen, an allied and consequential power. Crystallum, non ex aqua, sed ex substantia metallorum communi con- frigeratum dico. As the equator, or mid point of the equatorial hemispherical line, is to the centre, so water is to gold. Hydrogen is to the electrical azote, as azote to the magnetic hydrogen. Ibid. Crystal will strike fire and upon collision with steel send forth its sparks, not much inferiourly to a flint. It being, indeed, nothing else but pure flint. Ibid. Chap. iii. And the magick thereof (the lodestone) is not safely to be believed, which was delivered by Orpheus, that sprinkled with water it will upon a question emit a voice not much unlike an infant. That is : to the twin counterforces of the mag- netic power, the equilibrium of which is revealed in magnetic iron, as the substantial, add the twin coun- terforces or positive and negative poles of the electrical power, the indifference of which is realised in water, as the superficial (whence Orpheus employed the term * sprinkled,' or rather affused or supervised) and you will hear the voice of infant nature ; that 280 NOTES OK 81 R T. BROWVE** " TULOAB KRBORS." is, you will understand the rudiment*! products and elementary powers and constructions of the pheno- menal world. An enigma this not tmworti Orpheus, qnicunqu*fuit, and therefore not improbably ascribed to him. N.B. NegaUro and positive mag. netisra are to attraction and repulsion, or cohesion and dispersion, as negative and positive electricity are to contraction and dilation. Chap. vii.Soct.4. That cemphire beget* in mB Tjr dif,il.rir, observation will hardly confirm, &c. There is no doubt of the fact as to a temporary eflect ; and cam phi re is therefore a strong and imme- diate antidote to an overdose of cantkaridt*. there are, doubtless, sorts and cases of 6 might relieve. Opium is occasionally an aphrodisiac, but far of toner the contrary. The same is true of bang, or powdered hemp leaves, and, I suppose, of the whole tribe of narcotic stimulants. IbuL Chap. viL Sect 8. The yew and the berries thereof are harmless, we know. The berries are harmless, but the leaves of the yew are undoubtedly poisonous. See Withering's Plant*. Book III. Chap, xiil althoofh tapidariea and 1**~y enqiiirtw affirm it, Ac. 44 Questuary H having gain or money for their object. NOTES ON SIB T. BROWNE 's "VULGAR ERRORS." 287 Book VI. Chap. viii. The river Gihon, a branch of Euphrates and river of Paradise. The rivers from Eden were, perhaps, meant to symbolise, or rather expressed only, the great primary races of mankind. Sir T. B. was the very man to have seen this ; but the superstition of the letter was then culminant. Ibid. Chap. x. The chymists have laudably reduced their causes (of colors) unto sal, sulphur, and mercury, &c. Even now, after all the brilliant discoveries from Scheele, Priestley, and Cavendish, to Berzelius and Davy, no improvement has been made in this division, not of primary bodies (those idols of the modern atomic chemistry), but of causes, as Sir T. B. rightly expresses them, that is, of elementary powers mani- fested in bodies. Let mercury stand for the bi-polar metallic principle, best imaged as a line or axis from north to south, the north or negative pole being the cohesive or coherentific force, and the south or posi- tive pole being the dispersive or incoherentific force : the first is predominant in, and therefore represented by, carbon, the second by nitrogen ; and the series of metals are the primary and, hence, indecomponible syntheta and proportions of both. In like manner, sulphur represents the active and passive principle of fire : the contractive force, or negative electricity oxygen produces flame ; and the dilative force, or positive electricity hydrogen produces warmth. And lastly, salt is the equilibrium or compound of the two former. So taken, salt, sulphur, and mercury 288 VOTES OK SIR T. BBOWXB*S " TULOA1 are equivalent to the combustive, the combustible, and the combust, under one or other of which all known bodies, or ponderable substances, may be classed and distinguished* The difference between a great mind sand a I i * use of history is this. The latter would consider, for instance, what Luther did, uupht, or sanctioned : the former, what Luther, a Luii would now do, teach, and sanction. This thought occurred to me at midnight, Tuesday, the 1 6th of March, 18*24. as I was stepj lied, my eye baring glanced on Luther's Table Talk. \ ou would be well with a great mind, leave him vMth a favourable impression of you: if with a littl in '.ml, leave him with a favourable opinion of himself. s not common to find a book of so early date as this (1658), at least among those of equal neatness of printing, that contains so many gross typographical errors ; with the exception of our earliest dramatic writers, some of which appear to have been nerer corrected, but worked off at once as the types were first arranged by the compositor*. Hut the grate and doctrinal works are, in general, ycceedingly correct, and form a striking contrast to modern pub- lications, of which the late edition of Bacon s Works would be paramount in the infamy of multiplied liced errata, were it the unrivalled slovenliness of Anderson's British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the pages, un.l many of them perverting the sense, or k the whole beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low. instead. These are the i execrable of all typographical errors. 1808. NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE'S "VULGAR ERRORS." 289 (The volume from which the foregoing notes have been taken, is inscribed in Mr. Lamb's writing 4 C. Lamb, 9th March, 1804. Bought for S. T. Coleridge.' Under which in Mr. Coleridge's hand is written * N. B. It was on the 10th ; on which day I dined and punched at Lamb's, and exulted in the having procured the Hydriotaphia, and all the rest lucro apposita. S. T. C.' That same night, the volume was devoted as a gift to a dear friend in the following letter. Ed.) March IQtk, 1804. Saturday night, 12 o'clock. MY DEAR , Sir Thomas Browne is among my first favorites, rich in various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imaginative ; often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though doubtless too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic : thus I might without admixture of falsehood, describe Sir T. Browne, and my description would have only this fault, that it would be equally, or almost equally, applicable to half a dozen other writers, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and what he has more than all this peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to my own mind in some measure by saying, that he is a quiet and sublime enthusiast with a strong tinge of the fantast, the humourist constantly mingling with, arid flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in his head which is all the more interesting for a little twist in the brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Montaigne, but from no other than 990 NOTES ON SIR T. BROWSES " VULGAR ERRORS.** !!: |S* lal to Unh ; Montaigne is too often a mars ^W"g gossip, a chit-chat story of whims and peculiarities that load to nothing. but which in : iiomas Browne is alwajs the result of a feeling bean conjoined with a mind of active curio*; the natural and becoming egotism of a man, who. loving other men as himself, gains the habit, and the privilege of talking about himself as (ami as about other men. Fond of the curious and a oddities and strangenesses, while he con- ceived himself, with quaint and humourous pi a useful in.jum T mi., physical truth and funda- mental science, he loved to contemplate and discuss his own thoughts and feelings, because be found by comparison with other men's, that they too were cariosities, and so with a perfectly graceful and 4 ease he put them too into his museum and cabinet of van y truth he was not mis- taken : so completely does he see everything in a li^'lu of his own, reading nature neither by son, moon, nor camll. it by the light of the faery around his own head ; so that you might say that nature had granted to him in per]* tuity a patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his Hydrio* i above all : and in addition to the pecul: the exclusive Sir Thomas-Browne-ness of all fancies and modes of illustration, wonder at and admire his entireness in every subject, which is before him be is tofiu in tlfa; he follows it; be never wanders from it. and be has no occasion to wander; for *h pens to be his subject, he meta- hoses all nature into it In ti.v reatise on some Urns dug u : lk how earthy, bow redolent of graves and sepulchres is every Ifa '. have now dark mould, now a thigh- NOTES ON SIR T. BROWNE'S "VULGAR ERRORS." '291 bone, now a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin ! a fragment of an old tombstone with moss in its hie jacet ; a ghost or a winding-sheet or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind ; and the gayest thing you shall meet with shall be a silver nail or gilt Anno Domini from a perished coffin top. The very same remark applies in the same force to the interesting, though the far less interesting, Treatise on the Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients. There is the same attention to oddities, to the remoteness and minutice of vegetable terms, the same entireness of subject. You have quin- cunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth ; quin- cunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. beginning with the words ' More consider- ables,' &c. But it is time for me to be in bed, in the words of Sir Thomas, which will serve you, my dear, as a fair specimen of his manner. ' But the quincunx of heaven (the Hyades or five stars about the horizon at midnight at that time) runs low, and 'tis time we close the five ports of knowledge : we are unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth prsecogitations, making tables of cobwebbes, and wildernesses of handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.' Think you, my dear Friend, that there ever was such a reason given before for going to bed at midnight ; to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes ! u 2 XOTES OX SIR T. HBOWXE't M VULGAR Ai.-i then * the huntsmen art orira ' What >! Doea the whimsical knight gire us thus a dish of strong green tea. and call lit that you are quietly aaleep And that all tho ttaim hang bright abovt joor dwUsa^ SQeat M tho* they watched the iliiyiaf * L y. ooi OMNIANA. OMNIANA. THE FRENCH DECADE. I HAVE nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists, as far as they are personally concerned in this substitution of every tenth ; for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered ; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood . between France and the other members of Christen- dom ; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanising repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow-labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and members of the church of England, inveigh against this change as a blasphemous contempt of the fourth command- ment, I pause, and before I can assent to the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare my mind to include in the same sentence, at least as far as theory goes, the names of several among the most revered reformers of Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I will begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the Church of England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the year 1583. This meek and MVIV enlightened, no less than zealous and orthodox, first instance ? Alas ! the policy of the maxim is on a level with its honesty. The Philistines had pi. the eyes of Samson, and thus, as they thought, fitted him 10 drudge and grind Among the alavw and MM. h U comimdsa, At food for nothing !, no bt*r Mrvkw : But his darkness added to his fury without din iiis strength, and the very pillars of the temple of oppression OMNI ANA. 299 With horrible convulsion, to and fro, He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew The whole roof after them with burst of thunder, Upon the heads of all who sat beneath : Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests, Their choice nobility. The error might be less unpardonable with a statesman of the Continent ; but with Englishmen, who have Ireland in one direction, and Scotland in another; the one in ignorance, sloth, and rebel- lion, in the other general information, industry, and loyalty, verily it is not error merely, but infa- tuation. PICTURESQUE WORDS. Who is ignorant of Homer's Yet in some Greek manuscript hexameters I have met with a compound epithet, which may compare with it for the prize of excellence in flashing on the mental eye a complete image. It is an epithet of the brutified archangel, and forms the latter half of the verse : Ye youthful bards ! compare this word with its literal translation, " tail-horn-hoofed Satan," and be shy of compound epithets, the components of which are indebted for their union exclusively to the printer's hyphen. Henry More, indeed, would have naturalised the word without hesitation, and cerco- ceronychous would have shared the astonishment of the English reader in the glossary to his Song of the Soul with Achronycul, Anaisthsesie, &c., &c. TOLERATION. The state, with respect to the different sects of 300 OMKIAXA. religion under its protection, should resemble a well drawn portrait Let there be half a score individuals looking at it, every one sees its eyes and its benignant smile directed towards himself. The Cramer of preventive laws, no less than private tutors and school- masters, should remember, th readiest way to make either mind or body grow awry, is by lacing it too tight. WAS. It would have proved a striking part of a vision presented to Adam the day after the death of Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a million of men crowded together in the space of a square mile. When the first father had exhausted his wonder on the multitude of his offspring, he would then naturally re of his angelic instructor, for what purposes so vast a ie had assembled ? what is the common end? Alas! to murder each other, all Cains, and yet no Abels! Parodies on new poems are read as satires ; on old ones, the soliloquy of Hamlet for instance as compliments. A man of genius may securely laugh at a mode of attack by which his reviU r. m half a century or less, becomes his eneomisst. M. Dunns. Among the extravagancies of faith which have characterised many infidel writers, who would swallow a whale to avoid believing that a whale swallowed Jonas, a high rank should be given to Dupuis, who, at the commencement of the French Revolution, OMNIANA. 301 published a work in twelve volumes, octavo, in order to prove that Jesus Christ was the sun, and all Christians, worshippers of Mithra. His arguments, if arguments they can be called, consist chiefly of metaphors quoted from the Fathers. What irre- sistible conviction would not the following passage from South 's Sermons (vol. v. p. 165) have flashed on his fancy, had it occurred in the writings of Origen or Tertullian ! and how complete a confutation of all his grounds does not the passage afford to those humble souls, who, gifted with common sense alone, can boast of no additional light received through a crack in their upper apartments : Christ, the great sun of righteousness and Saviour of the world, having by a glorious rising, after a red and bloody setting, proclaimed his deity to men and angels ; and by a complete triumph over the two grand enemies of mankind, sin and death, set up the everlasting gospel in the room of all false religions, has now changed the Persian superstition into the Christian doctrine, and without the least approach to the idolatry of the former, made it henceforward the duty of all nations, Jews and Gentiles, to worship the rising sun. This one passage outblazes the whole host of Dupuis' evidences and extracts. In the same sermon, the reader will meet with Hume's argument against miracles anticipated, and put in Thomas's mouth. ORIGIN OP THE WORSHIP OF HYMEN. The- origin of the worship of Hymen is thus related by Lactantius. The story would furnish matter for an excellent pantomime. Hymen was a beautiful youth of Athens, who for the love of a young virgin disguised himself, and assisted at the MM Eleosinian ritet : and at this time be, together with his belorcd. and di? en other young ladies of that was surprised and carried off by pirate*, who supposing him to be what be appeared, lodged him his mistress. In the dead of the night when the robbers were all asleep, he arose and cot their throats. Thence making hasty waj back to Athena, he bargained with the parent* that he would restore to them their daughter and all her companions, if they would consent to her marriage with him. They did so, and this marriage proving remarkably happy, it became the custom to invoke the name of Hymen at all nuptials. mtm It is hard and uncandid to censure the great reformer* in philosophy and religion for their egotism and boaatfulness. It is scarcely possible for a man to meet with continued personal abuse, on account of his superior talents, without associating more and more the sense of the value of his discoveries or detections with his own person. The neces> repelling unjust contempt, forces the most modest man into a feeling of pride and self-consciousness. can a tall man help thinking of his site, when dwarf* are constantly on tiptoe beside him " Paracelsus was a braggart and a quack; so was Cardan ; but it was their merits, m Hies, drew upon them that torn iction and calumny, which compelled them so frequent and write concerning themselves, that at length it became a habit to do so. Wolff too, though boaster, was yet persecuted into a habit of egotism both in his prefaces and in his ordinary conversation ; and the same holds good of the founder of the OMNIANA. 