* 
 
 PERKINS LIBRARY 
 
 Dulce Ui 
 
 Kare Dooka 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://archive.org/details/aidstoreflection06cole 
 
AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS. 
 
 EDITED BIT 
 
 HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, Esq. M. A. 
 
 TO WHICH IS PREFIXED 
 
 A PRELIMINARY ESSAY, 
 By John M'Vickar, D. D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW-YORK. 
 
 THIS MAKES, THAT WHATSOEVER HERE BEFALLS, 
 YOU IN THE REGION OF YOURSELF REMAIN 
 NEIGHB'RING ON HEAVEN ; AND THAT NO FOREIGN LAND. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 LONDON; 
 
 PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM PICKERING. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 SWORDS, STANFORD & Co. 
 
 1839. 
 
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839, 
 
 By Swords, Stanford, and Co, 
 
 in the Clerk's office of the Southern District of New- York. 
 
 Stereotyped by Henry W. Rees, 
 
 32 Ann Street. 
 
 Piercy & Reed, Printers, 9, Spruce-st., N. Y 
 
. 
 
 to?\ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Editor's Advertisement v 
 
 Preliminary Essay by John M'Vickar, D. D vii 
 
 Author's address to the Reader ...... xli 
 
 Author's Preface xliii 
 
 Introductory Aphorisms ........ 1 
 
 On Sensibility 24 
 
 Prudential Aphorisms .29 
 
 Moral and Religious Aphorisms ...... 38 
 
 Elements of Religious Philosophy .97 
 
 Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion ...... 106 
 
 Aphorisms on that which is indeed Spiritual Religion . . .112 
 
 On the difference in kind of Reason and the Understanding . 161 
 On Instinct in connection with the Understanding . . . 184 
 
 On Original Sin ......... 196 
 
 On Redemption . . . 247 
 
 On Baptism .......... 282 
 
 Conclusion . - . 301 
 
 Appendix 323 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 This corrected edition of the Aids to Reflection is 
 commended to Christian readers, in the hope and the 
 trust that the power which the book, has already exer- 
 cised over hundreds, it may, by God's furtherance, 
 hereafter exercise over thousands. No age, since 
 Christianity had a name, has more pointedly needed 
 the mental discipline taught in this work than that in 
 which we now live ; when, in the Author's own words, 
 all the great ideas or verities of religion seem in danger 
 of being condensed into idols, or evaporated into meta- 
 phors. Between the encroachments, on the one hand, 
 of those who so magnify means that they practically 
 impeach the supremacy of the ends which those means 
 were meant to subserve ; and of those, on the other 
 hand, who, engrossed in the contemplation of the great 
 Redemptive Act, rashly disregard or depreciate the 
 appointed ordinances of grace ; — between those who, 
 confounding the sensuous Understanding, varying in 
 every individual, with the universal Reason, the image 
 of God, the same in all men, inculcate a so-called 
 
VI ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 faith, having no demonstrated harmony with the attri- 
 butes of God, or the essential laws of humanity, and 
 being sometimes inconsistent with both; and those 
 again who, requiring a logical proof of that which, 
 though not contradicting, does in its very kind tran- 
 scend, our reason, virtually deny the existence of true 
 faith altogether ; — between these almost equal enemies 
 of the truth, Coleridge — in all his works, but pre- 
 eminently in this — has kindled an inextinguishable 
 beacon of warning and of guidance. In so doing, he 
 has taken his. stand on the sure word of Scripture, 
 and is supported by the authority of almost every one 
 of our great divines, before the prevalence of that 
 system of philosophy, (Locke's), which no consistent 
 reasoner can possibly reconcile with the undoubted 
 meaning of the Articles and Formularies of the English 
 Church : — 
 
 In causaque valet, causamque juvantibus armis. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn, April 25, 1839. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 BY THE REV. JOHN M'VICKAR. 
 
 In the following reprint of Coleridge's " Aids to Reflec- 
 tion" as recently put forth in London, by his nephew and 
 executor, with the author's final amendments, the Preface 
 therein adopted of the earlier American edition of 1829, 
 has been after full consideration dropped. It is due to the 
 American public as well as to the extended reputation of 
 that Preface, and of its able author, the Rev. Dr. James 
 Marsh, to state the reasons which in the judgment of the 
 present editor have rendered its republication inexpedient in 
 connexion with the following stereotype edition, addressed 
 as the work now is generally to the Church at large, but 
 more especially to the members of that communion of which 
 its eminent and lamented author was an affectionate and 
 faithful son. 
 
 The reasons are as follows : 
 
 1. That such Preface is mainly occupied in justifying 
 Coleridge and his philosophy against objections which have 
 no place except on the Calvinistic scheme of Divinity. But 
 these obviously are difficulties in the way of the reception 
 not of Coleridge's but of his commentator's opinions, objec- 
 tions therefore not with churchmen but with dissenters from 
 the Church. 
 
 2. That it inculcates what is deemed a false and danger- 
 ous principle, viz, that some system of metaphysical philoso- 
 
Vlli PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 pliy is essential to soundness in Christian doctrine. " For 
 myself," says Dr. Marsh, " I am fully convinced that we can 
 have no right views of Theology till we have right views 
 of the human mind," [Preface, p. 23.) Now this certainly 
 is not the creed of the Church nor the spirit of its formula- 
 ries, and as surely it is not the principle inculcated by his 
 author. " Religion," says Coleridge, " has no speculative 
 dogmas — Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation ; but 
 a life : — not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living 
 process," (p. 150.) 
 
 3. That it tends to a misapprehension of Coleridge's Re- 
 ligious views by identifying them with " what among us," 
 says Dr. Marsh, " are termed the Evangelical Doctrines of 
 Religion," (p. 14.) Now this term used as a party name, 
 in which sense alone it can be here understood, is one pe- 
 culiarly inappropriate as applied to Coleridge — for not only 
 does he every where magnify those doctrines which such 
 teachers are understood to make light of ; viz, the necessity 
 of union with the one visible Church, and of communion in 
 its spiritual sacraments, and the sin of schism in separating 
 from it ; not . only too does he decry what such doctrine is 
 understood to elevate, viz, that " the baptized," to use Cole- 
 ridge's own words, " are each individually to be called, con- 
 verted, and chosen, with all the corollaries from this assump- 
 tion, the watching for signs and sensible assurances, the 
 frames, and the states, and the feelings, and the sudden con- 
 versions" — doctrines, says he, which have " never been in 
 any age taught or countenanced by any known or accredited 
 Christian church, or by any body and succession of learned 
 Divines" — not only does he thus teach in double opposition 
 to them, but he further expressly discards the name, and 
 speaks with but little respect of what he terms " the conta- 
 gious fever-boils of the (most unfitly so called) Evangelicals," 
 (p. 243, note.) Now, whether right or wrong in his judgment 
 of them, our author certainly, at least, is not to be ranked un- 
 der the same distinctive appellation with them. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. IX 
 
 4. That its unqualified eulogium of Coleridge and his 
 opinions renders it an unsafe guide for young and enthusias- 
 tic minds, and may lead many of its readers, as it certainly 
 tends to lead all, into a dangerous over trust on human and 
 private authority in the interpretation of Divine truth. Fully 
 sharing with Dr. Marsh as the present editor does, in his 
 affectionate admiration of the genius and writings of Cole- 
 ridge, and in his belief of their growing and happy influ- 
 ence on the rising generation, and acknowledging in com- 
 mon with him that debt incalculable which all feel as due 
 to one whose words have been to their spirit " words of 
 power," still must he follow Coleridge, and teach others to 
 follow him as a fallible leader, with thoughtful and wary 
 steps, and not only so, but as one who hath actually left be- 
 hind him slippery as well as safe foot-prints, in the path of 
 Religious inquiry. 
 
 And lastly, it is rejected as being a Preface which takes 
 too much knowledge for granted on the part of the reader, 
 to answer the present demand of an edition fitted for popular* 
 use. At the time it was written, Coleridge was a living 
 teacher, and his speculations known and sought after only 
 by the philosophic or professional student. Now his teach- 
 ing has become the heritage of the public — his name that 
 of an established classic, and his deep disquisitions are 
 passing into the hands of thousands, to whom without some 
 preparatory instruction, they are little better than a sealed 
 book. Under such changed circumstances a new Preface, 
 and one of another character, was obviously needed. 
 
 Such are the reasons which to the present editor have 
 seemed imperiously to demand from him, with all the hu- 
 mility he felt for the task, a new, plainer, and more catholic 
 Introduction to Coleridge's " Aids to Reflection.*' 
 
 In entering upon it, he would fain avoid all idea of com- 
 petition with his predecessor, as being well aware that his 
 own chief fitness for the task, and certainly his only vantage- 
 ground in it, arises from his being of "kin" in church and 
 
X PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 doctrine with the author whose philosophy of both he pre- 
 sumes to comment upon. Than the writer of the rejected 
 Preface, he is well aware too, that few on this side the At- 
 lantic have more deeply studied, none more eloquently eulo- 
 gized this same Christian philosophy — and had Dr. Marsh 
 been but as free to deduce from it its necessary results in 
 Church and doctrine, untrammelled by the conditions of a 
 self-constituted ministry, and the fetters of an incongruous 
 metaphysical creed, as he was conclusive in his proof of the 
 premises from which such conclusions flow — had it been 
 thus — none can feel more convincingly than the present edi- 
 tor that in such case there would have been neither room 
 nor demand for his present more humble labors. 
 
 With this prolonged explanation rendered indispensable 
 by the circumstances of the case, he now proceeds to the 
 task before him. 
 
 HISTORICAL RISE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLERIDGE. 
 
 Among the great thinkers of the generation now recently 
 past away — few, if any can be named, no one certainly 
 among those using the English language as the medium of 
 thought — who has left behind him so deep and wide an in- 
 tellectual impress as Coleridge — or given to the rising gen- 
 eration a stronger spiritual impulse. Nor have we as yet 
 seen in all probability either its extent or depth. It has in 
 truth but just begun to take hold upon the public sentiment. 
 Hitherto Coleridge's teaching has formed but here and there 
 an individual mind — or at best, built up some limited, un- 
 observed fraternity of deep and quiet thinkers. It now, on 
 the contrary, begins to indoctrinate the mass of the educa- 
 ted — to enter into general reasoning — bids fair to become 
 the prevailing system taught in Protestant Christendom, and 
 in the estimate of many is to be regarded as among the fore- 
 most means now obviously preparing, under the Providence 
 of God, for bringing back an unspiritual age to an earlier, 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XI 
 
 purer, and more Christian philosophy. Whatever estimate 
 may be formed of its value, there can be no doubt of its 
 spreading influence. 
 
 The story of its past slow progress is soon told. It be- 
 gan, as is well known, within the narrow circle of Coleridge's 
 personal admirers, and with audience not always " fit tho' 
 few." With the public at large Coleridge was from his 
 earliest years a contemned or feared man — an enthusiast, 
 a disorganizer, or a mystic — in youth decried as a leveller, 
 in manhood as a homeless wanderer, in age as a religious 
 dreamer — and it may not be denied but that some passages 
 of both his public and private life as well as not a few of 
 both his earlier and later tenets gave too good ground, at 
 least on a superficial view, for such scornful estimate of the 
 man and his opinions. 
 
 Under such load of contumely, deepened by his charac- 
 teristic peculiarities of style and thought, no wonder that 
 the occasional works put forth by him whether in prose or 
 verse, with all their rare learning, sweet eloquence, and deep 
 spiritual power, qualities now universally accorded to them, 
 fell almost still-born from the press — like their author at 
 once condemned and scorned — " published" as remarked by 
 his English editor " but not publici juris." To this rule if 
 there was any exception, it relates to the present work "Aids 
 to Reflection," and he never failed, his nephew tells us, to 
 make " a special remark" if he found his visiter to have read 
 the " Friend," or any other of his less known publications. 
 Such, with some gradual enlargement of his philosophic cir- 
 cle, and a corresponding though slow advance of influence, 
 continued to be Coleridge's literary position through life. 
 Acknowledged genius and contemned opinions — his society 
 courted but his books unread, and his teaching except over 
 a chosen few, unfelt and unregarded. 
 
 His conversational powers on the other hand, or rather 
 (for it was not con-versation) his deep discursive and eloquent 
 soliloquies on all subjects brought before him by his visiters, 
 
Xll PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 whether of taste, politics, philosophy or Religion — these 
 were from the very first both felt and acknowledged to be of 
 magical influence. To these outpourings of a deeply learn- 
 ed but still more deeply self-communing spirit, and which, 
 river-like, seemed to gather strength and volume as they 
 flowed on in their solitary magnificence — his visiters were 
 wont to listen in charmed and mostly silent amazement — for 
 independently of the fascination of thought, their senses 
 too, were taken prisoner; the richest melodies of musical 
 utterance, features serene and passive, as of some sculp- 
 tured demigod, and an eye inspiring awe from its statue-like, 
 objectless gaze, all conspired to give to Coleridge when thus 
 encircled somewhat of the power, as well as the appearance 
 of an oracular Python, giving forth in solemn chant its 
 mystic, and not always safely interpreted response, to ques- 
 tions reverently propounded by almost worshippers, for his 
 solution. Under this aspect at least, Coleridge appeared to 
 some who had casual access to his society, rather as a bril- 
 liant meteor flashing forth dark light, than as a steadfast 
 luminary, by whose guidance Christians might safely walk ; 
 and there was unquestionably, much in his manner, as well 
 as somewhat in his occasional judgments, that might well 
 excuse such hasty conclusion.* 
 
 But with the removal by death of this highly gifted mind, 
 has come a more adequate sense of its value and loss, and a 
 new era has consequently commenced in the history of its 
 influence. Being dead, the Teacher now speaketh more 
 truly than during life. Prejudice has died with the breathing 
 man, and with the living voice and its enchantment, has 
 passed away all possibility of future misapprehension. Cole- 
 
 * In the columns of the Churchman, April 7th 1832, the present editor 
 has detailed an evening spent with Coleridge under such circumstances, 
 in the month of June, 1830, in company with Irving the Scotch preacher, 
 who had come to consult him touching the modern miracle, of the " gift 
 of tongues." 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. Xlll 
 
 ridge now stands forth revealed to us in his works, and in 
 his works alone. By them he is to be judged, and that ver- 
 dict is already rendered. Hardly has tke world of letters 
 and philosophy, had time thoughtfully to peruse them, before 
 with one voice it has united in ranking their author first 
 among the deep thinkers of his own age and nation, and 
 second to none in any, for his profound insight into the laws 
 of our moral and spiritual being, and his clear, eloquent, and 
 Christian exposition of the truths and duties that flow from 
 them. Therefore in critical estimation is he already num- 
 bered with the greatest and wisest, that have ever been 
 esteemed the lights and guides of the earth, and all that is 
 now needed, as Ave think, to make his fame as wide as it 
 is lofty, is what by degrees is actually effecting both in 
 England and this country, through the medium of stereotype 
 editions, and familiar explanations. 
 
 Nor will this triumph, we may confidently predict, of the 
 vital principles of Coleridge's Philosophy, be either a partial 
 or a temporary one ; for it is the triumph not of opinions over 
 opinions, but of principles, over principles. It is not there- 
 fore an impression passively received, that subsequent im- 
 pressions may efface, but it is the reception into the mind, of 
 living truths — seeds sown in it — light kindled and the spirit 
 of a better age recalled. It is something in short, which the 
 needs of the heart of man as well as the demands of his 
 reason, will not suffer, soon or ever again, we may hope, to 
 be covered up and buried, as it has long been, whether under 
 the flood of an epicurean, and basely material philosophy, or 
 the shifting sands of phenomenal metaphysics, measuring 
 spiritual things by the unspiritual faculty that judgeth accord- 
 ing to sense, or the crumbling structure of a merely pru- 
 dential, and a falsely named, rational faith, or last, but not 
 least, under the modern baseless fabric of the Gospel of 
 Christ without the Church of Christ — Christianity without 
 its exponent. "What limit will eventually be set to the 
 influence of this philosophy, or with what rapidity it will 
 
 B 
 
XIV PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 be found to advance, not, we mean in its " hay and stubble," 
 but in its gold that stands the fire — that time alone will show. 
 For the present, ft is our willing part to labor within our 
 narrow path, to remove or to level such obstructions as 
 ignorance, error, or prejudice may have heretofore raised 
 against it in our country. 
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF COLERIDGE AS ARISING FROM THE CHAR- 
 ACTER of his WRiTiNGS.-The chief Prose works of Coleridge 
 are his "Friend," "Biographia Literaria," " Lay Sermons," 
 " Church and State," and "Aids to Reflection." To these are 
 now to be added his equally valuable though less connected 
 disquisitions, which under the title of " Literary Remains," 
 are at present in the course of publication in London, consist- 
 ing of the contents of his various Note-Books, Marginal An- 
 notations &c, his usual desultory mode of writing, together 
 with his " Table-Talk," so far at least as such record of 
 his thoughts — genuine and valuable as it is, may be admitted 
 into the list. It is a work at least to which may be justly 
 applied his own eulogium of another — that " his sands were 
 seed pearl." But in all these, one and the same difficulty 
 meets the student, and that is, a frequent reference by the 
 author to what the reader continually wants but can no where 
 find, a clear, connected view of Coleridge's System of Philo- 
 sophy. His speculations are all fragmentary, fractional parts 
 as it were, of some great unity ever brooding in his teeming 
 mind, but never sufficiently developed to be connectedly 
 brought forth. The fulfilment however of such virtual promise 
 under the title of " Philosophy reconciled with the Christian 
 Religion," or as he entitles it more at large in the work be- 
 fore us, " The Assertion of Religion as necessarily invol- 
 ving Revelation, and of Christianity, as the only Revelation 
 of permanent and universal validity ;" this, is well known to 
 have occupied for many years much of his thoughts, being 
 often alluded to in his writings, as in the present, where he 
 terms it, " the principal labor of my life since manhood ;" still 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XV 
 
 more frequently and openly promised to his enquiring friends, 
 and the hope of its completion, never finally abandoned by 
 himself or despaired of by others, up to the very day of his 
 death. But unhappily for the student, we may say, for the 
 world, that hope is now past, and it will be a bold hand that 
 shall undertake to build up that " temple" as he often rever- 
 ently termed it, which such a master hand, after preparing 
 the materials and laboring for years at the foundation, either 
 faultered to attempt or failed to accomplish. 
 
 Such at any rate, is the aspect of Coleridge's recorded 
 mind, and it is the feature from which springs much doubt- 
 less, of the earlier interest, as well as permanent difficulty 
 of his writings. They awaken in the mind of the student, 
 somewhat of the feelings that belong to the delighted yet be- 
 wildered traveller in " the gorgeous East," as he muses and 
 mourns over the rich and scattered fragments of some unfi- 
 nished temple in the desert, to which war or death seems to 
 have put a hasty termination. The deep and solid founda- 
 tions he sees are laid, and here and there perhaps a solitary 
 column of granite or porphyry erected, giving promise by its 
 enduring material, and its massive and fair proportions, and 
 its richly sculptured capital, and its hieroglyphic frieze and 
 base, what in grandeur and beauty the finished structure 
 would have been, but leaving all else, whether of parts or 
 finish, to vain and puzzled conjecture. 
 
 Such is the first aspect of Coleridge to the inquiring un- 
 satisfied eye of the student, and for such disappointment in 
 the midst of his admiration, he must prepare himself. How 
 far this is a remediable defect in the writings of Coleridge, 
 or how far it is but the necessary fate of all inquirers who 
 seek to sound the depths of their own spirit, and to grasp by 
 the power of reason, the circle within which reason is itself 
 contained — this may be variously decided. That there are 
 Avithin us, secrets we cannot unravel and depths we cannot 
 sound, no mind ever felt more deeply or reverently than that 
 of Coleridge, but still it is the very aim of his philosophy to 
 
XVI PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 bring us up to the verge of such insoluble problem and per- 
 haps its occasional result however unintended, sometimes to 
 tempt the arrogant or over-musing mind beyond it. But this 
 is a different question from the attempt to reduce into order, 
 and carry out into scientific arrangement, the unconnected 
 truths so profusely scattered throughout his works. This 
 surely may be done, though as surely, it is no easy task, since 
 its accomplishment necessarily involves every question of 
 mental and spiritual philosophy, and demands in them all 
 that the solution given appear alike the product of reason, 
 and the teaching of revelation. Such task it is evident can 
 be successfully grappled with, only by one. who shall be at 
 the same time the deepest of philosophers and the most 
 spiritual and learned of Christians. 
 
 But there is another hope, which is, that such develop- 
 ment may, be the maturing growth of many minds in many 
 years — the fruit in short in an age yet to come, of the seed 
 which Coleridge and his co-thinkers sowed in their own, 
 ripening into all the fulness of spiritual truth under that 
 higher teaching whence philosopher as well as Christian 
 derives his truest light. In the meantime it must be the 
 comfort of the solitary unaided student, to believe and trust 
 that the same unity of plan, which Avas ever present to 
 the mind of the author, will be by degrees transferred to, and 
 impressed upon that of his thoughtful, docile, and loving 
 reader, and that however such reader may fail to be able 
 to put it forth in words for the benefit of others, it will' not be 
 wanting in his own inmost thoughts, for his own spiritual 
 good ; there working out within him, what his author ever 
 and chiefly aimed at, namely, that the heart and the reason, 
 the one awakened, and the other enlightened, should become 
 a united temple of praise and love, to the honor of God, and 
 the glory of the Redeemer, and meet for the gracious in- 
 dwelling of the Spirit of all truth : preparing it for such a 
 philosophy as " flashed conviction on the mind of a Galen 
 and kindled meditation into a hymn of praise." 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XVU 
 
 "AIDS to reelection," and true method of studying 
 it. — In taking up the following work, the reader who 
 would not be disappointed, must understand previously 
 what he has to expect. It is not then, a work of amuse- 
 ment, to be read lightly, nor of connected science to be 
 studied continuously, but one to be read, studied and above 
 all meditated upon in its separate truths just as they are 
 found to strike in upon the mind. Each " aphorism" is as a 
 torch by itself, having its own circle of light and is there- 
 fore to be separately dwelt upon by the student, and tested 
 by his own repeated inward experience, until he see the 
 light and feel its truth and not only so but can lay hold 
 upon it as a reality, and upon conviction is ready to give 
 it a place in his previously established trains of reason- 
 ing and to incorporate it into his actual stock of settled prin- 
 ciples in thought and action. In this way, and in this way 
 alone, will the work become to the reader what in its title it 
 promises, " aids to reflection." Nor must the student expect 
 too much on the first perusal of a single aphorism or even of 
 the whole work ; a reflecting mind, says our author, is not 
 a " flower that grows wild or comes up of its own accord."' 
 But if sincere let him go on — try one aphorism — try another 
 — open the volume at hazard — persevere, until at length he 
 find some deep spiritual truth to strike home — then indeed 
 may he pause, for then begins the reign of Coleridge over the 
 thoughtful mind. The reader then for the first time recog- 
 nizes him as his " Master," for he finds that under his teach- 
 ing, he can now speak what before he had only thought ,- 
 that he has got embodied some new truth, a new stepping- 
 stone for his foot to rest upon amid the dark waters. The 
 author who is found to exercise such power over the mind, 
 will soon come, notwithstanding all difficulties of interpreta- 
 tion, to be rightly valued by the student ; and if such teach- 
 ing bear on truths nearest the heart, giving to the mind a. 
 new and firmer hold on those already received or new andl 
 clearer light to guide it in its further search,, such a writer 
 
XV111 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 will be at once recognized, not only as a teacher, but as a 
 friend, and there will be quickly established, between the 
 reader and such mind a sense of spiritual relationship, 
 alike loving and reverential, and such as will not afterwards 
 be lightly severed. 
 
 That such is, in truth, the influence of Coleridge's mind, 
 over that of his reader, and more especially in this pre- 
 sent work, is of course a matter of individual experience, but 
 from the numbers on both sides of the Atlantic, who have 
 openly acknowledged such obligation and the greater num- 
 ber who from its rapid sale it may be judged, are silently 
 benefitting by it, the editor feels justified in asserting such 
 to be its essential character and influence, and consequently, 
 in recommending its adoption to all who prize for themselves 
 the possession of such a spiritual monitor and guide. 
 
 But after all, the work, with ordinary readers will still have 
 its obscurities and its incomprehensible passages ; as for in- 
 stance, the geometrical bi-polar theory of thought, contained 
 in note, p. 130 — the algebraic formula, p. 250 — the logical 
 synopsis, p. 258, as well as some other occasional touches 
 of transcendental metaphysics. To all this, the only answer 
 is, " pass them over" — " go on" — let not the truth you do feel, 
 be lost upon either your heart or intellect through prejudice of 
 that which you do not feel — take the lesson you do under- 
 stand, and give your author credit for a meaning even when 
 you perceive it not, and in time you may come to see a deep 
 truth where you now see nothing but mystic words. 
 
 GENERAL ARGUMENT OF " AIDS TO REFLECTION." The 
 
 general scheme of the work, though not always or easily 
 traceable in it, partly from the moral nature of the argument 
 addressing itself rather to the heart than to the logical facul- 
 ty, and partly from the unconnected " aphorisms" by which 
 it is carried on, is shortly as follows. 
 
 Addressing himself to the unspiritual but not un-intellectual 
 mind, Coleridge takes up the religious argument on the sup- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XIX 
 
 posed reader's professed principles of worldly calculation. 
 First, then, comes Religion, contemplated in the form of pru- 
 dence ; Christened but not Christianized. This is in gen- 
 eral the thoughtful mind's first step in the course of convic- 
 tion : the man stands firm in religion as a matter of policy- 
 Then, " awakened by the cock-crow, (a sermon, a calamity, 
 a sick bed or a providential escape) the Christian pilgrim 
 sets out in the morning twilight, while yet the truth is below 
 the horizon," (p. 18.) Travelling onward, he is led up to a 
 higher point in his spiritual course — to " the purifying and 
 remedial virtues" — to religion contemplated under the form 
 of morality — a holier prudence, than what he first profest, 
 then becomes his guide, even " the steward faithful and dis- 
 creet" — "the eldest servant in the family of Faith, and the 
 Ruler over all its household." Last and highest of all, 
 comes Religion, viewed as " spiritual Christianity," 
 morality ascending from uprightness "to Crod-likeness," and 
 giving to faith its repose by the doctrine of a personal 
 Saviour and communion with his life-giving spirit. This is 
 Religion contemplated in its true form, seeking its summit 
 in the imitation of the Divine nature, in the sincere love of 
 the true as truth, of the good as good, and of God as both 
 in one ; and leading the man to " all the acts, exercises, and 
 disciplines of mind, will, and affection that are requisite or 
 conducive to the great design of redemption from the form 
 of the evil one, and of his second creation, or birth in the 
 divine image." (p. 22.) 
 
 To the reflecting mind of the supposed pilgrim in these his 
 advancing stages of " Prudence" " Morality" and " Spiritual 
 Religion," are addressed the successive aphorisms with 
 their commentaries, that constitute the body of the work — 
 deduced in each instance from the predominant faculty 
 under which the man is then walking — that is, 
 
 In his first stage of Prudence, from the sense and sensuous, 
 understanding. 
 
XX PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 In the second or that of Morality, from the heart and con- 
 science, and, 
 
 In the third or spiritual state, from the reason and the will. 
 
 Such is the argument of the work, though much of its com- 
 pleteness must doubtless come from the reader's own power 
 of thought in supplying what is left deficient and connecting 
 what stands disunited. To do this, however, will be found 
 among the most valuable exercises of Reflection, which the 
 work itself can call forth, and is therefore, as such, seriously 
 recommended to the student. But before passing to another 
 head, it is proper here to note, for the caution of its less 
 learned, or more easily guided readers, that in some minor 
 points, in this work, unconnected with the leading argument, 
 Coleridge's judgment is not to be commended. " Among 
 these spots on the sun" to apply the author's own figure, 
 which as obstructing neither its light nor heat, might have 
 been passed over "without notice, but for the natural tendency 
 of the human mind to make a God of the luminary that gives 
 it light, may be indicated the following — our author's alle- 
 gorized view of the historical circumstances of the fall of 
 man, (p. 144.) His defective argument and unjustifiable ad- 
 missions on the subject of Infant Baptism, as given in his 
 conference with a Baptist, (p. 283,) and most striking of all 
 his false and dangerous estimate, of perhaps the moral worth, 
 certainly the spiritual teaching of one whom he addresses 
 as "Friend, pure of heart and fervent," even the Scotch 
 preacher, Edward Irving — " a mighty wrestler" says he " in 
 the cause of spiritual Religion and Gospel morality, in whom 
 more than in any other contemporary I seem to see the 
 spirit of Luther revived," (p. 298, Note.) Nor was this as 
 already noted the limit of Coleridge's delusion touching a 
 friend for whom his fond affection seems to have strangely 
 blinded his judgment. Such lapses of wisdom on the part 
 of those whom God seems to have set forth as peculiarly 
 lights and guides upon earth, it is painful to have witnessed 
 and still more painful to be called upon to record — but, the 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXI 
 
 less willingly, the more scrupulously should it be done, and 
 it is even perhaps so permitted, lest Christians should per- 
 chance be tempted in their reverential love to transfer unto 
 fallible man that submission of mind due only to God, his 
 Church, and his word. 
 
 GENERAL NATURE AND ORIGINALITY OP COLERtDGE's PHI- 
 LOSOPHY. — The Philosophy of Coleridge, if at least by such 
 name his teaching is to be called, has been too much looked 
 at both in England and this country in the light of novelty. 
 It has been both cried up and cried down on this argument, 
 and the most popular of the objections against it and conclu- 
 sive ones had it been true, have been drawn from this its 
 supposed character. But such is neither its merit nor its 
 demerit. It is an old and not a novel school of Philosophy. 
 It was that of Plato, and many other ancient Sages so far 
 forth at least as the speculations of teachers, unenlightened 
 by Revelation, can be said to symbolize with those of a 
 Christian. "Nor were our great divines" says Coleridge, 
 " ashamed of this learned discipline, to which they had sub- 
 mitted their minds under Aristotle and Tully, but brought 
 the purified products as sacrificial gifts to Christ. They 
 baptized the logic and manly rhetoric of ancient Greece." 
 {Notes on Donne.) 
 
 Among Christian teachers too, in every age of Christen- 
 dom, it has been, that of the deepest and the worthiest — the 
 great fathers of the Church — the soundest Doctors in the 
 schools of Rome — the early Reformers both in England and 
 on the continent, and above all, the greatest Divines in the 
 Church of England in the days of her glory — in the golden 
 age of her Hookers and Barrows and Cudworths and Taylors, 
 these all agree in it ; nor is even this its highest authority. 
 It is the philosophy, so far as such name is applicable to 
 revealed teaching of scripture itself. St. Paul and St. John, 
 with reverence be it said, are the pillars of this school — 
 the spiritual truths they teach, when translated into man's 
 
XX11 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 language constitute that Christian philosophy now to some 
 so strange, but which in earlier ages of the Church, was not 
 only the current faith, but of the very heart and soul of 
 Christendom. 
 
 With the abuse of the Protestant principle, the right of 
 private judgment in the interpretation of scripture, and more 
 especially with its greatest exemplification, the defection 
 of the Puritans in England from the unity of the Church in 
 the 17th century, when the name of Calvin was brought in to 
 sanction novelties which Calvin himself had not taught, came 
 the first and fatal step in that disunion of reason from reve- 
 lation and of philosophy from Christian doctrine, which the 
 principles of Coleridge now go to reconcile. The fundamental 
 error then fallen into by sectarian teachers, was the substi- 
 tution of the "understanding" for the "reason ;" or in other 
 words of "each man's notions" for "all men's wisdom." 
 Hence came necessarily contempt for Christian antiquity — 
 contempt for the voice of the Church and her institutions, 
 contempt in short for all Christian authority, except that 
 written word which with singular inconsistency, such rea= 
 soners received as the word of God solely upon the teaching 
 of that Church which they abandoned and its authority 
 which they rejected. Hence followed of course, in that spirit 
 of reckless independence which taught schism to be no sin, 
 what the elder philosophy could not have received, Christianity 
 without its teacher — the truth without its " pillar and ground," 
 a church without unity — a ministry without origin — sacra- 
 ments without binding power — and to close all, metaphysics 
 or the speculations of the " understanding" elevated into that 
 high place in the interpretation of Christian doctrine from 
 which Christian philosophy, the reason of the Church, ( "quod 
 semper, quodubique, quod ab omnibus, ,")had just been dethroned. 
 Under this newly discovered guide, came forth a new creed, 
 and one not merely without harmony, but, in irreconcilable 
 contrariety to the first teachings of reason and to the funda- 
 mental laws of conscience — Christianity and Redemption 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXU1 
 
 were no longer to be held as they had been, convertible 
 terms, but the doctrines of a partial redemption and uncon- 
 ditional salvation and a will without freedom and grace irre- 
 sistible, the metaphysical conclusions in short of the puzzled 
 understanding, were made to proclaim a never-ending war 
 between reason and revelation, a war which the philoso- 
 phy of Coleridge, and of such reasoners as he — the better 
 wisdom of an elder age, can alone reduce into permanent 
 and harmonious peace. 
 
 From this deep fountain of error, came many streams — 
 First, was fed from it the dark pool of fatalism ; the whole host 
 of necessitarian arguers, whether infidel or sectarian having 
 ever since drawn their sharpest arrows from this quiver — 
 proceeding to demonstrate by the "understanding," in the 
 face of reason and of conscience, the impossibility of that 
 freedom which in the very moment of demonstration, the man 
 was himself exerting. With such reasoners came too, the 
 perversion of "original sin" into "hereditary guilt," thus 
 "throwing the darkness of storms," says Coleridge, "on an 
 awful fact in human nature, which in itself had only the 
 darkness of negations." (Notes on Jeremy Taylor.) 
 
 Hence too, in a shallower stream, flowed the metaphysics 
 of Locke — shallow through the substitution of the " under- 
 standing," for the " reason," being but a vain attempt to 
 build up the temple of spiritual truth, apart from the light of 
 reason, on the sandy foundations of experience. As its 
 tendency was to unspiritualize the mind, so has its result 
 been perhaps to give birth to, certainly to nourish the infidel 
 age that followed, and to elothe materialism with the out- 
 ward trappings of philosophy. 
 
 Hence too at a later day, came that second flood of Epi- 
 curean teaching, which under the authority of Paley, has de- 
 graded the very name of Ethical science — a system of morals 
 forsooth, built up without even a mention of reason or con- 
 science. In parallel stream and from the same source has 
 flowed also the Socinian error — revelation without myste- 
 
XXIV PERLIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 lies — an error that could find no foothold in Christendom, 
 till, a false philosophy had confounded the " reason" with the 
 "sensuous understanding." The spiritual reason in man 
 stumbles not at revealed mysteries, for it feels itself to be a 
 mystery — but his understanding knows none such, it must be 
 able always to cora-ceive, that which it re-ceives — therefore 
 it is, that a system of divinity, which looks to the understand- 
 ing, rather than the reason will ever be found willing to reject 
 as fable or to degrade into metaphor, those spiritual truths 
 which it can neither digest nor translate. 
 
 Over this darkening flood of error has come lastly in our 
 own day, the benumbing influences of a mechanical age — 
 forgetting and learning from a base philosophy to deny, amid 
 its mighty conquests over material nature, those immaterial 
 powers, super-natural — above and beyond nature — by which 
 alone the hand of art has achieved its conquests. 
 
 Under such accumulation of rubbish, philosophical and 
 doctrinal, truths ancient and long held and essential to a 
 Faith at once spiritual and rational, became trodden down 
 in the minds of men and hidden, but not lost. They were 
 still within the heart of man, in his conscience and in his 
 reason, in his prayers, and in his inextinguishable wants. 
 Such living truths were not always to be denied a voice, and 
 in our own day we find, as if by common impulse, that in 
 every nation of Protestant Christendom, they have spoken, 
 and with a reaction as irrepressible as it has been simulta- 
 neous, they have come forth " conquering," and we believe 
 "to conquer." This better philosophy has already found an 
 abode in Germany and a resting-place in France, but above 
 all in England it is now rapidly building up its citadel and its 
 home, in the threefold union, — the cord that cannot easily be 
 broken — of learning, orthodoxy, and a spiritual creed. Into 
 the heart of Americans too, it has entered widely if not 
 deeply. It has already penetrated the school and the pulpit 
 — it has begun by Christianizing education, it is going on to 
 spiritualize philosophy, and it will find doubtless in time, its 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXV 
 
 completion, in a demonstrated union of reason and revela- 
 tion, in connection with the teaching of the Apostolic Church 
 of Christ. 
 
 Under the view thus given, the claims of Coleridge as the 
 originator of this philosophy, whether urged by friends 
 or charged by enemies, must, it is obvious, be greatly mode- 
 rated. In such regenerating movement of the race, no indi- 
 vidual mind governs, nor, however zealous, can any man be 
 esteemed more than a co-worker. Among such foremost 
 ones, however, Coleridge stands in England, at least, pre- 
 eminent. In his case, the kindling spark, whencesoever it 
 came, fell on an ardent and mighty mind, one alike fitted for 
 the task, and willing for the encounter to which it called him, 
 and that girded himself to it early and heartfully, and for 
 twenty years, as he himself tells us, bore him on though 
 without fruit, yet in hope, "casting his bread upon the 
 waters." 
 
 But still this pre-eminence excludes not his fellow la- 
 borers, among whom another layman, the late Alexander 
 Knox, though within a narrower circle, deserves to be re- 
 corded, as well as not a few divines of the Church of Eng- 
 land, recent or living, more especially from the university 
 of Oxford, whence this earlier and sounder philosphy had 
 never been wholly cast out. 
 
 LEADING PRINCIPLES IN COLERIDGE S PHILOSOPHY. Dis- 
 tinction between the reason and the understanding. — The fun- 
 damental postulate of all Coleridge's reasonings, is that the 
 Reason in man, variously defined by him, as the "light of the 
 mind," the "organ of wisdom," "the source of universal and 
 necessary principles," is a power that sees by its own light 
 and is therefore, essentially distinct from the " understand- 
 ing," or "the faculty that judges according to sense." "In 
 no former part of the volume" says Coleridge, when he 
 comes to read of this point, "has the author felt the same 
 anxiety to obtain a patient attention ; for he does not 
 
 C 
 
XXVI PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 hesitate to avow, that on his success in establishing the 
 validity of the distinction between the Reason and the 
 Understanding he rests his hopes of carrying the reader 
 along with him through all that is to follow," (p. 163.) "Till 
 this distinction be seen," is elsewhere his language " nothing 
 can be seen aright." "Till this great truth be mastered, and 
 with the sight, that is insight, other truths may casually take 
 possesion of the mind, but the mind cannot possess them." 
 (Notes on Donne.) 
 
 In this sense of its importance his editor as may be judg- 
 ed from what he has already said, fully concurs. That 
 such distinction will eventually be granted by every reflecting 
 reader, there can be little doubt. His first, and indeed, only 
 difficulty, he will find to lie, not in the distinction of the 
 things themselves, "the light" from the faculty that holds the 
 light, for that we all familiarly make on a thousand Occasions, 
 but, simply in the appropriation of terms which by long use and 
 common custom, have become confounded, at least with or- 
 dinary thinkers. But this obviously is a minor difficulty, and 
 bears not at all on the real question. On that point, reflect- 
 ing, religious men cannot long or far differ now and never 
 have, for it is the question whether the living sonl of man, 
 be dependant or not for its light of truth on the dying body, 
 since if not, it follows of course that the mind must have 
 its own primitive stock of a knowledge not of this world, and 
 which gives to it, its fundamental laws of being — its informing 
 processes of thought, — the moulds into which it casts the im- 
 pressions of the outward senses, a»d the weights by which it 
 tries them. This is the "light of reason" "the image in 
 which man was created" — " that through the being of which 
 he became a living soul." — " this is that house not made 
 with hands" of which Coleridge ever so eloquently speaks, 
 in which the reflecting mind even here on earth can dwell 
 and find it, "not vacant but gloriously furnished." 
 
 But in addition to, and in power of this, its primitive pos- 
 session of ideas of obligation and duty, and truth, and order, 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXV11 
 
 and goodness, the mind gains through experience a new 
 stock, relating to things of time and space, and this is "un 
 demanding" — man is reason — he possesses understanding. 
 
 Reason therefore, is fixed — Understanding is discursive — 
 Reason appeals but to itself, Understanding finds its authority 
 elsewhere — Reason is imperative — its word is law — Under- 
 standing is relative — its language is expediency — the ac- 
 commodation of means to ends. Reason is the seat of ideas, 
 Understanding of conceptions — Reason gives birth to experi- 
 ence, and experience in turn, trains up the Understanding — 
 Reason makes man " wise," a moral, a religious being and 
 fitted under grace for the spiritual things of eternity — Un- 
 derstanding on the other hand, makes man " knowing" — the 
 conqueror of this world, not of the next, and fitted but for the 
 occupations and enjoyments of time and space. Love, duty 
 goodness, faith, the spiritual and the willing mind, all belong 
 to the Reason of our nature — art and its triumphs, the world 
 and its glory, time and its employments, belong to the equally 
 needful, but still unquestionably lower and distinct faculty, 
 the " understanding" of our nature. 
 
 Now in these views Coleridge undoubtedly runs counter 
 to Locke and his school, but as he agrees with older and far 
 higher authorities — he is not to be charged herein as is often 
 done, with either heresy or novelty. "It is what" says he, 
 "no man can learn from another, but which (were it possible,) 
 I might have learned from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon ; from 
 Luther, Hooker, Pascal, Leibnitz and Fenelon," (p. 175. note.) 
 
 To this it may be further added, that it is a distinction 
 which has been forgotten by dissenters rather than by 
 churchmen, and that however novel it may now sound to such 
 religious reasoners as have consecrated to themselves the 
 shallow metaphysics of modern times* yet has it never been 
 
 * It is the confession of Dr. Marsh, in his Preface, that Brown's 
 philosophy had received the sanction of their " highest ecclesiastical 
 authorities." 
 
XXV111 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 a strange language unto those familiar wi«h the elder di- 
 vines of the Church of England, and who hold not to the 
 speculations of individual minds in opposition to the com- 
 mon teaching of the Church Catholic. 
 
 Distinction between Nature and Will. — Between these, 
 Coleridge teaches not so truly distinction as contrariety — 
 "Nature" is that which is necessitated, bound by the law of 
 antecedent and consequent, a linked chain of causes and 
 effects, " will" on the other hand, as the exponent of spirit is 
 that which alone, in creation, is not bound, but free — self- 
 moved — not a matter of mechanism, and consequently not a 
 "nature." An enslaved will is, therefore, a will which by 
 its own act, has admitted to a certain extent, a nature within 
 it. Such is the natural man, but though a creaturely will 
 cannot be free, yet the will in a rational creature, may cease 
 to be creaturely, and through grace go forth into the glorious 
 liberty of the Gospel. Now the terms in which this exposi- 
 tion of the necessary freedom of the will, as "will" is made 
 by our author, may sound somewhat novel, but the substance 
 of it is common to all Christian philosophy and doctrine, with 
 the solitary exception of the maintainers of religious fatalism, 
 and the other forms of what is falsely termed " high Calvin- 
 ism." Against such, and such only, does Coleridge stand in 
 irreconcilable hostility. " The doctrine of modern Calvin- 
 ism," says he " as laid down by Jonathan Edwards and the 
 late Dr. Williams, which represents a will absolutely passive, 
 clay in the hands of a potter, destroys all will, takes away 
 its essence and definition .... with such a system, not the 
 wit of man, nor all the theodicies ever framed by human in- 
 genuity, before and since the celebrated attempt of Leibnitz, 
 can reconcile the sense of responsibility nor the fact of 
 the difference in kind between regret and remorse," (p. 115.) 
 
 It is for the solution of this insoluble problem, that Dr. Marsh 
 in his preface so vainly labours. His reason justifies what 
 his creed rejects, and to reconcile Coleridge with Calvinism, 
 is that fruitless task which places him ever in a false posi- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXIX 
 
 tion with regard to his own faith, and in a needless one in 
 the light of all others. 
 
 Distinction between objective and subjective truths. — These 
 are terms borrowed from the schools, being old and conve- 
 nient terms for a sound and necessary distinction. " Objec- 
 tive" relates to things as they are in. themselves ; " Subjec- 
 tive" as they appear to be through the medium of our senses, 
 or the laws of the perceiving mind, — Thus the colours of 
 nature, to take one of the many forms of merely phenomenal 
 existence, have but a subjective not objective reality, and 
 may be said to exist but in reference to the eye that sees 
 them. Truth on the contrary, as all that belongs to spirit, 
 has a reality objective not merely subjective. Its existence 
 does not depend on our perceptions, nor is it at all modified 
 by thern. But to apply this — Home Tooke in analyzing 
 truth into what one " troweth" or thinketh, gave it but a 
 subjective existence, changing with every man's opinion. 
 The teaching of Locke too, though less unsound, tended 
 obviously to the same fatal result — all truths with him, being 
 "conclusions" of the logical understanding, not objects to the 
 spiritual reason. Even the ideas of God, eternity, duty, &c, 
 are not positive but negative thoughts, arrived at by the 
 process of successive exclusions. The Socinian creed 
 too, is another form of the same error, denying existence to 
 whatever cannot be contemplated under the intelligible forms 
 of our own subjective understandings. 
 
 Now what infidels had thus rejected, and false philosophy 
 anatomized into negatives, and the worldly mind is ever 
 ready to evaporate into metaphor, for these despised truths 
 of our moral and spiritual nature, Coleridge has butreclaimed 
 their earlier and higher rank in philosophy as being actual 
 objects to the eye of the spiritual reason, "living truths" 
 "eternal verities," " spiritual things" that are spiritually dis- 
 cerned and the only realities which abide unchanged in this 
 phenomenal existence. This it is that renders the teaching 
 of Coleridge a truly religious philosophy, not in a mystical 
 
XXX PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 but in a Christian sense, for it looks at and addresses man 
 as the scriptures do, directly in his spiritual as well as in his 
 intellectual nature, and brings before him the laws and truths 
 and wants of his spiritual being, as familiarly and as objec- 
 tively as it does those, which relate and are present to 
 his senses. Hence follows the important discrimination, and 
 one marked out with peculiar felicity by Coleridge, between 
 the figurative and the symbolic language of scripture — its 
 figures as being addressed to the "understanding" and in- 
 tended for illustration of the nature, its symbols as addressed 
 to the reason, or spiritual part of man, and intended for 
 conviction of the truth, of that spoken of. " I do not regard" 
 says he, "the words born again and spiritual life as figures 
 or metaphors," these are the truths he adds, which the natural 
 man, (that is the sensuous understanding,) cannot receive 
 because they are spiritually discerned." The influence of this 
 ever present distinction over the mind of the habitual student 
 of Coleridge is one more easily felt than explained — he finds 
 it eventually, to give, as it were substance to what before were 
 shadowy thoughts and to secure for them a corresponding 
 hold on his spirit, whether looked at in meditation or ap- 
 pealed to in action. 
 
 DOCTRINAL VIEWS OF COLERIDGE AS EXHIBITED IN " AIDS 
 
 to reflection." — That Coleridge in heart as well as profes- 
 sion, after some early wanderings, settled down a faithful 
 member of the church of England, cannot now be for a 
 moment doubted, however it may have once been, by any one 
 familiar with his writings. Her articles and homilies we find 
 to have been the subject of his most frequent and deepest 
 meditations — her spiritual influence over the land, his affec- 
 tionate boast and earnest prayer, and her coming dubious 
 fortunes the source of his most painful anxieties. " No man 
 can justly blame me" is elsewhere his touching language, 
 though borrowed from another at the close of one of his own 
 eloquent eulogiums, " for honouring my spiritual mother, the 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXXI 
 
 church of England ; in whose womb I was conceived, at 
 whose breast I was nourished, and in whose bosom I hope 
 to die," (Remains.) 
 
 The doctrines contained in this work, are therefore those 
 not of " evangelical dissenters," but of the Ohurch of Eng- 
 land as exhibited in her articles, liturgy and sacraments, 
 though still under that wise, because necessary, freedom of 
 interpretation which she scripturally permits to all her indi- 
 vidual members. But though it is, indeed, part of her glory 
 that she ties up the reason and conscience by no metaphys- 
 ical subtleties, yet is it also her higher boast that in every 
 age, the majority of her sons and the ablest of her teachers, 
 have concurred in one common system of church doctrine : 
 now with them Coleridge substantially and in general, most 
 closely agrees. But as this is a point on which suspicion 
 has been cast by his previous American editor, in applying 
 to him a term popularly used to contra-distinguish those who 
 make light of the necessity of a visible church and its bind- 
 ing sacraments and of the sin of schism in departing from it, 
 it is due to our author to exhibit in his own words this at- 
 tachment and conformity to the Church of England, in her 
 spiritual, sacramental and catholic character. 
 
 Of the Church of Christ, he teaches its visible nature, 
 unity and necessity — " a church visible," says he, is the 
 "exponent" of Christianity. "My fixed principle is, that 
 Christianity without a visible church exercising spiritual 
 authority is vanity and dissolution," (p. 230, note.) 
 
 Of this one catholic apostolic Church he holds that of 
 England to be the purest branch. " Enough for me" is his 
 language, " if in my heart of hearts, free from all fear of man 
 or lust of preferment, I believe (as I do,) the Church of Eng- 
 land to be the most Apostolic Church .... and that the 
 imperfections in its liturgy are but spots in the sun, which 
 impede neither its light nor its heat," (p. 300, note.) 
 
 Touching its great principle, regard for early authority, his 
 Janguage is, " the Church of England has preserved the 
 
XXXIV PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 end of the Christian life, yet viewed safely because not arro- 
 gantly but through the means appointed. In the teacher 
 therefore he maintains the necessity of that union of learn- 
 ing with orthodoxy, which leaves no room for discretionary 
 independence, and in the private Christian, that deference 
 to the authority of the Church, which bridles the license of 
 self-will, and in all, that union with it and reliance upon it 
 through its covenanted sacraments which are the only sure 
 means of grace and spiritual advancement. 
 
 If it be further asked, what aspect the teaching of Coleridge 
 "bears towards the theology which under the title of the " Ox- 
 ford tracts," has recently awakened so much misplaced alarm 
 among well-meaning churchmen both in England and Ame- 
 rica, the answer is, that it is that of friendly travellers, on 
 roads different indeed, but not diverse, setting out in their 
 journey from distant points, but guided by the same compass 
 and tending to the same haven. These Tracts, to which 
 too much honour we think has been done in regarding them 
 as the " moving power," instead of among the " leading indi- 
 cations" of that change that has already come over the spirit 
 of English churchmen and which slumbers awhile in the 
 heart before it comes forth in words, are as their name 
 imports, " Tracts for the times," even as the writings of Cole- 
 ridge might be appropriately termed. Both are warring 
 against the same modern errors, both fighting for the same 
 deep, despised, ancient truths, and both exposing and refu- 
 ting the same logical fallacies — the one in the Church, the 
 other in philosophy, and thus both labouring in a common 
 cause, to bring back an unreflecting, arrogant, all things- 
 understanding age to the docile, reflecting, mystery-admitting 
 spirit of earlier and better times. It were an interesting task 
 to draw out as might be done in parallel columns, these strik- 
 ing accordances, in language as well as sentiment, between 
 writers, who seem at first sight to have so little in common 
 as Coleridge and the Oxford divines, and it would afford a 
 new and certainly no feeble argument in favour of those com- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXXY 
 
 mon principles, in which the thoughtful mind is found to take 
 refuge as in an impregnable fortress, when driven by error 
 or infidelity to seek the grounds of its faith, either in philo- 
 sophy or religion. But it would swell our Preface too far ta 
 carry out this speculation, suffice it to say, both are evidently 
 the product of the same wide spread reaction, — both go to 
 change the current of the age, in the same direction, and 
 however the one may occasionally lead the solitary musing 
 mind unto the very borders of mysticism, or the other delude 
 some reverential spirit into an over estimate of exploded 
 forms or monkish asceticism, still may we believe in them 
 both as mighty elements of good, and chosen instruments of 
 power, working out under the over-ruling providence of God 
 deeper and more abiding changes upon earth than either 
 friends or enemies seem to look at. 
 
 SUMMARY OF THE BENEFICIAL TENDENCIES OF "AIDS TO 
 REFLECTION" ON THE MIND OF THE STUDENT. 
 
 In Habits of Thought. — It tends to awaken in the student 
 the power of, and taste for self-conscious reflection — and 
 this it does not by verbal directions which are a vain thing to 
 arouse thought, but by the author going before his reader in 
 the path of self-knowledge, showing him the way, giving 
 him the result, and thus enabling him to retrace for himself, 
 the steps by which it has been reached. Thus does the 
 student by degrees become familiar with his own mind and 
 with all the objects and processes of thinking. 
 
 In habits of Language. — It tends to give him an equivalent 
 precision. From Coleridge's command over his reader's 
 mind, the student first comes to know the power of words, and 
 with his author to esteem them not dead, but " living" things, 
 even the embodied and articulated spirit of our race. Thence 
 he proceeds from Coleridge's example, to learn the secret of 
 that power, viz, to use them as " seeds of thought," and al- 
 ways therefore, to have in his own mind "realities" corres- 
 ponding to the terms he uses. 
 
XXXV111 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 Christian confidence, full of hope, full of trust, flowing, not 
 from ourselves, but from Him who hath loved us, and given 
 us the earnest of his spirit. " We are not always to be look- 
 ing to or brooding over ourselves either for accusation or for 
 confidence, but in the place of " this servile thrall-like fear," 
 says Coleridge, borrowing the words of Milton, "we are to 
 substitute that adoptive and cheerful boldness which our new 
 alliance with God requires of us as Christians." 
 
 In the Christian's religious estimate of others. — It tends to 
 unite in his mind, charity with orthodoxy. "Resist every 
 false doctrine," is its principle, "and call no man heretic." 
 " The false doctrine," says Coleridge, " does not make the man 
 a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical." 
 " Scripture is given to teach us our duty, not to enable us to 
 sit in judgment on the souls of our fellow creatures." 
 
 And lastly, What man owes to the light of the Gospel. — 
 Coleridge shall say in his own powerful words, " Not there- 
 fore, that there is a life to come, and a futuie state ; but 
 what each individual soul may hope for itself therein ; and 
 on what grounds : and that this state has been rendered an 
 object of aspiration and fervent desire, and a source of 
 thanksgiving and exceeding great joy ; and by whom, and 
 through whom, and for whom, and by what means, and 
 under what conditions — these are the peculiar and distin- 
 guishing fundamentals of the Christian Faith ; These are 
 the revealed lights and obtained privileges of the Christian 
 Dispensation. Not alone the knowledge of the boon, but 
 the precious inestimable boon itself, is the grace and truth 
 that came by Jesus Christ. I believe Moses, I believe Paul ; 
 but I believe in Christ." 
 
 Such in fine is the character of the work now affection- 
 ately recommended by its present editor to the Christian 
 confidence of all who seek to build up their faith "in the 
 clear light of their own self-consciousness." It is sent forth 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXXIX 
 
 for the benefit of such trustfully, as by one who has himself 
 tried it ; it is sent forth in humility as by one who feels that 
 his task of commentator has been above him, and yet is it 
 sent forth without fear, as being with a Christian's prayer 
 and in a Christian's confidence, that what has been rightly 
 intended, will be made available under the light of a better 
 wisdom and the guidance of a Higher Teacher to the spir- 
 itual good of those who seek that good in the only temper in 
 which it is ever to be found, the temper of faith, of love, and 
 of humility. 
 
 Columbia College, 
 
 New-York, Nov. 1, 1839. 
 
THE AUTHOR'S ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 Fellow-Christian ! the wish to be admired as a 
 
 fine writer held a very subordinate place in my thoughts 
 
 and feelings in the composition of this Volume. Let 
 
 then its comparative merits and demerits, in respect of 
 
 style and stimulancy, possess a proportional weight, 
 
 and no more, in determining your judgment for or 
 
 against its contents. Read it through : then compare 
 
 the state of your mind, with the state in which your 
 
 mind was, when you first opened the book. Has it 
 
 led you to reflect ? Has it supplied or suggested fresh 
 
 subjects for reflection ? Has it given you any new 
 
 information ? Has it removed any obstacle to a lively 
 
 conviction of your responsibility as a moral agent ? 
 
 Has it solved any difficulties, which had impeded your 
 
 faith as a Christian ? Lastly, has it increased your 
 
 power of thinking connectedly — especially on the 
 
 scheme and purpose of the Redemption by Christ ? If 
 
 it have done none of these things, condemn it aloud as 
 
 worthless : and strive to compensate for your own loss 
 
 of time, by preventing others from wasting theirs. 
 
 But if your conscience dictates an affirmative answer 
 
 to all or any of the preceding questions, declare this 
 
 too, aloud, and endeavour to extend my utility. 
 
 D2 
 
Ovtus navra irpds lavr^v indyov(ra } koI ovvtiBpoio^ivtj ipv^y, aim els airhv, 
 ftaioTa Kal fia\a fieff/iiuis /ifucapiferai. 
 
 MAKINU6. 
 
 Omnis divines, atque hum ana eruditionis elementa Iria, Nosse, Velte, 
 Posse ; quorum principium unum Mens ; cujus oculus Ratio ; cui lumen 
 * * prabet Deus. 
 
 VICO. 
 
 Naluram hominis hanc Deus ipse voluit, ut duarum rerum cupidus ef 
 appetens esset, religionis et sapientice. Sed homines ideo fattuntur, quod 
 aul religionem suscipiunt omissa sapientia ; aut sapientice soli student 
 omissa religione ; cum alteram sine allero esse non possit verum. 
 
 LA.CTANTIIT8. 
 
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 An Author has three points to settle : to what sort 
 his wOrk belongs, for what description of readers it is 
 intended, and the specific end or object, which it is to 
 answer. There is indeed a preliminary question re- 
 specting the end which the writer himself has in view, 
 whether the number of purchasers, or the benefit of the 
 readers. But this may be safely passed by; since 
 where the book itself or the known principles of the 
 writer do not supersede the. question, theie will seldom 
 be sufficient strength of character for good or for evil to 
 afford much chance of its being either distinctly put or 
 fairly answered. 
 
 I shall proceed therefore to state-as briefly as possible 
 the intentions of the present volume in reference to the 
 three first-mentioned points, namely, What? For whom? 
 For what ? 
 
 I. What ? The answer is contained in the title-page. 
 It belongs to the class of didactic works. Consequently, 
 those who neither wish instruction for themselves, nor 
 assistance in instructing others, have no interest in its 
 contents. 
 
 Sis sus, sis Divus : sum caltha, et non tibi spiro ! 
 
Xliv PREFACE. 
 
 II. For whom? Generally, for as many in all classes 
 as wish for aid in disciplining their minds to habits of 
 reflection ; for all, who desirous of building up a manly 
 character in the light of distinct consciousness, are con- 
 tent to study the principles of moral architecture on the 
 several grounds of prudence, morality, and religion. 
 And lastly, for all who feel an interest in the position 
 which I have undertaken to defend, this, namely, that 
 the Christian Faith is the perfection of human intelli- 
 gence, — an interest sufficiently strong to insure a patient 
 attention to the arguments brought in its support. 
 
 But if I am to mention any particular class or descrip- 
 tion of readers, who were prominent in my thought 
 during the composition of the volume, my reply must 
 be ; that it was especially designed for the studious 
 young at the close of their education or on their first 
 entrance into the duties of manhood and the rights of 
 self-government. And of these, again, in thought and 
 wish I destined the work (the latter and larger portion, 
 at least) yet more particularly to students intended for 
 the ministry ; first, as in duty bound, to the members 
 of our Universities : secondly, (but only in respect of 
 this mental precedency second) to all alike of whatever 
 name, who have dedicated their future lives to the cul- 
 tivation of their race, as pastors, preachers, missionaries, 
 or instructors of youth. 
 
 III. For what ? The worth of an author is estimated 
 by the ends, the attainment of which he proposed to 
 himself by the particular work ; while the value of the 
 work depends on its fitness, as the means. The objects 
 of the present volume are the following, arranged in the 
 order of their comparative importance. 
 
 1 . To direct the reader's attention to the value of the 
 science of words, their use and abuse, and the incalcula- 
 
PREFACE. Xlv 
 
 ble advantages attached to the habit of using them ap- 
 propriately, and with a distinct knowledge of their 
 primary, derivative, and metaphorical senses. And in 
 furtherance of this object I have neglected no occasion 
 of enforcing the maxim, that to expose a sophism and to 
 detect the equivocal or double meaning of a word is, in 
 the great majority of cases, one and the same thing. 
 Home Tooke entitled his celebrated workjETreu Trrepoevrct, 
 winged words : or language, not only the vehicle of 
 thought but the wheels. With my convictions and 
 views, for *■*** I should substitute z.oyot, that is, words 
 select and determinate, and for TrrepoevTct {tdovres, that is, 
 living words. The wheels of the intellect I admit them 
 to be : but such as Ezekiel beheld in the visions of God 
 as he sate among the captives by the river of Chebar. 
 Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, the wheels luent, 
 and thither ivas their Spirit to go : for the Spirit of 
 the living creature was in the wheels also. 
 
 2. To establish the distinct characters of prudence, 
 morality, and religion : and to impress the conviction, 
 that though the second requires the first, and the third 
 contains and supposes both the former ; yet still moral 
 goodness is other and more than prudence or the prin- 
 ciple of expediency ; and religion more and higher than 
 morality. For this distinction the better Schools even 
 of Pagan Philosophy contended. 
 
