Chapter VI: Part III: p. 59 (1)

As also to make us take such a poor suffering as this for a sign of
true grace, instead of faith, hope, love, mortification, and a
heavenly mind; and that the loss of one grain of love was worse than a
long imprisonment.

Here Baxter confounds his own particular case, which very many would have coveted, with the sufferings of other prisoners on the same score;--sufferings nominally the same, but with few, if any, of Baxter's almost flattering supports.

Ib. p. 60.

It would trouble the reader for me to reckon up the many diseases and
dangers for these ten years past, in or from which God hath delivered
me; though it be my duty not to forget to be thankful. Seven months
together I was lame with a strange pain in one foot, twice delivered
from a bloody flux; a spurious cataract in my eye, with incessant webs
and networks before it, hath continued these eight years, * * * so
that I have rarely one hour's or quarter of an hour's ease. Yet
through God's mercy I was never one hour melancholy, &c.

The power of the soul, by its own act of will, is, I admit, great for any one occasion or for a definite time, yea, it is marvellous. But of such exertions and such an even frame of spirit, as Baxter's were, under such unremitting and almost unheard-of bodily derangements and pains as his, and during so long a life, 1 do not believe a human soul capable, unless substantiated and successively potentiated by an especial divine grace.

Ib. p. 65.

The reasons why I make no larger a profession necessary than the Creed
and Scriptures, are, because if we depart from this old sufficient
Catholic rule, we narrow the Church, and depart from the old
Catholicism.

Why then any Creed? This is the difficulty. If you put the Creed as in fact, and not by courtesy, Apostolic, and on a parity with Scripture, having, namely, its authority in itself, and a direct inspiration of the framers, inspired 'ad id tempus et ad eam rem', on what ground is this to be done, without admitting the binding power of tradition in the very sense of the term in which the Church of Rome uses it, and the Protestant Churches reject it? That it is the sum total made by Apostolic contributions, each Apostle casting, as into a helmet, a several article as his [Greek: symbolon], is the tradition; and this is holden as a mere legendary tale by the great majority of learned divines. That it is simply the Creed of the Western Church is affirmed by many Protestant divines, and some of these divines of our Church. Its comparative simplicity these divines explain by the freedom from heresies enjoyed by the Western Church, when the Eastern Church had been long troubled therewith. Others, again, and not unplausibly, contend that it was the Creed of the Catechumens preparatory to the Baptismal profession of faith, which other was a fuller comment on the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, into whose name (or power) they were baptised. That the Apostles' Creed received additions after the Apostolic age, seems almost certain; not to mention the perplexing circumstance that so many of the Latin Fathers, who give almost the words of the Apostolic Creed, declare it forbidden absolutely to write or by any material form to transmit the 'Canon Fidei', or 'Symbolum' or 'Regula Fidei', the Creed [Greek: kat' hexocháen], by analogy of which the question whether such a book was Scripture or not, was to be tried. With such doubts how can the Apostles' Creed be preferred to the Nicene by a consistent member of the Reformed Catholic Church?

Ib. p. 67.

They think while you (the Independents) seem to be for a stricter
discipline than others, that your way or usual practice tendeth to
extirpate godliness out of the land, by taking a very few that can
talk more than the rest, and making them the Church, &c.

Had Baxter had as judicious advisers among his theological, as he had among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become, first, Arian, then Socinian, and finally Unitarian: that is, the 'demi-semi-quaver' of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for the 'semi-breve'.

Ib. p. 69.

After this I waited on him (Dr. John Owen) at London again, and he
came once to me to my lodgings, when I was in town near him. And he
told me that he received my chiding letter and perceived that I
suspected his reality in the business; but he was so hearty in it that
I should see that he really meant as he spoke, concluding in these
words, "You shall see it, and my practice shall reproach your
diffidence" * * *. About a month after I went to him again, and he had
done nothing, but was still hearty for the work. And to be short, I
thus waited on him time after time, till my papers had been near a
year and a quarter in his hand, and then I advised him to return them
to me, which he did, with these words, "I am still a well-wisher to
those mathematics;"--without any other words about them, or ever
giving me any more exception against them. And this was the issue of
my third attempt for union with the Independents.

Dr. Owen was a man of no ordinary intellect. It would be interesting to have his conduct in this point, seemingly so strange, in some measure explained: The words "those mathematics" look like an innuendo, that Baxter's scheme of union, by which all the parties opposed to the Prelatic Church were to form a rival Church, was, like the mathematics, true indeed, but true only in the idea, that is, abstracted from the subject matter. Still there appears a very chilling want of open-heartedness on the part of Owen, produced perhaps by the somewhat overly and certainly most ungracious resentments of Baxter. It was odd at least to propose concord in the tone and on the alleged ground of an old grudge.

Ib.

I have been twenty-six years convinced that dichotomizing will not do
it, but that the divine Trinity in Unity hath expressed itself in the
whole frame of nature and morality * * *. But he, Mr. George Lawson,
had not hit on the true method of the 'vestigia Trinitatis', &c.

