Chapter XI: Front Matter (11)

I conclude with this remark. The doctrine of Original Sin concerns all men. But it concerns Christians _in particular_ no otherwise than by its connexion with the doctrine of Redemption; and with the Divinity and Divine Humanity of the Redeemer as a corollary or necessary inference from both mysteries. BEWARE OF ARGUMENTS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY, WHICH CANNOT STOP THERE, AND CONSEQUENTLY OUGHT NOT TO HAVE COMMENCED THERE. Something I might have added to the clearness of the preceding views, if the limits of the work had permitted me to clear away the several delusive and fanciful assertions respecting the state[119] of our first parents, their wisdom, science, and angelic faculties, assertions without the slightest ground in Scripture:--Or, if consistently with the wants and preparatory studies of those for whose use the volume was especially intended, I could have entered into the momentous subject of a Spiritual Fall or Apostacy _antecedent_ to the formation of man--a belief, the scriptural grounds of which are few and of diverse interpretation, but which has been almost universal in the Christian Church. Enough, however, has been given, I trust, for the Reader to see and (as far as the subject is capable of being understood) to understand this long controverted Article, in the sense in which alone it is binding on his faith. Supposing him therefore, to know the meaning of original sin, and to have decided for himself on the fact of its actual existence, as the antecedent ground and occasion of Christianity, we may now proceed to Christianity itself, as the Edifice raised on this ground, that is, to the great Constituent Article of the Faith in Christ, as the Remedy of the Disease--The Doctrine of Redemption.

But before I proceed to this momentous doctrine let me briefly remind the young and friendly pupil, to whom I would still be supposed to address myself, that in the following Aphorism the word science is used in its strict and narrowest sense. By a Science I here mean any chain of truths which are either absolutely certain, or necessarily true for the human mind, from the laws and constitution of the mind itself. In neither case is our conviction derived, or capable of receiving any addition, from outward experience, or empirical _data_--that is, matters of fact _given_ to us through the medium of the senses--though these _data_ may have been the occasion, or may even be an indispensable condition, of our reflecting on the former, and thereby becoming _conscious_ of the same. On the other hand, a connected series of conclusions grounded on empirical _data_, in contra-distinction from science, I beg leave (no better term occurring) in this place and for this purpose, to denominate a scheme.

[103] It has in its consequences proved no trifling evil to the Christian world, that Aristotle's Definitions of Nature are all grounded on the petty and rather rhetorical than philosophical Antithesis of Nature to Art--a conception inadequate to the demands even of _his_ philosophy. Hence in the progress of his reasoning, he confounds the _natura naturata_ (that is, the sum total of the facts and phænomena of the Senses) with an hypothetical _natura naturans_, a _Goddess_ Nature, that has no better claim to a place in any sober system of Natural Philosophy than the Goddess _Multitudo_; yet to which Aristotle not rarely gives the name and attributes of the Supreme Being. The result was, that the idea of God thus identified with this hypothetical _Nature_ becomes itself but an _hypothesis_, or at best but a precarious inference from incommensurate premises and on disputable principles: while in other passages, God is confounded with (and every where, in Aristotle's _genuine_ works, _included in_) the Universe: which most grievous error it is the great and characteristic merit of Plato to have avoided and denounced.

[104] Take one passage among many from the posthumous Tracts (1660) of John Smith,[105] not the least star in that bright constellation of Cambridge men, the contemporaries of Jeremy Taylor. "While we reflect on our idea of Reason, we know that our Souls are not it, but only partake of it; and that we have it κατα μεθεξιν and not κατ᾽ ουσιην. Neither can it be called a Faculty, but far rather a Light, which we enjoy, but the Source of which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual to be denominated _mine_." This _pure_, intelligence he then proceeds to contrast with the _Discursive_ Faculty, that is, the Understanding.

[105] There is a Note on John Smith and his 'Select Discourses' in Coleridge's 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii. pp. 415-19.--ED.

[106] See Coleridge on Jeremy Taylor: 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii. pp. 295-334, &c.--ED.

[107] We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley, that the Church of England does not demand the literal understanding of the document contained in the second (from verse 8) and third Chapters of Genesis as a point of faith, or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy of the interpreter; divines of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the most averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in general, having from the earliest ages of the Christian Church adopted or permitted it in this instance. And indeed no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt, that if in any other work of Eastern origin he met with Trees of Life and of Knowledge; talking and conversable snakes:

Inque rei signum _serpentem serpere_ jussum;

