Chapter XIII: Letter VI: p. 90

(The systems compared as to their tendency to promote morality in
general.)

I have hitherto made no objection to, no remark on, any one part of this Letter; for I object to the whole--not as Calvinism, but--as what Calvin would have recoiled from. How was it that so good and shrewd a man as Andrew Fuller should not have seen, that the difference between a Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian consists in this:--The former not only believes a will, but that it is equivalent to the 'ego ipse', to the actual self, in every moral agent; though he believes that in human nature it is an enslaved, because a corrupt, will. In denying free will to the unregenerated he no more denies will, than in asserting the poor negroes in the West Indies to be slaves I deny them to be men. Now the latter, the Priestleyan, uses the word will,--not for any real, distinct, correspondent power, but,--for the mere result and aggregate of fibres, motions, and sensations; in short, it is a mere generic term with him, just as when we say, the main current in a river.

Now by not adverting to this, and alas! misled by Jonathan Edwards's book, Fuller has hidden from himself and his readers the damnable nature of the doctrine--not of necessity (for that in its highest sense is identical with perfect freedom; they are definitions each of the other); but--of extraneous compulsion. O! even this is not adequate to the monstrosity of the thought. A denial of all agency;--or an assertion of a world of agents that never act, but are always acted upon, and yet without any one being that acts;--this is the hybrid of Death and Sin, which throughout this letter is treated so amicably! Another fearful mistake, and which is the ground of the former, lies in conceding to the Materialist, 'explicite et implicite', that the [Greek: noúmenon], the 'intelligibile', the 'ipseitas super sensibilis', of guilt is in time, and of time, and, consequently, a mechanism of cause and effect;--in other words, in confounding the [Greek: phainómena, tà rhéonta, tà màe óntôs ónta],--all which belong to time, and cannot be even thought of except as effects necessarily predetermined by the precedent causes, (themselves in their turn effects of other causes),--with the transsensual ground or actual power.

After such admissions, no other possible defence can be made for Calvinism or any other 'ism' than the wretched recrimination: "Why, yours, Dr. Priestley, is just as bad!"--Yea, and no wonder:--for in essentials both are the same. But there was no reason for Fuller's meddling with the subject at all,--metaphysically, I mean.

Ib. p. 95.

If the unconditionality of election render it unfriendly to virtue, it
must be upon the supposition of that view of things, "which attributes
more to God, and less to man," having such ascendancy; which is the
very reverse of what Dr. Priestley elsewhere teaches, and that in the
same performance.

But in both systems, as Fuller has erroneously stated his own, man is annihilated. There is neither more nor less; it is all God; all, all are but 'Deus infinite modificatus':--in brief, both systems are not Spinosism, for no other reason than that the logic and logical consequency of 10 Fullers + 10 X 10 Dr. Priestleys, piled on each other, would not reach the calf of Spinoza's leg. Both systems of necessity lead to Spinosism, nay, to all the horrible consequences attributed to it by Spinoza's enemies. O, why did Andrew Fuller quit the high vantage ground of notorious facts, plain durable common sense, and express Scripture, to delve in the dark in order to countermine mines under a spot, on which he had no business to have wall, tent, temple, or even standing-ground!

[Footnote 1: The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems examined and compared, as to their moral tendency; in a series of Letters addressed to the friends of vital and practical religion; especially those amongst Protestant Dissenters. By Andrew Fuller. Market Harborough. 1793.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON WHITAKER'S ORIGIN OF ARIANISM DISCLOSED. [1] 1810.

Chap. I. 4. p. 30.

'Making himself equal with God'.

Whoever reads the four verses (John v. 16-19,) attentively, judging of the meaning of each part by the context, must needs, I think, see that the [Greek: íson heautòn poiôn tòn Theô] (18) refers,--not to the [Greek: paterá ídion élege tòn Theòn], (18) or the [Greek: ho patáer mou] (17), but--to the [Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai] (17). The 19th verse, which is directly called Jesus' reply, takes no notice whatever of the [Greek: ho patáer mou] (17), but consists wholly of a justification of the [Greek: kagô ergázomai].

1803.