Among Baxter's philosophical merits, we ought not to overlook, that the substitution of Trichotomy for the old and still general plan of Dichotomy in the method and disposition of Logic, which forms so prominent and substantial an excellence in Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason, of the Judgment, and the rest of his works, belongs originally to Richard Baxter, a century before Kant;--and this not as a hint, but as a fully evolved and systematically applied principle. Nay, more than this:--Baxter grounded it on an absolute idea presupposed in all intelligential acts: whereas Kant takes it only as a fact in which he seems to anticipate or suspect some yet deeper truth latent, and hereafter to be discovered.

On recollection, however, I am disposed to consider 'this' alone as Baxter's peculiar claim, I have not indeed any distinct memory of Giordano Bruno's 'Logice Venatrix Veritatis'; but doubtless the principle of Trichotomy is necessarily involved in the Polar Logic, which again is the same with the Pythagorean 'Tetractys', that is, the eternal fountain or source of nature; and this being sacred to contemplations of identity, and prior in order of thought to all division, is so far from interfering with Trichotomy as the universal form of division (more correctly of distinctive distribution in logic) that it implies it. 'Prothesis' being by the very term anterior to 'Thesis' can be no part of it. Thus in

'Prothesis'
'Thesis' 'Antithesis'
'Synthesis'

we have the Tetrad indeed in the intellectual and intuitive contemplation, but a Triad in discursive arrangement, and a Tri-unity in result. [3]

Ib. p. 144.

Seeing the great difficulties that lie in the way of increasing charities so as to meet the increase of population, or even so as to follow it, and the manifold desirableness of parish Churches, with the material dignity that in a right state of Christian order would attach to them, as compared with meeting-houses, chapels, and the like--all more or less 'privati juris', I have often felt disposed to wish that the large majestic Church, central to each given parish, might have been appropriated to Public Prayer, to the mysteries of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and to the 'quasi sacramenta', Marriage, Penance, Confirmation, Ordination, and to the continued reading aloud, or occasional chanting, of the Scriptures during the intervals of the different Services, which ought to be so often performed as to suffice successively for the whole population; and that on the other hand the chapels and the like should be entirely devoted to teaching and expounding.

Ib. p. 153.

And I proved to him that Christianity was proved true many years
before any of the New Testament was written, and that so it may be
still proved by one that doubted of some words of the Scripture; and
therefore the true order is, to try the truth of the Christian
religion first, and the perfect verity of the Scriptures afterwards.

With more than Dominican virulence did Goeze, Head Pastor of the Lutheran Church at Hamburg, assail the celebrated Lessing for making and supporting the same position as the pious Baxter here advances.

This controversy with Goeze was in 1778, nearly a hundred years after Baxter's writing this.

Ib. p. 155.

And within a few days Mr. Barnett riding the circuit was cast by his
horse, and died in the very fall. And Sir John Medlicote and his
brother, a few weeks after, lay both dead in his house together.

This interpreting of accidents and coincidences into judgments is a breach of charity and humility, only not universal among all sects and parties of this period, and common to the best and gentlest men in all; we should not therefore bring it in charge against any one in particular. But what excuse shall be made for the revival of this presumptuous encroachment on the divine prerogative in our days?

Ib. p. 180.

Near this time my book called A Key for Catholics, was to be
reprinted. In the preface to the first impression I had mentioned with
praise the Earl of Lauderdale. * * * I thought best to prefix an
epistle to the Duke, in which I said not a word of him but truth. * *
* But the indignation that men had against the Duke made some blame
me, as keeping up the reputation of one whom multitudes thought very
ill of; whereas I owned none of his faults, and did nothing that I
could well avoid for the aforesaid reasons. Long after this he
professed his kindness to me, and told me I should never want while he
was able, and humbly entreated me to accept twenty guineas from him,
which I did.

This would be a curious proof of the slow and imperfect intercourse of communication between Scotland and London, if Baxter had not been particularly informed of Lauderdale's horrible cruelties to the Scotch Covenanters:--and if Baxter did know them, he surely ran into a greater inconsistency to avoid the appearance of a less. And the twenty guineas! they must have smelt, I should think, of more than the earthly brimstone that might naturally enough have been expected in gold or silver, from his palm. I would as soon have plucked an ingot from the cleft of the Devil's hoof.

[Greek: Taut' élegon períthumos egô gàr mísei en ísô Laudérdalon échô
kaì kerkokerônucha Satan.]

Ib. p. 181.

About that time I had finished a book called Catholic Thoughts; in
which I undertake to prove that besides things unrevealed, known to
none, and ambiguous words, there is no considerable difference between
the Arminians and Calvinists, except some very tolerable difference in
the point of perseverance.

What Arminians? what Calvinists?--It is possible that the guarded language and positions of Arminius himself may be interpreted into a "very tolerable" compatibility with the principles of the milder Calvinists, such as Archbishop Leighton, that true Father of the Church of Christ. But I more than doubt the possibility of even approximating the principles of Bishop Jeremy Taylor to the fundamental doctrines of Leighton, much more to those of Cartwright, Twiss, or Owen.

Ib. p. 186.

Bishop Barlow told my friend that got my papers for him, that he could
hear of nothing that we judged to be sin, but mere inconveniences.
When as above seventeen years ago, we publicly endeavoured to prove
the sinfulness even of many of the old impositions.