 3. To substantiate and set forth at large the momen- 
 tous distinction between reason and understanding. 
 Whatever is achievable by the understanding for the 
 purposes of worldly interest, private or public, has in the 
 present age been pursued with an activity and a success 
 beyond all former experience, and to an extent which 
 equally demands my admiration and excites my wonder. 
 But likewise it is, and long has been, my conviction, 
 
Xlvi PREFACE. 
 
 that in no age since the first dawning of science and 
 philosophy in this island have the truths, interests, and 
 studies which especially belong to the reason, contem- 
 plative or practical, sunk into such utter neglect, not to 
 say contempt, as during the last century. It is there- 
 fore one main object of this volume to establish the 
 position, that whoever transfers to the understanding the 
 primacy due to the reason, loses the one and spoils the 
 otfier. 
 
 4. To exhibit a full and consistent scheme of the 
 Christian Dispensation, and more largely of all the pe- 
 culiar doctrines of the Christian Faith ; and to answer 
 all the objections to the same, which do not originate in 
 a corrupt will rather than an erring judgment ; and to 
 do this in a manner intelligible for all who, possessing 
 the ordinary advantages of education, do in good earnest 
 desire to form their religious creed in the light of their 
 own convictions, and to have a reason for the faith 
 which they profess. There are indeed mysteries, in 
 evidence of which no reasons can be brought. But it 
 has been my endeavour to show, that the true solution 
 of this problem is, that these mysteries are reason, rea- 
 son in its highest form of self-affirmation. 
 
 Such are the special objects of these Aids to Reflec- 
 tion. Concerning the general character of the work, 
 let me be permitted to add the few following sentences. 
 St. Augustine, in one of his Sermons, discoursing on a 
 high point of theology, tells his auditors — Sic accipite, 
 ut mereamini intelligere. Fides enim debet pracedere 
 intellectum, ut sit intellectus Jidei pramium. Now 
 without a certain portion of gratuitous and (as it were) 
 experimentative faith in the writer, a reader will scarcely 
 give that degree of continued attention, without which 
 no didactic work worth reading can be read to any wise 
 
PREFACE. xlvii 
 
 or profitable purpose. In this sense, therefore, and to 
 this extent, every author, who is competent to the office 
 he has undertaken, may without arrogance repeat St. 
 Augustine's words in his own right, and advance a 
 similar claim on similar grounds. But I venture no 
 further than to imitate the sentiment at a humble dis- 
 tance, by avowing my belief that he, who seeks instruc- 
 tion in the following pages, will not fail to find enter- 
 tainment likewise ; but that whoever seeks entertainment 
 only will find neither. 
 
 Reader ! — You have been bred in a land abounding 
 with men, able in arts, learning, and knowledges mani- 
 fold, this man in one, this in another, few in many, none 
 in all. But there is one art, of which every man should 
 be master, the art of reflection. If you are not a think- 
 ing man, to what purpose are you a man at all ? In like 
 manner, there is one knowledge, which it is every man's 
 interest and duty to acquire, namely, self-knowledge : or 
 to what end was man alone, of all animals, endued by 
 the Creator with the faculty of self-consciousness ? 
 Truly said the Pagan moralist, 
 
 e cozlo descendit, YvSiQt ceavrevr 
 
 But you are likewise born in a Christian land : and 
 Revelation has provided for you new subjects for reflec- 
 tion, and new treasures of knowledge, never to be un- 
 locked by him who remains self-ignorant. Self-know- 
 ledge is the key to this casket ; and by reflection alone 
 can it be obtained. Reflect on your own thoughts, 
 actions, circumstances, and — which will be of especial 
 aid to you in forming a habit of reflection, — accustom 
 yourself to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read, 
 their birth, derivation and history. For if words are not 
 
xlviii PREFACE. 
 
 things, they are living powers, by which the things of 
 most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, 
 and humanized. Finally, by reflection you may draw 
 from the fleeting facts of your worldly trade, art, or pro- 
 fession, a science permanent as your immortal soul ; and 
 make even these subsidiary and preparative to the re- 
 ception of spiritual truth, " doing as the dyers do, who 
 having first dipt their silks in colours of less value, then 
 give them the last tincture of crimson in grain." 
 
AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM L 
 
 In philosophy equally as in poetry, it is the highest 
 and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the 
 strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues ad- 
 mitted truths from the neglect caused by the very 
 circumstance of their universal admission. Extremes 
 meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and inter- 
 esting, are too often considered as so true, that they 
 lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the 
 dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most 
 despised and exploded errors. 
 
 APHORISM II. 
 
 There is one sure way of giving freshness and im- 
 portance to the most common-place maxims — that of 
 reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state 
 and conduct, to our own past and future being. 
 
 APHORISM III. 
 
 To restore a common-place truth to its first uncom- 
 mon lustre, you need only translate it into action. But 
 to do this, you must have reflected on its truth. 
 
 l 
 
AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 LEJGHTON AMD COLERIDGE. 
 
 Jt is the advice of the wise man, " Dwell at home," 
 " or, with yourself; and though there are very few that 
 do this, yet it is surprising that the greatest part of 
 mankind cannot be prevailed upon, at least to visit 
 themselves sometimes ; but, according to the saying of 
 the wise Solomon, The eyes of the fool are in the ends 
 of the earth." 
 
 A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the 
 spring and source of every good thing. — " Omnis boni 
 principium intellectus cogitabundus ." — It is at once the 
 disgrace and the misery of men, that they live without 
 forethought. Suppose yourself fronting a mirror. Now 
 what the objects behind you are to their images at the 
 same apparent distance before you, such is reflection to 
 forethought. As a man without forethought scarcely 
 deserves the name of a man, so forethought without 
 reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct 
 of a beast. 
 
 APHORISM V. 
 
 As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its 
 fruits singly, or even than all its fruits of a single sea- 
 son, so the noblest object of reflection is the mind itself, 
 by which we reflect : 
 
 And as the blossoms, the green, and the ripe, fruit of 
 an orange-tree are more beautiful to behold when on 
 the tree and seen as one with it, than the same growth 
 detached and seen successively, after their importation 
 into another country and different clime ; so it is with 
 the manifold objects of reflection, when they are con- 
 sidered principally in reference to the reflective power, 
 and as part and parcel of the same. No object, of 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 3 
 
 whatever value our passions may represent it, but be- 
 comes foreign to us as soon as it is altogether uncon 
 nected with our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. 
 To be ours, it must be referred to the mind, either as 
 motive, or consequence, or symptom. 
 
 APHORISM VL 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 He who teaches men the principles and precepts of 
 spiritual wisdom, before their minds are called off from 
 foreign objects, and turned inward upon themselves, 
 might as well write his instructions, as the Sybil wrote 
 her prophecies, on the loose leaves of trees, and commit 
 them to the mercy of the inconstant winds. 
 
 APHORISM VII. 
 
 In order to learn, we must attend : in order to profit 
 by what we have learned, we must think — that is, re- 
 flect. He only thinks who reflects.* 
 
 APHORISM VIII. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordi- 
 nary skill and address, to fix the attention of men on the 
 world within them, to induce them to study the processes 
 
 * The indisposition, nay, the angry aversion to think, even in persons 
 who are most willing to attend, and on the subjects to which they are 
 giving studious attention, as political economy, biblical theology, classi- 
 cal antiquities, and the like, — is the phenomenon that forces itself on my 
 notice afresh, every time I enter into the society of persons in the higher 
 ranks. To assign a feeling and a determination of will, as a satisfactory 
 teason for embracing or rejecting this or that opinion or belief, is of ordi- 
 nary occurrence, and sure to obtain the sympathy and the suffrages of 
 the company. And yet to me this seems little less irrational than to 
 apply the nose to a picture, and to decide on its genuineness by the 
 sense of smell. 
 
4 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and superintend the works which they are themselves 
 carrying on in their own minds ; in short, to awaken in 
 them both the faculty of thought* and the inclination to 
 exercise it. For alas ! the largest part of mankind are 
 no where greater strangers than at home. 
 
 APHORISM IX. 
 
 Life is the one universal soul, which by virtue of the 
 enlivening Breath, and the informing Word, all organized 
 bodies have in common, each after, its kind. This, 
 therefore, all animals possess, and man as an animal. 
 But, in addition to this, God transfused into man a higher 
 gift, and specially imbreathed : — even a living (that is, 
 self-subsisting) soul, a soul having its life in itself. 
 " And man became a living soul." He did not merely 
 possess it, he became it. It was his proper being, his 
 truest self,, the man in the man. None then, not one of 
 human kind, so poor and destitute, but there is provided 
 for him, even in his present state, a house not built with 
 hands^&ye, and spite of the philosophy (falsely so 
 called) which mistakes the causes, the conditions, and 
 the occasions of our becoming conscious of certain truths 
 and realities for the truths and realities themselves — a 
 
 * Distinction between thought and attention. — By thought is here 
 meant the voluntary reproduction in our minds of those states of con- 
 sciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader) of 
 those inward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic 
 documents, the teacher of moral or religious truth refers us. In atten- 
 tion, we keep the mind passive : in thought, we rouse it into activity. 
 In the former, we submit to an impression— we keep the mind steady, 
 in order to receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate the 
 artist, while we ourselves make a copy or duplicate of his work. We 
 may learn arithmetic, or the elements of geometry, by continued atten- 
 tion alone ; but self-knowledge, or an insight into the laws and consti- 
 tution of the human mind and the grounds of religion and true morality, 
 in addition to the effort of attention requires the energy of thought, 
 
NTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 5 
 
 house gloriously furnished. Nothing is wanted hut the 
 eye, which is the light of this house, the light which is 
 the eye of this soul. This seeing light, this enlightening 
 eye, is reflection.* It is more, indeed, than is ordinarily 
 meant by that word ; but it is what a Christian ought 
 to mean by it, and to know too, whence it first came, 
 and still continues to come — of what light even this light 
 is but a reflection. This, too, is thought ; and all thought 
 is but unthinking that does not flow out of this, or tend 
 towards it. 
 
 APHORISM X. 
 
 Self-superintendence ! that any thing should overlook 
 itself ! Is not this a parodox, and hard to understand ? 
 It is, indeed, difficult, and to the imbruted sensualist a 
 direct contradiction : and yet most truly does the poet 
 exclaim, 
 
 ■ Unless above himself he can 
 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! 
 
 APHORISM XI, 
 
 An hour of solitude passed in sincere and earnest 
 prayer, or the conflict with, and conquest over, a single 
 passion or " subtle bosom sin," will teach us more of 
 thought, will more effectually awaken the faculty, and 
 form the habit, of reflection, than a year's study in th§ 
 schools without them, 
 
 APHORISM XII, 
 
 In a world, the opinions of which are drawn from out^ 
 side shows, many things may be paradoxical, (that is, 
 
 * The dianoia of St. John, 1 Ep. v, 20, inaccurately rendered under? 
 standing in our translation. To exhibit the full force of the Greek word; 
 we must say, a power of discernment by reason. 
 
 1* 
 
O AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 contrary to the common notion) and nevertheless true : 
 nay, because they are true. How should it be other- 
 wise, as long as the imagination of the worldling is 
 wholly occupied by surfaces, while the Christian's 
 thoughts are fixed on the substance, that which is and 
 abides, and which, because it is the substance,* the out- 
 ward senses cannot recognise. Tertullian had good 
 reason for his assertion, that the simplest Christian (if 
 indeed a Christian) knows more than the most accom- 
 plished irreligious philosopher. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Let it not, however, be forgotten, that the powers of 
 the understanding and the intellectual graces are precious 
 gifts of God ; and that every Christian, according to the 
 opportunities vouchsafed to him, is bound to cultivate 
 the one and to acquire the other. Indeed, he is scarcely 
 a Christian who wilfully neglects so to do. What says 
 the apostle ? Add to your faith knowledge, and to 
 knowledge manly energy, for this is the proper render- 
 ing of <*psTTiv t and not virtue, at least in the present 
 and ordinary acceptation of the word.t 
 
 * Quod stat subtttA, that which stands beneath, and (as it were) sup- 
 ports, the appearance. In a language like ours, where so many words 
 are derived from other languages, there are few modes of instruction 
 more useful or more amusing than that of accustoming young people to. 
 seek for the etymology, or primary meaning of the words they use. 
 There are cases, in which more knowledge of more value may be con- 
 veyed by the history of a word, than by the history of a campaign. 
 
 + I am not ashamed to confess that I dislike the frequent use of the 
 word virtue, instead of righteousness, in the pulpit : and that in prayer. 
 or preaching before a Christian community, it sounds too much like pagan 
 philosophy. The passage in St. Peter's epistle, is the only scripture 
 authority that can be pretended for its use, and I think it right, there- 
 fore, to notice, that it rests, either on an oversight of the translators, or 
 on a change in the meaning of the word since their time. 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM XIII. 
 
 Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine 
 "Word (by whom light, as well as immortality, was 
 brought into the world) which did not expand the in- 
 tellect, while it purified the heart ; — which did not mul- 
 tiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it 
 fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.* 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 If acquiescence without insight ; if warmth without 
 light ; if an immunity from doubt, given and guarantied 
 by a resolute ignorance ; if the habit of taking for granted 
 the words of a catechism, remembered or forgotten ; if 
 a mere sensation of positiveness substituted — I will not 
 say for the sense of certainty, but — for that calm assu- 
 rance, the very means and conditions of which it super^ 
 sedes ; if a belief that seeks the darkness, and yet strikes 
 no root, immoveable as the limpet from the rock, and, 
 like the limpet, fixed there by mere force of adhesion ; — 
 if these suffice to make men Christians, in what sense 
 could the apostle affirm that believers receive, not indeed 
 worldly wisdom, that comes to nought, but the wisdom 
 of God, that we might know and comprehend, the things 
 that are freely given to us of God ? On what grounds 
 could he denounce the sincerest fervour of spirit as de- 
 
 * The effects of a zealous ministry on the intellects and acquirements 
 of the labouring classes are not only attested by Baxter, and the Presby- 
 terian divines, but admitted by Bishop Burnet, who, during his mission 
 in the west of Scotland, was " amazed to find a poor commonalty so able 
 to argue," &c. But we need not go to a sister church for proof or ex- 
 ample. The diffusion of light and knowledge through this kingdom, by 
 the exertions of the bishops and clergy, by Episcopalians and Puritans, 
 from Edward VI, to the Restoration, was as wonderful as it is praise- 
 worthy, and may be justly placed among the most remarkable facts of 
 history. 
 
B AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 fective, where it does not likewise bring forth fruits in 
 the understanding ? 
 
 APHORISM XIV. 
 
 In our present state, it is little less than impossible 
 that the affections should be kept constant to an object 
 which gives no employment to the understanding, and 
 
 vet cannot be made manifest to the senses. The exer- 
 
 j 
 
 cise of the reasoning and reflecting powers, increasing 
 insight, and enlarging views, are requisite to keep alive 
 the substantial faith in the heart. 
 
 APHORISM XV. 
 
 In the state of perfection, perhaps, all other faculties 
 may be swallowed up in love, or superseded by imme- 
 diate vision ; but it is on the wings of the cherubim, that 
 is (according to the interpretation of the ancient Hebrew 
 doctors) the intellectual powers and energies, that we 
 must first be borne up to the " pure empyrean." It 
 must be seraphs, and not the hearts of imperfect mortals, 
 that can burn unfuelled and self-fed. Give me under- 
 standing (is the prayer of the royal Psalmist) and I 
 shall observe thy law with my whole heart. — Thy law 
 is exceedingly broad — that is, comprehensive, pregnant, 
 containing far more than the apparent import of the 
 words on a first perusal. It is my meditation all the day. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 It is worthy of especial observation, that the Scrip- 
 tures are distinguished from all other writings pretending 
 to inspiration, by the strong and frequent recommenda- 
 tions of knowledge, and a spirit of inquiry. Without 
 reflection, it is evident that neither the one can be ac- 
 quired nor the other exercised. 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. » 
 
 APHORISM XVI. 
 
 The word rational has been strangely abused of late 
 times. This must not, however, disincline us to the 
 weighty consideration, that thoughtfulness, and a desire 
 to bottom all our convictions on grounds of right reason, 
 are inseparable from the character of a Christian. 
 
 APHORISM XVII. 
 
 A reflecting mind is not a flower that grows wild, or 
 comes up of its own accord. The difficulty is indeed 
 greater than many, who mistake quick recollection for 
 thought, are disposed to admit ; but how much less than 
 it would be, had we not been born and bred in a Chris- 
 tian and Protestant land, few of us are sufficiently 
 aware. Truly may we, and thankfully ought we to, 
 exclaim with the Psalmist : The entrance of thy words 
 giveth light ; itgiveth understanding even to the simple. 
 
 APHORISM XVIII. 
 
 Examine the journals of our zealous missionaries, I 
 will not say among the Hottentots or Esquimaux, but in 
 the highly civilized, though fearfully uncultivated, in- 
 habitants of ancient India. How often, and how feel- 
 ingly, do they describe the difficulty of rendering the 
 simplest chain of thought intelligible to the ordinary 
 natives, the rapid exhaustion of their whole power of 
 attention, and with what distressful effort it is exerted 
 while it lasts ! Yet it is among these that the hideous 
 practices of self-torture chiefly prevail. O if folly were 
 no easier than wisdom, it being often so very much more 
 grievous, how certainly might these unhappy slaves of 
 superstition be converted to Christianity ! But, alas ! 
 to swing by hooks passed through the back, or to walk 
 in shoes with nails of iron pointed upwards through the 
 
10 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 soles — all this is so much less difficult, demands so 
 much less exertion of the will than to reflect, and by- 
 reflection to gain knowledge and tranquillity ! 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 It is not true, that ignorant persons have no notion of 
 the advantages of truth and knowledge. They confess, 
 they see and bear witness to,' these advantages in the 
 conduct, the immunities, and the superior powers of the 
 possessors. Were they attainable by pilgrimages the 
 most toilsome, or penances the most painful, we should 
 assuredly have as many pilgrims and self-tormentors 
 in the service of true religion, as now exist under the 
 tyranny of papal or Brahman superstition. 
 
 APHORISM XIX. 
 
 In countries enlightened by the gospel, however, the 
 most formidable and (it is to be feared) the most frequent 
 impediment to men's turning the mind inwards upon 
 themselves, is that they are afraid of what they shall 
 find there. There is an aching hollowness in the bosom, 
 a dark cold speck at the heart, an obscure and boding 
 sense of a somewhat, that must be kept out of sight of 
 the conscience ; some secret lodger, whom they can 
 neither resolve to eject or retain.* 
 
 * The following sonnet was extracted by me from Herbert's Temple, 
 in a work long since out of print, for the purity of the language and the 
 fulness of the sense. But I shall be excused, I trust, in repeating it 
 here for higher merits and with higher purposes, as a forcible comment 
 on the words in the text. 
 
 Graces vouchsafed in a Christian land. 
 
 Lord ! with what care hast thou begirt us round ! 
 
 Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters 
 
 Deliver us to laws. They send us bound 
 
 To rules of reason. Holy messengers ; 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 11 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Few are so obdurate, few have sufficient strength of 
 character, to be able to draw forth an evil tendency or 
 immoral practice into distinct consciousness, without 
 bringing it in the same moment before an awaking con- 
 science. But for this very reason it becomes a duty of 
 conscience to form the mind to a habit of distinct con- 
 sciousness. An unreflecting Christian walks in twilight 
 among snares and pitfalls ! He entreats the heavenly 
 Father not to lead him into temptation, and yet places 
 himself on the very edge of it, because he will not kindle 
 the torch which his Father had given into his hands, as 
 a mean of prevention, and lest he should pray too late. 
 
 APHORISM XX. 
 
 Among the various undertakings of men, can there be 
 mentioned one more important, can there be conceived 
 one more sublime, than an intention to form the human 
 mind anew after the divine image ? The very intention, 
 if it be sincere, is a ray of its dawning. 
 
 The requisites for the execution of this high intent 
 may be comprised under three heads ; the prudential, 
 the moral, and the spiritual : 
 
 Pulpits and Sundays ; sorrow dogging sin ; 
 Afflictions sorted ; anguish of all sizes ; 
 Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in ! 
 Bibles laid open ; millions of surprises ; 
 Blessings beforehand ; ties of gratefulness ; 
 The sound of glory ringing in our ears : 
 Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ; 
 Angels and grace ; eternal hopes and fears ! 
 Yet all these fences, and their whole array, 
 One cunning bosom sin blows quite away. 
 
12 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XXI. 
 
 First, Religious Prudence.-'-What this is, will be best 
 explained by its effects and operations. Prudence con- 
 sists in the service of religion, in the prevention or abate- 
 ment of hindrances and distractions ; and consequently 
 in avoiding, or removing, all such circumstances as, by 
 diverting the attention of the workman, retard the pro- 
 gress and hazard the safety of the work. It is likewise 
 (I deny not) a part of this unworldly prudence, to place 
 ourselves as much and as often as it is in our power so 
 to do, in circumstances directly favourable to our great 
 design ; and to avail ourselves of all the positive helps 
 and furtherances which these circumstances afford. But 
 neither dare we, as Christians, forget whose and under 
 what dominion the things are, quce nos circumstant, that 
 is, which stand around us. We are to remember, that 
 it is the world that constitutes our outward circum- 
 stances ; that in the form of the world, which is ever- 
 more at variance with the divine form (or idea) they are 
 cast and moulded ; and that of the means and measures 
 which prudence requires in the forming anew of the di- 
 vine image in the soul, the far greater number suppose 
 the world at enmity with our design. We are to avoid 
 its snares, to repel its attacks, to suspect its aids and 
 succours, and even when compelled to receive them as 
 allies within our trenches, yet to commit the outworks 
 alone to their charge, and to keep them at a jealous dis- 
 tance from the citadel. The powers of the world are 
 often christened, but seldom christianized. They are 
 but proselytes of the outer gate : or, like the Saxons of 
 old, enter the land as auxiliaries, and remain in it as 
 conquerors and lords. 
 
INTRODUCTJPY APHORISMS. 13 
 
 APHORISM XXII. 
 
 The rules of prudence in general, like the laws of the 
 stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou 
 shalt not is their characteristic formula: and it is an 
 especial part of Christian prudence that it should be so. 
 Nor would it be difficult to bring under this head, all the 
 social obligations that arise out of the relations of the 
 present life, which the sensual understanding (t« <ppd- 
 viifiet t»)5 o-ccpKos, Romans viii, 6,) is of itself able to dis- 
 cover, and the performance of which, under favourable 
 circumstances, the merest worldly self-interest, without 
 love or faith, is sufficient to enforce ; but which Chris- 
 tian prudence enlivens by a higher principle, and renders 
 symbolic and sacramental. (Ephesians v, 32.) 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 This then, under the appellation of prudential requi- 
 sites, comes first under consideration : and may be re- 
 garded as the shrine and frame-work for the divine 
 image, into which the worldly human is to be trans- 
 formed ^ We are next to bring out the divine portrait 
 itself, the distinct features of its countenance, as a so- 
 journer among men ; its benign aspect turned towards 
 its fellow-pilgrims, the extended arm, and the hand that 
 blesseth and healeth. 
 
 APHORISM XXIII. 
 The outward service (flfjjs-xe/**) of ancient religion, 
 the rites, ceremonies and ceremonial vestments of the 
 
 * See the epistle of St. James, c. i, v. 26, 27, where, in the author- 
 ized version, the Greek word dpijoKeia is falsely rendered religion : whe- 
 ther by mistake of the translator, or from the intended sense having 
 become obsolete, I cannot decide. At all events, for the English reader 
 
 2 
 
14 AIDS TO REFLECTION* 
 
 old law, had morality for their substance. They were 
 the letter, of which morality was the spirit ; the enigma, 
 of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself 
 is the service and ceremonial (cultus exterior, tgir&i*) 
 of the Christian religion. The scheme of grace and 
 truth that became* through Jesus Christ, the faith that 
 looksf down into the perfect law of liberty, has " light 
 for its garment :" its very " robe is righteousness" 
 
 of our times it has the effect of an erroneous translation. It not only 
 obscures the connexion of the passage, and weakens the peculiar force 
 and sublimity of the thought, rendering it comparatively flat and trivial, 
 almost indeed tautological, but has occasioned this particular verse to be 
 perverted into a support of a very dangerous error ; and the whole epistle 
 to be considered as a set-off against the epistles and declarations of St. 
 Paul, instead of (what in fact it is) a masterly comment and confirma- 
 tion of the same. I need not inform the religious reader, that James, 
 C. i, v. 27, is the favourite text and most boasted authority of those 
 divines who represent the Redeemer of the world as little more than a 
 moral reformer, and the Christian faith as a code of ethics, differing from 
 the moral system of Moses and the prophets by an additional motive ; or 
 rather, by the additional strength and clearness which the historical fact 
 of the resurrection has given to the same motive. 
 
 * The Greek word iyivero, unites in itself the two senses of began to 
 exist and was made to exist. It exemplifies the force of the middle voice r 
 in distinction from the verb reflex. In answer to a note on John i, 2, 
 in the Unitarian version of the New Testament, I think it worth noticing, 
 that the same word is used in the very same sense by Aristophanes in 
 that famous parody on the cosmogonies of the mythic poets, or the crea- 
 tion Of the finite, as delivered, or supposed to be delivered, in the Cabiric 
 or Samothracian mysteries, in the Comedy of the Birds. 
 
 ylvtT Ovpavo; 'Q,Keav6s ts 
 
 Kal Trj. 
 t James, C 1, V. 25. 'O Si vapaicvipas sis v6p.ov ri\etov rdv rrjs e\evOcpcas, 
 The Greek word, parakupsas, signifies the incurvation or bending of the 
 body in the act of looking down into ; as, for instance, in the endeavour 
 to see the reflected image of a star in the water at the bottom of a well. 
 A more happy or forcible word could not have been chosen to express 
 the nature and ultimate object of reflexion, and to enforce the necessity 
 of it, in order to discover the living fountain and spring-head of the evi. 
 dence of the Christian faith in the believer himself, and at the same time 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. IS 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Herein the apostle places the pre-eminence, the pe- 
 culiar and distinguishing excellence, of the Christian 
 religion. The ritual is of the same kind, (o/iteo«V/«v) 
 though not of the same order, with the religion itself — 
 not arbitrary or conventional, as types and hieroglyphics 
 are in relation to the things expressed by them ; but in- 
 separable, consubstantiated (as it were), and partaking 
 therefore of the same life, permanence, and intrinsic 
 worth with its spirit and principle. 
 
 APHORISM XXIV, 
 
 Morality is the body, of which the faith in Christ is 
 the soul — so far indeed its earthly body, as it is adapted 
 to its state of warfare on earth, and the appointed form 
 and instrument of its communion with the present world; 
 yet not " terrestrial" nor of the world, but a celestial 
 body, and capable of being transfigured from glory to 
 glory, in accordance with the varying circumstances and 
 outward relations of its moving and informing spirit. 
 
 to point out the seat and region, where alone it is to be found. Quantum 
 sumus, scimus. That which we find within ourselves, which is more 
 than ourselves, and yet the ground of whatever is good and permanent 
 therein, is the substance and life of all other knowledge. 
 
 N. B. The Familists of the sixteenth century, and similar enthusiasts 
 of later date, overlooked the essential point, that it was a law, and a law 
 that involved its own end (teAos) a perfect law (teXeioj) or law that per- 
 fects or completes itself; and therefore, its obligations are called, in 
 reference to human statutes, imperfect duties, i. e., incoercible from 
 without. They overlooked that it was a law that portions out (vfyoj 
 from vifiui to allot, or make division of) to each man the sphere and limits, 
 within which it is to be exercised — which as St. Peter notices of certain 
 profound passages in the writings of St. Paul, (2 Pet. c. iii, v. 16,) ol 
 djuadEis leal d-TfipiKTOi s-psfiXovviv, us koX rag \0i7ras ypayaj, Ttp os rfiv ISiav avroJit 
 
16 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XXV. 
 
 Wo to the man, who will believe neither power, 
 freedom, nor morality, because he no where finds either 
 entire, or unmixed with sin, thraldom and infirmity. In 
 the natural and intellectual realms, we distinguish what 
 we cannot separate ; and in the moral world, we must 
 distinguish in order to separate. Yea, in the clear dis- 
 tinction of good from evil the process of separation com- 
 mences. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 It was customary with religious men in former times, 
 to make a rule of taking every morning some text, or 
 aphorism,* for their occasional meditation during the 
 day, and thus to fill up the intervals of their attention to 
 business. I do not point it out for imitation, as knowing 
 too well, how apt these self-imposed rules are to degen- 
 erate into superstition or hollowness: otherwise I would 
 have recommended the following as the first exercise. 
 
 APHORISM XXVI. 
 
 It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order 
 to distinguish ; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes 
 
 * In accordance with a preceding remark, on the use of etymology in 
 disciplining the youthful mind to thoughtful habits, and as consistent 
 with the title of this work, "Aids to Reflection," I shall offer no apology 
 for the following and similar notes : — 
 
 Aphorism, determinate position, from the Greek ap, from ; and horizein, 
 to bound, or limit ; whence our horizon. In order to get the full sense 
 of a word, we should first present to our minds the visual image that 
 forms its primary meaning. Draw lines of different colours round the 
 different counties of England, and then cut out each separately, as in the 
 common play-maps that children take to pieces and put together — so 
 that each district can be contemplated apart from the rest, as a whole in 
 itself. This twofold act of circumscribing, and detaching, when it is ex- 
 erted by the mind on subjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorize, 
 and the result an aphorism. 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 17 
 
 in order to divide. In the former, we may contemplate 
 the source of superstition and idolatry ;* in the latter of 
 schism, heresy,! and a seditious and sectarian spirit.f 
 
 APHORISM XXVII. 
 
 Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and 
 worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms : 
 and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism. 
 
 APHORISM XXVIII. 
 
 On the prudential influence which the fear or foresight of the conse- 
 quences of his actions, in respect of his own loss or gain, may exert on a 
 newly converted believer. 
 
 Precautionary remark. — I meddle not with, the 
 dispute respecting conversion, whether, and in what 
 sense, necessary in all Christians. It is sufficient for 
 my purpose, that a very large number of men, even in 
 Christian countries, need to be converted, and that not a 
 few, I trust, have been. The tenet becomes fanatical 
 and dangerous, only when rare and extraordinary excep- 
 tions are made to be the general rule ; — when what was 
 vouchsafed to the apostle of the Gentiles by especial 
 
 * To v6x\tov SirjpfiKatnv zi; ttoXAcov Btdv iiiorfjTag. — DattlllSC. de Myst. 
 
 Egypt ; that is, They divided the intelligible into many and several indi- 
 vidualities. 
 
 t From aipevis. Though well aware of its formal and apparent deri- 
 vation from haireo, I am inclined to refer both words to airo, as the 
 primitive term, containing the primary visual image, and therefore should 
 explain Jimresis as a wilful raising into public notice, an uplifting (for 
 display) of any particular opinion differing from the established belief of 
 the church at large, and making it a ground of schism, that is division. 
 
 X I mean these words in their large and philosophic sense in relation 
 to the spirit, or originating temper and tendency, and not to any one 
 mode under which, or to any one class, in or by which, it may be dis- 
 played. A seditious spirit may (it is possible, though not probable) 
 exist in the council-chamber of a palace as strongly as in a mob in Palace- 
 Yard ; and a sectarian spirit in a cathedral, no less than in a conventicle. 
 
 2* 
 
18 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 grace, and for an especial purpose, namely, a conversion* 
 begun and completed in the same moment, is demanded 
 or expected of all men, as a necessary sign and pledge 
 of their election. Late observations have shown, that 
 under many circumstances the magnetic needle, even 
 after the disturbing influence has been removed, will 
 keep wavering, and require many days before it points 
 aright, and remains steady to the pole. So is it ordi- 
 narily with the soul, after it has begun to free itself from 
 the disturbing forces of the flesh, and the world, and to 
 convert! itself towards God. 
 
 APHORISM XXIX. 
 Awakened by the cock-crow (a sermon, a calamity, a 
 sick bed, or a providential escape) the Christian pilgrim 
 sets out in the morning twilight, while yet the truth 
 (the vojw.05 TiXnoi o tjJs lAev&giVs) is below the horizon. 
 Certain necessary consequences of his past life and his 
 present undertaking will be seen by the refraction of its 
 light : more will be apprehended and conjectured. The 
 phantasms, that had predominated during the hours of 
 darkness, are still busy. Though they no longer present 
 themselves as distinct forms, they yet remain as forma- 
 tive motions in the pilgrim's soul, unconscious of its own 
 activity and over-mastered by its own workmanship. 
 
 * Whereas Christ's other disciples had a breeding under him, St. 
 Paul was bom an apostle ; not carved out, as the rest, by degrees and 
 in course of time, but a fusile apostle, an apostle poured out and cast in 
 a mould. As Adam was a perfect man in an instant, so was St. Paul a 
 perfect Christian. The same spirit was the lightning that melted, and 
 the mould that received and shaped him. — Donne's Sermons— quoted 
 from memory. 
 
 * From the Latin, convertere, that is, by an act of the will to turn 
 towards the true pole, at the same time (for this is the force of the pre- 
 positive con,) that the understanding is convinced and made aware of its 
 existence and direction. 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 19 
 
 Things take the signature of thought. The shapes of 
 the recent dream become a mould for the objects in the 
 distance, and these again give an outwardness and sen- 
 sation of reality to the shapings of the dream. The 
 bodings inspired by the long habit of selfishness, and 
 self-seeking cunning, though they are now commencing 
 the process of their purification into that fear which is 
 the beginning of wisdom, and which, as such, is ordained 
 to be our guide and safeguard, till the sun of love, the 
 perfect law of liberty, is fully arisen — these bodings will 
 set the fancy at work, and haply, for a time, transform 
 the mists of dim and imperfect knowledge into deter- 
 minate superstitions. But in either case, whether seen 
 clearly or dimly, whether beholden or only imagined, the 
 consequences contemplated in their bearings on the indi- 
 vidual's inherent* desire of happiness and dread of pain 
 become motives ; and (unless all distinction in the words 
 be done away with, and either prudence or virtue be 
 reduced to a superfluous synonyme, a redundancy in all 
 the languages of the civilized world) these motives, and 
 the acts and forbearances directly proceeding from them, 
 fall under the head of prudence, as belonging to one or 
 other of its three very distinct species. 
 
 I. It may be a prudence, that stands in opposition to 
 a higher moral life, and tends to preclude it, and to pre- 
 vent the soul from ever arriving at the hatred of sin for 
 its own exceeding sinfulness (Rom. vii, 13) : and this is 
 an evil prudence. 
 
 * The following extract from Leighton's Theological Lectures, sect. 
 II, may serve as a comment on this sentence : 
 
 " The human mind, however stunned and weakened by the Fall, still 
 retains some faint idea of the good it has lost ; a kind of languid sense 
 of its misery and indigence, with affections suitable to these obscure no- 
 tions. This at least is beyond all doubt and indisputable, that a!l men 
 
20 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 II. Or it may be a neutral prudence, not incompatible 
 with spiritual growth : and to this we may, with especial 
 propriety, apply the words of our Lord, What is not 
 against us is for us. It is therefore an innocent, and 
 (being such) a proper, and commendable prudence. 
 
 III. Or it may lead and be subservient to a higher 
 principle than itself. The mind and conscience of the 
 individual may be reconciled to it, in the foreknowledge 
 of the higher principle, and with yearning towards it 
 that implies a foretaste of future freedom. The en- 
 feebled convalescent is reconciled to his crutches, and 
 thankfully makes use of them, not only because they 
 are necessary for his immediate support, but likewise, 
 because they are the means and conditions of exercise, 
 and by exercise, of establishing, gradatim paulatim^that 
 strength, flexibility, and almost spontaneous obedience 
 of the muscles, which the idea and cheering presenti- 
 ment of health hold out to him. He finds their value 
 
 wish well to themselves ; nor can the mind divest itself of this propensity, 
 without divesting itself of its being. This is what the schoolmen mean 
 when in their manner of expression they say, that ' the will (voluntas, 
 not arbilrium) is carried towards happiness not simply as will, but as 
 nature.' " 
 
 I venture to remark that this position, if not more certainly, would be 
 more evidently true, if instead of beatitudo, the word indolentia (that is, 
 freedom from pain, negative happiness) had been used. But this de- 
 pends on the exact meaning attached to the term self, of which more in 
 another place. One conclusion, however, follows inevitably from the 
 preceding position, namely, that this propensity can never be legitimately 
 made the principle of morality, even because it is no part or appurtenance 
 of the moral will ; and because the proper object of the moral principle 
 is to limit and control this propensity, and to determine in what it may 
 be, and in what it ought to be, gratified ; while it is the business of phi- 
 losophy to instruct the understanding, and the office of religion to con- 
 vince the whole man, that otherwise than as a regulated, and of course 
 therefore a subordinate, end, this propensity, innate and inalienable 
 though it be, can never be realized or fulfilled. 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 21 
 
 in their present necessity, and their worth as they are 
 the instruments of finally superseding it. This is a 
 faithful, a wise prudence, having, indeed, its birth-place 
 in the world, and the wisdom of this world for its father ; . 
 but naturalized in a better land, and having the wisdom 
 from above for its sponsor and spiritual parent. To 
 steal a dropt feather from the spicy nest of the phoenix, 
 (the fond humour, I mean, of the mystic divines and al- 
 legorizers of holy writ), it is the son of Terah from Ur 
 of the Chaldees, who gives a tithe of all to the King of 
 Righteousness, without father, without mother, without 
 descent, (v«V«« uurovo^oi), and receives a blessing on the 
 remainder. 
 
 IV. Lastly, there is a prudence that co-exists with 
 morality, as morality co-exists with the spiritual life : a 
 prudence that is the organ of both, as the understanding 
 is to the reason and the will, or as the lungs are to the 
 heart and brain. This is a holy prudence, the steward 
 faithful and discreet (e/*ovoV«s sriVes kx) tyon/tos, Luke 
 xii, 42), the eldest servant in the family of faith, born in 
 the house, and made the ruler over his lord's household. 
 
 Let not then, I entreat you, my purpose be misunder- 
 stood ; as if, in distinguishing virtue from prudence, I 
 wished to divide the one from the other. True morality 
 is hostile to that prudence only, which is preclusive of 
 true morality. The teacher, who subordinates prudence 
 to virtue, cannot be supposed to dispense with virtue ; 
 and he, who teaches the proper connexion of the one 
 with the other, does not depreciate the lower in any 
 sense ; while by making it a link of the same chain with 
 the higher, and receiving the same influence, he raises it. 
 
 In general, morality may be compared to the conso- 
 nant ; prudence to the vowel. The former cannot be 
 uttered (reduced to practice) but by means of the latter. 
 
22 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XXX. 
 
 What the duties of morality are, the apostle instructs 
 the believer in full, comprising them under the two heads 
 of negative and positive ; negative to keep himself pure 
 from the world ; and positive, beneficence from loving- 
 kindness, that is, love of his fellow-men (his kind) as 
 himself. 
 
 APHORISM XXXI. 
 
 Last and highest come the spiritual, comprising all 
 the truths, acts, and duties, that have an especial refer- 
 ence to the timeless, the permanent, the eternal, to the 
 sincere love of the true, as truth, of the good, as good : 
 and of God as both in one. It comprehends the whole 
 ascent from uprightness (morality, virtue, inward recti- 
 tude) to godlikeness, with all the acts, exercises, and 
 disciplines of mind, will, and affection, that are requisite 
 or conducive to the great design of our redemption from 
 the form of the evil one, and of our second creation or 
 birth in the divine image.* 
 
 * It is worthy of observation, and may furnish a fruitful subject for 
 future reflection, how nearly this scriptural division coincides with the 
 Platonic, which, commencing with the prudential, or the habit of act and 
 purpose proceeding from enlightened self-interest, [qui animi imperio, 
 corporis servitio, rerum auxilio, in proprium sui commodum et sibi provi- 
 dus utitur, hunc esse prudentem statuimus,] ascends to the moral, that 
 is, to the purifying and remedial virtues ; and seeks its summit in the 
 imitation of the divine nature. In this last division, answering to that 
 which we have called the spiritual, Plato includes all those inward acts 
 and aspirations, waitings, and walchings, which have a growth in god- 
 likeness for their immediate purpose, and the union of the human soul 
 with the supreme good as their ultimate object. Nor was it altogether 
 without grounds that several of the Fathers ventured to believe that 
 Plato had some dim conception of the necessity of a divine mediator, 
 whether through some indistinct echo of the patriarchal faith, or some 
 rays of light refracted from the Hebrew prophets through a Phoenician 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 23 
 
 APHORISM XXXII. 
 
 It may be an additional aid to reflection, to distinguish 
 the three kinds severally, according to the faculty to 
 which each corresponds, the part of our human nature 
 which is more particularly its organ. Thus : the pru- 
 dential corresponds to the sense and the understanding ; 
 the moral to the heart and the conscience ; the spiritual 
 to the will and the reason, that is, to the finite will 
 reduced to harmony with, and in subordination to, the 
 reason, as a ray from that true light which is both reason 
 and will, universal reason, and will absolute. 
 
 medium (to which he may possibly have referred in his phrase, deoxapa- 
 66tos a-oipia, the wisdom delivered from God,) or by his own sense of 
 the mysterious contradiction in human nature between the will and the 
 reason, the natural appetences and the not less innate law of conscience, 
 (Romans ii, 14, 15,) we shall in vain attempt to determine. It is not 
 impossible that all three may have co-operated in partially unveiling 
 these awful truths to this plank from the wreck of paradise thrown on 
 the shores of idolatrous Greece, to this divine philosopher, 
 
 Che in quella schiera ando phi presso al segno 
 Al qual aggiunge, a chi dal cielo e dato. 
 
 Petrarch. Del Trionfo della Fama, cap. in, 1, 5, 6. 
 
REFLECTIONS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY TO 
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 
 
 ON SENSIBILITY. 
 
 If prudence, though practically inseparable from mo- 
 rality, is not to be confounded with the moral principle ; 
 still less may sensibility, that is, a constitutional quick- 
 ness of sympathy with pain and pleasure, and a keen 
 sense of the gratifications that accompany social inter- 
 course, mutual endearments, and reciprocal preferences, 
 be mistaken, or deemed a substitute, for either. Sensi- 
 bility is not even a sure pledge of a good heart, though 
 among the most common meanings of that many-mean- 
 ing and too commonly misapplied expression. 
 
 So far from being either morality, or one with the 
 moral principle, it ought not even to be placed in the 
 same rank with prudence. For prudence is at least an 
 offspring of the understanding ; but sensibility (the sen- 
 sibility, I mean, here spoken of) is for the greater part 
 a quality of the nerves, and a result of individual bodily 
 temperament- 
 Prudence is an active principle, and implies a sacri- 
 fice of self, though only to the same self projected, as it 
 were, to a distance. But the very term sensibility, 
 
SENSIBILITY. 25 
 
 marks its passive nature ; and in its mere self, apart 
 from choice and reflection, it proves little more than the 
 coincidence or contagion of pleasurable or painful sensa- 
 tions in different persons. 
 
 Alas ! how many are there in this over-stimulated 
 age, in which the occurrence of excessive and unhealthy- 
 sensitiveness is so frequent, as even to have reversed 
 the current meaning of the word, nervous. How many 
 are there whose sensibility prompts them to remove 
 those evils alone, which by hideous spectacle or clamo- 
 rous outcry are present to their senses and disturb their 
 selfish enjoyments. Provided the dunghill is not before 
 their parlour window, they are well contented to know 
 that it exists, and perhaps as the hotbed on which their 
 own luxuries are reared. Sensibility is not necessarily 
 benevolence. Nay, by rendering us tremblingly alive 
 to trifling misfortunes, it frequently prevents it, and in- 
 duces an effeminate selfishness instead, 
 
 pampering the coward heart 
 
 With feelings all too delicate for use. 
 
 Sweet are the tears, that from a Howard's eye 
 
 Drop on the cheek of one, he lifts from earth : 
 
 And he, who works me good with unmoved face, 
 
 Does it but half. He chills me, while he aids, 
 
 My benefactor, not my brother man. 
 
 But even this, this cold benevolence, 
 
 Seems worth, seems manhood, when there rise before me 
 
 The sluggard pity's vision-weaving tribe, 
 
 Who sigh for wretchedness yet shun the wretched, 
 
 Nursing in some delicious solitude 
 
 Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies. 
 
 Lastly, where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament 
 and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it 
 
 3 
 
26 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 may almost be said to become* virtue. But sensibility 
 and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and 
 too often have become, the panders of vice, and the in- 
 struments of seduction. 
 
 So must it needs be with all qualities that have their 
 rise only in parts and fragments of our nature. A man 
 of warm passions may sacrifice half his estate to rescue 
 a friend from prison : for he is naturally sympathetic, 
 and the more social part of his nature happened to be 
 uppermost. The same man shall afterwards exhibit the 
 same disregard of money in an attempt to seduce that 
 friend's wife or daughter. 
 
 All the evil achieved byHobbes and the whole school of 
 materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared 
 with the mischief effected and occasioned by the senti- 
 mental philosophy of Sterne, and his numerous imita- 
 tors. The vilest appetites and the most remorseless 
 inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the titles of 
 the heart, the irresistible feelings, the too tender sensi- 
 bility : and if the frosts -of prudence, the icy chains of 
 human law thawed and vanished at the genial warmth 
 of human nature, who could help it ? It was an amia- 
 ble weakness ! 
 
 About this time, too, the profanation of the word, 
 Love, rose to its height. The French naturalists, Buffon 
 
 * There sometimes occurs an apparent play on words, which not only 
 to the moralizer, but even to the philosophical etymologist, appears more 
 than a mere play. Thus in the double sense of the word, become. I 
 have known persons so anxious to have their dress become them, as to 
 convert it at length into their proper self, and thus actually to become 
 the dress. Such a one, (safeliest spoken of by the neuter pronoun,) I 
 consider as but a suit of live finery. It is indifferent whether we say, 
 it becomes he, or, he becomes it. 
 
SENSIBILITY. 27 
 
 and others, borrowed it from the sentimental novelists : 
 the Swedish and English philosophers took the con- 
 tagion ; and the muse of science condescended to seek 
 admission into the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged 
 like a harlot, and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know 
 not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into 
 the service of virtue, than by such a comment on the 
 present paragraph, as would be afforded by a selection 
 from the sentimental correspondence produced in courts 
 of justice within the last thirty years, fairly translated 
 into the true meaning of the words, and the actual object 
 and purpose of the infamous writers. 
 
 Do you in good earnest aim at dignity of character? 
 By all the treasures of a peaceful mind, by all the charms 
 of an open countenance, I conjure you, O youth ! turn 
 away from those who live in the twilight between vice 
 and virtue. Are not reason, discrimination, law, and 
 deliberate choice, the distinguishing characters of hu- 
 manity 1 Can aught then worthy of a human being pro- 
 ceed from a habit of soul, which would exclude all these 
 and (to borrow a metaphor from paganism) prefer the 
 den of Trophonius to the temple and oracles of the God 
 of light ? Can any thing manly, I say, proceed from 
 those, who for law and light would substitute shapeless 
 feelings, sentiments, impulses, which as far as they 
 differ from the vital workings in the brute animals owe 
 the difference to their former connexion with the proper 
 virtues of humanity ; as dendrites derive the outlines, 
 that constitute their value above other clay-stones, from 
 the casual neighbourhood and pressure of the plants, 
 the names of which they assume ! Remember, that 
 love itself in its highest earthly bearing, as the ground 
 
28 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 of the marriage union,* becomes love by an inward fiai 
 of the will, by a completing and sealing act of moral 
 election, and lays claim to permanence only under the 
 form of duty. 
 
 * It might be a mean of preventing many unhappy marriages, if the 
 youth of both sexes had it early impressed on their minds, that marriage 
 contracted between Christians is a true and perfect symbol or mystery ; 
 that is, the actualizing faith being supposed to exist in the receivers, it 
 is an outward sign co-essential with that which it signifies, or a living 
 part of that, the whole of which it represents. Marriage, therefore, in 
 the Christian sense (Ephesians v, 22—33,) as symbolical of the union 
 of the soul with Christ the Mediator, and with God through Christ, is 
 perfectly a sacramental ordinance, and not retained by the reformed 
 churches as one of the sacraments, for two reasons ; first, that the sign 
 is not distinctive of the church of Christ, and the ordinance not peculiar, 
 nor owing its origin to the gospel dispensation ; secondly, that it is not 
 of universal obligation, nor a means of grace enjoined on all Christians. 
 In other and plainer words, marriage does not contain in itself an open 
 profession of Christ, and it is not a sacrament of the chufch, but only of 
 certain individual members of the church. It is evident, however, that 
 neither of these reasons affect or diminish the religious nature and dedi- 
 cative force of the marriage vow, or detract from the solemnity in the 
 apostolic declaration : This is a great mystery. 
 
 The interest, which the state has in the appropriation of one woman 
 to one man, and the civil obligations therefrom resulting, form an altoge- 
 ther distinct consideration. When I meditate on the words of the apostle, 
 confirmed and illustrated as they are, by so many harmonies in the spir- 
 itual structure of our proper humanity, (in the image of God, male and 
 female created he the man,) and then reflect how little claim so large a 
 number of legal cohabitations have to the name of Christian marriages — 
 I feel inclined to doubt, whether the plan of celebrating marriages uni- 
 versally by the civil magistrate, in the first instance, and leaving the re- 
 ligious covenant, and sacramental pledge to the election of the parties 
 themselves, adopted during the republic in England, and in our own 
 times by the French legislature, was not in fact, whatever it might be in 
 intention, reverential to Christianity. At all events, it was their own act 
 and choice, if the parties made bad worse by the profanation of a gospel 
 mystery. 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM I. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 With respect to any final aim or end, the greater part 
 of mankind live at hazard. They have no certain har- 
 bour in view, nor direct their course by any fixed star. 
 But to him that knoweth not the port to which he is 
 bound, no wind can be favourable ; neither can he who 
 has not yet determined at what mark he is to shoot, 
 direct his arrow aright. 
 
 It is not, however, the less true that there is a proper 
 object to aim at ; and if this object be meant by the term 
 happiness, (though I think that not the most appropriate 
 term for a state, the perfection of which consists in the 
 exclusion of all hap, that is, chance), I assert that there 
 is such a thing as human happiness, as summum bonum, 
 or ultimate good. What this is, the' Bible alone shows 
 clearly and certainly, and points out the way that leads 
 to the attainment of it. This is that which prevailed 
 with St. Augustine to study the Scriptures, and engaged 
 his affection to them. " In Cicero, and Plato, and other 
 such writers," says he, " I meet with many things acutely 
 said, and things that excite a certain warmth of emotion, 
 but in none of them do I find these words, Come unto 
 
 3* 
 
30 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest."* 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Felicity, in its proper sense, is but another word for 
 fortunateness, or happiness ; and I can see no advantage 
 in the improper use of words, when proper terms are to 
 be found, but, on the contrary, much mischief. For, by 
 familiarizing the mind to equivocal expressions, that is, 
 such as may be taken in two or more different mean- 
 ings, we introduce confusion of thought, and furnish the 
 sophist with his best and handiest tools. For the juggle 
 of sophistry consists, for the greater part, in using a 
 word in one sense in the premiss, and in another sense 
 in the conclusion. We should accustom ourselves to 
 think, and reason, in precise and steadfast terms, even 
 when custom, or the deficiency, or the corruption of the 
 language will not permit the same strictness in speaking. 
 The mathematician finds this so necessary to the truths 
 which he is seeking, that his science begins with, and is 
 founded on, the definition of his terms. The botanist, 
 the chemist, the anatomist, &c, feel and submit to this 
 necessity at all costs, even at the risk of exposing their 
 several pursuits to the ridicule of the many, by technical 
 terms, hard to be remembered, and alike quarrelsome to 
 the ear and the tongue. In the business of moral and 
 religious reflection, in the acquisition of clear and dis- 
 tinct conceptions of our duties, and of the relations in 
 which we stand to God, our neighbour, and ourselves, 
 no such difficulties occur. At the utmost we have only 
 
 * Apud Ciceronem et Platonem, aliosque ejusmodi scriptores, mvlta 
 sunt acute dicta, et leniter calentia, sed in iis omnibus hoc non inveniOf 
 Yenite ad me, fyc. (Matt, xii, 28.) 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 31 
 
 to rescue words, already existing and familiar, from the 
 false or vague meanings imposed on them by careless- 
 ness, or by the clipping and debasing misusage of the 
 market. And surely happiness, duty, faith, truth, and 
 final blessedness, are matters of deeper and dearer inter- 
 est for all men, than circles to the geometrician, or the 
 characters of plants to the botanist, or the affinities and 
 combining principle of the elements of bodies to the che- 
 mist, or even than the mechanism (fearful and worderful 
 though it be !) of the perishable tabernacle of the soul 
 can be to the anatomist. Among the aids to reflection, 
 place the following maxim prominent : let distinctness 
 in expression advance side by side with distinction in 
 thought. For one useless subtlety in our elder divines 
 and moralists, I will produce ten sophisms of equivoca- 
 tion in the writings of our modern preceptors : and for 
 one error resulting from excess in distinguishing the 
 indifferent, I could show ten mischievous delusions from 
 the habit of confounding the diverse. 
 
 Whether you are reflecting for yourself, or reasoning 
 with another, make it a rule to ask yourself the precise 
 meaning of the word, on which the point in question 
 appears to turn ; and if it may be (that is, by writers of 
 authority has been) used in several senses, then ask 
 which of these the word is at present intended to convey. 
 By this mean, and scarcely without it, you will at length 
 acquire a facility in detecting the quid pro quo. And 
 believe me, in so doing you will enable yourself to dis- 
 arm and expose four-fifths of the main arguments of our 
 most renowned irreligious philosophers, ancient and 
 modern. For the quid pro quo is at once the rock and 
 quarry, on and with which the strongholds of disbelief, 
 materialism, and (more pernicious still) epicurean mo- 
 rality, are built. 
 
32 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM II. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 If we seriously consider what religion is, we shall find 
 the saying of the wise king Solomon to be unexception- 
 ably true : Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all 
 her paths are peace. 
 
 Doth religion require any thing of us more than that 
 we live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present 
 world 1 Now what, I pray, can be more pleasant or 
 peaceable than these ? Temperance is always at leisure, 
 luxury always in a hurry : the latter weakens the body 
 and pollutes the soul, the former is the sanctity, purity, 
 and sound state of both. It is one of Epicurus's fixed 
 maxims, " That life can never be pleasant without virtue." 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 In the works of moralists, both Christian and Pagan, 
 it is often asserted (indeed there are few common-places 
 of more frequent recurrence) that the happiness even of 
 this life consists solely, or principally in virtue ; that 
 virtue is the only happiness of this life ; that virtue is 
 the truest pleasure, &c. 
 
 I doubt not that the meaning, which the writers in- 
 tended to convey by these and the like expressions, was 
 true and wise. But I deem it safer to say, that in all 
 the outward relations of this life, in all our outward con- 
 duct and actions, both in what we should do, and in what 
 we should abstain from, the dictates of virtue are the 
 very same with those of self-interest ; tending to, though 
 they do not proceed from, the same point. For the out- 
 ward object of virtue being the greatest producible sum 
 of happiness of all men, it must needs include the object 
 of an intelligent self-love, which is the greatest possible 
 happiness of one individual ; for what is true of all must 
 

 PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 33 
 
 be true of each. Hence, you cannot become better, 
 (that is, more virtuous), but you will become happier : 
 and you cannot become worse, (that is, more vicious), 
 without an increase of misery (or at the best a propor- 
 tional loss of enjoyment) as the consequence. If the 
 thing were not inconsistent with our well being, and 
 known to be so, it would not have been classed as a vice. 
 Thus what in an enfeebled and disordered mind is called 
 prudence, is the voice of nature in a healthful state : as 
 is proved by the known fact, that the prudential duties, 
 (that is, those actions which are commanded by virtue 
 because they are prescribed by prudence), the animals 
 fulfil by natural instinct. 
 
 The pleasure that accompanies or depends on a 
 healthy and vigorous body will be the consequence and 
 reward of a temperate life and habits of active industry, 
 whether this pleasure were or were not the chief or only 
 determining motive thereto.' Virtue may, possibly, add 
 
 to the pleasure n good uf anothci kind, a higher good, 
 
 perhaps, than the worldly mind is capable of under- 
 standing, a spiritual complacency, of which in your pre- 
 sent sensualized state you can form no idea. It may 
 add, I say, but it cannot detract from it. Thus the re- 
 flected rays of the sun that give light, distinction, and 
 endless multiformity to the mind, give at the same time 
 the pleasurable sensation of warmth to the body. 
 
 If then the time has not yet come for any thing higher, 
 act on the maxim of seeking the most pleasure with the 
 least pain : and, if only you do not seek where you your- 
 self know it will not be found, this very pleasure and 
 this freedom from the disquietude of pain may produce 
 in you a state of being directly and indirectly favourable 
 to the germination and up-spring of a nobler seed. If 
 it be true, that men are miserable because they are 
 
34 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 wicked, it is likewise true, that many are wicked because 
 they are miserable. Health, cheerfulness, and easy cir- 
 cumstances, the ordinary consequences of temperance 
 and industry, will at least leave the field clear and open, 
 will tend to preserve the scales of the judgment even : 
 while the consciousness of possessing the esteem, re- 
 spect, and sympathy of your neighbours, and the sense 
 of your own increasing power and influence, can scarcely 
 fail to give a tone of dignity to your mind, and incline 
 you to hope nobly of your own being. And thus they 
 may prepare and predispose you to the sense and ac- 
 knowledgment of a principle differing, not merely in 
 degree but in kind, from the faculties and instincts of 
 the higher and more intelligent species of animals, (the 
 .ant, the beaver, the elephant), and which principle is 
 therefore your proper humanity. And on this account 
 and with this view alone may certain modes of pleasura- 
 ble or agreeable sensation, without confusion of terms, be 
 
 honoured with the title Of refined, intellectual, onnobling 
 
 pleasures. For pleasure (and happiness in its proper 
 sense is but the continuity and sum total of the pleasure 
 which is allotted or happens to a man, and hence by the 
 Greeks called *vkv$U } that is, good-hap, or more religi- 
 ously euSctifiovicc, that is, favourable providence) — plea- 
 sure, I say, consists in the harmony between the specific 
 excitability of a living creature, and the exciting causes 
 correspondent thereto. Considered therefore exclusively 
 in and for itself, the only question is quantum, not quale ? 
 How much on the whole ? the contrary, that is, the 
 painful and disagreeable, haying been subtracted. The 
 quality is a matter of taste : et de gustibus non est dis- 
 putandum. No man can judge for another. 
 
 This, I repeat, appears to me a safer language than 
 the sentences quoted above (that virtue alone is happi- 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 35 
 
 ness ; that happiness consists in virtue, &c,) sayings 
 which I find it hard to reconcile with other positions of 
 still more frequent occurrence in the same divines, or 
 with the declaration of St. Paul : "If in this life only 
 we have hope, ive are of all men most miserable." 
 
 At all events, I should rely far more confidently on 
 the converse, namely, that to be vicious is to be mis- 
 erable. Few men are so utterly reprobate, so imbruted 
 by their vices, as not to have some lucid, or at least 
 quiet and sober, intervals ; and in such a moment, dum 
 desceviunt irce, few can stand up unshaken against the 
 appeal to their own experience — what have been the 
 wages of sin ? what has the devil done for you ? What 
 sort of master have you found him ? Then let us in 
 befitting detail, and by a series of questions that ask no 
 loud, and are secure against any false, answer, urge 
 home the proof of the position, that to be vicious is to 
 be wretched : adding the fearful corollary, that if even 
 in the body, which as long as life is in it can never be 
 wholly bereaved of pleasurable sensations, vice is found 
 to be misery, what must it not be in the world to come? 
 There, where even the crime is no longer possible, 
 much less the gratifications that once attended it — where 
 nothing of vice remains but its guilt and its misery — 
 vice must be misery itself, all and utter misery. — So 
 best, if I err not, may the motives of prudence be held 
 forth, and the impulses of self-love be awakened, in 
 alliance with truth, and free from the danger of con- 
 founding things (the laws of duty, I mean, and the 
 maxims of interest) which it deeply concerns us to keep 
 distinct, inasmuch as this distinction and the faith therein 
 are essential to our moral nature, and this again the 
 ground-work and pre-condition of the spiritual state, in 
 which the humanity strives after godliness and, in the 
 
36 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 name and power, and through the prevenient and assist- 
 ing grace, of the Mediator, will not strive in vain. 
 
 The advantages of a life passed in conformity with 
 the precepts of virtue and religion, and in how many 
 and various respects they recommend virtue and reli- 
 gion even on grounds of prudence, form a delightful 
 subject of meditation, and a source of refreshing thought 
 to good and pious men. Nor is it strange if, transported 
 with the view, such persons should sometimes discourse 
 on the charm of forms and colours to men whose eyes 
 are not yet couched ; or that they occasionally seem to 
 invert the relations of cause and effect, and forget that 
 there are acts and determinations of the will and affec- 
 tions, the consequences of which may be plainly fore- 
 seen, and yet cannot be made our proper and primary 
 motives for such acts and determinations, without de- 
 stroying or entirely altering the distinct nature and cha- 
 racter of the latter. Sophron is well informed that 
 wealth and extensive patronage will be the consequence 
 of his obtaining the love and esteem of Constantia. But 
 if the foreknowledge of this consequence were, and were 
 found out to be, Sophron's main and determining motive 
 for seeking this love and esteem ; and if Constantia were 
 a woman that merited,, or was capable of feeling, either 
 the one or the other; would not Sophron find (and de- 
 servedly too) aversion and contempt in their stead? 
 Wherein, if not in this, differs the friendship of world- 
 lings from true friendship? Without kind offices and 
 useful services, wherever the power and opportunity 
 occur, love would be a hollow pretence. Yet what 
 noble mind would not be offended, if he were thought to 
 value the love for the sake of the services, and not rather 
 the services for the sake of the love ! 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 3? 
 