The above was written many years ago. I still think the remark plausible, though I should not now express myself so positively. I imagined the Jews to mean: "he has evidently used the words [Greek: ho patáer mou]--not in the sense in which all good men may use them, but--in a literal sense, because by the words that followed, [Greek: ergázetai, kagô ergázomai], he makes himself equal to God." To justify these words seemed to me to be the purport of Christ's reply.

Chap. II. 1. p. 34.

[Greek: (Philôn)--perì mèn oun tà theia kaì pátria matháemata, póson
te kaì paelíkon eisenáenektai pónon, érgô pasi daelos kaì perì tà
philósopha dè kaì eleuthéria taes éxôthen paideías oiós tis aen, oudèn
dei légein hóti kaì málista tàen katà Plátôna kaì Pythagóran ezaelôkôs
agôgàen, diénegken ápantas toùs kath' heautòn, historeitai].

Euseb. Hist. II. 4.

Philo's acquaintance with the doctrines of the heathens was known only
by historical report to Eusebius; while the writings of Philo
displayed his knowledge in the religion of the Jews.

Strange comment. Might I not, after having spoken of Dun Scotus's works, say;--"he is reported to have surpassed all his contemporaries in subtlety of logic:"--yet still mean no other works than those before mentioned? Are not Philo's works full of, crowded with, Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy? Eusebius knew from his works that he was a great Platonic scholar; but that he was greater than any other man of his age, he could only learn from report or history. That Virgil is a great poet I know from his poems; but that he was the greatest of the Augustan age, I must learn from Quinctilian and others.

Ib. p. 35.

Philo and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon,--(or rather, perhaps, authors; for the first ten chapters form a complete work of themselves,)--were both Cabalistico-Platonizing Jews of Alexandria. As far as, being such, they must agree, so far they do agree; and as widely as such men could differ, do they differ. Not only the style of the Wisdom of Solomon is generically different from Philo's,--so much so that I should deem it a free translation from a Hebrew original,--but also in all the 'minutiæ' of traditional history and dogma it contradicts Philo. Philo attributes the creation of man to angels; and they infused the evil principle through their own imperfections. In the Book of Wisdom, God created man spotless, and the Devil tempting him occasioned the Fall. So the whole account of the plagues of Egypt differs as widely as possible, even to absolute contradiction. The origin of idolatry is explained altogether differently by Philo, and by the Book of Wisdom. In short, so unsupported is the tradition that many have supposed an elder Philo as the author. That the second and third chapters allude to Christ is a groundless hypothesis. The 'just man' is called 'the son of God', Jehovah, [Greek: pais Kyrión];--but Christ's specific title which was deemed blasphemous by the Jews, was 'Ben Elohim', [Greek: uhiòs tou Theou];--and the fancy that Philo was a Christian in heart, but dared not openly profess himself such, is too absurd. Why no traces in his latest work, or those of his middle age? Why not the least variation in his religious or philosophical creeds in his latter works, written long after the resurrection, from those composed by him before, or a few years after, Christ's birth? Some of Philo's earlier works must have been written when our Lord was in his infancy, or at least boyhood.

In short, just take all those passages of Philo which most closely resemble others in the Wisdom of Solomon, and contain the same or nearly the same thoughts, and write them in opposite columns, and no doubt will remain that Philo was not the composer of the Book of Wisdom. Philo subtle, and with long involved periods knit together by logical connectives: the Book of Wisdom sententious, full of parallelisms, assertory and Hebraistic throughout. It was either composed by a man who tried to Hebraize the Greek, or, if a translator, by one who tried to Greecise the Hebraisms of his original--not to disguise or hide them--but only so as to prevent them from repelling or misleading the Greek reader. The different use of the Greek particles in the Wisdom of Solomon, and in the works of Philo, is sufficient to confute the hypothesis of Philo being the author. As little could it have been written by a Christian. For it could not have been a Christian of Palestine, from the overflowing Alexandrine Platonism;--nor a Christian at all; for it contradicts the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and in no wise connects any redemptory or sacrificial virtue with the death of his 'just man';--denies original sin in the Christian sense, and explains the vice and virtue of mankind by the actions of the souls of men in a state of pre-existence. No signs or miracles are referred to in the account of 'the just man'; and that it was intended as a generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the plural number in the third chapter.