Clearly an undeterminable controversy; inasmuch as there is no centra-definition possible of sin and inconvenience in religion: while the exact point, at which an inconvenience, becoming intolerable, passes into sin, must depend on the state and the degree of light, of the individual consciences to which it appears or becomes intolerable. Besides, a thing may not be only indifferent in itself, but may be declared such by Scripture, and on this indifference the Scripture may have rested a prohibition to Christians to judge each other on the point. If yet a Pope or Archbishop should force this on the consciences of others, for example, to eat or not to eat animal food, would he not sin in so doing? And does Scripture permit me to subscribe to an ordinance made in direct contempt of a command of Scripture?

If it were said,--In all matters indifferent and so not sinful you must comply with lawful authority:--must I not reply, But you have yourself removed the indifferency by your injunction? Look in Popish countries for the hideous consequences of the unnatural doctrine--that the Priest may go to Hell for sinfully commanding, and his parishioners go with him for not obeying that command.

Ib. p. 191.

About this time died my dear friend Mr. Thomas Gouge, of whose life
you may see a little in Mr. Clark's last book of Lives:--a wonder of
sincere industry in works of charity. It would make a volume to recite
at large the charity he used to his poor parishioners at Sepulchre's,
before he was ejected and silenced for non-conformity, &c.

I cannot express how much it grieves me, that our Clergy should still think it fit and expedient to defend the measures of the High Churchmen from Laud to Sheldon, and to speak of the ejected ministers, Calamy, Baxter, Gouge, Howe, and others, as schismatics, factionists, fanatics, or Pharisees:--thus to flatter some half-dozen dead Bishops, wantonly depriving our present Church of the authority of perhaps the largest collective number of learned and zealous, discreet and holy, ministers that one age and one Church was ever blest with; and whose authority in every considerable point is in favor of our Church, and against the present Dissenters from it. And this seems the more impolitic, when it must be clear to every student of the history of these times, that the unmanly cruelties inflicted on Baxter and others were, as Bishops Ward, Stillingfleet, and others saw at the time, part of the Popish scheme of the Cabal, to trick the Bishops and dignified Clergy into rendering themselves and the established Church odious to the public by laws, the execution of which the King, the Duke, Arlington, and the Popish priests directed towards the very last man that the Bishops themselves (the great majority at least) would have molested.

Appendix II. p. 37.

If I can prove that it hath been the universal practice of the Church
'in nudum apertum caput manus imponere', doth it follow that this is
essential, and the contrary null?

How likewise can it be proved that the imposition of hands in Ordination did not stand on the same ground as the imposition of hands in sickness; that is, the miraculous gifts of the first preachers of the Gospel? All Protestants admit that the Church retained several forms so originated, after the cessation of the originating powers, which were the substance of these forms.

Ib.

If you think not only imposition to be essential, but also that
nothing else is essential, or that all are true ministers that are
ordained by a lawful Bishop per 'manuum impositionem', then do you
egregiously 'tibi ipsi imponere'.

Baxter, like most scholastic logicians, had a sneaking affection for puns. The cause is,--the necessity of attending to the primary sense of words, that is, the visual image or general relation expressed, and which remains common to all the after senses, however widely or even incongruously differing from each other in other respects. For the same reason, schoolmasters are commonly punsters. "I have indorsed your Bill, Sir," said a pedagogue to a merchant, meaning he had flogged his son William.--My old master the Rev. James Bowyer, the 'Hercules furens' of the phlogistic sect, but else an incomparable teacher,--used to translate, 'Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu',--first reciting the Latin words, and observing that they were the fundamental article of the Peripatetic school,--"You must flog a boy, before you can make him understand;"--or, "You must lay it in at the tail before you can get it into the head."

Ib. p. 45.

Then, that the will must follow the practical intellect whether right
or wrong,--that is no precept, but the nature of the soul in its
acting, because that the will is 'potentia cæca, non nata ad
intelligendum, sed ad volendum vel nolendum intellectum'.

This is the main fault in Baxter's metaphysics, that he so often substantiates distinctions into dividuous self-subsistents. As here;--for a will not intelligent is no will.

Appendix. III. p. 55.

And for many ages no other ordinarily baptised but infants. If Christ
had no Church then, where was his wisdom, his love, and his power?
What was become of the glory of his redemption, and his Catholic
Church, that was to continue to the end?

But the Antipoedo-Baptists would deny any such consequences as applicable to them, who are to act according to the circumstances, in which God, who ordains his successive manifestations in due correspondence with other lights and states of things, has placed them. He does not exclude from the Church of Christ (say they) those whom we do not accept into the communion of our particular Society, any more than the House of Lords excludes Commoners from being Members of Parliament. And we do this because--we think that such promiscuous admission would prolong an error which would be deadly to us, though not to you who interpret the Scriptures otherwise.

'In fine.'