he would want no other proofs that it was an allegory he was reading, and intended to be understood as such. Nor, if we suppose him conversant with Oriental works of any thing like the same antiquity, could it surprise him to find events of true history in connexion with, or historical personages among the actors and interlocutors of, the parable. In the temple-language of Egypt the serpent was the symbol of the understanding in its twofold function, namely as the faculty of _means_ to _proximate_ or _medial_, ends, analogous to the _instinct_ of the more intelligent animals, ant, bee, beaver, and the like, and opposed to the practical reason, as the determinant of the _ultimate_ end; and again, it typifies the understanding as the discursive and logical faculty possessed individually by each individual--the λογος εν ἑκαστω, in distinction from the νους, that is, intuitive reason, the source of ideas and ABSOLUTE Truths, and the principle of the necessary and the universal in our affirmations and conclusions. Without or in contra-vention to the reason (_i.e._ _the spiritual mind_ of St. Paul, and _the light that lighteth every man_ of St. John) this understanding (φρονημα σαρκος, or carnal mind) becomes the _sophistic_ principle, the wily tempter to evil by counterfeit good; the pander and advocate of the passions and appetites; ever in league with, and always first applying to, the _Desire_, as the inferior nature in man, the _woman_ in our humanity; and through the DESIRE prevailing on the WILL (the _Man_-hood, _Vir_tus) against the command of the universal reason, and against the light of reason in the WILL itself. This essential inherence of an intelligential principle (φως νοερον) in the Will (αρχη φελητικη) or rather the Will itself thus considered, the Greeks expressed by an appropriate word βουλη. This, but little differing from Origen's interpretation or hypothesis, is supported and confirmed by the very old tradition of the _homo androgynus_, that is, that the original man, the individual first created, was bi-sexual: a chimæra, of which and of many other mythological traditions the most probable explanation is, that they were originally symbolical _glyphs_ or sculptures, and afterwards translated into _words_, yet _literally_, that is into the common names of the several figures and images composing the symbol, while the symbolic _meaning_ was left to be deciphered as before, and sacred to the initiate. As to the abstruseness and subtlety of the conceptions, this is so far from being an objection to this oldest _gloss_ on this venerable relic of Semitic, not impossibly ante-diluvian, philosophy, that to those who have carried their researches farthest back into Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian antiquity, it will seem a strong confirmation. Or if I chose to address the sceptic in the language of the day, I might remind him, that as alchemy went before chemistry, and astrology before astronomy, so in all countries of civilized man have metaphysics outrun common sense. Fortunately for us that they have so! For from all we know of the _un_metaphysical tribes of New Holland and elsewhere, a common sense not preceded by metaphysics is no very enviable possession. O be not cheated, my youthful reader, by this shallow prate! The creed of true common sense is composed of the _results_ of scientific meditation, observation, and experiment, as far as they are _generally_ intelligible. It differs therefore in different countries and in every different age of the same country. The common sense of a people is the moveable _index_ of its average judgment and information. Without metaphysics science could have had no language, and common sense no materials.

But to return to my subject. It cannot be denied, that the Mosaic Narrative thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the birth and parentage and successive moments of _phænomenal_ sin (_peccatum phænomenon; crimen primarium et commune_), that is, of sin as it reveals itself _in time_, and is an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense most truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam we all fell. The first human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. And with no less truth may it be said, that it is the same Adam that falls in every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and undivorceable Eve: and the same EVE tempted by the same serpentine and perverted understanding, which, framed originally to be the interpreter of the reason and the ministering angel of the Spirit, is henceforth sentenced and bound over to the service of the Animal Nature, its needs and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its materials, with the World of Sense for its appointed sphere: _Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life._ I have shown elsewhere, that as the Instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degree not in kind, and circumstantially, not essentially, from the _vis vitæ_, or vital power in the assimilative and digestive functions of the stomach and other organs of nutrition, even so the Understanding, in itself and distinct from the Reason and Conscience, differs in degree only from the Instinct in the animal. It is still but _a beast of the field_, though _more subtle than any beast of the field_, and therefore in its corruption and perversion _cursed above any_--a pregnant word! of which, if the reader wants an exposition or paraphrase, he may find one more than two thousand years old among the fragments of the poet Menander. (See Cumberland's Observer, No. CL. vol. iii. p. 289, 290.) This is the _Understanding_ which in its _every thought_ is to be brought _under obedience to Faith_; which it can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected to the Reason, of which spiritual Faith is even the blossoming and the fructifying process. For it is indifferent whether I say that Faith is the interpenetration of the Reason and the Will, or that it is at once the Assurance and the Commencement of the approaching Union between the Reason and the _intelligible_ realities, the _living_ and _substantial_ truths, that are even in this life its most proper objects.

I have thus put the reader in possession of my own opinions respecting the narrative in Gen. ii. and iii. Εστιν ουν δη, ὡς εμοιγε δοκει, ἱερος μυθος, αληθεστατον και αρχαιτατον φιλοσοφημα, ευσεβεσι μεν σεβασμα, συνετοις τε φωναν· ες δε το παν ἑρμηνεως χατιζει. Or I might ask with Augustine, Why not both? Why not at once symbol and history? or rather how should it be otherwise? Must not of necessity the FIRST MAN be a SYMBOL of Mankind, in the fullest force of the word, Symbol, rightly defined--that is, a sign included in the idea, which it represents;--an actual _part_ chosen to represent the _whole_, as a lip with a chin prominent is a symbol of man; or a _lower_ form or species used as the representative of a higher in the same _kind_: thus Magnetism is the Symbol of Vegetation, and of the vegetative and reproductive power in animals; the Instinct of the ant-tribe, or the bee, is a symbol of the human understanding. And this definition of the word is of great practical importance, inasmuch as the symbolical is hereby distinguished _toto genere_ from the allegoric and metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, and allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with _inspired_ Scripture! The writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet I readily acknowledge, that allegorical _applications_ are one thing, and allegorical _interpretation_ another: and that where there is no ground for supposing such a sense to have entered into the intent and purpose of the sacred penman, they are not to be commended. So far, indeed, am I from entertaining any predilection for them, or any favourable opinion of the Rabbinical commentators and traditionists, from whom the fashion was derived, that in carrying it as far as our own Church has carried it, I follow her judgment, not my own. But in the first place, I know but one other part of the Scriptures not universally held to be parabolical, which, not without the sanction of great authorities, I am disposed to regard as an Apologue or Parable, namely, the book of Jonah; the reasons for believing the Jewish nation collectively to be therein impersonated, seeming to me unanswerable. Secondly, as to the Chapters now in question--that such interpretation is at least tolerated by our Church, I have the word of one of her most zealous champions. And lastly it is my deliberate and conscientious conviction, that the proofs of such having been the intention of the inspired writer or compiler of the book of Genesis, lie on the face of the narrative itself.