The result is, in my judgment, that this Book was composed by an unknown Jew of Alexandria, either sometime before, or at the same time with, Christ. I do not think St. Paul's parallel passages amount to any proof of quotation or allusion;--they contain the common doctrine of the spiritualized Judaism in the Cabala;--and yet the work could scarcely have been written long before Christ, or it would certainly have been quoted or mentioned by Philo, and most probably by Josephus. And this, too, is an answer to the splendid and well-supported hypothesis of its being a translation from a Chaldaic original, composed by Jerubbabel. The variations of the Syriac translation,--which are so easily explained by translating the passage into the Chaldaic, when the cause of the mistake in the Greek or of the variation in the Syriac, is seen at once,--are certainly startling; but they are too free; and how could the Fathers, Jerome for example, remain ignorant of the existence of this Chaldaic original? My own opinion is, as I said before, that the Book was written in Greek by an Alexandrian Jew, who had formed his style on that of the LXX., and was led still further to an imitation of the Old Testament manner by the nature of his fiction, and as a dramatic propriety, and yet deviated from it partly on account of the very remoteness of his Platonic conceptions from the simplicity and poverty of the Hebrew; and partly because of the wordy rhetoric epidemic in Alexandria: and that it was written before the death, if not the birth, of Christ, I am induced to believe, because I do not think it probable that a book composed by a Jew, who had confessed Christ after the resurrection, would so soon have been received by the Christians, and so early placed in the very next rank to works of full inspiration.

Taken, therefore, as a work 'ante', or at least 'extra, Christum', it is most valuable as ascertaining the opinions of the learned Jews on many subjects, and the general belief concerning immortality, and a day of judgment. On this ground Whitaker might have erected a most formidable battery, that would have played on the very camp and battle-array of the Socinians, that is, of those who consider Christ only as a teacher of important truths.

In referring to the Cabala, I am not ignorant of the date of the oldest Rabbinical writings which contain or refer to this philosophy, but I coincide with Eichorn, and very many before Eichorn, that the foundations of the Cabala were laid and well known long before Christ, though not all the fanciful superstructure. I am persuaded that new light might be thrown on the Apocalypse by a careful study of the Book Sohar, and of whatever else there may be of that kind. The introduction (i. 4,) is clearly Cabala:--the [Greek: ho ôn, kaì ho aen, kaì ho erchómenos]= 3, and the 'seven spirits' = 10 'Sephiroth', constituting together the 'Adam Kadmon', the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate one in the Messiah.

Were it not for the silence of Philo and Josephus, which I am unable to explain if the Wisdom of Solomon was written so long before Christ, I might perhaps incline to believe it composed shortly after, if not during, the persecution of the Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator. This hypothesis would give a particular point to the bitter exposure of idolatry, to the comparison between the sufferings of the Jews, and those of idolatrous nations, to the long rehearsal and rhetorical declaration of the plagues of Egypt, and to the reward of 'the just man' after a death of martyrdom; and would besides help to explain the putting together of the first ten chapters, and the fragment contained in the remaining chapters. They were works written at the same time, and by the same author: nay, I do not think it absurd to suppose, that the chapters after the tenth were annexed by the writer himself, as a long explanatory appendix; or, possibly, if they were once a separate work, these nine concluding chapters were parts of a book composed during the persecution in Egypt, the introduction and termination of which, being personal and of local application, were afterwards omitted or expunged in order not to give offence to the other Egyptians,--perhaps, to spare the shame of such Jews as had apostatized through fear, and in general not to revive heart-burnings. In modern language I should call these chapters in their present state a Note on c. x. 15-19.

On a reperusal of this Book, I rather believe that these latter chapters never formed part of any other work, but were composed as a sort of long explanatory Postscript, with particular bearing on certain existing circumstances, to which this part of the Jewish history was especially applicable. Nay, I begin to find the silence of Philo and Josephus less inexplicable, and to imagine that I discover the solution of this problem in the very title of the Book. No one expects to find any but works of authenticity enumerated in these writers; but to this a work, calling itself the Wisdom of Solomon, both being a fiction and never meant to pass for anything else, could make no pretensions. To have approximated it to the Holy Books of the nation would have injured the dignity of the Jewish Canon, and brought suspicion on the genuine works of Solomon, while it would have exposed to a charge of forgery a composition which was in itself only an innocent dramatic monologue. N. B. This hypothesis possesses all the advantages, and involves none of the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one commentator, I find, has suspected that the Wisdom of Solomon and the second book of Maccabees were by the same author. I think this nothing.