There are two senses in which the words, 'Church of England,' may be used;--first, with reference to the idea of the Church as an estate of this Christian Realm, protesting against the Papal usurpation, comprising, first, the interests of a permanent learned class, that is, the Clergy;--secondly, those of the proper, that is, the infirm poor, from age or sickness;--and thirdly, the adequate proportional instruction of all in all classes by public prayer, recitation of the Scriptures, by expounding, preaching, catechizing, and schooling, and last, not least, by the example and influence of a pastor and a schoolmaster placed as a germ of civilization and cultivation in every parish throughout the land. To this idea, the Reformed Church of England with its marriable and married Clergy would have approximated, if the revenues of the Church, as they existed at the death of Henry VII., had been rightly transferred by his successor;--transferred, I mean, from reservoirs, which had by degeneracy on the one hand, and progressive improvement on the other, fallen into ruin, and in which those revenues had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,--transferred from what had become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true; but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability, arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt principles of a great majority in all classes during the dynasty of the Tudors,) does not prevent this wholesale sacrilege, from deserving the character of the "first and deadliest wound inflicted on the Constitution of the kingdom; which term, in the body politic, as in bodies natural, expresses not only what is and has been evolved, but likewise whatever is potentially contained in the seminal principle of the particular body, and which would in its due time have appeared but for emasculation in its infancy. This, however, is the first sense of the words, Church of England. [4]

The second is the Church of England as now by law established, and by practice of the law actually existing. That in the first sense it is the object of my admiration and the earthly 'ne plus ultra' of my religious aspirations, it were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed to express my conviction, that on our recurring to the same ends and objects, (the restoration of a national and circulating property in counterpoise of individual possession, disposable and heritable) though in other forms and by other means perhaps, the decline or progress of this country depends. In the second sense of the words I can sincerely profess, that I love and honour the Church of England, comparatively, beyond any other Church established or unestablished now existing in Christendom; and it is wholly in consequence of this deliberate and most affectionate filial preference, that I have read this work, and Calamy's historical writings, with so deep and so melancholy an interest. And I dare avow that I cannot but regard as an ignorant bigot every man who (especially since the publicity and authentication of the contents of the Stuart Papers, Memoirs and Life of James II. &c.) can place the far later furious High Church compilations and stories of Walker and others in competition with the veracity and general verity of Baxter and Calamy; or can forget that the great body of Non-conformists to whom these great and good men belonged, were not dissenters from the established Church willingly, but an orthodox and numerous portion of the Church. Omitting then the wound received by religion generally under Henry VIII., and the shameless secularizations clandestinely effected during the reigns of Elizabeth and the first James, I am disposed to consider the three following as the grand evil epochs of our present Church. First, The introduction and after-predominance of Latitudinarianism under the name of Arminianism, and the spirit of a conjoint Romanism and Socinianism at the latter half or towards the close of the reign of James I. in the persons of Montague, Laud, and their confederates. Second, The ejection of the two thousand ministers after the Restoration, with the other violences in which the Churchmen made themselves the dupes of Charles, James, the Jesuits, and the French Court. (See the Stuart Papers 'passim'). It was this that gave consistence and enduring strength to Schism in this country, prevented the pacation of Ireland, and prepared for the separation of America at a far too early period for the true interest of either country. Third, The surrender by the Clergy of the right of taxing themselves, and the Jacobitical follies that combined with the former to put it in the power of the Whig party to deprive the Church of her Convocation,--a bitter disgrace and wrong, to which most unhappily the people were rendered indifferent by the increasing contrast of the sermons of the Clergy with the Articles and Homilies of the Church itself,--but a wrong nevertheless which already has avenged, and will sooner or later be seen to avenge, itself on the State and the governing classes that continue this boast of a short-sighted policy; the same policy which in our own days would have funded the property of the Church, and, by converting the Clergy into salaried dependents on the Government 'pro tempore', have deprived the Establishment of its fairest honor, that of being neither enslaved to the court, nor to the congregations; the same policy, alas! which even now pays and patronizes a Board of Agriculture to undermine all landed property by a succession of false, shallow, and inflammatory libels against tithes.

These are my weighed sentiments: and fervently desiring, as I do, the perpetuity and prosperity of the established Church, zealous for its rights and dignity, preferring its forms, believing its Articles of Faith, and holding its Book of Common Prayer and its translation of the Scriptures among my highest privileges as a Christian and an Englishman, I trust that I may both entertain and avow these sentiments without forfeiting any part of my claim to the name of a faithful member of the Church of England.

June 1820.

N. B. As to Warburton's Alliance of the Church and State, I object to the title (Alliance), and to the matter and mode of the reasoning. But the inter-dependence of the Church and the State appears to me a truth of the highest practical importance. Let but the temporal powers protect the subjects in their just rights as subjects merely: and I do not know of any one point in which the Church has the right or the necessity to call in the temporal power as its ally for any purpose exclusively ecclesiastic. The right of a firm to dissolve its partnership with any one partner, breach of contract having been proved, and publicly to announce the same, is common to all men as social beings.

I spoke above of "Romanism." But call it, if you like, Laudism, or Lambethism in temporalities and ceremonials, and of Socinianism in doctrine, that is, a retaining of the word but a rejecting or interpreting away of the sense and substance of the Scriptural Mysteries. This spirit has not indeed manifested itself in the article of the Trinity, since Waterland gave the deathblow to Arianism, and so left no alternative to the Clergy, but the actual divinity or mere humanity of our Lord; and the latter would be too impudent an avowal for a public reader of our Church Liturgy: but in the articles of original sin, the necessity of regeneration, the necessity of redemption in order to the possibility of regeneration, of justification by faith, and of prevenient and auxiliary grace,--all I can say with sincerity is, that our orthodoxy seems so far in an improving state, that I can hope for the time when Churchmen will use the term Arminianism to express a habit of belief opposed not to Calvinism, or the works of Calvin, but to the Articles of our own Church, and to the doctrine in which all the first Reformers agreed.