[108] Rom. v. 14. Who were they, who _had_ not _sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression_; and over whom, notwithstanding, _death reigned_?

[109] Slightly altered from Jeremy Taylor's 'Deus Justificatus; or a Vindication of the Glory of the Divine Attributes in the Question of Original Sin, Against the Presbyterian way of Understanding it.' See Heber's edition of Taylor's works, 1822, v. ix. pp. 315-16.--ED.

[110] This sense of the word is implied even in its metaphorical or figurative use. Thus we may say of a _river_ that it _originates_ in such or such a _fountain_; but the water of a _canal_ is _derived_ from such or such a river. The Power which we call Nature, may be thus defined: A Power subject to the Law of Continuity (_lex continui; nam in naturâ non datur saltus_) which law the human understanding, by a necessity arising out of its own constitution, can _conceive_ only under the form of Cause and Effect. That this _form_ (or law) of Cause and Effect is (relatively to the world _without_, or to things as they subsist independently of our perceptions) only a form or mode of _thinking_; that it is a law inherent in the Understanding itself (just as the symmetry of the miscellaneous objects seen by the kaleidoscope inheres in, or results from, the mechanism of the kaleidoscope itself)--this becomes evident as soon as we attempt to apply the pre-conception directly to any operation of nature. For in this case we are forced to represent the cause as being at the same instant the effect, and _vice versâ_ the effect as being the cause--a relation which we seek to express by the terms Action and Re-action; but for which the term Reciprocal Action or the law of Reciprocity (_Wechselwirkung_) would be both more accurate and more expressive.

These are truths which can scarcely be too frequently impressed on the mind that is in earnest in the wish to _reflect_ aright. Nature is a line in constant and continuous evolution. Its _beginning_ is lost in the super-natural: and _for our understanding_, therefore, it must appear as a continuous line without beginning or end. But where there is no discontinuity there can be no origination, and every appearance of origination in _nature_ is but a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our own _Will_ or Spirit. Herein, indeed, the Will consists. This is the essential character by which WILL is _opposed_ to Nature, as _Spirit_, and raised _above_ Nature, as _self-determining_ Spirit--this namely, that it is a power of _originating_ an act or state.

A young friend or, as he was pleased to describe himself, _a pupil of mine, who is beginning to learn to think_, asked me to explain by an instance what is meant by "_originating_ an act or state." My answer was--This morning I awoke with a dull pain, which I knew from experience the getting up would remove; and yet by adding to the drowsiness and by weakening or depressing the _volition (voluntas sensorialis seu mechanica_) the very pain seemed to _hold me back_, to fix me (as it were) to the bed. After a peevish ineffectual quarrel with this painful disinclination, I said to myself: Let me count twenty, and the moment I come to nineteen I will leap out of bed. So said, and so done. Now should you ever find yourself in the same or in a similar state, and should attend to _the goings-on_ within you, you will learn what I mean by _originating_ an act. At the same time you will see that it belongs _exclusively_ to the Will (_arbitrium_); that there is nothing analogous to it in outward experiences; and that I had, therefore, no way of explaining it but by referring you to an _act_ of your own, and to the peculiar self-consciousness preceding and accompanying it. As we know what Life is by _Being_, so we know what Will is by _Acting_. That in _willing_ (replied my young friend) we _appear_ to ourselves to constitute an actual _Beginning_ and that this seems _unique_, and without any example in our _sensible_ experience, or in the phænomena of nature, is an undeniable _fact_. But may it not be an illusion arising from our ignorance of the antecedent causes? You _may_ suppose this (I rejoined):--that the soul of every man should impose a _Lie_ on itself; and that this Lie, and the acting on the faith of its being the most important of all truths and the most real of all realities, should form the main contra-distinctive character of Humanity, and the only basis of that distinction between Things and Persons on which our whole moral and criminal Law is grounded;--you may suppose this; I cannot, as I could in the case of an arithmetical or geometrical proposition, render it _impossible_ for you to suppose it. Whether you can reconcile such a supposition with the belief of an all-wise Creator, is another question. But, taken singly, it is doubtless in your power to suppose this. Were it not, the belief of the contrary would be no subject of a _command_, no part of a moral or religious _duty_. You would not, however, suppose it _without a reason_. But all the pretexts that ever have been or ever can be offered for this supposition, are built on certain _notions_ of the Understanding that have been generalized from _conceptions_; which conceptions, again, are themselves generalized or abstracted from objects of sense. Neither the one nor the other, therefore, have any force except in application to objects of sense and within the sphere of sensible Experience. What but absurdity can follow, if you decide on Spirit by the laws of Matter? if you judge that which, if it be at all, must be _super_-sensual, by that faculty of your mind, the very definition of which is "the faculty judging _according_ to sense"? These then are unworthy the name of _reasons_: they are only pretexts. But _without_ reason to contradict your own consciousness in defiance of your own conscience, is _contrary_ to reason. Such and such writers, you say, have made a great _sensation_. If so, I am sorry for it; but the fact I take to be this. From a variety of causes the more austere Sciences have fallen into discredit, and impostors have taken advantage of the general ignorance to give a sort of mysterious and terrific importance to a parcel of trashy sophistry, the authors of which would not have employed themselves more irrationally in submitting the works of Raffaelle or Titian to canons of criticism deduced from the sense of smell. Nay, less so. For here the objects and the organs are only disparate: while in the other case they are absolutely diverse. I conclude this note by reminding the reader, that my first object is to make myself _understood_. When he is in full possession of my _meaning_, then let him consider whether it deserves to be received as _the truth_. Had it been my immediate purpose to make him _believe_ me as well as _understand_ me, I should have thought it necessary to warn him that a _finite_ Will does indeed originate an _act_, and may originate a _state_ of being; but yet only _in_ and _for_ the Agent himself. A finite Will _constitutes_ a true Beginning; but with regard to the series of motions and chants by which the free act is manifested and made _effectual_, the _finite_ Will _gives_ a beginning only by co-incidence with that _absolute_ WILL, which is at the same time _Infinite_ POWER! Such is the language of Religion, and of Philosophy too in the last instance. But I express the same truth in ordinary language when I say, that a finite Will, or the Will of a finite free-agent, acts outwardly by confluence with the laws of nature.