Ib. p. 36.

Philo throws out a number of declarations, that shew his own and the
Jewish belief in a secondary sort of God, a God subordinate in origin
to the Father of all, yet most intimately united with him, and sharing
his most unquestionable honours.

The belief of the Alexandrian Jews who had acquired Greek philosophy, no doubt;--but of the Palestine Jews?

Ib. 2. p. 48.

St. John also is witnessed by a heathen (Amelius,) and by one who put
him down for a barbarian, to have represented the Logos as "the Maker
of all things," as "with 'God'," and as "God." And St. John is
attested to have declared this, "not even as shaded over, but on the
contrary as placed in full view."

Stranger still. Whitaker could scarcely have read the Greek. Amelius says, that these truths, if stripped of their allegorical dress, ([Greek: metapephrasména ek taes tou Barbárou theologías]) would be plain;--that is, that John in an allegory, as of one particular man, had shadowed out the creation of all things by the Logos, and the after union of the Logos with human nature,--that is, with all men. That this is his meaning, consult Plotinus.

Ib. 9. p. 107.

"Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being
into power, and dividing the Logos into two.

Who that had even rested but in the porch of the Alexandrian philosophy, would not rather say, 'of substantiating powers and attributes into being?' What is the whole system from Philo to Plotinus, and thence to Proclus inclusively, but one fanciful process of hypostasizing logical conceptions and generic terms? In Proclus it is Logolatry run mad.

Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.

Such would be the evidence for that divinity, to accompany the Book of
Wisdom, if we considered it to be as old as Solomon, or only as the
Son of Sirach. But I consider it to be much later than either, and
actually a work of Philo's. * * The language is very similar to
Philo's; flowing, lively and happy.

How is it possible to have read the short Hebraistic sentences of the Book of Wisdom, and the long involved periods that characterize the style of all Philo's known writings, and yet attribute both to one writer? But indeed I know no instance of assertions made so audaciously, or of passages misrepresented and even mistranslated so grossly, as in this work of Whitaker. His system is absolute naked Tritheism.

Ib.

The righteous man is shadowed out by the author with a plain reference
to our Saviour himself. "'Let us lie in wait for the righteous'," &c.

How then could Philo have remained a Jew?

Ib. 2. p. 195.

In all effects that are voluntary, the cause must be prior to the
effect, as the father is to the son in human generation. But in all
that are necessary, the effect must be coeval with the cause; as the
stream is with the fountain, and light with the sun. Had the sun been
eternal in its duration, light would have been co-eternal with it.

A just remark; but it cuts two ways. For these necessary effects are not really but only logically different or distinct from the cause:--the rays of the sun are only the sun diffused, and the whole rests on the sensitive form of material space. Take away the notion of material space, and the whole distinction perishes.

Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.

Justin accordingly sets himself to shew, that in the beginning, before
all creatures, God generated a certain rational power out of himself.

Is it not monstrous that the Jews having, according to Whitaker, fully believed a Trinity, one and all, but half a century or less before Trypho, Justin should never refer to this general faith, never reproach Trypho with the present opposition to it as a heresy from their own forefathers, even those who rejected Christ, or rather Jesus as Christ?--But no!--not a single objection ever strikes Mr. Whitaker, or appears worthy of an answer. The stupidest become authentic--the most fantastic abstractions of the Alexandrine dreamers substantial realities! I confess this book has satisfied me how little erudition will gain a man now-a-days the reputation of vast learning, if it be only accompanied with dash and insolence. It seems to me impossible, that Whitaker can have written well on the subject of Mary, Queen of Scots, his powers of judgment being apparently so abject. For instance, he says that the grossest moral improbability is swept away by positive evidence:--as if positive evidence (that is, the belief I am to yield to A. or B.) were not itself grounded on moral probabilities. Upon my word Whitaker would have been a choice judge for Charles II. and Titus Oates.

Ib. p. 267.

Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of
Christ,) asserting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance
to the Jews, &c.

A precious beginning of a precious demonstration! It is well for me that my faith in the Trinity is already well grounded by the Scriptures, by Bishop Bull, and the best parts of Plotinus, or this man would certainly have made me either a Socinian or a Deist.