Note--that by Latitudinarianism, I do not mean the particular tenets of the divines so called, such as Dr. H. More, Cudworth and their compeers, relative to toleration, comprehension, and the general belief that in the greater number of points then most controverted, the pious of all parties were far more nearly of the same mind than their own imperfections, and the imperfection of language allowed them to see: I mean the disposition to explain away the articles of the Church on the pretext of their inconsistency with right reason;--when in fact it was only an incongruity with a wrong understanding, the faculty which St. Paul calls [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs], the rules of which having been all abstracted from objects of sense, (finite in time and space,) are logically applicable to objects of the sense alone. This I have elsewhere called the spirit of Socinianism, which may work in many whose tenets are anti-Socinian.

Law is--'conclusio per regulam generis singulorum in genere isto inclusorum'. Now the extremes 'et inclusa' are contradictory terms. Therefore extreme cases are not capable subjects of law 'a priori', but must proceed on knowledge of the past, and anticipation of the future, and the fulfilment of the anticipation is the proof, because the only possible determination, of the accuracy of the knowledge. In other words the agents may be condemned or honored according to their intentions, and the apparent source of their motives; so we honor Brutus, but the extreme case itself is tried by the event.

[Footnote 1: 'Relliquiæ Baxterianæ': or Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times. Published from his manuscript, by Matthew Sylvester.--London, 'folio'. 1699.]

[Footnote 2: See Hooker E. P. V. xviii. 3. Vol. II. p. 80. Keble. Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See Table Talk, p. 162. 2nd edit. Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See the Church and State, p. 73, 3rd edit.--Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON LEIGHTON. [1]

Surely if ever work not in the sacred Canon might suggest a belief of inspiration,--of something more than human,--this it is. When Mr. Elwyn made this assertion, I took it as the hyperbole of affection: but now I subscribe to it seriously, and bless the hour that introduced me to the knowledge of the evangelical, apostolical Archbishop Leighton.

April 1814.

Next to the inspired Scriptures--yea, and as the vibration of that once struck hour remaining on the air, stands Leighton's Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St. Peter.

Comment Vol. I. p. 2.

--their redemption and salvation by Christ Jesus; that inheritance of
immortality bought by his blood for them, and the evidence and
stability of their right and title to it.

By the blood of Christ I mean this. I contemplate the Christ,

1;--As 'Christus agens', the Jehovah Christ, the Word:

2;--As 'Christus patiens', The God Incarnate.

In the former he is 'relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, sol intelligibilis: relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, calor fovens'. In the latter he is 'vita vivificans, principium spiritualis, id est, veræ reproductionis in vitam veram'. Now this principle, or 'vis vitæ vitam vivificans', considered in 'forma passiva, assimilationem patiens', at the same time that it excites the soul to the vital act of assimilating--this is the Blood of Christ, really present through faith to, and actually partaken by, the faithful. Of this the body is the continual product, that is, a good life-the merits of Christ acting on the soul, redemptive.

Ib. pp. 13-15.

Of their sanctification: 'elect unto obedience', &c.

That the doctrines asserted in this and the two or three following pages cannot be denied or explained away, without removing (as the modern Unitarians), or (as the Arminians) unsettling and undermining, the foundations of the Faith, I am fully convinced; and equally so, that nothing is gained by the change, the very same logical consequences being deducible from the tenets of the Church Arminians;--scarcely more so, indeed, from those which they still hold in common with Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer and the other Fathers of the Reformation in England, and which are therefore most unfairly entitled Calvinism--than from those which they have attempted to substitute in their place. Nay, the shock given to the moral sense by these consequences is, to my feelings, aggravated in the Arminian doctrine by the thin yet dishonest disguise. Meantime the consequences appear to me, in point of logic, legitimately concluded from the terms of the premisses. What shall we say then? Where lies the fault? In the original doctrines expressed in the premisses? God forbid. In the particular deductions, logically considered? But these we have found legitimate. Where then? I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and according to such rules. The rules are alien and inapplicable; the process presumptuous, yea, preposterous. The error, [Greek: to prôton pseudos], lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all, in this instance.