 APHORISM III. 
 
 Though prudence in itself is neither virtue nor spirit- 
 ual holiness, yet without prudence, or in opposition to 
 it, neither virtue nor holiness can exist. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 Art thou under the tyranny of sin ? a slave to vicious 
 habits? at enmity with God, and a skulking fugitive 
 from thy own conscience ? O, how idle the dispute, 
 whether the listening to the dictates of prudence from 
 prudential and self-interested motives be virtue or merit, 
 when the not listening is guilt, misery, madness, and 
 despair ! The best, the most Christianlike pity thou 
 canst show, is to take pity on thy own soul. The best 
 and most acceptable service thou canst render, is to do 
 justice and show mercy to thyself. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM I. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 What the apostles were in an extraordinary way befit- 
 ting the first annunciation of a religion for all mankind, 
 this all teachers of moral truth, who aim to prepare for 
 its reception by calling the attention of men to the law 
 in their own hearts, may, without presumption, consider 
 themselves to be under ordinary gifts and circumstances : 
 namely ambassadors for the greatest of kings, and upon 
 no mean employment, the great treaty of peace and re- 
 concilement betwixt him and mankind. 
 
 APHORISM II. 
 
 OF THE FEELING NATURAL TO INGENUOUS MINDS TOWARDS 
 THOSE WHO HAVE FIRST LED THEM TO REFLECT. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Though divine truths are to be received equally from 
 every minister alike, yet it must be acknowledged that 
 there is something (we know not what to call it) of a 
 more acceptable reception of those which at first were 
 the means of bringing men to God, than of others ; like 
 the opinion some have of physicians, whom they love. 
 
 APHORISM III. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to 
 the worth and value of its object. What, then, is the 
 best knowledge? 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 39 
 
 The exactest knowledge of things, is, to know them 
 in their causes ; it is then an excellent thing, and worthy 
 of their endeavours who are most desirous of knowledge, 
 to know the best things in their highest causes ; and the 
 happiest way of attaining to this knowledge, is, to pos- 
 sess those things, and to know them in experience. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is one main point of happiness, that he that is 
 happy doth know and judge himself to be so. This 
 being the peculiar good of a reasonable creature, it is to 
 be enjoyed in a reasonable way. It is not as the dull 
 resting of a stone, or any other natural body in its natu- 
 ral place ; but the knowledge and consideration of it is 
 the fruition of it, the very relishing and tasting of its 
 sweetness. 
 
 REMARK. 
 
 As in a Christian land we receive the lessons of 
 morality in connexion with the doctrines of revealed 
 religion, we cannot too early free the mind from preju- 
 dices widely spread, in part through the abuse, but far 
 more from ignorance, of the true meaning of doctrinal 
 terms, which, however they may have been perverted 
 to the purposes of fanaticism, are not only scriptural, 
 but of too frequent occurrence in Scripture to be over 
 looked or passed by in silence. The following extract, 
 therefore, deserves attention, as clearing the doctrine of 
 salvation, in connexion with the divine foreknowledge, 
 from all objections on the score of morality, by the just 
 and impressive view which the Archbishop here gives 
 of those occasional revolutionary moments, that turn of 
 the tide in the mind and character of certain individuals, 
 which (taking a religious course, and referred imme- 
 
40 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 diately to the author of all good) were in his day, more 
 generally than at present, entitled effectual calling. 
 The theological interpretation and the philosophic valid- 
 ity of this apostolic triad, election, salvation, and effectual 
 calling, (the latter being the intermediate) will be found 
 among the comments on the aphorisms of spiritual im- 
 port. For my present purpose it will be sufficient if 
 only I prove that the doctrines are in themselves innocu- 
 ous, and may be both holden and taught without any 
 practical ill-consequences, and without detriment to the 
 moral frame. 
 
 APHORISM V. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Two links of the chain (namely, election and salva- 
 tion) are up in heaven in God's own hand ; but this 
 middle one (that is, effectual calling) is let down to 
 earth, into the hearts of his children, and they laying 
 hold on it have sure hold on the other two : for no power 
 can sever them. If, therefore, they can read the charac- 
 ters of God's image in their own souls, those are the 
 counterpart of the golden characters of his love, in 
 which their names are written in the book of life. Their 
 believing writes their names under the promises of the 
 revealed book of life (the Scriptures) and thus ascer- 
 tains them, that the same names are in the secret book 
 of life which God hath by himself from eternity. So 
 that finding the stream of grace in their hearts, though 
 they see not the fountain whence it flows, nor the ocean 
 into which it returns, yet they know that it hath its 
 source in their eternal election, and shall empty itself 
 into the ocean of their eternal salvation. 
 
 If election, effectual calling, and salvation, be insepa- 
 rably linked together, then, by any one of them a man 
 may lay hold upon all the rest, and may know that his 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 41 
 
 hold is sure ; and this is the way wherein we may attain, 
 and ought to seek, the comfortable assurance of the love 
 of God. Therefore make your calling sure, and by 
 that your election; for that being done, this follows of 
 itself. We are not to pry immediately into the decree, 
 but to read it in the performance. Though the mariner 
 sees not the pole-star, yet the needle of the compass 
 which points to it, tells him which way he sails : thus 
 the heart that is touched with the loadstone of divine 
 love, trembling with godly fear, and yet still looking 
 towards God by fixed believing, interprets the fear by 
 the love in the fear, and tells the soul that its course is 
 heavenward, towards the haven of eternal rest. He 
 that loves, may be sure he was loved first ; and he that 
 chooses God for his delight and portion, may conclude 
 confidently, that God hath chosen him to be one of those 
 that shall enjoy him, and be happy in him for ever; for 
 that our love and electing of him is but the return and 
 repercussion of the beams of his love shining upon us. 
 
 Although from present unsanctification, a man cannot 
 infer that he is not elected; for the decree may, for part 
 of a man's life, run (as it were) underground ; yet this 
 is sure, that that estate leads to death, and unless it be 
 broken, will prove the black line of reprobation. A man 
 hath no portion amongst the children of God, nor can 
 read one word of comfort in all the promises that belong 
 to them, while he remains unholy. 
 
 REMARK. 
 
 In addition to the preceding, I select the following 
 paragraphs as having no where seen the terms, spirit, 
 the gifts of the spirit, and the like, so effectually vindi- 
 cated from the sneers of the sciolist on the one hand, 
 
 and protected from the perversions of the fanatic on the 
 4* 
 
42 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 other. In these paragraphs the Archbishop at once 
 shatters and precipitates the only draw-bridge between 
 the fanatical and the orthodox doctrine of grace, and the 
 gifts of the spirit. In Scripture the term, spirit, as a 
 power or property seated in the human soul, never stands 
 singly, but is always specified by a genitive case follow 
 ing; this being a Hebraism instead of the adjective which 
 the writer would have used if he had thought, as well as 
 written, in Greek. It is the spirit of meekness (a meek 
 spirit) or the spirit of chastity, and the like. The moral 
 result, the specific form and character in which the Spirit 
 manifests its presence, is the only sure pledge and token 
 of its presence ; which is to be, and which safely may 
 be, inferred from its practical effects, but of which an 
 immediate knowledge or consciousness is impossible ; 
 and every pretence to such knowledge is either hypocrisy 
 or fanatical delusion. 
 
 APHORISM VI. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 If any pretend that they have the Spirit, and so turn 
 away from the straight rule of the Holy Scriptures, they 
 have a spirit indeed, but it is a fanatical spirit, the spirit 
 of delusion and giddiness : but the Spirit of God, that 
 leads his children in the way of truth, and is for that 
 purpose sent them from heaven to guide them thither, 
 squares their thoughts and ways to that rule whereof it 
 is author, and that word which was inspired by it, and 
 sanctifies them to obedience. He that saith I know him, 
 and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the 
 truth is not in him. (1 John ii, 4.) 
 
 Now this Spirit which sanctifieth, and sanctifieth to 
 obedience, is within us the evidence of our election, and 
 the earnest of our salvation. And whoso are not sanc- 
 tified and led by this Spirit, the Apostle tells us what is 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 43 
 
 their condition: If any man have not the Spirit of 
 Christ, he is none of his. The stones which are ap- 
 pointed for that glorious temple above, are hewn, and 
 polished, and prepared for it here ; as the stones were 
 wrought and prepared in the mountains, for building the 
 temple at Jerusalem. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 There are many serious and sincere Christians who 
 have not attained to a fulness of knowledge and insight, 
 but are well and judiciously employed in preparing for 
 it. Even these may study the master-works of our 
 elder divines with safety and advantage, if they will 
 accustom themselves to translate the theological terms 
 into their moral equivalents ; saying to themselves — 
 This may not be all that is meant, but this is meant, and 
 it is that portion of the meaning, which belongs to me 
 in the present stage of my progress. For example : 
 render the words, sanctification of the Spirit, or the 
 sanctifying influences of the Spirit, by purity in life and 
 action from a pure principle. 
 
 He needs only reflect on his own experience to be 
 convinced, that the man makes the motive, and not the 
 motive the man. What is a strong motive to one man, 
 is no motive at all to another. If, then, the man de- 
 termines the motive, what determines the man — to a 
 good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous course 
 of conduct ? The intelligent will, or the self-determining 
 power ? True, in part it is ; and therefore the will is 
 pre-eminently the spiritual constituent in our being. 
 But will any reflecting man admit, that his own will is 
 the only and sufficient determinant of all he is, and all 
 he does ? Is nothing to be attributed to the harmony 
 of the system to which he belongs, and to the pre-estab- 
 
44 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 lished fitness of the objects and agents, known and un- 
 known, that surround him, as acting on the will, though, 
 doubtless, with it likewise ? a process, which the co- 
 instantaneous yet reciprocal action of the air and the 
 vital energy of the lungs in breathing may help to render 
 intelligible. 
 
 Again : in the world we see every where evidences 
 of a unity, which the component parts are so far from 
 explaining, that they necessarily pre-suppose it as the 
 cause and condition of their existing as those parts ; or 
 even of their existing at all. This antecedent unity, or 
 cause and principle of each union, it has since the time 
 of Bacon and Kepler been customary to call a law. 
 This crocus, for instance, or any other flower, the reader 
 may have in sight or choose to bring before his fancy. 
 That the root, stem, leaves, petals, &c, cohere to one 
 plant, is owing to an antecedent power or principle in 
 the seed, which existed before a single particle of the 
 matters that constitute the size and visibility of the 
 crocus, had been attracted from the surrounding soil, air, 
 and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed ? Here too 
 the same necessity meets us. An antecedent unity (I 
 speak not of the parent plant, but of an agency antece- 
 dent in the order of operance, yet remaining present as 
 the conservative and reproductive power) must here too 
 be supposed. Analyse the seed with the finest tools, 
 and let the solar microscope come in aid of your senses, 
 what do you find ? Means and instruments, a wondrous 
 fairy tale of nature, magazines of food, stores of various 
 sorts, pipes, spiracles, defences — a house of many cham- 
 bers, and the owner and inhabitant invisible ! Reflect 
 further on the countless millions of seeds of the same 
 name, each more than numerically differenced from every 
 other ; and further yet, reflect on the requisite harmony 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 45 
 
 of all surrounding things, each of which necessitates the 
 same process of thought, and the coherence of all of 
 which to a system, a world, demands its own adequate 
 antecedent unity, which must therefore of necessity be 
 present to all and in all, yet in no wise excluding or 
 suspending the individual law or principle of union in 
 each. Now will reason, will common sense, endure the 
 assumption, that it is highly reasonable to believe a 
 universal power, as the cause and pre-condition of the 
 harmony of all particular wholes, each of which involves 
 the working principle of its own union — that it is reason- 
 able, I say, to believe this respecting the aggregate of 
 objects, which, without a subject, (that is, a sentient and 
 intelligent existence) would be purposeless : and yet 
 unreasonable and even superstitious or enthusiastic to 
 entertain a similar belief in relation to the system of in- 
 telligent and self-conscious beings, to the moral and 
 personal world ? But if in this too, in the great com- 
 munity of persons, it is rational to infer a one universal 
 presence, a one present to all and in all, is it not most 
 irrational to suppose that a finite will can exclude it ? 
 
 Whenever, therefore, the man is determined (that is, 
 impelled and directed) to act in harmony of intercom- 
 munion, must not something be attributed to this all- 
 present power as acting in the will ? and by what fitter 
 names can we call this than the law, as empowering ; 
 the word, as informing; and the spirit, as actuating? 
 
 What has been here said amounts (I am aware) only 
 to a negative conception ; but this is all that is required 
 for a mind at that period of its growth which we are 
 now supposing, and as long as religion is contemplated 
 under the form of morality. A positive insight belongs 
 to a more advanced stage : for spiritual truths can only 
 spiritually be discerned. This we know from revelation, 
 
46 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and (the existence of spiritual truths being granted) 
 philosophy is compelled to draw the same conclusion. 
 But though merely negative, it is sufficient to render the 
 union of religion and morality conceivable ; sufficient to 
 satisfy an unprejudiced inquirer, that the spiritual doc- 
 trines of the Christian religion are not at war with the 
 reasoning faculty, and that they do not run on the same 
 line, or radius, with the understanding, yet neither do 
 they cut or cross it. It is sufficient, in short, to prove, 
 that some distinct and consistent meaning may be at- 
 tached to the assertion of the learned and philosophic 
 Apostle, that the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, 
 that is, with the will, as the supernatural in man and 
 the principle of our personality — of that, I mean, by 
 which we are responsible agents ; persons, and not 
 merely living things.* 
 
 It will suffice to satisfy a reflecting mind, that even 
 at the porch and threshold of revealed truth there is a 
 great and worthy sense in which we may believe the 
 Apostle's assurance, that not only doth the Spirit aid 
 our infirmities ; that is, act on the will by a pre-disposing 
 influence from without, as it were, though in a spiritual 
 manner, and without suspending or destroying its free- 
 dom (the possibility of which is proved to us in the in- 
 fluences of education, of providential occurrences, and, 
 above all, of example) but that in regenerate souls it 
 
 * Whatever is comprised in the chain and mechanism of cause and 
 effect, of course necessitated, and having its necessity in some other 
 thing, antecedent or concurrent— this is said to be natural ; and the ag- 
 gregate and system of all such things is Nature. It is, therefore, a con- 
 tradiction in terms to include in this the free-will, of which the verbal 
 definition is— that which originates an act or state of being. In this 
 6ense, therefore, which is the sense of St. Paul, and indeed of the New 
 Testament throughout, spiritual and supernatural are synonymous. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 47 
 
 may act in the will ; that uniting and becoming one* 
 with our will or spirit it may make intercession for us; 
 nay, in this intimate union taking upon itself the form 
 of our infirmities, may intercede for us ivith groanings 
 that cannot be uttered. Nor is there any danger of 
 fanaticism or enthusiasm as the consequence of such a 
 belief, if only the attention be carefully and earnestly 
 drawn to the concluding words of the sentence (Romans 
 viii. 26) ; if only the due force and the full import be 
 given to the term unutterable or incommunicable, in St. 
 Paul's use of it. In this, the strictest and most proper 
 use of the term, it signifies, that the subject, of which it 
 is predicated, is something which I cannot, which from 
 the nature of the thing it is impossible that I should, 
 communicate to any human mind (even of a person under 
 the same condition with myself) so as to make it in itself 
 the object of his direct and immediate consciousness. It 
 cannot be the object of my own direct and immediate 
 consciousness ; but must be inferred. Inferred it may 
 be from its workings ; it cannot be perceived in them. 
 And, thanks to God ! in all points in which the knowl- 
 edge is of high and necessary concern to our moral and 
 religious welfare, from the effects it may safely be in- 
 ferred by us, from the workings it may be assuredly 
 known ; and the Scriptures furnish the clear and unfail- 
 ing rules for directing the inquiry, and for drawing the 
 conclusion. 
 
 If any reflecting mind be surprised that the aids of the 
 
 * Some distant and faint similitude of this, that merely as a similitude 
 may be innocently used to quiet the fancy, provided it be not imposed 
 on the understanding as an analogous fact, or as identical in kind, is 
 presented to us in the power of the magnet to awaken and strengthen 
 the magnetic power in a bar of iron, and (in the instance of the compound 
 magnet) acting in and with the latter. 
 
48 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 divine Spirit should be deeper than our consciousness 
 can reach, it must arise from the not having attended 
 sufficiently to the nature and necessary limits of human 
 consciousness. For the same impossibility exists as to 
 the first acts and movements of our own will — the far- 
 thest distance our recollection can follow back the traces 
 never leads us to the first foot-mark — the lowest depth 
 that the light of our consciousness can visit even with a 
 doubtful glimmering, is still at an unknown distance 
 from the ground : and so, indeed, must it be with all 
 truths, and all modes of being that can neither be counted, 
 coloured, or delineated. Before and after, when applied 
 to such subjects, are but allegories, which the sense or 
 imaginations supplies to the understanding. The posi- 
 tion of the Aristoteleans, nihil in intellectu quod non 
 prius in sensu, on which Mr. Locke's Essay is grounded, 
 is irrefragable : Locke erred only in taking half the truth 
 for a whole truth. Conception is consequent on per- 
 ception. What we cannot imagine, we cannot, in the 
 proper sense of the word, conceive. 
 
 I have already given one definition of nature. Another, 
 and differing from the former in words only, is this : 
 Whatever is representable in the forms of time and 
 space, is nature. But whatever is comprehended in 
 time and space, is included in the mechanism of cause 
 and effect. And conversely, whatever, by whatever 
 means, has its principle in itself,. so far as to originate 
 its actions, cannot be contemplated in any of the forms 
 of space and time ; it must, therefore, be considered as 
 spirit or spiritual by a mind in that stage of its develope- 
 ment which is here supposed, and which we have agreed 
 to understand under the name of morality or the moral 
 state : for in this stage we are concerned only with the 
 forming of negative conceptions, negative convictions ; 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 49 
 
 and by spiritual I do not pretend to determine what the 
 will is, but what it is not — namely, that it is not nature. 
 And as no man who admits a will at all, (for we may 
 safely presume, that no man not meaning to speak figu- 
 ratively, would call the shifting current of a stream the 
 will* of the river), will suppose it below nature, we may 
 safely add, that it is supernatural ; and this without the 
 least pretence to any positive notion or insight. 
 
 Now morality accompanied with convictions like 
 these, I have ventured to call religious morality. Of 
 the importance I attach to the state of mind implied in 
 these convictions, for its own sake, and as the natural 
 preparation for a yet higher state and a more substantive 
 knowledge, proof more than sufficient, perhaps, has been 
 given in the length and minuteness of this introductory 
 discussion, and in the foreseen risk which I run of ex- 
 posing the volume at large to the censure which every 
 work, or rather which every writer, must be prepared to 
 undergo, who, treating of subjects that cannot be seen, 
 touched, or in any other way made matters of outward 
 sense, is yet anxious both to attach to and to convey a 
 distinct meaning by, the words he makes use of — the 
 censure of being dry, abstract, and (of all qualities most 
 scaring and opprobrious to the ears of the present gene- 
 ration) metaphysical : though how it is possible that a 
 work not physical, that is, employed on objects known 
 or believed on the evidence of senses, should be other 
 than metaphysical, that is, treating on subjects, the evi- 
 dence of which is not derived from the senses, is a pro- 
 
 " The river windeth at his own sweet will." 
 Wordsworth's exquisite Sonnet on Westminster Bridge at sunrise. 
 But who does not see that here the poetic charm arises from the 
 known and felt impropriety of the expression, in the technical sense of 
 the word impropriety, among grammarians 1 
 
 5 
 
50 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 blem which critics of this order find it convenient to 
 leave unsolved. 
 
 The author of the present volume, will, indeed, have 
 reason to think himself fortunate, if this be all the charge ! 
 How many smart quotations, which (duly cemented by 
 personal allusions to the author's supposed pursuits, 
 attachments, and infirmities) would of themselves make 
 up a review of the volume, might be supplied with the 
 works of Butler, Swift, and Warburton. For instance : 
 " It may not be amiss to inform the public, that the 
 compiler of the Aids to Reflection, and commenter on a 
 Scotch Bishop's Platonico-Calvinistic commentary on 
 St. Peter, belongs to the sect of the iEolists, whose 
 fruitful imaginations led them into certain notions, which 
 although in appearance very unaccountable, are not 
 without their mysteries and their meanings ; furnishing 
 plenty of matter for such, whose converting imaginations 
 dispose them to reduce all things into types ; who can 
 make shadows, no thanks to the sun ; and then mould 
 them into substances, no thanks to philosophy ; whose 
 peculiar talent lies in fixing tropes and allegories to the 
 letter, and refining what is literal into figure and mys- 
 tery." — Tale of the Tub, sect. xi. 
 
 And would it were my lot to meet with a critic, who, 
 in the might of his own convictions, and with arms of 
 equal point and efficiency from his own forge, would 
 come forth as my assailant ; or who, as a friend to my 
 purpose, would set forth the objections to the matter and 
 pervading spirit of these aphorisms, and the accompany- 
 ing elucidations. Were it my task to form the mind of 
 a young man of talent, desirous to establish his opinions 
 and belief on solid principles, and in the light of distinct 
 understanding, I would commence his theological stu- 
 dies, or, at least, that most important part of them re- 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 51 
 
 specting the aids which religion promises in our attempts 
 to realize the ideas of morality, by bringing together all 
 the passages scattered throughout the writings of Swift 
 and Butler, that bear on enthusiasm, spiritual operations, 
 and pretences to the gifts of the spirit, with the whole 
 train of new lights, raptures, experiences, and the like. 
 For all that the richest wit, in intimate union with pro- 
 found sense and steady observation, can supply on these 
 topics, is to be found in the works of these satirists ; 
 though unhappily alloyed with much that can only tend 
 to pollute the imagination. 
 
 Without stopping to estimate the degree of caricature 
 in the portraits sketched by these bold masters, and 
 without attempting to determine in how many of the 
 enthusiasts brought forward by them in proof of the in- 
 fluence of false doctrines, a constitutional insanity, that 
 would probably have shown itself in some other form, 
 would be the truer solution, I would direct my pupil's 
 attention to one feature common to the whole group — 
 the pretence, namely, of possessing, or a belief and ex- 
 pectation grounded on other men's assurances of their 
 possessing, an immediate consciousness, a sensible ex- 
 perience, of the Spirit in and during its operation on the 
 soul. It is not enough that you grant them a conscious- 
 ness of the gifts and graces infused, or an assurance of 
 the spiritual origin of the same, grounded on their cor- 
 respondence to the Scripture promises, and their con- 
 formity with the idea of the divine giver. No ! they all 
 alike, it will be found, lay claim (or at least look for- 
 ward) to an inward perception of the Spirit itself and of 
 its operating. 
 
 Whatever must be misrepresented in order to be ridi- 
 culed, is in fact not ridiculed ; but the thing substituted 
 for it. It is a satire on something else, coupled with a 
 
52 AIDS TO REFLECTION 
 
 lie on the part of the satirist, who knowing, or having 
 the means of knowing the truth, chose to call one thing 
 by the name of another. The pretensions to the super- 
 natural, pilloried by Butler, sent to Bedlam by Swift, and 
 (on their re-appearance in public) gibbetted by Warbur- 
 ton, and anatomized by Bishop Lavington, one and all 
 have this for their essential character, that the Spirit is 
 made the immediate object of sense or sensation. 
 Whether the spiritual presence and agency are supposed 
 cognizable by indescribable feeling or unimaginable vision 
 by some specific visual energy ; whether seen or heard, 
 or touched, smelt, and tasted — for in those vast store- 
 houses of fanatical assertion, the volumes of ecclesiasti- 
 cal history and religious auto-biography, instances are 
 not wanting even of the three latter extravagancies ; — this 
 variety in the mode may render the several pretensions 
 more or less offensive to the taste ; but with the same 
 absurdity for the reason, this being derived from a con- 
 tradiction in terms common and radical to them all alike, 
 the assumption of a something essentially supersensual, 
 that is nevertheless the object of sense, that is, not su- 
 persensual. 
 
 Well then ! — for let me be allowed still to suppose 
 the reader present to me, and that I am addressing him 
 in the character of companion and guide — the positions 
 recommended for your examination not only do not in- 
 volve, but exclude, this inconsistency. And for aught 
 that hitherto appears, we may see with complacency the 
 arrows of satire feathered with wit, weighted with sense, 
 and discharged by a strong arm, fly home to their mark. 
 Our conceptions of a possible spiritual communion, 
 though they are but negative, and only preparatory to a 
 faith in its actual existence, stand neither in the level or 
 the direction of the shafts. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 53 
 
 If it be objected, that Swift and Warburton did not 
 choose openly to set up the interpretations of later and 
 more rational divines against the decisions of their own 
 church, and from prudential considerations did not attack 
 the doctrine in toto : that is their concern (I would an- 
 swer) and it is more charitable to think otherwise. But 
 we are in the silent school of reflection, in the secret 
 confessional of thought. Should we lie for God, and 
 that to our own thoughts ? — They indeed, who dare do 
 the one, will soon be able to do the other. So did the 
 comforters of Job : and to the divines, who resemble 
 Job's comforters, we will leave both attempts. 
 
 But (it may be said) a possible conception is not ne- 
 cessarily a true one ; nor even a probable one, where 
 the facts can be otherwise explained. In the name of 
 the supposed pupil I would reply— That is the very 
 question I am preparing myself to examine ; and am 
 now seeking the vantage ground where I may best com- 
 mand the facts. In my own person, I would ask the 
 objector, whether he counted the declarations of Scrip- 
 ture among the facts to be explained. But both for 
 myself and my pupil, and in behalf of all rational inquiry, 
 I would demand that the decision should not be such, in 
 itself or in its effects, as would prevent our becoming 
 acquainted with the most important of these facts ; nay, 
 such as would, for the mind of the decider, preclude 
 their very existence. Unless ye believe, says the pro- 
 phet, ye cannot understand. Suppose (what is at least 
 possible) that the facts should be consequent on the be- 
 lief, it is clear that without the belief the materials, on 
 which the understanding is to exert itself, would be 
 wanting. 
 
 The reflections that naturally arise out of this last 
 remark, are those that best suit the stage at which we 
 
 5* 
 
54 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 last halted, and from which we now recommence out 
 progress — the state of a moral man, who has already 
 welcomed certain truths of religion, and is inquiring 
 after other and more special doctrines : still, however, 
 as a moralist, desirous indeed, to receive them into 
 combination with morality, but to receive them as its 
 aid, not as its substitute. Now, to such a man I say; — 
 Before you reject the opinions and doctrines asserted 
 and enforced in the following extract from Leighton, 
 and before you give way to the emotions of distaste or 
 ridicule, which the prejudices of the circle in which you 
 move, or your own familiarity with the mad perversions 
 of the doctrine by fanatics in all ages, have connected 
 with the very words, spirit, grace, gifts, operations, &c, 
 re-examine the arguments advanced in the first pages of 
 this introductory comment, and the simple and sober 
 view of the doctrine, contemplated in the first instance 
 as a mere idea of the reason, flowing naturally from the 
 admission of an infinite omnipresent mind as the ground 
 of the universe. Reflect again and again, and be sure 
 that you understand the doctrine before you determine 
 on rejecting it. That no false judgments, no extrava- 
 gant conceits, no practical ill-consequences need arise 
 out of the belief of the spirit, and its possible commu- 
 nion with the spiritual principle in man, or can arise out 
 of the right belief, or are compatible with the doctrine 
 truly and scripturally explained, Leighton, and almost 
 every single period in the passage here transcribed from 
 him, will suffice to convince you. 
 
 On the other hand, reflect on the consequences of 
 rejecting it. For surely it is not the act of a reflecting 
 mind, nor the part of a man of sense to disown and cast 
 out one tenet, and yet persevere in admitting and cling- 
 ing to another that has neither sense nor purpose, that 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 55 
 
 does not suppose and rest on the truth and reality of the 
 former! If you have resolved that all belief of a divine 
 comforter present to our inmost being and aiding our 
 infirmities, is fond and fanatical — if the Scriptures prom- 
 ising and asserting such communion are to be explained 
 away into the action of circumstances, and the necessary 
 movements of the vast machine, in one of the circulating 
 chains of which the human will is a petty link — in what 
 better light can prayer appear to you, than the groans 
 of a wounded lion in his solitary den, or the howl of a 
 dog with his eyes on the moon ? At the best, you can 
 regard it only as a transient bewilderment of the social 
 instinct, as a social habit misapplied ! Unless indeed 
 you should adopt the theory which I remember to have 
 read in the writings of the late Dr. J ebb, and for some 
 supposed beneficial re-action of praying on the prayer's 
 own mind, should practise it as a species of animal mag- 
 netism to be brought about by a wilful eclipse of the 
 reason, and a temporary make-believe on the part of the 
 self-magnetizer ! 
 
 At all events, do not pre-jndge a doctrine, the utter 
 rejection of which must oppose a formidable obstacle to 
 your acceptance of Christianity itself, when the books, 
 from which alone we can learn what Christianity is and 
 what it teaches, are so strangely written, that in a series 
 of the most concerning points, including (historical facts 
 excepted) all the peculiar tenets of the religion, the plain 
 and obvious meaning of the words, that in which they 
 were understood by learned and simple for at least six- 
 teen centuries, during the far larger part of which the 
 language was a living language, is no sufficient guide to 
 their actual sense or to the writer's own meaning! And 
 this too, where the literal and received sense involves 
 nothing impossible, or immoral, or contrary to reason. 
 
56 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 With such a persuasion, deism would be a more con- 
 sistent creed. But, alas ! even this will fail you. The 
 utter rejection of all present and living communion with 
 the universal spirit impoverishes deism itself, and ren- 
 ders it as cheerless as atheism, from which indeed it 
 would differ only by an obscure impersonation of what 
 the atheist receives unpersonified under the name of 
 fate or nature. 
 
 APHORISM VII. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 The proper and natural effect, and in the absence of 
 all disturbing or intercepting forces, the certain and sen- 
 sible accompaniment of peace (or reconcilement) with 
 God, is our own inward peace, a calm and quiet temper 
 of mind. And where there is a consciousness of earn- 
 estly desiring, and of having sincerely striven after the 
 former, the latter may be considered as a sense of its 
 presence. In this case, I say, and for a soul watchful 
 and under the discipline of the gospel, the peace with a 
 man's self may be the medium or organ through which 
 the assurance of his peace with God is conveyed. We 
 will not therefore condemn this mode of speaking, though 
 we dare not greatly recommend it. Be it, that there is r 
 truly and in sobriety of speech, enough of just analogy 
 in the subjects meant, to make this use of the words, if 
 less than proper, yet something more than metaphorical; 
 still we must be cautious not to transfer to the object 
 the defects or the deficiency of the organ, which must 
 needs partake of the imperfections of the imperfect 
 beings to whom it belongs. Not without the co-assur- 
 ance of other senses and of the same sense in other men, 
 dare we affirm that what our eye beholds is verily there 
 to be beholden. Much less may we conclude negatively, 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 57 
 
 and from the inadequacy, or the suspension, or from 
 every other affection of sight infer the non-existence, or 
 departure, or changes of the thing itself. The chame- 
 leon darkens in the shade of him that bends over it to 
 ascertain its colours. In like manner, but with yet 
 greater caution, ought we to think respecting a tranquil 
 habit of the inward life, considered as a spiritual sense 
 as the medial organ in and by which our peace with 
 God, and the lively working of his grace on our spirit, 
 are perceived by us. This peace which we have with 
 God in Christ, is inviolable ; but because the sense and 
 persuasion of it may be interrupted, the soul that is 
 truly at peace with God may for a time be disquieted in 
 itself, through weakness of faith, or the strength of 
 temptation, or the darkness of desertion, losing sight of 
 that grace, that love and light of God's countenance, on 
 which its tranquillity and joy depend. Thou didst hide 
 thy face, saith David, and. I was troubled. But when 
 these eclipses are over, the soul is revived with new 
 consolation, as the face of the earth is renewed and 
 made to smile with the return of the sun in the spring ; 
 and this ought always to uphold Christians in the saddest 
 times, namely, that the grace and love of God towards 
 them depend not on their sense, nor upon any thing in 
 them, but is still in itself, incapable of the smallest 
 alteration. 
 
 A holy heart that gladly entertains grace, shall find 
 that it and peace cannot dwell asunder ; while an un- 
 godly man may sleep to death in the lethargy of carnal 
 presumption and impenitency: but a true, lively, solid 
 peace, he cannot have. There is no peace to the wicked, 
 saith my God, Isa. lvii, 21. 
 
58 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM VIII. 
 
 WORLDLY HOPES. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Wor]dly hopes are not living, but lying hopes ; they 
 die often before us, and we live to bury them, and see 
 our own folly and infelicity in trusting to them ; but at 
 the utmost, they die with us when we die, and can ac- 
 company us no farther. But the lively hope, which is 
 the Christian's portion, answers expectation to the full, 
 and much beyond it, and deceives no way but in that 
 happy way of far exceeding it. 
 
 A living hope, living in death itself ! The world dares 
 say no more for its device than Dum spiro spero; but 
 the children of God can add, by virtue of this living 
 hope, Dum exspiro spero. 
 
 APHORISM IX. 
 THE WORLDLING'S FEAR. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is a fearful thing when a man and all his hopes die 
 together. Thus saith Solomon of the wicked, Prov. xi, 
 7, When he dieth, then die his hopes; (many of them 
 before, but at the utmost then,* all of them;) but the 
 righteous hath hope in his death. Prov. xiv, 32. 
 
 APHORISM X. 
 
 WORLDLY MIRTH. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, 
 and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs 
 
 * One of the numerous proofs against those who with a strange in- 
 consistency hold the Old Testament to have been inspired throughout, 
 and yet deny that the doctrine of a future state is taught therein. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 59 
 
 to a heavy heart. Prov. xxv, 20. Worldly mirth is so 
 far from curing spiritual grief, that even worldly grief, 
 where it is great and takes deep root is not allayed but 
 increased by it. A man who is full of inward heaviness, 
 the more he is encompassed about with mirth, it exas- 
 perates and enrages his grief the more ; like ineffectual 
 weak physic, which removes not the humour, but stirs 
 it and makes it more unquiet. But spiritual joy is sea- 
 sonable for all estates ; in prosperity, it is pertinent to 
 crown and sanctify all other enjoyments, with this which 
 so far surpasses them ; and in distress, it is the only 
 Nepenthe, the cordial of fainting spirits : so Psal. iv, 7, 
 He hath put joy into my heart. This mirth makes way 
 for itself, which other mirth cannot do. These songs 
 are sweetest in the night of distress. 
 
 There is something exquisitely beautiful and touching 
 in the first of these similes : and the second, though less 
 pleasing to the imagination, has the charm of propriety, 
 and expresses the transition with equal force and liveli- 
 ness. A grief of recent birth is a sick infant that must 
 have its medicine administered in its milk, and sad 
 thoughts are the sorrowful heart's natural food. This 
 is a complaint that is not to be cured by opposites, 
 which for the most part only reverse the symptoms 
 while they exasperate the disease — or like a rock in the 
 mid channel of a river swollen by a sudden rain-flush 
 from the mountain, which only detains the excess of 
 waters from their proper outlet, and makes them foam, 
 roar, and eddy. The soul in her desolation hugs the 
 sorrow close to her, as her sole remaining garment : and 
 this must be drawn off so gradually, and the garment to 
 be put in its stead so gradually slipt on and feel so like 
 the former, that the sufferer shall be sensible of the 
 change only by the refreshment. The true spirit of 
 
60 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 consolation is well content to detain the tear in the eye, 
 and finds a surer pledge of its success in the smile of 
 resignation that dawns through that, than in the liveliest 
 shows of a forced and alien exhilaration. 
 
 APHORISM XI. 
 Plotinus thanked God, that his soul was not tied to 
 an immortal body. 
 
 APHORISM XII. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 What a full confession do we make of our dissatis- 
 faction with the objects of our bodily senses, that in our 
 attempts to express what we conceive the best of beings, 
 and the greatest of felicities to be, we describe by the 
 exact contraries of all, that we experience here — the one 
 as infinite, incomprehensible, immutable, &c, the other 
 as incorruptible, undefiled, and that passeth not away. 
 At all events, this coincidence, say rather, identity of 
 attributes is sufficient to apprize us, that to be inheritors 
 of bliss, we must become the children of God. 
 
 This remark of Leighton's is ingenious and startling. 
 Another, and more fruitful, perhaps more solid, inference 
 from the fact would be, that there is something in the 
 human mind which makes it know (as soon as it is 
 sufficiently awakened to reflect on its own thoughts and 
 notices) that in all finite quantity there is an infinite, in 
 all measure of time an eternal; that the latter are the 
 basis, the substance, the true and abiding reality of the 
 former ; and that as we truly are, only as far as God is 
 with us, so neither can we truly possess (that is, enjoy) 
 our being or any other real good, but by living in the 
 sense of his holy presence. 
 
 A life of wickedness is a life of lies; and an evil being, 
 or the being of evil, the last and darkest mystery. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 61 
 
 APHORISM XIII. 
 THE WISEST USE OF THE IMAGINATION, 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is not altogether unprofitable ; yea, it is great wis- 
 dom in Christians to be arming themselves against such 
 temptations as may befall them hereafter, though they 
 have not as yet met with them ; to labour to overcome 
 them before-hand, to suppose the hardest things that 
 may be incident to them, and to put on the strongest 
 resolutions they can attain unto. Yet all that is but an 
 imaginary effort; and therefore there is no assurance 
 that the victory is any more than imaginary too, till it 
 come to action, and then, they that have spoken and 
 thought very confidently, may prove but (as one said of 
 the Athenians) fortes in tabula, patient and courageous 
 in picture or fancy ; and, notwithstanding all their arms, 
 and dexterity in handling them by way of exercise, may 
 be foully defeated when they are to fight in earnest. 
 
 APHORISM XIV. 
 
 THE LANGUAGE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The word of God speaks to men, and therefore it 
 speaks the language of the children of men. This just 
 and pregnant thought was suggested to Leighton by 
 Gen. xxii, 12. The same text has led me to unfold and 
 expand the remark. — On moral subjects, the Scriptures 
 speak in the language of the affections which they 
 excite in us ; on sensible objects, neither metaphysically, 
 as they are known by superior intelligences ; nor theo- 
 retically, as they would be seen by us were we placed in 
 the sun ; but as they are represented by our human 
 senses in our present relative position. Lastly, from no 
 vain, or worse than vain, ambition of seeming to ivalk 
 6 
 
62 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 on the sea of mystery in my way to truth, but in the 
 hope of removing a difficulty that presses heavily on the 
 minds of many who in heart and desire are believers, 
 and which long pressed on my own mind, I venture to 
 add : that on spiritual things, and allusively to the mys- 
 terious union or conspiration of the divine with the 
 human in the spirits of the just, spoken of in Rom. vii, 
 27, the word of God attributes the language of the spirit 
 sanctified to the Holy One, the Sanctifier. 
 
 Now the spirit in man (that is, the will) knows its own 
 state in and by its acts alone : even as in geometrical 
 reasoning the mind knows its constructive faculty in the 
 act of constructing, and contemplates the act in the 
 product (that is, the mental figure or diagram) which is 
 inseparable from the act and co-instantaneous. 
 
 Let the reader join these two positions ; first, that the 
 divine Spirit acting in the human will is described as 
 one with the will so filled and actuated : secondly, that 
 our actions are the means, by which alone the will be- 
 comes assured of its own state : and he will understand, 
 though he may not perhaps adopt my suggestion, that 
 the verse, in which God speaking of himself, says to 
 Abraham, Now I knoiu that thou fearest God, seeing 
 thou has not withheld thy son, thy only son, from me — 
 may be more than merely figurative. An accommoda- 
 tion I grant ; but in the thing expressed, and not al- 
 together in the expressions. In arguing with infidels, 
 or with the weak in faith, it is a part of religious pru- 
 dence, no less than of religious morality, to avoid what- 
 ever looks like an evasion. To retain the literal sense, 
 wherever the harmony of Scripture permits, and reason 
 does not forbid, is ever the honester, and, nine times in 
 ten, the more rational and pregnant interpretation. The 
 contrary plan is an easy and approved way of getting 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 63 
 
 rid of a difficulty; but nine times in ten a bad way of • 
 solving it. But alas ! there have been too many com- 
 mentators who are content not to understand a text 
 themselves, if only they can make the reader believe 
 they do. 
 
 Of the figures of speech in the sacred volume, that 
 are only figures of speech, the one of most frequent oc- 
 currence is that which describes an effect by the name 
 of its most usual and best known cause : the passages, 
 for instance, in which grief, fury, repentance, &c, are 
 attributed to the Deity. But these are far enough from 
 justifying the (I had almost said, dishonest) fashion of 
 metaphorical glosses, in as well as out of the church ; 
 and which our fashionable divines have carried to such 
 an extent, as in the doctrinal part of their creed, to leave 
 little else but metaphors. But the reader who wishes to 
 find this latter subject, and that of the aphorism, treated 
 more at large, is referred to Mr. Southey's Omniana, 
 vol. ii, p. 7 — 12, and to the note in p. 62 — 67, of the 
 author's second Lay Sermon. 
 
 APHORISM XV. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN NO STOIC. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERinGE. 
 
 Seek not altogether to dry up the stream of sorrow, 
 but to bound it and keep it within its banks. Religion 
 doth not destroy the life of nature, but adds to it a life 
 more excellent; yea, it doth not only permit, but requires 
 some feelings of afflictions. Instead of patience, there 
 is in some men an affected pride of spirit suitable only 
 to the doctrine of the Stoics as it is usually taken. 
 They strive not to feel at all the afflictions that are on 
 them ; but where there is no feeling at all, there can be 
 no patience. 
 
64 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 * Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic is, per- 
 haps, the nearest to Christianity. Yet even to this sect 
 Christianity is fundamentally opposite. For the Stoic 
 attaches the highest honour (or rather, attaches honour 
 solely) to the person that acts virtuously in spite of his 
 feelings, or who has raised himself above the conflict by 
 their extinction ; while Christianity instructs us to place 
 small reliance on a virtue that does not begin by bring- 
 ing the feelings to a conformity with the commands of 
 the conscience. Its especial aim, its characteristic 
 operation, is to moralize the affections. The feelings, 
 that oppose a right act, must be wrong feelings. The 
 act, indeed, whatever the agent's feelings might be, 
 Christianity would command : and under certain cir- 
 cumstances would both command and commend it — 
 command it, as a healthful symptom in a sick patient ; 
 and commend it, as one of the ways and means of chang- 
 ing the feelings, or displacing them by calling up the 
 opposite. 
 
 COROLLARIES TO APHORISM XV. 
 
 I. The more consciousness in our thoughts and words, 
 and the less in our impulses and general actions, the 
 better and more healthful the state both of head and 
 heart. As the flowers from an orange tree in its time 
 of blossoming, that burgeon forth, expand, fall, and are 
 momently replaced, such is the sequence of hourly and 
 momently charities in a pure and gracious soul. The 
 modern fiction which depictures the son of Cytherea 
 with a bandage round his eyes, is not without a spiritual 
 meaning. There is a sweet and holy blindness in Chris- 
 tian love even as there is a blindness of life, yea, and 
 of genius too, in the moment of productive energy. 
 
 II, Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supple- 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 65 
 
 ments for the deficient energy of the living principle, 
 the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those 
 momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and 
 best balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, 
 and where humility, no less than prudence, prescribes 
 deliberation. We find a similitude of this, I had almost 
 said a remote analogy, in organized bodies. The lowest 
 class of animals or protozoa, the polypi for instance, 
 have neither brain nor nerves. Their motive powers 
 are all from without. The sun, light, the warmth, the 
 are their nerves and brain. As life ascends, nerves 
 appear ; but still only as the conductors of an external 
 influence ; next are seen the knots or ganglions, as so 
 many foci of instinctive agency, that imperfectly imitate 
 the yet wanting centre. And now the promise and 
 token of a true individuality are disclosed ; both the 
 reservoir of sensibility and the imitative power that 
 actuates the, organs of motion, (the muscles) with the 
 net-work of conductors, are all taken inward and appro- 
 priated ; the spontaneous rises into the voluntary, and 
 finally after various steps and a long ascent, the material 
 and animal means and conditions are prepared for the 
 manifestations of a free will, having its law within itself 
 and its motive in the law — and thus bound to originate 
 its own acts, not only without, but even against, alien 
 stimulants. That in our present state we have only the 
 dawning of this inward sun (the perfect law of liberty) 
 will sufficiently limit and qualify the preceding position, 
 if only it have been allowed to produce its two-fold con- 
 sequence — the excitement of hope and the repression of 
 vanity. 
 
66 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XVI. 
 
 As excessive eating or drinking both makes the body 
 sickly and lazy, fit for nothing but sleep, and besots the 
 mind, as it clogs up with crudities the way through 
 which the spirits should pass,* bemiring them, and 
 making them move heavily, as a coach in a deep way ; 
 thus doth all immoderate use of the world and its de- 
 lights wrong the soul in its spiritual condition, makes it 
 sickly and feeble, full of spiritual distempers and inac- 
 tivity, benumbs the graces of the Spirit, and fills the 
 soul with sleepy vapours, makes it grow secure and 
 heavy in spiritual exercises, and obstructs the way and 
 motion of the Spirit of God, in the soul. Therefore, if 
 you would be spiritual, healthful, and vigorous, and 
 enjoy much of the consolations of Heaven, be sparing 
 and sober in those of the earth, and what you abate of 
 the one, shall be certainly made up in the other. 
 
 APHORISM XVII. 
 INCONSISTENCY. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 It is a most unseemly and unpleasant thing, to see a 
 man's life full of ups and downs, one step like a Chris- 
 tian, and another like a worldling ; it cannot choose but 
 both pain himself and mar the edification of others. 
 
 * Technical phrases of an obsolete system will yet retain their places, 
 nay, acquire universal currency, and become sterling in the language, 
 when they at once represent the feelings, and give an apparent solution 
 of them by visual images easily managed by the fancy. Such are many 
 terms and phrases from the humoral physiology long exploded, but which 
 are far more popular than any description would be from the theory that 
 has taken its place. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 67 
 
 The same sentiment, only with a special application 
 to the maxims and measures of our cabinet statesmen, 
 has been finely expressed by a sage poet of the pre- 
 ceding generation, in lines which no generation will find 
 inapplicable or superannuated. 
 
 God and the world we worship both together, 
 
 Draw not our laws to Him, but His to ours ; 
 Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither, 
 
 The imperfect will brings forth but barren flowers ! 
 Unwise as all distracted interests be, 
 Strangers to God, fools in humanity : 
 Too good for great things, and too great for good, 
 While still " I dare not" waits upon '' I wou'd." 
 
 APHORISM XVII CONTINUED. 
 
 THE ORDINARY MOTIVE TO INCONSISTENCY. 
 
 LE1GHTON. 
 
 What though the polite man count thy fashion a little 
 odd and too precise, it is because he knows nothing 
 above that model of goodness which he hath set himself, 
 and therefore approves of nothing beyond it : he knows 
 not God, and therefore doth not discern and esteem what 
 is most like Him. When courtiers come down into the 
 country, the common home-bred people possibly think 
 their habit strange ; but they care not for that, it is the 
 fashion at court. What need, then, that Christians 
 should be so tender-foreheaded, as to be put out of 
 countenance because the world looks on holiness as a 
 singularity ? It is the only fashion in the highest court, 
 yea, of the King of kings himself. 
 
 APHORISM XVIII. 
 
 SUPERFICIAL RECONCILIATIONS, AND SELF-DECEIT IN FOR- 
 GIVING. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 When, after variances, men are brought to an agree- 
 ment, they are much subject to this, rather to cover their 
 
68 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 remaining malices with superficial verbal forgiveness, 
 than to dislodge them and free the heart of them. This 
 is a poor self-deceit. As the philosopher said to him, 
 who being ashamed that he was espied by him in a 
 tavern in the outer room, withdrew himself to the inner, 
 he called after him, " That is not the way out ; the 
 more you go that way, you will be the further in !" So 
 when hatreds are upon admonition not thrown out, but 
 retire inward to hide themselves, they grow deeper and 
 stronger than before ; and those constrained semblances 
 of reconcilement are but a false healing, do but skin the 
 wound over and therefore it usually breaks forth worse 
 again. 
 
 APHORISM XIX. 
 
 OF THE WORTH AND THE DUTIES OF THE PREACHER. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 The stream of custom and our profession bring us to 
 the preaching of the Word, and we sit out our hour 
 under the sound ; but how few consider and prize it as 
 the great ordinance of God for the salvation of souls, the 
 beginner and the sustainer of the divine life of grace 
 within us ! And certainly, until we have these thoughts 
 of it, and seek to feel it thus ourselves, although we 
 hear it most frequently, and let slip no occasion, yea, 
 hear it with attention and some present delight, yet still 
 we miss the right use of it, and turn it from its true end. 
 while we take it not as that ingrafted ivord which is able 
 to save our souls. James i, 21. 
 
 Thus ought they who preach to speak the word ; to 
 endeavour their utmost to accommodate it to this end. 
 that sinners may be converted, begotten again, and be- 
 lievers nourished and strengthened in their spiritual life ; 
 to regard no lower end, but aim steadily at that mark. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 69 
 
 Their hearts and tongues ought to be set on fire with 
 holy zeal for God and loVe to souls, kindled by the Holy 
 Ghost, that came down on the apostles in the shape of 
 fiery tongues. 
 
 And those that hear should remember this as the end 
 of their hearing, that they may receive spiritual life and 
 strength by the word. For though it seems a poor 
 despicable business, that a frail, sinful man like your- 
 selves should speak a few words in your hearing, yet, 
 look upon it as the way wherein God communicates 
 happiness to those who believe, and works that believing 
 unto happiness, alters the whole frame of the soul, and 
 makes a new creation as it begets it again to the inheri- 
 tance of glory. Consider it thus, which is its true no- 
 tion ; and then, what can be so precious 1 
 
 APHORISM XX. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 The difference is great in our natural life, in some 
 persons especially ; that they who in infancy were so 
 feeble, and wrapped up as others in swaddling clothes, 
 yet afterwards come to excel in wisdom and m the 
 knowledge of sciences, or to be commanders of great 
 armies, or to be kings : but the distance is far greater 
 and more admirable, betwixt the small beginnings of 
 grace, and our after perfection, that fulness of knowledge 
 that we look for, and that crown of immortality which 
 all they are born to who are born of God. 
 
 But as in the faces or actions of some children, char- 
 acters and presages of their after-greatness have appeared 
 (as a singular beauty in Moses' face, as they write of 
 him, and as Cyrus was made king among the shepherds' 
 children with whom he was brought up, &c,) so also, 
 certainly, in these children of God, there be some char- 
 
70 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 acters and evidences that they are born for Heaven by 
 their new birth. That holiness and meekness, that pa- 
 tience and faith which shine in the actions and sufferings 
 of the saints, are characters of their Father's image, and 
 show their high original, and foretel their glory to come; 
 such a glory as doth not only surpass the world's 
 thoughts, but the thoughts of the children of God them- 
 selves. 1 John hi, 2. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 This aphorism would, it may seem, have been placed 
 more fitly in the chapter following. In placing it here, 
 T have been determined by the following convictions : 
 1. Every state, and consequently that which we have 
 described as the state of religious morality, which is not 
 progressive, is dead or retrograde. 2. As a pledge of 
 this progression, or, at least, as the form in which the 
 propulsive tendency shows itself, there are certain hopes, 
 aspirations, yearnings, that with more or less of con- 
 sciousness, rise and slir in the heart of true morality as 
 naturally as the sap in the full-formed stem of a rose 
 flows towards the bud, within which the flower is ma- 
 turing. 3. No one, whose own experience auihorizes 
 him to confirm the truth of this statement, can have 
 been conversant with the volumes of religious biography, 
 can have perused (for instance) the lives of Cranmer, 
 Ridley, Latimer, Wishart, Sir Thomas More, Bernard 
 Gilpin, Bishop Bedel, or of Egede, Swartz, and the 
 missionaries of the frozen world, without an occasional 
 conviction, that these men lived under extraordinary 
 influences, which in each instance and in all ages of the 
 Christian era bear the same characters, and both in the 
 accompaniments and the results evidently refer to a 
 common origin. And what can this be ? is the question 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 71 
 
 that must needs force itself on the mind in the first 
 moment of reflection on a phenomenon so interesting 
 and apparently so anomalous. The answer is as neces- 
 sarily contained in one or the other of two assumptions. 
 These influences are either the product of delusion, 
 (insania amabilis, and the reaction of disordered nerves), 
 or they argue the existence of a relation to some real 
 agency, distinct from what is experienced or acknow- 
 ledged by the world at large, for which as not merely 
 natural on the one hand, and yet not assumed to be 
 miraculous* on the other, we have no apter name than 
 spiritual. Now, if neither analogy justifies nor the moral 
 feelings permit the former assumption ; and we decide 
 therefore in favour of the reality of a state other and 
 higher than the mere moral man, whose religion! con- 
 sists in morality, has attained under these convictions ; 
 can the existence of a transitional state appear other than 
 probable ? or that these very convictions, when accom- 
 panied by correspondent dispositions and stirrings of 
 the heart, are among the marks and indications of such 
 a state 1 And thinking it not unlikely that among the 
 readers of this volume, there may be found some indi- 
 viduals, whose inward state, though disquieted by doubts 
 and oftener still perhaps by blank misgivings, may, 
 nevertheless, betoken the commencement of a transition 
 from a not irreligious morality to a spiritual religion, 
 with a view to their interests I placed this aphorism 
 under the present head. 
 
 * In check of fanatical pretensions, it is expedient to confine the term 
 miraculous, to cases where the senses are appealed to, in proof of some- 
 thing that transcends, or can be a part of, the experience derived from 
 the senses. 
 
 t For let it not be forgotten, that morality, as distinguished from pru- 
 dence, implying, (it matters not under what name, whether of honour. 
 
72 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XXI. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 The most approved teachers of wisdom, in a human 
 way, have required of their scholars, that to the end their 
 minds might be capable of it, they should be purified 
 from vice and wickedness. And it was Socrates' cus- 
 tom, when any one asked him a question, seeking to be 
 informed by him, before he would answer them, he asked 
 them concerning their own qualities and course of life, 
 
 APHORISM XXII. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE NOT THE ULTIMATE END OF RELIGIOUS 
 PURSUITS. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 The hearing and reading of the word, under which I 
 comprise theological studies generally, are alike defec- 
 tive when pursued without increase of knowledge, and 
 when pursued chiefly for increase of knowledge. To 
 seek no more than a present delight, that evanishelh 
 with the sound of the words that die in the air, is not to 
 desire the word as meat, but as music, as God tells the 
 prophet Ezekiel of his people, Ezek. xxxiii, 32. And 
 lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that 
 hath a pleasant voice and can play well upon an instru- 
 ment ; for they hear thy words, and they do them not. 
 To desire the word for the increase of knowledge, al- 
 though this is necessary and commendable, and, being 
 rightly qualified, is a part of spiritual accretion, yet, take 
 it as going no further, it is not the true end of the word. 
 Nor is the venting of that knowledge in speech and fre- 
 quent discourse of the word and the divine truths that 
 
 or duty, or conscience, still, I say, implying,) and being grounded in, an 
 awe of the invisible and a confidence therein beyond (nay, occasionally 
 in apparent contradiction to) the inductions of outward experience, is 
 essentially religious. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 73 
 
 are in it; which, where it is governed with Christian 
 prudence, is not to be despised, but commended ; yet, 
 certainly, the highest knowledge, and the most frequent 
 and skilful speaking of the word severed from the growth 
 here mentioned, misses the true end of the word. If 
 any one's head or tongue should grow apace, and all the 
 rest stand at a stay, it would certainly make him a mon- 
 ster ; and they are no other, who are knowing and dis- 
 coursing Christians, and grow daily in that respect, but 
 not at all in holiness of heart and life, which is the pro- 
 per growth of the children of God. Apposite to their 
 case is Epictetus's comparison of the sheep ; they return 
 aiot what they eat in grass, but in wooL 
 
 APHORISM XXIII. 
 
 THE SUM OF CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 I/EIGHTON. 
 
 In times of peace, the Church may dilate more, and 
 build as it were into breadth, but in times of trouble, it 
 arises more in height > it is then built upwards 1 as in 
 cities where men are straitened, they build usually higher 
 than in the country. 
 
 APHORISM XXIV. 
 
 WORTH VT TO BE FRAMED AND HUNG UP IN THE LIBRARY OF 
 EVERY THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 
 
 LEIGHTOU ANfo COLERIDGE. 
 
 Where there is a great deal of smoke and no clear 
 flame, it argues much moisture in the matter, yet it wit- 
 nesseth certainly that there is fire there ; and therefore 
 dubious questioning is a much better evidence, than that 
 senseless deadness which most take for believing. Men 
 that know nothing in sciences, have no doubts. He 
 never truly believed, who was not made first sensible 
 
 and convinced of unbelief. 
 
 7 
 
74 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the dispo* 
 sition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end 
 in believing the truth. I will venture to add in my own 
 name and from my own conviction the following : 
 
 APHORISM XXV. 
 
 He, who begins by loving Christianity, better than 
 truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church bet- 
 ter than Christianity, and end in loving himself better 
 than all. 
 
 APHORISM XXVI. 
 
 THE ABSENCE OF DISPUTES, AND A GENERAL AVERSION TO RE- 
 LIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES, NO PROOF OF TRUE UNANIMITY. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 The boasted peaceableness about questions of faith 
 too often proceeds from a superficial temper, and not 
 seldom from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no 
 marketable use or value, and from indifference to reli- 
 gion itself. Toleration is a herb of spontaneous growth 
 in the soil of indifference ; but the weed has none of the 
 virtues of the medicinal plant, reared by humility in the 
 garden of zeal. Those, who regard religions as matters 
 of taste, may consistently include all religious differences 
 in the old adage, de gustibus non est disputandum. And 
 many there be among these of Gallio's temper, who care 
 for none of these things, and who account all questions 
 in religion, as he did, but matters of words and names. 
 And by this all religions may agree together. But that 
 were not a natural union produced by the active heat of 
 the spirit, but a confusion rather, arising from the want 
 of it ; not a knitting together, but a freezing together, as 
 cold congregates all bodies how heterogeneous soever, 
 sticks, stones, and water ; but heat makes first a sepa- 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 75 
 
 ration of different things, and then unites those that are 
 of the same nature. 
 
 Much of our common union of minds, I fear, proceeds 
 from no other than the aforementioned causes, want of 
 knowledge, and want of affection to religion. You that 
 boast you live conformably to the appointments of the 
 Church, and that no one hears of your noise, we may 
 thank the ignorance of your minds for that kind of 
 quietness. 
 
 The preceding extract is particularly entitled to our 
 serious reflections, as in a tenfold degree more applica- 
 ble to the present times than to the age in which it was 
 written. We all know, tnat lovers are apt to take offence 
 and wrangle on occasions that perhaps are but trifles, 
 and which assuredly would appear such to those who 
 regard love itself as folly. These quarrels may, indeed, 
 be no proof of wisdom ; but still, in the imperfect state 
 of our nature the entire absence of the same, and this 
 too on far more serious provocations, would excite a 
 strong suspicion of a comparative indifference in the 
 parties who can love so coolly where they profess to love 
 so well. I shall believe our present religious tolerancy 
 to proceed from the abundance of our charity and good 
 sense, when I see proofs that we are equally cool and 
 forbearing as litigants and political partizans. 
 
 APHORISM XXVII. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF WORLDLY VIEWS, (OR WHAT ARE CALLED 
 A MAN'S PROSPECTS IN LIFE,) THE BANE OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 MINISTRY. 
 
 LEIGHTOW- 
 
 It is a base, poor thing for a man to seek himself; far 
 below that royal dignity that is here put upon Christians, 
 and that priesthood joined with it. Under the law, those 
 who were squint-eyed were incapable of the priesthood; 
 
76 AIDS TO REFLECTION 
 
 truly, this squinting toward our own interest, the looking 
 aside to that, in God's affairs especially, so deforms the 
 face of the soul, that makes it altogether unworthy the 
 honour of this spiritual priesthood. Oh ! this is a large 
 task, an infinite task. The several creatures bear their 
 part in this; the sun says somewhat, and moon and 
 stars, yea, the lowest have some share in it ; the very 
 plants and herbs of the field speak of God ; and yet, the 
 very highest and best, yea, all of them together, the 
 whole concert of heaven and earth cannot show forth all 
 His praise to the full. No, it is but a part, the smallest 
 part of that glory, which they can reach. 
 
 APHORISM XXVIII. 
 
 DESPISE NONE ; DESPAIR OF NONE. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest 
 piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, 
 said they, the name of God may be on it. Though there 
 was a little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing 
 but good religion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample 
 riot on any ^ there may be some work of grace there, 
 that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be 
 written upon that soul thou treadest on ; it may be a 
 soul that Christ thought so mueh of, as to give his pre- 
 cious blood for it ; therefore despise it not. 
 
 APHORISM XXIX. 
 
 MEN OF LEAST MERIT MOST APT TO BE CONTEMPTUOUS, BE- 
 CAUSE MOST IGNORANT AND MOST OVERWEENING OF THEM- 
 SELVES. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Too many take the ready course to deceive them- 
 selves ; for they look with both eyes on the failings and 
 defects of others, and scarcely give their good qualities 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 77 
 
 half an eye, while, on the contrary, in themselves, they 
 study to the full their own advantages, and their weak 
 nesses and defects, (as one says,) they skip over, as 
 children do their hard words in their lesson, that are 
 troublesome to read ; and making this uneven parallel, 
 what wonder if the result be a gross mistake of them- 
 selves ! 
 