Ib. 2. p. 270.

The general mode of commencing and concluding the Epistles of St.
Paul, is a prayer of supplication for the parties, to whom they were
addressed; in which he says, 'Grace to you and peace from God our
Father, and'--from whom besides?--'the Lord Jesus Christ'; in which
our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as 'the Grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all'; and is even 'invoked' the first at times as,
'the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all'; shews us plainly, &c.

Invoked! Surely a pious wish is not an invocation. "May good angels attend you!" is no invocation or worship of angels. The essence of religions adoration consists in the attributing, by an act of prayer or praise, a necessary presence to an object--which not being distinguishable, if the object be sensuously present, we may safely define adoration as an acknowledgement of the actual and necessary presence of an intelligent being not present to our senses. "May lucky stars shoot influence on you!" would be a very foolish superstition, --but to say in earnest! "O ye stars, I pray to you, shoot influences on me," would be idolatry. Christ was visually present to Stephen; his invocation therefore was not perforce an act of religious adoration, an acknowledgment of Christ's deity.

[Footnote 1: The Origin of Arianism Disclosed. By John Whitaker, B.D. London, 1791.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON OXLEE ON THE TRINITY AND INCARNATION. [1] 1827

Strange--yet from the date of the book of the Celestial Hierarchies of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite to that of its translation by Joannes Scotus Erigena, the contemporary of Alfred, and from Scotus to the Rev. John Oxlee in 1815, not unfrequent--delusion of mistaking Pantheism, disguised in a fancy dress of pious phrases, for a more spiritual and philosophic form of Christian Faith! Nay, stranger still:--to imagine with Scotus and Mr. Oxlee that in a scheme which more directly than even the grosser species of Atheism, precludes all moral responsibility and subverts all essential difference of right and wrong, they have found the means of proving and explaining, "the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation," that is, the great and only sufficient antidotes of the right faith against this insidious poison. For Pantheism--trick it up as you will--is but a painted Atheism. A mask of perverted Scriptures may hide its ugly face, but cannot change a single feature.

Introduction, p. 4.

In the infancy of the Christian Church, and immediately after the
general dispersion which necessarily followed the sacking of Jerusalem
and Bither, the Greek and Latin Fathers had the fairest opportunity of
disputing with the Jews, and of evincing the truth of the Gospel
dispensation; but unfortunately for the success of so noble a design,
they were totally ignorant of the Hebrew Scriptures, and so wanted in
every argument that stamp of authority, which was equally necessary to
sanction the principles of Christianity, and to command the respect of
their Jewish antagonists. For the confirmation of this remark I may
appeal to the Fathers themselves, but especially to Barnabas, Justin,
and Irenæus, who in their several attempts at Hebrew learning betray
such portentous signs of ignorance and stupidity, that we are covered
with shame at the sight of their criticisms.

Mr. Oxlee would be delighted in reading Jacob Rhenferd's Disquisition on the Ebionites and other supposed heretics among the Jewish Christians. And I cannot help thinking that Rhenferd, who has so ably anticipated Mr. Oxlee on this point, and in Jortin's best manner displayed the gross ignorance of the Gentile Fathers in all matters relating to Hebrew learning, and the ludicrous yet mischievous results thereof, has formed a juster though very much lower opinion of these Fathers, with a few exceptions, than Mr. Oxlee. I confess that till the light of the twofoldness of the Christian Church dawned on my mind, the study of the history and literature of the Church during the first three or four centuries infected me with a spirit of doubt and disgust which required a frequent recurrence to the writings of John and Paul to preserve me whole in the Faith.

Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.

The truth of the doctrine is vehemently insisted on, in a variety of
places, by the great R. Moses ben Maimon; who founds upon it the unity
of the Godhead, and ranks it among the fundamental articles of the
Jewish religion. Thus in his celebrated Letter to the Jews of
Marseilles he observes, &c.

But what is obtained by quotations from Maimonides more than from Alexander Hales, or any other Schoolman of the same age? The metaphysics of the learned Jew are derived from the same source, namely, Aristotle; and his object was the same, as that of the Christian Schoolmen, namely, to systematize the religion he professed on the form and in the principles of the Aristotelian philosophy.

By the by, it is a serious defect in Mr. Oxlee's work, that he does not give the age of the writers whom he cites. He cannot have expected all his readers to be as learned as himself.