[111] It may conduce to the readier comprehension of this point if I say, that the equivoque consists in confounding the almost technical sense of the _noun substantive_, right, (a sense most often determined by the genitive case following, as the right of property, the right of husbands to chastise their wives, and so forth) with the popular sense of the _adjective_, right: though this likewise has, if not a double sense, yet a double application;--the first, when it is used to express the fitness of a mean to a relative end, for example, "the _right_ way to obtain the _right_ distance at which a picture should be examined," and the like; and the other, when it expresses a perfect conformity and commensurateness with the immutable idea of equity, or perfect rectitude. Hence the close connexion between the words righteousness and _god_liness, that is, godlikeness.

I should be tempted to subjoin a few words on a predominating doctrine closely connected with the present argument--the Paleyan principle of GENERAL CONSEQUENCES; but the inadequacy of this Principle as a criterion of Right and Wrong, and above all its utter unfitness as a Moral _Guide_ have been elsewhere so fully stated ('The Friend,' vol. ii. Essay xi.[112]), that even in again referring to the subject, I must shelter myself under Seneca's rule, that what we cannot too frequently think of, we cannot too often be made to recollect. It is, however, of immediate importance to the point in discussion, that the reader should be made to see how altogether incompatible the principle of judging by General Consequences is with the Idea of an Eternal, Omnipresent, and Omniscient Being;--that he should be made aware of the absurdity of attributing _any_ form of Generalization to the All-perfect Mind. To _generalize_ is a faculty and function of the human understanding, and from the imperfection and limitation of the understanding are the use and the necessity of generalizing derived. Generalization is a Substitute for Intuition, for the power of _intuitive_ (that is, immediate) knowledge. As a substitute, it is a gift of inestimable value to a finite intelligence, such as _man_ in his present state is endowed with and capable of exercising; but yet a _substitute_ only, and an imperfect one to boot. To attribute it to God is the grossest anthropomorphism: and grosser instances of anthropomorphism than are to be found in the controversial writings on Original Sin and Vicarious Satisfaction, the records of superstition do not supply.

[112] Essay xv. p. 204, Bohn's edition.--ED.

[113] I have since this page was written, met with several passages in the Treatise on Repentance, the Holy Living and Dying, and the Worthy Communicant, in which the Bishop asserts without scruple the _impossibility_ of total obedience; and on the same grounds as I have given. [See Taylor's 'Doctrine and Practice of Repentance,' c. I. sec. ii., "On the Possibility or Impossibility of Keeping the Precepts of the Gospel;" Heber's ed. of the 'Works,' v. 8, p. 265.--ED.]

[114] Availing himself of the equivocal sense and (I most readily admit) the injudicious use, of the word "free" in the--even on this account--_faulty_ phrase, "_free only to sin_," Taylor treats the notion of a power in the Will of determining itself to evil without an equal power of determining itself to good, as a "_foolery_." I would this had been the only instance in his "Deus Justificatus" of that inconsiderate contempt so frequent in the polemic treatises of minor divines, who will have ideas of reason, spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned, translated for them into adequate conceptions of the understanding. The great articles of Corruption and Redemption are _propounded_ to us as spiritual mysteries; and every interpretation, that pretends to explain them into comprehensible notions, does by its very success furnish presumptive proof of its failure. The acuteness and logical dexterity, with which Taylor has brought out the falsehood or semblance of falsehood in the Calvinistic scheme, are truly admirable. Had he next concentered his thoughts in tranquil meditation, and asked himself: What then _is_ the truth? If a Will _be_ at all, what must a will be?--he might, I think, have seen that a nature in a Will implies already a _corruption_ of that Will; that a _nature_ is as inconsistent with _freedom_ as free choice with an incapacity of choosing aught but evil. And lastly, a free power in a _nature_ to fulfil a law _above_ nature!--I, who love and honour this good and great man with all the reverence that can dwell "on this side idolatry," dare not retort on this assertion the charge of _foolery_; but I find it a paradox as startling to my _reason_ as any of the hard sayings of the Dort divines were to his _understanding_.