 APHORISM XXX. 
 
 VANITY MAY STRUT IN RAGS, AND HUMILITY BE ARRAYED IN 
 PURPLE AND FINE LINEN. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is not impossible that there may be in some an 
 affected pride in the meanness of apparel, and in others, 
 under either neat or rich attire, a very humble unaffected 
 mind : using it upon some of the aforementioned en- 
 gagements, or such like, and yet, the heart not at all 
 upon it. Magnus qui fictilibus utitur tanquam argento, 
 nee ille minor qui argento tanquam Jictilibus, says 
 Seneca : Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it 
 were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his 
 plate is no more than earthenware, 
 
 APHORISM XXXI. 
 
 OF THE DETRACTION AMONG RELIGIOUS PROFESSORS. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 They who have attained to a self-pleasing pitch of 
 civility or formal religion, have usually that point of 
 presumption with it, that they make their own size the 
 model and rule to examine all by. What is below it, 
 they condemn indeed as profane ; but what is beyond it, 
 they account needless and affected preciseness : and 
 therefore are as ready as others to let fly invectives or 
 bitter taunts against it, which are the keen and poisoned 
 
 7* 
 
78 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that shall be 
 called to a strict account. 
 
 The slanders, perchance, may not be altogether forged 
 or untrue ; they may be the implements, not the inven- 
 tions, of malice. But they do not on this account escape 
 the guilt of detraction. Rather, it is characteristic of 
 the evil spirit in question, to work by the advantage of 
 real faults ; but these stretched and aggravated to the 
 utmost. It is not expressible how deep a wound a 
 
 TONGUE SHARPENED TO THIS WORK WILL GIVE, WITH NO 
 
 noise and a very little word. This is the true white 
 gunpowder, which the dreaming projectors of silent mis- 
 chiefs and insensible poisons sought for in the laborato- 
 ries of art and nature, in a world of good ; but which 
 was to be found in its most destructive form,, in " the 
 world, of evil,, the tongue." 
 
 APHORISM XXXII. 
 
 THE REMEDY. 
 
 LEIGHTON; 
 
 All true remedy must begin at the heart; otherwise- 
 it will be but a mountebank cure> a false imagined con- 
 quest. The weights and wheels are there, and the clock 
 striken according to their motion. Even he that speaks 
 contrary to what is within him, guilefully contrary to 
 his- inward conviction and knowledge, yet speaks con- 
 formably to what is within him in the temper and frame 
 of his heart, which is double, aJieart and a heart, as- 
 tie Psalmist hath it, Psal. xii, 2. 
 
 APHORISM XXXIII. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 It is an argument of a candid ingenuous mind, to de- 
 light in the good name and commendations of others ;: 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 79 
 
 to pass by their defects and take notice of their virtues ; 
 and to speak and hear of those willingly, and not endure 
 either to speak or hear of the other ; for in this indeed 
 you may be little less guilty than the evil speaker, in 
 taking pleasure in it, though you speak it not. He that 
 willingly drinks in tales and calumnies, will, from the 
 delight he hath in evil hearing, slide insensibly into the 
 humour of evil speaking. It is strange how most per- 
 sons dispense with themselves in this point,, and that in 
 scarcely any societies shall we find a hatred of this ill, 
 but rather some tokens of taking pleasure in it ; and 
 until a Christian sets himself to an inward watchfulness 
 over his heart, not suffering in it any thought that is un- 
 charitable, or vain self-esteem, upon the sight of others' 
 frailties, he will still be subject to somewhat of this,, in 
 the tongue or ear at least. So then,, as for die evil of 
 guile in the tongue, a sincere heart, truth in the inward 
 parts, powerfully redresses it ; therefore it is expressed^ 
 Psal. xv, 2, That speaketh the truth from his heart ; 
 thence it flows. Seek much after this, to speak nothing 
 with God, nor men, but what is the sense of a single 
 unfeigned heart.. sweet truth ! excellent but rare 
 sincerity ! he that loves that truth within, and who is 
 himself at once the truth and the life, He alone can 
 work it there ! J Seek it of him. 
 
 It is characteristic of the Roman dignity and sobriety, 
 that, in the Latin, to favour with the tongue (favere 
 lingua) means, to he silent. We say, Hold! your tongue ! 
 as if it were an injunction, that could not be carried into 
 effect but by manual force, or the pincers of the fore- 
 finger and thumb T And verily — I blush to say it — it is 
 not women and Frenchmen only that would rather have 
 their tongues bitten than bitted, and feel their souls in a 
 strait-waistcoat,, when they am obliged to remain silent. 
 
80 AIDS TO REFLECTION, 
 
 APHORISM XXXIV. 
 ON THE PASSION FOR NEW AND STRIKING THOUGHTS. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 In conversation seek not so much either to vent thy 
 knowledge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually 
 and effectually what thou dost know. And in this way 
 those mean despised truths, that every one thinks he is 
 sufficiently seen in, will have a new sweetness and use 
 in them, which thou didst not so well perceive before 
 (for these flowers cannot be sucked dry,) and in this 
 humble sincere way thou shalt grow in grace and in 
 knowledge too. 
 
 APHORISM XXXV. 
 
 THE RADICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GOOD MAN AND 
 THE VICIOUS MAN. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 The godly man hates the evil he possibly by tempta- 
 tion hath been drawn to do, and loves the good he is 
 frustrated of, and, having intended, hath not attained to 
 do. The sinner, who hath his denomination from sin as 
 his course, hates the good which sometimes he is forced 
 to do, and loves that sin which many times he does not, 
 either wanting occasion and means, so that he cannot do 
 it, or through the check of an enlightened conscience 
 possibly dares not do ; and though so bound up from 
 the act, as a dog in a chain, yet the habit, the natural 
 inclination and desire in him, is still the same, the 
 strength of his affection is earned to sin. So in the 
 weakest sincere Christian, there is that predominant 
 sincerity and desire of holy walking, according to which 
 he is called a righteous person, the Lord is pleased to 
 give him that name, and account him so, being upright 
 in heart,, though often failing. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 81 
 
 Leighton adds, " There is a righteousness of a higher 
 strain." I do not ask the reader's full assent to this 
 position : I do not suppose him as yet prepared to yield 
 it. But thus much he will readily admit, that here, if 
 any where, we are to seek the fine line which, like stripes 
 of light in light, distinguishes, not divides, the summit 
 of religious morality from spiritual religion. 
 
 "A righteousness (Leighton continues,) that is not in 
 him, but upon him. He is clothed with it." This, Reader ! 
 is the controverted doctrine, so warmly asserted and so 
 bitterly decried under the name of " imputed right- 
 eousness." Our learned Archbishop, you see, adopts 
 it ; and it is on this account principally, that by many 
 of our leading churchmen his orthodoxy has been more 
 than questioned, and his name put in the list of pro- 
 scribed divines, as a Calvinist. That Leighton attached 
 a definite sense to the words above quoted, it would be 
 uncandid to doubt ; and the general spirit of his writings 
 leads me to presume that it was compatible with the 
 eternal distinction between things and persons, and there- 
 fore opposed to modern Calvinism. But what it was, I 
 have not (I own) been able to discover. The sense, 
 however, in which I think he might have received this 
 doctrine, and in which I avow myself a believer in it, 
 I shall have an opportunity of showing in another place. 
 My present object is to open out the road by the removal 
 of prejudices, so far at least as to throw some disturbing 
 doubts on the secure taking-for-granted, that the pecu- 
 liar tenets of the Christian faith asserted in the articles 
 and homilies of our national Church are in contradiction 
 to the common sense of mankind. And with this view, 
 (and not in the arrogant expectation or wish, that a mere 
 ipse dixit should be received for argument) I here avow 
 my conviction, that the doctrine of imputed righteous- 
 
82 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ness, rightly and scripturally interpreted, is so far from 
 being either irrational or immoral, that reason itself pre- 
 scribes the idea in order to give a meaning and an ul- 
 timate object to morality ; and that the moral law in the 
 conscience demands its reception in order to give reality 
 and substantive existence to the idea presented by the 
 reason. 
 
 • APHORISM XXXVI. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Your blessedness is not, — no, believe it, it is not where 
 most of you seek it, in things below you. How can that 
 be ? It must be a higher good to make you happy. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of 
 creation, leaves death behind it or under it. The metal 
 at its height of being seems a mute prophecy of the 
 coming vegetation, into a mimic semblance of which it 
 crystallizes. The blossom and flower, the acme of 
 vegetable life, divides into correspondent organs with 
 reciprocal functions, and by instinctive motions and 
 approximations seems impatient of that figure, by which 
 it is differenced in kind from the flower-shaped Psyche, 
 that flutters with free wing above it. And wonderfully 
 in the insect realm doth the irritability, the proper seat 
 of instinct, while yet the nascent sensibility is subordi- 
 nated thereto — most wonderfully, I say, doth the mus- 
 cular life in the insect, and the musculo-arterial in the 
 bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive under- 
 standing, yea, and the moral affections and charities, of 
 man. Let us carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the 
 mysterious week, the teeming work-days of the creator: 
 as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired his- 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 83 
 
 torian of the generations of the heaven and the earth, in 
 the days that the Lord God made the earth and the 
 heavens. And who that hath watched their ways with 
 an understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving, 
 still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and 
 loyal bee ; the home-building, wedded, and divorceless 
 swallow ; and above all the manifoldly intelligent* ant 
 tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their 
 warriors and miners, the husbandfolk, that fold in their 
 tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters 
 with the holy instincts of maternal love, detached and 
 in selfless purity — and not say to himself, Behold the 
 shadow of approaching humanity, the sun rising from 
 behind, in the kindling morn of creation ! Thus all 
 lower natures find their highest good in semblances and 
 seekings of that which is higher and better. All things 
 strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall 
 man alone stoop ? Shall his pursuits and desires, the 
 reflections of his inward life, be like the reflected image 
 of a tree on the edge of a pool, that grows downward, 
 and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable element be- 
 neath it, in neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds 
 and oozy bottom-grass that are yet better than itself and 
 more noble, in as far as substances that appear as 
 shadows are preferable to shadows mistaken for sub- 
 stance ! No ! it must be a higher good to make you 
 happy. While you labour for any thing below your 
 proper humanity, you seek a happy life in the region of 
 death. Well saith the moral poet — 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! 
 
 * See Huber on Bees, and on Ants. 
 
84 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XXXVII. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 There is an imitation of men that is impious and 
 wicked, which consists in taking the copy of their sins. 
 Again, there is an imitation which though not so grossly 
 evil, yet, is poor and servile, being in mean things, yea, 
 sometimes descending to imitate the very imperfections 
 of others, as fancying some comeliness in them : as some 
 of Basil's scholars, who imitated his slow speaking, 
 which he had a little in the extreme, and could not help. 
 But this is always laudable, and worthy of the best minds, 
 to be imitators of that which is good, wheresover they 
 find it ; for that stays not in any man's person, as the 
 ultimate pattern, but rises to the highest grace, being 
 man's nearest likeness to God, His image and resem- 
 blance, bearing His stamp and superscription, and be- 
 longing peculiarly to Him, in what hand soever it be 
 found, as carrying the mark of no other owner than 
 Him. 
 
 APHORISM XXXVIII. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Those who think themselves high-spirited, and will 
 bear least, as they speak, are often, even by that, forced 
 to bow most, or to burst under it; while humility and 
 meekness escape many a burden, and many a blow, 
 always keeping peace within, and often without too. 
 
 APHORISM XXXIX. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Our condition is universally exposed to fears and 
 troubles, and no man is so stupid but he studies and 
 projects for some fence against them, some bulwark to 
 break the incursion of evils, and so to bring his mind to 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 85 
 
 some ease, ridding it of the fear of them. Thus, men 
 seek safety in the greatness, or multitude, or supposed 
 faithfulness, of friends ; they seek by any means to be 
 strongly underset this way, to have many, and powerful, 
 and trust-worthy friends. But wiser men, perceiving 
 the unsafely and vanity of these and all external things, 
 have cast about for some higher course. They see a 
 necessity of withdrawing a man from externals, which 
 do nothing but mock and deceive those most who trust 
 most to them ; but they cannot tell whither to direct 
 him. The best of them bring him into himself, and 
 think to quiet him so, but the truth is, he finds as little 
 to support him there ; there is nothing truly strong 
 enough within him, to hold out against the many sor- 
 rows and fears which still from without do assault him. 
 So then, though it is well done, to call off a man from 
 outward things, as moving sands, that he build not on 
 them, yet, this is not enough; for his own spirit is as 
 unsettled a piece as is in all the world, and must have 
 some higher strength than its own, to fortify and fix it. 
 This is the way that is here taught, Fear not their fear, 
 but sanctify the Lord your God in your hearts ; and if 
 you can attain this latter, the former will follow of itself. 
 
 APHORISM XL. 
 
 WORLDLY TROUBLES IDOLS. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 The too ardent love or self-willed desire of power, or 
 wealth, or credit in the world, is (an Apostle has assured 
 us) idolatry. Now among the words or synonymes for 
 idols, in the Hebrew language^ there is one that in its 
 primary sense signifies troubles (tegirim), other two 
 that signify terrors (miphletzeth and emim). And so it 
 is certainly. All our idols prove so to us. They fill 
 
86 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 us with nothing but anguish and troubles, with cares 
 and fears, that are good for nothing but to be fit punish- 
 ments of the folly, out of which they arise. 
 
 APHORISM XLI. 
 
 ON THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF INFIDELS. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 A regardless contempt of infidel writings is usually 
 the fittest answer ; Spreta vilescerent. But where the 
 holy profession of Christians is likely to receive either 
 the main or the indirect blow, and a word of defence 
 may do any thing to ward it off, there we ought not to 
 spare to do it. 
 
 Christian prudence goes a great way in the regulating 
 of this. Some are not capable of receiving rational 
 answers, especially in divine things ; they were not only 
 lost upon them, but religion dishonoured by the contest. 
 
 Of this sort are the vulgar railers at religion, the foul- 
 mouthed believers of the Christian faith and history. 
 Impudently false and slanderous assertions can be met 
 only by assertions of their impudent and slanderous false- 
 hood : and Christians will not, must not, condescend to 
 this. How can mere railing be answered by them who 
 are forbidden to return a railing answer? Whether, or 
 on what provocations, such offenders may be punished 
 or coerced on the score of incivility, and ill-neighbour- 
 hood, "and for abatement of a nuisance, as in the case of 
 other scolds and endangerers of the public peace, must 
 be trusted to the discretion of the civil magistrate. Even 
 then, there is danger of giving them importance, and 
 flattering their vanity, by attracting attention to their 
 works, if the punishment be slight ; and if severe, of 
 spreading far and wide their reputation as martyrs, as 
 the smell of a dead dog at a distance is said to change 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 87 
 
 into that of musk. Experience hitherto seems to favour 
 the plan of treating these betes puantes and enfans de 
 Diable, as their four-footed brethren, the skink and 
 squash, are treated* by the American woodmen, who 
 turn their backs upon the fetid intruder, and make ap- 
 pear not to see him, even at the cost of suffering him to 
 regale on the favourite viand of these animals, the brains 
 of a stray goose or crested thraso of the dunghill. At 
 all events, it is degrading to the majesty, and injurious 
 to the character of religion, to make its safety the plea 
 for their punishment, or at all to connect the name of 
 Christianity with the castigation of indecencies that 
 properly belong to the beadle, and the perpetrators of 
 which would have equally deserved his lash, though the 
 religion of their fellow-citizens, thus assailed by them, 
 had been that of Fo or of Juggernaut. 
 
 On the other hand, we are to answer every one that 
 inquires a reason, or an account ; which supposes some- 
 thing receptive of it. We ought to judge ourselves 
 engaged to give it, be it an enemy, if he will hear; if it 
 gain him not, it may in part convince and cool him; 
 much more, should it be one who ingenuously inquires 
 for satisfaction, and possibly inclines to receive the truth, 
 but has been prejudiced by misrepresentations of it. 
 
 * About the end of the same year (says Kalm) another of these ani- 
 mals {Mephitis Americana) crept into our cellar ; but did not exhale the 
 smallest scent, because it was not disturbed. A foolish old woman, how- 
 ever, who perceived it at night, by the shining, and thought, I suppose, 
 that it would set the world on fire, killed it ; and at that moment its stench 
 began to spread. 
 
 We recommend this anecdote to the consideration of sundry old wo- 
 men, on this side of the Atlantic, who, though they do not wear the ap- 
 propriate garment, are worthy to sit in their committee-room, like Bick- 
 erstaff in the Tatler, under the canopy of their grandam's hoop-petticoat. 
 
OO AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XLIL 
 
 PASSION NO FRIEND TO TRUTH. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Truth needs not the service of passion; yea, nothing 
 so disserves it, as passion when set to serve it. The 
 Spirit of truth is withal the Spirit of meekness. The 
 Dove that rested on that great champion of truth, who 
 is The Truth itself, is from Him derived to the lovers 
 of truth, and they ought to seek the participation of it. 
 Imprudence makes some kind of Christians lose much 
 of their labour, in speaking for religion, and drive those 
 further off, whom they would draw into it. 
 
 The confidence that attends a Christian's belief makes 
 the believer not fear men, to whom he answers, but still 
 he fears his God, for whom he answers, and whose in- 
 terest is chief in those things he speaks of. The soul 
 that hath the deepest sense of spiritual things, and the 
 truest knowledge of God, is most afraid to miscarry in 
 speaking of Him, most tender and wary how to acquit 
 itself when engaged to speak of and for God.* 
 
 * To the same purpose are the two following sentences from Hilary : 
 
 Etiam qua, pro religione dicimus, cum grandi mctu et disciplind dicere 
 debemus. — Hilarius de Trinit. Lib. 7. 
 
 Non relictus est hominum cloquiis de Dei rebus aliius quam Dei sermo. 
 —Idem. 
 
 The latter, however, must be taken with certain qualifications and ex- 
 ceptions : as when any two or more texts are in apparent contradiction, 
 and it is required to state a truth that comprehends and reconciles both, 
 and which, of course, cannot be expressed in the words of either :— for 
 example, the Filial subordination (My father is greater than I,) in the 
 equal Deity (My Father and I are one.) 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 89 
 
 APHORISM XLIII. 
 
 ON THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is a fruitless verbal debate, whether conscience be 
 a faculty or a habit. When all is examined, conscience 
 will be found to be no other than the mind of a man, 
 under the notion of a particular reference to himself and 
 his own actions. 
 
 •COMMENT. 
 
 What conscience is, and that it is the ground and 
 antecedent of human (or self-) consciousness, and not 
 any modification of the latter, I have shown at large in 
 a work announced for the press, and -described in the 
 chapter following. I have selected the preceding ex- 
 tract as an exercise for reflection ; and because I think 
 that in too closely following Thomas a Kempis, the 
 Archbishop has strayed from his own judgment. The 
 definition, for instance, seems to say all, and in fact says 
 nothing ; for if I asked, How do you define the human 
 mind ? the answer must at least contain, if not consist 
 of, the words, " a mind capable of conscience." For 
 ■conscience is no synonyme of consciousness, nor any 
 mere expression of the same as modified by the particu- 
 lar object. On the contrary, a consciousness properly 
 human, (that is, self-consciousness,) with the sense of 
 moral responsibility, pre-supposes the conscience as its- 
 antecedent condition and ground. Lastly, the sentence, 
 " It is a fruitless verbal debate," is an assertion of the 
 same complexion with the contemptuous sneers at verbal 
 criticism by the contemporaries of Bentl'ey.. In ques- 
 tions of philosophy or divinity that have occupied the 
 learned and been the subjects of many successive con- 
 
90 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 troversies, for one instance of mere logomachy I could 
 bring ten instances of logodaedaly, or verbal legerde- 
 main, which have perilously confirmed prejudices, and 
 withstood the advancement of truth, in consequence of 
 the neglect of verbal debate, that is, strict discussion 
 of terms. In whatever sense, however, the term con- 
 science may be used, the following aphorism is equally 
 true and important. It is worth noticing, likewise, that 
 Leighton himself in a following page, (vol. ii, p. 97), 
 tells us, that a good conscience is the root of a good 
 conversation : and then quotes from St. Paul a text, 
 Titus i, 15, in which the mind and the conscience are 
 expressly distinguished. 
 
 APHORISM XLIV. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE A NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENT 
 OF A GOOD CONSCIENCE. 
 
 LEIOHTON. 
 
 If you would have a good conscience, you must by 
 all means have so much light, so much knowledge of 
 the will of God,, as may regulate you, and show you 
 your way, may teach you how to do,, and speak, and 
 think, as in His presence. 
 
 APHORISM XLV. 
 YET THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULE, THOUGH ACCOMPANIED 
 BY AN ENDEAVOUR TO ACCOMMODATE OUR CONDUCT TO 
 THIS RULE, WILL NOT OF ITSELF FORM A GOOD CONSCIENCE. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 To set the outward actions right, though with an 
 honest intention, and not so to regard and find out the 
 inward disorder of the heart, whence that in the actions 
 flows, is but to be still putting the index of a clock right 
 with your finger, while it is foul, or out of order within, 
 which is a continual business and does no good. Qh ! 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 91 
 
 but a purified conscience, a soul renewed and refined in 
 its temper and affections, will make things go right 
 without, in all the duties and acts of our calling. 
 
 APHORISM XLVI. 
 
 THE DEPTH OF THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 How deeply seated the conscience is in the human 
 soul, is seen in the effect which sudden calamities pro- 
 duce on guilty men, even when unaided by any deter- 
 minate notion or fears of punishment after death. The 
 wretched criminal, as one rudely awakened from a long 
 sleep, bewildered with the new light, and half recollect- 
 ing, half striving to recollect, a fearful something, he 
 knows not what, but which he will recognize as soon as 
 he hears the name, already interprets the calamities into 
 judgments, executions of a sentence passed by an invi- 
 sible judge j as if the vast pyre of the last judgment 
 were already kindled in an unknown distance, and some 
 flashes of it> darting forth at intervals beyond the rest, 
 were flying and lighting upon the face of his soul. The 
 calamity may consist in loss of fortune, or character, or 
 reputation ; but you hear no regrets from him. Re- 
 morse extinguishes all regret j and remorse is the im- 
 plicit creed of the guilty. 
 
 APHORISM XLVII. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 God hath suited every creature He hath made with a 
 convenient good to which it tends, and in the obtainment 
 of which it rests and is satisfied. Natural bodies have 
 all their own natural place, whither^ if not hindered, they 
 move incessantly till they be in it ;• and they declare, by 
 resting there, that they are (as I may say) where they 
 would be. Sensitive creatures are carried to seek a 
 
92 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sensitive good, as agreeable to their rank in being, and, 
 attaining that, aim no further. Now in this is the ex- 
 cellency of man, that he is made capable of a commu- 
 nion with his Maker, and, because capable of it, is un- 
 satisfied without it : the soul, being cut out (so to speak) 
 to that largeness, cannot be filled with less. Though he 
 is fallen from his right to that good, and from all right 
 desire of it, yet, not from a capacity of it, no, nor from 
 a necessity of it, for the answering and filling of his 
 capacity. 
 
 Though the heart once gone from God turns contin- 
 ually further away from Him, and moves not towards 
 Him till it be renewed, yet, even in that wandering, it 
 retains that natural relation to God, as its centre, that it 
 hath no true rest elsewhere, nor can by any means find 
 it. It is made for Him,, and is therefore still restless till 
 it meet with Him. 
 
 It is true, the natural man takes much pains to quiet 
 bis heart by other things, and digests many vexations 
 with hopes of contentment in the end and accomplish- 
 ment of some design he hath ; but still the heart mis- 
 gives. Many times he attains not the thing he seeks ; 
 but if he do, yet he never attains the satisfaction he 
 seeks and expects in it, but only learns from that to 
 desire something further, and still hunts on after a fancy, 
 drives his own shadow before him, and never overtakes 
 it ; and if he did, yet it is but a shadow. And so, in 
 running from God, besides the sad end, he carries an 
 interwoven punishment with his sin, the natural disquiet 
 and vexation of his spirit, fluttering to and fro, and Jinding 
 no rest for the sole of his foot ; the waters of incon- 
 stancy and' vanity covering the whole face of the earth. 
 
 These things are too gross and heavy. The soul, the 
 immortal soul, descended from heaven, must either be 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 93 
 
 more happy or remain miserable. The highest, the 
 uncreated Spirit, is the proper good, the Father of 
 spirits, that pure and full good which raises the soul 
 above itself; whereas all other things draw it down 
 below itself. So, then, it is never well with the soul, 
 but when it is near unto God, yea, in its union with 
 Him, married to Him : mismatching itself elsewhere it 
 hath never any thing but shame and sorrow. All that 
 forsake Thee shall be ashamed, says the Prophet, Jer. 
 xvii, 13 ; and the Psalmist, Tlxey that are far off from 
 Thee shall perish. Psal. lxxiii, 27. And this is indeed 
 our natural miserable condition, and it is often expressed 
 this way, by estrangedness and distance from God. 
 
 The same sentiments are to be found in the works of 
 Pagan philosophers and moralists. Well then may they 
 be made a subject of reflection in our days. And well 
 may the pious deist, if such a character now exists, re- 
 flect that Christianity alone both teaches the way, and 
 provides the means, of fulfilling the obscure promises 
 of this great instinct for all men, which the philosophy 
 of boldest pretensions confined to the sacred few. 
 
 APHORISM XLVIII. 
 
 A CONTRACTED SPHERE, OR WHAT IS CALLED RETIRING FROM 
 THE BUSINESS OF THE WORLD, NO SECURITY FROM THE 
 SPIRIT OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 The heart may be engaged in a little business as 
 much, if thou watch it not, as in many and great affairs. 
 A man may drown in a little brook or pool, as well as 
 in a great river, if he be down and plunge himself into 
 it, and put his head under water. Some care thou must 
 have, that thou mayest not care. Those things that are 
 thorns indeed, thou must make a hedge of them, to keep 
 
94 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 out those temptations that accompany sloth, and extreme 
 want that waits on it ; but let them be the hedge : suffer 
 them not to grow within the garden. 
 
 APHORISM XLIX. 
 
 ON CHURCH-GOING, AS A PART OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY, WHEN 
 NOT IN REFERENCE TO A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is a strange folly in multitudes of us, to set our- 
 selves no mark, to propound no end in the hearing of 
 the Gospel. The merchant sails not merely that he 
 may sail, but for traffic, and traffics that he may be rich. 
 The husbandman ploughs not merely to keep himself busy, 
 with no further end, but ploughs that he may sow, and 
 sows that he may reap with advantage. And shall we 
 do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitlessly — hear, 
 only to hear, and look no further? This is indeed a 
 great vanity and a great misery, to lose that labour, and 
 gain nothing by it, which, duly used, would be of all 
 others most advantageous and gainful ; and yet all 
 meetings are full of this ! 
 
 APHORISM L. 
 
 ON THE HOPES AND SELF-SATISFACTION OF A RELIGIOUS MO- 
 RALIST, INDEPENDENT OF A SPIRITUAL FAITH ON WHAT 
 
 ARE THEY GROUNDED ? 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 There have been great disputes one way or another, 
 about the merit of good works ; but I truly think they 
 who have laboriously engaged in them have been very 
 idly, though very eagerly, employed about nothing, since 
 the more sober of the schoolmen themselves acknow- 
 ledge there can be no such thing as meriting from the 
 blessed God, in the human, or, to speak more accurately, 
 in any created nature whatsoever : nay, so far from any 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 95 
 
 possibility of merit, there can be no room for reward any 
 otherwise than of the sovereign pleasure and gracious 
 kindness of God ; and the more ancient writers, when 
 they use the word merit, mean nothing by it but a cer- 
 tain correlate to that reward which God both promises 
 and bestows of mere grace and benignity. Otherwise^ 
 in order to constitute what is properly called merit, 
 many things must concur, which no man in His senses 
 will presume to attribute to human works, though ever 
 so excellent ; particularly, that the thing done must not 
 previously be matter of debt, and that it be entire, or our 
 own act, unassisted by foreign aid ; it must also be per- 
 fectly good, and it must bear an adequate proportion to 
 the reward claimed in consequence of it. If all these 
 things do not concur, the act cannot possibly amount to 
 merit. Whereas I think no one will venture to assert, 
 that any one of .these can take place in any human ac- 
 tion whatever. But why should I enlarge here, when 
 one single circumstance overthrows all those titles : the 
 most righteous of mankind would not be able to stand, 
 if his works were weighed in the balance of strict jus- 
 tice ; how much less then could they deserve that im- 
 mense glory which is now in question ! Nor is this to 
 be denied only concerning the unbeliever and the sinner, 
 but concerning the righteous and pious believer, who is 
 not only free from all the guilt of his former impenitence 
 and rebellion, but endowed with the gift of the Spirit. 
 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the 
 house of God : and if it first begin at us, what shall the 
 end be of them that obey not the gospel of God ? And 
 if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the un- 
 godly and the sinner appear? 1 Peter iv, 17, 18. The 
 Apostle's interrogation expresses the most vehement 
 legation, and signifies that no mortal, in whatever degree 
 
96 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 he is placed, if he be called to the strict examination of 
 divine justice, without daily and repeated forgiveness, 
 could be able to keep his standing, and much less could 
 he arise to that glorious height. " That merit," says 
 Bernard, " on which my hope relies, consists in these 
 three things ; the love of adoption, the truth of the pro- 
 mise, and the power of its performance." This is the 
 threefold cord which cannot be broken. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Often have I heard it said by advocates for the Soci- 
 nian scheme- — True ! we are all sinners ; but even in 
 the Old Testament God has promised forgiveness on 
 repentance. One of the Fathers (I forget which) sup- 
 plies the retort — True ! God has promised pardon on 
 penitence : but has he promised penitence on sin ? — He 
 that repenteth shall be forgiven : but where is it said, 
 He that sinneth shall repent ? But repentance, perhaps, 
 the repentance required in Scripture, the passing into a 
 new and contrary principle of action, this metanoia,* is 
 in the sinner's own power ? at his own liking ? He has 
 but to open his eyes to the sin, and the tears are close 
 at hand to wash it away ! Verily, the exploded tenet 
 of transubstantiation is scarcely at greater variance with 
 the common sense and experience of mankind, or bor- 
 ders more closely on a contradiction in terms, than this 
 volunteer transmentation, this self-change, as the easyt 
 means of self-salvation ! But the reflections of our evan- 
 gelical author on this subject will appropriately com- 
 mence the aphorisms relating to spiritual religion. 
 
 * Meravoia, the New Testament word, which we render by repentance, 
 compounded of fiera, trans, and vSs, mens, the spirit, or practical reason. 
 
 t May I without offence be permitted to record the very appropriate 
 title, with which a stern humorist lettered a collection of Unitarian tracts T 
 * Salvation made easy ; or, Every man his own Redeemer." 
 
ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 PRELIMINARY TO THE APHORISMS ON 
 SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 Philip saith unto him : Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 
 Jesus saith unto him, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father : and 
 how sayest thou then, Show us the Father 1 Believest thou not that I 
 am in the Father and the Father in me 1 And I will pray the Father 
 and he shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth: 
 whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither know- 
 eth him. But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in 
 you. And in that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye 
 in me and I in you. John xiv, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 20. 
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 If there be aught spiritual in man, the will must be 
 such. 
 
 If there be a will, there must be a spirituality in man. 
 
 I suppose both positions granted. The reader admits 
 the reality of the power, agency, or mode of being ex- 
 pressed in the term, spirit ; and the actual existence of 
 a will. He sees clearly, that the idea of the former is 
 necessary to the conceivability of the latter ; and that, 
 vice versa, in asserting the fact of the latter he presumes 
 and instances the truth of the former — just as in our 
 common and received systems of natural philosophy, the 
 being of imponderable matter is assumed to render the 
 loadstone intelligible, and the fact of the loadstone 
 adduced to prove the reality of imponderable matter. 
 
 9 
 
98 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 In short, I suppose the reader, whom I now invite to 
 the third and last division of the work, already disposed 
 to reject for himself and his human brethren the insidi- 
 ous title of " Nature's noblest animal," or to retort it as 
 the unconscious irony of the Epicurean poet on the ani- 
 malizing tendency of his own philosophy. I suppose 
 him convinced, that there is more in man than can be 
 rationally referred to the life of nature and the mechanism 
 of organization ; that he has a will not included in this 
 mechanism ; and that the will is in an especial and pre- 
 eminent sense the spiritual part of our humanity. 
 
 Unless, then, we have some distinct notion of the will, 
 and some acquaintance of the prevalent errors respecting 
 the same, an insight into the nature of spiritual religion 
 is scarcely possible ; and our reflections on the particu- 
 lar truths and evidences of a spiritual state will remain 
 obscure, perplexed, and unsafe. To place my reader on 
 this requisite vantage-ground, is the purpose of the fol- 
 lowing exposition. 
 
 We have begun, as in geometry, with denning our 
 terms ; and we proceed, like the geometricians, with 
 stating our postulates ; the difference being, that the 
 postulates of geometry no man can deny, those of moral 
 science are such as no good man will deny. For it is 
 not in our power to disclaim our nature as sentient be- 
 ings ; but it is in our power to disclaim our nature as 
 moral beings. It is possible, (barely possible, I admit,) 
 that a man may have remained ignorant or unconscious 
 of the moral law within him : and a man need only per- 
 sist in disobeying the law of conscience to make it pos- 
 sible for himself to deny its existence, or to reject and 
 repel it as a phantom of superstition. Were it other- 
 wise, the. Creed would stand in the same relation to 
 morality as the multiplication table. 
 
ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 99 
 
 This then is the distinction of moral philosophy — not 
 that I begin with one or more assumptions ; for this ia 
 common to all science ; but — that I assume a something, 
 the proof of which no man can give to another, yet every 
 man may find for himself. If any man assert that he 
 cannot find it, I am bound to disbelieve him. I cannot 
 do otherwise without unsettling the very foundations of 
 my own moral nature. For I either find it as an essen- 
 tial of the humanity common to him and me : or I have 
 not found it at all, except as an hypochondriast finds 
 glass legs. If, on the other hand, he will not find it, he 
 excommunicates himself. He forfeits his personal rights, 
 and becomes a thing : that is, one who may rightfully 
 be employed, or used, as* means to an end, against his 
 will, and without regard to his interest. 
 
 All the significant objections of the Materialist, and 
 Necessitarian are contained in the term, morality, all the 
 objections of the infidel in the term, religion. The very 
 terms, I say, imply a something granted, which the ob^ 
 jection supposes not granted. The term presumes what 
 the objection denies, and in denying presumes the con* 
 trary. For it is most important to observe that the rea- 
 soners on both sides commence by taking something for 
 granted, our assent to which they ask or demand : that 
 is, both set off with an assumption in the form of a pos- 
 
 * On this principle alone is it possible to justify capital, or ignominious 
 punishments, or indeed any punishment not having the reformation of 
 the criminal as one of its objects. Such punishments, like those inflicted 
 on suicides, must be regarded as posthumous : the wilful extinction of 
 the moral and personal life being, for the purposes of punitive justice, 
 equivalent to a wilful destruction of the natural life. If the speech of 
 Judge Burnet to the horse-stealer (You are not hanged for stealing a 
 horse ; but, that horses may not be stolen) can be vindicated to all, it 
 must be on this principle ; and not on the all-unsettling scheme of ex- 
 pedience, which is the anarchy of morals. 
 
100 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tulate. But the Epicurean assumes what according to 
 himself he neither is nor can be under any obligation to 
 assume, and demands what he can have no right to de- 
 mand : for he denies the reality of all moral obligation, 
 the existence of any right. If he use the words, right 
 and obligation, he does it deceptively, and means only 
 power and compulsion. To overthrow the faith in aught 
 higher or other than nature and physical necessity, is 
 the very purpose of his argument. He desires you only 
 to take for granted, that all reality is included in nature, 
 and he may then safely defy you to ward off his conclu- 
 sion — that nothing is excluded ! 
 
 But as he cannot morally demand, neither can he ra- 
 tionally expect, your assent to this premiss : for he can- 
 not be ignorant, that the best and greatest of men have 
 devoted their lives to the enforcement of the contrary ; 
 that the vast majority of the human race in all ages and 
 in all nations have believed in the contrary ; and that 
 there is not a language on earth, in which he could 
 argue, for ten minutes, in support of his scheme, without 
 sliding into words and phrases that, imply the contrary. 
 It has been said, that the Arabic has a thousand names 
 for a lion ; but this would be a trifle compared with the 
 number of superfluous words and useless synonymes 
 that would be found in an index expurgatorius of any 
 European dictionary constructed on the principles of a 
 consistent and strictly consequential Materialism. 
 
 The Christian likewise grounds his philosophy on as- 
 sertions ; but with the best of all reasons for making 
 them — namely that he ought so to do. He asserts what 
 he can neither prove, nor account for, nor himself com- 
 prehend ; but with the strongest inducements, that of 
 understanding thereby whatever else it most concerns 
 him to understand aright. And yet his assertions have 
 
ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 101 
 
 nothing in them of theory or hypothesis ; but are in im- 
 mediate reference to three ultimate facts ; namely, the 
 reality of the law of conscience; the existence of a 
 responsible will, as the subject of that law; and lastly, 
 the existence of evil — of evil essentially such, not by 
 accident of outward circumstances, not derived from its 
 physical consequences, nor from any cause out of itself. 
 The first is a fact of consciousness ; the second a fact 
 of reason necessarily concluded from the first ; and the 
 third a fact of history interpreted by both. 
 
 Omnia exeunt in mysterium, says a Schoolman : that 
 is, There is nothing, the absolute ground of which is not 
 a mystery. The contrary were indeed a contradiction 
 in terms : for how can that, which is to explain all things, 
 be susceptible of an explanation ? It would be to sup- 
 pose the same thing first and second at the same time. 
 
 If I rested here, I should merely have placed my 
 creed in direct opposition to that of the Necessitarians, 
 who assume (for observe, both parties begin in an as- 
 sumption and cannot do otherwise) that motives act on 
 the will, as bodies act on bodies ; and that whether mind 
 and matter are essentially the same, or essentially dif- 
 ferent, they are both alike under one and the same law of 
 compulsory causation. But this is far from exhausting 
 my intention. I mean at the same time to oppose the 
 disciples of Shaftesbury and those who, substituting one 
 faith for another, have been well called the pious Deists 
 of the last century, in order to distinguish them from the 
 infidels of the present age, who persuade themstelves, (for 
 the thing itself is not possible,) that they reject all faith. 
 I declare my dissent from these two, because they im- 
 posed upon themselves an idea for a fact : a most sub- 
 lime idea indeed, and so necessary to human nature, that 
 without it no virtue is conceivable ; but still an idea, 
 
 9* 
 
102 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 In contradiction to their splendid but delusory tenets, I 
 profess a deep conviction that man was and is a fallen 
 creature, not by accidents of bodily constitution or any 
 other cause, which human wisdom in a course of ages 
 might be supposed capable of removing ; but as diseased 
 in his will, in that will which is the true and only strict 
 synonyme of the word, 1, or the intelligent self. Thus 
 at each of these two opposite roads, (the philosophy of 
 Hobbes and that of Shaftesbury,) I have placed a direct- 
 ing post, informing my fellow-travellers, that on neither 
 of these roads can they see the truths to which I would 
 direct their attention. 
 
 But the place of starting was at the meeting of four 
 roads, and one only was the right road. I proceed there- 
 fore to preclude the opinion of those likewise, who in- 
 deed agree with me as to the moral responsibility of 
 man in opposition to Hobbes and the anti-moralists, and 
 that he is a fallen creature, essentially diseased, in op- 
 position to Shaftesbury and the misinterpreters of Plato ; 
 but who differ from me in exaggerating the diseased 
 weakness of the will into an absolute privation of all 
 freedom, thereby making moral responsibility, not a 
 mystery above comprehension, but a direct contradiction, 
 of which we do distinctly comprehend the absurdity. 
 Among the consequences of this doctrine, is that direful 
 one of swallowing up all the attributes of the Supreme 
 Being in the one attribute of infinite power, and thence 
 deducing that things are good and wise because they 
 were created, and not created through wisdom and good- 
 ness. Thence too the awful attribute of justice is ex- 
 plained away into a mere right of absolute property; 
 the sacred distinction between things and persons is 
 erased ; and the selection of persons for virtue and vice 
 in this life, and for eternal happiness or misery in the 
 
ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 103 
 
 next, is represented as the result of a mere will, acting 
 in the blindness and solitude of its own infinity. The 
 title of a work written by the great and pious Boyle is 
 " Of the awe, which the human mind owes to the Su- 
 preme Reason." This, in the language of these gloomy 
 doctors, must be translated into — " The horror, which a 
 being capable of eternal pleasure or pain is compelled 
 to feel at the idea of an Infinite Power, about to inflict 
 the latter on an immense majority of human souls, with- 
 out any power on their part either to prevent it or the 
 actions which are (not indeed its causes but) its assigned 
 signals, and preceding links of the same iron chain !" 
 
 Against these tenets I maintain, that a will conceived 
 separately from intelligence is a nonentity, and a mere 
 phantasm of abstraction ; and that a will, the state of 
 which does in no sense originate in its own act, is an 
 absolute contradiction. It might be an instinct, an im- 
 pulse, a plastic power, and, if accompanied with con- 
 sciousness, a desire; but a will it could not be. And 
 this every human being knows with equal clearness, 
 though different minds may reflect on it with different 
 degrees of distinctness ; for who would not smile at the 
 notion of a rose willing to put forth its buds and expand 
 them into flowers ? That such a phrase would be deemed 
 a poetic license proves the difference in the things : for 
 all metaphors are grounded on an apparent likeness of 
 things essentially different. I utterly disclaim the notion 
 that any human intelligence, with whatever power it 
 might manifest itself, is alone adequate to the office of 
 restoring health to the will : but at the same time I deem 
 it impious and absurd to hold that the Creator would 
 have given us the faculty of reason, or that the Redeemer 
 would in so many varied forms of argument and persuasion 
 have appealed to it, if it had been either totally useless 
 
104 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 or wholly impotent. Lastly, I find all these several 
 truths reconciled and united in the belief, that the im- 
 perfect human understanding can be effectually exerted 
 only in subordination to, and in a dependent alliance 
 with, the means and aidances supplied by the All-perfect 
 and Supreme Reason ; but that under these conditions 
 it is not only an admissible, but a necessary, instrument 
 of bettering both ourselves and others. 
 
 We may now proceed to our reflections on the spirit 
 of religion.- The first three or four aphorisms I have 
 selected from the theological works of Dr. Henry More, 
 a contemporary of Archbishop Leighton, and like him 
 held in suspicion by the Calvinists of that time as a 
 Latitudinarian and Platonizing divine, and who probably, 
 like him, would have been arraigned as a Calvinist by 
 the Latitudinarians (I cannot say, Platonists) of this day, 
 had the suspicion been equally groundless. One or two 
 I have ventured to add from my own reflections. The 
 purpose, however, is the same in all — that of declaring, 
 in the first place, what spiritual religion is not, what is 
 not a religious spirit, and what are not to be deemed 
 influences of the Spirit. If after these disclaimers I 
 shall without proof be charged by any with renewing or 
 favouring the errors of the Familists, Vanists, Seekers, 
 Behmenists, or by whatever other names Church history 
 records the poor bewildered enthusiasts, who in the 
 swarming time of our Republic turned the facts of the 
 Gospel into allegories, and superseded the written ordi- 
 nances of Christ by a pretended teaching and sensible 
 presence of the Spirit, I appeal against them to their 
 own consciences as wilful slanderers. But if with proof, 
 I have in these aphorisms signed and sealed my own 
 condemnation. 
 
ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 105 
 
 " These things I could not forbear to write. For the 
 light within me, that is, my reason and conscience, does 
 assure me, that the ancient and Apostolic faith accord- 
 ing to the historical meaning thereof, and in the literal 
 sense of the Creed, is solid and true : and that Familism 
 in its fairest form and under whatever disguise, is a 
 smooth tale to seduce the simple from their allegiance 
 to Christ." 
 
 Henry More. 
 
APHORISMS 
 
 ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 And here it will not be impertinent to observe, that what the eldest 
 Greek philosophy entitled the Reason (NOYE) and ideas, the philo- 
 sophic Apostle names the Spirit and truths spiritually discerned ; 
 while to those who in the pride of learning or in the overweening 
 meanness of modern metaphysics decry the doctrine of the Spirit in 
 man and its possible communion with the Holy Spirit, as vulgar en- 
 thusiasm, I submit the following sentences from a Pagan philosopher, 
 a nobleman and a minister of state — "Ita dico, Lucili, sacer intra nos 
 Spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos. 
 Hie promt a nobis tractatus est, ita nos ipse tractat. Bonus vir sine 
 Deo nemo est." Seneca. Epist. xli. 
 
 APHORISM I. 
 
 H. MORE. 
 
 Every one is to give a reason of his faith; but priests 
 and ministers more punctually than any, their province 
 being to make good every sentence of the Bible to a 
 rational inquirer into the truth of these oracles. En- 
 thusiasts find it an easy thing to heat the fancies of un- 
 learned and unreflecting hearers ; but when a sober man 
 would be satisfied of the grounds from whence they 
 speak, he shall not have one syllable or the least tittle 
 of a pertinent answer. Only they will talk big of the 
 Spirit, and inveigh against reason with bitter reproaches, 
 calling it carnal or fleshly, though it be indeed no soft 
 flesh, but enduring and penetrant steel, even the sword 
 of the Spirit, and such as pierces to the heart. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 107 
 
 APHORISM II. 
 
 There are two very bad things in this resolving of 
 men's faith and practice into the immediate suggestion 
 of a Spirit not acting on our understandings, or rather 
 into the illumination of such a Spirit as they can give 
 no account of, such as does not enlighten their reason 
 or enable them to render their doctrine intelligible to 
 others. First, it defaces and makes useless that part 
 of the image of God in us, which we call reason : and 
 secondly, it takes away that advantage, which raises 
 Christianity above all other religions, that she dare appeal 
 to so solid a faculty. 
 
 APHORISM III. 
 
 It is the glory of the Gospel charter and the Christian 
 constitution, that its author and head is the Spirit of 
 truth, essential Reason as well as absolute and incom- 
 prehensible Will. Like a just monarch, he refers even 
 his own causes to the judgment of his high courts. — He 
 has his King's Bench in the reason, his Court of Equity 
 in the conscience; that the representative of his majesty 
 and universal justice, this the nearest to the king's heart, 
 and the dispenser of his particular decrees. He has 
 likewise his Court of Common Pleas in the understand- 
 ing, his Court of Exchequer in the prudence. The laws 
 are his laws. And though by signs and miracles he has 
 mercifully condescended to interline here and there with 
 his own hand the great statute-book, which he had 
 dictated to his amanuensis, Nature ; yet has he been 
 graciously pleased to forbid our receiving as the king's 
 mandates aught that is not stamped with the Great Seal 
 of the conscience, and countersigned by the reason. 
 
108 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 ON AN UNLEARNED MINISTRY, UNDER PRETENCE OF A CALL 
 OF THE SPIRIT, AND INWARD GRACES SUPERSEDING OUT- 
 WARD HELPS. 
 
 H. MORE. 
 
 Tell me, ye high-flown perfectionists, ye boasters of 
 the light within you, could the highest perfection of your 
 inward light ever show to you the history of past ages, 
 the state of the world at present, the knowledge of arts 
 and tongues, without books or teachers ? How then 
 can you understand the providence of God, or the age, 
 the purpose, the fulfilment of prophecies, or distinguish 
 such as have been fulfilled from those to the fulfilment 
 of which we are to look forward ? How can you judge 
 concerning the authenticity and uncorruptedness of the 
 Gospels, and the other sacred Scriptures ? And how 
 without this knowledge can you support the truth of 
 Christianity ? How can you either have, or give,a reason 
 for, the faith which you profess ? This light within, 
 that loves darkness, and would exclude those excellent 
 gifts of God to mankind, knowledge and understanding, 
 what is it but a sullen self-sufficiency within you, en- 
 gendering contempt of superiors, pride and a spirit of 
 division, and inducing you to reject for yourselves, and 
 to undervalue in others, the helps without, which the 
 grace of God has provided and appointed for his 
 Church — nay, to make them grounds or pretexts of your 
 dislike or suspicion of Christs's ministers who have fruit- 
 fully availed themselves of the helps afforded them ? 
 
 APHORISM V. 
 
 H. MORE. 
 
 There are wanderers, whom neither pride nor a per- 
 verse humour have led astray ; and whose condition is 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 109 
 
 such, that I think few more worthy of a man's best di- 
 rections. For the more imperious sects having put such 
 unhandsome vizards on Christianity, and the sincere 
 milk of the word having been every where so sophisti- 
 cated by the humours and inventions of men, it has 
 driven these anxious melancholists to seek for a teacher 
 that cannot deceive, the voice of the eternal Word with- 
 in them ; to which if they be faithful, they assure them- 
 selves it will be faithful to them in return. Nor would 
 this be a groundless presumption, if they had sought 
 this voice in the reason and the conscience, with the 
 Scripture articulating the same, instead of giving heed 
 to their fancy and mistaking bodily disturbances, and 
 the vapors resulting therefrom, for inspiration and the 
 teaching of the Spirit. 
 
 APHORISM VI. 
 
 HACKET. 
 
 When every man is his own end, all things will come 
 to a bad end. Blessed were those days, when every 
 man thought himself rich and fortunate by the good 
 success of the public wealth and glory. We want public 
 souls, we want them. I speak it with compassion : there 
 is no sin and abuse in the world that affects my thought 
 so much. . Every man thinks, that he is a whole com- 
 monwealth in his private family. Omnes qua sua sunt 
 qucerunt. All seek their own. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Selfishness is common to all ages and countries. In 
 all ages self-seeking is the rule, and self-sacrifice the 
 exception. But if to seek our private advantage in har- 
 mony with, and by the furtherance of, the public pros- 
 perity, and to derive a portion of our happiness from 
 
 10 
 
110 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sympathy with the prosperity of our fellow-men — if this 
 be public spirit, it would be morose and querulous to 
 pretend that there is any want of it in this country at 
 the present time. On the contrary, the number of 
 "public souls" and the general readiness to contribute 
 to the public good, in science and in religion, in patriot- 
 ism and in philanthrophy, stand prominent* among the 
 characteristics of this and the preceding generation. 
 The habit of referring actions and opinions to fixed laws ; 
 convictions rooted in principles ; thought, insight, sys- 
 tem ; — -these, had the good Bishop lived in our times, 
 would have been his desiderata, and the theme of his 
 complaints. " We want thinking souls, we want them." 
 This and the three preceding extracts will suffice as 
 precautionary aphorisms. And here, again, the reader 
 may exemplify the great advantages to be obtained from 
 the habit of tracing the proper meaning and history of 
 Words. We need only recollect the common and 
 idiomatic phrases in which the word " spirit" occurs in 
 a physical or material sense (as, fruit has lost its spirit 
 and flavour), to be convinced that its property is to im- 
 
 * The Very 1 marked!, positive as well as comparative, magnitude and 
 prominence of the bump, entitled benevolence (see Spurzheim's map 
 of the human skull) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtel, has woe- 
 fully unsettled the faith of many ardent phrenologists, and strengthened 
 the previous doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On 
 my mind, this fact (for a fact it is) produced the directly contrary effect ; 
 find inclined me to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some 
 truth in the Spurzheimian scheme. Whether future craniologists may 
 hot see cause to new-name this and one or two other of these convex 
 gnomons, is quite a different question. At present, and according to the 
 present use of words, any such change would be premature : and we 
 must be content to say, that Mr. Thurtel's benevolence was insufficiently 
 modified by the unprotrusive and unindicated convolutes of the brain, 
 that secrete honesty and common sense. The organ of destructiveness 
 Was indirectly potentiated by the absence or imperfect development of 
 the glands of reason and conscience, in this " unfortunate gentleman /" 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. Ill 
 
 prove, enliven, actuate some other thing, not constitute 
 a thing in its own name. The enthusiast may find one 
 exception to this where the material itself is called spirit. 
 And when he calls to mind, how this spirit acts when 
 taken alone by the unhappy persons who in their first 
 exultation will boast that it is meat, drink, fire, and 
 clothing to them, all in one — when he reflects, that its 
 properties are to inflame, intoxicate, madden, with ex- 
 haustion, lethargy, and atrophy for the sequels ; — well 
 for him, if in some lucid interval he should fairly put 
 the question to his own mind, how far this is analogous 
 to his own case, and whether the exception does not 
 confirm the rule. The letter without the spirit killeth ; 
 but does it follow, that the spirit is to kill the letter ? To 
 kill that which it is its appropriate office to enliven ? 
 
 However, where the ministry is not invaded, and the 
 plain sense of the Scriptures is left undisturbed, and the 
 believer looks for the suggestions of the Spirit only or 
 chiefly in applying particular passages to his own indi- 
 vidual case and exigencies; though in this there maybe 
 much weakness, some delusion and imminent danger of 
 more, I cannot but join with Henry More in avowing, 
 that I feel knit to such a man in the bonds of a common 
 faith far more closely, than to those who receive neither 
 the letter nor the Spirit, turning the one into metaphor 
 and oriental hyperbole, in order to explain away the 
 other into the influence of motives suggested by their 
 own understandings, and realized by their own strength. 
 
APHORISMS 
 
 ON THAT WHICH IS INDEED SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 In the selection of the extracts that form the remain- 
 der of this volume and of the comments affixed, I had 
 the following objects principally in view : — first, to ex- 
 hibit the true and Scriptural meaning and intent of 
 several articles of faith, that are rightly classed among 
 the mysteries and peculiar doctrines of Christianity : — 
 secondly, to show the perfect rationality of these doc- 
 trines, and their freedom from all just objection when 
 examined by their proper organ, the reason and con- 
 science of man: — lastly, to exhibit from the works of 
 Leighton, who perhaps of all our learned Protestant 
 theologians best deserves the title of a spiritual divine, 
 an instructive and affecting picture of the contempla- 
 tions, reflections, conflicts, consolations and monitory 
 experiences of a philosophic and richly-gifted mind, 
 amply stored with all the knowledge that books and 
 long intercourse with men of the most discordant cha- 
 racters could give, under the convictions, impressions, 
 and habits of a spiritual religion. 
 
 To obviate a possible disappointment in any of my 
 readers, who may chance to be engaged in theological 
 studies, it may be well to notice, that in vindicating the 
 peculiar tenets of our Faith, I have not entered on the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, or the still profounder mystery 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 113 
 
 of the origin of moral evil — and this for the reasons fol- 
 lowing. 1. These doctrines are not (strictly speaking) 
 subjects of reflection, in the proper sense of this word : 
 and both of them demand a power and persistency of 
 abstraction, and a previous discipline in the highest 
 forms of human thought, which it would be unwise, if not 
 presumptuous, to expect from any, who require aids to 
 reflection, or would be likely to seek them in the present 
 work. 2. In my intercourse with men of various ranks 
 and ages, I have found the far larger number of serious 
 and inquiring persons little, if at all, disquieted by doubts 
 respecting articles of faith simply above their compre- 
 hension. It is only where the belief required of them 
 jars with their moral feelings : where a doctrine, in the 
 sense in which they have been taught to receive it, 
 appears to contradict their clear notions of right and 
 wrong, or to be at variance with the divine attributes of 
 goodness and justice, that these men are surprised, per- 
 plexed, and alas! not seldom offended and alienated. 
 Such are the doctrines of arbitrary election and repro- 
 bation ; the sentence to everlasting torment by an eternal 
 and necessitating decree; vicarious atonement, and the 
 necessity of the abasement, agony and ignominious 
 death of a most holy and meritorious person, to appease 
 the wrath of God. Now it is more especially for such 
 persons, unwilling sceptics, who believing earnestly ask 
 help for their unbelief, that this volume was compiled, 
 and the comments written : and therefore, to the Scrip- 
 ture doctrines, intended by the above-mentioned, my 
 principal attention has been directed. 
 
 But lastly, the whole scheme of the Christian Faith, 
 including all the articles of belief common to the Greek 
 and Latin, the Roman and the Protestant Churches, 
 with the threefold proof, that it is ideally, morally, and 
 
114 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 historically true, will be found exhibited and vindicated 
 in a proportionally larger work, the principal labour of 
 my life since manhood, and which might be entitled, 
 "Assertion of religion, as necessarily involving revela- 
 tion; and of Christianity, as the only revelation of per- 
 manent and universal validity." 
 
 APHORISM I. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Where, if not in Christ, is the power that can per- 
 suade a sinner to return, that can bring home a heart to 
 God? 
 
 Common mercies of God, though they have a leading 
 faculty to repentance, (Rom. ii, 4,) yet, the rebellious 
 heart will not be led by them. The judgments of God, 
 public or personal, though they ought to drive us to God, 
 yet the heart, unchanged, runs the farther from God. 
 Do we not see it by ourselves and other sinners about 
 us ? They look not at all towards Him who smites, 
 much less do they return; or if any more serious 
 thoughts of returning arise upon the surprise of an af- 
 fliction, how soon vanish they, either the stroke abating, 
 or the heart, by time, growing hard and senseless under 
 it ! Leave Christ out, I say, and all other means work 
 not this way ; neither the works nor the word of God 
 sounding daily in his ear, Return, return. Let the 
 noise of the rod speak it too, and both join together to 
 make the cry the louder, yet the wicked will do wick- 
 edly. Dan. xi, 10. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 By the phrase "in Christ," I understand all the super- 
 natural aids vouchsafed and conditionally promised in 
 the Christian dispensation: and among them the spirit 
 of truth* which the world cannot receive, were it only 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 115 
 
 that the knowledge of spiritual truth is of necessity- 
 immediate and intuitive ; and the world or natural man 
 possesses no higher intuitions than those of the- pure 
 sense, which are the subjects of mathematical science. 
 But aids, observe : — therefore, not by the will of man 
 alone; but neither without the will. The doctrine of 
 modern Calvinism, as laid down by Jonathan Edwards 
 and the late Dr. Williams, which represents a will abso- 
 lutely passive, clay in the hands of a potter, destroys all 
 will, takes away its essence and definition, as effectually 
 as in saying — This circle is square — I should deny the 
 figure to be a circle at all. It was in strict consistency 
 therefore, that these writers supported the Necessitarian 
 scheme, and made the relation of cause and effect the 
 law of the universe, subjecting to its mechanism the 
 moral world no less than the material or physical. It 
 follows, that all is nature. Thus, though few writers 
 use the term spirit more frequently, they in effect deny 
 its existence, and evacuate the term of all its proper 
 meaning. With such a system not the wit of man nor 
 all the theodicies ever framed by human ingenuity, be- 
 fore and since the attempt of the celebrated Leibnitz, 
 can reconcile the sense of responsibility, nor the fact of 
 the difference in kind between regret and remorse. The 
 same compulsion of consequence drove the fathers of 
 modern (or pseudo-) Calvinism to the origination of 
 holiness in power, of justice in right of property, and 
 whatever other outrages on the common sense and 
 moral feelings of mankind they have sought to cover 
 under the fair name of sovereign grace. 
 
 I will not take on me to defend sundry harsh and in- 
 convenient expressions in the works of Calvin. Phrases 
 equally strong and assertions' not less rash and startling 
 are no rarities in the writings of Luther : for catachresis 
 
116 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 was the favourite figure of speech in that age. But let 
 not the opinions of either on this most fundamental sub- 
 ject *be confounded with the New-England system, now 
 entitled Calvinistic. The fact is simply this. Luther 
 considered the pretensions to free-will boastful, and bet- 
 ter suited to the budge doctors of the Stoic Fur, than to> 
 the preachers of the Gospel, whose great theme is the 
 redemption of the will from slavery; the restoration of 
 the will to perfect freedom being the end and consum- 
 mation of the redemptive process, and the same with the 
 entrance of the soul into glory, that is, its union with 
 Christ: "glory" (John xvii, 5,) being one of the names 
 or tokens or symbols of the spiritual Messiah. Pros- 
 pectively to this we are to understand the words of our 
 Lord, At that day ye shall know that lam in my Father, 
 and ye in me, (John xiv, 20 :) the freedom of a finite 
 will being possible under this condition only, that it has 
 become one with the will of God. Now as the differ- 
 ence of a captive and enslaved will, and no will at all, 
 such is the difference between the Lutheranism of 
 Calvin and the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards. 
 
 APHORISM II. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 There is nothing in religion farther out of nature's 
 reach, and more remote from the natural man's liking 
 and believing, than the doctrine of redemption by a Sa- 
 viour, and by a crucified Saviour. It is comparatively 
 easy to persuade men of the necessity of an amendment 
 of conduct; it is more difficult to make them see the 
 necessity of repentance in the Gospel sense, the neces- 
 sity of a change in the principle of action ; but to con- 
 vince men of the necessity of the death of Christ is the 
 most difficult of all. And yet the first is but varnish 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 117 
 
 and whitewash without the second ; and the second but 
 a barren notion without the last. Alas ! of those who 
 admit the doctrine in words, how large a number evade 
 it in fact, and empty it of all its substance and efficacy, 
 making the effect the efficient cause, or attributing their 
 election to salvation to supposed foresight of their faith 
 and obedience. But it is most vain to imagine a faith 
 in such and such men, which, being foreseen by God, 
 determined him to elect them for salvation : were it only 
 that nothing at all is future, or can have this imagined 
 futuriiion, but as it is decreed, and because it is decreed, 
 by God so to be. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 No impartial person, competently acquainted with the 
 history of the Reformation, and the works of the earlier 
 Protestant divines at home and abroad, even to the close 
 of Elizabeth's reign, will deny that the doctrines of Cal- 
 vin on redemption and the natural state of fallen man 
 are in all essential points the same as those of Luther, 
 Zuinglius, and the first Reformers collectively. These 
 doctrines have, however, since the re-establishment of 
 the Episcopal Church at the return of Charles II, been 
 as generally* exchanged for what is commonly entitled 
 
 * At a period, in which Doctors Marsh and Wordsworth have, by the 
 zealous on one side, been charged with Popish principles on account of 
 their anti-bibliolatry and the sturdy adherents of the doctrines common 
 to Luther and Calvin, and the literal interpreters of the Articles and 
 Homilies, are (I wish I could say, altogether without any fault of their 
 own) regarded by the clergy generally as virtual schismatics, dividers 
 of, though not from, the Church, it is serving the cause of charity to 
 assist in circulating the following instructive passage from the Life of 
 Bishop Hackett respecting the disputes between the Augustinians, or 
 Lutherq-Calvinistic divines and the Gratians of his age : in which con- 
 troversy (says his biographer) he, Hackett, " was ever very moderate." 
 