Ib. ch. iii. p. 26.

Mr. Oxlee seems too much inclined to identify the Rabbinical interpretations of Scripture texts with their true sense; when in reality the Rabbis themselves not seldom used those interpretations as a convenient and popular mode of conveying their own philosophic opinions. Neither have I been able to admire the logic so general among the divines of both Churches, according to which if one, two, or perhaps three sentences in any one of the Canonical books appear to declare a given doctrine, all assertions of a different character must have been meant to be taken metaphorically.

Ib. p. 26-7.

The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the
Godhead in the following declaration: 'But Egypt is man, and not God:
and their horses flesh, and not spirit'. (c. xxxi. 3.) * * *. In the
former member the Prophet declares that Egypt was man, and not God;
and then in terms of strict opposition enforces the sentiment by
adding, that their cavalry was flesh, and not spirit; which is just as
if he had said: 'But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man,
that is, flesh, and not God, who is spirit'.

Assuredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is even doubtful whether [Hebrew: unable to transliterate. txt Ed.] ('ruach') in this place means 'spirit' in contradistinction to 'matter' at all, and not rather air or wind. At all events, the poetic decorum, the proportion, and the antithetic parallelism, demand a somewhat as much below God, as the horse is below man. The opposition of 'flesh' and 'spirit' in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he wrote in Greek, favours our common version,--'flesh and not spirit': but the place in which this passage stands, namely, in one of the first forty chapters of Isaiah, and therefore written long before the Captivity, together with the majestic simplicity characteristic of Isaiah's name gives perhaps a greater probability to the other: 'Egypt is man, and not God; and her horses flesh, and not wind'. If Mr. Oxlee renders the fourth verse of Psalm civ.--'He maketh spirits his messengers', (for our version--'He maketh his angels spirits'--is without a violent inversion senseless), this is a case in point for the use of the word, 'spirits', in the sense of incorporeal beings. (Mr. Oxlee will hardly, I apprehend, attribute the opinion of some later Rabbis, that God alone and exclusively is a Spirit, to the Sacred Writers, easy as it would be to quote a score of texts in proof of the contrary.) I, however, cannot doubt that the true rendering of the above-mentioned verse in the Psalms is;--'He maketh the winds his angels or messengers, and the lightnings his ministrant servants'.

As to Mr. Oxlee's 'abstract intelligences,' I cannot but think 'abstract' for 'pure,' and even pure intelligences for incorporeal, a lax use of terms. With regard to the point in question, the truth seems to be this. The ancient Hebrews certainly distinguished the principle or ground of life, understanding, and will from ponderable, visible, matter. The former they considered and called 'spirit', and believed it to be an emission from the Almighty Father of Spirits: the latter they called 'body'; and in this sense they doubtless believed in the existence of incorporeal beings. But that they had any notion of immaterial beings in the sense of Des Cartes, is contrary to all we know of them, and of every other people in the same degree of cultivation. Air, fire, light, express the degrees of ascending refinement. In the infancy of thought the life, soul, mind, are supposed to be air--'anima, animus', that is, [Greek: ánemos], spiritus, [Greek: pneuma]. In the childhood, they are fire, 'mens ignea, ignicula', and God himself [Greek: pur noeròn, pur aeízôon]. Lastly, in the youth of thought, they are refined into light; and that light is capable of subsisting in a latent state, the experience of the stricken flint, of lightning from the clouds, and the like, served to prove, or at least, it supplied a popular answer to the objection;--"If the soul be light, why is it not visible?" That the purest light is invisible to our gross sense, and that visible light is a compound of light and shadow, were answers of a later and more refined period. Observe, however, that the Hebrew Legislator precluded all unfit applications of the materializing fancy by forbidding the people to 'imagine' at all concerning God. For the ear alone, to the exclusion of all other bodily sense, was he to be designated, that is, by the Name. All else was for the mind--by power, truth, wisdom, holiness, mercy.

Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.

I fear I must surrender my hope that Mr. Oxlee was an exception to the rule, that the study of Rabbinical literature either finds a man 'whimmy', or makes him so. If neither the demands of poetic taste, nor the peculiar character of oracles, were of avail, yet morality and piety might seem enough to convince any one that this vision of Micaiah, (2 'Chron'. c. xviii. 18, &c.) was the poetic form, the veil, of the Prophet's meaning. And a most sublime meaning it was. Mr. Oxlee should recollect that the forms and personages of visions are all and always symbolical.