[115] Vol. ix. pp. 5, 6, Heber's edit. ['Doctrine and Practice of Repentance,' c. vi. sec. I.--ED.]

[116] This passage appears as here in the first edition of the 'Aids,' 1825.--ED.

[117] The same, slightly different, appears in Coleridge's 'Literary Remains,' 1838, v. iii., p. 328.--ED.

[118] If the Law worked _on_ the Will, it would be the working of an extrinsic and alien force, and, as St. Paul profoundly argues, would prove the Will sinful.

[119] For a specimen of these Rabbinical dotages I refer, not to the writings of mystics and enthusiasts, but to the shrewd and witty Dr. South, one of whose most elaborate sermons stands prominent among the many splendid extravaganzas on this subject.

APHORISM XI.

In whatever age and country it is the prevailing mind and character of the nation to regard the present life as subordinate to a life to come, and to mark the present state, _the World of their Senses_, by signs, instruments, and mementos of its connexion with a future state and a spiritual world;--where the Mysteries of Faith are brought within the _hold_ of the people at large, not by being explained away in the vain hope of accommodating them to the average of their understanding, but by being made the objects of love by their combination with events and epochs of history, with national traditions, with the monuments and dedications of ancestral faith and zeal, with memorial and symbolical observances, with the realizing influences of social devotion, and above all, by early and habitual association with Acts of the Will, _there_ Religion is. _There_, however obscured by the hay and straw of human Will-work, the foundation is safe. In _that_ country, and under the predominance of such maxims the National Church is no mere State-_Institute_. It is the State itself in its intensest federal union; yet at the same moment the Guardian and Representative of all personal Individuality. For the Church is the Shrine of Morality; and in Morality alone the citizen asserts and reclaims his personal independence, his _integrity_. Our outward acts are efficient, and most often possible, only by coalition. As an efficient power, the agent, is but _a fraction_ of unity: he becomes an _integer_ only in the recognition and performance of the Moral Law. Nevertheless it is most true (and a truth which cannot with safety be overlooked) that morality _as_ morality, has no existence for _a people_. It is either absorbed and lost in the quicksands of prudential _calculus_, or it is taken up and transfigured into the duties and mysteries of religion. And no wonder: since morality (including the _personal_ being, the I AM, as its subject) is itself a mystery, and the ground and _suppositum_ of all other mysteries, relatively to man.

APHORISM XII.

_Paley not a Moralist._

Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of self-interest; or on the average consequences of actions, supposing them _general_; form a branch of Political Economy, to which let all due honour be given. Their utility is not here questioned. But however estimable within their own sphere, such schemes, or any one of them in particular, may be, they do not belong to Moral Science, to which both in kind and purpose, they are in all cases _foreign_, and, when substituted for it, _hostile_. Ethics, or the _Science_ of Morality, does indeed in no wise exclude the consideration of _action_; but it contemplates the same in its originating spiritual _source_, without reference to space or time or sensible existence. Whatever springs out of _the perfect law of freedom_, which exists only by its unity with the will of God, its inherence in the Word of God, and its communion with the Spirit of God--_that_ (according to the principles of Moral Science) is GOOD--it is light and righteousness and very truth. Whatever seeks to separate itself from the Divine Principle, and proceeds from a false centre in the agent's particular will, is EVIL--a work of darkness and contradiction. It is sin and essential falsehood. Not the outward deed, constructive, destructive, or neutral,--not the deed as a possible object of the senses,--is the object of Ethical Science. For this is no compost, _collectorium_ or inventory of single duties; nor does it seek in the multitudinous sea, in the pre-determined waves, and tides and currents of _nature_ that freedom, which is exclusively an attribute of _spirit_. Like all other pure sciences, whatever it enunciates, and whatever it concludes, it enunciates and concludes _absolutely_. Strictness is its essential character: and its first Proposition is, _Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all_. For as the Will or Spirit, the Source and Substance of Moral Good, is one and all in every part; so must it be the totality, the whole articulated series of single acts, taken as unity, that can alone, in the severity of science, be recognised as the proper counterpart and adequate representative of a good Will. Is it in this or that limb, or not rather in the whole body, the entire _organismus_ that the law of life reflects itself?--Much less, then, can the law of the Spirit work in fragments.

APHORISM XIII.

Wherever there exists a permanent[120] learned class, having authority and possessing the respect and confidence of the country; and wherever the Science of Ethics is acknowledged, and taught in _this_ class as a regular part of a learned education, to its future members generally, but as the special study and indispensable ground-work of such as are intended for holy orders;--_there_ the Article of Original Sin will be an AXIOM of Faith in _all_ classes. Among the learned an undisputed _truth_, and with the people a fact, which no man imagines it possible to deny: and the doctrine, thus inwoven in the faith of all, and coeval with the consciousness of each, will for each and all, possess a reality, _subjective_ indeed, yet virtually equivalent to that which we intuitively give to the objects of our senses.