 " But having been bred under Bishop Davenant and Dr. Ward in 
 
118 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Arminianism, but which, taken as a complete and ex- 
 plicit scheme of belief, it would be both historically and 
 theologically more accurate to call Grotianism, or Chris- 
 tianity according to Grotius. The change was not, we 
 may readily believe, effected without a struggle. In the 
 Romish Church this latitudinarian system, patronized 
 by the Jesuits, was manfully resisted by Jansenius, 
 Arnauld, and Pascal ; in our own Church by the Bishops 
 Davenant, Sanderson, Hall, and the Archbishops Usher 
 and Leighton : and in this latter half of the preceding 
 aphorism the reader has a specimen of the reasonings 
 by which Leighton strove to invalidate or counterpoise 
 the reasonings of the innovators. 
 
 Passages of this sort are, however, of rare occurrence 
 in Leighton's works. Happily for thousands, he was 
 more usefully employed in making his readers feel that 
 the doctrines in question, Scripturally treated and taken 
 as co-organized parts of a great organic whole, need no 
 
 Cambridge, he was addicted to their sentiments. Archbishop Usher 
 would say, that Davenant understood those controversies better than ever 
 any man did since St. Augustine. But he (Bishop Hackett) used to say, 
 that he was sure he had three excellent men of his opinion in this con- 
 troversy ; 1. Padre Paolo (Father Paul) whose Letter is extant in Hein- 
 sius, anno 1604. 2 Thomas Aquinas. 3. ,St. Augustine. But besides 
 and above them all, he believed in his conscience that St. Paul was of 
 the same mind likewise. Yet at the same time he would profess that 
 he disliked no Arminians, but such as revile and defame every one who 
 is not so : and he would often commend Arminius himself for his excel- 
 lent wit and parts, but only tax his want of reading and knowledge in 
 antiquity. And he ever held, it was the foolishest thing in the world to 
 say the Arminians were Popishly inclined, when so many Dominicans 
 and Jansenists were rigid followers of Augustine in these points : and 
 no less foolish to say that the Anti- Arminians were Puritans and Pres- 
 byterians, when Ward and Davenant, and Prideaux, and Browning, those 
 stout champions for Episcopacy, were decided Anti-Arminians : while 
 Arminius himself was ever a Presbyterian. Therefore he greatly com- 
 mended the moderation of our Church, which extended equal communion 
 to both." 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGIOUS. 119 
 
 such reasonings. And better still would it have been, 
 had he left them altogether for those, who, severally 
 detaching the great features of Revelation from the 
 living context of Scripture, do by that very act destroy 
 their life and purpose. And then, like the eyes of the 
 Indian spider,* they become clouded microscopes, to 
 exaggerate and distort all the other parts and proportions. 
 No offence then will be occasioned, I trust, by the frank 
 avowal that I have given to the preceding passage a 
 place among the spiritual aphorisms for the sake of 
 comment : the following remarks having been the first 
 marginal note I had pencilled on Leighton's pages, and 
 thus (remotely, at least), the occasion of the present work. 
 Leighton, I observed, throughout his inestimable 
 work, avoids all metaphysical views of Election, rela- 
 tively to God, and confines himself to the doctrine in its 
 relation to man ; and in that sense too, in which every 
 Christian may judge of it who strives to be sincere with 
 his own heart. The following may, I think, be taken 
 as a safe and useful rule in religious inquiries. Ideas, 
 that derive their origin and substance from the moral 
 being, and to the reception of which as true objectively 
 (that is, as corresponding to a reality out of the human 
 mind) we are determined by a practical interest exclu- 
 sively, may not, like theoretical positions, be pressed 
 onward into all their logical consequences. t The law 
 
 * Aranea prodigiosa. See Baker's Microscopic Experiments. 
 
 t May not this rule be expressed more intelligibly (to a mathematician 
 at least) thus :— Reasoning from finite to finite on a basis of truth ; also, 
 reasoning from infinite to infinite on a basis of truth i wi$ always lead 
 to truth as intelligibly as the basis on which such truths respectively 
 rest. While reasoning from finite to infinite, ox from infinite to finite, 
 will lead to apparent absurdity, although the basis be true : and is not 
 such apparent absurdity another expression for " truth unintelligible by 
 a finite mind'!" 
 
120 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 of conscience, and not the canons of discursive reason- 
 ing, must decide in such cases. At least, the latter have 
 no validity, which the single veto of the former is not 
 sufficient to nullify. The most pious conclusion is here 
 the most legitimate. 
 
 • It is too seldom considered, though most worthy of 
 consideration, how far even those ideas or theories of 
 pure speculation, that bear the same name with the ob- 
 jects of religious faith, are indeed the same. Out of the 
 principles necessarily presumed in all discursive think- 
 ing, and which being, in the first place, universal, and 
 secondly, antecedent to every particular exercise of the 
 understanding, are therefore referred to the reason, the 
 human mind (wherever its powers are sufficiently deve- 
 loped, and its attention strongly directed to speculative 
 or theoretical inquiries,) forms certain essences, to which 
 for its own purposes it gives a sort of notional subsis- 
 tence. Hence they are called entia rationalia : the 
 conversion of which into entia realia, or real objects, by 
 aid of the imagination, has in all times been the fruitful 
 stock of empty theories and mischievous superstitions, 
 of surreptitious premisses and extravagant conclusions. 
 For as these substantiated notions were in many in- 
 stances expressed by the" same terms, as the objects 
 of religious faith ; as in most instances they were 
 applied, though deceptively, to the explanation of real 
 experiences ; and lastly, from the gratifications, which 
 the pride and ambition of man received from the sup- 
 posed extension of his knowledge and insight ; it was 
 too easily forgotten or overlooked, that the stablest and 
 most indispensable of these notional beings were but 
 the necessary forms of thinking, taken abstractedly : 
 and that like the breathless lines, deplhless surfaces, 
 and perfect circles of geometry, they subsist wholly and 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 121 
 
 solely in and for the mind that contemplates them. 
 Where the evidence of the senses fails us, and beyond 
 the precincts of sensible experience, there is no reality 
 attributable to any notion, but what is given to it by Re- 
 velation, or the law of conscience, or the necessary in- 
 terests of morality. 
 
 Take an instance : 
 
 It is the office, and as it were, the instinct of reason 
 to bring a unity into all our conceptions and several 
 knowledges. On this all system depends ; and without 
 this we could reflect connectedly neither on nature nor 
 our own minds. Now this is possible only on the as- 
 sumption or hypothesis of a One as the ground and 
 cause of the universe, and which in all succession and 
 through all changes is the subject neither of time nor 
 change. The One must be contemplated as eternal and 
 immutable. 
 
 Well ! the idea, which is the basis of religion, com- 
 manded by the conscience and required by morality, 
 contains the same truths, Or at least truths that can be 
 expressed in no other terms ; but this idea presents itself 
 to our mind with additional attributes, and these too not 
 formed by mere abstraction and negation — with the attri- 
 butes of holiness, providence, love, justice, and mercy. 
 It comprehends, moreover, the independent (extra-mun- 
 dane) existence and personality of the Supreme One, as 
 our Creator, Lord, and Judge. 
 
 The hypothesis of a one ground and principle of the 
 universe (necessary as an hypothesis, but having only a 
 logical and conditional necessity,) is thus raised into the 
 idea of the Living God, the supreme object of our faith, 
 love, fear, and adoration. Religion and morality do in- 
 deed constrain us to declare him eternal and immutable. 
 But if from the eternity of the Supreme Being a reasoner 
 
 11 
 
122 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 should deduce the impossibility of a creation; or con- 
 clude with Aristotle, that the creation was co-eternal ; 
 or, like the later Platonists, should turn creation into 
 emanation, and make the universe proceed from the 
 Deity, as the sunbeams from the solar orb ; — or if from 
 the divine immutability he should infer that all prayer 
 and supplication must be vain and superstitious : then 
 however evident and logically necessary such conclu- 
 sions may appear, it is scarcely worth our while to ex- 
 amine, whether they are so or not. The positions 
 themselves must be false. For were they true, the idea 
 would lose the sole ground of its reality. It would be 
 no longer the idea intended by the believer in his pre- 
 miss — in the premiss, with which alone religion and 
 morality are concerned. The very subject of the dis- 
 cussion would be changed. It would no longer be the 
 God, in whom we believe ; but a stoical Fate, or the 
 superessential One of Plotinus, to whom neither intelli- 
 gence, nor self-consciousness, nor life, nor even being 
 can be attributed ; or lastly, the world itself, the indivi- 
 sible one and only substance {substantia una et unica) 
 of Spinoza, of which all phenomena, all particular and 
 individual things, lives, minds, thoughts, and actions are 
 but modifications. 
 
 Let the believer never be alarmed by objections wholly 
 speculative, however plausible on speculative grounds 
 such objections may appear, if he can but satisfy him- 
 self, that the result is repugnant to the dictates of con- 
 science, and irreconcilable with the interests of morality. 
 For to baffle the objector we have only to demand of 
 him, by w,hat right and under what authority he converts 
 a thought into a substance, or asserts the existence of a 
 real somewhat corresponding to a notion not derived 
 from the experience of his senses. It will be of no pur- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 123 
 
 pose for him to answer that it is a legitimate notion. 
 The notion may have its mould in the understanding ; 
 but its realization must be the work of the fancy. 
 
 A reflecting reader will easily apply these remarks to 
 the subject of Election, one of the stumbling stones in 
 the ordinary conceptions of the Christian Faith, to which 
 the Infidel points in scorn, and which far better men 
 pass by in silent perplexity. Yet surely, from mistaken 
 conceptions of the doctrine. I suppose the person, with 
 whom I am arguing, already so far a believer, as to have 
 convinced himself, both that a state of enduring bliss is 
 attainable under certain conditions ; and that these con- 
 ditions consist in his compliance with the directions 
 given and rules prescribed in the Christian Scriptures. 
 These rules he likewise admits to be such, that, by the 
 very law and constitution of the human mind, a full and 
 faithful compliance with them cannot but have conse. 
 quences of some sort or other. But these consequences 
 are moreover distinctly described, enumerated, and pro- 
 mised in the same Scriptures, in which the conditions 
 are recorded ; and though some of them may be appa- 
 rent to God only, yet the greater number of them are of 
 such a nature that they cannot exist unknown to the in- 
 dividual, in and for whom they exist. As little possible 
 is it, that he should find these consequences in himself, 
 and not find in them the sure marks and the safe pledges 
 that he is at the time in the right road to the life pro- 
 mised under these conditions. Now I dare assert that 
 no such man, however fervent his charity and however 
 deep his humility may be, can peruse the records of 
 history with a reflecting spirit, or look round the world 
 with an observant eye, and not find himself compelled 
 to admit, that all men are not on the right road. He 
 cannot help judging that even in Christian countries 
 
124 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 many, — a fearful many, — have not their faces turned 
 toward it. 
 
 This then is a mere matter of fact. Now comes the 
 question. Shall the believer, who thus hopes on the 
 appointed grounds of hope, attribute this distinction ex- 
 clusively to his own resolves and strivings, — or if not 
 exclusively, yet primarily and principally? Shall he refer 
 the first movements and preparations to his own will and 
 understanding, and bottom his claim to the promises on 
 his own comparative excellence ? If not, if no man dare 
 take this honour to himself, to whom shall he assign it, 
 if not to that Being in whom the promise originated, and 
 on whom its fulfilment depends ? If he stop here who 
 shall blame him ? By what argument shall his reason- 
 ing be invalidated, that might not be urged with equal 
 force against any essential difference between obedient 
 and disobedient, Christian and worldling ; — that would 
 not imply that both sorts alike are, in the sight of God, 
 the sons of God by adoption ? If he stop here, I say, 
 who shall drive him from his position ? For thus far he 
 is practically concerned ; — this the conscience requires ; 
 this the highest interests of morality demand. It is a 
 question of facts, of the will and the deed, to argue 
 against which on the abstract notions and possibilities 
 of the speculative reason, is as unreasonable, as an at- 
 tempt to decide a question of colors by pure geometry, 
 or to unsettle the classes and specific characters of na- 
 tural history by the doctrine of fluxions. 
 
 But if the self-examinant will abandon this position, 
 and exchange the safe circle of religion and practical 
 reason for the shifting sand-wastes and mirages of spe- 
 culative theology ; if instead of seeking after the marks 
 of Election in himself he undertakes to determine the 
 ground and origin, the possibility and mode of Election 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 125 
 
 itself in relation to God ; — in this case, and whether he 
 does it for the satisfaction of curiosity, or from the am- 
 bition of answering those, who would call God himself 
 to account, why and by what right certain souls were 
 born in Africa instead of England ; — or why (seeing that 
 it is against all reason and goodness to choose a worse, 
 when being omnipotent He could have created a better) 
 God did not create beasts men, and men angels ; — or 
 why God created any men but with foreknowledge of 
 their obedience, and left any occasion for Election ; — in 
 this case, I say, we can only regret that the inquirer had 
 not been better instructed in the nature, the bounds, the 
 true purposes and proper objects of his intellectual facul- 
 ties, and that he had not previously asked himself, by 
 what appropriate sense, or organ of knowledge, he hoped 
 to secure an insight into a nature which was neither an 
 object of his senses, nor a part of his self-consciousness ; 
 and so leave him to ward off shadowy spears with the 
 shadow of a shield, and to retaliate the nonsense of blas- 
 phemy with the abracadabra of presumption. He that 
 will fly without wings must fly in his dreams : and till 
 he awakes, will not find out that to fly in a dream is but 
 to dream of flying. 
 
 Thus then the doctrine of Election is in itself a neces- 
 sary inference from an undeniable fact — necessary at 
 least for all who hold that the best of men are what they 
 are through the grace of God. In relation to the believer 
 it is a hope, which if it spring out of Christian principles, 
 be examined by the tests and nourished by the means 
 prescribed in Scripture, will become a lively and an as- 
 sured hope, but which cannot in this life pass into know- 
 ledge, much less certainty of fore-knowledge. The con- 
 trary belief does indeed make the article of Election both 
 tool and parcel of a mad and mischievous fanaticism. 
 
 U* 
 
126 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 But with what force and clearness does not the Apostle 
 confute, disclaim, and prohibit the pretence, treating it 
 as a downright contradiction in terms I See Rom. viii, 24. 
 
 But though I hold the doctrine handled as Leighton 
 handles it (that is, practically, morally, humanly) ra- 
 tional, safe, and of essential importance, I see many* 
 reasons resulting from the peculiar circumstances, under 
 which St. Paul preached and wrote, why a discreet 
 minister of the Gospel should avoid the frequent use of 
 the term, and express the meaning in other words per- 
 fectly equivalent and equally Scriptural ; lest in saying 
 truth he may convey error. 
 
 Had my purpose been confined to one particular tenet, 
 an apology might be required for so long a comment. 
 But the reader will, I trust, have already perceived, that 
 my object has been to establish a general rule of inter- 
 pretation and vindication applicable to all doctrinal tenets, 
 and especially to the (so called) mysteries of the Chris- 
 tian faith : to provide a safety-lamp for religious inquirers. 
 Now this I find in the principle, that all revealed truths 
 
 * For example : at the date of St. Paul's Epistles, the (Roman) world 
 may be resembled to a mass in the furnace in the first moment of fusion, 
 here a speck and there a spot of the melted metal shining pure and bril- 
 liant amid the scum and dross. To have received the name of Christian 
 was a privilege, a high and distinguishing favour. No wonder, therefore, 
 that in St. Paul's writings the words, elect and election often, nay, most 
 often, mean the same as eccalwmeni, ecclesia, that is, those who have 
 been called out of the world : and it is a dangerous perversion of the 
 Apostle's word to interpret it in the sense, in which it was used by our 
 Lord, viz, in opposition to the called. (Many are called but few chosen.) In 
 St. Paul's sense and at that time the believers collectively formed a small 
 and select number ; and every Christian, real or nominal, was one of the 
 elect. Add too, that this ambiguity is increased by the accidental cir- 
 cumstance, that the Kyriak, cedes Dominicce, Lord's House, kirk ; and 
 ecelesia, the sum total of the eccalumeni, evocati, called-out ; are both 
 rendered by the same word Church. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 127 
 
 are to be judged of by us, as far as they are possible 
 subjects of human conception, or grounds of practice, or 
 in some way connected, with our moral and spiritual 
 interests. In order to have a reason for forming a judg- 
 ment on any given article, we must be sure that we pos- 
 sess a reason, by and according to which a judgment 
 may be formed. Now in respect of all truths, to which 
 a real independent existence is assigned, and which yet 
 are not contained in, or to be imagined under, any form 
 of space or time, it is strictly demonstrable, that the hu- 
 man reason, considered abstractly, as the source of posi 
 tive science and theoretical insight, is not such a reason. 
 At the utmost, it has only a negative voice. In other 
 words, nothing can be allowed as true for the human 
 mind, which directly contradicts this reason. But even 
 here, before we admit the existence of any such contra- 
 diction, we must be careful to ascertain, that there is no 
 equivocation in play, that two different subjects are not 
 confounded under one and the same word. A striking 
 instance of this has been adduced in the difference be- 
 tween the notional One of the Ontologists, and the idea 
 of the living God 
 
 But if not the abstract or speculative reason, and yet 
 a reason there must be in order to a rational belief — 
 then it must be the practical reason of man, compre- 
 hending the will, the conscience, the moral being with 
 its inseparable interests and affections — that reason, 
 namely, which is the organ of wisdom, and (as far as 
 man is concerned) the source of living and actual 
 truths. 
 
 From these premisses we may further deduce, that 
 every doctrine is to be interpreted in reference to those, 
 to whom it has been revealed, or who have, or have had 
 the means of knowing or hearing the same. For instance : 
 
128 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the doctrine that there is no name under heaven, by which 
 a man can be saved, but the name of Jesus. If the word 
 here rendered name, may be understood (as it well may, 
 and as in other texts it must be) as meaning the power, 
 or originating cause, I see no objection on the part of 
 the practical reason to our belief of the declaration in its 
 whole extent. It is true universally or not true at all. 
 If there be any redemptive power not contained in the 
 power of Jesus, then Jesus is not the Redeemer : not 
 the Redeemer of the world, not the Jesus (that is, Sa- 
 viour) of mankind. But if with Tertullian and Augus- 
 tine we make the text assert the condemnation and misery 
 of all who are not Christians by Baptism and explicit 
 belief in the revelation of the New Covenant — then I 
 say, the doctrine is true to all intents and purposes. It 
 is true, in every respect, in which any practical, moral, 
 or spiritual interest or end can be connected with its 
 truth. It is tnue in respect to every man who has had, 
 or who might have had, the Gospel preached to him. 
 It is true and obligatory for every Christian community 
 and for every individual believer, wherever the oppor- 
 tunity is afforded of spreading the light of the Gospel, 
 and making known the name of the only Saviour and 
 Redeemer. For even though the uninformed Heathens 
 should not perish, the guilt of their perishing will attach 
 to those who not only had no certainty of their safety, 
 but who are commanded to act on the supposition of the 
 contrary. But if, on the other hand, a theological dog- 
 matist should attempt to persuade me that this text was 
 intended to give us an historical knowledge of God's 
 future actions and dealings — and for the gratification of 
 our curiosity to inform us, that Socrates and Phocion, 
 together with all the savages of the woods and wilds of 
 Africa and America, will be sent to keep company with 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 129 
 
 the Devil and his angels in everlasting torments — I 
 should remind him, that the purpose of Scripture was to 
 teach us our duty, not to enable us to sit in judgment 
 on the souls of our fellow-creatures. 
 
 One other instance will, I trust, prevent all miscon- 
 ception of my meaning. I am clearly convinced, that the 
 Scriptural and only true* idea of God will, in its de- 
 velopment, be found to involve the idea of the Tri- 
 unity. But I am likewise convinced, that previously to 
 the promulgation of the Gospel the doctrine had no 
 claim on the faith of mankind : though it might have been 
 a legitimate contemplation for a speculative philosopher, 
 a theorem in metaphysics valid in the Schools. 
 
 I form a certain notion in my mind, and say : This is 
 what I understand by the term, God. From books and con- 
 versation I find that the learned generally connect the 
 same notion with the same word. I then apply the rules 
 laid down by the masters of logic, for the involution and 
 evolution of terms, and prove (to as many as agree with me 
 in my premisses) that the notion, God, involves the notion, 
 Trinity. I now pass out of the Schools, and enter into 
 discourse with some friend or neighbour, unversed in the 
 formal sciences, unused to the process of abstraction, nei- 
 ther logician nor metaphysician ; but sensible and single- 
 minded, an Israelite indeed,, trusting in the Lord God 
 of his fathers, even the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and 
 of Jacob. If I speak of God to him, what will he un- 
 derstand me to be speaking of? What does he mean, 
 and suppose me to mean, by the word ? An accident or 
 
 * Or (I may add) any idea which does not either identify the Creator 
 with the creation ; or else represent the Supreme Being as a mere im- 
 personal law or ordo ordinans, differing from the law of gravitation only 
 by its universality. 
 
130 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 product of the reasoning faculty, or an abstraction which 
 the human mind forms by reflecting on its own thoughts 
 and forms of thinking ? No. By God he understands 
 me to mean an existing and self-subsisting reality,* a 
 
 * I have elsewhere remarked on the assistance which those that labor 
 after distinct conceptions would receive from the re-introduction of the 
 terms objective and subjective, objective and subjective reality, and the 
 like, as substitutes for real and notional, and to the exclusion of the false 
 antithesis between real and ideal. For the student in that noblest of the 
 sciences, the scire teipsum, the advantage would be especially great. 
 The few sentences that follow, in illustration of the terms here advocated, 
 will not, I trust, be a waste of the reader's time. 
 
 The celebrated Euler having demonstrated certain properties of arches, 
 adds : " All experience is in contradiction to this ; but this is no reason 
 for doubting its truth." The words sound paradoxical ; but mean no 
 more than this — that the mathematical properties of figure and space are 
 not less certainly the properties of figure and space because they can 
 never be perfectly realized in wood, stone, or iron. Now this assertion of 
 Euler's might be expressed at once, briefly and simply, by saying, that 
 the properties in question were subjectively true, though not objectively 
 — or that the mathematical arch possessed a subjective reality though 
 incapable of being realized objectively. 
 
 In like manner if I had to express my conviction that space was not 
 itself a thing, but a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward ground 
 and condition in the percipient, in consequence of which things are seen 
 as outward and co-existing, I convey this at once by the words, Space 
 is subjective, or space is real in and for the subject alone. 
 
 If I am asked, Why not say, in and for the mind, which every one 
 would understand 1 ! I reply: we know indeed, that all minds are sub- 
 jects ; but are by no means certain that all subjects are minds. For a 
 mind is a subject that knows itself, or a subject that is its own object. 
 The inward principle of growth and individual form in every seed and 
 plant is a subject, and without any exertion of poetic privilege poets 
 may speak of the soul of the flower. But the man would be a dreamer, 
 who otherwise than poetically should speak of roses and lilies as self- 
 conscious subjects. Lastly, by the assistance of the terms, object and 
 subject, thus used as correspondent opposites, or as negative and posi- 
 tive in physics (for example, negative and positive electricity) we may 
 arrive at the distinct import and proper use of the strangely misused 
 word, Idea. And as the forms of logic are all borrowed from geometry, 
 (ratiocinatio discursiva formas suas sive canonas recipit ab intuitu) I 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 131 
 
 real and personal Being — even the person, the I am, who 
 sent Moses to his forefathers in Egypt. Of the actual 
 existence of this divine Being he has the same historical 
 assurance as of theirs ; confirmed indeed by the book 
 
 may be permitted to elucidate my present meaning. Every line may be, 
 and by the ancient Geometricians was, considered as a point produced, 
 the two extremes being its poles, while the point itself remains in, or is 
 at least represented by, the mid point, the indifference of the two poles 
 or correlative opposites. Logically applied, the two extremes or poles 
 are named thesis and antithesis : thus in the line, 
 
 I 
 T A 
 
 we have T = thesis, A = antithesis, and I = punctum indifferens sive 
 amphotericum, which latter is to be conceived as both in as far as it may 
 be either of the two former. Observe : not both at the same time in the 
 same relation : for this would be the identity of T and A, not the indif- 
 ference ; — but so, that relatively to A, I is equal to T, and relatively to 
 T, it becomes = A. For the purposes of the universal Noetic, in which 
 we require terms of most comprehension and least specific import, might 
 not the Noetic Pentad be, — 1. Prothesis. 
 
 2. Thesis. 4. Mesothesis. 3. Antithesis. 
 
 5. Synthesis. 
 
 Prothesis. 
 
 Sum. 
 
 Thesis. Mesothesis. Antithesis. 
 
 Res. Agere. Ago, Patior. 
 
 Synthesis. 
 
 Agens. 
 
 1 . Verb substantive =Prothesis, as expressing the identity or co-in- 
 herence of act and being. 
 
 2. Substantive = Thesis, expressing being. 3. Verb = Antithesis, 
 expressing act. 4. Infinitive = Mesothesis, as being either substantive 
 or verb, or both at once, only in different relations ; 5. Participle = Syn- 
 thesis. Thus, in chemistry, sulphuretted hydrogen is an acid relatively 
 to the more powerful alkalis, and an alkali relatively to a powerful acid. 
 Yet one other remark, and I pass to the question. In order to render 
 the constructions of pure mathematics applicable to philosophy, the Py- 
 thagoreans, I imagine, represented the line as generated, or, as it were, 
 radiated, by a point not contained in the line but independent, and (in 
 the language of that School) transcendant to all production, which it 
 
132 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 of Nature, as soon and as far as that stronger and better 
 light has taught him to read and construe it — confirmed 
 by it, I say, but not derived from it. Now by what right 
 can I require this man (and of such men the great ma- 
 jority of serious believers consisted previously to the 
 light of the Gospel) to receive a notion of mine, wholly 
 alien from his habits of thinking, because it may be 
 
 caused but did not partake in. Facit, non patitur. This was the punc- 
 tum invisible et presuppositum : and in this way the Pythagoreans guarded 
 against the error of Pantheism, into which the later Schools fell. The 
 assumption of this point I call the logical prolhesis. We have now 
 therefore four relations of thought expressed : 1. Prothesis, or the 
 identity of T and A, which is neither, because in it, as the transcendant 
 of both, both are contained and exist as one. Taken absolutely, this 
 finds its application in the Supreme Being alone, the Pythagorean Te- 
 tractys ; the ineffabfe name, to which no image can be attached ; the 
 point, which has no (real) opposite or counter-point. But relatively 
 taken and inadequately, the germinal power of every seed might be 
 generalized under the relation of Identity. 2. Thesis, or position. 
 3. Antithesis, or opposition. 4. Indifference. To which when we add 
 the Synthesis or composition, in its several forms of equilibrium, as in 
 quiescent electricity ; of neutralization, as of oxygen and hydrogen in 
 water ; and of predominance, as of hydrogen and carbon with hydrogen, 
 predominant, in pure alcohol ; or of carbon and hydrogen, with the com- 
 parative predominance of the carbon, in oil ; we complete the five most 
 general forms or preconceptions of constructive logic. 
 
 And now for the answer to the question, what is an idea, if it mean 
 neither an impression on the senses, nor a definite conception, nor an ab- 
 stract notion 1 (And if it does mean either of these, the word is superflu- 
 ous : and while it remains undetermined which of these is meant by the 
 word, or whether it is not which you please, it is worse than superfluous.) 
 But supposing the word to have a meaning of its own, what does it mean? 
 What is an idea 1 In answer to this, I commence with the absolutely 
 Real as the prothesis ; the subjectively Real as the thesis ; the objec- 
 tively Real as the antithesis ; and I affirm, that Idea is the indifference 
 of the two — so namely, that if it be conceived as in the subject, the idea 
 is an object, and possesses objective truth ; but if in an object, it is then 
 a subject, and is necessarily thought of as exercising the powers of a 
 subject. Thus an idea conceived as subsisting in an object becomes a 
 law ; and a law contemplated subjectively (in a mind) is an idea. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 133 
 
 logically deduced from another notion, with which he 
 was almost as little acquainted, and not at all concerned? 
 Grant for a moment, that the latter (that is, the notion, 
 with which I first set out) as soon as it is combined with 
 the assurance of a corresponding reality becomes identi- 
 cal with the true and effective Idea of God ! Grant, that 
 in thus realizing the notion I am warranted by revela- 
 tion, the law of conscience, and the interests and neces- 
 sities of my moral being ! Yet by what authority, by 
 what inducement, am I entitled to attach the same reality 
 to a segond notion, a notion drawn from a notion. It is 
 evident, that if I have the same right, it must be on the 
 same grounds. Revelation must have assured it, my 
 conscience required it— or in some way or other I must 
 have an interest in this belief. It must concern me, as 
 a moral and responsible being. Now these grounds 
 were first given in the redemption of mankind by Christ, 
 the Saviour and Mediator : and by the utter incompati- 
 bility of these offices with a mere creature. On the 
 doctrine of redemption depends the faith, the duty, of 
 believing in the divinity of our Lord. And this again 
 is the strongest ground for the reality of that Idea, in 
 which alone this divinity can be received without breach 
 of the faith in the unity of the Godhead. But such is 
 the Idea of the Trinity. Strong as the motives are that 
 induce me to defer the full discussion of this great article 
 of the Christian Creed, I cannot withstand the request 
 of several divines, whose situation and extensive services 
 entitle them to the utmost deference, that I should so 
 far deviate from my first intention as at least to indicate 
 the point on which I stand, and to prevent the miscon- 
 ception of my purpose : as if I held the doctrine of the 
 Trinity for a truth which men could be called on to be- 
 lieve by mere force of reasoning, independently of .and 
 
 12 
 
134 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 positive Revelation. In short, it had been reported in 
 certain circles, that I considered this doctrine as a de- 
 monstrable part of the religion of nature. Now though 
 it might be sufficient to say, that I regard the very 
 phrase " Revealed Religion" as a pleonasm, inasmuch 
 as a religion not revealed is, in my judgment, no religion 
 at all ; I have no objection to announce more particularly 
 and distinctly what I do and what I do not maintain on 
 this point : provided that in the following paragraph, 
 with this view inserted, the reader will look for nothing 
 more than a plain statement of my opinions. The 
 grounds on which they rest, and the arguments by which 
 they are to be vindicated, are for another place. 
 
 I hold then, it is true, that all the (so called) demon- 
 strations of a God either prove too little, as that from 
 the order and apparent purpose in nature; or too much, 
 namely, that the World is itself God : or they clandes- 
 tinely involve the conclusion in the premisses, passing off 
 the mere analysis or explication of an assertion for the 
 proof of it, — a species of logical legerdemain not unlike 
 that of the jugglers at a fair, who putting into their 
 mouths what seems to be a walnut, draw out a score 
 yards of ribbon — as in' the postulate of a First Cause. 
 And lastly, in all these demonstrations the demonstra- 
 tors presuppose the idea or conception of a God without 
 being able to authenticate it, that is, to give an account 
 whence they obtained it. For it is clear, that the proof 
 first mentioned and the most natural and convincing of 
 all (the cosmological I mean, or that from the order in 
 nature) presupposes the ontological — that is, the proof 
 of a God from the necessity and necessary objectivity 
 of the Idea. If the latter can assure us of a God as an 
 existing reality, the former will go far to prove his 
 power, wisdom, and benevolence. All this I hold. But 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 135 
 
 I also hold, that this truth, the hardest to demonstrate, 
 is the one which of all others least needs to be demon- 
 strated ; that though there may be no conclusive demon- 
 strations of a good, wise, living, and personal God, there 
 are so many convincing reasons for it, within and with- 
 out — a grain of sand sufficing, and a whole universe at 
 hand to echo the decision! — that for every mind not 
 devoid of all reason, and desperately conscience-proof, 
 the truth which it is the least possible to prove, it is 
 little less than impossible not to believe ! only indeed 
 just so much short of impossible, as to leave some room 
 for the will and the moral election, and thereby to keep 
 it a truth of religion, and the possible subject of a com- 
 mandment.* 
 
 On this account I do not demand of a Deist, that he 
 should adopt the doctrine of the Trinity. For he might 
 very well be justified in replying, that he rejected the 
 doctrine, not because it could not be demonstrated, nor. 
 yet on the score of any incomprehensibilities and seeming 
 contradictions that might be objected to it, as knowing 
 
 * In a letter to a friend on the mathematical Atheists of the French 
 Revolution, La Lande and others, or rather on a young man of distin- 
 guished abilities, but an avowed and proselyting partizan of their tenets, 
 I concluded with these words : "The man who will believe nothing but 
 by force of demonstrative evidence (even though it is strictly demon* 
 strable that the demonstrability required would countervene all the pur- 
 poses of the truth in question, all that render the belief of the same de-> 
 sirable or obligatory) is not in a state of mind to be reasoned with on 
 any subject. But if he further denies the fact of the law of conscience, 
 and the essential difference between right and wrong, I confess he puzzles 
 me. I cannot without gross inconsistency appeal to his conscience and 
 moral sense, or I should admonish him that, as an honest man, he ought 
 to advertise himself, with a Cavete omnes ! Scelus sum. And as an 
 honest man myself, I dare not advise him on prudential grounds to keep 
 his opinions secret, lest I should make myself his accomplice, and be 
 helping him on with a wrap-rascal." 
 
136 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 that these might be, and in fact had been, urged with 
 equal force against a personal God under any form 
 capable of love and veneration ; but because he had not 
 the same theoretical necessity, the same interests and 
 instincts of reason for the one hypothesis as for the 
 other. It is not enough, the Deist might justly say, 
 that there is no cogent reason why I should not believe 
 the Trinity; you must show me some cogent reason why 
 I should. 
 
 But the case is quite different with a Christian, who 
 accepts the Scriptures as the word of God, yet refuses 
 his assent to the plainest declarations of these Scrip- 
 tures, and explains away the most express texts into 
 metaphor and hyperbole, because the literal and obvious 
 interpretation is (according to his notions) absurd and 
 contrary to reason. He is bound to show, that it is so 
 in any sense, not equally applicable to the texts assert- 
 ing the being, infinity, and personality of God the Father, 
 the Eternal and Omnipresent One, who created the 
 heaven and the earth. And the more is he bound to do 
 this, and the greater is my right to demand it of him, 
 because the doctrine of Redemption from sin supplies 
 the Christian with motives and reasons for the divinity 
 of the Redeemer far more concerning and coercive sub- 
 jectively, that is, in the economy of his own soul, than 
 are all the inducements that can influence the Deist 
 objectively, that is, in the interpretation of nature. 
 
 Do I then utterly exclude the speculative reason from 
 theology ? No ! It is its office and rightful privilege to 
 determine on the negative truth of whatever we are 
 required to believe. The doctrine must not contradict 
 any universal principle : for this would be a doctrine 
 that contradicted itself. Or philosophy ? No. It may 
 be and has been the servant and pioneer of faith by 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 137 
 
 convincing the mind that a doctrine is cogitable, that 
 the soul can present the idea to itself; and that if we 
 determine to contemplate, or think of, the subject at all, 
 so and in no other form can this be effected. So far 
 are both logic and philosophy to be received and trusted. 
 But the duty, and in some cases and for some persons 
 even the right, of thinking on subjects beyond the bounds 
 of sensible experience; the grounds of the real truth; 
 the life, the substance, the hope, the love, in one word, 
 the faith ; — these are derivatives from the practical, 
 moral, and spiritual nature and being of man. 
 
 APHORISM III. 
 
 BURNET AND COLERIDGE, 
 
 That religion is designed to improve the nature and 
 faculties of man, in order to the right governing of our 
 actions, to the securing the peace and progress, external 
 and internal, of individuals and of communities, and 
 lastly, to the rendering us capable of a more perfect 
 state, entitled the kingdom of God, to which the present 
 life is probationary — this is a truth, which all who have 
 truth only in view, will receive on its own evidence. 
 If such then be the main end of religion altogether (the 
 improvement namely of our nature and faculties), it is 
 plain, that every part of religion is to be judged by its 
 relation to this main end. And since the Christian, 
 scheme is religion in its most perfect and effective form, 
 a revealed religion, and, therefore, in a special sense 
 proceeding from that Being who made us and knows 
 what we are, of course therefore adapted to the needs 
 and capabilities of human nature ; nothing can be a part 
 of this holy Faith that is not duly proportioned to this, 
 end, 
 
 13* 
 
138 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 This aphorism should be borne in mind, whenever a 
 theological resolve is proposed to us as an article of 
 faith. Take, for instance, the determinations passed at 
 the Synod of Dort, concerning the absolute decrees of 
 God in connection with his omniscience and foreknow- 
 ledge. Or take the decision in the Council of Trent on 
 the difference between the two kinds of Transubstantia- 
 tion, the one in which both the substance and the acci- 
 dents are changed, the same matter remaining — as in 
 the conversion of water to wine at Cana : the other, in 
 which the matter and the substance are changed, the 
 accidents remaining unaltered, as in the Eucharist — 
 this latter being Transubstantiation par eminence ! Or 
 rather take the still more tremendous dogma, that it is 
 indispensable to a saving faith carefully to distinguish 
 the one kind from the other, and to believe both, and to 
 believe the necessity of believing both in order to sal- 
 vation ! For each or either of these extra-Scriptural 
 articles of faith the preceding aphorism supplies a safe 
 criterion. Will the belief tend to the improvement of 
 any of my moral or intellectual faculties ? But before 
 I can be convinced that a faculty will be improved, I 
 must be assured that it exists. On all these dark say- 
 ings, therefore, of Dort or Trent, it is quite sufficient to 
 ask, by what faculty, organ, or inlet of knowledge, we 
 are to assure ourselves that the words mean any thing, 
 or correspond to any object out of our own mind or even 
 in it : unless indeed the mere craving and striving to 
 think on, after all the materials for thinking have been 
 exhausted, can be called an object. When a number 
 of trust-worthy persons assure me, that a portion of 
 fluid which they saw to be water, by some change in 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 139 
 
 the fluid itself or in their senses, suddenly acquired the 
 colour, taste, smell, and exhilarating property of wine, I 
 perfectly understand what they tell me, and likewise by 
 what faculties they might have come to the knowledge 
 of the fact. But if any one of the number not satisfied 
 with my acquiescence in the fact, should insist on my 
 believing, that the matter remained the same, the sub- 
 stance and the accidents having been removed in order 
 to make way for a different substance with different 
 accidents, I must entreat his permission to wait till I 
 can discover in myself any faculty, by which there can 
 be presented to me a matter distinguishable from acci- 
 dents, and a substance that is different from both. It is 
 true, I have a faculty of articulation; but I do not see 
 that it can be improved by my using it for the formation 
 of words without meaning, or at best, for the utterance 
 of thoughts, that mean only the act of so thinking, or of 
 trying so to think. But the end of religion is the im- 
 provement of our nature and faculties. Ergo, &c. I 
 sum up the whole in one great practical maxim. The 
 object of religious contemplation, and of a truly spiritual 
 faith, is " the ways of God to man." Of the workings 
 of the Godhead, God himself has told us, My ways are 
 not as your ways, nor my thoughts as your thoughts. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 THE CHARACTERISTIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DISCIPLINE 
 OF THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS AND THE DISPENSATION 
 OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 By undeceiving, enlarging, and informing the intellect, 
 philosophy sought to purify and to elevate the moral 
 character. Of course, those alone could receive the 
 latter and incomparably greater benefit, who by natural 
 capacity and favorable contingencies of fortune were fit 
 
140 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 recipients of the former. How small the number, we 
 scarcely need the evidence of history to assure us. 
 Across the night of Paganism, philosophy flitted on, 
 like the lantern-fly of the Tropics, a light to itself, and 
 an ornament, but alas! no more than an ornament, of 
 the surrounding darkness. 
 
 Christianity reversed the order. By means accessi- 
 ble to all, by inducements operative on all, and by con- 
 victions, the grounds and materials of which all men 
 might find in themselves, her first step was to cleanse 
 the heart. But the benefit did not stop here. In pre- 
 venting the rank vapours that steam up from the cor- 
 rupt heart, Christianity restores the intellect likewise to 
 its natural clearness. By relieving the mind from the 
 distractions and importunities of the unruly passions, 
 she improves the quality of the understanding : while at 
 the same time she presents for its contemplations objects 
 so great and so bright as cannot but enlarge the organ, 
 by which they are contemplated. The fears, the hopes, 
 the remembrances, the anticipations, the inward and 
 outward experience, the belief and the faith, of a Chris- 
 tian, form of themselves a philosophy and a sum of 
 knowledge, which a life spent in the Grove of Academus, 
 or the " painted Porch," could not have attained or col- 
 lected. The result is contained in the fact of a wide 
 and still widening Christendom. 
 
 Yet I dare not say, that the effects have been propor- 
 tionate to the divine wisdom of the scheme. Too soon 
 did the Doctors of the Church forget that the heart, the 
 moral nature, was the beginning and the end ; and that 
 truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its 
 expansion. This was the true and first apostacy — when 
 in council and synod the divine humanities of the Gospel 
 gave way to speculative systems, and religion became a 
 
ON SPIRITtJAL RELIGION. I4l 
 
 science of shadows under the name of theology, or at 
 best a bare skeleton of truth, without life or interest, 
 alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of 
 Christians. For these therefore there remained only 
 rites and. ceremonies and spectacles, shows and sem- 
 blances. Thus among the learned the substance of 
 things hoped for (Heb. xi, 1,) passed off into notions; 
 and for the unlearned the surfaces of things became* 
 substance. The Christian world was for centuries di- 
 vided into the many, that did not think at all, and the 
 few who did nothing but think — both alike unreflecting, 
 the one from defect of the act, the other from the absence 
 of an object. 
 
 APHORISM V. 
 
 There is small chance of truth at the goal where there 
 is not a child-like humility at the starting-post. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Humility is the safest ground of docility, and docility 
 the surest promise of docibility. Where there is no 
 working of self-love in the heart that secures a leaning 
 beforehand ; where the great magnet of the planet is not 
 overwhelmed or obscured by partial masses of iron in 
 close neighbourhood to the compass of the judgment, 
 though hidden or unnoticed ; there will this great de- 
 sideratum be found of a child-like humility. Do I then 
 say, that I am to be influenced by no interest ? Far from 
 it! There is an interest of truth; or how could there 
 be a love of truth ? And that a love of truth for its own 
 sake, and merely as truth, is possible, my soul bears 
 
 * Virium et proprietatum, qua non nisi de substantibus predicari pos- 
 sunt, formis supers tantibus attributio, est Superstitio. 
 
142 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 witness to itself in its inmost recesses. But there are 
 other interests — those of goodness, of beauty, of utility. 
 It would be a sorry proof of the humility I am extolling, 
 were I to ask for angel's wings to overfly my own 
 human nature. I exclude none of these. It is enough 
 if the lene clinamen, the gentle bias, be given by no 
 interest that concerns myself other than as I am a man, 
 and included in the great family of mankind ; but which 
 does therefore especially concern me, because being a 
 common interest of all men it must needs concern the 
 very essentials of my being, and because these essentials, 
 as existing in me, are especially intrusted to my par- 
 ticular charge. 
 
 Widely different from this social and truth-attracted 
 bias, different both in its nature and its effects, is the 
 interest connected with the desire of distinguishing your- 
 self from other men, in order to be distinguished by 
 them. Hoc revera est inter te et veritatem. This in- 
 terest does indeed stand between thee and truth. I 
 might add between thee and thy own soul. It is scarcely 
 more at variance with the love of truth than it is un- 
 friendly to the attainment that deserves that name. By 
 your own act you have appointed the many as your 
 judges and appraisers : for the anxiety to be admired is 
 a loveless passion, ever strongest with regard to those 
 by whom we are least known and least cared for, loud 
 on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen 
 at the family fireside. What you have acquired by 
 patient thought and cautious discrimination, demands a 
 portion of the same effort in those who are to receive it 
 from you. But applause and preference are things of 
 barter ; and if you trade in them, experience will soon 
 teach you that there are easier and less unsuitable ways 
 to win golden judgments than by at once taxing the 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 143 
 
 patience and humiliating the self-opinion of your judges , 
 To obtain your end, your words must be as indefinite as 
 their thoughts : and how vague and genera these are 
 even on objects of sense, the few who at a mature age 
 have seriously set about the discipline of their faculties, 
 and have honestly taken stock, best know by recollection 
 of their own state. To be admired you must make your 
 auditors believe at least that they understand what you 
 say; which be assured, they never will, under such circum- 
 stances, if it be worth understanding, or if you understand 
 your own soul. But while your prevailing motive is to 
 be compared and appreciated, is it credible, is it possible, 
 that you should in earnest seek for a knowledge which 
 is and must remain a hidden light, a secret treasure ? 
 Have you children, or have you lived among children, 
 and do you not know, that in all things, in food, in med- 
 icine, in all their doings and abstainings they must be- 
 lieve in order to acquire a reason for their belief ? But 
 so is it with religious truths for all men. These we 
 must all learn as children. The ground of the prevail- 
 ing error on this point is the ignorance, that in spiritual 
 concernments to believe and to understand are not diverse 
 things, but the same thing in different periods of its 
 growth. Belief is the seed, received into the will, of 
 which the understanding or knowledge is the flower, 
 and the thing believed is the fruit. Unless ye believe ye 
 cannot understand : and unless ye be humble as chil- 
 dren, ye not only will not, but ye cannot believe. Of 
 such therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven. Yea, bless- 
 ed is the calamity that makes us humble ; though so 
 repugnant thereto is our nature, in our present state, 
 that after a while, it is to be feared, a second and sharper 
 calamity would be wanted to cure us of our pride in 
 having become so humble. 
 
144 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Lastly, there are among us, though fewer and less 
 in fashion than among our ancestors, persons who, like 
 Shaftesbury, do not belong to " the herd of Epicurus," 
 yet prefer a philosophic paganism to the morality of the 
 Gospel. Now it would conduce, methinks, to the child- 
 like humility we have been discoursing of, if the use of 
 the term, virtue, in that high, comprehensive, and 
 notional sense in which it was used by the ancient 
 Stoics, were abandoned, as a relic of Paganism, to these 
 modern Pagans: and if Christians restoring the word to 
 its original import, namely, manhood or manliness, used 
 it exclusively to express the quality of fortitude ; strength 
 of character in relation to the resistance opposed by 
 nature and the irrational passions to the dictates of 
 reason; energy of will in preserving the line of rectitude 
 tense and firm against the warping forces and treacheries 
 of temptation. Surely, it were far less unseemly to 
 value ourselves on this moral strength than on strength, 
 of body, or even strength of intellect. But we will 
 rather value it for ourselves : and bearing in mind the 
 old adage, Quis custodiet ipsum costodem ? we will 
 value it the more, yea, then only will we allow it true 
 spiritual worth, when we possess it as a gift of grace, a 
 boon of mercy undeserved, a fulfilment of a free promise 
 (1 Cor. x, 13). What more is meant in this last para- 
 graph, let the venerable Hooker say for me in the fol- 
 lowing. 
 
 APHORISM VI. 
 
 HOOKER. 
 
 What is virtue but a medicine, and vice but a wound? 
 Yea, we have so often deeply wounded ourselves with 
 medicine, that God hath been fain to make wounds 
 medicinable ; to secure by vice where virtue hath 
 stricken ; to suffer the just man to fall, that being raised 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 145 
 
 he may be taught what power it was which upheld him 
 standing. I am not afraid to affirm it boldly with St. 
 Augustine, that men purled up through a proud opinion 
 of their own sanctity and holiness received a benefit at 
 the hands of God, and are assisted with his grace when 
 with his grace they are not assisted, but permitted (and 
 that grievously) to transgress. Whereby, as they were 
 through over great liking of themselves supplanted {trip- 
 ped up), so the dislike of that which did supplant them 
 may establish them afterwards the surer. Ask the very 
 soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly itself make you 
 this answer : My eager protestations made in the glory 
 of my spiritual strength I am ashamed of. But my 
 shame and the tears, with which my presumption and 
 my weakness were bewailed, recur in the songs of my 
 thanksgiving. My strength had been my ruin, my fall 
 hath proved my stay. 
 
 APHORISM VII. 
 
 The being and providence of One Living God, holy, 
 gracious, merciful, the Creator and Preserver of all 
 things, and a Father of the righteous ; the Moral Law 
 in its 1 utmost height, breadth and purity ; a state of 
 retribution after death ; the 2 resurrection of the dead ; 
 and a day of Judgment — all these were known and re- 
 ceived by the Jewish people, as established articles of 
 the national Faith, at or before the proclaiming of Christ 
 by the Baptist. They are the ground-work of Chris- 
 tianity, and essentials in the Christian Faith, but not its 
 characteristic and peculiar doctrines : except indeed as 
 they are confirmed, enlivened, realized and brought 
 home to the whole being of man, head, heart, and spirit* 
 by the truths and influences of the Gospel. 
 
 13 
 
146 AIDS TO REFLECTION, 
 
 Peculiar to Christianity are : 
 
 I. The belief that a Mean of Salvation has been ef- 
 fected and provided for the human race by the incarna- 
 tion of the Son of God in the person of Jesus Christ ; 
 and that his life on earth, his sufferings, death, and 
 resurrection, are not only proofs and manifestations, but 
 likewise essential and effective parts of the great redemp- 
 tive act, whereby also the obstacle from the corruption 
 of our nature is rendered no longer insurmountable. 
 
 II. The belief in the possible appropriation of this 
 benefit by repentance and faith, including the aids that ren 
 der an effective faith and repentance themselves possible. 
 
 III. The belief in the reception (by as many as shall 
 be heirs of salvation) of a living and spiritual principle, 
 a seed of life capable of surviving this natural life, and 
 of existing in a divine and immortal state. 
 
 IV. The belief in the awakening of the spirit in them 
 that truly believe, and in the communion of the spirit, 
 thus awakened, with the Holy Spirit. 
 
 V. The belief in the accompanying and consequent 
 gifts, graces, comforts, and privileges of the Spirit, which 
 acting primarily on the heart and will, cannot but mani- 
 fest themselves in suitable works of love and obedience, 
 that is, in right acts with right affections, from right 
 principles. 
 
 VI. Further, as Christians we are taught, that these 
 Works are the appointed signs and evidences of our 
 Faith ; and that, under limitation of the power, the 
 means, and the opportunities afforded us individually, 
 they are the rule and measure, by which we are bound 
 and enabled to judge, of xohat spirit we are. 
 
 VII. All these, together with the doctrine of the 
 Fathers re-proclaimed in the everlasting Gospel, we 
 receive in the full assurance, that God beholds and will 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 147 
 
 finally judge us with a merciful consideration of our in- 
 firmities, a gracious acceptance of our sincere though 
 imperfect strivings, a forgiveness of our defects, through 
 the mediation, and a completion of our deficiencies by 
 the perfect righteousness of the Man Christ Jesus, even 
 the Word that was in the beginning with God, and who, 
 being God, became man for the redemption of mankind. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 I earnestly entreat the Reader to pause awhile, and 
 to join with me in reflecting on the preceding Aphorism. 
 It has been my aim throughout this work to enforce two 
 points : 1 . That Morality arising out of the reason and 
 conscience of men, and Prudence, which in like manner 
 flows out of the understanding and the natural wants 
 and desires of the individual, are two distinct things. 2. 
 That morality with prudence as its instrument has, con- 
 sidered abstractedly, not only a value but a worth in 
 itself. Now the question is (and it is a question which 
 every man must answer for himself) " From what you 
 know of yourself; of your own heart and strength ; and 
 from what history and personal experience have led you 
 to conclude of mankind generally ; dare you trust to it ? 
 Dare you trust to it ? To it, and to it alone ? If so, 
 well ! It is at your own risk. I judge you not. Before 
 Him, who cannot be mocked, you stand or fall. But if 
 not, if you have had too good reason to know, that your 
 heart is deceitful and your strength weakness : if you 
 are disposed to exclaim with Paul — the Law indeed is 
 holy, just, good, spiritual ; but I am carnal, sold under 
 sin : for that which I do, I allow not ; and what I would, 
 that I do not ! — in this case, there is a Voice that says, 
 Come unto me ; and I will give you rest. This is the 
 voice of Christ : and the conditions, under which the 
 
148 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 promise was given by him, are that you believe in him, 
 and believe his words. And he has further assured you, 
 that if you do so, you will obey him. You are, in short, 
 to embrace the Christian Faith as your religion — those 
 truths which St. Paul believed after his conversion, and 
 not those only which he believed no less undoubtingly 
 while he was persecuting Christ, and an enemy of the 
 Christian Religion. With what consistency could I offer 
 you this volume as aids to reflection, if I did not call on 
 you to ascertain in the first instance what these truths 
 are ? But these I could not, lay before you without first 
 enumerating certain other points of belief, which though 
 truths, indispensable truths, and truths comprehended or 
 rather pre-supposed in the Christian scheme, are yet not 
 these truths. {John i, 17.) 
 
 While doing this, I was aware that the positions, in 
 the first paragraph of the preceding aphorism, to which 
 the numerical marks are affixed, will startle some of my 
 readers. Let the following sentences serve for the notes 
 corresponding to the marks : 
 
 1 Be you holy : even as God is holy. — What more 
 does he require of thee, O man ! than to do justice, love 
 mercy, and walk humbly toith the Lord thy God ? To 
 these summary passages from Moses and the Prophets 
 (the first exhibiting the closed, the second the expanded, 
 hand of the Moral Law) I might add the authorities of 
 Grotius and other more orthodox and not less learned 
 divines, for the opinion that the Lord's Prayer was a 
 selection, and the famous passage [The hour is coming, 
 fyc, John v, 28, 29,] a citation by our Lord from the 
 Liturgy of the Jewish Church. But it will be sufficient 
 to remind the reader, that the apparent difference be- 
 tween the prominent moral truths of the Old and those 
 of the New Testament results from the latter having 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 149 
 
 been written in Greek ; while the conversations recorded 
 by the Evangelists took place in Syro-Chaldaic or Ara- 
 maic. Hence it happened that where our Lord cited 
 the original text, his biographers substituted the Septua- 
 gint Version, while our English Version is in both in- 
 stances immediate and literal^ — in the Old Testament 
 from the Hebrew Original, in the New Testament from 
 the freer Greek translation. The text, I give you a 
 new commandment, has no connection with the present 
 subject. 
 
 2 There is a current mistake on this point likewise, 
 though this article of the Jewish belief is not only as- 
 serted by St. Paul, but is elsewhere spoken of as com- 
 mon to the Twelve Tribes. The mistake consists in 
 supposing the Pharisees to have been a distinct sect, 
 and in strangely over-rating the number of the Sadducees. 
 The former were distinguished not by holding, as mat- 
 ters of religious belief, articles different from the Jewish 
 Church at large ; but by their pretences to a more- rigid 
 orthodoxy, a more scrupulous performance. They were, 
 in short (if I may dare use a phrase which I dislike as 
 profane and denounce as uncharitable), the Evangelicals 
 and strict professors of the day. The latter, the Sad- 
 ducees, whose opinions much more nearly resembled 
 those of the Stoics than the Epicureans (a remark that 
 will appear paradoxical to those only who have abstracted 
 their notions of the Stoic philosophy from Epictetus, 
 Mark Antonine, and certain brilliant inconsistencies of 
 Seneca), were a handful of rich men, Romanized Jews, 
 not more numerous than Infidels among- us-, and holden 
 by the people at large in at least equal abhorrence. 
 Their great argument was :■ that the belief of a future 
 state of rewards and punishments injured or destroyed 
 the purity of the Moral Law for the more enlightened! 
 
 13* 
 
150 AIDS OF REFLECTION. 
 
 classes, and weakened the influence of the laws of the 
 land for the people, the vulgar multitude. 
 
 I will now suppose the reader to have thoughtfully 
 rcperused the paragraph containing the tenets peculiar 
 to Christianity, and if he have his religious principles yet 
 to form, I should expect to overhear a troubled murmur: 
 How can I comprehend this ? How is this to be proved? 
 To the first question I should answer : Christianity is 
 not a theory, or a speculation ; but a life ; — not a philo- 
 sophy of life, but a life and a living process. To the 
 second : Try it. It has been eighteen hundred years 
 in existence : and has one individual left a record, like 
 the following ? " I tried it ; and it did not answer. I 
 made the experiment faithfully according to the direc- 
 tions ; and the result has been, a conviction of my own 
 credulity." Have you, in your own experience, met 
 with any one in whose words you could place full con- 
 fidence, and who has seriously affirmed : — " I have 
 given Christianity a fair trial. I was aware, that its 
 promises were made only conditionally. But my heart 
 bears me witness, that I have to the utmost of my power 
 complied with these conditions. Both outwardly and in 
 the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have 
 performed the duties which it enjoins, and I have used 
 the means which it prescribes. Yet my assurance of 
 its truth has received no increase. Its promises have 
 not been fulfilled : and I repent me of my delusion !" 
 If neither your own experience nor the history of almost 
 two thousand years has presented a single testimony to 
 this purport ; and if you have read and heard of many 
 who have lived and died bearing witness to the contrary:, 
 and if you have yourself met with some one, in whom, 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 151 
 
 on any other point you would place unqualified trust, 
 who has on his own experience made report to you, that 
 he is faithful who promised, and what he promised he 
 has proved himself able to perform : is it bigotry, if I 
 fear that the unbelief, which prejudges and prevents the 
 experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the uncor- 
 rupted judgment ; that not the strong free mind, but the 
 enslaved will, is the true original infidel in this instance? 
 It would not be the first time, that a treacherous bosom- 
 sin had suborned the understandings of men to bear 
 false witness against its avowed enemy, the right though 
 unreceived owner of the house, who had long warned it 
 out, and waited only for its ejection to enter and take 
 possession of the same 
 
 I have elsewhere in the present work explained the 
 difference between the understanding and the reason, by 
 reason meaning exclusively the speculative or scientific 
 power so called, the vou? or mens of the ancients. And 
 wider still is the distinction between the understanding 
 and the spiritual mind. But no gift of God does or can 
 contradict any other gift, except by misuse or misdirec- 
 tion. Most readily therefore do I admit, that there can 
 be no contrariety between revelation and the understand- 
 ing; Unless you call the fact, that the skin though sen- 
 sible of the warmth of the sun, can convey no notion of 
 its figure or its joyous light, or of the colors which it 
 impresses on the clouds, a contrariety between the skin 
 and the eye ; or infer that the cutaneous and the optic 
 nerves contradict each other. 
 
 But we have grounds to believe, that there are yet 
 other rays or effluences from the sun, which neither 
 feeling nor sight can apprehend, but which are to be 
 inferred from the effects. And were it even so with 
 regard to the spiritual sun, how would this contradict 
 
152 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the understanding or the reason ? It is a sufficient proof 
 of the contrary, that the mysteries in question are not in 
 the direction of the understanding or the (speculative) 
 reason. They do not move on the same line or plane 
 with them, and therefore cannot contradict them. But 
 besides this, in the mystery that most immediately con- 
 cerns the believer, that of the birth into a new and spir- 
 itual life, the common sense and experience of mankind 
 come in aid of their faith. The analogous facts,, which 
 we know to be true, not only facilitate the apprehension 
 of the facts promised to us, and expressed by the same 
 words in conjunction with a distinctive epithet; but being 
 confessedly not less incomprehensible^ the certain know- 
 ledge of the one disposes us to the belief of the other. 
 It removes at least all objections to the truth of the doc- 
 trine derived from the mysteriousness of its subject. 
 The life, we seek after, is a mystery ; but so both in 
 itself and in its origin is the life we have. In order to 
 meet this question, however,, with minds duly prepared, 
 there are two preliminary inquiries to be decided ; the 
 first respecting the purport, the second respecting the 
 language, of the Gospel. 
 
 First then of the purport, namely, what the Gospel 
 does not, and what it does profess to be. The Gospel 
 is not a system of theology, nor a syntagma of theore- 
 tical propositions and conclusions for the enlargement of 
 speculative knowledge, ethical or metaphysical. But it 
 is a history, a series of facts and events related or an- 
 nounced. These do indeed involve, or rather I should 
 say they at the same time are> most important doctrinal 
 truths ; but still facts and declaration of facts. 
 