First:--because the terms from which the conclusion must be drawn-('termini in majore præmissi, a quibus scientialiter et scientifice demonstrandum erat') are accommodations and not scientific--that is, proper and adequate, not 'per idem', but 'per quam maxime simile', or rather 'quam maxime dissimile':

Secondly;--because the truths in question are transcendant, and have their evidence, if any, in the ideas themselves, and for the reason; and do not and cannot derive it from the conceptions of the understanding, which cannot comprehend the truths, but is to be comprehended in and by them, ('John' i. 5.):

Lastly, and chiefly;--because these truths, as they do not originate in the intellective faculty of man, so neither are they addressed primarily to our intellect; but are substantiated for us by their correspondence to the wants, cravings, and interests of the moral being, for which they were given, and without which they would be devoid of all meaning,--'vox et præterea nihil'. The only conclusions, therefore, that can be drawn from them, must be such as are implied in the origin and purpose of their revelation; and the legitimacy of all conclusions must be tried by their consistency with those moral interests, those spiritual necessities, which are the proper final cause of the truths and of our faith therein. For some of the faithful these truths have, I doubt not, an evidence of reason; but for the whole household of faith their certainty is in their working. Now it is this, by which, in all cases, we know and determine existence in the first instance. That which works in us or on us exists for us. The shapes and forms that follow the working as its results or products, whether the shapes cognizable by sense or the forms distinguished by the intellect, are after all but the particularizations of this working; its proper names, as it were, as John, James, Peter, in respect of human nature. They are all derived from the relations in which finite beings stand to each other; and are therefore heterogeneous and, except by accommodation, devoid of meaning and purpose when applied to the working in and by which God makes his existence known to us, and (we may presume to say) especially exists for the soul in whom he thus works. On these grounds, therefore, I hold the doctrines of original sin, the redemption therefrom by the Cross of Christ, and change of heart as the consequent; without adopting the additions to the doctrines inferred by one set of divines, the modern Calvinists, or acknowledging the consequences burdened on the doctrines by their antagonists. Nor is this my faith fairly liable to any inconvenience, if only it be remembered that it is a spiritual working, of which I speak, and a spiritual knowledge,--not through the 'medium' of image, the seeking after which is superstition; nor yet by any sensation, the watching for which is enthusiasm, and the conceit of its presence fanatical distemperature. "Do the will of the Father, and ye shall 'know' it."

We must distinguish the life and the soul; though there is a certain sense in which the life may be called the soul; that is, the life is the soul of the body. But the soul is the life of the man, and Christ is the life of the soul. Now the spirit of man, the spirit subsistent, is deeper than both, not only deeper than the body and its life, but deeper than the soul; and the Spirit descendent and supersistent is higher than both. In the regenerated man the height and the depth become one--the Spirit communeth with the spirit--and the soul is the 'inter-ens', or 'ens inter-medium' between the life and the spirit;--the 'participium', not as a compound, however, but as a 'medium indifferens'--in the same sense in which heat may be designated as the indifference between light and gravity. And what is the Reason?--The spirit in its presence to the understanding abstractedly from its presence in the will,--nay, in many, during the negation of the latter. The spirit present to man, but not appropriated by him, is the reason of man:--the reason in the process of its identification with the will is the spirit.

Ib. pp. 63-4.

Can we deny that it is unbelief of those things that causeth this
neglect and forgetting of them? The discourse, the tongue of men and
angels cannot beget divine belief of the happiness to come; only He
that gives it, gives faith likewise to apprehend it, and lay hold upon
it, and upon our believing to be filled with joy in the hopes of it.

Most true, most true!

Ib. p. 68.

In spiritual trials that are the sharpest and most fiery of all, when
the furnace is within a man, when God doth not only shut up his
loving-kindness from its feeling, but seems to shut it up in hot
displeasure, when he writes bitter things against it; yet then to
depend upon him, and wait for his salvation, this is not only a true,
but a strong and very refined faith indeed, and the more he smites,
the more to cleave to him. * * * Though I saw, as it were, his hand
lifted up to destroy me, yet from that same hand would I expect
salvation.

Bless God, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter! It is the honey in the lion.

Ib. p. 75.

This natural men may discourse of, and that very knowingly, and give a
kind of natural credit to it as to a history that may be true; but
firmly to believe that there is divine truth in all these things, and
to have a persuasion of it stronger than of the very things we see
with our eyes; such an assent as this is the peculiar work of the
Spirit of God, and is certainly saving faith.

'Lord I believe: help thou my unbelief!' My reason acquiesces, and I believe enough to fear. O, grant me the belief that brings sweet hope!

Ib. p. 76.

Faith * * causes the soul to find all that is spoken of him in the
word, and his beauty there represented, to be abundantly true, makes
it really taste of his sweetness, and by that possesses the heart more
strongly with his love, persuading it of the truth of those things,
not by reasons and arguments, but by an inexpressible kind of
evidence, that they only know that have it.

Either this is true, or religion is not religion; that is, it adds nothing to our human reason; 'non religat'. Grant it, grant it me, O Lord!

Ib. pp. 104-5.

This sweet stream of their doctrine did, as the rivers, make its own
banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to
after ages, and by the confluence of more such prophecies grew greater
as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the Gospel in the
New Testament, both acted and preached by the great Prophet himself,
whom they foretold to come, and recorded by his Apostles and
Evangelists, and thus united into one river, clear as crystal. This
doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath still refreshed the city
of God, his Church under the Gospel, and still shall do so, till it
empty itself into the ocean of eternity.

In the whole course of my studies I do not remember to have read so beautiful an allegory as this; so various and detailed, and yet so just and natural.

Ib. p. 121.

There is a truth in it, that all sin arises from some kind of
ignorance * * *. For were the true visage of sin seen at a full light,
undressed and unpainted, it were impossible, while it so appeared,
that any one soul could be in love with it, but would rather flee from
it as hideous and abominable.