With the learned this will be the case, because the Article is the first--I had almost said, _spontaneous_--product of the application of moral science to history, of which it is the interpreter. A mystery in its own right, and by the necessity and essential character of its subject--(for the Will, like the Life, in every act and product pre-supposes to itself, a Past always present, a Present that evermore resolves itself into a Past)--the doctrine of Original Sin gives to all the other mysteries of religion a common basis, a connection of dependency, an intelligibility of relation, and total harmony, that supersede extrinsic proof. There is here that same proof from unity of purpose, that same evidence of symmetry, which, in the contemplation of a human skeleton, flashed conviction on the mind of Galen, and kindled meditation into a hymn of praise.

Meanwhile the People, not goaded into doubt by the lessons and examples of their teachers and superiors; not drawn away from the fixed stars of heaven, the form and magnitude of which are the same for the naked eye of the shepherd as for the telescope of the sage--from the immediate truths, I mean, of Reason and Conscience to an exercise to which they have not been trained,--of a faculty which has been imperfectly developed,--on a subject not within the sphere of the faculty, nor in any way amenable to its judgment;--the PEOPLE will need no arguments to receive a doctrine confirmed by their own experience from within and from without, and intimately blended with the most venerable traditions common to all races, and the traces of which linger in the latest twilight of civilization.

Among the revulsions consequent on the brute bewilderments of a Godless revolution, a great and active zeal for the interests of religion may be one. I dare not trust it, till I have seen what it is that gives religion this interest, till I am satisfied that it is not the interests of this world; necessary and laudable interests, perhaps, but which may, I dare believe, be secured as effectually and more suitably by the prudence of this world, and by this world's powers and motives. At all events, I find nothing in the fashion of the day to deter me from adding, that the reverse of the preceding--that where religion is valued and patronized as a supplement of law, or an aid extraordinary of police; where Moral SCIENCE is exploded as the mystic jargon of dark ages; where a lax System of Consequences, by which every iniquity on earth may be (and how many _have_ been!) denounced and defended with equal plausibility, is publicly and authoritatively taught as Moral Philosophy; where the mysteries of religion, and truths supersensual, are either cut and squared for the comprehension of the understanding, "the faculty judging according to sense," or desperately torn asunder from the reason, nay, fanatically opposed to it; lastly, where Private[121] Interpretation is every thing and the Church nothing--_there_ the mystery of Original Sin will be either rejected, or evaded, or perverted into the monstrous fiction of Hereditary Sin,--guilt inherited; in the mystery of Redemption metaphors will be obtruded for the reality; and in the mysterious appurtenants and symbols of Redemption (Regeneration, Grace, the Eucharist, and Spiritual Communion) the realities will be evaporated into metaphors.

[120] A learned order must be supposed to consist of three classes. First, those who are employed in adding to the existing sum of power and knowledge. Second, and most numerous class, those whose office it is to diffuse through the community at large the practical Results of science, and that kind and degree of knowledge and cultivation, which for all is requisite or clearly useful. Third, the formers and instructors of the second--in schools, halls, and universities, or through the medium of the press. The second class includes not only the parochial clergy, and all others duly ordained to the ministerial office; but likewise all the members of the legal and medical professions, who have received a learned education under accredited and responsible teachers. [See 'The Church and State,' p. 45, &c., third edition--H. N. C.]

[121] The author of 'The Statesman's Manual' must be the most inconsistent of men, if he can be justly suspected of a leaning to the Romish Church; or if it be necessary for him to repeat his fervent Amen to the wish and prayer of our late good old King, that "every adult in the British Empire should be able to read his Bible, and have a Bible to read!" Nevertheless, it may not be superfluous to declare, that in thus protesting against the _license_ of private interpretation, I do not mean to condemn the exercise or deny the right of individual judgment. I condemn only the pretended right of every individual, competent and incompetent, to interpret Scripture in a sense of his own, in opposition to the judgment of the Church, without knowledge of the originals or of the languages, the history, the customs, opinions, and controversies of the age and country in which they were written; and where the interpreter judges in ignorance or contempt of uninterrupted tradition, the unanimous consent of Fathers and Councils, and the universal Faith of the Church in all ages. It is not the attempt to form a judgment, which is here called in question; but the grounds, or rather the _no-grounds_ on which the judgment is formed and relied on.

My fixed principle is: that A CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT A CHURCH EXERCISING SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY IS VANITY AND DISSOLUTION. And my _belief_ is, that when Popery is rushing in on us like an inundation, the nation will find it to be so. I say _Popery_; for this too I hold for a delusion, that Romanism or _Roman_ Catholicism is separable from Popery. Almost as readily could I suppose a circle without a centre.

APHORISM XIV.

LEIGHTON.

As in great maps or pictures you will see the border decorated with meadows, fountains, flowers, and the like, represented in it, but in the middle you have the main design: so amongst the works of God is it with the foreordained Redemption of Man. All his other works in the world, all the beauty of the creatures, the succession of ages, and the things that come to pass in them, are but as the border to this as the mainpiece. But as a foolish unskilful beholder, not discerning the excellency of the principal piece in such maps or pictures, gazes only on the fair border, and goes no farther--thus do the greatest part of us as to this great Work of God, the redemption of our personal Being, and the re-union of the Human with the Divine, by and through the Divine Humanity of the Incarnate Word.