 Secondly of the language. This, is a wide subject- 
 But the point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity 
 of thoroughly understanding the distinction between ana,- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 153 
 
 logous and metaphorical language. Analogies are used 
 in aid of conviction : metaphors, as means of illustration. 
 The language is analogous, wherever a thing, power, or 
 principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same 
 thing, power, or principle in a lower but more known 
 form. Such, for instance, is the language of John iii, 6. 
 That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that ivhich is 
 born of the Spirit, is Spirit. The latter half of the 
 verse contains the fact asserted ; the former half the 
 analogous fact, by which it is rendered intelligible. If 
 any man choose to call this metaphorical or figurative, I 
 ask him whether with Hobbes and Bolingbroke he ap- 
 plies the same rule to the moral attributes of the Deity? 
 Whether he regards the divine justice, for instance, as a 
 metaphorical term, a mere figure of speech ? If he dis- 
 claims this, then I answer, neither do I regard the words, 
 born again, or spiritual life, as figures or metaphors. I 
 have only to add, that these analogies are the material, 
 or (to speak chemically) the base, of symbols and sym- 
 bolical expressions ; the nature of which is always tau- 
 tegorical, that is, expressing the same subject but with 
 a difference, in contra-distinction from metaphors and 
 similitudes, which are always allegorical, that is, express- 
 ing a different subject but with a resemblance.* 
 
 Of metaphorical language, on the other hand, let the 
 following be taken as instance and illustration. I am 
 speaking, we will suppose, of an act, which in its own 
 nature, and as a producing and efficient cause, is tran- 
 scendant ; but which produces sundry effects each of 
 which is the same in kind with an effect produced by a 
 cause well known and of ordinary occurrence. Now 
 when I characterize or designate this transcendant act, 
 
 * See the Statesman's Manual, p. 230, 2nd edit. Ed. 
 
154 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 in exclusive reference to these its effects, by a succes- 
 sion of names borrowed from their ordinary causes ; not 
 for the purpose of rendering the act itself, or the manner 
 of the agency, conceivable, but in order to show the 
 nature and magnitude of the benefits received from it, 
 and thus to excite the due admiration, gratitude, and love 
 in the receivers ; in this case I should be rightly de- 
 scribed as speaking metaphorically. And in this case 
 to confound the similarity, in respect of the effects re- 
 latively to the recipients, with an identity in respects of 
 the Causes or modes of causation relatively to the tran- 
 scendant act or the Divine Agent, is a confusion of me- 
 taphor with analogy, and of figurative with literal ; and 
 has been and continues to be a fruitful source of super- 
 stition or enthusiasm in believers, and of objections and 
 prejudices to infidels and sceptics. But each of these 
 points is worthy of a separate consideration : and apt 
 occasions will be found of reverting to them severally 
 in the following aphorisms, or the comments thereto 
 attached, 
 
 APHORISM VIII. 
 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Faith elevates" the soul not only above sense and sen- 
 sible things, but above reason itself. As reason corrects 
 the errors which sense might occasion, so supernatural 
 faith corrects the errors of natural reason judging accord- 
 ing to sense, 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 My remarks on this aphorism from Leighton cannot 
 be better introduced, or their purport more distinctly 
 announced, than by the following sentence from Har- 
 rington, with no other change than is necessary to make 
 words express, without aid of the context, what from the 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 155 
 
 context it is evident was the writer's meaning. " The 
 definition and proper character of man — that, namely, 
 which should contra-distinguish him from the animals — 
 is to be taken from his reason rather than from his un- 
 derstanding : in regard that in other creatures there may 
 be something of understanding, but there is nothing of 
 reason." 
 
 Sir Thomas Brown, in his Religio Medici, complains* 
 that there are not impossibilities enough in religion for 
 his active faith ; and adopts by choice and in free pre- 
 ference such interpretations of certain texts and decla- 
 rations of Holy Writ, as place them in irreconcilable 
 contradiction to the demonstrations of science and the 
 experience of mankind, because (says he) " I love to 
 lose myself in a mystery, and 'tis my solitary recreation 
 to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas 
 and riddles of the Trinity and Incarnation :" — and be- 
 cause he delights (as thinking it no vulgar part of faith) 
 to believe a thing not only above but contrary to reason, 
 and against the evidence of our proper senses. For the 
 worthy knight could answer all the objections of the 
 Devil and reason " with the old resolution he had learnt 
 of Tertullian : Certum est quia impossibile est. It is 
 certainly true because it is quite impossible !" Now this 
 I call Ultra-fidianism.* 
 
 * There is this advantage in the occasional use of a newly minted 
 term or title, expressing the doctrinal schemes of particular sects or par- 
 ties, that it avoids the inconvenience that presses on either side, whether 
 we adopt the name which the party itself has taken up by which to ex- 
 press its peculiar tenets, or that by which the same party is designated 
 by its opponents. If we take the latter, it most often happens that either 
 the persons are invidiously aimed at in the designation of the principles, 
 or that the name implies some consequence or occasional accompaniment 
 of the principles denied by the parties themselves, as applicable to theni 
 
156 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Again, there is a scheme constructed on the principle 
 of retaining the social sympathies, that attend on the 
 name of believer, at the least possible expenditure of 
 belief; a scheme of picking and choosing Scripture texts 
 
 collectively. On the other hand, convinced as I am, that current appel- 
 lations are never wholly indifferent or inert : and that, when employed 
 to express the characteristic relief or object of a religious confederacy, 
 they exert on the many a great and constant, though insensible, influence ; 
 I cannot but fear that in adopting the former I may be sacrificing the 
 interests of truth beyond what the duties of courtesy can demand or jus- 
 tify. I have elsewhere stated my objections to the word Unitarians, as 
 a name which in its proper sense can belong only to the maintainers of 
 the truth impugned by the persons, who have chosen it as their designa- 
 tion. " For unity or unition, and indistinguishable unicity or sameness, 
 are incompatible terms. We never speak of the unity of attraction, or 
 the unity of repulsion ; but of the unity of attraction and repulsion in 
 each corpuscle. Indeed, the essential diversity of the conceptions, unity 
 and sameness, was among the elementary principles of the old logicians ; 
 and Leibnitz, in his critique on Wissowatius, has ably exposed the 
 sophisms grounded on the confusion of the two terms. But in the ex* 
 elusive sense, in which the name, Unitarian, is appropriated by the Sect, 
 and in which they mean it to be understood, it is a presumptuous boast 
 and an uncharitable calumny. No one of the Churches to which they 
 on this article of the Christian faith stand opposed, Greek or Latin, ever 
 adopted the term, Trini — or Tri-uni-tarians as their ordinary and proper 
 name : and had it been otherwise, yet unity is assuredly no logical op- 
 posite to Tri-unity, which expressly includes it. The triple alliance is 
 a fortiori an alliance. The true designation of their characteristic tenet, 
 and which would simply and inoffensively express a fact admitted on all 
 sides, is Psilanthropism, or the assertion of the mere humanity of 
 Christ."* 
 
 I dare not hesitate to avow my regret that any scheme of doctrines or 
 tenets should be the subject of penal law : though I can easily conceive 
 that any scheme, however excellent in itself, may be propagated, and 
 however false or injurious, may be assailed in a manner and by means 
 that would make the advocate or assailant justly punishable. But then 
 it is the manner, the means, that constitute the crime. The merit or 
 demerit of the opinions themselves depends on their originating and de- 
 termining causes, which may differ in every different believer, and are 
 
 * " Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters." p. 367, 2nd edit. Ed. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 157 
 
 for the support of doctrines, that had been learned be- 
 forehand from the higher oracle of common sense ; 
 which, as applied to truths of religion, means the popu- 
 lar part of the philosophy in fashion. Of course, the 
 
 certainly known to Him alone, who commanded us, Judge not, lest ye 
 be judged. At all events, in the present state of the law, I do not see 
 where we can begin, or where we can stop, without inconsistency and 
 consequent hardship. Judging by all that we can pretend to know or 
 are entitled to infer, who among us will take on himself to deny that the 
 late Dr. Priestley was a good and benevolent man, as sincere in his love 
 as he was intrepid and indefatigable in his pursuit, of truth 1 Now let us 
 construct three parallel tables, the first containing the articles of belief, 
 moral and theological, maintained by the venerable Hooker, as the rep- 
 resentative of the Established Church, each article being distinctly lined 
 and numbered ; the second the tenets and persuasions of Lord Herbert, 
 as the representative of the Platonizing Deists ; and the third, those of 
 Dr. Priestley. Let the points, in which the second and third agree with 
 or differ from the first, be considered as to the comparative number 
 modified by the comparative weight and importance of the several points 
 — and let any competent and upright man be appointed the arbiter, to 
 decide according to his best judgment, without any reference to the 
 truth of the opinions, which of the two differed from the first more widely. 
 I say this, well aware that it would be abundantly more prudent to leave 
 it unsaid. But I say it in the conviction, that the liberality in the adop- 
 tion of admitted misnomers in the naming of doctrinal systems, if only 
 they have been negatively legalized, is but an equivocal proof of liberality 
 towards the persons who dissent from us. On the contrary, I more than 
 suspect that the former liberality does in too many men arise from a 
 latent predisposition to transfer their reprobation and intolerance from 
 the doctrines to the doctors, from the belief to the believers. Indecency, 
 abuse, scoffing on subjects dear and awful to a multitude of our fellow- 
 citizens, appeals to the vanity, appetites, and malignant passions of igno- 
 rant and incompetent judges — these are flagrant overt acts, condemned 
 by the law written in the heart of every honest man, Jew, Turk, and 
 Christian. These are points respecting which the humblest honest man 
 feels it his duty to hold himself infallible, and dares not hesitate in giving 
 utterance to the verdict of his conscience in the jury-box as fearlessly as 
 by his fireside. It is far otherwise with respect to matters of faith and 
 inward conviction: arid with respect to these I say— " Tolerate no be- 
 lief that you judge false and of injurious tendency : and arraign no be- 
 liever. The man is more and other than his belief : and God only knows 
 14 
 
158 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 scheme differs at different times and in different indi- 
 viduals in the number of articles excluded ; but, it may 
 always be recognized by this permanent character, that 
 its object is to draw religion down to the believer's intel- 
 
 how small or how large a part of him the belief in question may be, for 
 good or for evil. Resist every false doctrine ; and call no man heretic. 
 The false doctrine does not necessarily make the man a heretic ; but an 
 evil heart can make any doctrine heretical." 
 
 Actuated by these principles, I have objected to a false and deceptive 
 designation in the case of one system. Persuaded that the doctrines, 
 enumerated in p. 142 — 3, are not only essential to the Christian religion, 
 but those which contra-distinguish the religion as Christian, I merely re- 
 peat this persuasion in another form, when I assert, that (in my sense of 
 the word, Christian) Unitarianism is not Christianity. But do I say, 
 that those who call themselves Unitarians, are not Christians 1 God for- 
 bid ! I would not think, much less promulgate, a judgment at once so 
 presumptuous and so uncharitable. Let a friendly antagonist retort on 
 my scheme of faith in the like manner : I shall respect him all the more 
 for his consistency as a reasoner, and not confide the less in his kindness 
 towards me as his neighbour and fellow Christian. This latter and most 
 endearing name I scarcely know how to withhold even from my friend, 
 Hyman Hurwitz, as often as I read what every reverer of Holy Writ 
 and of the English Bible ought to read, his admirable Vindicice Hebraicee ! 
 It has trembled on the verge, as it were, of my lips, every time I have 
 conversed with that pious, learned, strong-minded, and single-hearted 
 Jew, an Israelite indeed, and without guile — 
 
 Cujus cura sequi naturam, legibus uti, 
 
 Et mentem vitiis, ora negate dolis ; 
 Virtutes opibus, verum prceponere falsa, 
 
 Nil vacuum sensu dicer e, nil facere. 
 Post obitum vivam* secum, secum requiescam, 
 
 Nee fiat melior sors mea sorte sua! 
 
 From a poem of Hildebert on his Master, 
 the persecuted Berengarius. 
 
 Under the same feelings I conclude this aid to reflection by applying 
 the principle to another misnomer not less inappropriate and far more 
 influential. Of those, whom I have found most reason to respect and 
 
 * I do not answer for the corrupt Latin* 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 15§ 
 
 lect, instead of raising his intellect up to religion. And 
 this extreme I call Minimi-fidianism. 
 
 Now if there be one preventive of both these extremes 
 more efficacious than another, and preliminary to all the 
 
 value, many have been members of the Church of Rome : and certainly 
 I did not honor those the least, who scrupled even in common parlance 
 to call our Church a reformed Church. A similar scruple would not, 
 methinks, disgrace a Protestant as to the use of the words, Catholic or 
 Roman Catholic ; and if (tacitly at least, and in thought) he remembered 
 that the Romish anti-Catholic Church would more truly express the fact. 
 Romish, to mark that the corruptions in discipline, doctrine, and prac- 
 tice do, for the larger part, owe both their origin and perpetuation to the 
 Romish Court, and the local tribunals of the City of Rome ; and neither 
 are or ever have been Catholic, that is, universal, throughout the Roman 
 Empire, or even in the whole Latin or Western Church— and anti-Ca- 
 tholic, because no other Church acts on so narrow and excommunicative 
 a principle, or is characterised by such a jealous spirit of monopoly. In- 
 stead of a Catholic (universal) spirit, it may be truly described as a spirit 
 of particularism counterfeiting Catholicity by a negative totality, and 
 heretical self-circumspection— in the first instances cutting off, and since 
 then cutting herself off from, all the other members of Christ's body. 
 For the rest, I think as that man of true catholic spirit and apostolic zeal, 
 Richard Baxter, thought ; and my readers will thank me for conveying 
 my reflections in his own words, in the following golden passage from 
 his Life, " faithfully published from his own original MSS. by Matthew 
 Silvester, 1696." 
 
 " My censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at 
 first. I then thought that their errors in the doctrines of faith were their 
 most dangerous mistakes. But now I am assured that their misexpres- 
 sions and misunderstanding us, with our mistakings of them and incon- 
 venient expressing of our own opinions, have made the difference in 
 most points appear much greater than it is ; and that in some it is next 
 to none at all. But the great and unreconcilable differences lie in their 
 Church tyranny ; in the usurpations of their hierarchy, and priesthood, 
 under the name of spiritual authority exercising a temporal lordship ; in 
 their corruptions and abasement of God's worship ; but above all, in their 
 systematic befriending of ignorance and vice. 
 
 " At first I thought that Mr. Perkins well proved that a Papist cannot 
 go beyond a reprobate ; but now I doubt not that God hath many sancti- 
 fied ones among them, who have received the true doctrine of Chris- 
 tianity so practically that their contradictory errors prevail not against 
 
160 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 rest, it is the being made fully aware of the diversity of 
 reason and the understanding. And this is the more 
 expedient, because though there is no want of authori- 
 ties ancient and modern for the distinction of the faeul- 
 ties, and the distinct appropriation of the terms, yet our 
 best writers too often confound the one with the other. 
 Even Lord Bacon himself, who in his Novum Organwn 
 has so incomparably set forth the nature of the differ- 
 ence, and the unfitness of the latter faculty for the ob- 
 jects of the former, does nevertheless in sundry places 
 use the term reason where he means the understanding, 
 and sometimes, though less frequently, understanding 
 for reason. In consequence of thus confounding the two 
 terms, or rather of wasting both words for the expression 
 of one and the same faculty, he left himself no appro- 
 priate term for the other and higher gift of reason, and 
 was thus under the necessity of adopting- fantastical and 
 mystical phrases, for example, the dry light {lumen sic- 
 cum,) the lucific vision, and the like, meaning thereby 
 nothing more than reason in contra-distinction from the 
 understanding. Thus too in the preceding aphorism, 
 by reason Leighton means the human understanding, the 
 explanation annexed to it being (by a noticeable coinci- 
 dence,) word for word, the very definition which the 
 
 them, to hinder their love of God and their salvation : but that their 
 errors are like a conquerable dose of poison, which a healthful nature 
 doth overcome- And I can never believe that a man may not be saved 
 by that religion, which doth but bring him to the true love of God and to 
 a heavenly mind and life : nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell 
 that truly loveth him. Also at first it would disgrace any doctrine with 
 me, if I did but hear it called Popery and anti-Christian ; but I have 
 long learned to be more impartial, and to know that Satan can use even 
 the names of Popery and Antichrist, to bring a truth into suspicion and 
 discredit."— Baxter's Life, Part I. p. 131. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 161 
 
 founder of the Critical Philosophy gives of the under- 
 standing — namely, " the faculty judging according to 
 sense." • 
 
 ON THE DIFFERENCE IN KIND OF REASON AND THE 
 UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 SCHEME OF THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 On the contrary, reason is the power of universal and 
 necessary convictions, the source and substance of truths 
 above sense, and having their evidence in themselves. 
 Its presence is always marked by the necessity of the 
 position affirmed : this necessity being conditional, when 
 a truth of reason is applied to facts of experience, or to 
 the rules and maxims, of the understanding ; but abso- 
 lute, when the subject matter is itself the growth or off- 
 spring of reason. Hence arises a distinction in reason 
 itself, derived from the different mode of applying it, and 
 from the objects to which it is directed : accordingly as 
 we consider one and the same gift, now as the ground: 
 of formal principles, and now as the origin of ideas; 
 Contemplated distinctively in reference to formal (or 
 abstract) truth, it is the speculative reason ;. but in refer- 
 ence to actual (or moral) truth, as the fountain of ideas 
 and the light of the conscience, we name it the practical 
 reason.. Whenever by self-subjection to this universal 
 light, the will of the individual, the particular will, has 
 become a will of reason,, the man is regenerate : and 
 reason is then the spirit of the regenerated man, whereby 
 the person is capable of \a quickening intercommunion 
 with the Divine Spirit. And herein consists the mystery 
 of Redemption, that this has been rendered possible for 
 us. And so it is written ; the first man Adam was 
 wade a living soul, the last Adam a quickening SgiriU: 
 U* 
 
162 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 (1 Cor. xv, 45.) We need only compare the passages 
 in the writings of the Apostles Paul and John, concern- 
 ing the Spirit and spiritual gifts, with thos» in the Pro- 
 verbs and in the Wisdom of Solomon respecting reason, 
 to be convinced that the terms are synonymous.* In 
 this at once most comprehensive and most appropriate 
 acceptation of the word, reason is pre-eminently spiritual, 
 and a spirit, even our spirit, through an effluence of the 
 same grace by which we are privileged to say Our Father ! 
 
 On the other hand, the judgments of the understanding 
 are binding only in relation to the objects of our senses, 
 which we reflect under the forms of the understanding. 
 It is, as Leighton, rightly defines it, " the faculty judging 
 according to sense." Hence we add the epithet human 
 without tautology : and speak of the human understand- 
 ing in disjunction from that of beings higher or lower 
 than man. But there is, in this sense, no human reason. 
 There neither is nor can be but one reason, one and the 
 same ; even the light that lighteth every man's individual 
 understanding (discursus,) and thus maketh it a reason- 
 able understanding, discourse of reason — one only, yet 
 manifold ; it goeth through all understanding, and re- 
 maining in itself regenerateth all other powers. The 
 same writer calls it likewise an influence from the Glory 
 of the Almighty, this being one of the names of the Mes- 
 siah, as the Logos, or co-eternal Filial Word. And 
 most noticeable for its coincidence is a fragment of He- 
 raclitus, as I have indeed already noticed elsewhere ; — 
 H To discourse rationally it behoves us to derive strength 
 from that which is common to all men : for all human 
 understandings are nourished by the one Divine Word." 
 
 Beasts, we have said, partake of understanding. If 
 
 * See Wisd. of Sol. c. vii, 22.-23, 27. Ed. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 1G3 
 
 any man deny this, there is a ready way of settling the 
 question. Let him give a careful perusal to Huber's 
 two small volumes on bees and ants, (especially the lat- 
 ter,) and to Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Ento- 
 mology ; and one or other of two things must follow. 
 He will either change his opinion as irreconcilable with 
 the facts ; or he must deny the facts, which yet I cannot 
 suppose, inasmuch as the denial would be tantamount 
 to the no less extravagant than uncharitable assertion, 
 that Huber, and the several eminent naturalists, French 
 and English, Swiss, German and Italian, by whom Hu- 
 ber's observations and experiments have been repeated 
 and confirmed, had all conspired to impose a series of 
 falsehoods and fairy-tales on the world. I see no way, 
 at least, by which he can get out of this dilemma, but 
 by overleaping the admitted rules and fences of all legi- 
 timate discussion, and either transferring to the word', 
 understanding, the definition already appropriated to 
 reason, or denning understanding in genere by the spe- 
 cific and accessional perfections which the human un- 
 derstanding derives from its co-existence with reason 
 and free-will in the same individual person ; in plainer 
 words, from its being exercised by a self-conscious and 
 responsible creature. And, after all, the supporter of 
 Harrington's position would have a right to ask him, by 
 what other name he would designate the faculty in the in- 
 stances referred to ? If it be not understanding, what is it' 
 In no former part of this volume has the author felt 
 the same anxiety to obtain a patient attention. For he 
 does not hesitate to avow, that on his success in estab- 
 lishing the validity and importance of the distinction be- 
 tween reason and the understanding, he rests his hopes of 
 carrying the reader along with him through all that is to 
 follow. Let the student but clearly see and comprehend 
 
164 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the diversity in the things themselves, the expediency 
 of a correspondent distinction and appropriation of the 
 words will follow of itself. Turn back for a moment to 
 the aphorism, and having reperused the first paragraph 
 of this comment thereon, regard the two following nar- 
 ratives as the illustration. I do not say proof: for I take 
 these from a multitude of facts equally striking for the 
 one only purpose of placing my meaning out of all doubt. 
 
 I. Huber put a dozen humble-bees under a bell-glass 
 along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons so une- 
 qual in height as not to be capable of standing steadily. 
 To remedy this two or three of the humble-bees got 
 upon the comb, stretched themselves over its edge, and 
 with their heads downwards fixed their forefeet on the 
 table on which the comb stood, and so with their hind 
 feet kept the comb from falling. When these were 
 weary others took their places. In this constrained and 
 painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades at 
 intervals, and each working in its turn, did these affec- 
 tionate little insects support the comb for nearly three 
 days : at the end of which they had prepared sufficient 
 wax to build pillars with. But these pillars having acci- 
 dentally got displaced, the bees had recourse again to the 
 same manoeuvre, till Huber pitying their hard case, &c. 
 
 II. " I shall at present describe the operations of a 
 single ant that I observed sufficiently long to satisfy my 
 curiosity. 
 
 "One rainy day, I observed a laborer digging the 
 ground near the aperture which gave entrance to the 
 ant-hill. It placed in a heap the several fragments it 
 had scraped up, and formed them into small pellets, 
 which it deposited here and there upon the nest. It 
 returned constantly to the same place, and appeared to 
 have a marked design, for it labored with ardor and; 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 165 
 
 perseverance. I remarked a slight furrow, excavated 
 in the ground in a straight line, representing the plan 
 of a path or gallery. The laborer, the whole of whose 
 movements fell under my immediate observation, gave 
 it greater depth and breadth, and cleared out its borders : 
 and I saw at length, in which I could not be deceived, 
 that it had the intention of establishing an avenue which 
 was to lead from one of the stories to the under-ground 
 chambers. This path, which was about two or three 
 inches in length, and formed by a single ant, was opened 
 above and bordered on each side by a buttress of earth ; 
 its concavity en forme de gouttiere was of the most per- 
 fect regularity, for the architect had not left an atom too 
 much. The work of this ant was so well followed and 
 understood, that I could almost to a certainty guess its 
 next proceeding, and the very fragment it was about to 
 remove. At the side of the opening where this path 
 terminated, was a second opening to which it was ne- 
 cessary to arrive by some road. The same ant engaged 
 in and executed alone this undertaking. It furrowed 
 out and opened another path, parallel to the first, leaving 
 between each a little wall of three or four lines in height. 
 Those ants who lay the foundation of a wall, chamber, 
 or gallery, from working separately occasion, now and 
 then, a want of coincidence in the parts of the same or 
 different objects. Such examples are of no unfrequent 
 occurrence, but they by no means embarrass them. 
 What follows proves that the workman, on discovering 
 his error, knew how to rectify it. A wall had been 
 erected with the view of sustaining a vaulted ceiling, 
 still incomplete, that had been projected from the wall 
 of the opposite chamber. The workman who began 
 constructing it, had given it too little elevation to meet 
 the opposite partition upon which it was to rest. Had 
 
166 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it been continued on the original plan, it must infallibly 
 have met the wall at about one half of its height, and 
 this it was necessary to avoid. This state of things 
 very forcibly claimed my attention, when one of the ants 
 arriving at the place, and visiting the works, appeared 
 to be struck by the difficulty which presented itself; 
 but this it as soon obviated, by taking down the ceiling 
 and raising the wall upon which it reposed. It then, in 
 my presence, constructed a new ceiling with the frag- 
 ments of the former one." — Ruber's Natural History 
 of Ants,?. 38—41. 
 
 Now I assert, that the faculty manifested in the acts 
 here narrated does not differ in kind from understand- 
 ing, and that it does so differ from reason. What I 
 conceive the former to be, physiologically considered, 
 will be shown hereafter. In this place I take the under- 
 standing as it exists in men, and in exclusive reference 
 to its intelligential functions ; and it is in this sense of 
 the word that I am to prove the necessity of contra- 
 distinguishing it from reason. 
 
 Premising then, that two or more subjects having the 
 same essential characters are said to fall under the same 
 general definition, I lay it down, as a self-evident truth, — 
 (it is, in fact, an identical proposition) — that whatever 
 subjects fall under one and the same general definition 
 are of one and the same kind: consequently, that which 
 does not fall under this definition, must differ in kind 
 from each and all of those that do. Difference in degree 
 does indeed suppose sameness in kind ; and difference 
 in kind precludes distinction from difference of degree. 
 Heterogenea non comparari, ergo nee distingui, possunt. 
 The inattention to this rule gives rise to the numerous 
 sophisms comprised by Aristotle under the head of 
 tttraficcTis tU aAAo y/vo«, that is, transition into a new kind. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 167 
 
 or the falsely applying to X what had been truly asserted 
 of A, and might have been true of X, had it differed from 
 A in its degree only. The sophistry consists in the 
 omission to notice what not being noticed will be sup- 
 posed not to exist ; and where the silence respecting the 
 difference in kind is tantamount to an assertion that the 
 difference is merely in degree. But the fraud is espe- 
 cially gross, where the heterogeneous subject, thus 
 clandestinely slipt in, is in its own nature insusceptible 
 of degree : such as, for instance, certainty or circularity, 
 contrasted with strength, or magnitude. 
 
 To apply these remarks for our present purpose, we 
 have only to describe Understanding and Reason, each 
 by its characteristic qualities. The comparison will 
 show the difference. 
 
 UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 1. Understanding is dis- 
 cursive. 
 
 2. The understanding in 
 all its judgments refers to 
 some other faculty as its 
 ultimate authority. 
 
 3. Understanding is the 
 faculty of reflection. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 1. Reason is fixed. 
 
 2. The reason in all its de- 
 cisions appeals to itself as 
 the ground and substance of 
 their truth. — (Heb. vi, 13.) 
 
 3. Reason of contempla- 
 tion. Reason indeed is 
 much nearer to Sense than 
 to Understanding : for Rea- 
 son (says our great Hooker) 
 is a direct aspect of truth, 
 an inward beholding, hav- 
 ing a similar relation to the 
 intelligible or spiritual, as 
 sense has to the material 
 or phenomenal. 
 
168 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 The result is : that neither falls under the definition 
 of the other. They differ in kind : and had my object 
 been confined to the establishment of this fact, the pre- 
 ceding columns would have superseded all further dis- 
 quisition. But I have ever in view the especial interest 
 of my youthful readers, whose reflective power is to be 
 cultivated, as well as their particular reflections to be 
 called forth and guided. Now the main chance of their 
 reflecting on religious subjects aright, and of their 
 attaining to the contemplation of spiritual truths at all 
 rests on their insight into the nature of this disparity 
 still more than on their conviction of its existence. I 
 now, therefore, proceed to a brief analysis of the under- 
 standing, in elucidation of the definitions already given. 
 
 The understanding then, (considered exclusively as an 
 organ of human intelligence,) is the faculty by which 
 we reflect and generalize. Take, for instance, any ob- 
 jects consisting of many parts, a house, or a group of 
 houses : and if it be contemplated, as a whole, that is, 
 as many constituting a one, it forms what, in the tech- 
 nical language of psychology, is called a total impres- 
 sion. Among the various component parts of this, we 
 direct our attention especially to such as we recollect to 
 have noticed in other total impressions. Then, by a 
 voluntary act, we withhold our attention from all the 
 rest to reflect exclusively on these ; and these we hence 
 forward use as common characters, by virtue of which 
 the several objects are referred to one and the same sort* 
 
 * Accordingly as we attend more or less to the differences, the sort 
 becomes, of course, more or less comprehensive. Hence there arises for 
 the systematic naturalist the necessity of subdividing the sorts into orders, 
 classes families, &c: all which, however, resolve themselves for the 
 mere logician into the conception of genus and species, that is, the com- 
 prehending and the comprehended. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 169 
 
 Thus, the whole process may be reduced to three 
 acts, all depending on and supposing a previous im- 
 pression on the senses ; first, the appropriation of out 
 attention; 2. (and in order to the continuance of the 
 first) abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the 
 attention ; and 3. generalization. And these are the 
 proper functions of the understanding: and the power 
 of so doing, is what we mean, when we say we possess 
 understanding, or are created with the faculty of under- 
 standing. 
 
 [It is obvious, that the third function includes the act 
 of comparing one object with another. In a note (for, 
 not to interrupt the argument, I avail myself of this most 
 useful contrivance,) I have shown, that the act of com- 
 paring supposes in the comparing faculty, certain inherent 
 forms, that is, modes of reflecting not referable to the 
 objects reflected on, but pre-determined by the constitu- 
 tion and (as it were) mechanism of the understanding 
 itself. And under some one or other of these forms,* 
 
 * Were it not so, how could the first comparison have been possible ? 
 It would involve the absurdity of measuring a thing by itself. But if we 
 think on some one thing, the length of our own foot, of of our hand and 
 ami from the elbow joint, it is evident that in ofder to do this, we must 
 have the conception of measure. Now these antecedent and most gene- 
 ral conceptions are what is meant by the constituent forms of the under- 
 standing : we call them constituent because they are not acquired by the 
 understanding, but are implied in its constitution. As rationally might 
 a circle be said to acquire a centre and circumference, as the understand- 
 ing to acquire these, its inherent forms, or ways of conceiving. This is 
 what Leibnitz meant, when to the old adage of the Peripatetics, Nihil 
 in intelfoctu quod non prius in sensu, (There is nothing in the understand- 
 ing not derived from the senses, or— There is nothing cowceived that was 
 not previously perceived ;) he replied— prater intellectum ipsum (except 
 th« understanding itself.) 
 
 And here let me remark for onCe and all : whoever would reflect to 
 any purpose — whoever is in earnest in his pursuit of self-knowledge, and 
 
 15 . 
 
170 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the resemblances and differences must be subsumed in 
 order to be conceivable and a fortiori therefore in order 
 to be comparable. The senses do not compare, but 
 merely furnish the materials for comparison. But this 
 
 of one of the principal means to this, an insight into the meaning of tht- 
 words he uses, and the different meanings properly or improperly con- 
 veyed by one and the same word, according as it is used in the schools 
 or the market, accordingly as the kind or a high degree is intended (for 
 example, heat, weight, and the like, as employed scientifically, compared 
 with the same word used popularly) — whoever, I say, seriously, proposes 
 this as his object, must so far overcome his dislike of pedantry, and his 
 dread of being sneered at as a pedant, as not to quarrel with an uncouth 
 word or phrase, till he is quite sure that some other and more familiar 
 one would not only have expressed the precise meaning with equal clear- 
 ness, but have been as likely to draw attention to this meaning exclu- 
 sively. The ordinary language of a philosopher in conversation or popu- 
 lar writings, compared with the language he uses in strict reasoning, is 
 as his watch compared with the chronometer in his observatory. He 
 sets the former by the town-clock, or even perhaps by the Dutch clock 
 in his kitchen, not because he believes it right, but because his neigh- 
 bours and his cook go by it. To afford the reader an opportunity for 
 exercising the forbearance here recommended, I turn back to the phrase, 
 " most general conceptions," and observe, that in strict and severe pro- 
 priety of language I should have said generalific or generific rather than 
 general, and concipiences or conceptive acts rather than conceptions. 
 
 It is an old complaint, that a man of genius no sooner appears, but the 
 host of dunces are up in arms to repel the invading alien. This obser- 
 vation would have made more converts to its truth, I suspect, had it 
 been worded more dispassionately and with a less contemptuous antithe- 
 sis. For " dunces," let us substitute " the many," or the "otJroj *<5<7/«os" 
 (this world) of the Apostle, and we shall perhaps find no great difficulty 
 in accounting for the fact. To arrive at the root, indeed, and last ground 
 of the problem, it would be necessary to investigate the nature and 
 effects of the sense of difference on the human mind where it is not 
 holden in check by reason and reflection. We need not go to the savage 
 tribes of North America, or the yet ruder natives of the Indian Isles, to 
 learn how slight a degree of difference will, in uncultivated minds, call 
 up a sense of diversity, and inward perplexity and contradiction, as if the 
 strangers were, and yet were not, of the same kind with themselves. 
 Who has not had occasion to observe the effect which the gesticulations 
 and nasal tones of a Frenchman produce on our own vulgar 1 Here we 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 171 
 
 the reader will find explained in the note, and will now 
 cast his eye back to the sentence immediately preceding 
 this parenthesis.] 
 
 Now when a person speaking to us of any particular 
 
 may see the origin and primary import of our unkindness. It is a sense 
 of wttkind, and not the mere negation but the positive opposite of the 
 sense of kind. Alienation, aggravated now by fear, now by contempt, 
 and not seldom by a mixture of both, aversion, hatred, enmity, are so 
 many successive shapes of its growth and metamorphosis. In applica- 
 tion to the present case, it is sufficient to say, that Pindar's remark on 
 sweet music holds equally true of genius : as many as are not delighted 
 by it are disturbfid, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes 
 it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a 
 glory round its head, or recoils from it as from a spectre. But this 
 speculation would lead me too far ; I must be content with having re- 
 ferred to it as the ultimate ground of the fact, and pass to the more ob- 
 vious and proximate causes. And as the first, I would rank the person's 
 not understanding what he expects to understand, and as if he had a right 
 to do so. An original mathematical work, or any other that requires 
 peculiar and (so to say) technical marks and symbols, will excite no un- 
 easy feelings— not in the mind of a competent reader, for he understands 
 it ; and not with others, because they neither expect nor are expected to 
 understand it. The second place we may assign to misunderstanding, 
 which is almost sure to follow in cases where the incompetent person, 
 finding no outward marks (diagrams, arbitrary signs, and the like) to in- 
 form him at first sight, that the subject is one which he does not pretend 
 to understand, and to be ignorant of which does not detract from his 
 estimation as a man of abilities generally, will attach some meaning to 
 what he hears or reads ; and as he is out of humour with the author, it 
 will most often be such a meaning as he can quarrel with and exhibit in 
 a ridiculous or offensive point of view. 
 
 But above all, the whole world almost of minds, as far as we regard 
 intellectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the busy-indolent 
 and lazy-indolent. To both alike all thinking is painful, and all attempts 
 to rouse them to think, whether in the re-examination of their existing 
 convictions, •. or for the reception of new light, are irritating. " It may all 
 be very deep and clever ; but really one ought to be quite sure of it be- 
 fore one wrenches one's brain to find out what it is. I take up a book 
 as a companion, with whom I can have an easy cheerful chit-chat on 
 what we both know beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure 
 hours we have a right to relaxation and amusement." 
 
172 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 object or appearance refers it by means of some com- 
 mon character to a known class (which he does in giving 
 it a name,) we say, that we understand him ; that is, we 
 understand his words. The name of a thing, in the 
 
 Well ! but. in their studims hours, when their bow is to be bent, when 
 they are apud Musas, or amidst the Muses'! Alas! it is just the same ! 
 The same craving for amusement, that is, to be away from the Muses ! 
 for relaxation, that is, the unbending of a bow which in fact had never 
 been strung ! There are two ways of obtaining their applause. The 
 first is : Enable them to reconcile in one and the same occupation the 
 love of sloth and the hatred of vacancy !. Gratify indolence, and yet save 
 them from ennui — in plain English, from themselves ! For, spite of their 
 antipathy to- dry reading, the keeping company with themselves is, after 
 all, the insufferable annoyance : and the true secret of their dislike to a 
 work of thought and- inquiry lies in its tendency to make them acquainted 
 with their own permanent being. The other road to their favour is, to 
 introduce to them, their Own thoughts and predilections, tricked out in 
 the fine language, in which it would gratify their vanity to express them 
 in their own conversation, and. with which they can imagine themselves 
 showing off: and this (as has been elsewhere- remarked) is the charac- 
 teristic difference between the second-rate writers of the last two or 
 three generations, and the same class, under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. 
 In the latter we find the most far-fetched and singular thoughts in the 
 simplest and most native language ; in the former, the most obvious and 
 common-place thoughts in the most far-fetched and motley language. 
 But lastly, and as the sine qua non of their patronage, a sufficient arc 
 must be left for the reader's mind to oscillate in— freedom of choice. 
 
 To make the shifting cloud be what you please, 
 
 save only where the attention of curiosity determines the line of motion. 
 The attention must not be fastened down : and this every work of 
 genius, not simply narrative, must do before it can be justly appreciated. 
 
 In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of 
 studious meditation or scientific research to the capacity of the people, 
 presenting in the concrete, by instances and examples, what had been 
 ascertained in the abstract and by discovery of the law. Now, on the 
 other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their 
 own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them under 
 the title of the public, into a supreme and inappellable tribunal of intel- 
 lectual excellence. 
 
 P. S. In a continuous work, the frequent insertion and length of notes 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 173 
 
 original sense of the word name, {nomen, vovpinv, t« in- 
 telligible, id quod intelligitur) expresses that which is 
 understood in an appearance, that which we place (or 
 make to stand) under it, as the condition of its real ex- 
 istence, and in proof that it is not an accident of the 
 senses, or affection of the individual, not a phantom or 
 apparition, that is, an appearance which is only an ap- 
 pearance. (See Gen. ii, 19, 20, and in Psalm xx, 1, 
 and in many other places of the Bible, the identity of 
 nomen with numen, that is, invisible power and presence, 
 the nomen substantivum of all real objects, and the ground 
 of their reality, independently of the affections of sense 
 in the percipient.) In like manner, in a connected suc- 
 cession of names, as the speaker passes from one to the 
 other, we say that we understand his discourse {discursio 
 intellectus, discursus, his passing rapidly from one thing 
 to another.) Thus, in all instances, it is words, names, 
 or, if images, yet images used as words or names, that 
 are the only and exclusive subjects of understanding. 
 In no instance do we understand a thing in itself ; but 
 only the name to which it is referred* Sometimes in- 
 deed, when several classes are recalled conjointly, we 
 identify the words with the object — though by courtesy 
 of idiom rather than in strict propriety of language. 
 Thus we may say that we understand a rainbow, when 
 recalling successively the several names for the several 
 sorts of colours, we know that they are to be applied to 
 one and the same jphcenomenon, at once distinctly and 
 simultaneously ; but even in common speech we should 
 not say this of a single colour. No one would say he 
 
 would need an apology : in a book like this, of aphorisms and detached 
 comments none is necessary, it being understood beforehand that the 
 sauce and the garnish are to occupy the greater part of the dish. 
 
 15* 
 
174 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 understands red or blue. He sees the colour, and had 
 seen it before in a vast number and variety of objects ; 
 and he understands the word red, as referring his fancy 
 or memory to this his collective experience. 
 
 If this be so, and so it most assuredly is — if the pro- 
 per functions of the understanding be that of generalizing 
 the notices received from the senses in order to the con- 
 struction of names : of referring particular notices (that 
 is, impressions or sensations) to their proper names ; 
 and vice versa, names to their correspondent class or 
 kind of notices — then it follows of necessity, that the 
 understanding is truly and accurately denned in the 
 words of Leighton and. Kant, a faculty judging according 
 to sense. 
 
 Now whether in defining the speculative reason (that 
 is, the reason considered abstractedly as an intellective 
 power) we call it " the source of necessary and univer- 
 sal principles, according to which the notices of the 
 senses, are either affirmed or denied ;" or describe it as 
 " the power by which we are enabled to draw from par- 
 ticular and contingent appearances universal and neces- 
 sary conclusions:"* it is equally evident that the two 
 
 * Take a familiar illustration. My sight and touch convey to me a 
 certain impression, to which my understanding applies its pre-concep- 
 tions (eonceptus antecedentes et generalissimi) of quantity and relation) 
 and thus, refers it to the class and name of three-cornered bodies— we 
 will suppose it the iron of a turf-spade. It compares the sides, and finds 
 that any two measured' as one are greater than the third ; and according 
 to a law of the imagination, th«re- arises a presumption that in all other 
 bodies of the same figure (that is, three-cornered, and equilateral) the 
 same proportion exists. After this, the senses have been directed suc- 
 cessively to a number of three-cornered bodies of unequal sides — and in 
 these too the same proportion has been found without exception, till at 
 length it becomes a fact of experience, that in all triangles hitherto seen, 
 the two sides together are greater than the third : and there will exist 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 175 
 
 definitions differ in their essential characters, and conse- 
 quently the subjects differ in kind. 
 
 The dependence of the understanding on the repre- 
 sentations of the senses, and its consequent posteriority 
 
 no ground or analogy for anticipating an exception, to a rule, generalized 
 from so vast a number of particular instances. So far and no farther 
 could the understanding carry us : and as far as this" the faculty, judg- 
 ing according to- sense," conducts many of the inferior animals, if not in 
 the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent. 
 
 The reason supersedes the whole process, and on the first conception 
 presented by the understanding inconsequence of the first sight of a tri- 
 angular figure, of whatever sort it might chance to be, it affirms with an 
 assurance incapable of future increase, with a perfect certainty, that in 
 all possible triangles any two of the inclosing lines will and must be 
 greater than the third. In. short, understanding in its highest form of 
 experience remains commensurate with the experimental notices of the 
 senses from which it is generalized. Reason, on the other hand> either 
 predetermines, experience, or avails itself of a past experience to super- 
 sede its necessity in all future time ; and affirms truths which.no sense 
 eould perceive, nor experiment verify, nor experience confirm. 
 
 Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that- in its 
 own proper form it is inconceivable. For to conceive is a function of 
 the understanding, which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate 
 thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding all truth must be 
 reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and: to be rendered 
 expressible. And here we have a second test and sign of a, truth so 
 affirmed' that it can come forth out of the moulds of the understanding 
 only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each of which is 
 partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the rep- 
 resentative or expression (the exponent) of a truth beyond conception 
 and inexpressible. Examples: Before Abraham was, I am. — God is a 
 circle, the centre of which is every where, and circumference no where. 
 The soul is all in every part. 
 
 If this appear extravagant, it is an extravagance which; no man can 
 indeed learn from another, but which, (were this possible,) I might have 
 learnt from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon ; from Luther, Hooker, Pascal, 
 Leibnitz, and Fenelon. But in this last paragraph I have, I see, unwit- 
 tingly overstepped my purpose, according to which we were to take 
 reason as a simply intellectual power. Yet even as such, and with all 
 the disadvantage of a technical and arbitrary abstraction, it has been 
 made evident: — 1. that there is an intuition or immediate beholding, 
 
176 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 thereto, as contrasted with the independence and ante- 
 cedency of reason, are strikingly exemplified in the 
 Ptolemic System (that truly wonderful product and 
 highest boast of the faculty, judging according to the 
 
 accompanied by a conviction of the necessity and universality of the truth 
 so beholden not derived from, the senses, which intuition, when it is con- 
 strued by pure sense, gives birth to the scienee of mathematics, and 
 when applied to objects supersensuous or spiritual is the organ of theo- 
 logy and philosophy : — and 2. that there is likewise a reflective and dis- 
 cursive faculty, or mediate apprehension which, taken by itself and un- 
 influenced by the former, depends on the senses for the materials on 
 which it is exercised, and is contained within the sphere of the senses. 
 And this faculty it is, which in generalizing the notices of the senses 
 constitutes sensible experience, and j gives rise to maxims or rules which 
 may become more and more general, but can never be raised into uni- 
 versal verities, or beget a consciousness of absolute certainty ; though 
 they may be sufficient to extinguish, all doubt. (Putting revelation out 
 of view, take our first progenitor in the 50th or 100th year of his exist- 
 ence. His experience would probably have freed him from all doubt, as 
 the sun sank in the horizon, that it would re-appear the next morning. 
 But compare this state of assurance with that which the same man would 
 have had of the 37th proposition of Euclid, supposing him like Pythago- 
 ras to have discovered the demonstration.) Now is it expedient, I ask, 
 or conformable to the laws and purposes of language, to call two so alto- 
 gether desperate subjects by one and the same name 1 Or, having two 
 names in our language, should we call each of the two diverse subjects 
 by both — that is, by either name, as caprice might dictate 1 If not, then 
 as we have two words, reason and understanding (as indeed what lan- 
 guage of cultivated man has notl) — what should prevent us from appro- 
 priating the former to the power distinctive of humanity 1 We need only 
 place the derivatives from the two terms in opposition (for example, " A 
 and B are both rational beings ; but there is no comparison between 
 them in point of intelligence," or " She always concludes rationally, 
 though not a woman of much understanding") to see that we cannot re- 
 verse the order— i. e. call the higher gift understanding, and the lower 
 reason. What should prevent us 1 I asked. Alas ! that which has pre- 
 vented us — the cause of this confusion in the terms — is only too obvious ; 
 namely, inattention to the momentous distinction in the things, and 
 (generally) to the duty and habit recommended in the fifth introductory 
 aphorism of this volume, {see p. 2.) But the cause of this, and of all its 
 lamentable effects and subcauses, false doctrine, blindness of heart, and 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 177 
 
 senses f) compared with the Newtonian, as the offspring 
 of a yet higher power, arranging, correcting, and annul- 
 ling the representations of the senses according to its 
 own inherent laws and constitutive ideas. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 In wonder all philosophy began ; in wonder it ends ; 
 and admiration fills up the interspace. But the first 
 wonder is the offspring of ignorance : the last is the 
 parent of adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our 
 knowledge ; the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis. 
 
 SEQUELiE : OR THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE PRECEDING 
 APHORISM. 
 
 As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the 
 same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind 
 should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few ? The most 
 obvious reason is this. The wonder takes place before 
 the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of 
 mankind) long before the individual is capable of direct- 
 ing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or 
 even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and 
 dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) 
 is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiar 
 ity. So is it with the objects of the senses, and the ways 
 and fashions of the world around us : even as with the 
 
 contempt of the word, is best declared by the philosophic Apostle : they, 
 did not like to retain God in their knowledge, (Rom. i, 28,) and though 
 they could not extinguish the light that lighteth every man, and which 
 shone in the darkness ; yet because the darkness could not comprehend 
 the light, they refused to bear witness of it and worshipped, instead, the 
 shaping mist, which the light had drawn upward from the ground (that 
 is, from the mere animal nature and instinct,) and which that light alone 
 had made visible, that is, by superinducing on the animal instinct the 
 principle of self-consciousness. 
 
178 AIDS OF REFLECTION. 
 
 beat of our own hearts, which we notice only in moments 
 of fear and perturbation. But with regard to the con- 
 cerns of our inward being, there is yet another cause 
 that acts in concert with the power in custom to prevent 
 a fair and equal exertion of reflective thought. The 
 great fundamental truths and doctrines of religion, the 
 existence and attributes of God and the life after death, 
 are in Christian countries taught so early, under such 
 circumstances, and in such close and vital association 
 with whatever makes or marks reality for our infant 
 minds, that the words ever after represent sensations, 
 feelings, vital assurances, sense of reality — rather than 
 thoughts, or any distinct conception. Associated, I had 
 almost said identified, with the parental voice, look, 
 touch, with the living warmth and pressure of the mother, 
 on whose lap the child is first made to kneel, within 
 whose palms its little hands are folded, and the motion 
 of whose eyes its eyes follow and imitate — (yea, what 
 the blue sky is to the mother, the mother's upraised 
 eyes and brow are to the child, the type and symbol of 
 an invisible heaven !) — from within and without these 
 great first truths, these good and gracious tidings, these 
 holy and humanizing spells, in the preconformity to 
 which our very humanity may be said to consist, are so 
 infused that it were but a tame and inadequate expres- 
 sion to say, we all take them for granted. At a later 
 period, in youth or early manhood, most of us, indeed, 
 (in the higher and middle classes at least) read or hear 
 certain proofs of these truths — which we commoly listen 
 to, when we listen at all, with much the same feelings 
 as a popular prince on his coronation day, in the centre 
 of a fond and rejoicing nation, may be supposed to hear 
 the champion's challenge to all the non-existents, that 
 deny or dispute his rights and royalty. In fact, the 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 179 
 
 order of proof is most often reversed or transposed. As 
 far at least as I dare judge from the goings on in my 
 own mind, when with keen delight I first read the works 
 of Derham, Nieuwentiet, and Lyonet, I should say that 
 the full and life-like conviction of a gracious Creator is 
 the proof (at all events, performs the office and answers 
 all the purpose of a proof) of the wisdom and benevo- 
 lence in the construction of the creature. 
 
 Do I blame this ? Do I wish it to be otherwise ? God 
 forbid ! It is only one of its accidental, but too frequent, 
 consequences, of which I complain, and against which 
 I protest. I regret nothing that tends to make the light 
 become .the life of men, even as the life in the eternal 
 Word is their only and single true light. But I do 
 regret, that in after years — when by occasion of some 
 new dispute on some old heresy, or any other accident, 
 the attention has for the first time been distincly at- 
 tracted to the superstructure raised on these fundamen- 
 tal truths, or to truths of later revelation supplemental 
 of these and not less important — all the doubts and dif- 
 ficulties, that cannot but arise where the understanding, 
 the mind of the flesh, is made the measure of spiritual 
 things ; all the sense of strangeness and seeming con- 
 tradiction in terms ; all the marvel and the mystery, that 
 belong equally to both, are first thought of and applied 
 in objection exclusively to the latter. I would disturb 
 no man's faith in the great articles of the (falsely so 
 called) religion of nature. But before the man rejects, 
 and calls on other men to reject, the revelations of the 
 Gospel and the religion of all Christendom, I would have 
 him place himself in the state and under all the priva- 
 tions of a Simonides, when in the fortieth day of his 
 meditation the sage and philosophic poet abandoned the 
 problem in despair. Ever and anon he seemed to have 
 
180 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 hold of the truth ; but when he asked himself what he 
 meant by it, it escaped from him, or resolved itself into 
 meanings, that destroyed each other. I would have the 
 sceptic, while yet a sceptic only, seriously consider 
 whether a doctrine, of the truth of which a Socrates could 
 obtain no other assurance than what he derived from his 
 strong wish that it should be true ; and which Plato 
 found a mystery hard to discover, and when discovered, 
 communicable only to the fewest of men ; can, conso- 
 nantly with history or common sense, be classed among 
 the articles, the belief of which is insured to all men 
 by their mere common sense ? Whether, without gross 
 outrage to fact, they can be said to constitute a religion 
 of nature, or a natural theology antecedent to revelation, 
 or superseding its necessity ? Yes ! in prevention (for 
 there is little chance, I fear, of a cure) of the pugnacious 
 dogmatism of partial reflection, I would prescribe to 
 every man who feels a commencing alienation from the 
 Catholic faith, and whose studies and attainments au» 
 thorize him to argue on the subject at all, a patient and 
 thoughtful perusal of the arguments and representations 
 which Bayle supposes to have passed through the mind 
 of Simonides. Or I should be fully satisfied if I could 
 induce these eschewers of mystery to give a patient, 
 manly, and impartial perusal to the single treatise of 
 Pomponatius, De Fato* 
 
 When they have fairly and satisfactorily overthrown 
 the objections and cleared away the difficulties urged 
 
 * The philosopher, whom the Inquisition would have burnt alive as an 
 atheist, had not Leo X, and Cardinal Bembo decided that the work 
 might be formidable to those semi-pagan Christians who regarded reve- 
 lation as a mere make-weight to their boasted religion of nature ; but 
 contained nothing dangerous to the Catholic Church or offensive to a 
 true believer. (He was born in 1462, and died in 1525. Ed.) 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 181 
 
 by this sharp-witted Italian against the doctrines which 
 they profess to retain, then let them commence their 
 attack on those which they reject. As far as the sup- 
 posed irrationality of the latter is the ground of argument, 
 I am much deceived if, on reviewing their forces, they 
 would not find the ranks woefully thinned by the success 
 of their own fire in the preceding engagement — unless, 
 indeed, by pure heat of controversy, and to storm the 
 lines of their antagonists, they can bring to life again 
 the arguments which they had themselves killed off in 
 the defence of their own positions. In vain shall we 
 seek for any other mode of meeting the broad facts of 
 the scientific Epicurean, or the requisitions and queries 
 of the all-analysing Pyrrhonist, than by challenging the 
 tribunal to which they appeal, as incompetent to try the 
 question. In order to non-suit the infidel plaintiff, we 
 must remove the cause from the faculty, that judges 
 according to sense, and whose judgments, therefore, are 
 valid only on objects of sense, to the superior courts of 
 conscience and intuitive reason ! The words 1 speak 
 unto you, are Spirit, and such only are life, that is, have 
 an inward and actual power abiding in them. 
 
 But the same truth is at once shield and blow. The 
 shaft of Atheism glances aside from it to strike and 
 pierce the breast-plate of the heretic. Well for the 
 latter, if, plucking the weapon from the wound, he re- 
 cognizes an arrow from his own quiver, and abandons a 
 cause that connects him with such confederates ! With* 
 out further rhetoric, the sum and substance of the ar* 
 gument is this; — an insight into the proper functions 
 and subaltern rank of the understanding may not, in* 
 deed, disarm the Psilanthropist of his metaphorical 
 glosses, or of his versions fresh from the forge, with no 
 other stamo than the private mark of the individual 
 
 16 
 
182 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 manufacturer ; but it will deprive him of the only ra- 
 tional pretext for having recourse to tools so liable to 
 abuse, and of such perilous example. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Since the preceding pages were composed, and during 
 an interim of depression and disqualification, I heard 
 with a delight and an interest, that I might without 
 hyperbole call medicinal, that the contradistinction of 
 understanding from reason, — for which during twenty 
 years I have been contending, casting my bread upon 
 the waters with a perseverance which, in the existing 
 state of the public taste, nothing but the deepest con- 
 viction of its importance could have inspired— has been 
 lately adopted and sanctioned by the present distin- 
 guished Professor of Anatomy, in the course of lectures 
 given by him at the Royal College of Surgeons, on the 
 zoological part of natural history ; and, if I am rightly 
 informed, in one of the eloquent and impressive intro- 
 ductory discourses. In explaining the nature of instinct, 
 as deduced from the actions and tendencies of animals 
 successively presented to the observation of the com- 
 parative physiologist in the ascending scale of organic 
 life — or rather, I should have said, in an attempt to de- 
 termine that precise import of the term, which is re- 
 quired by the facts* — the Professor explained the nature 
 
 * The word, instinct, brings together a number of facts into one class 
 by the assertion of a common ground, the nature of which ground it de- 
 termines negatively only — that is, the word does not explain what this 
 common ground is ; but simply indicates that there is such a ground, 
 and that it is different in kind from that in which the responsible and 
 consciously voluntary actions of men originate. Thus, in its true and pri- 
 mary import, instinct stands in antithesis to reason ; and the perplexity 
 and contradictory statements into which so many meritorious naturalists, 
 and popular writers on natural history (Priscilla Wakefield, Kirby, Spence, 
 Hitber, and even Reimarus) have fallen on this subject, arise wholly 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 183 
 
 of what I have elsewhere called the adaptive power, 
 that is, the faculty of adapting means to proximate ends. 
 [N. B. I mean here a relative end — that which rela- 
 tively to one thing is an end, though relatively to some 
 other it is in itself a mean. It is to be regretted that we 
 have no single word to express those ends, that are not 
 the end : for the distinction between those and an end 
 in the proper sense of the term is an important one.] 
 The Professor, I say, not only explained, first, the nature 
 of the adaptive power in genere, and, secondly, the 
 distinct character of the same power as it exists speci- 
 fically and exclusively in the human being, and acquires 
 the name of understanding ; but he did it in a way which 
 gave the whole sum and substance of my convictions, 
 of all I had so long wished, and so often, but with such 
 imperfect success, attempted to convey, free from all 
 semblance of paradoxy, and from all occasion of of- 
 fence — omnem offendiculi* ansam pracidens. It is, 
 
 from their taking the word in opposition to understanding. I notice this, 
 because I would not lose any opportunity of impressing on the mind of 
 my youthful readers the important truth that language (as the embodied 
 and articulated spirit of the race, as the growth and emanation of a peo- 
 ple, and not the»work of any individual wit or will) is often inadequate, 
 sometimes deficient, but never false or delusive. We have only to mas- 
 ter the true origin and original import of any native and abiding word, to 
 find in it, if not the solution of the facts expressed by it, yet a finger- 
 mark pointing to the road on which this solution is to be sought. 
 
 * Neque quicquam addubito, quin ea candidis omnibus facial satis. 
 Quid autem facias istis qui vel ob ingenii pertinaciam sibi satisfieri nolint, 
 vel stupidiores sint quam ut satisf actionem inlelligant 1 Nam quemadmo- 
 dum Simonides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores esse quam ut possint a se 
 decipi, ita quosdam videas stupidiores quam ut placari queant. Adhuc 
 non mirum est invenire quod calumnietur qui nihil aliud qucerit nisi quod 
 calumnietur, (Erasmi Epist. ad Dorpium.) At all events, the paragraph 
 passing through the medium of my own prepossessions, if any fault be 
 found with it, the fault probably, and the blame certainly, belongs to the 
 reporter. 
 
184 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 indeed for the fragmentary reader only that I have any 
 scruple. In those who have had the patience to accom- 
 pany me so far on the up-hill road to manly principles, 
 I can have no reason to guard against that disposition 
 to hasty offence from anticipation of consequences — that 
 faithless and loveless spirit of fear which plunged Galileo 
 into a prison* — a spirit most unworthy of an educated 
 man, who ought to have learnt that the mistakes of 
 scientific men have never injured Christianity, while 
 every new truth discovered by them has either added to 
 its evidence, or prepared the mind for its reception. 
 
 ON INSTINCT IN CONNEXION WITH THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 It is evident, that the definition of a genus or class is 
 an adequate definition only of the lowest species of that 
 genus : for each higher species is distinguished from the 
 lower by some additional character, while the general 
 
 * And which (I may add) in a more enlightened age, and in a Pro- 
 testant country, impelled more than one German University to anathe- 
 matize Fr. Hoffman's discovery of carbonic acid gas, and of its effects 
 on animal life, as hostile to religion and tending to atheism ! Three or 
 four students at the University of Jena, in the attempt to raise a spirit 
 for the discovery of a supposed hidden treasure, were strangled or poi- 
 soned by the fumes of the charcoal they had been burning in a close gar- 
 den-house of a vineyard near Jena, while employed in their magic fumi- 
 gations and charms. One only was restored to life : and from his ac- 
 count of the noises and spectres (in his ears and eyes) as he was losing 
 his senses, it was taken for granted that the bad spirit had destroyed 
 them. Frederic Hoffman admitted that it was a very bad spirit that had 
 tempted them, the spirit of avarice and folly ; and that a very noxious 
 spirit (gas, or Geist) was the immediate cause of their death. But he 
 contended that this latter spirit was the spirit of charcoal, which would 
 have produced the same effect, had the young men been chaunting 
 psalms instead of incantations : and acquitted the Devil of all direct con- 
 cern in the business. The theological faculty took the alarm : even 
 physicians pretended to be horror-stricken at Hoffman's audacity. The 
 controversy and appendages embittered several years of this great and 
 good man's life. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION- 185 
 
 definition includes only the characters common to all the 
 species. Consequently it describes the lowest only. 
 Now I distinguish a genus or kind of powers under the 
 name of adaptive power, and give as its generic defini- 
 tion — the power of selecting and adapting means to prox- 
 imate ends ; and as an instance of the lowest species of 
 this genus, I take the stomach of a caterpillar. I ask 
 myself, under what words I can generalize the action of 
 this organ ; and I see, that it selects and adapts the ap- 
 propriate means (that is, the assimilable part of the ve- 
 getable congesta) to the proximate end, that is, the growth 
 or reproduction of the insect's body. This we call Vital 
 Power, or vita propria of the stomach; and this being 
 the lowest species, its definition is the same with the 
 definition of the kind. 
 
 Well ! from the power of the stomach, I pass to the 
 power exerted by the whole animal. I trace it wander- 
 ing from spot to spot, and plant to plant, till it finds the 
 appropriate vegetable ; and again on this chosen vege- 
 table, I mark it seeking out and fixing on the part of the 
 plant, bark, leaf, or petal, suited to its nourishment : or 
 (should the animal have assumed the butterfly form), to 
 the deposition of its eggs, and the sustentation of the 
 future larva. Here I see a power of selecting and 
 adapting means to proximate ends according to circum- 
 stances : and this higher species of adaptive power we 
 call Instinct. 
 
 Lastly, I reflect on the facts narrated and described 
 in the preceding extracts from Huber, and see a power 
 of selecting and adapting the proper means to the proxi- 
 mate ends, according to varying circumstances. And 
 what shall we call this yet higher species ? We 
 name the former, instinct : we must call this Instinctive 
 Intelligence. 
 