This is the only (defect, shall I say? No, but the only) omission I have felt in this divine Writer--for him we understand by feeling, experimentally--that he doth not notice the horrible tyranny of habit. What the Archbishop says, is most true of beginners in sin; but this is the foretaste of hell, to see and loathe the deformity of the wedded vice, and yet still to embrace and nourish it.

Ib. p. 122.

He calls those times wherein Christ was unknown to them, 'the times of
their ignorance'. Though the stars shine never so bright, and the moon
with them in its full, yet they do not, altogether, make it day: still
it is night till the sun appear.

How beautiful, and yet how simple, and as it were unconscious of its own beauty!

Ib. p. 124.

You were running to destruction in the way of sin, and there was a
voice, together with the Gospel preaching to your ear, that spake into
your heart, and called you back from that path of death to the way of
holiness, which is the only way of life. He hath severed you from the
mass of the profane world, and picked you out to be jewels for
himself.

O, how divine! Surely, nothing less than the Spirit of Christ could have inspired such thoughts in such language. Other divines,--Donne and Jeremy Taylor for instance,--have converted their worldly gifts, and applied them to holy ends; but here the gifts themselves seem unearthly.

Ib. p. 138.

As in religion, so in the course and practice of men's lives, the
stream of sin runs from one age to another, and every age makes it
greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their
course by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man
when he is born, falls like a drop into this main current of
corruption, and so is carried down it, and this by reason of its
strength, and his own nature, which willingly dissolves into it, and
runs along with it.

In this single period we have religion, the spirit,--philosophy, the soul,--and poetry, the body and drapery united;--Plato glorified by St. Paul; and yet coming as unostentatiously as any speech from an innocent girl of fifteen.

Ib. p. 158.

The chief point of obedience is believing; the proper obedience to
truth is to give credit to it.

This is not quite so perspicuous and single-sensed as Archbishop Leighton's sentences in general are. This effect is occasioned by the omission of the word "this," or "divine," or the truth "in Christ." For truth in the ordinary and scientific sense is received by a spontaneous, rather than chosen by a voluntary, act; and the apprehension of the same (belief) supposes a position of congruity rather than an act of obedience. Far otherwise is it with the truth that is the object of Christian faith: and it is this truth of which Leighton is speaking. Belief indeed is a living part of this faith; but only as long as it is a living part. In other words, belief is implied in faith; but faith is not necessarily implied in belief. 'The devils believe.'

Ib. p. 166.

Hence learn that true conversion is not so slight a work as we
commonly account it. It is not the outward change of some bad customs,
which gains the name of a reformed man in the ordinary dialect; it is
new birth and being, and elsewhere called 'a new creation. Though it
be but a change in qualities', yet it is such a one, and the qualities
so far distant from what they before were, &c.

I dare not affirm that this is erroneously said; but it is one of the comparatively few passages that are of service as reminding me that it is not the Scripture that I am reading. Not the qualities merely, but the root of the qualities is trans-created. How else could it be a birth,--a creation?

Ib. p. 170.

This natural life is compared, even by natural men, to the vainest
things, and scarce find they things light enough to express it vain;
and as it is here called grass, so they compare the generations of men
to the leaves of trees. * * * 'Man that is born of a woman is of few
days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut
down. Job' xiv. 1, 2. Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.

It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless subtleties, or mere phantoms--'entia logica, vel etiam verbalia solum'. And yet in order to secure a safe and Christian interpretation to these and numerous other passages of like phrase and import in the Old Testament, it is of highest concernment that we should distinguish the personeity or spirit, as the source and principle of personality, from the person itself as the particular product at any one period, and as that which cannot be evolved or sustained but by the co-agency of the system and circumstances in which the individuals are placed. In this latter sense it is that 'man' is used in the Psalms, in Job, and elsewhere--and the term made synonymous with flesh. That which constitutes the spirit in man, both for others and itself, is the real man; and to this the elements and elementary powers contribute its bulk ([Greek: tò] 'videri et tangi') wholly, and its phenomenal form in part, both as co-efficients, and as conditions. Now as these are under a law of vanity and incessant change,--[Greek: tà màe ónta, all' aèi ginómena],--so must all be, to the production and continuance of which they are indispensable. On this hangs the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as an essential part of the doctrine of immortality;--on this the Scriptural (and only true and philosophical) sense of the soul, 'psyche' or life, as resulting from the continual assurgency of the spirit through the body;--and on this the begetting of a new life, a regenerate soul, by the descent of the divine Spirit on the spirit of man. When the spirit by sanctification is fitted for an incorruptible body, then shall it be raised into a world of incorruption, and a celestial body shall burgeon forth thereto, the germ of which had been implanted by the redeeming and creative Word in this world. Truly hath it been said of the elect:--They fall asleep in earth, but awake in heaven. So St. Paul expressly teaches: and as the passage (1. 'Cor'. xv. 35--54,) was written for the express purpose of rectifying the notions of the converts concerning the Resurrection, all other passages in the New Testament must be interpreted in harmony with it. But John, likewise,--describing the same great event, as subsequent to, and contra-distinguished from, the partial or millennary Resurrection--which (whether we are to understand the Apostle symbolically or literally) is to take place in the present world,--beholds 'a new earth' and 'a new heaven' as antecedent to, or coincident with, the appearance of the New Jerusalem,--that is, the state of glory, and the resurrection to life everlasting. The old earth and its heaven had passed away from the face of Him on the throne, at the moment that it gave up the dead. 'Rev'. xx.-xxi.