APHORISM XV.

LUTHER.

It is a hard matter, yea, an impossible thing for thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance), at such a time when Moses setteth on thee with the Law (see Aphorism XII.),--when the holy Law written in thy heart accuseth and condemneth thee, forcing thee to a comparison of thy heart therewith, and convicting thee of the incompatibleness of thy will and nature with Heaven and holiness and an immediate God--that then thou shouldest be able to be of such a mind as if no Law nor sin had ever been! I say it is in a manner impossible that a human creature, when he feeleth himself assaulted with trials and temptations, and the conscience hath to do with God, and the tempted man knoweth that the root of temptation is within him, should obtain such mastery over his thoughts as then to think no otherwise than that from everlasting nothing hath been but only and alone Christ, altogether Grace and Deliverance!

COMMENT.

In irrational agents, namely, the brute animals, the will is hidden or absorbed in the law. The law is their _nature_. In the original purity of a rational agent the uncorrupted will is identical with the law. Nay, inasmuch as a Will perfectly identical with the Law is one with the _divine_ Will, we may say, that in the unfallen rational agent the Will _constitutes_ the Law.[122] But it is evident that the holy and spiritual power and light, which by a _prolepsis_ or anticipation we have _named_ law, is a grace, an inward perfection, and without the commanding, binding and menacing character which belongs to a law, acting as a master or sovereign distinct from, and existing, as it were, externally for, the agent who is bound to obey it. Now this is St. Paul's sense of the word; and on this he grounds his whole reasoning. And hence too arises the obscurity and apparent paradoxy of several texts. That the Law is a _Law_ for you; that it acts _on_ the Will not _in_ it; that it exercises an agency _from without_, by fear and coercion; proves the corruption of your Will, and presupposes it. Sin in this sense came by the law: for it has its essence, as sin, in that counter-position of the holy principle to the will, which occasions this principle to be a LAW. Exactly (as in all other points) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the assertion of John, when speaking of the re-adoption of the redeemed to be sons of God, and the consequent resumption (I had almost said re-absorption) of the Law into the Will (νομον τελειον τον της ελευθεριας, James i. 25.,)--he says--_For the law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ_. That by the Law St. Paul meant only the _ceremonial_ law, is a notion that could originate only in utter inattention to the whole strain and bent of the Apostle's argument.

[122] In fewer words thus: For the brute animals, their nature is their law;--for what other third law can be imagined, in addition to the law of nature, and the law of reason? Therefore: in irrational agents the law constitutes the will. In moral and rational agents the will constitutes, or ought to constitute, the law: I speak of moral agents, unfallen. For the personal Will comprehends the _idea_, as a Reason, and it gives causative force to the Idea, as a _practical_ Reason. But Idea with the power of realizing the same is a Law; or say:--the Spirit comprehends the Moral Idea, by virtue of its rationality, and it gives to the Idea causative Power, as a Will: In every sense therefore, it _constitutes_ the Law, supplying both the Elements of which it consists--namely, the Idea, and the realizing Power.

APHORISM XVI.

LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE.

Christ's death was both voluntary and violent. There was external violence: and that was the accompaniment, or at most the occasion, of his death. But there was internal willingness, the spiritual Will, the Will of the Spirit, and this was the proper cause. By this Spirit he was restored from death: neither indeed _was it possible for him to be holden of it; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit_, says St. Peter. But he is likewise declared elsewhere to have died by that same Spirit, which here, in opposition to the violence, is said to quicken him. Thus Hebrews ix. 14. _Through the eternal Spirit he offered himself._ And even from Peter's words, and without the epithet, eternal, to aid the interpretation, it is evident that _the Spirit_, here opposed to the flesh, body or animal life, is of a higher nature and power than the individual _soul_, which cannot of itself return to re-inhabit or quicken the body.

If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in doctrine, is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, Peter and Paul, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, would have laid so great stress on them? But the true life of Christians is to eye Christ in every step of his life--not only as their Rule but as their Strength: looking to him as their Pattern both in doing and in suffering, and drawing power from him for going through both: being _without him_ able for nothing. Take comfort then, thou that believest! _It is he that lifts up the Soul from the Gates of Death_: and he hath said, _I will raise thee up at the last day_. Thou that believest _in_ him, believe him and take comfort. Yea, when thou art most sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and he far off to thy thinking, then is he nearest to raise and comfort thee: as sometimes it grows darkest immediately before day.

APHORISM XVII.

LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE.

Would any of you be cured of that common disease, the fear of death? Yet this is not the right name of the disease, as a mere reference to our armies and navies is sufficient to prove: nor can the fear of death, either as loss of life or pain of dying, be justly held a _common_ disease. But would you be cured of the fear and fearful questionings connected with the approach of death? Look this way, and you shall find more than you seek. Christ, the Word that was from the beginning and was made flesh and dwelt among men, died. And he, who dying conquered death in his own person, conquered Sin, and Death which is the Wages of Sin, for thee. And of this thou mayest be assured, if only thou believe in him, and love him. I need not add, keep his commandments: since where Faith and Love are, Obedience in its threefold character, as Effect, Reward, and Criterion, follows by that moral necessity which is the highest form of freedom. The Grave is thy bed of rest, and no longer the _cold_ bed: for thy Saviour has warmed it, and made it fragrant.