303 Brunonian system, and of his great namesake Giordano Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age have attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many therefore abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves, that they abhor all egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or discourse. But watch these men narrowly ; and in the greater number of cases you will find their thoughts, feelings, and mode of expression, saturated with the passion of contempt, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism. Your very humble men in company, if they produce any thing, are in that thing of the most exquisite irritability and vanity. When a man is attempting to describe another person's character, he may be right or he may be wrong ; but in one thing he will always succeed, that is, in describing himself. If, for example, he expresses simple approbation, he praises from a consciousness of possessing similar qualities; if he approves with admiration, it is from a consciousness of deficiency. A- " Ay! he is a sober man." B. " Ah ! Sir, what a blessing is sobriety ! " Here A. is a man conscious of sobriety, who egotises in tmsm ; B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of a contrary habit, contemplates sobriety with blameless envy. Again : A. " Yes, he is a warm man, a moneyed fellow ; you may rely upon him." B. " Yes, yes, Sir, no wonder; he has the blessing of being well in the world." This reflection might be introduced in defence of plaintive egotism, and by way of preface to an examination of all the charges against it, and from what feelings they proceed. 1800.* * From Mr. Gutch's commonplace book. ED. Contempt is egotism in ill humour Aj-i without moral affection, social sympathy, and e?en witboot passion and i magma ^tith, mere lu>t> ^ the basest egoiiam and betnjs' i, or below humanity, abould be pronounced with the barab breathing, as fa-go*' LOW, CAP or LIBERTY. ^e who hoped proudly of human nature, and tied no -n between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first con- us a colossal statue of Corinthian brass* formed bj the fusion and commixture of all metals in the con- flagration of the state. Hut there is a common so exactly represents the pole and cap t it seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate en i*m mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap : I!t II-H. i ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam auil. una, una, una ; m tuin prre rei absurditat*. quam anima concipiebat, exclamarit, Na5 ! delirat borologium ! Quater pulsarit horam unam. 1 knew a person 3, as we saj, listened to the clock as it was H it struck, he count*: no. one. one ; and then exclaimed, " Why. the its wits ; it has struck one four times H is a good exemplification of the nature of Bull*, which will be found always to contain in them - ::';.- .'",:.'. - . ". : . . : v ..'' OMNIANA. 305 objectivity with subjectivity ; in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalisation of the mind, an ens rationis not an ens reale. I have read many attempts at a definition of a Bull, and lately in the Edinburgh Review ; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her delightful essay on Bulls, and given the defini- tion of the genus, Blunder, for that of the particular species. I will venture, therefore, to propose the following : a Bull consists in a mental juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection. The psycho- logical conditions of the possibility of a Bull, it would not be difficult to determine ; but it would require a larger space than can be afforded here, at least, more attention than my readers would be likely to afford. There is a sort of spurious Bull which consists wholly in mistake of language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a language of which he is not master. WISE IGNORANCE. It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse ; the latter extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the com- mentators on the Apocalypse. moral aique aatagentis re pan eat, quadra quo aoimo naacire velle. -J. C. Scalia. Ex. 307, %.: . r . . , [;.; :: QtUGcunqt* libris vis propheterum indidil, Afflate cwlo, plena veraci Deo ; Nee operte cn tupimro tUeotU aprre autle ; K! prudenUr pnpUri ! Na^trt Tcll qiue magnier opiimuf Dooere noo nil t, erudite taecttia eei. JOSET. SCAUO. ROUOB. generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, a 1 fair sisters and imitators uceive themselves always in the chair of n ml of course entided to the same 1 he custom originated, perhaps, in the hun. .o conqueror*, that they might s< blush continually at their own praises. Mr. < frequently speaks of a " picturesque eye:' something leas of aolcri>m. I may affirm that our fair erer-hlushing triumplmnts ba?e secured to them* Mfoej !i . okam : piecam M hi ta - r;. hi being its own portrait * wr*pbrru. HASTY : ite mercy (st least of my contemporaries ete Omniana should outlive the present genera .1 I could not help i the blank page of a very celebrated work,* the following passage from Picas Miranduls: Movent mibi totnachttm grammsHstai qnldam, qui cum -mbulonim origin^ ite te oetentec OMNIANA. 307 venditant, ita circumferunt jactabundi, ut prse ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos arbitrentur. Epist. ad Hermol. Barb. MOTIVES AND IMPULSES. It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are. What does he habitually wish, habitu- ally pursue ? and thence deduce his impulses, which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct ; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive. Let a haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen appetite of health and exercise the impulse : then place the same or some more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and stomach- worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is impossible to understand the character of lago, who is repre- sented as now assigning one, and then another, and again a third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his own restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting power on those especially who are his superiors in practical and moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics have attributed to the profound author this the appropriate inconsistency of the character itself. A second illustration : Did Curio, the quondam patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the hunt of perse- cution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making 5000J. a year by his apostacy ?- I neither know nor care. Probably not. But this I x 2 Ml OMXIAKA. know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of Us superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords, to live in splendour and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass needle : and so, perhaps, DOW and then, but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionise a man's ns and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening twilight, and from twilight into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such tiny atoms , that by the time he has arrived at a given point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imper* <>le degrees of his conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder liar, is merely that between the hour band and that which tells the seconds, on a watch. Of the former you can see only the past motion ; of the latter both the past motion and the present moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of the latter rogue; for he has lied to mank to himself the former lies to his own heart, as well as to the public. IKWARD Buvmraa, Talk to a blind man he knows be wants the sense :gly makes the proper allowances, there are certain internal senses, which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste, philosopi igion. Of course there is no reasoning with them ; for they do not possess the bets, on which the reasoning IKJ grounded. Nothing is possible but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial cont* OMNIANA. 309 or, what a man of kind dispositions is very likely to fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on duplicity. THE VICES OP SLAVES NO EXCUSE FOR SLAVERY. It often happens, that the slave himself has neither the power nor the wish to be free. He is then brutified ; but this apathy is the dire effect of slavery, and so far from being a justifying cause, that it con- tains the grounds of its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian race bred up the Merovingi as beasts ; and then assigned their unworthiness as the satisfac- tory reason for their dethronement. Alas ! the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of com- manding than from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses his master ; even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked and cudgelled, and half starved to boot. As we, however, or our ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creature with this wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him ; and though we cannot immediately make him free, yet we can, and ought to, put him in the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person, yet in that of his children. The French, you will say, are not capable of freedom. Grant this ; but does this fact justify the ungrateful traitor, whose every measure has been to make them still more incapable of it ? CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent and descent which really takes place in the sap of tree*. Senretus discovered the minor i the heart to the longs. Don following passage* of Giordano Bruno (published in 1501) seem to imply more? I put the question, pauperi* forma, with unfeigned diffidence. * Da Immaoao at Tnnnnwmhili," Hfc vl eap. 8. 11 noatro corpora Moguls per to turn drcumcunat t raunat, etc to toto mundo, astro, tcllurc, Quart Don aliter qtuun noatro in corpora saoguis 'ic remeai, naqoa ad inferior* flu Majors, ad toperm a pedibus quam dainda raoadai :- and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of the same book : Quidaaaat Qoodam ni gyro nature cuncta rtdiraoi Ortoa ad proprios runum ; si sorbcai omnaa Pootus aquaa, totum non rastituatque parssni Ordinc; qua potsit renim coosiitore \ consiitaf, partam, nac prima rarisat iia, at antique* cursus noo inda rasumat. affirmed in the M Supplement to the Scotch Encyclopo?ilia Britannii Des Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aristotle and the Schools. uted infinity to the universe. The very title of Bruno's poem prove* that this honour belongs to him. Feyjoo lay* claim to a knowledge of the circulation S rancisco de la Rejna, a fa who published a work upon his own an at Burgos, M passage which he quotes is perfectly / . ', Reyna himself claimed any discovery, >o does not mention ; i.ut, these words seem to OMNIANA. 311 refer to some preceding demonstration of the fact. I am inclined to think that this, like many other things, "was known before it was discovered ; just as the preventive powers of the vaccine disease, the existence of adipocire in graves, and certain prin- ciples in grammar and in population, upon which bulky books have been written and great reputations raised in our days. PERITURJJ PARCERE CHARTS. What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c., and then reflects that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glory in the name of their great author ! and that there is extant in manuscript a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely, surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed more beneficially to the literature and to the actual literati of the country, if they would publish the valuable manuscripts that lurk in our different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of , but it is treading on hot embers ! To HAVE AND TO BE. The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German poet : * Hast thou anything ? share it with me and I will pay thee the worth of it. Art thou anything ? then let us exchange souls ! * " Hast du etxvas, so theile mir's mit, und ich zahle was recht 1st Bist du etwas, o dann tauscheiidie Seelen wir aus." Schiller. S.C. OU.MAHA. The following is offered as a mare playful tmUon : Women have no souls," says prophet Mahomet. . dearest Anna ! why so grave f I aaid you had no soul, 'tit true : For what you are, you cannot have Tb I that bare one, aiooe I fart had you. PARTY PASSIO*. "da lady, the rehemeir impassionate partisan of Mr. Wilkes, in the daj of his un< I .I'irii.'u' the broad blaze of his patriotism* 1, Sir ! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man ?" " Oh ! by 'ana. Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr \\ ilkes's talents ! " V, and is be not, a fine roan, too, and a handsome man ' Madam ( he squints, doesn't be ? " Squints ! yea to be sure he does, Sir ! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint ' " : to A MA* or , ,/>;,' i/ , . , , i < t .i , I , (it, in >, ' i , l'\, i } . * < ' : '. ,';/ t ,i '. i/ mitn't l#in 1). nobia ferat, aut quaia dignaior Mtiba ultra, Taotocum ultra aai aaalta, nioeooasosndsoipl- 1 - 1 -~ Per acalam proprio < guain Don*, ct vp|j
  • the reputation, the latter more detri- mental to the progress of philosophy. In the affairs of common life we very properly appeal to common sense ; but it is absurd to reject the results of tho microscope from the negative testimony of the naked eye. Knives are sufficient for the table and the market; 1 it f T the purposes of science we most dissect with tbe lancet As an instance of the latter evil, take that truly powerful and active intellect. Sir Thomas Browne, who, though he had written a large volume in detection of vulgar errors, yet peremptorily pro- nounces tbe motion of the earth round the son, and consequently the whole of the Copernican system unworthy of any serious confutation, as being mani- festly repugnant to common sense; which said common sense, like a miller s scales, used to weigh gold or gasses, may, and often does, become very gross, though unfortunately not very uncommon, non- sense. And as for the former, which may be called Logica Pr*pott*ra t I have read in metaphysical essays of no small fame, arguments drawn nb *rtm in proof and diitproof of personal . genious as they may be, were dearly anticipated by ttle old woman's appeal to her little dog. for the solution of the very same doubts, occasioned by her petticoats having been cut round about : If it b not M, U'U Urk and bell nil, Bat If I bt I, bell wag bit little UiL OMNI AN A. 319 TOLERATION. I dare confess that Mr. Locke's treatise on Toleration appeared to me far from being a full and satisfactory answer to the subtle and oft- times plausible arguments of Bellarmin, and other Romanists. On the whole, I was more pleased with the celebrated W. Penn's tracts on the same subject. The following extract from his excellent letter to the king of Poland appeals to the heart rather than to the head, to the Christian rather than to the philo- sopher ; and, besides, overlooks the ostensible object of religious penalties, which is not so much to convert the heretic, as to prevent the spread of heresy. The thoughts, however, are so just in themselves, and expressed with so much life and simplicity, that it well deserves a place in these Omniana : Now, Prince ! give a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee. Did Christ Jesus or His holy followers endeavour, by precept or example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called He any troops of men or angels to defend Him ? Did He encourage Peter to dispute His right with the sword ? But did He not say, Put it up ? Or did He countenance His over-zealous disciples, when they would have had fire from heaven to destroy those that were not of their mind ? No ! But did not Christ rebuke them, saying, Ye know not what spirit ye are of? And if it was neither Christ's spirit, nor their own spirit that would have fire from heaven, Oh ! what is that spirit that would kindle fire on earth to destroy such as peaceably dissent upon the account of conscience ! King ! when did the true religion persecute ? When did the true church offer violence for religion ? Were not her weapons prayers, tears, and patience? Did not Jesus conquer by these weapons, and vanquish cruelty by suffering? Can clubs, and staves, and swords, and prisons, and banish- motto reach the ioul, convert the heart, or coonm* U undmtandiog of man T When did violeoo* ever mak a true convert, or bodily punkhmtot a slaott* ChrUUan! Thin maketh raid the end of ChriaV. coming. Ye*, it robUth God's Spirit of iu office, which u to oonnnc* U world. That is tba nword bj which th ancient Chratkns The theory of persecution seems to rest on the sing Assumptions. -plies a right, We have a right to do whatever it is to do. is the duty and consequently the ru supreme power in a state to promote the greatest possible sum of well-being in that state. 3. This is impossible without morality. 4. Hut morality can r be produced or preserved in a people at large \\uhuut true nhgion. 5. Relative to the duties of the legislature or governors, that is the true religion which they conscientiously believe to be so. 6. As there can be but one true religion, at the same time, this one it duty and ri- nse and protect. the established re- ligion cannot be protected and secured except by the imposition of restraints or the influence of penalties on those, who profess and propagate host; i ue religion, consisting of precepts, counsels, commandments, doctrines, and historical narratives, cannot be effectually proved or defended, but by a comprehensive view of the whole as a system* Now mnot be hoped for from the mass of mat. iy he attacked, and the (kith of ignorant ited by particular objections, by the state- of difficulties without any counter-statement of the greater difficulties which would result from the rejection of the former, and by all the other stratagems used in the desultory warfare of sectaries and infidels. wevcr. manifestly dishonest and dangerous. OMNIANA. y^l and there must exist, therefore, a power in the state to prevent, suppress, and punish it. 9. The advocates of toleration have never heen able to agree among themselves concerning the limits to their own claims ; have never established any clear rules, as to what shall and what shall not be admitted under the name of religion and conscience. Treason and the grossest indecencies not only may be, but have been, called by these names : as among the earlier Anabaptists. 