Ib. pp. 39-40.

It will not avail us much, however, to have established their
incorporeity or spirituality, if what R. Moses affirms be true * * *.
This impious paradox * *. Swayed, however, by the authority of so
great a man, even R. David Kimchi has dilapsed into the same error,
&c.

To what purpose then are the crude metaphysics of these later Rabbis brought forward, differing as they do in no other respect from the theological 'dicta' of the Schoolmen, but that they are written in a sort of Hebrew. I am far from denying that an interpreter of the Scriptures may derive important aids from the Jewish commentators: Aben Ezra, (about 1150) especially, was a truly great man. But of this I am certain, that he only will be benefited who can look down upon their works, whilst studying them;--that is, he must thoroughly understand their weaknesses, superstitions, and rabid appetite for the marvellous and the monstrous; and then read them as an enlightened chemist of the present day would read the writings of the old alchemists, or as a Linnæus might peruse the works of Pliny and Aldrovandus. If he can do this, well;--if not, he will line his skull with cobwebs.

Ib. pp. 40, 41.

But how, I would ask, is this position to be defended? Surely not by
contradicting almost every part of the inspired volumes, in which such
frequent mention occurs of different and distinct angels appearing to
the Patriarchs and Prophets, sometimes in groups, and sometimes in
limited numbers * *. It is, indeed, so wholly repugnant to the general
tenor of the Sacred Writings, and so abhorrent from the piety of both
Jew and Christian, that the learned author himself, either forgetting
what he had before advanced, or else postponing his philosophy to his
religion, has absolutely maintained the contrary in his explication of
the Cherubim, &c.

I am so far from agreeing with Mr. Oxlee on these points, that I not only doubt whether before the Captivity any fair proof of the existence of Angels, in the present sense, can be produced from the inspired Scriptures,--but think also that a strong argument for the divinity of Christ, and for his presence to the Patriarchs and under the Law, rests on the contrary, namely, that the Seraphim were images no less symbolical than the Cherubim. Surely it is not presuming too much of a Clergyman of the Church of England to expect that he would measure the importance of a theological tenet by its bearings on our moral and spiritual duties, by its practical tendencies. What is it to us whether Angels are the spirits of just men made perfect, or a distinct class of moral and rational creatures? Augustine has well and wisely observed that reason recognizes only three essential kinds;--God, man, beast. Try as long as you will, you can never make an Angel anything but a man with wings on his shoulders.

Ib. ch. III. p. 58.

But this deficiency in the Mosaic account of the creation is amply
supplied by early tradition, which inculcates not only that the angels
were created, but that they were created, either on the second day,
according to R. Jochanan, or on the fifth, according to R. Chanania.

Inspired Scripture amply supplied by the Talmudic and Rabbinical traditions!--This from a Clergyman of the Church of England!