If then it be health and comfort to the Faithful that Christ descended into the grave, with especial confidence may we meditate on his return from thence, _quickened by the Spirit_: this being to those who are in him the certain pledge, yea, the effectual cause of that blessed resurrection, for which they themselves hope. There is that union betwixt them and their Redeemer, that they shall rise by the communication and virtue of his rising: not simply by his _power_--for so the _wicked_ likewise to their grief shall be raised: but _they by his life as their life_.

COMMENT.

_On the three Preceding Aphorisms._

To the reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my temporary guidance, and who permits me to regard him as my pupil, or junior fellow-student, I continue to address myself. Should he exist only in my imagination, let the bread float on the waters! If it be the Bread of Life, it will not have been utterly cast away.

Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have passed over since the transit from Religious Morality to Spiritual Religion. My first attempt was to satisfy you, that there _is_ a Spiritual principle in Man,[123] and to expose the sophistry of the arguments in support of the contrary. Our next step was to clear the road of all counterfeits, by showing what is _not_ the Spirit, what is _not_ Spiritual Religion.[124] And this was followed by an attempt to establish a difference in kind between religious truths and the deductions of speculative science; yet so as to prove, that the former are not only equally rational with the latter, but that they alone appeal to reason in the fulness and living reality of their power. This and the state of mind requisite for the formation of right convictions respecting spiritual truths, afterwards employed our attention. Having then enumerated the Articles of the Christian Faith _peculiar_ to Christianity, I entered on the great object of the present work; namely, the removal of all valid objections to these articles on grounds of right reason or conscience. But to render this practicable it was necessary, first, to present each article in its true Scriptural purity, by exposure of the caricatures of misinterpreters; and this, again, could not be satisfactorily done till we were agreed respecting the faculty entitled to sit in judgment on such questions. I early foresaw, that my best chance (I will not say, of giving an _insight_ into the surpassing worth and transcendent reasonableness of the Christian scheme, but) of rendering the very question intelligible, depended on my success in determining the true nature and limits of the human UNDERSTANDING, and in evincing its _diversity_ from REASON. In pursuing this momentous subject, I was tempted in two or three instances into disquisitions, which if not beyond the comprehension, were yet unsuited to the taste, of the persons for whom the work was principally intended. These, however, I have separated from the running text, and compressed into notes. The reader will at worst, I hope, pass them by as a leaf or two of waste paper, willingly given by him to those for whom it may not be paper _wasted_. Nevertheless, I cannot conceal, that the subject itself supposes, on the part of the reader, a steadiness in _self-questioning_, a pleasure in referring to his own inward experience for the facts asserted by the author, which can only be expected from a person who has fairly set his heart on arriving at clear and fixed conclusions in matters of Faith. But where this interest is felt, nothing more than a common capacity, with the ordinary advantages of education, is required for the complete comprehension both of the argument and the result. Let but one thoughtful hour be devoted to the pages 143-165. In all that follows, the reader will find no difficulty in _understanding_ the author's meaning, whatever he may have in _adopting_ it.

The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original Sin and Redemption; _that_ the Ground, _this_ the Superstructure of our faith. The former I have exhibited, first, according to the scheme of the Westminster Divines and the Synod of Dort; then, according to the[125] scheme of a contemporary Arminian divine; and lastly, in contrast with both schemes, I have placed what I firmly believe to be the _Scriptural_ sense of this article, and vindicated its entire conformity with reason and experience. I now proceed to the other momentous article--from the necessitating _Occasion_ of the Christian Dispensation to Christianity itself. For Christianity and Redemption are equivalent terms. And here my Comment will be comprised in a few sentences: for I confine my views to the one object of clearing this awful mystery from those too current misrepresentations of its nature and import that have laid it open to scruples and objections, not to such as shoot forth from an unbelieving heart--(against these a sick bed will be a more effectual antidote than all the argument in the world)--but to such scruples as have their birth-place in the reason and moral sense. Not that it is a mystery--not that _it passeth all understanding_;--if the doctrine be more than an hyperbolical phrase, it must do so;--but that it is at variance with the Law revealed in the conscience; that it contradicts our moral instincts and intuitions--_this_ is the difficulty, which alone is worthy of an answer. And what better way is there of correcting the misconceptions than by laying open the source and occasion of them? What surer way of removing the scruples and prejudices, to which these misconceptions have given rise, than by propounding the mystery itself--namely THE REDEMPTIVE ACT, as the transcendent _Cause_ of Salvation--in the express and definite words, in which it was enunciated by the Redeemer himself?

But here, in addition to the three Aphorisms preceding, I interpose a view of redemption as appropriated by faith, coincident with Leighton's, though for the greater part expressed in my own words. _This_ I propose as the right view. Then follow a few sentences transcribed from Field (an excellent divine of the reign of James I., of whose work on the Church it would be difficult to speak too highly)[127] containing the questions to be solved, and which is numbered, as an Aphorism, rather to preserve the uniformity of appearance, than as being strictly such. Then follows the Comment: as part and commencement of which the Reader will consider the two paragraphs of pp. 135, 136, written for this purpose and in the foresight of the present inquiry: and I entreat him therefore to begin the Comment by re-perusing these.

[123] Elements of Religious Philosophy, _ante_, p. 88--ED.

[124] See _ante_, pp. 96-101.--ED.