10. And last, it is a petitio principii, or begging the question, to take for granted that a state has no power except in case of overt acts. It is its duty to prevent a present evil, as much at least as to punish the perpetrators of it. Besides, preaching and publishing are overt acts. Nor has it yet been proved, though often asserted, that a Christian sovereign has nothing to do with the eternal happi- ness or misery of the fellow creatures entrusted to his charge. HINT FOR A NEW SPECIES OF HISTORY. The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so considerable a part of mankind as the Jews now are, and especially have been heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure and use. It is a very good piece of history, and that of the best kind, namely, of human nature, and of that part of it which is most different from us, and commonly the least known to us. And, indeed, the principal advantage which is to be made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to see what men think and are, than to be informed of the natures and truth of things ; to observe what thoughts and passions have occupied men's minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance, the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention Y MM of the in LW*' HVfa, *oL L I u the thick volume of title pages and chapter* of content* (composed) of large and small works cor- respondent to each (proposed) by a certain omni* pregnant, wi'Mi- parturient genius of my acquaintance, not the least promising is, " A ii.^; ry of the morals and (as connected therewith) of the manners of the English Nation from the Conquest to the present u 1 rom the chapter of contents U appears that my friend is a steady believer in the ; ted progression of his fellow-countrymen; there has been a constant growth of wealth and well-being among us, and with these an increase of knowledge, and with increasing knowledge an increase and diffusion of practical goodness. The degrees of acceleration, indeed, have been different at different periods. The moral being has sometimes crawled, sometimes strolled, sometimes walked, sometimes 1. ut it has at all times been moving onward. If in any one point it has gone backward, it has been only in order to leap forward in some other. The work was to commence with a numeration table, or catalogue, of those virtues or qualities which make a man happy in himself, an i onduce to the iness of those aboi i a greater or lesser ro of agency. The degree and the frequency in which each uf these virtues manifested themselves, in the successive reigns from William the Conqueror inclusively, were to be illustrated by apposite quota- tions from the works of contemporary writers, not only of historians and chroniclers, but of the poets, romance writers, and theologians, not omitting the correspondence between literary men, the laws and regulations, civil and ecclesiastical, and whatever OMNI AN A. 323 records the industry of antiquarians has brought to light in their provincial, municipal, and monastic histories : tall tomes and huge ! undegenerate sons of Anak, which look down from a dizzy height on the dwarfish progeny of contemporary wit, and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries ; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism. Such of these illustrations as most amused or impressed me, when I heard them (for alas ! even his very title-pages and contents my friend composes only in air!) I shall probably attempt to preserve in different parts of these Omniana. At present I shall cite one article only which I found wafered on a blank leaf of his memorandum-book, superscribed ; " Flattering news for Anno Domini 2000, when- ever it shall institute a comparison between itself and the 17th and 18th centuries." It consists of an extract, say rather, an exsection from the " Kingston Mercantile Advertiser," from Saturday, August the 15th, to Tuesday, August 18th, 1801. This paper, which contained at least twenty more adver- tisements of the very same kind, was found by accident among the wrapping-papers in the trunk of an officer just returned from the West India station. They stand here exactly as in the original, from which they are reprinted : Kingston, July 30, 1801. Ran away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Half- way Tree, a negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba country, strong made, an ulcer on her left leg, marked D. C., diamond between. She is supposed to be harboured by her husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry working between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of hl*y. of thai place; the said negro man bra* eoo- ceded a boy in hit wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to aoj pereoo apprehending the abovfrdescribed wench, and delivering to Mr. Archibald M'Lea, EasKmd ; and if found! secreted by any person, the law will be put in force, 18, 1S01. Strayed, on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Mooo country, named Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williame* planter, in 8t John's, who had tent him to town under the charge of a negro man, with a cart for provisions. The said boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 yean of age, about twelve montha in the country, no mark, speak* little English, but can tell hia owner's name; had on a long Osnaburg frock. It is supposed he might hare gone out to Tend some peart and lemon-grass, and hare lost himself in the street One pistole will be paid to any person apprehending and bringing him to this office. .l* Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up West Street the following morning), a small bay HOR3K ft car Uppod, flat rump, much scored from the saddle on his back, and marked on the near aide F. M. with a diamond between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and deliver him to W. Ballantine, butcher, back of West Street. receive the above reward. Strayed oa Sunday morning last, from the subs* house, in East Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately cropped, a large chafe slightly skinned over on the near buttock, and otherwise chafed from the action ofthehameti in his recent breaking. Half a joe will be paid to any person taking up and bringing this mule to the subscriber's bouse, or to the Store in Harbour Street Jon* WALUH. OMNI AN A. 3*25 Kingston, July 2, 1801. TEN POUNDS REWARD, Ran away About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman named DORAH. purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age, and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high ; has a mark on one of her shoulders, about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws; of a coal black com- plexion, very artful, and most probably passes about the country with false papers and under another name ; if that is not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond, where she has a mother and other connexions. What a history ! horses and negroes ! negroes and horses ! It makes me tremble at my own nature. Surely, every religious and conscientious Briton is equally a debtor in gratitude to Thomas Clarkson and his fellow-labourers with every African : for on the soul of every individual among us did a portion of guilt rest, as long as the slave-trade remained legal. A few years back ,the public was satiated with accounts of the happy condition of the slaves in our colonies, and the great encouragements and facilities afforded to such of them, as by industry and fore- sight laboured to better their situation. With what truth this is stated as the general tone of feeling among our planters, and their agents, may be con- jectured from the following sentences, which made part of what in England we call the leading paragraph of the same newspaper : Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a number of slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, OHM and are absolutely in posMsrfoo of the fcl rimpli of land* MM! j :...-. .: ...:..,.>:<, M their husband*. To account for thie, we need only look to the fl^fwvwlAtirtnA ri *il v MwnmitftMi AIM! ftliA Imtwwift^^M MA<*t^^Ml 1 to It* dfatw of the community tad rate of the fair tntaJ Negro yard* too, under mob direction, will neotaearily prove the a*y lum of niiuiwmjB from the country. TEXT SrxRRixa WHRII I hear (ts who now can trarel twenty milea in a stage-coach without the probability of hearing) an ignorant religionist quote an unconnected sentence of half-a-doien words from any part of the Old or New Testament, and rev 10 literal sense of these words the eternal misery of all who reject, nay. even of all those countless myriads, who hare never had the opportunity of ace* j >. and sundry other. articles of faith conjured up by the same textual magic ; I ask myself what idea these persons f< the Bible, that they should use it in a wav they themselves use no other book? They deem the whole written by very essence of rational discourse, that is, connection and dependency done away, because the discourse is infullil.lv rational? The mysteriea, which these iial lynxes detect in the simplest texts, remind* me of the 000 nondescripts, each aa large as bis own black cat, which Dr. Katterfelto, by aid of his solar microscope, discovered in a drop of transparent tvatrr. But to a contemporary who has not thro" in the same helmet with them, these fanatics think it no to listen. Let them then, or far rather, lei those who are in danger of infection from them. attend to the golden aphorisms of the old and OMNI ANA. 327 orthodox divines. " Sentences in scripture (says Dr. Donne) like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one root of beauty and strength ; but being plucked out, one by one, serve only for springes and snares." The second I transcribe from the preface to Lightfoot's works. " Inspired writings are an inestimable treasure to mankind ; for so many sentences, so many truths. But then the true sense of them must be known : otherwise, so many sentences, so many authorised falsehoods." PELAGIANISM. OUR modern latitudinarians will find it difficult to suppose, that anything could have been said in the defence of Pelagianism equally absurd with the facts and arguments which have been adduced in favour of original sin (sin being taken as guilt ; that is, observes a Socinian wit, the crime of being born). But in the comment of Rabbi Akibah on Ecclesiastes, xii. 1, we have a story of a mother, who must have been a most determined believer in the uninheritability of sin. For having a sickly and deformed child, and resolved that it should not be thought to have been punished for any fault of its parents or ancestors, and yet having nothing else for which to blame the child, she seriously and earnestly accused it before the judge of having kicked her unmercifully during her pregnancy. I am firmly persuaded that no doctrine was ever widely diffused among various nations through suc- cessive ages and under different religions (such as is the doctrine of original sin, and redemption, those fundamental articles of every known religion pro- fessing to be revealed), which is not founded either in the nature of things or in the necessities of our 3*28 ' MMAJCA. o language of the schools, it carries with it presumptive evidence that it is either objectively or subjectively true. And the more strange and contradictory such a doctrine may appear to the understanding, or discursive Jacuhv stronger is the presumption in its fat. whatever satirists may say, and sciolists imagine, the human mind has no predilection forabsm I do not, however, mean that such a doctrine shall he always the best possible representation of the truth on which it is founded; for the same body casts strangely different shadows in different places), and different degrees of light, but that it always does shadow out some such truth, and derive its influence over our faith from our obscure perception of that truth. Yea, even where the person himself attributes his belief of it to the miracles, with which it was 'unced by the founder of his religion. THE SOUL AMD ITS OBOAXS of Sana - a strong presumptive proof against materialism, that there doea not exist a language on earth, the rudest to the most refined, in which a materialist can talk for five minutes together involving some contradiction in terms to his own system. Will not this apply equally to the astronomer ? Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's rising and setting, .just like other men. What should we think of the coxcomb who should have objected to him, that be contradicted bis own system? Anm it does not apply equally ; say rather, it is utterly inapplicable to the astronomer and natural philosoph- his philosophic, and his ordinary language apeak of two quite different things, t which are equally true. In his ordinary language ho OMNIANA. 329 refers to a fact of appearance, to a phenomenon common and necessary to all persons in a given situation; in his scientific language he determines that one position or figure, which heing supposed, the appearance in question would be the necessary result, and all appearances in all situations may be demonstrably foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air, and strongly illuminated. What figure is here ? A triangle. But what here ? A trapezium ; and so" on. The same question put to twenty men, in twenty different positions and distances, would receive twenty different answers : each would be a true answer. But what is that one figure which, being so placed, all these facts of appearance must result according to the law of perspective ? Ay ! this is a different question, this is a new subject. The words which answer this would be absurd if used in reply to the former.* Thus, the language of the scripture on natural objects is as strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so. For it is not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would have been consistent with the divine wisdom ? The inspired writers must have borrowed their terminology, either from the crude and mistaken philosophy of their own times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten thousand ; or they must have anticipated the termi- nology of the true system, without any revelation of the system itself, and so have become unintelligible to all men ; or lastly, they must have revealed the system itself, and thus have left nothing for the exercise, development, or reward of the human * See Church and State. Appendix, p. 231. ED. llJhntlliding. instead of teachii ledge. ' thoee social n- rtue*. out of \\-hi.-h thr arts and sciences will spring up in due time and of their own accord. Bat nothing of he refers to the very name facts, of common language of man- speaks : and these too are facts that have sole and entire being in our own consciousness; frets, aa to which oat and con*cir* are identical. whatever is common to all languages, in all rliinjiies.ni all times, and in all stages of civilisation, most be the exponent and consequei com- mon consciousness of man as man. Whatever .s universal language, therefore, con- tradicts the universal consciousness, and the facts in question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever contradicts the consciousness contradicts the fact tve been seduced into a dry discussion where I had intended only a few amusing facts, in proof, that the mind makes the sense far more than the senses make the mind. If I have life, and health, and leisure, I purpose to compile from the works, memoirs, and transactions of the different philoso- phical societies in 1 In rope, from magazines, an rirll llSfi '!" Tn.-li.-tl :IM.