 16* 
 
186 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Here then we have three powers of the same kind ; 
 life, instinct, and instinctive intelligence : the essential 
 characters that define the genus existing equally in all 
 three. But in addition to these, I find one other char- 
 acter common to the highest and lowest : namely, that 
 the purposes are all manifestly predetermined by the 
 peculiar organization of the animals ; and though it may 
 not be possible to discover any such immediate depen- 
 dency in all the actions, yet the actions being determined 
 by the purposes, the result is equivalent : and both the 
 actions and the purposes are all in a necessitated refer- 
 ence to the preservation and continuance of the particu- 
 lar animal or the progeny. There is selection, but not 
 choice ; volition rather than will. The possible know- 
 ledge of a thing, or the desire to have that thing repre^ 
 sentable by a distinct correspondent thought, does not, 
 in the animal, suffice to render the thing an object, or 
 the ground, of a purpose. I select and adapt the proper 
 means to, the separation of a stone from a rock, which I 
 neither can, nor desire to use for food, shelter, or orna-> 
 ment : because, perhaps, I wish to measure the angles 
 of its primary crystals, or, perhaps, for no better reason 
 than the apparent difficulty of loosening the stone — sit 
 pro ratione voluntas — and thus make a motive out of the 
 absence of all motive, and a reason out of the arbitrary 
 will to act without any reason. 
 
 Now what is the conclusion from these premisses ? 
 Evidently this : that if I suppose the adaptive power in 
 its highest species, or form of instinctive intelligence, to 
 co-exist with reason,, free will, and self-consciousness, it 
 instantly becomes Understanding : in other words, that 
 understanding differs indeed from the noblest form of 
 instinct,, but not in itself or in its own essential proper- 
 ties, but in consequence of its co-existence with far 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 187 
 
 higher powers of a diverse kind in one and the same 
 subject. Instinct in a rational, responsible, and self-con- 
 scious animal, is Understanding, 
 
 Such I apprehend to have been the Professor's view 
 and exposition of instinct — and in confirmation of its 
 truth, I would merely request my readers, from the nu- 
 merous well-authenticated instances on record, to recall 
 some one of the extraordinary actions of dogs for the 
 preservation of their masters' lives, and even for the 
 avenging of their deaths. In these instances we have 
 the third species of the adaptive power in connexion with 
 an apparently moral end — with an end in the proper 
 sense of the word. Here the adaptive power co-exists 
 with a purpose apparently voluntary, and the action 
 seems neither pre-determined by the organization of the 
 animal, nor in any direct reference to his own preserva- 
 tion, nor to the continuance of his race. It is united 
 with an imposing semblance of gratitude, fidelity, and 
 disinterested love. We not only value the faithful brute ; 
 we attribute worth to him. This, I admit, is a problem, 
 of which I have no solution to offer. One of the wisest 
 of uninspired men has not hesitated to declare the dog 
 a great mystery, on account of this dawning of a moral 
 nature unaccompanied by any the least evidence of rea- 
 son, in whichever of the two senses we interpret the 
 word — whether as the practical reason, that is, the power 
 of proposing an ultimate end, the determinability of the 
 will by ideas ; or as the sciential reason, that is, the 
 faculty of concluding universal and necessary truths 
 from particular and contingent appearances. But in a 
 question respecting the possession of reason, the absence 
 of all truth is tantamount to a proof of the contrary, ft 
 is, however, by no means equally clear to me, that the 
 deg may not possess an analogon of words,, which I 
 
188 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 have elsewhere shown to be the proper objects of the 
 " faculty, judging according to sense." 
 
 But to return to my purpose : I entreat the reader to 
 reflect on any one fact of this kind, whether occurring 
 in his own experience, or selected from the numerous 
 anecdotes of the dog preserved in the writings of zoolo- 
 gists. I will then confidently appeal to him, whether it 
 is in his power not to consider the faculty displayed in 
 these actions as the same in kind with the understanding, 
 however inferior in degree. Or should he even in these 
 instances prefer calling it instinct, and this in contra- 
 distinction from understanding, I call on him to point 
 out the boundary between the two, the chasm or parti- 
 tion-wall that divides or separates the one from the other. 
 If he can, he will have done what none before him have 
 been able to do, though many and eminent men have 
 tried hard for it : and my recantation shall be among 
 the first trophies of his success. If he cannot, I must 
 infer that he is controlled by his dread of the conse- 
 quences, by an apprehension of some injury resulting 
 to religion or morality from this opinion ; and I shall 
 console myself with the hope, that in the sequel of this 
 work he will find proofs of the directly contrary ten- 
 dency. Not only is this view of the understanding, as 
 differing in degree from instinct, and in kind from reason, 
 innocent in its possible influences on the religious char- 
 acter, but it is an indispensable preliminary to the re- 
 moval of the most formidable obstacles to an intelligent 
 belief of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, of the 
 characteristic articles of the Christian Faith, with which 
 the advocates of the truth in Christ have to contend ; — 
 the evil heart of unbelief alone excepted. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 189 
 
 REFLECTIONS INTRODUCTORY TO APHORISM X. 
 
 The most momentous question a man can ask is, Have 
 I a Saviour 1 And yet as far as the individual querist 
 is concerned, it is premature and to no purpose, unless 
 another question has been previously put and answered, 
 (alas ! too generally put after the wounded conscience 
 has already given the answer !) namely, Have I any need 
 of a Saviour ? For him who needs none, (O bitter irony 
 of the evil Spirit, whose whispers the proud soul takes 
 for its own thoughts, and knows not how the temper is 
 scoffing the while !) there is none, as long as he feels no 
 need. On the other hand, it is scarcely possible to have 
 answered this question in the affirmative, and not ask — 
 first, in what the necessity consists ? secondly, whence 
 it proceeded ? and, thirdly, how far the answer to this 
 second question is or is not contained in the answer to 
 the first ? I entreat the intelligent reader, who has taken 
 me as his temporary guide on the straight, but yet, from 
 the number of cross roads, difficult way of religious in- 
 quiry, to halt a moment^ and consider the main points 
 that, in this last division of my work, have been already 
 offered for his reflection. I have attempted, then, to fix 
 the proper meaning of the words* nature and spirit, the 
 one being the antithesis to the other : so that the most 
 general and negative definition of nature is, whatever is 
 not spirit ; and vice versa of spirit,, that which is not 
 comprehended in nature ; or in the language of our elder 
 divines, that which transcends nature. But nature is 
 the term in which we comprehend all things that are 
 representable in the forms of time and space, and sub- 
 jected to the relations of cause and effect : and the cause 
 of the existence of which, therefore, is to be sought for 
 perpetually in something antecedent. The word itself 
 
190 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 expresses this in the strongest manner possible : Natura, 
 that which is about to be born, that which is always he- 
 coming. It follows, therefore, that whatever originates 
 its own acts, or in any sense contains in itself the cause 
 of its own state, must be spiritual, and consequently su- 
 pernatural : yet not on that account necessarily miracu- 
 lous. And such must the responsible will in us be, if it 
 be at all. 
 
 A prior step has been to remove all misconceptions 
 from the subject ; to show the reasonableness of a belief 
 in the reality and real influence of a universal and divine 
 spirit ; the compatibility and possible communion of such 
 a spirit with the spiritual in principle ; and the analogy 
 offered by the most undeniable truths of natural phi- 
 losophy.* 
 
 These views of the spirit, and of the will as spiritual, 
 form the ground-work of my scheme. Among the nu- 
 merous corollaries or appendents, the first that presented 
 itself respects the question ; — whether there is any 
 faculty in man by which a knowledge of spiritual truths, 
 
 * It has in its consequences proved no trifling evil to the Christian 
 world, that Aristotle's definitions of nature are all grounded on the petty 
 and rather rhetorical than philosophical antithesis of nature to art — a 
 conception inadequate to the demands eyen of his philosophy. Hence 
 in the progress of his reasoning, he confounds the natura naturata (that 
 is, the sum total of the facts and phanomena of the senses) with an hy- 
 pothetical natura naturans, a Goddess Nature, that has no better claim 
 to a place in any sober system of natural philosophy than the Goddess 
 Multitudo ; yet to which Aristotle not rarely gives the name and attri- 
 butes of the Supreme Being. The result was, that the idea of God thus 
 identified with this hypothetical nature becomes itself but an hypothesis, 
 or at best but a precarious inference from incommensurate premisses and 
 on disputable principles : while in other passages, God is confounded 
 with (and every where, in Aristotle's genuine works, included in) the 
 universe : which most grievous error it is the great and characteristic merit 
 of Plato to have avoided and denounced. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 191 
 
 or of any truths not abstracted from nature, is rendered 
 possible ; — and an answer is attempted in the comment 
 on Aphorism VIII. And here I beg leave to remark, 
 that in this comment the only novelty, and if there be 
 merit, the only merit is — that there being two very dif- 
 ferent meanings, and two different words, I have here 
 and in former works appropriated one meaning to one of 
 the words, and the other to the other — instead of using 
 the words indifferently and by hap-hazard : a confusion, 
 the ill effects of which in this instance are so great and 
 of such frequent occurrence in the works of our ablest 
 philosophers and divines, that I should select it before 
 all others in proof of Hobbes' maxim : — that it is a short 
 downhill passage from errors in words to errors in things. 
 The difference of the reason from the understanding, and 
 the imperfection and limited sphere of the latter, have 
 been asserted by many both before and since Lord Ba- 
 con ;* but still the habit of using reason and understand- 
 ing as synonymes acted as a disturbing force. Some it 
 led into mysticism, others it set on explaining away a 
 clear difference in kind into a mere superiority in degree : 
 and it partially eclipsed the truth for all. 
 
 In close connexion with this, and therefore forming 
 the comment on the Aphorism next following, is the 
 subject of the legitimate exercise of the understanding, 
 and its limitation to objects of sense ; with the errors 
 
 * Take one passage among many from the Posthumous Tracts (1660) 
 of John Smith, not the least star in that bright constellation of Cam- 
 bridge men, the contemporaries of Jeremy Taylor. " While we reflect 
 on our own idea of reason, we know that our souls are not it, but only 
 partake of it : and that we have it Kara pi8e£iv and not kut' oicrifivi 
 Neither can it be called a faculty, but far rather a light, which we enjoy, 
 but the source of which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual 
 to be denominated mine." This pure intelligence he then proceeds to 
 contrast with the discursive faculty, that is, the understanding. 
 
192 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 both of unbelief and of misbelief, which result from its 
 extension beyond the sphere of possible experience. 
 Wherever the forms of reasoning appropriate only to 
 the natural world are applied to spiritual realities, 
 it may be truly said, that the more strictly logical the 
 reasoning is in all its parts, the more irrational it is 
 as a whole. 
 
 To the reader thus armed and prepared, I now ven- 
 ture to present the so-called mysteries of Faith, that is, 
 the peculiar tenets and especial constituents of Chris- 
 tianity, or religion in spirit and in truth. In right order 
 I must have commenced with the articles of the Trinity 
 and the Apostacy, including the question respecting the 
 origin of Evil, and the Incarnation of the Word. And 
 could I have followed this order, some difficulties that 
 now press on me would have been obviated. But (as 
 has already been explained) the limits of the present 
 volume rendered it alike impracticable and inexpedient ; 
 for the necessity of my argument would have called 
 forth certain hard though most true sayings, respecting 
 the hollowness and tricksy sophistry of the so-called 
 " natural theology," " religion of nature," " light of na- 
 ture," and the like, which a brief exposition could not 
 save from innocent misconceptions, much less protect 
 against plausible misinterpretation. And yet both rea- 
 son and experience have convinced me, that in the 
 greater number of our Alogi, who feed on the husks of 
 Christianity, the disbelief of the Trinity, the divinity of 
 Christ included, has its origin and support in the as- 
 sumed self-evidence of this natural theology, and in their 
 ignorance of the insurmountable difficulties which (on 
 the same mode of reasoning) press upon the funda- 
 mental articles of their own remnant of a creed. But 
 arguments, which would prove the falsehood of a known 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 193 
 
 truth, must themselves be false, and can prove the false- 
 hood of no other position in eodem genere. 
 
 This hint I have thrown out as a spark that may per- 
 haps fall where it will kindle. And worthily might the 
 wisest of men make inquisition into the three momentous 
 points here spoken of, for the purposes of speculative 
 insight, and for the formation of enlarged and system- 
 atic views of the destination of man, and the dispensa- 
 tion of God. But the practical inquirer (I speak not of 
 those who inquire for the gratification of curiosity, and 
 still less of those who labour as students only to shine 
 as disputants ; but of one, who seeks the truth, because 
 he feels the want of it,) the practical inquirer, I say, 
 hath already placed his foot on the rock, if he have satis- 
 fied himself that whoever needs not a Redeemer is more 
 than human. Remove from him the difficulties and 
 objections that oppose or perplex his belief of a crucified 
 Saviour ; convince him of the reality of sin, which- is 
 impossible without a knowledge of its true nature and 
 inevitable consequences; and then satisfy him as to the 
 fact historically, and as to the truth spiritually, of a re- 
 demption therefrom by Christ; do this for him, and there 
 is little fear that he will permit either logical quirks or 
 metaphysical puzzles to contravene the plain dictate of 
 his common sense, that the sinless One that redeemed 
 mankind from sin, must have been more than man; and 
 that He who brought light and immortality into the 
 world, could not in his own nature have been an inher- 
 itor of death and darkness. It is morally impossible 
 that a man with these convictions should suffer the ob- 
 jection of incomprehensibility (and this on a subject of 
 faith) to overbalance the manifest absurdity and contra- 
 diction in the notion of a Mediator between God and the 
 
 17 
 
194 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 human race, at the same infinite distance from God as 
 the race for whom he mediates. 
 
 The origin of evil, meanwhile, is a question interest- 
 ing only to the metaphysician, and in a system of moral 
 and religious philosophy. The man of sober mind, who 
 seeks for truths that possess a moral and practical inter- 
 est, is content to be certain, first, that evil must have 
 had a beginning, since otherwise it must either be God, 
 or a co-eternal and co-equal rival of God ; both impious 
 notions, and the latter foolish to boot : — secondly, that 
 it could not originate in God; for if so, it would be at 
 once evil and not evil, or God would be at once God 
 (that is, infinite goodness) and not God — both alike im- 
 possible positions. Instead therefore of troubling him- 
 self with this barren controversy, he more profitably 
 turns his inquiries to that evil which most concerns him- 
 self, and of which he may find the origin. 
 
 The entire scheme of necessary Faith may be reduced 
 to two heads; — first, the object and occasion, and se- 
 condly, the fact and effect, — of our redemption by Christ : 
 and to this view does the order of the following Com- 
 ments correspond. I have begun with Original Sin, 
 and proceeded in the following Aphorism to the doc- 
 trine of Redemption. The Comments on the remaining 
 Aphorisms are all subsidiary to these, or written in the 
 hope of making the minor tenets of general belief be 
 believed in a spirit worthy of these. They are, in 
 short, intended to supply a febrifuge against aguish 
 scruples and horrors, the hectic of the soul ; — and " for 
 servile and thrall-like fear, to substitute that adoptive 
 and cheerful boldness, which our new alliance with God 
 requires of us as Christians." (Milton.) Not the origin 
 of evil, not the chronology of sin, or the chronicles of 
 the original sinner; but sin originant, underived from 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 195 
 
 without, and no passive link in the adamantine chain of 
 effects, each of which is in its turn an instrument of 
 causation, but no one of them a cause ; — not with sin 
 inflicted, which would be a calamity; — not with sin (that 
 is, an evil tendency) implanted, for which let the planter 
 be responsible; — but I begin with original sin. And 
 for this purpose I have selected the Aphorism from the 
 ablest and most formidable antagonist of this doctrine, 
 Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and from the most eloquent 
 work of this most eloquent of divines. Had I said, of 
 men, Cicero would forgive me, and Demosthenes nod 
 assent!* 
 
 * We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley. that the Church of Eng- 
 land does not demand the literal understanding of the document contained 
 in the second (from verse 8) and third chapters of Genesis as a point of 
 faith, or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy of the 
 interpreter : divines of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the most 
 averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in general, having from the 
 earliest ages of the Christian Church adopted or permitted it in this in- 
 stance. And indeed no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt, that if 
 in any other work of Eastern origin he met with trees of life and of 
 knowledge ; or talking and conversable snakes : 
 
 Inque rei signum serpentem serpere jussum ; 
 he would want no other proofs that it was an allegory he was reading, 
 and intended to be understood as such. Nor, if we suppose him conver- 
 sant with Oriental works of any thing like the same antiquity, could it 
 surprise him to find events of true history in connexion with, or historical 
 personages among the actors-and interlocutors of, the parable. In the 
 temple-language of Egypt the serpent was the symbol of the understand- 
 ing in its two-fold function, namely, as the faculty, of means to proxi- 
 mate or medial ends, analogous to the instinct of the more intelligent 
 animals, ant, bee, beaver, and the like, and opposed to the practical rea- 
 son, as the determinant of the ultimate end ; and again, as the discursive 
 and logical faculty possessed individually by each individual — the \6yos 
 in E/taoro), in distinction from the vovg, that is, intuitive reason, the 
 source of ideas and absolute truths, and the principle of the necessary 
 and the universal in our affirmations and conclusions. "Without or in 
 contra-vention to the reason (that is, the spiritual mind of St. Paul, and 
 the light that lighteth every man of St. John) this understanding {(ppovrina 
 
196 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM X. 
 
 ON ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOE. 
 
 Is there any such thing ? That is not the question. 
 For it is a fact acknowledged on all hands almost : and 
 
 eapKos t or carnal mind) becomes the sophistic principle, the wily tempter 
 to evil by counterfeit good ; the pander and advocate of the passions and 
 appetites : ever in league with, and always first applying to, the desire, 
 as the inferior nature in man, the woman in our humanity ; and through 
 the desire prevailing on the will (the manhood, virtus) against the com- 
 mand of the universal reason, and against the light of reason in the will 
 itself. This essential inherence of an intelligential principle (0u5j voep6v) 
 in the will (aptf 6s\ririKv,) or rather the will itself thus considered, the 
 Greeks expressed by an appropriate word, fiovM. This but little dif- 
 fering from Origen's interpretation or hypothesis, is supported and con- 
 firmed by the very old tradition of the homo androgynus, that is, that the 
 original man, the individual first created, was bi-sexual : a chimera, of 
 which, and of many other mythological traditions, the most probable ex- 
 planation is, that they were originally symbolical glyphs or sculptures, 
 and afterwards translated into words, yet literally, that is into the com- 
 mon names of the several figures and images composing the symbol ; 
 while the symbolic meaning was left to be decyphered as before, and 
 sacred to the initiate. As to the abstruseness and subtlety of the con- 
 ceptions, this is so far from being an objection to thi.s oldest gloss on this- 
 venerable relic of Semetic, not impossibly ante-diluvian, philosophy, that 
 to those who have carried their researches farthest back into Greek,. 
 Egyptian, Persian, and Indian antiquity, it will seem a strong confirma- 
 tion. Or, if I chose to address the Sceptic in the language of the day, I 
 might remind him, that as alchemy went before chemistry, and astrology 
 before astronomy, so in all countries of civilized man have metaphysics 
 outrun common sense. Fortunately for us that they have so ! For from 
 all we know of the unmetaphysical tribes of New Holland and elsewhere, 
 a common sense not preceded by metaphysics is no very enviable posses- 
 sion. O be not cheated, my youthful reader, by this shallow prate ! The 
 creed of true common sense is composed of the results of scientific medi- 
 tation, observation, and experiment, as far as they are generally intelli- 
 gible. It differs therefore in different countries, and in every different 
 age of the same country. The common sense of a people is the move- 
 able index of its average judgment and information. Without meta- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 197 
 
 even those who will not confess it in words, confess it 
 in their complaints. For my part I cannot but confess 
 that to be, which I feel and groan under, and by which 
 all the world is miserable. 
 
 physics science could have had no language, and common sense no. 
 materials. 
 
 But to return to my subject. It cannot be denied, that the Mosaic 
 narrative thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the birth 
 and parentage and successive moments of phenomenal sin (peccatum 
 phenomenon ; crimen primariurn et commune), that is, of sin as it reveals 
 itself in time, and is an immediate object of consciousness. And in thia 
 sense most truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam we all fell. The 
 first human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. 
 And with no less truth may it be said, that it is the same Adam that falls 
 in every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and 
 undivorceable Eve : and the same Eve tempted by the same serpentine 
 and perverted understanding, which, framed originally to be the inter- 
 preter of the reason and the ministering angel of the spirit, is henceforth 
 sentenced and bound over to the service of the animal nature, its needs 
 and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its materials, with the 
 world of sense for its appointed sphere : Upon thy belly shall thou go, 
 and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I have shown elsewhere, 
 that as the Instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degree not in kind, 
 and circumstantially, not essentially, from the vis vita, or vital power in 
 the assimilative and digestive functions of the stomach and other organs 
 of nutrition, even so the understanding in itself, and distinct from the 
 reason and conscience, differs in degree only from the instinct in the 
 animal. It is still but a beast of the field, though more subtle than any 
 beast of the field, and therefore in its corruption and perversion cursed 
 above any— a pregnant word! of which, if the reader wants an exposi- 
 tion or paraphrase, he may find one more than two thousand years old 
 among the fragments of the poet Menander. (See Cumberland's Ob- 
 server, No. CL, vol. iii, p. 289, 290.) This is the understanding which 
 in its every thought is to be brought under obedience to faith ; which it 
 can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected to the reason, of which 
 spiritual faith is even the blossoming and the fructifying process. For 
 it is indifferent whether I say that faith is the interpenetration of the 
 reason and the will, or that it is at once the assurance and the com-s 
 mencement of the approaching union between the reasqn and the intel- 
 ligible realities, the living and substantial truths, that are even in thil 
 life its most proper objects. 
 
 17* 
 
198 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Adam turned his back on the sun, and dwelt in the 
 dark and the shadow. He sinned, and brought evil into 
 his supernatural endowments, and lost the sacrament 
 and instrument of immortality, the tree of life in the 
 
 I have thus put the reader in possession of my own opinions respecting 
 the narrative in Gen. ii, and iii. "Koriv ovv Sfi, us e^oiye. SokcT, 'lepo; fivdos, 
 akniQiaTtxTov Kai dp^aidraroj/ fiKoaotpripa, evoefieoi piv ai^aapa^ avverois re tj>oi- 
 vav' is Si to nav tppjmds ^ori|ei. Or I might ask with Augustine, Why 
 not both"! Why not at once symbol and history"! Or rather how 
 should it be otherwise'? Must not of necessity the first man be a 
 symbol of mankind in .the fullest force of the word symbol, rightly 
 defined; — a sign included in the idea which it represents ;— that is, 
 an actual part chosen to represent the whole, as a lip with a chin 
 prominent is a symbol of man ; or a lower form or species of a higher 
 in the same kind : thus magnetism is the symbol of vegetation, and 
 of the vegetative and reproductive power in animals ; the instinct of 
 the ant tribe or the bee is a symbol of the human understanding. And 
 this definition of the word is of great practical importance, inasmuch as 
 the symbolical is hereby distinguished toto genere from the allegoric and 
 metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, and allegorical or 
 typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scripture ! The 
 writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet I readily 
 acknowledge that allegorical applications are one thing, and allegorical 
 interpretations another : and that where there is no ground for supposing 
 such a sense to have entered into the intent and purpose of the sacred 
 penman, they are not to be commended. So far indeed am I from en- 
 tertaining any predilection for them, or any favourable opinion of the 
 Rabbinical commentators and traditionists, from whom the fashion was 
 derived, that in carrying it as far as our own Church has carried it, I fol- 
 low her judgment, not my own. But in the first place, I know but one 
 other part of the Scriptures not universally held to be parabolical, which, 
 not without the sanction of great authorities, I am disposed to regard as 
 an apologue or parable, namely, the book of Jonah ; the reasons for be- 
 lieving the Jewish Nation collectively to be therein impersonated seeming 
 to me unanswerable. Secondly, as to the chapters now in question — 
 that such interpretation is at least tolerated by our Cb/irch, I have the 
 word of one of her most zealous champions. And lastly, it is my de- 
 liberate and conscientious conviction, that the proofs of such having been 
 the intention of the inspired writer or compiler of the book of Genesis lie 
 on the /ace qf the narrative itself. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 199 
 
 centre of the garden.* He then fell under the evils of 
 a sickly body, and a passionate and ignorant soul. His 
 sin made him sickly, his sickness made him peevish: 
 his sin left him ignorant, his ignorance made him foolish 
 and unreasonable. His sin left him to his nature : and 
 by nature, whoever was to be born at all, was to be 
 born a child, and to do before he could understand, and 
 to be bred under laws to which he was always bound, 
 but which could not always be exacted ; and he was to 
 choose when he could not reason, and had passions 
 most strong when he had his understanding most weak; 
 and the more need he had of a curb, the less strength 
 he had to use it ! And this being the case of all the 
 world, what was every man's evil, became all men's 
 greater evil ; and though alone it was very bad, yet 
 when they came together it was made much worse. 
 Like ships in a storm, every one alone hath enough to 
 do to outride it ; but when they meet, besides the evils 
 of the storm, they find the intolerable calamity of their 
 mutual concussion ; and every ship that is ready to be 
 oppressed with the tempest, is a worse tempest to every 
 vessel against which it is violently dashed. So it is in 
 mankind. Every man hath evil enough of his own, 
 and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own 
 reason and conscience. But when he hath parents and 
 children, friends and enemies, buyers and sellers, law- 
 yers and clients, a family and a neighbourhood — then it 
 is that every man dashes against another, and one rela- 
 tion requires what another denies ; and when one speaks 
 another will contradict him; and that which is well 
 
 * Rom. v, 14. — Who were they who had not sinned after the simili- 
 tude of Adam's transgression ; and over whom notwithstanding, death 
 
200 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 spoken is sometimes innocently mistaken ; and that upon 
 a good cause produces an evil effect; and by these, and 
 ten thousand other concurrent causes, man is made 
 more than most miserable. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 The first question we should put to ourselves, when 
 we have to read a passage that perplexes us in a work 
 of authority, is ; What does the writer mean by all this ? 
 And the second question should be, What does he intend 
 by all this ? In the passage before us, Taylor's mean- 
 ing is not quite clear. A sin is an evil which has its 
 ground or origin in the agent, and not in the compulsion 
 of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory from 
 the absence of a power to resist or control them : and if 
 this absence likewise be the effect of circumstance (that is, 
 if it have been neither directly nor indirectly caused by the 
 agent himself), the evil derives from the circumstances; 
 and therefore (in the Apostle's sense of the word, sin, 
 when he speaks of the exceeding sinfulness of sin) such 
 evil is not sin ; and the person who suffers it, or who is 
 the compelled instrument of its infliction on others, may 
 feel regret, but cannot feel remorse. So likewise of the 
 word origin, original, or originant. The reader cannot 
 too early be warned that it is not applicable, and, with- 
 out abuse of language, can never be applied, to a mere 
 link in a chain of effects, where each, indeed, stands in 
 the relation of a cause to those that follow, but is at the 
 same time the effect of all that precede. For in these 
 cases a cause amounts to little more than an antecedent. 
 At the utmost it means only a conductor of the causative 
 influence ; and the old axiom, causa causes causa causati, 
 applies with a never-ending regress to each several link, 
 up the whole chain of nature. But this is nature : and 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 201 
 
 no natural thing or act can be called originant, or be 
 truly said to have an origin* in any other. The mo- 
 ment we assume an origin in nature, a true beginning, 
 an actual first — that moment we rise above nature, 
 
 * This sense of the word is implied even in its metaphorical or figura- 
 tive use. Thus we may say of a river that it originates in such or such 
 a fountain ; but the water of a canal is derived from such or such a river. 
 The power which we call nature, may be thus defined : A power subject 
 to the law of continuity (lex continui ; nam in natura non datur saltus) 
 which law the human understanding, by a necessity arising out of its 
 own constitution, can conceive only under the form of cause and effect. 
 That this form or law, of cause and effect is (relatively to the world 
 without, or to things as they subsist independently of our perceptions) 
 only a form or mode of thinking ; that it is a law inherent in the under- 
 standing itself (just as the symmetry of the miscellaneous objects seen 
 by the kaleidoscope inheres in, or results from, the mechanism of the 
 kaleidoscope itself)- — this becomes evident as soon as we attempt to apply 
 the preconception directly to any operation of nature. For in this case we 
 are forced to represent the cause as being at the same instant the effect, 
 and vice versa the effect as being the cause — a relation which we seek 
 to express by the terms action and re-action ; but for which the term re- 
 ciprocal action or the law of reciprocity (Wechselwirkung) would bo 
 both more accurate and more expressive. v 
 
 These are truths which can scarcely be too frequently impressed on 
 the mind that is in earnest in the wish to reflect aright. Nature is a line 
 in constant and continuous evolution. Its beginning is lost in the super- 
 natural : and for our understanding therefore it must appear as a con- 
 tinuous line without beginning or end. But where there is no discon- 
 tinuity there can be no origination, and every appearance of origination 
 in nature is but a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our 
 own will or spirit. Herein, indeed, the will consists. This is the essen- 
 tial character by which will is opposed to nature, as spirit, and raised 
 above nature, as self-determining spirit — this namely, that it is a power 
 of originating an act or state. 
 
 A young friend, or, as he was pleased to describe himself, a pupil of 
 mine, who is beginning to learn to think, asked me to explain by an in- 
 stance what is meant by " originating an act or state." My answer was 
 — This morning I awoke with a dull pain, which I knew from experience 
 the getting up would remove : and yet by adding to the drowsiness and 
 by weakening or depressing the volition (voluntas sensorialis seu me- 
 chanica) the very pain seemed to hold me back, to fix me, as it were, to 
 
202 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and are compelled to assume a supernatural power. 
 (Gen. i, 1.) 
 
 It will be an equal convenience to myself and to my 
 readers, to let it be agreed between us, that we will 
 
 the bed. After a peevish ineffectual quarrel with this painful disinclina- 
 tion, I said to myself: Let me count twenty, and the moment I come to 
 nineteen I will leap out of bed. So said, and so done. Now should 
 you ever find yourself in the same or in a similar state, and should attend 
 to the goings-on within you, you will learn what I mean by originating 
 an act. At the same time you will see that it belongs exclusively to 
 the will (arbitrium ;) that there is nothing analogous to it in outward ex- 
 periences ; and that I had, therefore, no way of explaining it but by re- 
 ferring you to an act of your own, and to the peculiar self-consciousness 
 preceding and accompanying it. As we know what life is by being, so 
 we know what will is by acting. That in willing (replied my young 
 friend) we appear to ourselves to constitute an actual beginning, and that 
 this seems unique, and without any example in our sensible experience, 
 or in the jphcznomena of nature, is an undeniable fact. But may it not be 
 an illusion arising from our ignorance of the antecedent causes 1 You 
 may suppose this (I rejoined :)— that the soul of every man should im- 
 pose a lie on itself; and that this lie, and the acting on the faith of its 
 being the most important of all truths, and the most real of all realities, 
 should form the main contra-distinctive character of humanity, and the 
 only basis of that distinction between things and persons on which our 
 whole moral and criminal law is grounded ;— you may suppose this ;— I 
 cannot, as I could in the case of an arithmetical or geometrical proposi- 
 tion, render it impossible for you to suppose it. Whether you can recon- 
 cile such a supposition with the belief of an all-wise Creator is another 
 question. But, taken singly, it is doubtless in your power to suppose 
 this. Were it not, the belief of the contrary would be no subject of a 
 command, no part of a moral or religious duty. You would not, how- 
 ever, suppose it without a reason. But all the pretexts that ever have 
 been or ever can be offered for this supposition, are built on certain no- 
 tions of the understanding that have been generalized from conceptions ; 
 which conceptions, again, are themselves generalized or abstracted from, 
 objects of sense. Neither the one nor the other, therefore, have any 
 force except in application to objects of sense, and within the sphere of 
 sensible experience. What but absurdity can follow, if you decide on, 
 spirit by the laws of matter ; — if you judge that, which if it be at all must 
 be super-sensual, by that faculty of your mind, the very definition of 
 which is " the faculty judging according to sense 1" These then are un- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 203 
 
 generalize the word circumstance, so as to understand 
 by it, as often as it occurs in this Comment, all and 
 every thing not connected with the will, past or present, 
 of a free agent. Even though it were the blood in the 
 chambers of his heart, or his own inmost sensations, we 
 will regard them as circumstantial, extrinsic, or from 
 without. 
 
 In this sense of the word, original, and in the sense 
 before given of sin, it is evident that the phrase, original 
 sin, is a pleonasm, the epithet not adding to the thought, 
 but only enforcing it. For if it be sin, it must be original ; 
 and a state or act, that has not its origin in the will; 
 may be calamity, deformity, disease, or mischief ; but a 
 
 worthy the name of reasons : they are only pretexts. But without rea- 
 son to contradict your own consciousness in defiance of your own con- 
 science, is contrary to reason. Such and such writers, you say, have 
 made a great sensation. If so, I am sorry for it ; but the fact I take to 
 be this. From a variety of causes the more austere sciences have fallen 
 into discredit, and impostors have taken advantage of the general igno- 
 rance to give a sort of mysterious and terrific importance to a parcel of 
 trashy sophistry, the authors of which would not have employed them- 
 selves more irrationally in submitting the works of Raphael or Titian 
 to canons of criticism deduced from the sense of smell. Nay, less so. 
 For here the objects and the organs are only disparate : while in the 
 other case they are absolutely diverse. I conclude this note by remind- 
 ing the reader, that my first object is to make myself understood. When 
 he is in full possession of my meaning, then let him consider whether it 
 deserves to be received as the truth. Had it been my immediate pur- 
 pose to make him believe me as well as understand me, I should have 
 thought it necessary to warn him that a finite will does indeed originate 
 an act, and may originate a state of being ; but yet only in and for the 
 agent himself. A finite will constitutes a true beginning ; but with re- 
 gard to the series of motions and changes by which the free act is mani- 
 fested and made effectual, the finite will gives a beginning only by coin- 
 cidence with that Absolute "Will, which is at the same time Infinite 
 Power ! Such is the language of religion, and of philosophy too in the 
 last instance. But I express the same truth in ordinary language when 
 I say, that a finite will, or the will of a finite free-agent, acts outwardly 
 by confluence with the laws of nature. 
 
204 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sin it cannot be. It is not enough that the act appears 
 voluntary, or that it is intentional ; or that it has the 
 most hateful passions or debasing appetite for its prox- 
 imate cause and accompaniment. All these may be 
 found in a mad-house, where neither law nor humanity 
 permit us to condemn the actor of sin. The reason of 
 law declares the maniac not a free-agent ; and the verdict 
 follows of course — Not guilty. Now mania, as distin- 
 guished from idiocy, frenzy, delirium, hypochondria, and 
 derangement (the last term used specifically to express 
 a suspension or disordered state of the understanding 
 or adaptive power), is the occultation or eclipse of reason, 
 as the power of ultimate ends. The maniac, it is well 
 known, is often found clever and inventive in the selection 
 and adaptation of means to his ends ; but his ends are 
 madness. He has lost his reason. For though reason, in 
 finite beings, is not the will — or how could the will be 
 opposed to the reason ? — yet it is the condition, the sine 
 qua non of a free-will. 
 
 We will now return to the extract from Jeremy Taylor 
 on a theme of deep interest in itself, and trebly important 
 from its bearings. For without just and distinct views 
 respecting the Article of Original Sin, it is impossible 
 to understand aright any one of the peculiar doctrines 
 of Christianity. Now my first complaint is, that the 
 eloquent Bishop, while he admits the fact as established 
 beyond controversy by universal experience, yet leaves 
 us wholly in the dark as to the main point, supplies us 
 with no answer to the principal question — why he names 
 it Original Sin. It cannot be said, We know what the 
 Bishop means, and what matters the name ? for the 
 nature of the fact, and in what light it should be regard- 
 ed by us, depends on the nature of our answer to the 
 question, whether Original Sin is or is not the right and 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 205 
 
 proper designation. I can imagine the same quantum 
 of sufferings, and yet if I had reason to regard them as 
 symptoms of a commencing change, as pains of growth, 
 the temporary deformity and misproportions of immatur- 
 ity, or (as in the final sloughing of the caterpillar) the 
 throes and struggles of the waxing or evolving Psyche, 
 I should think it no Stoical flight to doubt, how far I 
 was authorized to declare the circumstance an evil at all. 
 Most assuredly I would not express or describe the fact 
 as an evil having an origin in the sufferers themselves, 
 or as sin. 
 
 Let us, however, waive this objection. Let it be sup- 
 posed that the Bishop uses the word in a different and 
 more comprehensive sense, and that by sin he under- 
 stands evil of all kind connected with or resulting from 
 actions — though I do not see how we can represent the 
 properties even of inanimate bodies (of poisonous sub- 
 stances for instance) except as acts resulting from the 
 constitution of such bodies. Or if this sense, though 
 not unknown to the mystic divines, should be too com- 
 prehensive and remote, I will suppose the Bishop to 
 comprise under the term sin, the evil accompanying or 
 consequent on human actions and purposes : — though 
 here, too, I have a right to be informed, for what reason 
 and on what grounds sin is thus limited to human agency? 
 And truly, I should be at no loss to assign the reason. 
 But then this reason would instantly bring me back to 
 my first definition ; and any other reason, than that the 
 human agent is endowed with reason, and with a will 
 which can place itself either in subjection or in oppo- 
 sition to his reason — in other words, that man is alone 
 of all known animals a responsible creature — I neither 
 know nor can imagine. 
 
 Thus, then, the sense which Taylor — and with him 
 
 18 
 
206 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the antagonists generally of this Article as propounded 
 by the first Reformers — attaches to the words, Original 
 Sin, needs only be carried on into its next consequence, 
 and it will be found to imply the sense which I have 
 given — namely, that sin is evil having an origin. But 
 inasmuch as it is evil, in God it cannot originate : and 
 yet in some Spirit (that is, in some supernatural power) 
 it must. For in nature there is no origin. Sin there- 
 fore is spiritual evil : but the spiritual in man is the will. 
 Now when we do not refer to any particular sins, but to 
 that state and constitution of the will, which is the ground, 
 condition, and common cause of all sins ; and when we 
 would further express the truth, that this corrupt nature 
 of the will must in some sense or other be considered 
 as its own act, that the corruption must have been self- 
 originated ; — in this case and for this purpose we may, 
 with no less propriety than force, entitle this dire spirit- 
 ual evil and source of all evil, which is absolutely such, 
 Original Sin. I have said, the corrupt nature of the 
 will. I might add, that the admission of a nature into 
 a spiritual essence by its own act is a corruption. 
 
 Such, I repeat, would be the inevitable conclusion, if 
 Taylor's sense of the term were carried on into its im- 
 mediate consequences. But the whole of his most 
 eloquent Treatise makes it certain that Taylor did not 
 carry it on : and consequently Original Sin, according 
 to his conception, is a calamity which being common 
 to all men must be supposed to result from their com- 
 mon nature ; — in other words, the universal calamity of 
 human nature. 
 
 Can we wonder, then, that a mind, a heart, like Tay- 
 lor's should reject, that he should strain his faculties to 
 explain away, the belief that this calamity, so dire in 
 itself should appear to the All-merciful God a rightful 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 207 
 
 cause and motive for inflicting on the wretched sufferers 
 a calamity infinitely more tremendous ;— nay, that it 
 should be incompatible with Divine Justice not to pun- 
 ish it by everlasting torment? Or need we be surprised 
 if he found nothing that could reconcile his mind to such 
 a belief, in the circumstance that the acts now conse- 
 quent on this calamity, and either directly or indirectly 
 effects of the same, were, five or six thousand years ago, 
 in the instance of a certain individual and his accom- 
 plice, anterior to the calamity, and the cause or occasion 
 of the same ; — that what in all other men is disease, in 
 these two persons was guilt ; — that what in us is heredi- 
 tary, and consequently nature, in them was original, 
 and consequently sin ? Lastly, might it not be presumed, 
 that so enlightened, and at the same time so affectionate, • 
 a divine would even fervently disclaim and reject the 
 pretended justifications of God grounded on flimsy anal- 
 ogies drawn from the imperfections of human ordinances 
 and human justice-courts — some of very doubtful char- 
 acter even as human institutes, and all of them just only 
 as far as they are necessary, and rendered necessary 
 chiefly by the weakness and wickedness, the limited 
 powers and corrupt passions, of mankind ? The more 
 confidently might this be presumed of so acute and 
 practised a logician, as Taylor, in addition to his other 
 extraordinary gifts, is known to have been, when it is 
 demonstrable that the most current of these justifications 
 rests on a palpable equivocation : namely, the gross 
 misuse of the word right.* An instance will explain my 
 
 * It may conduce to the readier comprehension of this point if I say, 
 that the equivoque consists in confounding the almost technical sense of 
 the noun substantive, right, (a sense must often determined by the geni- 
 tive case following, as the right of property, the right of husbands to 
 chastise their wives, and so forth) with the popular sense of the adjec* 
 
208 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 meaning. In as far as, from the known frequency of 
 dishonest or mischievous persons, it may have been 
 found necessary, in so far is the law justifiable in giving 
 landowners the right of proceeding against a neighbour 
 or fellow-citizen for even a slight trespass on that which 
 the law has made their property : — nay, of proceeding 
 in sundry instances criminally and even capitally. But 
 surely, either there is no religion in the world, and 
 nothing obligatory in the precepts of the Gospel, or 
 there are occasions in which it would be very wrong in 
 
 tive, right : though this likewise has, if not a double sense, yet a double 
 application ; — the first, when it is used to express the fitness of a mean to 
 a relative end ; for example, " the right way to obtain the right distance 
 at which a picture should be examined," and the like ; and the other, 
 when it expresses a perfect conformity and commensurateness with the 
 immutable idea of equity, or perfect rectitude. Hence the close connec- 
 tion between the words righteousness and godliness, that is, godlikeness. 
 I should be tempted to subjoin a few words on a predominating doc- 
 trine closely connected with the present argument — the Paleyan principle 
 of general consequences ; but the inadequacy of this principle as a criterion 
 of right and wrong, and above all its utter unfitness as a mora] guide, 
 have been elsewhere so fully stated {Friend, vol. ii, essay xi,) that even 
 in again referring to the subject, I must shelter myself under Seneca's 
 rule, that what we cannot too frequently think of, we cannot too often 
 be made to recollect. It is, however, of immediate importance to the 
 point in discussion, that the reader should be made to see how altogether 
 incompatible the principle of judging by general consequences is with 
 the idea of an Eternal, Omnipresent, and Omniscient Being ; — that he 
 should be made aware of the absurdity of attributing any form of gene- 
 ralization to the All-perfect Mind. To generalize is a faculty and func- 
 tion of the human understanding, and from the imperfection and limita- 
 tion of the understanding are the use and the necessity of generalizing 
 derived. Generalization is a substitute for intuition, for the power of 
 intuitive, that is, immediate knowledge. As a substitute, it is a gift of 
 inestimable value to a finite intelligence, such as man in his present state 
 is endowed with and capable of exercising ; but yet a substitute only, 
 and an imperfect one to boot. To attribute it to God is the grossest 
 anthropomorphism : and grosser instances of anthropomorphism than are 
 to be found in the controversial writings on original sin and vicarious 
 satisfaction, the records of superstition do not supply. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 209 
 
 the proprietor to exercise the right, which yet it may 
 be highly expedient that he should possess. On this 
 ground it is, that religion is the sustaining opposite of 
 law. 
 
 That Taylor, therefore, should have striven fervently 
 against the Article so interpreted and so vindicated, is 
 (for me at least) a subject neither of surprise nor of com- 
 plaint. It is the doctrine which he substitutes ; it is the 
 weakness and inconsistency betrayed in the defence of 
 this substitute ; it is the unfairness with which he 
 blackens the established Article — for to give it, as it 
 had been caricatured by a few Ultra-Calvinists during 
 the fever of the (so called) Quinquarticular controversy, 
 was in effect to blacken it — and then imposes another 
 scheme, to which the same objections apply with even 
 increased force, a scheme which seems to differ from 
 the former only by adding fraud and mockery to injus- 
 tice ; — these are the things that excite my wonder ; it is 
 of these that I complain. For what does the Bishop's 
 scheme amount to ? God, he tells us, required of Adam 
 a perfect obedience, and made it possible by endowing 
 him " with perfect rectitudes and supernatural heights 
 of grace" proportionate to the obedience which he re^- 
 quired. As a consequence of his disobedience, Adam 
 lost this rectitude, this perfect sanity and proportionate- 
 ness of his intellectual, moral and corporeal state, powers 
 and impulses ; and as the penalty of his crime, he was 
 deprived of all supernatural aids and graces. The death, 
 with whatever is comprised in the Scriptural sense of 
 the word, death, began from that moment to work in 
 him, and this consequence he conveyed to his offspring, 
 and through them to all his posterity, that is, to all man- 
 kind. They were born diseased in mind, body and will. 
 For what less than disease can we call a necessity of 
 
 19* 
 
210 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 error and a predisposition to sin and sickness ? Taylor, 
 indeed, asserts, that though perfect obedience became 
 incomparably more difficult, it was not, however, abso- 
 lutely impossible. Yet he himself admits that the con- 
 trary was universal ; that of the countless millions of 
 Adam's posterity, not a single individual ever realized, 
 or approached to the realization of, this possibility ; and 
 (if my memory* does not deceive me) Taylor himself 
 has elsewhere exposed — -and if he has not, yet common 
 sense will do it for him — the sophistry in asserting of a 
 whole what may be true of the whole, but is in fact true 
 only of each of its component parts. Any one may snap 
 a horse-hair : therefore, any one may perform the same 
 feat with the horse's tail. On a level floor (on the hard- 
 ened sand, for instance, of a sea-beach) I chalk two 
 parallel straight lines, with a width of eight inches. It 
 is possible for a man, with a bandage over his eyes, to 
 keep within the path for two or three paces : therefore, 
 it is possible for him to walk blindfold for two or three 
 leagues without a single deviation ! And this possibility 
 would suffice to acquit me of injustice, though I had 
 placed man-traps within an inch of one line, and knew 
 that there were pit-falls and deep wells beside the other ! 
 This assertion, therefore, without adverting to its dis- 
 cordance with, if not direct contradiction to, the tenth 
 and thirteenth Articles of our Church, I shall not, I trust, 
 be thought to rate below its true value, if I treat it as an 
 infinitesimal possibility that may be safely dropped in 
 the calculation : and so proceed with the argument. 
 
 * I have, since this page was written, met with several passages in 
 the Treatise on Repentance, the Holy Living and Dying, and the 
 Worthy Communicant, in which the Bishop asserts without scruple the 
 impossibility of total obedience ; and on the same grounds as I have 
 given. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 211 
 
 The consequence then of Adam's crime was, by a na- 
 tural necessity, inherited by persons who could not (the 
 Bishop affirms) in any sense have been accomplices in 
 the crime or partakers in the guilt : and yet consistently 
 with the divine holiness, it was not possible that the 
 same perfect obedience should not be required of them. 
 Now what would the idea of equity, what would the law 
 inscribed by the Creator on the heart of man, seem to 
 dictate in this case ? Surely, that the supplementary 
 aids, the supernatural graces correspondent to a law 
 above nature, should be increased in proportion to the 
 diminished strength of the agents, and the increased 
 resistance to be overcome by them. But no ! not only 
 the consequence of Adam's act, but the penalty due to 
 his crime, was perpetuated. His descendants were de- 
 spoiled or left destitute of these aids and graces, while 
 the obligation to perfect obedience was continued ; an 
 obligation too, the non-fulfilment of which brought with 
 it death and the unutterable woe that cleaves to an im- 
 mortal soul for ever alienated from its Creator. 
 
 Observe that all these results of Adam's fall enter into 
 Bishop Taylor's scheme of Original Sin equally as into 
 that of the first Reformers. In this respect the Bishop's 
 doctrine is the same with that laid down in the Articles 
 and Homilies of the English Church. The only differ- 
 ence that has hitherto appeared, consists in the aforesaid 
 mathematical possibility of fulfilling the whole law, 
 which in the .Bishop's scheme is affirmed to remain still 
 in human nature, or (as it is elsewhere expressed) in 
 the nature of the human will.* But though it were pos- 
 
 * Availing himself of the equivocal sense, and (I most readily admit) 
 the injudicious use, of the word "free" in the— even on this account- 
 faulty phrase, " free only to sin," Taylor treats the notion of a power in 
 
212 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sible to grant this existence of a power in all men, which 
 in no man was ever exemplified, and where the non- 
 actualization of such power is, a priori, so certain, that 
 the belief or imagination of the contrary in any indivi- 
 dual is expressly given us by the Holy Spirit as a test, 
 whereby it may be known that the truth is not in him, 
 as an infallible sign of imposture or self-delusion ! — 
 though it were possible to grant this, which, consistently 
 with Scripture and the principles of reasoning which we 
 apply in all other cases, it is not possible to grant ; — and 
 though it were possible likewise to overlook the glaring 
 sophistry of concluding in relation to a series of inde- 
 terminate length, that whoever can do any one, can 
 therefore do all ; a conclusion, the futility of which must 
 force itself on the common-sense of every man who un- 
 derstands the proposition ; — still the question will arise — 
 
 the will of determining itself to evil without an equal power of determining 
 itself to good, as a "foolery." I would this had been the only instance in his 
 Deus Justificatus of that inconsiderate contempt so frequent in the polemic 
 treatises of minor divines, who will have ideas of reason, spiritual truths 
 that can only be spiritually discerned, translated for them into adequate 
 conceptions of the understanding. The great articles of Corruption and 
 Redemption are propounded to us as spiritual mysteries ; and every in- 
 terpretation that pretends to explain them into comprehensible notions, 
 does by its very success furnish presumptive proof of its failure. The 
 acuteness and logical dexterity, with which Taylor has brought out the 
 falsehood, or semblance of falsehood, in the Calvinistic scheme, are truly 
 admirable. Had he next concentred his thoughts in |j»i»3JBS1 uieuitation, 
 and asked himself- what then is the truth 7 -if a will be at all, what 
 must a will be?— he might, I think, have seen that a nature in a will 
 implies already a corruption of that will ; that a nature is as inconsistent 
 with freedom as free choice with an incapacity of choosing aught but 
 evil. And lastly, a free power in a nature to fulfil a law above nature ! 
 — I, who love and honor this good and great man with all the reverence 
 that can dwell " on this side idolatry," dare not retort on this assertion 
 the charge of foolery ; but I find it a paradox as startling to my reason 
 ae any of the hard sayings of the Dort divines were to his understanding. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 213 
 
 Why, and on what principle of equity, were the unoffend- 
 ing sentenced to be born with so fearful a disproportion 
 of their powers to their duties ? Why were they sub- 
 jected to a law, the fulfilment of which was all but im- 
 possible, yet the penalty on the failure tremendous 1 
 Admit that for those who had never enjoyed a happier 
 lot, it was no punishment to be made to inhabit a ground 
 which the Creator had cursed, and to have been born with 
 a body prone to sickness, and a soul surrounded with temp- 
 tation, and having the worst temptation within itself in 
 its own temptibility ! To have the duties of a spirit 
 with the wants and appetites of an animal ! Yet on such 
 imperfect creatures, with means so scanty and impedi- 
 ments so numerous, to impose the same task-work that 
 had been required of a creature with a pure and entire 
 nature, and provided with supernatural aids — if this be 
 not to inflict a penalty ; — yet to be placed under a law, 
 the difficulty of obeying which is infinite, and to have 
 momently to struggle with this difficulty, and to live mo- 
 mently in hazard of these consequences — if this be no 
 punishment ; — words have no correspondence with 
 thoughts, and thoughts are but shadows of each other, 
 shadows that own no substance for their antitype ! 
 
 Of such an outrage on common sense Taylor was in- 
 capable. He himself calls it a penalty ; he admits that 
 in effect it is a punishment : nor does he seek to sup- 
 press the question that so naturally arises out of this 
 admission ; — on what principle of equity were the inno- 
 cent offspring of Adam punished at all ? He meets it, 
 and puts in an answer. He states the problem, and 
 gives his solution — namely, that " God on Adam's ac- 
 count was so exasperated with mankind, that being angry 
 he would still continue the punishment !" — " The case'* 
 (says the Bishop) " is this : Jonathan and Michal were 
 
214 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Saul's children. It came to pass, that seven of Saul's 
 issue were to be hanged : all equally innocent, equally 
 culpable." [Before I quote farther, I feel myself called 
 on to remind the reader, that these last two words were 
 added by Taylor, without the least grounds in Scripture, 
 according to which (2 Sum. xxi) no crime was laid to 
 their charge, no blame imputed to them. Without any 
 pretence of culpable conduct on their part, they were 
 arraigned as children of Saul, and sacrificed to a point 
 of state-expedience. In recommencing the quotation, 
 therefore, the reader ought to let the sentence conclude 
 with the words — ] " all equally innocent. David took 
 the five sons of Michal, for she had left him unhand- 
 somely. Jonathan was his friend : and therefore he 
 spared his son, Mephibosheth. Now here it was indif- 
 ferent as to the guilt of the persons (bear in mind, reader, 
 that no guilt was attached to either of them !) whether 
 David should take the sons of Michal, or Jonathan's ; 
 but it is likely that as upon the kindness that David had 
 to Jonathan, he spared his son ; so upon the just provo- 
 cation of Michal, he made that evil fall upon them, 
 which, it may be, they should not have suffered, if their 
 mother had been kind. Adam was to God, as Michal 
 to David."* 
 
 This answer, this solution, proceeding too from a 
 divine so pre-eminently gifted, and occurring (with other 
 passages not less startling) in a vehement refutation of 
 the received doctrine, on the express ground of its oppo- 
 sition to the clearest conceptions and best feelings of 
 mankind — this it is that surprises me. It is of this that 
 I complain. The Almighty Father exasperated with 
 
 Vol. IX, p. 5-6. Heb. edit. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 215 
 
 those, whom the Bishop has himself in the same treatise 
 described as " innocent and most unfortunate" — the two 
 things best fitted to conciliate love and pity ! Or though 
 they did not remain innocent, yet those whose abandon- 
 ment to a mere nature, while they were left amenable 
 to a law above nature, he affirms to be the irresistible 
 cause, that they one and all did sin ! And this decree 
 illustrated and justified by its analogy to one of the worst 
 actions of an imperfect mortal ! From such of my readers 
 as will give a thoughtful perusal to these works of Tay- 
 lor, I dare anticipate a concurrence with the judgment 
 which I here transcribe from the blank space at the end 
 of the Deus Justificatus in my own copy ; and which, 
 though twenty years have elapsed since it was written, 
 I have never seen reason to recant or modify. " This 
 most eloquent Treatise may be compared to a statue of 
 Janus, with the one face, which we must suppose front- 
 ing the Calvinistic tenet, entire and fresh, as from the 
 master's hand ; beaming with life and force, witty scorn 
 on the lip, and a brow at once bright and weighty with 
 satisfying reason : — the other, looking toward the 'some- 
 thing to be put in its place,' maimed, featureless, and 
 weather-bitten into an almost visionary confusion and 
 indistinctness." 
 
 With these expositions I hasten to contrast the Scrip- 
 tural article respecting original sin, or the corrupt and 
 sinful nature of the human will, and the belief which 
 alone is required of us, as Christians. And here the 
 first thing to be considered, and which will at once re- 
 move a world of error, is ; that this is no tenet first 
 introduced or imposed by Christianity, and which, should 
 a man see reason to disclaim the authority of the Gos- 
 pel, would no longer have any claim on his attention. 
 It is no perplexity that a man may get rid of by ceasing 
 
216 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 to be a Christian, and which has no existence for a phi- 
 losophic Deist. It is a fact, affirmed, indeed, in the 
 Christian Scriptures alone with the force and frequency 
 proportioned to its consummate importance ; but a fact 
 acknowledged in every religion that retains the least 
 glimmering of the Patriarchal faith in a God infinite, yet 
 personal. A fact assumed or implied as the basis of 
 every religion, of which any relics remain of earlier date 
 than the last and total apostasy of the Pagan world, 
 when the faith in the great I Am, the Creator, was ex- 
 tinguished in the sensual Polytheism, which is inevitably 
 the final result of Pantheism, or the worship of nature ; 
 and the only form under which the Pantheistic scheme 
 — that, according to which the world is God, and "the 
 material universe itself the one only absolute being — 
 can exist for a people, or become the popular creed. 
 Thus in the most ancient books of the Brahmins, the 
 deep sense of this fact, and the doctrines grounded on 
 obscure traditions of the promised remedy, are seen 
 struggling, and now gleaming, now flashing, through the 
 mist of Pantheism, and producing the incongruities and 
 gross contradictions of the Brahmin Mythology : while in 
 the rival sect — in that most strange phenomenon, the 
 religious Atheism of the Buddhists, with whom God is 
 only universal matter considered abstractedly from all 
 particular forms — the fact is placed among the delusions 
 natural to man, which, together with other superstitions 
 grounded on a supposed essential difference between 
 right and wrong, the sage is to decompose and precipi- 
 tate from the menstruum of his more refined apprehen- 
 sions ! Thus in denying the fact, they virtually acknow- 
 ledge it. 
 
 From the remote East, turn to the mythology of the 
 Lesser Asia, to the descendants of Javan, who dwelt in 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 217 
 
 the tents of Shem, and possessed the isles. Here, again, 
 and in the usual form of an historic solution, we find the 
 same fact, and as characteristic of the human race, stated 
 in that earliest and most venerable mythus (or symbolic 
 parable) of Prometheus — that truly wonderful fable, in 
 which the characters of the rebellious Spirit and of the 
 Divine Friend of mankind (©£«? <pi*<iv8pa7rop) are united 
 in the same person ; and thus in the most striking man- 
 ner noting the forced amalgamation of the Patriarchal 
 tradition with the incongruous scheme of Pantheism. 
 This and the connected tale of To, which is but the se- 
 quel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek My- 
 thology, in which elsewhere both gods and men are 
 mere powers and products of nature. And most notice- 
 able it is, that soon after the promulgation and spread 
 of the Gospel had awakened the moral sense, and had 
 opened the eyes even of its wiser enemies to the neces- 
 sity of providing some solution of this great problem of 
 the moral world, the beautiful parable of Cupid and 
 Psyche was brought forward as a rival Fall of Man : 
 and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the 
 human race was again recognised. In the assertion of 
 original sin the Greek Mythology rose and set. 
 
 But not only was the fact acknowledged of a law in 
 the nature of man resisting the law of God ; (and what- 
 ever is placed in active and direct oppugnancy to the 
 good is, ipso facto, positive evil ;) it was likewise an 
 acknowledged mystery, and one which by the nature of 
 the subject must ever remain such — a problem, of which 
 any other solution than the statement of the fact itself, 
 was demonstrably impossible. That it is so, the least 
 reflection will suffice to convince every man, who has 
 previously satisfied himself that he is a responsible 
 
 being. It follows necessarily from the postulate of a 
 
 19 
 
218 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 responsible will. Refuse to grant this, and I have not 
 a word to say. Concede this, and you concede all. 
 For this is the essential attribute of a will, and contained 
 in the very idea, that whatever determines the will ac- 
 quires this power from a previous determination of the 
 will itself. The will is ultimately self-determined, or it 
 is no longer a will under the law of perfect freedom, but 
 a nature under the mechanism of cause and effect. And 
 if by an act, to which it had determined itself, it has 
 subjected itself to the determination of nature (in the 
 language of St. Paul, to the law of the flesh,) it receives 
 a nature into itself, and so far it becomes a nature : and 
 this is a corruption of the will and a corrupt nature. It 
 is also a fall of man, inasmuch as his will is the condi- 
 tion of his personality ; the ground and condition of the 
 attribute which constitutes him man. And the ground- 
 work of personal being is a capacity of acknowledging 
 the moral law (the law of the spirit, the law of freedom, 
 the divine will) as that which should, of itself, suffice to 
 determine the will to a free obedience of the law, the 
 law working therein by its own exceeding lawfulness.* 
 This, and this alone, is positive good ; good in itself, and 
 independent of all relations. Whatever resists, and, as 
 a positive force, opposes this in the will, is therefore 
 evil. But an evil in the will is an evil will ; and as all 
 moral evil (that is all evil that is evil without reference 
 to its contingent physical consequences) is of the will, 
 this evil will must have its source in the will. And thus 
 we might go back from act to act, from evil to evil, ad 
 infinitum, without advancing a step. 
 
 * If the law worked on the will, it would be the working of an ex- 
 trinsic and alien force, and, as St. Paul profoundly argues, would prove 
 the will sinful. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 219 
 
 We call an individual a bad man, not because an ac- 
 tion is contrary to the law, but because it has led us to 
 conclude from it some principle opposed to the law^ 
 some private maxim or by-law in the will contrary to 
 the universal law of right reason in the conscience, 
 as the ground of the action. But this evil principle 
 again must be grounded in some other principle which 
 has been made determinant of the will by the will's own 
 self-determination. For if not, it must have its ground 
 in some necessity of nature, in some instinct or pro- 
 pensity imposed, not acquired, another's work not our 
 own. Consequently neither act nor principle could 
 be imputed ; and relatively to the agent, not original, 
 not sin. 
 
 Now let the grounds on which the fact of an evil in- 
 herent in the will is affirmable in the instance of any 
 one man, be supposed equally applicable in every 
 instance, and concerning all men : so that the fact is 
 asserted of the individual, not because he has com- 
 mitted this or that crime, or because he has shown 
 himself to be this or that man, but simply because he is 
 a man. Let the evil be supposed such as to imply the 
 impossibility of an individual's referring to any particu- 
 lar time at which it might be conceived to have com- 
 menced, or to any period of his existence at which it 
 was not existing. Let it be supposed, in short, that the 
 subject stands in no relation whatever to time, can nei- 
 ther be called in time nor out of time ; but that all rela- 
 tions of time are as alien and heterogeneous in this 
 question, as the relations and attributes of space (north 
 or south, round or square, thick or thin) are to our affec- 
 tions and moral feelings. Let the reader suppose this, 
 and he will have before him the precise import of the 
 Scriptural doctrine of original sin ; or rather of the fact 
 
220 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 acknowledged in all. ages, and recognised, but not origi- 
 nating, in the Christian Scriptures. 
 