Ib. pp. 174-5.

'But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.'

And with respect to those learned men that apply the text to God, I
remember not that this 'abiding for ever' is used to express God's
eternity in himself.

No; nor is it here used for that purpose; but yet I cannot doubt but that either the Word, [Greek: Ho Lógos en archae], or the Divine promises in and through the incarnate Word, with the gracious influences proceeding from him, are here meant--and not the written [Greek: rháemata] or Scriptures.

Ib. p. 194.

If any one's head or tongue should grow apace, and all the rest stand
at a stay, it would certainly make him a monster; and they are no
other that are knowing and discovering Christians, and grow daily in
that, but not at all in holiness of heart and life, which is the
proper growth of the children of God.

Father in heaven, have mercy on me! Christ, Lamb of God, have mercy on me! Save me, Lord, or I perish! Alas! I am perishing.

Ib. p. 200.

A well-furnished table may please a man, while he hath health and
appetite; but offer it to him in the height of a fever, how unpleasant
it would be then! Though never so richly decked, it is then not only
useless, but hateful to him. But the kindness and love of God is then
as seasonable and refreshing to him, as in health, and possibly more.

To the regenerate;--but to the conscious sinner a source of terrors insupportable.

Ib. p. 211.

These things hold likewise in the other stones of this building,
chosen before time: all that should be of this building are
fore-ordained in God's purpose, all written in that book beforehand,
and then in due time they are chosen, by actual calling, according to
that purpose, hewed out and severed by God's own hand from the quarry
of corrupt nature;--dead stones in themselves, as the rest, but made
living by his bringing them to Christ, and so made truly precious',
and accounted precious by him that hath made them so.

Though this is not only true, but a most important truth, it would yet have been well to have obviated the apparent carnal consequences.

Ib. p. 216.

All sacrifice is not taken away; but it is changed from the offering
of those things formerly in use, to spiritual sacrifices. Now these
are every way preferable; they are easier and cheaper to us, and yet
more precious and acceptable to God.

Still understand,--to the regenerate. To others, they are not only not easy and cheap, but unpurchaseable and impossible too. O God have mercy upon me!

Ib. p. 229.

Though I be beset on all hands, be accused by the Law, and mine own
conscience, and by Satan, and have nothing to answer for myself; yet
here I will stay, for I am sure in him there is salvation, and no
where else.

"Here I _will_ stay." But alas! the poor sinner has forfeited the powers of willing; miserable wishing is all he can command. O, the dreadful injury of an irreligious education! To be taught our prayers, and the awful truths of religion, in the same tone in which we are taught the Latin Grammar,--and too often inspiring the same sensations of weariness and disgust!

Vol. II. p. 242.

And thus are reproaches mentioned amongst the sufferings of Christ in
the Gospel, and not as the least; the railings and mockings that were
darted at him, and fixed to the Cross, are mentioned more than the
very nails that fixed him. And ('Heb'. xii. 2,) the 'shame' of the
Cross, though he was above it, and despised it, yet that shame added
much to the burden of it.

I understand Leighton thus: that though our Lord felt it not as 'shame', nor was wounded by the revilings of the people in the way of any correspondent resentment or sting, which yet we may be without blame, yet he suffered from the same as sin, and as an addition to the guilt of his persecutors, which could not but aggravate the burden which he had taken on himself, as being sin in its most devilish form.

Ib. p. 293.

This therefore is mainly to be studied, that the seat of humility be
the heart. Although it will be seen in the carriage yet as little as
it can * * *. And this I would recommend as a safe way: ever let thy
thoughts concerning thyself be below what thou utterest; and what thou
seest needful or fitting to say to thy own abasement, be not only
content (which most are not) to be taken at thy word, and believed to
be such by them that hear thee, but be desirous of it; and let that be
the end of thy speech, to persuade them, and gain it of them, that
they really take thee for as worthless a man as thou dost express
thyself.

Alas! this is a most delicate and difficult subject: and the safest way, and the only safe general rule is the silence that accompanies the inward act of looking at the contrast in all that is of our own doing and impulse! So may praises be made their own antidote.

Vol. III. p. 20. Serm. I.

'They shall see God'. What this is we cannot tell you, nor can you
conceive it: but walk heavenwards in purity, and long to be there,
where you shall know what it means: 'for you shall know him as he is'.

We say; "Now I see the full meaning, force and beauty of a passage,--we see them through the words." Is not Christ the Word--the substantial, consubstantial Word, [Greek: ho ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós],--not as our words, arbitrary; nor even as the words of Nature phenomenal merely? If even through the words a powerful and perspicuous author--(as in the next to inspired Commentary of Archbishop Leighton,--for whom God be praised!)--I identify myself with the excellent writer, and his thoughts become my thoughts: what must not the blessing be to be thus identified first with the Filial Word, and then with the Father in and through Him?

Ib. p. 63. Serm. V.