| ]-\ ' tl jul.l'.,-V! Us. furnished by the English. French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate to the human unusual , in-urastanccs, (for pathology is tl). logy), excluding such only as are not it. the symbols or logy of science. These I would arrange under tho different senses and powers : as the eye. the ear. the touch, Ac. ; the voluntary and Mjitic: thoini: r shaping and mo N ) Wh. ii I was at Malta, 1605, there happened a ken squabble on the road from Valeuc to St.! between a party of soldiers and another of sailors. They were brought before me the next] nng. and the great effect which their in toxic*. tiad produced on their memory, and the hulo > effect on their courage in giving evidence, i may be seen by the following specimen* The soldiers swore that the sailors were the first aggressors, and had assaulted them with the following words: " j your eyes ! who stops the line of march there ? " The)] sailors with equal vehemence and unanimity averred,! that the soldiers were the first aggressors, and had! burst in on them calling out" Heave to, you lubbers I j or we 11 run vou cl 339 FORCE OF HABIT. An Emir had bought a left eye of a glass eye- maker, supposing that he would be able to see with it. The man begged him to give it a little time : he could not expect that it would see all at once as well as the right eye, which had been for so many years in the habit of it. PHCENIX. The Phoenix lives a thousand years, a secular bird of ages ; and there is never more than one at a time in the world. Yet Plutarch very gravely informs us, that the brain of the Phoenix is a pleasant bit, but apt to occasion the head ache. By the by, there are few styles that are not fit for something. I have often wished to see Claudian's splendid poem on the Phoenix translated into English verse in the elabo- rate rhyme and gorgeous diction of Darwin. Indeed Claudian throughout would bear translation better than any of the ancients. MEMORY AND RECOLLECTION. Beasts and babies remember, that is, recognise : man alone recollects. This distinction was made by Aristotle. Aliquid ex Nihilo. In answer to the nihil e nihilo of the atheists, and their near relations, the anima-mundi men, a humourist pointed to a white blank in a rude wood-cut, which very ingeniously served for the head of hair in one of the figures. BREVITY or THE GREEK AND ENGLISH COMPARED. As an instance of compression and brevity in z 2 VIMVSH. narration, unattainable in an y language bat the Greek, the follow i i was quoted : was denied by one of the company, who instantly rendered the lines in English, contending ] with reason that the indefinite article in English, together with the pronoun his. Ac. should be con- sidered as one word with the noun following, and more than counterbalanced by the greater nunit syllables in the Greek words, the terminations of which truth only little words glued on to them. The English distich follows, and the reader will recollect that it is a mere trial of comparative brevity, wit and poetry quite out of the question : Jack finding gold left a i*f oo U* ground; BUI miming hi* gold used the rope, which t* tend. THB WILL AVD IBB Dam The will to the deed, the inward principle to the outward act, is as the kernel to the shell . in the first place, the shell is necessary for the kernel, ] and that by which it is commonly known ; ai xt place, as the shell comes first, and tb nel grows gradually and hardens *ithm it. * with the moral m man. Legality precedes] morality in cv. lual. even as the Jewish dis- pensation preceded the Christian in the education of] the world at large. THI WILL FOR TOE Dno. When may the will be taken for the deed when the will is the obedience of the whole man . OMNI ANA. 341 when the will is in fact the deed, that is, all the deed in our power. In every other case, it is bending the bow without shooting the arrow. The bird of Para- dise gleams on the lofty branch, and the man takes aim, and draws the tough yew into a crescent with might and main, and lo ! there is never an arrow on the string. SINCERITY. The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery- makers, under whatever strength of sympathy, or desire to prolong happy thoughts in others for their sake or your own only as sympathising with theirs, it may originate. All sympathy, not consistent with acknowledged virtue, is but disguised selfishness. TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD. The pre-eminence of truth over falsehood, even when occasioned by that truth, is as a gentle foun- tain breathing from forth its air-let into the snow piled over and around it, which it turns into its own substance, and flows with greater murmur; and though it be again arrested, still it is but for a time, it awaits only the change of the wind to awake and roll onwards its ever increasing stream : I semplici pastori Sul Vesolo nevoso, Fatti curvi e canuti, D'alto stupor son muti, Mirando al fonte ombroso II Po con pochi umori ; Poscia udendo gl' onori Dell' urna angusta e stretta, Che '1 Adda, che 1 Tesino Soverchia il suo cammino, OMN: Che ampio *1 mars' aflfotU, 1 CtoglisidaoofooAt Chiabrtra, Rime, xxviii. ilsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise tarns ] all tli.- liht stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies ; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, ut place or evidence xistence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them. RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES, A man may look at glass, or through it. or both. Let all earthly things be unto thee as glass to see heaven through ! * Religious ceremonies should be pure glass, not dyed in the gorgeous crimsons and purple blues and greens of the drapery of saints and Mints** n ASSOCUTIOV. Many a star, which we behold as single, the astro- nomer resolves into two, each perhaps the centre of a separate system. Oft are the flowers of the weed mistaken for the growth of the plant, wh. - \MI h its intertwine. And many are the unsus- pected double stars, and frequent are the parasite weeds, wl. hilosopher detects in the received >ns of men : so strong is the tendency of tlu< imagination t<> what it has long consociated. .; that have habitually, though perhaps aod- .-- * , W* *IWw4>^ ^mfmm. In '" Or. If IM ptoMrth. ihnli H PMH^ OMNI ANA. 343 dentally and arbitrarily, been thought of in connec- tion with each other, we are prone to regard as inseparable. The fatal brand is cast into the fire, and therefore Meleager must consume in the flames. To these conjunctions of custom and association (the associative power of the mind which holds the mid place between memory and sense,) we may best apply Sir Thomas Browne's remark, that many things coagulate on commixture, the separate natures of which promise no concretion. CURIOSITY. The curiosity of an honourable mind willingly rests tbere, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbour bids it stop ; in other words, it willingly stops at the point, where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt ! NEW TRUTHS. To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about- to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive-wreath. Vicious PLEASURES. Gentries, or wooden frames, are put under the arches of a bridge, to remain no longer than till the latter are consolidated. Even so pleasures are the devil's scaffolding to build a habit upon ; that formed and steady, the pleasures are sent for fire-wood, and the hell begins in this life.* * This maybe found in Jeremy Taylor's apples of Sodom, Serm. xix., vol. v. ; Heber's edit. A few words are altered. IS. C. OMNI Mmruro HEAVEV. toe makes us not ^ .: only worth!' happiness. Existence itself gives a claim to JOT. Virtue and happiness are incommensurate quantities. How mu iia?e, before I have paid 10 old debt of my happiness in infancy and rhiUhood ! O ! We all outrun the constable with heaven's justice ! We have to earn the earth, before we can think of earning heaven. Dctr TO DUST. We were inde< wra 4rtt, ol rirra yi\*i, raJ wdrra T* M*ft' if we did not feel that we were so. HUMAS COU9TE5A5CE. There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophe. most sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer. LIE USEFUL TO TRUTH. A lie accidentally useful to the cause of an oppressed truth: Thus was the tongue of a dog made medicinal to a feeble and sickly Lazarus. 15 ROMAS CATHOLIC STATO. i Ionian Catholic states, where science has forced its way, and some light must follow, the devil him- self cunningly sets up a shop for common sense at the sign of the Ini VoLCjrrAar BSUD. is possible." says Jeremy Taylor. - i" -r .1 man to bring himself to believe anything he hath a mind OMXIANA. 345 to." But what is this belief? Analyse it into its constituents ; is it more than certain passions or feelings converging into the sensation of positiveness as their focus, and then associated with certain sounds or images ? Nemo enim, says Augustin, Jiuic ei'iden- tia, contradicet, nisi quern plus defensare delectat, quod sentit, quam, quid sentiendum sit, invenire. AMANDA. Lovely and pure no bird of Paradise, to feed on dew and flower-flagranee, and never to alight on earth, till shot by death with pointless shaft; but a rose, to fix its roots in the genial earth, thence to suck up nutriment and bloom strong and healthy, not to droop and fade amid sunshine and zephyrs on a soilless rock ! Her marriage was no meagre prose comment on the glowing and gorgeous poetry of her wooing ; nor did the surly over-browing rock of reality ever cast the dusky shadow of this earth on the soft moonlight of her love's first phantasies. HYMEN'S TORCH. The torch of love may be blown out wholly, but not that of Hymen. AY horn the flame and its cheering light and genial warmth no longer bless, him the smoke stifles ; for the spark is inextinguish- able, save by death : nigro eircumvelatus amictu Maeret Hymen, fumantque atrae sine lumine taedaa. YOUTH AND AGE. Youth beholds happiness gleaming in the prospect. Age looks back on the happiness of youth ; and instead of hopes, seeks its enjoyment in the re- collections of hope. CMS I ; M n! :: M ].*. :* .. The giant shadow* sleeping amid the wan yellow light of the December morning, looked like wrecks and scattered ruins of the long, long night LJUOHTOX. Next to the inspired Scriptures, yea, and as the ? <>f that once-struck hour remaining < ^tands Leightou's *' Commentary on the first Epistle of Peter." CmusruM HOVBTT. " Oh ! that God," says Carey in his Journal in Man. would make the Gospel successful among them ! That would undoubtedly make them honest men, and I four nothing else ever will.' spite of infidels and philosophising Christians, a fact. A perfect explanation of it would require and would show the psychology of faith, the nee between the whole soul's modifying an action, and an action enforced by modifications < soul amid prudential motives or favouring impulses. Let me here remind myself of the absolute necessity of having my whole faculties awake and imaginative, in order to illustrate this and similar truths ;- other- wise my writings will be no other than pages of ilgsbtm, IwcRirnox ox A CLOCK m CBSAFBIDI. What now thou dost, or art about to do, Will help to give thee pesos or make the* me ; When hovering o'er the line this hand will tell The last dread moment'twill be heaven or bell Read for the last two line* When wavViag o'er the dot this hsad shall teU The moment thai secures thee hearen or h*U ! OMNIANA 347 RATIONALISM is NOT REASON. Vengeance is mine, saitJi the Lord. An awful text ! Now because vengeance is most wisely and lovingly forbidden to us, hence we have by degrees, under false generalisations and puny sensibilities, taken up the notion that vengeance is nowhere. In short, the abuse of figurative interpretation is endless ; instead of being applied, as it ought to be, to those things which are the most comprehensible, that is, sensuous, and which therefore are the parts likely to be figurative, because such language is a con- descension to our weakness, it is applied to rot away the very pillars, yea, to fret away and dissolve the very corner stones of the temple of religion. O, holy Paul ! 0, beloved John ! full of light and love, whose books are full of intuitions, as those of Paul are books of energies, the one uttering to sympa- thising angels what the other toils to convey to weak-sighted yet docile men: Luther! Calvin! Fox, with Penn and Barclay ! Zinzendorf ! and ye too, whose outward garments only have been singed and dishonoured in the heathenish furnace of Roman apostacy, Francis of Sales, Fenelon ; yea, even Aquinas and Scotus ! With what astoundment would ye, if ye were alive with your merely human perfections, listen to the creed of our, so called, rational religionists ! Rational ! They who, in the very outset deny all reason, and leave us nothing but degrees to distinguish us from brutes; a greater degree of memory, dearly purchased by the greater * solicitudes of fear which convert that memory into foresight. ! place before your eyes the island of Britain in the reign of Alfred, its unpierced woods, OMXIAXA. its wide morasses and dreary heaths, its blood-stained and desolated shores, its untaught and scanty popula- tion ; behold the monarch listening now to Bede. and now to John Erigena ; and then see the same realm, a mighty empire, full of motion, full of books, where the cotter's son, twelve years old, has read more than ishops of yore, and possesses the opportunity of reading more than our Alfred himself; and then finally behold this mighty nation, its rulers and its wise men listening to Paley and to Mai thus ! I mournful, mournful. I v VM-II v v. v strange and sad is the laxity with which men in these days suffer the most inconsistent opinions to lie jumbled lazily together in their minds, holding the antimoralism of Paley and the bypophyaics of Locke, and yet gravely, and with a mock faith, talking of God as a pure spirit, of passing out of time into eternity, of a peace which pastes all understanding, of loving our neighbour as ourselves, and God above all, and so forth! Blank contra- dictions ! What are these men's minds but a huge Imul.er-room of bully, that is, of incompatible notions brought together by a feeling without a sense of Hon ix HUM* Consider the state of a rich man perfectly Adam SmitHfd. yet with a naturally good heart; then suppose him suddenly convinced, vitally convinced, f the truth of the blessed system of hope and confidence in reason and humanity! Contra- new and old views and reflections, the feelings with OMNIANA. 349 which he would begin to receive his rents, and to contemplate his increase of power by wealth, the study to relieve the labour of man from all mere annoy and disgust, the preclusion in his own mind of all cooling down from the experience of individual ingratitude, and his conviction that the true cause of all his dis- appointments was, that his plans were too narrow, too short, too selfish ! Wenn das Elend viel ist auf der Ulrde, so leruhet der grund davon, nach Abzug des theils ertrciglichen, theils verbesserlichen, theils eingebildeten Uebels der Naturwelt, ganz allein in den moralischen Handlungen der Menschen.* my God ! What a great, inspi- riting, heroic thought ! Were only a hundred men to combine even my clearness of conviction of this, with a Clarkson and Bell's perseverance, what might not be done ! How awful a duty does not hope become ! What a nurse, yea, mother of all other the fairest virtues ! We despair of others' goodness, and thence are ourselves bad. ! let me live to show the errors of the most of those who have hitherto attempted this work, how they have too often put the intellectual and the moral, yea, the moral and the religious, faculties at strife with each other, and how they ought to act with an equal eye to all, to feel that all is involved in the perfection of each ! This is the fundamental position. SELF-LOVE IN RELIGION. The unselfishness of self-love in the hopes and fears of religion consists ; first, in the previous * Although the misery on the earth is great indeed, yet the founda- tion of it rests, after deduction of the partly bearable, partly re- movable, and partly imaginary, evil of the natural world, entirely and alone on the moral dealings of men. ED. 350 I AHA. necessity of a moral energy, in order so (ar to subjugate the sensual, which is indeed and properly the selfish, pan of -, as to believe in a state after death, on the grounds of the Christian religion : secondly, in the abstract and, as it were, unin- dividual nature of the idea, self, or soul, when conceived apart from our present living body and the world of the senses. In my religious meditations of hope and fear, the reflection that this course of action will purchase heaven for me, for my soul, involves a lit of and for all men who pursue the same course. In worldly blessings, such as those promised in the Old Law, each man might make up to himself his own favourite scheme of happiness. " 1 will be ! v just, and observe all the laws and ceremonies of my religion, that God may grant me such a woman v wife, or wealth and honour, with which 1 will purchase such and such an estate, w Ac. Hut the reward of heaven admits no day-dreams ; its hopes an.v>! OHM ssed be God ! that \\hi.-h makes us capable of terestedness, capacitates us also for erestedneas. That I am capable of preferring a smaller advantage of my own to a far greater good of another mtn, this, the power of comparing the notions of " him and me " objectively, enables me likewise to prefer at least furnishes the condition of my preferring a greater good of another to a leaser good of my own ; nay, a pleasure of his, or external advantage, to an equal one of my own. Anl thus too, that 1 am capable of loving my neighbour as myself, empowers me to love myself as my neighbour, not only as much, but in the same way and with the very same feeling. Tiiis is the great privilege of pure religion. By diverting self-love to our self under those relations, in \\liich alone it is worthy of our anxiety, it anni- hilates self, as a notion of diversity mes meet These reflections supply a forcible, and, I believe, new argument against the purgatory, both of ; omanists, and of the modern Millennarians, and -ts. Their motives do, indeed, destroy the essence o! The doctors of self-love are misled by a wrong use of the words, We love ourselves ! " Now this is impossible for a finite and created being in the absolute meaning of sel: n its secondary and figurative meaning, self signifies only a less degree stance, a narrowness, of moral view, and a determination of value by measurement Hence the body is in this sense our self, because the sensations have been 1 y appropriated to it in too great a prop - is not a necessity of oar mr There is a state possible cv. niV. m which we may truly say, '* My self loves." freely consti- tuting its secondary or objective love in what it wills OMNI AN A. 353 to love, commands what it wills, and wills what it commands. The difference between self-love, and self that loves, consists in the objects of the former as given to it according to the law of the senses, while the latter determines the objects according to the law in the spirit. The first loves because it must ; the second, because it ought ; and the result of the first is not in any objective, imaginable, com- prehensible, action, but in that action by which it abandoned its power of true agency, and willed its own fall. This is, indeed, a mystery. How can it be otherwise ? For if the will be unconditional, it must be inexplicable, the understanding of a thing being an insight into its conditions and causes. But whatever is in the will is the will, and must therefore be equally inexplicable, In a word, the difference of an unselfish from a selfish love, even in this life, consists in this, that the latter depends on our transferring our present passion or appetite, or rather on our dilating and stretching it out in imagination, as the covetous man does ; while in the former we carry ourselves forward under a very different state from the present, as the young man, who restrains his appetites in respect of his future self as a tranquil and healthy old man. This last requires as great an effort of disinterested- ness as, if not a greater than, to give up a present enjoyment to another person who is present to us. The alienation from distance in time and from diversity of circumstance, is greater in the one case than in the other. And let it be remembered, that a .Christian may exert all the virtues and virtuous charities of humanity in any state ; yea, in the pangs of a wounded conscience, he may feel for the future periods of his own lost spirit, just as Adam for all his posterity. >:. miu'i.