I am, I confess, greatly disappointed. I had expected, I scarce know why, to have had some light thrown on the existence of the Cabala in its present form, from Ezekiel to Paul and John. But Mr. Oxlee takes it as he finds it, and gravely ascribes this patch-work of corrupt Platonism or Plotinism, with Chaldean, Persian, and Judaic fables and fancies, to the Jewish Doctors, as an original, profound, and pious philosophy in its fountain-head! The indispensable requisite not only to a profitable but even to a safe study of the Cabala is a familiar knowledge of the docimastic philosophy, that is, a philosophy, which has for its object the trial and testing of the weights and measures themselves, the first principles, definitions, postulates, axioms of logic and metaphysics. But this is in no other way possible but by our enumeration of the mental faculties, and an investigation of the constitution, function, limits, and applicability 'ad quas res', of each. The application to this subject of the rules and forms of the understanding, or discursive logic, or even of the intuitions of the reason itself, if reason be assumed as the first and highest, has Pantheism for its necessary result. But this the Cabalists did: and consequently the Cabalistic theosophy is Pantheistic, and Pantheism, in whatever drapery of pious phrases disguised, is (where it forms the whole of a system) Atheism, and precludes moral responsibility, and the essential difference of right and wrong. One of the two contra-distinctions of the Hebrew Revelation is the doctrine of positive creation. This, if not the only, is the easiest and surest criterion between the idea of God and the notion of a 'mens agitans molem'. But this the Cabalists evaded by their double meaning of the term, 'nothing', namely as nought = 0, and as no 'thing'; and by their use of the term, as designating God. Thus in words and to the ear they taught that the world was made out of nothing; but in fact they meant and inculcated, that the world was God himself expanded. It is not, therefore, half a dozen passages respecting the first three 'proprietates'[2] in the Sephiroth, that will lead a wise man to expect the true doctrine of the Trinity in the Cabalistic scheme: for he knows that the scholastic value, the theological necessity, of this doctrine consists in its exhibiting an idea of God, which rescues our faith from both extremes, Cabalo-Pantheism, and Anthropomorphism. It is, I say, to prevent the necessity of the Cabalistic inferences that the full and distinct developement of the doctrine of the Trinity becomes necessary in every scheme of dogmatic theology. If the first three 'proprietates' are God, so are the next seven, and so are all ten. God according to the Cabalists is all in each and one in all. I do not say that there is not a great deal of truth in this; but I say that it is not, as the Cabalists represent it, the whole truth. Spinoza himself describes his own philosophy as in substance the same with that of the ancient Hebrew Doctors, the Cabalists--only unswathed from the Biblical dress.

Ib. p. 61.

Similar to this is the declaration of R. Moses ben Maimon. "For that
influence, which flows from the Deity to the actual production of
abstract intelligences flows also from the intelligences to their
production from each other in succession," &c.

How much trouble would Mr. Oxlee have saved himself, had he in sober earnest asked his own mind, what he meant by emanation; and whether he could attach any intelligible meaning to the term at all as applied to spirit.

Ib. p. 65.

Thus having, by variety of proofs, demonstrated the fecundity of the
Godhead, in that all spiritualities, of whatever gradation, have
originated essentially and substantially from it, like streams from
their fountain; I avail myself of this as another sound argument, that
in the sameness of the divine essence subsists a plurality of Persons.

A plurality with a vengeance! Why, this is the very scoff of a late Unitarian writer,--only that he inverts the order. Mr. Oxlee proves ten trillions of trillions in the Deity, in order to deduce 'a fortiori' the rationality of three: the Unitarian from the Three pretends to deduce the equal rationality of as many thousands.

Ib. p. 66.

So, if without detriment to piety great things may be compared with
small, I would contend, that every intelligency, descending by way of
emanation or impartition from the Godhead, must needs be a personality
of that Godhead, from which it has descended, only so vastly unequal
to it in personal perfection, that it can form no part of its proper
existency.

Is not this to all intents and purposes ascribing partibility to God? Indeed it is the necessary consequence of the emanation scheme?--Unequal!--Aye, various 'wicked' personalities of the Godhead?--How does this rhyme?--Even as a metaphor, emanation is an ill-chosen term; for it applies only to fluids. 'Ramenta', unravellings, threads, would be more germane.

[Footnote 1: The Christian Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation considered and maintained on the principles of Judaism. By the Rev. John Oxlee. London, 1815.]

[Footnote 2: That is, Intelligence or the Crown, Knowledge, Wisdom. Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON A BARRISTER'S HINTS ON EVANGELICAL PREACHING. 1810. [1]

For only that man understands in deed
Who well remembers what he well can do;
The faith lives only where the faith doth breed
Obedience to the works it binds us to.
And as the Life of Wisdom hath exprest--
'If this ye know, then do it and be blest'.

LORD BROOK.

'In initio'.

There is one misconception running through the whole of this Pamphlet, the rock on which, and the quarry out of which, the whole reasoning, is built;--an error therefore which will not indeed destroy its efficacy as a [Greek: mísaetron] or anti-philtre to inflame the scorn of the enemies of Methodism, but which must utterly incapacitate it for the better purpose of convincing the consciences or allaying the fanaticism of the Methodists themselves; this is the uniform and gross mis-statement of the one great point in dispute, by which the Methodists are represented as holding the compatibility of an impure life with a saving faith: whereas they only assert that the works of righteousness are the consequence, not the price, of Redemption, a gift included in the great gift of salvation;--and therefore not of merit but of imputation through the free love of the Saviour.