-ul. vjm\ vh. !!.-, Mfcwi ' jriatiftm kg m n* tpentuUica I Aoyoc ~ :labie words! And O man: thou marvellous i.. .i>t ngsil A i sabbkNM bsgpurl H--A i rap u-!> dost thou trick out thy very ignorance with such glorious disguises, thai thou raayest seem to hide it i.-r ..tily lo worehij LIMITATION or LOVE or POETRT. uan may be, perhaps, exclusively a poet, a poet most exquisite in his kind, though the kind must needs be of worth ; I say, may be mnot recollect any one instance in which I have a right i<> suppose it. But. surely, to have an exclusive pleasure in f> being yourself a poet; to turn away . and to dwell wholly on the images of 1 1- an unworthy and effeminate tlnn^. A jeweller may devote his whole time to j. \\< u uiii.iiuii.-.i ; i ut th,- in. r. aaaK ur, vbo p nmdi his taste on no chemical or geological idea, cannot claim the same exemption from despect. How shall he fully enjoy Wordsworth, who has never meditated he truths which Wordsworth has wedded to immortal verse ? XIUTT or TDK AMUBLK. It is well ordered by nature, that the amiable and estimable have a fainter perception qualities than their friends have: otherwise they would love themselves. And though they may fear flattery, yet it intentional deceit, they en- and esteem those who love and esteem tl. .1* lovely and estimable, and give them pro* g done well, where they have meant to do well. OMNTANA. 355 TEMPER IN ARGUMENT. All reasoners ought to be perfectly dispassionate, and ready to allow all the force of the arguments they are to confute. But more especially those, who are to argue in behalf of Christianity, ought carefully to preserve the spirit of it in their manner of expressing themselves. I have so much honour for the Christian clergy, that I had much rather hear them railed at, than hear them rail ; and I must say, that I am often grievously offended with the generality of them for their method of treating all who differ from them in opinion. MRS. CHAPONE. Besides, what is the use of violence ? None. What is the harm ? Great, very great ; chiefly, in the confirmation of error, to which nothing so much tends, as to find your opinions attacked with weak arguments and unworthy feelings. A generous mind becomes more attached to principles so treated, even as it would to an old friend, after he had been grossly calumniated. We are eager to make compensation. PATRIARCHAL GOVERNMENT. The smooth words used by all factions, and their wide influence, may be exemplified in all the extreme systems, as, for instance, in the patriarchal govern- ment of Filmer. Take it in one relation, and it imports love, tender anxiety, longer experience, and superior wisdom, bordering on revelation, especially to Jews and Christians, who are in the life-long habit of attaching to patriarchs an intimacy with the Supreme Being. Take it on the other side, and it imports, that a whole people are to be treated and governed as children by a man not so old as very many, not older than very many, and in all probability AA 2 306 OHM not wiser than the many, and by his very aitualion precluded from the same experience. CALLOUS SELF-CO*' The most hateful form of self-conceit is the callous form, when it boasts and swells up on the score of iu own ignorance, as exemption from a folly, profess not to understand ;' " We are so unhappy as to be qi - dark as to the meaning of this \\ritrr ; " M All this may be very fine, 1 are not ashamed to confess us it t* unintrlli^il.lr : "then quote a passage with, ut the com* appeal to the PUBLIC, whether they : cbes ! Such books were not v. I f it be a work on inward religion, appeal to the inwardly religious, and ask It it be of true love and its anguish at yearnings, appeal to the true lover ! What have the public to do with this? He was like a cork, flexible, floating, full of pores and openings, and yet he could neither retun transmit the waters of Helicon, much less the poet, by his side, was like a diamond, transmitting to all around, yet retaining for himself the rays of the god of day. TknaoM. An upright shoe may fit both fe< never saw I a glove that would fit both hands. It is a man for a mean or mechanic office, that can be employed equally well under either of two opposite parties. OMNIANA. 357 DEATH. Death but supplies the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life. LOVE AN ACT OF THE WILL. Love, however sudden, as when we fall in love at first sight (which is, perhaps, always the case of love in its highest sense), is yet an act of the will, and that too one of its primary, and therefore ineffable acts. This is most important ; for if it be not true, either love itself is all a romantic hum, a mere con- nection of desire with a form appropriated to excite and gratify it, or the mere repetition of a day-dream ; or if it be granted that love has a real, distinct, and excellent being, I know not how we could attach blame and immorality to inconstancy, when confined to the affections and a sense of preference. Either, therefore, we must brutalise our notions with Pope : Lust thro' some certain strainers well refined, Is gentle love and charms all woman-kind : or we must dissolve and thaw away all bonds of morality by the irresistible shocks of an irresistible sensibility with Sterne. WEDDED UNION. The well-spring of all sensible communion is the natural delight and need, which undepraved man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, those things, wherein the excellency of his kind doth most consist ; and the eminence of love or marriage communion is, that 358 this mutual transfusion can take place more perfectly and totally in this, than in any other mode. Prefer person before money, good-temper with good sense before person ; and let all, wealth, easy temper, strong understanding and beauty, be as tig to thee, unless accompanied by virtue in and in hal>it. Suppose competence, health, and honesty ; then a happy marriage depends on four things : 1 . An rstanding proportionate to th i*, a reci- v at least of thine : 2. Natural sensibility and sympathy in general: 3. Steadiness in at- tining sensibility to its proper objects ta proper proportions:- al liking < 1 ii , 1 1 n g person and all the thousand obscure sympathies that determine conjugal liking, that is, love and desire to A. rather than to B. This seems very obvious and almost trivial : and yet all unhappy marriages arise from the not honestly putting, and sincerely answering each of these four questions : any one of them negatived, marriage is imperfect, and in hazard of discontent AWD the most similar and nearest points there is a n< v. I. ut f.. r the most part there is an absolute contrast, between Hobbes and Spinoza. Tim. 1 1 . 11,,-s makes a state of war the natural state of man from the essential and ever-* nature of man, as not a moral, but only a frightenable being: Spinoza makes the same state a necessity of man out of society, because he must then be an undeveloped man, and his moral being dormant; and so on through the whole. OMNIANA. 359 THE END MAY JUSTIFY THE MEANS. Whatever act is necessary to an end, and ascer- tained to be necessary and proportionate both to the end and the agent, takes its nature from that end. This premised, the proposition is innocent that ends may justify means. Remember, however, the impor- tant distinction: Unius facti diversi fines esse possunt: unius actionis non possunt. I have somewhere read this remark : Omne meritum est voluntarium, aut voluntate originis aut origins voluntatis. Quaintly as this is expressed, it is well worth consideration, and gives the true mean- ing of Baxter's famous saying, " Hell is paved with good intentions." NEGATIVE THOUGHT. On this calm morning of the i3th of November, 1809, it occurs to me, that it is by a negation and voluntary act of no thinking that we think of earth, air, water, &c. as dead. It is necessary for our limited powers of consciousness, that we should be brought to this negative state, and that this state should pass into custom ; but it is likewise necessary . that at times we should awake and step forward ; and this is effected by those extenders of our con- sciousness sorrow, sickness, poetry, and religion. The truth is, we stop in the sense of life just when we are not forced to go on, and then adopt a permission of our feelings for a precept of our reason. MAN'S RETURN TO HEAVEN. Heaven bestows light and influence on this lower world, which reflects the blessed rays, though it MQ cannot recompense them. So man may make a . T no requital. Youifo PRODIGIES, i on young prodigies and Rosciuses in verse, or on the stage, is arraigned, aa the envious uneaping Croat That bitea tbo first-born infanta of the spring. If t iii-re were no better answer, the following a good heart would scarcely admit ; but where nine-tenths of the applause hare been mere wonderment and miracle-lust (Wunditrsucht) these Terses are an excel- lent accompaniment to other arguments : Well, say it be ! Yet why of summer boast, Before the birds have natural cause to sing 1 Why should we joy in an abortive birth f At Christmas I no more desire a rose, Than wish a snow in Hay's new budding shows ; But like of each thing that in reason grows. Lovc't LaboWt lost* WELCH NAMES. The small number of surnames, and those Christian names and patronymics, not derived from trades, Ac. is one mark < ither not yet recently, *ed. Hence in Scotland the Mackintoshes, Macaulays, and so on. But the most remarkable show <>; rer saw, is the list of subscribers to Owen's Welch Dictionary. D. there are 81 names, 91 of which are Darts or Dari**, and the other three are > ::.!$ In 8HtfttUy*lUr*i--BD. OMNI ANA. 361 E. there are 30 ; 16 Evans; 6 Edwards ; 1 Edmonds; 1 Egan, and the remainder Ellis. In G. two-thirds are Gnffitlis. In H. all are Hughes and Howell. In I. there are 66 ; all Joneses. In L. 3 or 4 Lewises ; 1 Lewellyn ; all the rest Lloyds. M. four- fifths Morgans. 0. entirely Owen. R. all Roberts or Richards. T. all Thomases. V. all Vaughans ; and W. 64 names, 56 of them Williams. GERMAN LANGUAGE. The real value of melody in a language is consider- able as subadditive ; but when not jutting out into consciousness under the friction of comparison, the absence or inferiority of it is, as privative of pleasure, of little consequence. For example, when I read Voss's translation of the Georgics, I am, as it were, reading the original poem, until something particu- larly well expressed occasions me to revert to the Latin ; and then I find the superiority, or at least the powers, of the German in all other respects, but am made feelingly alive, at the same time, to its unsmooth mixture of the vocal and the organic, the fluid and the substance, of language. The fluid seems to have been poured in on the corpuscles all at once, and the whole has, therefore, curdled, and collected itself into a lumpy soup full of knots of curds inisled by interjacent whey at irregular dis- tances, and the curd lumpets of various sizes. It is always a question how far the apparent defects of a language arise from itself or from the false taste of the nation speaking it. Is the practical inferiority of the English to the Italian in the power of passing from grave to light subjects, in the manner of Ariosto, the fault of the language itself ? Wieland, in his Oberon, broke successfully through equal 362 difficulties. It is grievous to think how much leas careful the English have been to preserve than to ."-. Why have we lost, or all hit lest, the tvr or for as a prefix, -fordotu, forwcaritd, &c. ; and the zer or to,ztrrri**<, Jung- why is that last word now lost to common use, and confined to sheep and other Soph. His life was playful from infancy to death, like the snow :i calm day falls, but scarce seems to fall, and plays and dances in and out till the very moment that it gently reaches the earth. THE UKIVUHL >urely is not impossible that to some infu eing the whole universe may be as one . the distance between planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent HARMBOCB. rberout, that is, harbourous, is the old version and a beautiful word - to? should hf rendered a gentleman in drew and address, in appearance and demeanour, a man of the world in an innocent sense. The Latin miiiufa* has the same doable force in it ; only that to the rude early Romans, to have a clean pair of hands and a dean dress, was to be drett ; just as we say to boys, Th< meanings attached to the same word OMNI AN A. 363 or phrase in different sentences, will, of course, be accompanied with a different feeling in the mind ; this will affect the pronunciation, and hence arises a new word. We should vainly try to produce the same feeling in our minds by and he as by who ; for the different use of the latter, and its feeling having now coalesced. Yet ivho is properly the same word and pronunciation as 6 with the digammate prefix, and as qui Kal 6. AN ADMONITION. There are two sides to every question. If thou hast genius and poverty to thy lot, dwell on the foolish, perplexing, imprudent, dangerous, and even immoral, conduct of promise-breach in small things, of want of punctuality, of procrastination in all its shapes and disguises. Force men to reverence the dignity of thy moral strength in and for itself, seeking no excuses or palliations from fortune, or sickness, or a too full mind that, in opulence of con- ception, overrated its powers of application. But if thy fate should be different, shouldest thou possess competence, health, and ease of mind, and then be thyself called upon to judge such faults in another so gifted, oh ! then, upon the other view of the question, say, Am I in ease and comfort, and dare I wonder that he, poor fellow, acted so and so ? Dare I accuse him ? Ought I not to shadow forth to my- self that, glad and luxuriating in a short escape from anxiety, his mind over-promised for itself ; that, want combating with his eager desire to produce things worthy of fame, he dreamed of the nobler, when he should have been producing the meaner, and so had the meaner obtruded on his moral being, when the nobler was making full way on his intellectual. Think OMN: manifoldness of his it alls! Think, in short, on all that should be like a voice from heaven to warn thyself against this and this, and call r jity and for palliation; and then draw the balance. Take him in his whole. his head, his heart, his wishes, his innocence of all selfish crime, hundred years hence, what will be the result? The good, were it but a single volume that made truth more visible, and goodness more lovely, and pleasure at once more akin to virtue and, self-doubled, more pleasurable ! and the evil, while he liv 1. it injured none but himself; and where is it now? in his grave. Follow it not thither. KB CHIROBIX AJCD SERAPHIM COXTIXUALLT DO CRT. The mighty kingdoms angelical, like the thin clouds at dawn, receiving and hailing the first radi- ance, and singing and sounding forth th< ir Messed- ness, increase the rising joy in the heart of God, spread wide and utter forth the joy arisen, and in innumerable finite glories interpret all they can of infinite bliss. DEFINITION or MIRACLE. A phenomenon in no connection with any other tuenon, as its immediate cause, is a miracle ; ii.it is believed to have been such, is miraculous .0 person so believing. When it is strange and surprising, that is, without any analogy in our former experience it is called a miracle. The kind defines tii-- tiling : the circumstances the word.* <*te of thto , in the sense in i animals are. Not only my thoughts and affections extend to objects transnatural, as truth, .thing can be revealed, but as compact, or tlui.l, or aerial), I not merely sub- serve myself of them, but I employ them. / there is in me, or rather I am, a pneter-n:r that is, a super-sensuous t ; \\hat :- . why si ^li Kith nature? why lose the because my spectacles are broken ? 1 be objected, and very too :- soul or self is acted upon by nature h the body, and water or c. fused u'h or collect! 1 derange the cs of the soul by deranging the organs of the l-raiu ; the sword cannot touch the soul . OMNIANA. 367 by rending the flesh, it will rend the feelings. Therefore the violence of nature may, in destroying the body mediately destroy the soul ! It is to this objection that my first sentence applies ; and is an important, and I believe, a new and the only satis- factory reply I have ever heard. The one great and binding ground of the belief of God and a hereafter, is the law of conscience : but as the aptitudes, and beauty, and grandeur of the world, are a sweet arid beneficent inducement to this belief, a constant fuel to our faith, so here we seek these arguments, not as dissatisfied with the one main ground, not as of little fatih, but because, believing it to be, it is natural we should expect to find traces of it, and as a noble way of employing and developing, and enlarging the faculties of the soul, and this, not by way of motive, but of assimilation, producing virtue. 2nd April, 1811. HATRED OP INJUSTICE. It is the mark of a noble nature to be more shocked with the unjust condemnation of a bad man than of a virtuous one ; as in the instance of Strafford. For in such cases the love of justice, and the hatred of the contrary, are felt more nakedly, and constitute a strong passion per se, not only unaided by, but in conquest of, the softer self- repay ing sympathies. A wise foresight too inspires jealousy, that so may prin- ciples be most easily overthrown. This is the virtue of a wise man, which a mob never possesses, even as a mob never, perhaps, has the malignant finis ultimus, which is the vice of a man. on . K ; i : , i " s . Amongst the great truths are these : I That religion has no speculative dogmas ; all is practical, all appealing to the will, and th< ? all imperati >, / ,/ the Lord ti I"' '/ f tin- niir:il inti-riM \\hi.-li MiUtant. it. s the evidence of miracles. The instance of a \ gate suddenly converted, if properly sifted, will be i but an apparent exception. \ That the being of a God, and the immortality of man, are everywhere assumed by Christ. VI. That Socinianism is not a religion but a theory, and that, too, a very pernicious, or a very unsatisfactory, theory. Pernicious. f 1 udes 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 character of the legislator; OMNI ANA. 369 regarding God as merely a good-natured pleasure- giver, so happiness be produced, indifferent as to the means : Unsatisfactory, for it promises forgiveness without any solution of the difficulty of the compati- bility of this with the justice of God; in no way explains the fallen condition of man, nor offers any means for his regeneration. " If you will be good you will be happy," it says : that may be, but my will is weak ; I sink in the struggle. VII. That Socinianism never did and never can subsist as a general religion. For 1. It neither states the disease, on account of which the human being hungers for revelation, nor prepares any remedy in general, nor ministers any hope to the individual. 2. In order to make itself endurable on scriptural grounds, it must so weaken the texts and authority of. Scripture, as to leave in Scripture no binding ground of proof of anything. 3. Take a pious Jew, one of the Maccabees, and compare his faith and its grounds with Priestley's ; and then, for what did Christ come ? VIII. That Socinianism involves the shocking thought that man will not, and ought not to be expected to, do his duty as man, unless he first makes a bargain with his Maker, and his Maker with him. Give me, the individual me, a positive proof that I shall be in a state of pleasure after my death, if I do so and so, and then I will do it, not else ! And the proof asked is not one dependent on, or flowing from, his moral nature and moral feelings, but wholly extra- moral, namely, by his outward senses, the subjugation of which to faith, that is, the passive to the actional and self-created belief, is the great object of all religion ! IX. That Socinianism involves the dreadful reflec- tion, that it can establish its probability (its certainty being wholly out of the question and impossible, Priestley himself declaring that his own continuance as a Christian depended on a contingency.) only on the destruction of all the argument **d for oar mentand essential distinction from brutes; that it must j-! .-,. that we ha? e no grounds to obey " contrary . that in wisdom we ought to reject and declare utterly null all the commands of conscience, and all that is ini]>l e commands, reckless of the r iuns drawn from the present documents (and surely a man who has passed from orthodoxy to the loosest A hence to Arianism. and thence to direct i as no from his experience to deny the probabil fall positively say that our present Apostles* Creed was gathered out of the Scriptures? Whereas the Symbolum Fidei was elder than the Gospels, and pro- bably contained only the three doctrines the Redemption, and the Unity of the Cl> May it not hare happened, when baptism was ad* tered so early, and at last even to infants, that the old Symbolum Fidti became gradually intoila/um. as being appropriated to adult proselytes from Juda- ism or Paganism ? This seems to me even more than probable ; for in proportion to the majority of born over converted Christians must the creed of iction have been more frequent than that of doctrinal profession. A GOOD HEART. re is in Abbt's Essays an attempt to d mine the true sense of this phrase, at least to unfold (auttinandenftzen) what is meant and felt by it. I was much pleased with the remarks, I remember, and with the counter- position of Tom Jones at. Charles Grandison. Might not Luther and Calvin serv :t is made less noticeable in these last by its co-existence with, and sometimes real, more often apparent, subordination to fixed conscious Parson Adams contrasted with Dr. Harrison in Fielding's " Amelia " would do. Then there is the suppression of the good heart and the substitution of pli's or motives for the good heart, as in Laud, and the whole race of conscientious persecutors. Such principles constitute the virtues of the In A good heart contrasts with the Pharisaic OMNIANA. 373 righteousness. This last contemplation of the Pharisees, the dogmatists, and the rigorists in toto genere, serves to reconcile me to the fewness of the men who act on fixed principles. For unless there exist intellectual power to determine aright what are the principia jam fixa et formata, and unless there be the wisdom of love preceding the love of wisdom, and unless to this be added a graciousness of nature, a loving kindness, these rigorists are but bigots often to errors, and active, yea, remorseless in pre- venting or staying the rise and progress of truth. And even when bigoted adherents to true principles, yet they render truth unamiable, and forbid little children to come thereunto. As human nature now is, it is well, perhaps, that the number should be few, seeing that of the few, the greater part are pre- maturities. The number of those who act from good-hearted impulses, a kindly and cheerful mood, and the play of minute sympathies, continuous in their discon- tinuity, like the sand-thread of the hour-glass, and from their minuteness and transiency not calculated to stiffen or inflate the individual, and thus remaining unendangered by egotism, and its unhandsome vizard contempt, is far larger : and though these temper- amental pro-virtues will too often fail, and are not built to stand the storms of strong temptation ; yet on the whole they carry on the benignant scheme of social nature, like the other instincts that rule the animal creation. But of all the most numerous are the men, who have evermore their own dearliest beloved self, as the only or main goal or butt of their endeavours, straight and steady before their eyes, and whose whole inner world turns on the great axis of self-interest. These form the majority, if not of mankind, yet of those by whom the business of life .71 OMM is can and most expedient it is, that so it s} : . ,ul.l )>c ; nor can we imagine anything better con* trive of society, and the actions governed by this principle with the results, are the only materials on v. the statesman or individuals can safely There is, indeed, another sort (a class they can -:uv,iv betsBed) ^h" MM bskta MiMnlsrali wte live under the mastery of their senses and appetites ; and whose selfishness is an animal instinct, a goad a tergo, not an attraction a re prosptctu, or (so to speak) from a projected self. In fact, M. luals cannot so properly he said to have a self, as to he machines for the self of nature : and are as capable of loving themselves as of loving their neigh- bours. Such there are. Nay (if we were to count only ighing), the aggregate of such persons might possibly form a larger number than the class preceding. But they may safely be taken up into the , for the main ends of society, as being or sure to become its materials and tools. Their Mly is the stuff in which the sound sense of the worldly-wise is at onoe manifested and remunerated ; their idleness of thought, with the passions, appetites, likings and I, win. h are its natural growth, though weeds, Direction and employment to the industry of the I he accidents of inheritance by birth, of accumulation of property in partial masses, are thus counteracted, and the aneurisms in the circulating system prevented or rendered fewer and less obstinate, whilst animal want, the sore general result of idle- ness and its accompanying vices, tames si lengt selfish host into the laborious slaves and me* implements of the self-interested. Thus, without OMNIANA. 375 public spirit, nay, by the predominance of the opposite quality, the latter are the public benefactors : and, giving steadfastness and compactness to the whole, lay in the ground of the canvass, on which minds of finer texture may impress beauty and harmony. Lastly, there is in the heart of all men a working principle, call it ambition, or vanity, or desire of distinction, the inseparable adjunct of our individuality and personal nature, and flowing from the same source as language the instinct and necessity in each man of declaring his particular existence, and thus of singling or singularising himself. In some this principle is far stronger than in others, while in others its comparative dimness may pass for its non- existence. But in thoughts at least, and secret fancies there is in all men (idiocy of course excepted) a wish to remain the same and yet to be something else, and something more, or to exhibit what they are, or imagine they might be, somewhere else and to other spectators. Now, though this desire of distinction, when it is disproportionate to the powers and qualities by which the individual is indeed dis- tinguished, or when it is the governing passion, or taken as the rule of conduct, is but a " knavish sprite," yet as an attendant and subaltern spirit, it has its good purposes and beneficial effects : and is not seldom sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door. Though selfish in its origin, it yet tends to elevate the individual from selfishness into self-love, under a softer and perhaps better form than that of self- interest, the form of self-respect. Whatever other objects the man may be pursuing, and with whatever other inclinations, he is still by this principle 376 MMANA. impelled and almost compelled to pass out of himself in imagination, and to survey himself at a sufficient distance, in order to judge what figure he is likely to make in the eyes of his fellow-men. Hut i:. taking his station as at the apex of a triangle, while the self is at one angle of the base, he makes it possible at lea- image of his neighbour may appear at the other, whether by spontaneous associa- >r placed there for the purposes of comparison ; and so both be contemplated at equal distance. ;s the first step towards disinterestedness; and h it should never be reached, the advantage of ppearance is soon learnt, and the neces*; nig the appearance of the contrary, appearances cannot be long sustained without some i of the reality. At all events there results a control over -:s; some good may be pro- duced, and many a poisonous or off* be prevented. Courtesy, urbanity, gallantry, mumii cence ; the outward influence of the law shall I call it, or rather fashion of honour these are the hand- some hypocrisies that spring from the desire of I ask not the genius of a Maclu a Tacitus, or a Swift ; it needs only a worldly experience and an observing mind, to convince a man of forty that there is no medium between the creed of misanthropy and that of the gospel. A pagan might be as orthodox as Paul on the doctrine of works. First, set aside the large portion of them that have their sour loual temperament, the merit oi .!" any, belongs to nature, not to the individual agent ; and of the remaining number of good works, nine are derived from vices for one that has its < have often in looking at the water-works and complex machinery of our manufactories, indulged a humorous OMNIANA. 377 mood by fancying that the hammers, cogs, fly- wheels, &c., were each actuated by some appetite, or passion hate, rage, revenge, vanity, cupidity, &c., while the general result was most benignant, and the machine, taken as a whole, the product of power, knowledge, and benevolence ! Such a machine does the moral world, the world of human nature, appear and to those who seem evermore to place the comparison and the alternative between hell and earth, and quite overlook the opposition between earth and heaven, I recommend this meditation. EVIDENCES OP CHRISTIANITY.* I. Miracles as precluding the contrary evidence of no miracles. II. The material of Christianity, its existence and history. III. The doctrines of Christianity, and the cor- respondence of human nature to those doctrines, illustrated, 1st, historically as the actual production of a new world, and the dependence of the fate of the planet upon it ; 2nd, individually from its appeal for its truth to an asserted fact, which, whether it be real or not, every man possessing reason has an equal power of ascertaining within himself ; namely, a will which has more or less lost its freedom, though not the consciousness that it ought to be and may become free ; the conviction that this cannot be achieved without the operation of a principle con- natural with itself; the evident rationality of an entire confidence in that principle, being the condition and means of its operation ; the experience in his own nature of the truth of the process described by * Dictated to, and communicated by, Dr. Brabant, of Devizes. ED. 378 OMM uro as Car as he can place himself within the process, aided by the confident assurances of o as to the effects experienced by them, and which he is striving to arrive at All these form a practical Christian. Add, however, a gradual opening out of itellect to more and more clear perceptions of the strict coincidence of the doctrines < with tin- truths evolved by the mind, from reflections on its own nature. To such a man one main test of the objectivity, the entity, the objective truth of his is its accompaniment by an increase of insight into the moral beauty and necessity of the process i it comprises, and the dependence of that proof m the causes asserted. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes into knowledge will be the reward of that belief. The Christian, to whom, after a long profession of Christianity, the mysteries remain as much mysteries as before, is in the same state as a schoolboy with regard to his arithmetic to whom the / o sod of the examples in his cyphering book is the whole ground for his assuming that such and such figures amount to so and so. Srd. In the above I include the increasing dis- coveries in the correspondence of the histon doctrines, and the promises of Christianity, with the past, present, and probable future of human nature ; D this state a fair comparison of the religion as ^ophy, with all other religions which have pretended to revelations, and all other systems h regard to the totality of its truth .-mi iQcation with the manifest march I should conclude that, if we suppose a man to have convinced himself that not only the doctrines of Christianity, which may be conceived independently of OMNIANA. 379 history or time, as the Trinity, spiritual influences, &c., are coincident with the truths which his reason, thus strengthened, has evolved from its own sources, but that the historical dogmas, namely, of the incarnation of the creative Logos, and his becoming a personal agent, are themselves founded in philosophical necessity ; then it seems irrational, that such a man should reject the belief of the actual appearance of a religion strictly correspondent therewith, at a given time recorded, even as much as that he should reject Cassar's account of his wars in Gaul, after he has convinced himself a priori of their probability. As the result of these convictions he will not scruple to receive the particular miracles recorded, inasmuch as it would be miraculous that an incarnate God should not work what must to mere men appear as miracles ; inasmuch as it is strictly accordant with the ends and benevolent nature of such a Being, to commence the elevation of man above his mere senses by attracting and enforcing attention, first through an appeal to those senses. But with equal reason will he expect that no other or greater force should be laid on these miracles as such ; that they should not be spoken of as good in themselves, much less as the adequate and ultimate proof of that religion ; and likewise he will receive additional satisfaction, should he find these miracles so wrought, and on such occasions, as to give them a personal value as symbols of important truths when their miraculousness was no longer needful or efficacious. MM CMS Coifrnuo FIDEL NOT. 3rd, 1810. I. i I believe that I am a free-agent, inasmuch as, and so far as, I have a will, which renders me justly responsible for my actions, omUsive as well as corn- missive. Likewise that I possess reason, or a law of right and wrong, wl; tig with my sense of moral responsibility, constitutes the voice of conscience. II i I nee it becomes my absolute duty to believe, and I do believe, that there is a God, that is, a Being, in whom supreme reason and a most holy will are one with an infinite power; and that all will is coincident with the will of God, and there- fore secure in its ultimate consequences by omnipotence; having, if M. htude be not unlawful, such a relat . goodness of th<- Almighty, as a perfect time-piece will have to the sun. COROLLARY. The wonderful works of God in the sensible world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me of existence, and shadowing out to me His perfections. Hut as all language presupposes in the intelligent hearer or reader those primary notions, which it symbolises; as well as the power of making those combinations of these primary notions, whi represents and excites us to combine, even so I believe, that the notion of God is essential t human mind; that it is called i'-nh into distinct consciousness principally by the conscience, and auxiliarly by the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the outward crea i ere fore, evid< OMNIANA. 381 my reason, that the existence of God is absolutely and necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demon- stration, and that Scripture has so represented it. For it commands us to believe in one God. I am the Lord thy God : thou shalt have none other gods but me. Now all commandment necessarily relates to the will ; whereas all scientific demonstration is independent of the will, and is apodictic or demon- strative only as far as it is compulsory on the mind, volentem nolentem. III. My conscience forbids me to propose to myself the pains and pleasures of this life, as the primary motive, or ultimate end, of my actions ; on the con- trary, it makes me perceive an utter disproportionate- ness and heterogeneity between the acts of the spirit, as virtue and vice, and the things of the sense, such as all earthly rewards and punishments must be. Its hopes and fears, therefore, refer me to a different and spiritual state of being : and I believe in the life to come, not through arguments acquired by my understanding or discursive faculty, but chiefly and effectively, because so to believe is my duty, and in obedience to the commands of my conscience. Here ends the first table of my creed, which would have been my creed, had I been born with Adam ; and which therefore constitutes what may in this sense be called natural religion, that is, the religion of all finite rational beings. The second table con- tains the creed of revealed religion, my belief as a Christian. II. IV. I believe, and hold it as the fundamental article of Christianity, that I am a fallen creature ; that I am of myself capable of moral evil, but not of myself capable of moral good, and that an evil 382 ground existed in my will, previously to any given act, or assignable moment of time, in my conscious- ness. I am born u child <>f \s arful mystery I pretend not to understand. I cannot even conceive tbe possibility .f it, hut 1 know that so. My conscience, tbe sole fountain of cert commands me to believe it, and would itself be a contradiction, were it not so and what is real most be possible. I receive with full and grateful faith the assurance of revelation, that the Word, whi< from all eternity with God, and is God, assumed our human nature in order to redeem me, and all man- Kim! from this our connate corruption. My reason i ices me, that no other mode of redemption is conceivable, and, as did Socrates, would have yearned after the Redeemer, though it would not dare expect so wonderful an act of divine love, except only as an effort of my mind to conceive the utmost of the 'neatness of that love. VI I belim tlmt this assumption of hum by the Son of God, was revealed and realised to us rd made flesh, and manifested to us in Christ Jesus; and that his miraculous 1 agony, hi- loath, resurrection, and ascen- sion, were all both symbols of our reden ($cui>opcra raw iwpliw) and necessary parts of the 1 process. V 1 1 1 believe in the descent and sending of Hoi \ y whose free grace obtained for me by my Redeemer, I can alone be sau< and restored from my natural inheritance of sin and condemnation, be a child of God, and an it the kingdom of God. OMNI ANA. 383 COROLLARY. The Trinity of persons in the Unity of the God would have been a necessary idea of my speculative reason, deduced from the necessary postulate of an intelligent creator, whose ideas being anterior to the things, must be more actual than those things, even as those things are more actual than our images derived from them ; and who, as intelligent, must have had co-eternally an adequate idea of himself, in and through which he created all things both in heaven and earth. But this would only have been a speculative idea, like those of circles and other mathematical figures, to which we are not authorised by the practical reason to attribute reality. Solely in consequence of our Redemption does the Trinity become a doctrine, the belief of which as real is commanded by our conscience. But to Christians it is commanded, and it is false candour in a Christian, believing in original sin and redemption therefrom, to admit that any man denying the divinity of Christ can be a Christian. The true language of a Christian, which reconciles humility with truth, would be ; God and not man is the judge of man : which of the two is the Christian, he will determine ; but this is evident, that if the theanthropist is a Christian, the psilanthropist cannot be so ; and vice versa. Suppose, that two tribes used the same written characters, but attached different and opposite meanings to them, so that niger, for instance, was used by one tribe to con- vey the notion black, by the other white ; could they, without absurdity, be said to have the same language ? Even so, in the instance of the crucifixion, the same image is present to the theanthropist and to the psilanthropist or Socinian but to the latter it represents a mere man, a good man indeed and o; in < gorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; rffful* majrima or supreme of my actions, both inward and outward, should be ut any contradiction arising OMNI ANA. 385 therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings ; this, I say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my outward senses. Nor is this all ; but in the very act of being conscious of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact of which all men either are or ought to be conscious ; a fact, the ignorance of which constitutes either the non-personality of the ignorant, or the guilt, in which latter case the igno- rance is equivalent to knowledge wilfully darkened. I know that I possess this consciousness as a man, and not as Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; hence knowing that consciousness of this fact is the root of all other consciousness, and the only practical contradistinction of man from brutes, we name it the conscience ; by the natural absence or presumed presence of which, the law, both divine and human, determines whether X Y Z be a thing or a person : the conscience being that which never to have had places the objects in the same order of things as the brutes, for example, idiots ; and to have lost which implies either insanity or apostasy. Well this we have affirmed is a fact of which every honest man is as fully assured as of his seeing, hearing, or smelling. But though the former assurance does not differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in the kind ; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will, dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned, we are passive ; but in the fact of the conscience we are BM not only agents, bat it is by this alone, thai we know ourxelvee to be such ; nay. that our very passiveness s latter is an act of passiveness, and that we are patient (patient*) not, as in the other case. *. passive. The result is, the consciousness of responsibi. ie proof is afforded by the inward experience of iivereity between regret and rsmoree. 1 1 I have sound ears, and my companion speaks to me with A due proportion of voice, I may persuade In in that I did not hear, but cannot deceive myself. lint when my conscience speaks to me, I <:. repeated efforts, render myself finally insensill which add tin- other difference in the case of con- science, namely, that to make myself deaf is one and the same thing with making my conscience dumb, nil at length I become unconscious of my conscience. Frequent are the instances in \\ iu-h it is suspended, and as it were drowned, in th< appetites, passions and imaginations, t resigned myself, making use of my *ill in order to abandon my free-will ; and there are not, I fear examples wanting of the conscience being u destroyed, or of the passage of wickedness madness; that species of madness, namel it the reason is lost For so long as the reason nues, so long must the conscience exist either an a good conscience, or as a bad conscience. It appears, then, that even the very first step, the initiation of the process, the becoming conscious of a conscience, partakes of the nature of an act. It is an act, in and by which we take upon ourselves an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty; and this fealty implying the power of t i* the first and fundamental ease of Faith. It is likewise the commencement OMNI ANA. 387 of experience, and the result of all other experience. In other words, conscience, in this its simplest form, must be supposed in order to consciousness, that is, to human consciousness. Brutes may be, and are scious, but those beings only, who have an I, scire possunt hoc vel illud una cum seipsis ; that is, conscire vel scire aliquid mecum, or to know a thing in relation to myself, and in the act of knowing myself as acted upon by that something. Now the third person could never have been dis- tinguished from the first but by means of the second. There can be no He without a previous Thou. Much less could an I exist for us, except as it exists during the suspension of the will, as in dreams ; and the nature of brutes may be best understood, by con- ceiving them as somnambulists. This is a deep meditation, though the position is capable of the strictest proof, namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and that a Thou is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as equal to Thou, and yet not the same. And this again is only pos- sible by putting them in opposition as correspondent opposites, or correlatives. In order to this, a some- thing must be affirmed in the one, which is rejected in the other, and this something is the will. I do not will to consider myself as equal to myself, for in the very act of constituting myself J, I take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is, of any application of the will. If then, I minus the will be the thesis ; * Thou plus will must * There are four kinds of Theses, 9t infinite inlo n by the pure act of the sentoous imagination, that is, in the production of the forms of space and time abstracted from all corporeity, and likewise of th< inherent forms of the undercut! itself abstractedly from the consideration of par- ticulars, as in the case of geometry, numeral mathe- OMNI ANA. 391 matics, universal logic, and pure metaphysics. The discursive faculty then becomes what our Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason." We will now take up our reasoning again from the words " motion in itself." It is evident then, that the reason, as the irradi- ative power, and the representative of the infinite, judges the understanding as the faculty of the finite, and cannot without error be judged by it. When this is attempted, or when the understanding, in its synthesis with the personal will, usurps the supre- macy of the reason, or affects to supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the flesh (

    lew is modified by th- alter. And there arise impulses and objects ui hence arises a synthesis of the two in the pectoral system as the intermediate, and, like a drawbridge, e conductor and boundary :er as objectised by the former arise the emotions, affections, tie passions, as shed from the cognitions and appetites. Now the reason has been shown to be super-it generally refore not less so when the form of nn i Cation subsists in the alter, than when it is confined to the . not less when the ci their con- scious or believed object in :m-.ti. subjo individual personal sell iiough these emotions, affections, attachment- like, .0 prepared ladder by whn-h th<- lower nature is and made to partake of, the highest room, as we are taught to give a fe< 'eality 'im commune \\i\\ ih lower, gradually to sea the reality of the higher he objects of reason) and finally to know are indeed and pre-eminently real, as i love your earthly parents whom you see, by these means you will learn to love r who is invisible ; yt this holds good only so far as the reason is the president, and its objects the : and cases may arise in which the t as the Logos or Redemptive Reason declares. OMNTANA. 393 ivorthy of me ; nay, he that can permit his emotions to rise to an equality with the universal reason, is in enmity with that reason, Here then reason appears as the love of God ; and its antagonist is the attach- ment to individuals wherever it exists in diminution of, or in competition with, the love which is reason. In these five paragraphs I have enumerated and explained the several powers or forces belonging or incidental to human nature, which in all matters of reason the man is bound either to subjugate or subordinate to reason. The application to Faith follows of its own accord. The first or most inde- finite sense of faith is fidelity : then fidelity under previous contract or particular moral obligation. In this sense faith is fealty to a rightful superior ; faith is the duty of a faithful subject to a rightful governor. Then it is allegiance in active service ; fidelity to the liege lord under circumstances, and amid the temptations, of usurpation, rebellion, and intestine discord. Next we seek for that rightful superior on our duties to whom all our duties to all other superiors, on our faithfulness to whom all our bounden relations to all other objects of fidelity, are founded. We must inquire after that duty in which all others find their several degrees and dignities, and from which they derive their obligative force. We are to find a superior, whose rights, including our duties, are pre- sented to the mind in the very idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle, consequently underived, unconditional, and as rationally insusceptible, so probably prohibitive of all further question. In this sense then faith is fidelity, fealty, allegiance of the moral nature, to God, in opposition to all usurpation, and in resistance to all BM OMX1ANA. temptation to the placing any other claim above or equal with our fidelity to God. The will of God is the last ground and final aim of all our duties, and to that the whole man is to be harmonised by subordination, subjugation, or suppres- sion alike in commission and omission. But the will M.1, which is one with the supreme intelligence, is revealed to man through the conscience. But the conscience, \\ln.-h consists in an inappellable bearing- truth and reality of our reason, may legitimately be construed with the term reason, so far as the conscience is prescriptive ; while as approving or condemning, it is the consciousness of the subordination or insubordination, the barm< discord, of the personal will of man to and with the represent i .0 will of God. This brings me to the last and fullest sense of Faith, that is, as the obedience of the individual will to the reason, r lust of the flesh as opposed to the super-sensual ; in the lust of the eye as opposed to the supereensuous ; pride of the understanding as opposed to the infinite : in the ^poVq/xa ffa/uco'f in contrariety to the ;.il truth ; in tin* IIM of the personal will as opposed to the absolute and universal ; and in the love of the creature, as far as it is opposed to the love which is one with the reason, namely, th- love of God. H then to conclude. Faith subsists in " reason and the individual will. By itUT therefore it must be an energy* and inasmuch as^t relates to the whole moral man, nt be exerted in each and all of his constit idents, (acuities, and tendencies ; it must be a total, not a partial ; a continuous, not a desultory or occasional energy. And by virtue of the former, that is, reason, faith must be a light, a form of knowing, OMNI AN A. 395 a beholding of truth. In the incomparable words of the Evangelist, therefore faith must be a light originating in the Logos, or the substantial reason, which is coeternal and one with the Holy Will, and which light is at the same time the life of men. Now as life is here the sum or collective of all moral and spiritual acts, in suffering, doing, and being, so is faith the source and the sum, the energy and the principle of the fidelity of man to God, by the subordination of his human will, in all provinces of his nature, to his reason, as the sum of spiritual truth, representing and manifesting the will Divine. FORMULA FIDEI DE SANCTISSIMA TBINITATE. 1830. THE IDENTITY. The absolute subjectivity, whose only attribute is the Good ; whose only definition is that which is essentially causative of all possible true being ; the ground ; the absolute will ; the adorable TrpoTrpoorov, which, whatever is assumed as the first, must be pre- sumed as its antecedent; 0eos, without an article, and yet not as an adjective. See John i. 18. eou ovbels IcJjoa/ce moTrore, as differenced from ib. 1. /cat 0609 r]v 6 Aoyos. But that which is essentially causative of all being must be causative of its own, causa sui y Thence THE IPSE1TY. The eternally self-afnrmant self-affirmed ; the " I Am in that I am," or the " I shall be that I will to be;" the Father; the relatively subjective, whose attribute is, the Holy One ; whose definition is, the essent in the form of the infinite the absolute will, the absolute goal il act of self-affirmation, the Good as the ! One, co-cternally begets THE ALTEHITT. The supreme being ; 6 6Vro>? ir : erne reason ; the Jehovah ; the Son ; the hose attrihuta is th and whose definiti.., jforoma of being, whose essential poles are unity and ; or the essential infinite in the form of the finite; lastly, th< \ely objective, deita* object ira in relation to the i Am as the tltitti* subjectira ; the divine objei N.B. The distinctities in the pleroma are the eternal ideas, the subsistet us; each con- sidered in itself, an infinite in thr form of the 1 but all considered as one with the unity, the eternal Son, they are the energies* TOITQ oY aj/ror TOV ?rA^/xJ/iaro; atroO /y/itv Trarres whose attribute is Wisdom : Mncta tophi* ; the Good in iho rn of actual OMNI AN A. 397 A NIGHTLY PRAYER. 1831. ALMIGHTY GOD, by thy eternal Word, my Creator, Redeemer, and Preserver ! who hast in thy free communicative goodness glorified me with the capa- bility of knowing thee, the one only absolute Good, the eternal I Am, as the author of my being, and of desiring and seeking thee as its ultimate end ; who, when I fell from thee into the mystery of the false and evil will, didst not abandon me, poor self- lost creature, but in thy condescending mercy didst provide an access and a return to thyself, even to thee the Holy One, in thine only begotten Son, the way and the truth from everlasting, and who took on himself humanity, yea, became flesh, even the man Christ Jesus, that for man he might be the life and the resurrection ! Giver of all good gifts, who art thyself the one only absolute Good, from whom I have received whatever good I have, whatever capa- bility of good there is in me, and from thee good alone, from myself and my own corrupted will all evil and the consequents of evil, with inward prostration of will, mind, and affections I adore thy infinite majesty ; I aspire to love thy transcendant goodness ! In a deep sense of my unworthiness, and my unfitness to present myself before thee, of eyes too pure to behold iniquity, and whose light, the beatitude of spirits conformed to thy will, is a con- suming fire to all vanity and corruption ; but in the name of the Lord Jesus, of the dear Son of thy love, in whose perfect obedience thou deignest to behold as many as have received the seed of Christ into the body of this death ; I offer this my bounden nightly sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in humble trust, that the fragrance of my Saviour's righteousness OMM may remove from it the taint of my mortal corrup- tion. Thy mercies have followed me through all th hours and moments of my life; and now I lift up my heart in awe and thankfulness for the preservation of my life through the past day, for the alleviation of my bodily sufferings and languors, for the ma: comforts which thou hast reserved for me, yea, in thy rly compassion hast rescued from the wrr my own sins or sinful infirmities ; for the kind and affectionate friends thou hast raised up for me, espe- cially for those of this household, for the mother and mistress of this family, whose love to me hath been great and f. nd for the dear friend, the supporter and sharer of my studies and researches ; but above all, for the heavenly Friend, the crucified Saviour, the glorified Mediator, Christ Jesus, and for the hen Comforter, source of all abiding comforts, thy Holy Spirit ! O grant me the aid of thy Sj- I may with a deeper faith, a more enkindled love, bless thee, who through thy Son hast privileged me to call thee Abba, 1 MOU who hast revealed thyself in thy holy word as a God that nearest prayer ; before whose infinitude all differences cease of great and small ; who like a tender parent fore* knowest all our want*, yet listenest well-pleased to the humble petitions of thy children; who hast not alone permitted, l*ut taught us, to call <'G in all our needs, earnestly 1 implor- nuance of thy free mercy, of thy prot providence, through the coming n u nearest every prayer offered to thee believingly with a penitent and sincere heart in withholding grantest, healest in mtlu tin*; the wound, yea, turnest all to good for as many as truly seek thee through Christ, the Mediator rill to n<> ! 1 lu- be according to thy wise and righteous ordinances, O OMNI ANA. 399 shield me tins night from the assaults of disease, grant me refreshment of sleep unvexed by evil and distempered dreams ; and if the purpose and as- piration of my heart be upright before thee who alone knowest the heart of man, in thy mercy vouchsafe me yet in this my decay of life an interval of ease and strength ; if so (thy grace disposing and assisting) I may make compensation to thy church for the unused talents thou hast entrusted to me, for the neglected opportunities, which thy loving-kindness had provided. let me be found a labourer in the vineyard, though of the late hour, when the Lord and Heir of the vintage, Christ Jesus, calleth for his servant. Our Father, Sc. To thee, great omnipresent Spirit, whose mercy is over all thy works, who now beholdest me, who hearest me, who hast framed my heart to seek and to trust in thee, in the name of my Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, I humbly commit and commend my body, soul, and spirit. Glory be to thee, God ! CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES. The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of Russia, all with scarcely an exception belonging to genera that are now only found in, and require, a tropical climate, are such as receive no adequate solution from the hypo- thesis of their having been casually floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem, two data are requisite: 1. a total change of '* change shall hate been, not gradual, but sudden, instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and previ. Now these data or conditions will be afibrdt we assume a total submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains then and now ng, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, ami that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind, especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and was (as it most of necessity have been) most rapid and intense ai the equator and within th proportioi :ts it has been demonstrated by hr. \Vollaston*s experiment, in which the evaporation, occasion, boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze the Hold at the two ends. i. *., at a given distance from the greatest 1 1 \ t he evaporative process) the effect of an eva] ;>osed power and rapidity would be to produce at c< distances from the maximum point, north and south, a vast barrier of ice, such as, having once taken place, and being of such mass and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all the known and ordinary dim* agents of nature. That the situation of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation, from iu centre or the mnaimmm of its probable, and receives a strong confirm ^ the open sea and diminished cold, both at the n< rth OMNIANA. 401 and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier, and towards the true or physical poles of the r; r th. Now the action of a powerful co -agent in the evaporative process, such as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. And God remem- bered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark : and God made a wind to pass over the earth t and the waters assuaged. Genesis viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word rendered " assuaged," but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle in D'Oyley and Mant's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the state of chemical science in his time. The problem of the multitude of genera of animals, and their several exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legiti- mated by known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter. 1823. PARTS OF SPEECH. Prothesis identity of Act and Being, or a Being essentially Act, an Act essentially Being : Noun = Verb + Verb = Noun, Verb = Substantive I AM. Thesis Mesothesis Antithesis Noun Infinitive Mood Verb Synthesis Participle The modification of the noun by the verb is the ADNOUN or Adjective ; the modification of the Verb by the Noun is the Adverb. D D 402 Every language must have five parts of speech ; no language can have more than seven. Coi lions and Prepositions are one or the other of the preceding, hut most commonly the Verb in the impe- rative mood as But, i. e. 9 divide 6V corrupt, imper. from bda> divido bij; (= then, from 6V, connecto ; or the participle.) The visual image as expressing a concrete, is, by tin- frequent recurrence, made to express a relat r of Time or Space in the same way, in \viii.-h !': visual image by abstraction of length. When such a word governs a whole sentence, we call it a conjun ; only part of a sentence, a preposition : ex. gr. t We encountered many obstacles ; but we all went on except) James. An Interjection or Excla- mation is no part of 5/>< it does not express .1 th< ii'.'h:. hut a sensation, and is common to men and brutes. This is the Logical Pentad; Prothesis, Thesis, Antithesis, Mesothesis (or ti mce of Thesis and Antithesis. -A In. -h i> i i-ut in different Relations; while the Prothesis is both as one a and the same relation) and lastly the Synthesis. The modification of Thesis by Antithesis, an i versa, con- Adnoun a Pentad to an Heptad analogous to the law of colours. interpenet ration of Light and Shade it highest unity, or the identity of Light and Shadow is Ri i *ar i( o\jjv t in positive energy. the harmonious opposite, or Nadir Colour iu negative energy. Prothetis Mrsothesis Green indecomponible Blue OMNIANA. 403 Synthesis Green compon. and decomponible. But from the Prothesis, Eed, to the Thesis an oblique line may be drawn, the bisecting point of which con- stitutes the Mesothesis of Red and Yellow, i. e., Orange, and in like manner a line from the Prothesis to the Antithesis, the bisecting point of which is the Mesothesis or Indifference of Red and Blue, i. e., Violet or Indigo. And this is the Heptad of colours. The infinitive mood is the Mesothesis or indifference of noun and verb. " For not to dip the Hero in the lake, Could save the son of Thetis from to die." SPENSER. Now here ** to dip " is a verb relative to " the Hero," as its objective or accusative case : but it is a noun and the nominative, relatively to the verb " could save." In the Greek and Italian languages this form is of perpetual occurrence from to die, OLTTO TOV Oave'iv could hinder him from to destroy brave Hector. Here "to destroy " is the noun governed by the preposition (i. e., abbreviated verb) from, and a verb governing the noun and adnoun, brave Hector. Thesis Antithesis Alkali Acid Now hydrosublimate is the Mesothesis, i.e., an acid relatively to an alkali, an alkali relatively to an acid music, (and verse as its articulate analogon) is the Mesothesis of order and passion, or of law and life of controlling, predetermining will, of reason and of sponteneity, or lawless will will of the flesh, vapKos, will surging up toward and against D D 2 OUNIAXA. reason as fluid life. Painting is the Mesothesis of thing and thought A coloured wax peach is one ; passed off for another thing a practical lie, and not a work appertaining to the Fine Arts a delusion not an imitation. Every imitation, as oontra-J nitrogen to 2} oxygen. Hence the possible varieties in the fine arts, yet none The arbitrary at once betrays itself, as a genus hybridum, a jutcA-work 'Irrn inflated pro* tragedies, verse and prose, singing and dialoguing comic operas. Ice. Ac. Chinese OMNIANA. 405 mermaids, by stitching on the busts of monkeys to the tails of seals. BISHOP BEKKELET'S SIRIS. This great man needed only an entire, instead of partial, emancipation from the fetters of the mechanic philosophy to have enunciated all that is true and important in modern chemistry. Combining its (= hodiernity's) more accurate detail and discrimi- nation of facts with the more profound and vital philosophy of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Plato, he might have refined and integrated both into one harmonious system, the centre of which would be Theosophy, and its circumference Physiognomy. Plato and Aristotle considered God as abstracted or distinct from the natural world. But the Egyptians con- sidered God * and Nature as making one whole, or all things together as making one universe. In doing which they did not exclude the intelligent mind, but considered it as containing all things. Therefore, whatever was wrong in their way of thinking, it doth not, nevertheless, imply or lead to atheism. Sir is, Sect. 300. * Probably not God sensu eminenti, but the NATURE of God, while as Wisdom and Holy Will they too might have considered God as abstracted from the natural world. WITCHCRAFT.* Plotinus magorum maleficia superavit : daemonem suum vidit : paucis indiciis mirabiliter diviuavit. Ex vita Plotmi. One of the many lamentable effects of despotism * Transcribed from a copy of the works of Plotinus (Basileae MDXXV.) in possession of the present Editor. 406 ivil wars, is tl rous conjunction of phi- losophy with magic. Gloom from perpetual inse- curity and hopeless alienation from the duties and honourable aims of public life will always generate superstition. Hence logic, geometry, rhetoric, and moral philosophy have been the offspring of r lies ; but Theosophy and its half-broken witchcraft or Diabolosophy, of empires that have been military democracies under a succession of dictators. In the present instance it is impossible to say how mu infamous imposture was a scheme of the Pagans to counteractClin-tiamty.an.l invalidate- the evidence of miracles, by reducing it to an aiia^opor r), to be found on each side. The lofty speech of PI appears a blasphemous imitation of Ch \ oYi irpo? the wmwrr at the ml. t Bet at above. arguments at* for the most part taken ub*aatlally from KuinocU Latin Commentary OB Aets, chap. U. UPON THE GIFT OF TONGUES. 413 plainly implies the sense commonly imputed to it. " Are not these Galileans, and how hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born ] " Does not this intimate the astonishment of the hearers, that men all of one country, natives of the confined region of Galilee, should on a sudden magnify the Lord in the various languages of the known world? To this objection it has been replied, that by Galileans was meant followers of Christ, that being the earliest name given to the faithful ; the marvel being this, that a Jewish sect should depart so far from the rule and constant practice of the Jewish worship as to discourse upon divine things in profane Gentile languages. Some suggest, that they who prayed and sang hymns in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and perhaps in Persic, though really foreign Jews, may have been mistaken by the hearers for natives of Galilee ; but this view does not cohere with some of the arguments above recited. It is plain that the words of the narrative cannot be taken close to the letter, because, in some of the countries which it mentions, the same languages were in use as in some of the others, as the Greek in Phrygia and Pamphylia, the Syro-Chaldaic in Judea and Mesopotamia, the Persian in Parthia, Media, and Elymiiis : though it appears that different dialects were spoken in different districts of Asia Minor. Again it will doubtless be objected to some of the positions which have been brought forward in the argument against the common view, that in the twelfth chapter of Corinthians, speaking divers kinds of tongues is mentioned as one of the gifts of the Spirit, verses 10, 30; that such a gift, though in itself divine, the Corinthians might abuse, diverting it from the purposes for which it was bestowed, as is plainly inti- mated in the thirteenth chapter of the same Epistle. And some perhaps might reply to the second branch of objection 3, that as the account in the text is not to be taken literally, all languages, as they were needed, and not merely those specified in the sacred record, were doubtless at the command of the converts. To number 4, it may fairly be objected that till proof of 414 NOTE ox MB. COLKRIDGE'S OBSERVATION such a use of the term Mtv to*?** as it supposes, has been given, we ought to take H in the literal MMe, and f that the literal MOM teams more accordant than any other he general acope of the pannage (Mark xvi. 10, he powers promised to believer* are of an outward and sensuous character, aa taking up serpents, ng poiaon unharmed, restoring those that were sick in the body. Indeed this peaaage in St Mark's Gospel forms, to my mind, the strongest argument that can be alleged for the old interpretation of the event at Pentecost i regard to the general question it may be observed, . nature and object of the gift of tongues has never yet been satisfactorily explained, and that while this ob and uncertainty continues, the miracle at Pentecost cannot be thoroughly understood. For immediate spiritual edifica- ;t is quite enough to know that there was an out- pouring of the Spirit, which both fulfilled a divinely inspired cy and served to the propagation of the Gospel I have stated the arguments used against the ordinary view, not as holding them conclusive, but in the 1 cy at less* merit consideration, if only that they exhibit the difficulties of the question, and show how far, in common with much else relating to the Church in those times, it is from being clearly understood. It is always desirable to show in what shades any important subject is involved, in order that delusive spectre*, of darkness may not be mistaken for objects discerned by light of day in their true colours and lineaments. The miracle for such it is as fully on one view ss on the other, since prophecy by speaking with eloquence and power divinely inspired, is as miraculous ss to discourse in tongues unknown beforeis indeed a far greater work of the Holy Ghost-appears to be of a similar nature and import with that vision, whereby Peter was instructed that God is no respecter of persons ; that no man is to be called common or unclean by reason of his birth ; that in every nation whoso feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him. This magnifying of the divine works in the common speech of the Gentiles, and setting aside the UPON THE GIFT OF TONGUES. 415 formally sacred languages, was a fit preliminary to the annunciation, that the Gentiles were to be included in the spiritual covenant; that the promise was to all that were afar off, even as many as the Lord should call, not confined to the one chosen nation. Certainly the event, thus under- stood, has vastly more both of rational significance and of spiritual and symbolical grandeur, than when interpreted merely of a power to speak foreign tongues, or as if that were the sole cause of the emotions displayed ; since this latter faculty may be acquired by human endeavours, sufficiently for all missionary purposes, if not with such suddenness as is here supposed ; whereas to believe in the Saviour redeem- ingly, and to express that faith in words of force to convert others, is such a work as could only be brought about by a special influence of the Spirit. For no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. (1 Cor. xii. 3.) The ordinary view tends to merge the deeper miracle in one of a far lower character. The misrepresentation of the subject by Popish painters is a striking sign of the propensity of the Church of Rome to corrupt the Gospel record, and reduce the heavenly and purely spiritual to the earthly, though preternatural. They exhibit the effusion of the Spirit, which was to be upon all flesh, as confined to the Apostles and to the Virgin, whom, indeed, without a shadow of Scriptural authority, they set up as the head of the assembly. The grand mosaic in the dome of St. Mark's at Venice is a notable instance of this way of presenting the miracle.* It may be alleged that this is a symbolical rather than an historical representation ; but there can be little doubt that it both originated in a wrong notion of the nature of the event, and must have produced unscriptural views of it among the people. Painting in her palmary period was the vassal of Popery, a servant, and yet in some sort a teacher and mistress. S. C. * See Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art," vol. i., pp. 153-4. 1 i DAY US! \\ I IK I! BORROV LOAN DEPT. This book is due on (he last date stamped bclov th rcncv. Renewed bool :o immediate recall. n 1 JAN l A '64 -8P APR 2 7 '65 -5 W>