 In addition to this it will be well to remind the inquirer, 
 that the stedfast conviction of the existence, personality, 
 and moral attributes of God, is presupposed in the ac- 
 ceptance of the Gospel, or required as its indispensable 
 preliminary. It is taken for granted as a point which 
 the hearer had already decided for himself, a point finally 
 settled and put at rest : not by the removal of all diffi- 
 culties, or by any such increase of insight as enabled 
 him to meet every objection of the Epicurean or the 
 Sceptic with a full and precise answer ; but because he 
 had convinced himself that it was folly as well as pre- 
 sumption in so imperfect a creature to expect it ; and 
 because these difficulties and doubts disappeared at the 
 beam, when tried against the weight and convictive 
 power of the reasons in the other scale. It is, therefore, 
 most unfair to attack Christianity, or any article which 
 the Church has declared a Christian doctrine, by argu- 
 ments, which, if valid, are valid against all religion. Is 
 there a disputant who scorns a mere postulate, as the 
 basis of any argument in support of the faith ; who is 
 too high-minded to beg his ground, and will take it by 
 a strong hand? Let him fight it out with the Atheists, 
 or the Manicheans ; but not stoop to pick up their 
 arrows, and then run away to discharge them at Chris- 
 tianity or the Church ! 
 
 The only true way is to state the doctrine, believed 
 as well by Saul of Tarsus, yet breathing out threaten- 
 ings and slaughter against the Church of Christ, as by 
 Paul the Apostle, fully preaching the Gospel of Christ. 
 A moral evil is an evil that has its origin in a will. An 
 evil common to all must have a ground common to all. 
 But the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 221 
 
 conscience to admit ; and that there is an evil common 
 to all is a fact ; and this evil must therefore have a com- 
 mon ground. Now this evil ground cannot originate in 
 the Divine Will : it must therefore be referred to the 
 will of man. And this evil ground we call original sin. 
 It is a mystery, that is, a fact, which we see, but cannot 
 explain ; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, 
 but can neither comprehend nor communicate. And 
 such by the quality of the subject (namely, a responsible 
 will) it must be, if it be truth at all. 
 
 A sick man, whose complaint was as obscure as his 
 sufferings were severe and notorious, was thus addressed 
 by a humane stranger : " My poor Friend ! I find you 
 dangerously ill, and on this account only, and having 
 certain information of your being so, and that you have 
 not wherewithal to pay for a physician, I have come to 
 you. Respecting your disease, indeed, I can tell you 
 nothing that you are capable of understanding, more than 
 you know already, or can only be taught by reflection 
 on your own experience. But I have rendered the dis 
 ease no longer irremediable. I have brought the remedy 
 with me : and I now offer you the means of immediate 
 relief, with the assurance of gradual convalescence, and 
 a final perfect cure ; nothing more being required on 
 your part, but your best endeavours to follow the pre- 
 scriptions I shall leave with yon. It is, indeed, too 
 probable, from the nature of your disease, that you will 
 occasionally neglect or transgress them. But even this 
 has been calculated on in the plan of your cure, and the 
 remedies provided, if only you are sincere and in right 
 earnest with yourself, and have your heart in the work. 
 Ask me not how such a disease can be conceived pos-. 
 sible. Enough for the present that you know it to be 
 real : and I come to cure the disease, not to explain it,"' 
 
222 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Now, what if the patient or some of his neighbours 
 should charge this good Samaritan with having given 
 rise to the mischievous notion of an inexplicable disease, 
 involving the honor of the king of the country ; — should 
 inveigh against him as the author and first introducer of 
 the notion, though of the numerous medical works com- 
 posed ages before his arrival, and by physicians of the 
 most venerable authority, it was scarcely possible to 
 open a single volume without finding some description 
 of the disease, or some lamentation of its malignant and 
 epidemic character; — and, lastly, what if certain pre- 
 tended friends of this good Samaritan, in their zeal to 
 vindicate him against this absurd charge, should assert 
 that he was a perfect stranger to this disease, and boldly 
 deny that he had ever said or done any thing connected 
 with it, or that implied its existence ? 
 
 In this apologue or imaginary case, reader ! you have 
 the true bearings of Christianity on the fact and doctrine 
 of original sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of 
 a known fact) Christianity has only in common with 
 every religion, and with every philosophy, in which the 
 reality of a responsible will, and the essential difference 
 between good and evil, have been recognised. Peculiar 
 to the Christian religion are the remedy and (for all 
 purposes but those of a merely speculative curiosity) 
 the solution. By the annunciation of the remedy it 
 affords all the solution which our moral interests re- 
 quire ; and even in that which remains, and must re- 
 main, unfathomable, the Christian finds a new motive 
 to walk humbly with the Lord his God. 
 
 Should a professed believer ask you, whether that 
 which is the ground of responsible action in your will 
 could in any way be responsibly present in the will of 
 Adam, — answer him in these words : " You, Sir ! can 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION- 223 
 
 no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive 
 the affirmative. The corruption of my will may very 
 warrantably be spoken of as a consequence of Adam's 
 fall, even as my birth of Adam's existence ; as a con- 
 sequence, a link in the historic chain of instances, where- 
 of Adam is the first. But that it is on account of Adam ; 
 or that this evil principle was, a priori, inserted or in- 
 fused into my will by the will of another — which is 
 indeed a contradiction in terms, my will in such case 
 being no will — this is nowhere asserted in Scripture 
 explicitly or by implication." It belongs to the very 
 essence of the doctrine, that in respect of original sin 
 every man is the adequate representative of all men. 
 What wonder, then, that where no inward ground of 
 preference existed, the choice should be determined by 
 outward relations, and that the first in time should be 
 taken as the diagram ? Even in the book of Genesis 
 the word Adam, is distinguished from a proper name by 
 an article before it. It is the Adam, so as to express 
 the genus, not the individual — or rather, perhaps, I 
 should say, as well as the individual. But that the 
 word with its equivalent, the old man, is used symboli- 
 cally and universally by St. Paul, (1 Cor. xv, 22, 45, 
 Eph. iv, 22, Col. iii, 9, Rom. vi, 6,) is too evident to 
 need any proof. 
 
 I conclude with this remark. The doctrine of original 
 sin concerns all men. But it concerns Christians in 
 particular no otherwise than by its connexion with the 
 doctrine of Redemption ; and with the divinity and 
 divine humanity of the Redeemer, as a corollary or 
 necessary inference from both mysteries. Beware of 
 arguments against Christianity, which cannot stop there, 
 and consequently ought not to have commenced there. 
 Something I might have added to the clearness of the 
 
224 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 preceding views, if the limits of the work had permitted 
 me to clear away the several delusive and fanciful as- 
 sertions respecting the state* of our first parents, their 
 wisdom, science and angelic faculties, assertions with- 
 out the slightest ground in Scripture : — or, if consistently 
 with the wants and preparatory studies of those, for 
 whose use this volume was especially intended, I could 
 have entered into the momentous subject of a spiritual 
 fall or apostasy antecedent to the formation of man — a 
 belief the Scriptural grounds of which are few and of 
 diverse interpretation, but which has been almost uni- 
 versal in the Christian Church. Enough however has 
 been given, I trust, for the reader to see and (as far as 
 the subject is capable of being understood) to understand 
 this long controverted article, in the sense in which alone 
 it is binding on his faith. Supposing him therefore to 
 know the meaning of original sin, and to have decided 
 for himself on the fact of its actual existence, as the 
 antecedent ground and occasion of Christianity, we may 
 now proceed to Christianity itself, as the edifice raised 
 on this ground, that is, to the great constituent article 
 of the faith in Christ, as the remedy of the disease — the 
 doctrine of Redemption. 
 
 But before I proceed to this great doctrine, let me 
 briefly remind the young and friendly pupil, to whom I 
 would still be supposed to address myself, that in the 
 following Aphorisms the word science is used in its 
 strict and narrowest sense. By a science I here mean 
 any chain of truths which are either absolutely certain, 
 or necessarily true for the human mind, from the laws 
 
 * For a specimen of these Rabbinical dotages, I refer not to the writ- 
 ings of mystics and enthusiasts, but to the shrewd and witty Dr. South, 
 one of whose most elaborate sermons stands prominent among the many 
 splendid extravaganzas on this subject. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 225 
 
 and constitution of the mind itself. In neither case is 
 our conviction derived, or capable of receiving any ad- 
 dition, from outward experience, or empirical data — that 
 is, matters of fact given to us through the medium of the 
 the senses — though these data may have been the oc- 
 casion, or may even be an indispensable condition, of 
 our reflecting on the former, and thereby becoming con- 
 scious of the same. On the other hand, a connected 
 series of conclusions grounded on empirical data, in 
 contra-distinction from science, I beg leave (no better 
 term occurring) in this place and for this purpose to 
 denominate a scheme. 
 
 APHORISM XL 
 
 In whatever age and country it is the prevailing mind 
 and character of the nation to regard the present life as 
 subordinate to a life to come, and to mark the present 
 state, the world of their senses, by signs, instruments, 
 and mementos of its connexion with a future state and 
 a spiritual world ; — where the mysteries of faith are 
 brought within the hold of the people at large, not by 
 being explained away in the vain hope of accommoda- 
 ting them to the average of their understanding, but by 
 being made the objects of love by their combination 
 with events and epochs of history, with national tradi- 
 tions, with the monuments and dedications of ancestral 
 faith and zeal, with memorial and symbolical observan- 
 ces, with the realizing influences of social devotion, and, 
 above all, by early and habitual association with acts of 
 the will, — there religion is. There, however obscured 
 by the hay and straw of human will-work, the founda-* 
 tion is safe. In that country and under the predomi- 
 nance of such maxims, the National Church is no mere 
 State-institute. It is the State itself in its intensest fed-* 
 
226 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 eral union ; yet at the same moment the guardian and 
 representative of all personal individuality. For the 
 Church is the shrine of morality : and in morality alone 
 the citizen asserts and reclaims his personal indepen- 
 dence, his integrity. Our outward acts are efficient, 
 and most often possible, only by coalition. As an ef 
 ficient power, the agent is but a fraction of unity ; he 
 becomes an integer only in the recognition and perform- 
 ance of the moral law. Nevertheless it is most true (and 
 a truth which cannot with safety be overlooked) that 
 morality, as morality, has no existence for a people. It 
 is either absorbed and lost in the quicksands of pruden- 
 tial calculus, or it is taken up and transfigured into the 
 duties and mysteries of religion. And no wonder : since 
 morality (including the personal being, the I am, as its 
 subject) is itself a mystery, and the ground and suppo- 
 situm of all other mysteries, relatively to man. 
 
 APHORISM XII. 
 
 .J. 
 
 PALEY NOT A MORALIST. 
 
 Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of self- 
 interest, or on the average consequences of actions, sup- 
 posed to be general, form a branch of political economy, 
 to which let all due honor be given. Their utility is 
 not here questioned. But however estimable within 
 their own sphere such schemes, or any one of them in 
 particular, may be, they do not belong to moral science, 
 to which, both in kind and purpose, they are in all cases 
 foreign, and, when substituted for it, hostile. Ethics, 
 or the science of morality, does indeed in no wise ex- 
 clude the consideration of action ; but it contemplates 
 the same in its originating spiritual source, without ref- 
 erence to space, or time, or sensible existence. What- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 227 
 
 ever springs out of the 'perfect law of freedom, which 
 exists only by its unity with the will of God, its in- 
 herence in the Word of God, and its communion with 
 the Spirit of God — that (according to the principles of 
 moral science) is good — it is light and righteousness 
 and very truth. Whatever seeks to separate itself from 
 the divine principle, and proceeds from a false centre in 
 the agent's particular will, is evil — a work of darkness 
 and contradiction. It is sin and essential falsehood. 
 Not the outward deed, constructive, destructive, or neu- 
 tral, — not the deed as a possible object of the senses, — 
 is the object of ethical science. For this is no compost, 
 collectorium or inventory of single duties ; nor does it 
 seek in the multitudinous sea, in the predetermined wave, 
 and tides and currents of nature, that freedom which is 
 exclusively an attribute of spirit. Like all other pure 
 sciences, whatever it enunciates, and whatever it con- 
 cludes, it enunciates and concludes absolutely. Strict- 
 ness is its essential character : and its first proposition 
 is, Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in 
 one point, he is guilty of all. For as the will or spirit, 
 the source and substance of moral good, is one and all 
 in every part ; so must it be the totality, the whole 
 articulated series of single acts, taken as unity, that 
 can alone, in the severity of science, be recognised as 
 the proper counterpart and adequate representative of a 
 good will. Is it in this or that limb, or not rather in the 
 whole body, the entire organismus, that the law of life 
 reflects itself ? Much less, then, can the law of the 
 Spirit work in fragments. 
 
228 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XIII. 
 
 Wherever there exists a permanent* learned class, 
 having authority, and possessing the respect and confi- 
 dence of the country ; and wherever the science of ethics 
 is acknowledged and taught in this class, as a regular 
 part of a learned education, to its future members gene- 
 rally, but as the special study and indispensable ground 
 work of such as are intended for holy orders ; there the 
 article of original sin will be an axiom of faith in all 
 classes. Among the learned an undisputed truth, and 
 with the people a fact, which no man imagines it possi- 
 ble to deny : and the doctrine, thus inwoven in the faith 
 of all, and coeval with the consciousness of each, will, 
 for each and all, possess a reality, subjective indeed, yet 
 virtually equivalent to that which we intuitively give to 
 the objects of our senses. 
 
 With the learned this will be the case, because the 
 article is the first — I had almost said spontaneous — pro- 
 duct of the application of moral science to history, of 
 which it is the interpreter. A mystery in its own right, 
 and by the necessity and essential character of its sub- 
 ject — (for the will, like the life, in every act and product 
 
 * A learned order must be supposed to consist of three classes. First, 
 those who are employed in adding to the existing sum of power and 
 knowledge. Second, and most numerous class, those whose office it is 
 to diffuse through the community at large the practical results of science, 
 and that kind and degree of knowledge and cultivation, which for all is 
 requisite or clearly useful. Third, the formers and instructors of the 
 second — in schools, halls, and universities, or through the medium of the 
 press. The second class includes not only the Parochial Clergy, and 
 all others duly ordained to the ministerial office ; but likewise all the 
 members of the legal and medical professions, who have received a 
 learned education under accredited and responsible teachers. (Sec the 
 Church and State, p. 45, cj-c, 3d edit. Ed.) 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 229 
 
 pre-supposes to itself a past always present, a present 
 that evermore resolves itself into a past) — the doctrine 
 of original sin gives to all the other mysteries of religion 
 a common basis, a connection of dependency, an intelli- 
 gibility of relation, and a total harmony, which supersede 
 extrinsic proof. There is here that same proof from 
 unity of purpose, that same evidence of symmetry, which 
 in the contemplation of a human skeleton, flashed con- 
 viction on the mind of Galen, and kindled meditation 
 into a hymn of praise. 
 
 Meanwhile the people, not goaded into doubt by the 
 lessons and examples of their teachers and superiors ; 
 not drawn away from the fixed stars of heaven — the form 
 and magnitude of which are the same for the naked eye 
 of the shepherd as for the telescope of the sage — from 
 the immediate truths, I mean, of reason and conscience, 
 to an exercise to which they have not been trained, — of 
 a faculty which has been imperfectly developed, — on a 
 subject not within the sphere of the faculty, nor in any 
 way amenable to its judgment ; — the people will need 
 no arguments to receive a doctrine confirmed by their 
 own experience from within and from without, and inti- 
 mately blended with the most venerable traditions com- 
 mon to all races, and the traces of which linger in the 
 latest twilight of civilization. 
 
 Among the revulsions consequent on the brute bewil- 
 derments of a Godless revolution, a great and active zeal 
 for the interests of religion may be one. I dare not trust 
 it, till I have seen what it is that gives religion this in- 
 terest, till I am satisfied that it is not the interests of this 
 world; necessary and laudable interests, perhaps, but 
 which may, I dare believe, be secured as effectually and 
 more suitably by the prudence of this world, and by this 
 world's powers and motives. At all events, I find no- 
 
230 AIDS TO REFLECTION 
 
 thing in the fashion of the day to deter me from adding, 
 that the reverse of the preceding — that where religion 
 is valued and patronised as a supplement of law, or an 
 aid extraordinary of police ; where moral science is ex- 
 ploded as the mystic jargon of dark ages ; where a lax 
 system of consequences, by which every iniquity on 
 earth may be (and how many have been !) denounced 
 and defended with equal plausibility, is publicly and au- 
 thoritatively taught as moral philosophy ; where the 
 mysteries of religion, and truths supersensual, are either 
 cut and squared for the comprehension of the under- 
 standing, the faculty of judging according to sense, or 
 desperately torn asunder from the reason, nay, fanati- 
 cally opposed to it ; lastly, where private* interpretation 
 
 * The Author of the Statesman's Manual must be the most inconsist- 
 ent of men, if he can be justly suspected of a leaning to the Romish 
 Church ; or if it be necessary for him to repeat his fervent Amen to the 
 wish and prayer of our late good old king, that " every adult in the 
 British Empire should be able to read his Bible, and have a Bible to 
 read !" Nevertheless, it may not be superfluous to declare, that in thus 
 protesting against the license of private interpretation, I do not mean to 
 condemn the exercise or deny the right of individual judgment. I con- 
 demn only the pretended right of every individual, competent and incom- 
 petent, to interpret Scripture in a sense of his own, in opposition to the 
 judgment of the Church, without knowledge of the originals or of the 
 languages, the history, customs, opinions, and controversies of the age 
 and country in which they were written ; and where the interpreter 
 judges in ignorance or in contempt of uninterrupted tradition, the unani- 
 mous consent of Fathers and Councils, and the universal faith of the 
 Church in all ages. It is not the attempt to form a judgment, which is 
 here called in question ; but the grounds, or rather the no-grounds on 
 which the judgment is formed and relied on. 
 
 My fixed principle is : that a Christianity without a Church exercising 
 spiritual authority is vanity and dissolution. And my belief is, that when 
 Popery is rushing in on us like an inundation, the nation will find it to be 
 so. I say Popery ; for this too I hold for a delusion, that Romanism or 
 Roman Catholicism is separable from Popery. Almost as readily could 
 I suppose a circle without a centre. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 231 
 
 is every thing, and the Church nothing — there the mys- 
 tery of original sin will be either rejected, or evaded, or 
 perverted into the monstrous fiction of hereditary sin, — 
 guilt inherited; in the mystery of Redemption metaphors 
 will be obtruded for the reality ; and in the mysterious 
 appurtenants and symbols of Redemption (regeneration, 
 grace, the Eucharist, and spiritual communion) the 
 realities will be evaporated into metaphors. 
 
 APHORISM XIV. 
 
 LEIGHTOW. 
 
 As in great maps or pictures you will, see the border 
 decorated with meadows, fountains, flowers, and the like, 
 represented in it, but in the middle you have the main 
 design: so amongst the works of God is it with the 
 fore-ordained redemption of man. All his other works 
 in the world, all the beauty of the creatures, the succes- 
 sion of ages, and the things that come to pass in them, 
 are but as the border to this as the mainpiece. But as 
 a foolish unskilful beholder, not discerning the excellency 
 Gf the principal piece in such"" maps or pictures, gazes 
 only on the fair border, and goes no farther — thus do the 
 greatest part of us as to this great work of God, the 
 redemption of our personal being, and the re-union of 
 the human with the divine, by and through the divine 
 humanity of the Incarnate Word. 
 
 APHORISM XV. 
 
 LUTHEK. 
 
 It is a hard matter, yea, an impossible thing for thy 
 human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's as- 
 sistance), at such a time when Moses setteth on thee 
 with the Law (see Aphorism XII), — when the holy 
 Law written in thy heart accuseth and condemneth thee, 
 forcing thee to a comparison of thy heart therewith, and 
 
232 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 convicting thee of the incompatibleness of thy will and 
 nature with Heaven and holiness and an immediate God 
 — that then thou shouldst be able to be of such a mind 
 as if no law nor sin had ever been ! I say it is in a man- 
 ner impossible that a human creature, when he feeleth 
 himself assaulted with trials and temptations, and the 
 conscience hath to do with God, and the tempted man 
 knoweth that the root of temptation is within him, should 
 obtain such mastery over his thoughts as then to think 
 no otherwise than that from everlasting nothing hath 
 been but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and 
 deliverance ! 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 In irrational agents, namely, the brute animals, the 
 will is hidden or absorbed in the law. The law is their 
 nature. In the original purity of a rational agent the 
 uncorrupted will is identical with the law. Nay, inas- 
 much as a will perfectly identical with the law is one 
 with the divine will, we may say, that in the unfallen 
 rational agent the will constitutes the law.* But it is 
 evident that the holy and spiritual power and light, which 
 by a prolepsis or anticipation we have named law, is a 
 grace, an inward perfection, and without the command- 
 
 * In fewer words thus : For the brute animals, their nature is their 
 law ;— for what other third law can be imagined, in addition to the law 
 of nature, and the law of reason 1 Therefore : in irrational agents the 
 law constitutes the will. In moral and rational agents the will consti- 
 tutes, or ought to constitute, the law: I speak of moral agents, unfallen. 
 For the personal will comprehends the idea, as a reason, and it wives 
 causative force to the idea, as a practical reason. But idea with the 
 power of realizing the same is a law ; or say : — the spirit comprehends 
 the moral idea, by virtue of its rationality, and it gives to the idea causa- 
 tive power, as a will. In every sense, therefore, it constitutes the law, 
 supplying both the elements of which it consists, namely, the idea, and 
 t;he realizing power. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 233 
 
 ing, binding and menacing character which belongs to a 
 law, acting as a master or sovereign, distinct from, and 
 existing, as it were, externally for, the agent who is 
 bound to obey it. Now this is St. Paul's sense of the 
 word, and on this he grounds his whole reasoning. And 
 hence too arises the obscurity and apparent paradoxy of 
 several texts. That the law is a law for you ; that it 
 acts on the will not in it ; that it exercises an agency 
 from without, by fear and coercion ; proves the corrup- 
 tion of your will, and presupposes it. Sin in this sense 
 came by the law : for it has its essence, as sin, in that 
 counter-position of the holy principle to the will, which 
 occasions this principle to be a law. Exactly (as in all 
 other points) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the 
 assertion of John, when speaking of the re-adoption of 
 the redeemed to be sons of God, and the consequent 
 resumption (I had almost said re-absorption) of the law 
 into the will (vaamv rixsiov rav rvn IxeufopUs, James i, 25. 
 He says, For the law ivas given by Moses, but grace 
 and truth came by Jesus Christ. That by the law St. 
 Paul meant only the ceremonial law, is a notion that 
 could originate only in utter inattention to the whole 
 strain and bent of the Apostle's argument. 
 
 APHORISM XVI, 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 Christ's death was both voluntary and violent. There 
 was external violence : and that was the accompaniment, 
 or at most the occasion, of his death. But. there was 
 internal willingness, the spiritual will, the will of the 
 Spirit, and this was the proper cause. By this Spirit 
 he was restored from death : neither indeed was it pos^ 
 siblefor him to be holden of it. Being put to death in- 
 ihe flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, says St. Peter, 
 
£34 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 But he is likewise declared elsewhere to have died by 
 that same Spirit, which here, in opposition to the vio- 
 lence, is said to quicken him. Thus Heb. ix, 14. 
 Through the Eternal Spirit he offered himself. And 
 even from Peter's words, and without the epithet eternal, 
 to aid the interpretation, it is evident that the Spirit, 
 here opposed to the flesh by body or animal life, is of a 
 higher nature and power than the individual soul, which 
 cannot of itself return to reinhabit or quicken the body. 
 If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in 
 doctrine, is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, 
 Peter and Paul, with the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, would have laid so great stress on them ? 
 But the true life of Christians is to eye Christ in every 
 step of his life — not only as their rule but as their 
 strength : looking to him as their pattern both in doing 
 and in suffering, and drawing power from him for going 
 through both : being without him able for nothing. 
 Take comfort, then, thou that believest ! It is he that 
 lifts up the soul from the gates of death : and he hath 
 said, / ivill raise thee up at the last day. Thou that 
 believest in him, believe him and take comfort. Yea, 
 when thou art most sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and 
 he far off to thy thinking, then is he nearest to raise and 
 comfort thee : as sometimes it grows darkest immedi- 
 ately before day. 
 
 APHORISM XVII. 
 
 LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 Would any of you be cured of that common disease, 
 the fear of death ? Yet this is not the right name of the 
 disease, as a mere reference to our armies and navies is 
 sufficient to prove : nor can the fear of death, either as 
 loss of life or pain of dying, be justly held a common 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 235 
 
 disease. But would you be cured of the fear and fearful 
 questionings connected with the approach of death ? 
 Look this way, and you shall find more than you seek, 
 Christ, the Word that was from the beginning, and was 
 made flesh and dwelt among men, died. And he, who 
 dying conquered death in his own person, conquered sin, 
 and death, which is the wages of sin, for thee. And of 
 this thou mayest be assured, if only thou believe in him, 
 and love him. I need not add, keep his commandments : 
 since where faith and love are, obedience in its threefold 
 character, as effect, reward, and criterion, follows by that 
 moral necessity which is the highest form of freedom. 
 The grave is thy bed of rest, and no longer the cold bed : 
 for thy Saviour has warmed it, and made it fragrant. 
 
 If then it be health and comfort to the faithful that 
 Christ descended into the grave, with especial confidence 
 may we meditate on his return from thence, quickened 
 by the Spirit : this being to those who are in him the 
 certain pledge, yea, the effectual cause of that blessed 
 resurrection, for which they themselves hope. There 
 is that union betwixt them and their Redeemer, that 
 they shall rise by the communication and virtue of his 
 rising : not simply by his power — for so the wicked 
 likewise to their grief shall be raised : but they by his 
 life as their life. 
 
 COMMENT 
 
 ON THE THREE PRECEDING APHORISMS. 
 
 To the reader, who has consented to submit his mind 
 to my temporary guidance, and who permits me to re- 
 gard him as my pupil or junior fellow-student, I continue 
 to address myself. Should he exist only in my imagi- 
 nation, let the bread float on the waters ! If it be the 
 Bread of Life, it will not have been utterly cast away. 
 
236 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have 
 passed over since the transit from religious morality to 
 spiritual religion. My first attempt was to satisfy you, 
 that there is a spiritual principle in man, and to expose 
 the sophistry of the arguments in support of the con- 
 trary. Our next step was to clear the road of all coun- 
 terfeits, by showing what is not the Spirit, what is not 
 spiritual religion. And this was followed by an attempt 
 to establish a difference in kind between religious truths 
 and the deductions of speculative science ; yet so as to 
 prove, that the former are not only equally rational with 
 the latter, but that they alone appeal to reason in the 
 fulness and living reality of their power. This and the 
 state of mind requisite for the formation of right convic- 
 tions respecting spiritual truths, afterwards employed 
 our attention. Having then enumerated the Articles of 
 the Christian Faith peculiar to Christianity, I entered 
 on the great object of the present work : namely, the re- 
 moval of all valid objections to these articles on grounds 
 of right reason or conscience. But to render this prac- 
 ticable, it was necessary, first, to present each article in 
 its true Scriptural purity, by exposure of the caricatures 
 of misinterpreters ; and this, again, could not be satis- 
 factorily done till we were agreed respecting the faculty 
 entitled to sit in judgment on such questions. I early 
 foresaw that my best chance (I will not say, of giving 
 an insight into the surpassing worth and transcendant 
 reasonableness of the Christian scheme ; but) of render- 
 ing the very question intelligible, depended on my suc- 
 cess in determining the true nature and limits of the 
 human understanding, and in evincing its diversity from 
 reason. In pursuing this momentous subject, I was 
 tempted in two or three instances into disquisitions, 
 which if not beyond the comprehension, were yet un- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 237 
 
 suited to the taste, of the persons for whom the work 
 was principally intended. These, however, I have 
 separated from the running text, and compressed into 
 notes. The reader will at worst, I hope, pass them by 
 as a leaf or two of waste paper, willingly given by him 
 to those for whom it may not be paper wasted. Never- 
 theless, I cannot conceal that the subject itself supposes, 
 on the part of the reader, a steadiness in self-questioning, 
 a pleasure in referring to his own inward experience for 
 the facts asserted by the author, which can only be ex- 
 pected from a person who has fairly set his heart on 
 arriving at clear and fixed conclusions in matters of faith. 
 But where this interest is felt, nothing more than a 
 common capacity, with the ordinary advantages of edu- 
 cation, is required for the complete comprehension both 
 of the argument and the result. Let but one thoughtful 
 hour be devoted to the pages 161-182. In all that fol- 
 lows, the reader will find no difficulty in understanding 
 the author's meaning, whatever he may have in adopting it. 
 The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, 
 Original Sin and Redemption; that the ground, this the 
 superstructure of our faith. The former I have exhi- 
 bited, first, according to the scheme of the Westminster 
 Divines and the Synod of Dort; then, according to the* 
 
 * To escape the consequences of this scheme, some Arminian divines 
 have asserted that the penalty inflicted on Adam, and continued in his 
 posterity, was simply the loss of immortality — death as the utter extinc- 
 tion of personal being : immortality being regarded by them (and not, I 
 think, without good reason) as a supernatural attribute, and its loss there- 
 fore involved in the forfeiture of supernatural graces. This theory has 
 its golden side : and, as a private opinion, is said to have the counte- 
 nance of more than one dignitary of our Church, whose general ortho- 
 doxy is beyond impeachment. For here the penalty resolves itself into 
 the consequence, and this the natural and naturally inevitable conse- 
 quence of Adam's crime. For Adam, indeed, it was a positive punish- 
 
238 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 scheme of a contemporary Arminian divine ; and lastly, 
 in contrast with both schemes, I have placed what I 
 firmly believe to be the Scriptural sense of this article, 
 and vindicated its entire conformity with reason and 
 
 ment : a punishment of his guilt, the justice of which who could have 
 dared arraign 1 While for the offspring of Adam it was simply a not 
 super-adding to their nature the privilege by which the original man was 
 contradistinguished from the brute creation — a mere negation, of which 
 they had no more right to complain than any other species of animals. 
 God in this view appears only in his attribute of mercy, as averting by 
 supernatural interposition a consequence naturally inevitable. This is 
 the golden side of the theory. But if we approach to it from the opposite 
 direction, it first excites a just scruple, from the countenance it seems to 
 give to the doctrine of Materialism. The supporters of this scheme do 
 not, I presume, contend that Adam's offspring would not have been born 
 men, but have formed a new species of beasts ! And if not, the notion 
 ef a rational and self-conscious soul, perishing utterly with the dissolu- 
 tion of the organized body, seems to require, nay, almost involves, the 
 opinion that the soul is a quality or accident of the body — a mere har- 
 mony resulting from organization. 
 
 But let this pass unquestioned. Whatever else the descendants of 
 Adam might have been without the intercession of Christ, yet (this 
 intercession having been effectually made) they are now endowed with 
 souls that are not extinguished together with the material body. Now 
 unless these divines teach likewise the Romish figment of Purgatory, 
 and to an extent in which the Church of Rome herself would denounce 
 the doctrine as an impious heresy : unless they hold, that a punishment 
 temporary and remedial is the worst evil that the impenitent have to ap- 
 prehend in a future state ; and that the spiritual death declared and fore- 
 told by Christ, the death eternal where the worm never dies, is neither 
 death nor eternal, but a certain quantum of suffering in a state of faith, 
 hope, and progressive amendment— unless they go these lengths (and 
 the divines here intended are orthodox Churchmen, men who would not 
 knowingly advance even a step on the road towards them)— then I fear 
 that any advantage their theory might possess over the Calvinistic scheme 
 in the article of Original Sin, would be dearly purchased by increased 
 difficulties, and an ultra-Calvinistic narrowness in the article of Redemp- 
 tion. I at least find it impossible, with my present human feelings, not 
 to imagine otherwise than that even in heaven it would be a fearful thing 
 to know, that in order to my elevation to a lot infinitely more desirable 
 than by nature it would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 239 
 
 experience. I now proceed to the other momentous 
 article — from the necessitating occasion of the Chris- 
 tian dispensation to Christianity itself. For Christianity 
 and Redemption are equivalent terms. And here my 
 comment will be comprised in a few sentences : for I 
 confine my views to the one object of clearing this 
 awful mystery from those too current misrepresenta- 
 tions of its nature and import, that have laid it open to 
 scruples and objections, not to such as shoot forth from 
 an unbelieving heart- — (against these a sick bed will be 
 a more effectual antidote than all the argument in the 
 world) — but to such scruples as have their birth-place 
 in the reason and moral sense. Not that it is a mys- 
 tery — not that it passeth all understanding ; — if the 
 doctrine be more than a hyperbolical phrase, it must do 
 so ; — but that it is at variance with the law revealed in 
 the conscience, that it contradicts our moral instincts 
 and intuitions — this is the difficulty, which alone is 
 worthy of an answer. And what better way is there of 
 
 been rendered infinitely more calamitous ; and that my felicity had been 
 purchased by the everlasting misery of the majority of my fellow-men, 
 who, if no redemption had been provided, after inheriting the pains and 
 pleasures of earthly existence during the numbered hours, and the few 
 and evil— evil yet few — days of the years of their mortal life, would 
 have fallen asleep to wake no more, — would have sunk into the dream- 
 less sleep of the grave, and have been as the murmur and the plaint, and 
 the exulting swell and the sharp scream, which the unequal gust of yes- 
 terday snatched from the strings of a wind-harp. 
 
 In another place I have ventured to question the spirit and tendency 
 of Taylor's Work on Repentance.* But I ought to have added, that to 
 discover and keep the true medium in expounding and applying the 
 efficacy of Christ's Cross and Passion is beyond comparison the most 
 difficult and delicate point of practical divinity— and that which especially 
 needs a guidance from above. 
 
 * See also Literary Remains, vol. iii, pp. 295-325. Ed. 
 
240 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 correcting the misconceptions than by laying open the 
 source and occasion of them ? What surer way of re- 
 moving the scruples and prejudices, to which these 
 misconceptions have given rise, than by propounding 
 the mystery itself — namely the redemptive act, as the 
 transcendant cause of salvation — in the express and 
 definite words in which it was enunciated by the Re- 
 deemer himself? 
 
 But here, in addition to the three Aphorisms pre- 
 ceding, I interpose a view of redemption as appropri- 
 ated by faith, coincident with Leighton's, though for 
 the greater part expressed in my own words. This I 
 propose as the right view. Then follow a few sen- 
 tences transcribed from Field (an excellent divine of the 
 reign of James I, of whose work on the Church,* it 
 would be difficult to speak too highly), containing the 
 questions to be solved, and which is numbered as an 
 Aphorism, rather to preserve the uniformity of appear- 
 ance, than as being strictly such. Then follows the 
 comment: as part and commencement of which the 
 reader will consider the two paragraphs of pp. 153-154, 
 written for this purpose, and in the foresight of the pre- 
 sent inquiry : and I entreat him therefore to begin the 
 comment by re-perusing these 
 
 APHORISM XVIII. 
 
 Stedfast by faith. This is absolutely necessary for 
 resistance to the evil principle. There is no standing 
 out without some firm ground to stand on : and this 
 faith alone supplies. By faith in the love of Christ the 
 power of God becomes ours. When the soul is be- 
 
 * See Literary Remains, vol. iii, pp. 57 — 92. Ed. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 241 
 
 leaguered by enemies, weakness on the walls, treachery 
 at the gates, and corruption in the citadel, then by faith 
 she says — Lamb of God slain from the foundation of 
 the world ! Thou art my strength ! I look to thee for 
 deliverance ! And thus she overcomes. The pollution 
 {miasma) of sin is precipitated by his blood, the power 
 of sin is conquered by his Spirit. The Apostle says 
 not — stedfast by your own resolutions and purposes ; 
 but — stedfast by faith. Nor yet stedfast in your will, 
 but stedfast in the faith. We are not to be looking to, 
 or brooding over ourselves, either for accusation or for 
 confidence, or (by a deep yet too frequent self-delusion) 
 to obtain the latter by making a merit to ourselves of 
 the former. But we are to look to Christ and him cru- 
 cified. The law that is very nigh to thee, even in thy 
 heart : the law that condemneth and hath no promise ; 
 that stoppeth the guilty past in its swift flight, and maketh 
 it disown its name ; the law will accuse thee enough. 
 Linger not in the justice-court listening to thy indict- 
 ment. Loiter not in waiting to hear the sentence. No, 
 anticipate the verdict. Appeal to Cassar. Haste to the 
 king for a pardon. Struggle thitherward, though in fet- 
 ters; and cry aloud, and collect the whole remaining 
 strength of thy will in the outcry — J believe ; Lord help 
 my unbelief ! Disclaim all right of property in thy fet- 
 ters. Say that they belong to the old man, and that 
 thou dost but carry them to the grave, to be buried with 
 their owner! Fix thy thought on what Christ did, what 
 Christ suffered, what Christ is — as if thou wouldst fill 
 the hollowness of thy soul with Christ. If he emptied 
 himself of glory to become sin for thy salvation, must 
 not thou be emptied of thy sinful self to become right- 
 eousness in • and through his agony and the effective 
 21 
 
242 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 merits of his cross?* By what other means, in what 
 other form, is it possible for thee to stand in the pre- 
 sence of the Holy One ? With what mind wouldst thou 
 come before God, if not with the mind of Him, in whom 
 
 * God manifested in the flesh \s eternity in the form of time. But 
 eternity in relation to time is as the absolute to the conditional, or the 
 real to the apparent, and redemption must partake of both ; — always per- 
 fected, for it is a Fiat of the Eternal ;— continuous, for it is a process iri 
 relation to man ; the former the alone objectively, and therefore univer- 
 sally, true. That redemption is an opus perfectum, a finished work, the 
 claim to which is conferred in Baptism : that a Christian cannot speak 
 or think as if his redemption by the blood, and his justification by the 
 righteousness of Christ alone, were future or contingent events, but must 
 both say and think I have been redeemed, I am justified ; lastly, that for as 
 many as are received into his Church by Baptism, Christ has condemned 1 
 sin in the flesh, has made it dead in law, that is, no- longer imputable as 
 guilt, has destroyed the objective reality of sin : — these are truths which 
 all the Reformed Churches, Swedish, Danish, Evangelical, (or Lu- 
 theran,) the Reformed, (the Calvinistic in mid- Germany, France, and 
 Geneva, so called,) lastly, the Church of England, and the Church of 
 Scotland— nay, the best and most learned of divines of the Roman Ca- 
 tholic Church have united in upholding as most certain and- necessary 
 articles of faith, and the effectual preaching of which Luther declares to 
 be the appropriate criterion, stantis vel cadentis Ecclesia. The Church 
 is standing or falling, according as this doctrine is supported, or over- 
 looked, or countervened. Nor has the contrary doctrine, according to 
 which the baptized are each individually, to be called, converted, and 
 chosen, with all the corollaries from this assumption, the watching for 
 signs and sensible assurances, the frames, and the states, and the feel- 
 ings, and the sudden conversions, the contagious fever-boils of the (most 
 unfitly, so called) Evangelicals, and Arminian Methodists of the day, 
 been in any age taught or countenanced by any known and accredited 
 Christian Church, or by any body and succession of learned divines. On 
 the other hand, it has rarely happened that the Church has not been 
 troubled by Pharisaic and fanatical individuals, who have sought, by 
 working on the fears and feelings of the weak and unsteady, that celeb- 
 rity which they could not obtain by learning and orthodoxy ; and alas ! 
 so subtle is the poison, and so malignant in its operation, that it is almost 
 hopeless to attempt the cure of any person, once infected, more particu- 
 larly when, as most often happens, the patient is a woman. Nor does 
 Luther, in his numerous and admirable discourses on this point, conceal 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 243 
 
 alone God loveth the world? With good advice, per- 
 haps, and a little assistance, thou wouldst rather cleanse 
 and patch up a mind of thy own, and offer it as thy 
 admission-right, thy qualification, to Him who charged 
 his angels with folly ! Oh! take counsel of thy reason. 
 It will show thee how impossible it is that even a world 
 should merit the love of eternal wisdom and all-sufficing 
 beatitude, otherwise than as it is contained in that all- 
 perfect Idea, in which the supreme Spirit contemplateth 
 itself and the plenitude of its infinity — the Only-Begotten 
 before all ages, the beloved Son, in toJiom the Father is 
 indeed well pleased! 
 
 or palliate the difficulties which the carnal mind, that works under many 
 and different disguises, throws in the way to prevent the laying firm hold 
 of the truth. One most mischievous and very popular misbelief must 
 be cleared away in the first instance — the presumption, I mean, that 
 whatever is not quite simple, and what any plain body can understand 
 at the first hearing, cannot be of necessary belief, or among the funda- 
 mental articles or essentials of Christian faith. A docile, childlike mind, 
 a deference to the authority of the Churches, a presumption of the truth 
 of doctrines that have been received and taught as true by the whole 
 Church in all times ; reliance on the positive declarations of the Apostle 
 — in short, all the convictions of the truth of a doctrine that are previous 
 to a perfect insight into its truth, because these convictions, with the 
 affections and dispositions accompanying them, are the very means and 
 conditions of attaining to that insight — and study of, and quiet medita- 
 tion on, them with a gradual growth of spiritual knowledge and earnest 
 prayer for its increase ; all these, to each and all of which the young 
 Christian is so repeatedly and fervently exhorted by St. Paul, are to be 
 superseded, because, forsooth, truths needful for all men, must be quite 
 simple and easy, and adapted to the capacity of all, even of the plainest 
 and dullest understanding! What cannot be poured all at once on a 
 man, can only be supererogatory drops from the emptied shower-bath of 
 religious instruction ! But surely, the more rational inference would be, 
 that the faith, which is to save the whole man, must have its roots and 
 justifying grounds in the very depths of our being. And he who can 
 read the writings of the Apostles, John and Paul, without finding in 
 almost every page a confirmation of this, must have looked at them, as 
 at the sun in an eclipse, through blackened glasses. 
 
244 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 And as the mind, so the body with which it is to be 
 clothed ; as the indweller, so the house in which it is to 
 be the abiding-place.* There is but one wedding-gar- 
 ment, in which we can sit down at the marriage-feast 
 
 * St. Paul blends both forms of expression, and asserts the same doc- 
 trine, when speaking of the celestial body provided for the new man in 
 the spiritual flesh and blood, (that is, the informing power and vivific 
 life of the incarnate Word : for the blood is the life, and the flesh the 
 powear)— when speaking, I say, of this celestial body, as a house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens, yet brought down to us, made appro- 
 priable by faith, and ours— he adds, for in this earthly house (that is, 
 this mortal life, as the inward principle or energy of our tabernacle, or 
 outward and sensible body) we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed 
 upon with our house which is from heaven : not that we would be un- 
 clothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 
 2 Cor. v, 1-4. 
 
 The four last words of the first verse (eternal in the heavens) com- 
 pared with the conclusion of v, 2, (which is from heaven) present a 
 coincidence with John iii, 13, "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, 
 but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in 
 heaven." [Would not the coincidence be more apparent, if the words 
 of John had been rendered word for word, even to a disregard of the 
 English idiom, and with what would be servile and superstitious fidelity 
 in the translation of a common classic 1 I can see no reason why the 
 oiSsls, so frequent in St. John, should not be rendered literally, no one ; 
 and there may be a reason why it should. I have some doubt, likewise 
 respecting the omission of the definite articles rdv, tov, tm — and a greater 
 as to the b &, both in this place and in John i, 18, being adequately 
 rendered by our which is. What sense some of the Greek Fathers at- 
 tached to, or inferred from, St. Paul's in the heavens, the theological 
 student (and to theologians is this note principally addressed) may find 
 in Waterland's Letters to a Country Clergyman — a divine, whose judg- 
 ment and strong sound sense are as unquestionable as his learning and 
 orthodoxy. A clergyman, in full orders, who has never read the works 
 of Bull and Waterland, has a duty yet to perform.] 
 
 Let it not be objected, that, forgetful of my own professed aversion to 
 allegorical interpretations, I have, in this note, fallen into the fond hu- 
 mour of the mystic divines, and allegorizers of Holy Writ. There is, 
 believe me ! a wide difference between symbolical and allegorical. If I 
 say that the flesh and blood (corpus noumenon) of the Incarnate Word are 
 power and life, I say likewise that this mysterious power and life are 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 245 
 
 of Heaven : and that is the* bridegroom's own gift, when 
 he gave himself for us, that we might live in him and 
 he in us. There is but one robe of righteousness, even 
 the spiritual body, formed by the assimilative power of 
 faith, for whoever eateth the flesh of the Son of Man, 
 and drinketh his blood. Did Christ come from Heaven, 
 did the Son of God leave the glory which he had with 
 his Father before the world began, only to shew us a 
 way to life, to teach truths, to tell us of a resurrection ? 
 Or saith he not, J am the way — I am the truth — / am 
 the resurrection and the life ? 
 
 verily and actually the flesh and blood of Christ. They are the alle* 
 gorizers who turn the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, 
 tfne hard saying, — who can hear it? — after which time many of Christ's 
 disciples, who had been eye-witnesses of his mighty miracles, who had 
 heard the sublime morality of his Sermon on the Mount, had glorified 
 God for the wisdom which they had heard, and had been prepared to 
 acknowledge, This is indeed ihe Christ,— went back and walked no 
 more with him ! — the hard sayings, which even the Twelve were not yet 
 competent to understand farther than that they were to be spiritually 
 understood ; and which the chief of the Apostles was content to receive 
 with an implicit and anticipative faith ! — they, I repeat, are the alle- 
 gorizers who moralize these hard sayings, these high words of mystery, 
 into a hyperbolical metaphor per catachresin, which. only means a belief 
 of the doctrine which Paul believed, an obedience to the law, respecting 
 which Paul was blameless, before the voice called him on the road to 
 Damascus ! What every parent, every humane preceptor, would do when 
 a child had misunderstood a metaphor or apologue in a literal sense, we 
 all know. But the meek and merciful Jesus suffered many of his disci- 
 ples to fall off from eternal life, when, to retain them, he had only to say, 
 — O ye simple ones ! why are ye offended 1 My words, indeed, sound 
 strange ; but I mean no more than what you have often and often heard 
 from me before, with delight and entire acquiescence ! — Credat Jud<eus ! 
 Non ego. It is sufficient for me to know that I have used the language 
 of Paul and John, as it was understood and interpreted by Justin Martyr, 
 Tertullian, Irenaeus, and (if he does not err) by the whole Christian 
 Church then existing. 
 
 21* 
 
246 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XIX. 
 
 The Romanists teach that sins committed after Bap- 
 tism (that is, for the immense majority of Christians 
 having Christian parents, all their sins from the cradle 
 to the grave) are not so remitted for Christ's sake, but 
 that we must suffer that extremity of punishment which 
 they deserve : and therefore either we must afflict our- 
 selves in such sort and degree of extremity as may an- 
 swer the demerit of our sins, or be punished by God, 
 here or in the world to come, in such degree and sort 
 that his justice may be satisfied. [As the encysted 
 venom, or poison-bag, beneath the adder's fang, so does 
 this doctrine lie beneath the tremendous power of the 
 Romish Hierarchy. The demoralizing influence of 
 this dogma, and that it curdled the very life-blood in 
 the veins of Christendom, it was given to Luther, be- 
 yond all men since Paul, to see, feel, and promulgate. 
 And yet in his large Treatise on Repentance, how near 
 to the spirit of this doctrine — even to the very walls 
 and gates of Babylon — was Jeremy Taylor driven, in 
 recoiling from the fanatical extremes of the opposite 
 error !] But they that are orthodox, teach that it is 
 injustice to require the paying of one debt twice. * * * 
 It is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that our 
 satisfaction is required as a condition, without which 
 Christ's satisfaction is not applicable unto us, than to 
 say, Peter hath paid the debt of John, and he to whom 
 it was due accepteth of the payment on the condition 
 that John pay it himself also. * * * The satisfaction of 
 Christ is communicated and applied unto us without 
 suffering the punishment that sin deserveth, [and essen- 
 tially involveth,] upon the condition of our faith and 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 247 
 
 repentance. [To which I would add ; Without faith 
 there is no power of repentance : without a commencing 
 repentance no power to faith: and that it is in the 
 power of the will either to repent or to have faith in the 
 Gospel sense of the words, is itself a consequence of 
 the redemption of mankind, a free gift of the Redeemer : 
 the guilt of its rejection, the refusing to avail ourselves 
 of the power, being all that we can consider as exclu- 
 sively attributable to our own act.] 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 (containing an application of the principles laid down in 
 pages 153, 154.) 
 
 Forgiveness of sin, the abolition of guilt, through the 
 redemptive power of Christ's love, and of his perfect 
 obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity, 
 is expressed, on account of the resemblance of the con- 
 sequences in both cases, by the payment of a debt for 
 another, which debt the payer had not himself incurred. 
 Now the impropriation of this metaphor — (that is, the 
 taking it literally) — by transferring the sameness from 
 the consequents to the antecedents, or inferring the 
 identity of the causes from a resemblance in the effects — 
 this is the point on which I am at issue : and the view 
 or scheme of redemption grounded on this confusion I 
 believe to be altogether un-Scriptural. 
 
 Indeed, I know not in what other instance I could 
 better exemplify the species of sophistry noticed in p. 
 166, as the Aristotelean |t«T«/3«o-*5 eh «aa«- ye'pos, or clan- 
 destine passing over into a diverse kind. The purpose 
 of a metaphor is to illustrate a something less known 
 by a partial identification of it by some other thing better 
 understood, or at least more familiar. Now the article 
 of Redemption may be considered in a twofold relation — 
 
248 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 in relation to the antecedent, that is, the Redeemer's act, 
 as the efficient cause and condition of redemption; and 
 in relation to the consequent, that is, the effects in and 
 for the redeemed. Now it is the latter relation, in which 
 the subject is treated of, set forth, expanded, and en- 
 forced by St. Paul. The mysterious act, the operative 
 cause, is transcendant. Factum est : and beyond the 
 information contained in the enunciation of the fact, it 
 can be characterised only by the consequences. It is 
 the consequences of the act of Redemption, which the 
 zealous Apostle would bring home to the minds and 
 affections both of Jews and Gentiles. Now the Apos- 
 tle's opponents and gainsayers were principally of the 
 former class. They were Jews: not only Jews uncon- 
 verted, but such as had partially received the Gospel, 
 and who, sheltering their national prejudices under the 
 pretended authority of Christ's original Apostles and 
 the Church in Jerusalem, set themselves up against 
 Paul as followers of Cephas. Add too, that Paul him- 
 self was a Hebrew of the Hebrews; intimately versed in 
 the Jews' religion above many his equals in his own 
 nation, and above measure zealous of the traditions of 
 his fathers. It might, therefore, have been anticipated, 
 that his reasoning would receive its outward forms and 
 language, that it would take its predominant colors, from 
 his own past, and his opponents' present, habits of think- 
 ing; and that his figures, images, analogies, and refer- 
 ences would be taken preferably from objects, opinions, 
 events, and ritual • observances ever uppermost in the 
 imaginations of his own countrymen. And such we 
 find them ; — yet. so judiciously selected, that the promi- 
 nent forms, the figures of most frequent recurrence, are 
 drawn from points of belief and practice, forms, laws, 
 rites and customs, which then prevailed through the 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 249 
 
 whole Roman world, and were common to Jew and 
 Gentile. 
 
 Now it would be difficult if not impossible to select 
 points better suited to this purpose, as being equally 
 familiar to all, and yet having a special interest for the 
 Jewish converts, than those are from which the learned 
 Apostle has drawn the four principal metaphors, by 
 which he illustrates the blessed consequences of Christ's 
 redemption of mankind. These are : 1 . Sin offerings, 
 sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, atonement, *«t- 
 8M«W* 3. Ransom from slavery, redemption, the 
 
 * This word occurs but once in the New Testament, Rom. v, 11, the 
 marginal rendering being reconciliation. The personal noun, /caraXAaKrfo, 
 is still in use with the modern Greeks for a money-changer, or one who 
 takes the debased currency, so general in countries under a despotic or 
 other dishonest government, in exchange for sterling coin or bullion ; 
 the purchaser paying the catallage, that is, the difference. In the elder 
 Greek writers, the verb means to exchange for an opposite, as KaraWdc- 
 o-eto rfiv exdpw roXi cTaoiurats — He exchanged within himself enmity for 
 friendship, (that is, he reconciled himself) with his party; — or, as we 
 say, made it up with them, an idiom which (with whatever loss of 
 dignity) gives the exact force of the word. He made up the difference. 
 The Hebrew word, of very frequent occurrence in the Pentateuch, which 
 we render by the substantive atonement, has its radical or visual image 
 in copher, pitch. Gen. vi, 14. Thou shalt fitch it within and without 
 with pitch ; — hence to unite, to fill up a breach or leak, the word ex- 
 pressing both the act, namely, the bringing together what had been pre- 
 viously separated, and the means, or material, by which the re-union is 
 effected, as in our English verbs, to caulk, to solder, to poy or pay (from 
 poix, pitch,) and the French, suiver. Thence, metaphorically, expia- 
 tion, the piacula having the same root, and being grounded on another 
 property or use of gums and resins, the supposed cleansing powers of 
 their fumigation. Numb, viii, 21 : made atonement for the Levites to 
 cleanse them. Lastly (or if we are to believe the Hebrew Lexicons, 
 properly and most frequently) it means ransom. But if by proper, the 
 interpreter means primary and radical, the assertion does not need a 
 confutation : all radicals belonging to one or other of three classes. 
 1. Interjections, or sounds expressing sensations or passions. 2. Imita- 
 tions of sounds, as splash, roar, whiz, &c. 3. And principally, visual 
 
250 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 buying back again, or being bought back. 4. Satis- 
 faction of a creditor's claims by a payment of the debt. 
 To one or other of these four heads all the numerous 
 forms and exponents of Christ's mediation in St. Paul's 
 writings may be referred. And the very number and 
 variety of the words or periphrases used by him to 
 express one and the same thing, furnish the strongest 
 presumptive proof that all alike were used metaphori- 
 cally. [In the following notation, let the small letters 
 represent the effects or consequences, and the capitals 
 the efficient causes or antecedents. Whether by causes 
 we mean acts or agents, is indifferent. Now let X 
 signify a transcendant, that is, a cause beyond our com- 
 prehension, and not within the sphere of sensible expe- 
 rience.; and on the other hand, let A, B, C, and D repre- 
 sent each some one known and familiar cause, in refer- 
 ence to some single and characteristic effect: namely, 
 A in reference to k, B to 1, C to m, and D to n. Then 
 I say X+k 1 m n is in different places expressed by 
 A+k; B+l; C + m; D + n. And these I should call 
 metaphorical exponents of X.] 
 
 Now John, the beloved disciple, who leaned on the 
 Lord's bosom, the Evangelist octroi 7nievpx } that is, ac- 
 cording to the spirit, the inner and substantial truth of 
 the Christian Creed — John, recording the Redeemer's 
 own words, enunciates the fact itself, to the full extent 
 in which it is enuneiable for the human mind, simply 
 and without any metaphor, by identifying it in kind with 
 
 images, objects of sight. But as to frequency, in all the numerous 
 (fifty, I believe,) instances of the word in the Old Testament, I have 
 not found in which it can, or at least need, be rendered by ransom : 
 though beyond all doubt ransom is used in the Epistle to Timothy, as 
 an equivalent term. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 251 
 
 a fact of hourly occurrence — expressing it, I say, by a 
 familiar fact the same in kind with that intended, though 
 of a far lower dignity ;^-by a fact of every man's expe- 
 rience, known to all, yet not better understood than the 
 fact described by it. In the redeemed it is a regenera- 
 tion, a birth, a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, 
 the germinal principle of a higher and enduring life, of 
 a spiritual life — that is, a life the actuality of which is 
 not dependent on the material body, or limited by the 
 circumstances and processes indispensable to its organ- 
 ization and subsistence. Briefly, it is the differential 
 of immortality, of which the assimilative power of faith 
 and love is the integrant, and the life in Christ the 
 integration. 
 
 But even this would be an imperfect statement, if we 
 omitted the awful truth, that besides that dissolution of 
 our earthly tabernacle which we call death, there is 
 another death, not the mere negation of life, but its posi- 
 tive opposite. And as there is a mystery of life, and 
 an assimilation to the principle of life, even to him who 
 is the Life ; so is there a mystery of death, and an assi- 
 milation to the principle of evil ; a fructifying of the 
 corrupt seed,. of which death is the germination. Thus 
 the regeneration to spiritual life is at the same time a 
 redemption from the spiritual death. 
 
 Respecting the redemptive act itself, and the divine 
 agent, we know from revelation that he tvas made a 
 quickening (£,&>o7toio1jv, life-making) Spirit : and that in 
 order to this it was necessary that God should be mani- 
 fested in the flesh; that the Eternal Word, through 
 whom and by whom the world (xio-^o?, the order, beauty, 
 and sustaining law of visible natures) was and is, should 
 be made flesh, assume our humanity personally, fulfil 
 all righteousness, and so suffer and so die for us, as in 
 
252 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 dying to conquer death for as many as should receive 
 him. More than this, the mode, the possibility, we are 
 not competent to know. It is, as hath been already 
 observed concerning the primal act of apostasy, a mys- 
 tery by the necessity of the subject — a mystery, which 
 at all events it will be time enough for us to seek and 
 expect to understand, when we understand the mystery 
 of our natural life, and its conjunction with mind and 
 will and personal identity. Even the truths that are 
 given to us to know, we can know only through faith 
 in the spirit. They are spiritual things which must be 
 spiritually discerned. Such, however, being the means 
 and the effects of our redemption, well might the fervent 
 Apostle associate it with whatever was eminently dear 
 and precious to erring and afflicted mortals, and (where 
 no expression could be commensurate, no single title be 
 other than imperfect) seek from similitude of effect to 
 describe the superlative boon, by successively transfer- 
 ring to it, as by a superior claim, the name of each 
 several act and ordinance, habitually connected in the 
 minds of all his hearers with feelings of joy, confidence, 
 and gratitude. 
 
 Do you rejoice when the atonement made by the priest 
 has removed the civil stain from your name, restored 
 you to your privileges as a son of Abraham, and replaced 
 you in the respect of your brethren ? — Here is an atone- 
 ment which takes away a deeper and worse stain, an 
 eating canker-spot in the very heart of your personal 
 being. This, to as many as receive it, gives the privi- 
 lege to become sons of God (John i, 12); this will admit 
 you to the society of angels, and insure to you the rights 
 of brotherhood with spirits made perfect. (Heb. xii, 22.) 
 Here is a sacrifice, a sin-offering for the whole world : 
 and a High Priest, who is indeed a Mediator; who, not 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 253 
 
 in type or shadow, but in very truth, and in his own 
 right, stands in the place of Man to God, and of God to 
 Man ; and who receives as a Judge what he offered as 
 an Advocate. 
 
 Would you be grateful to one who had ransomed you 
 from slavery under a bitter foe, or who brought you 
 out of captivity? Here is redemption from a far direr 
 slavery, the slavery of sin unto death; and he who gave 
 himself for the ransom, has taken captivity captive. 
 
 Had you by your own fault alienated yourself from 
 your best, your only sure friend ; — had you, like a pro- 
 digal, cast yourself out of your Father's house; — would 
 you not love the good Samaritan, who should reconcile 
 you to your friend? Would you not prize above all 
 price the intercession, which had brought you back 
 from husks, and the tending of swine, and restored you 
 to your father's arms, and. seated you at your father's 
 table? 
 
 Had you involved yourself in a heavy debt for certain 
 gewgaws, for high-seasoned meats, and intoxicating 
 drinks, and glistening apparel, and in default of pay- 
 ment had made yourself over as a bondsman to a hard 
 creditor, who, it was foreknown, would enforce the bond 
 of judgment to the last tittle ; — with what emotions 
 would you not receive the glad tidings that a stranger, 
 or a friend whom in the days of your wantonness you 
 had neglected and reviled, had paid the debt for you, 
 had made satisfaction to your creditor? But you have 
 incurred a debt of death to the evil nature; you have 
 sold yourself over to sin ; and, relatively to you, and to 
 all your means and resources, the seal on the bond is 
 the seal of necessity. Its stamp is the nature of evil. 
 But the stranger has appeared, the forgiving friend has 
 come, even the Son of God from heaven: and to as 
 
 22 
 
254 AIDS TO REFLECTION* 
 
 many as have faith in his name, I Say — the debt is paid 
 for you ; — the satisfaction has been made. 
 
 Now, to simplify the argument, and at the same time 
 to bring the question to the test, we will confine our 
 attention to the figure last mentioned, namely, the satis- 
 faction of a debt. Passing by our modern Alogi, who 
 find nothing but metaphors in either Apostle, let us 
 suppose for a moment, with certain divines, that our 
 Lord's words, recorded by John, and which in all places 
 repeat and assert the same analogy, are to be regarded 
 as metaphorical ; and that it is the varied expressions of 
 St. Paul that are to be literally interpreted: for example, 
 that sin is, or involves, an infinite debt, (in the proper 
 and law-court sense of the word, debt) — a debt owing 
 by us to the vindictive justice of God the Father, which 
 can only be liquidated by the everlasting misery of Adam 
 and all his posterity, Or by a sum of suffering equal to 
 this. Likewise, that God the Father, by his absolute 
 decree, or (as some divines teach) through the necessity 
 of his unchangeable justice, had determined to exact the 
 full sum ; which must, therefore, be paid either by our- 
 selves or by some other in our name and behalf. But 
 besides the debt which all mankind contracted in and 
 through Adam, as a homo publicus, even as a nation is 
 bound by the acts of its head or its plenipotentiary, 
 every man (say these divines) is an insolvent debtor on 
 his own score. In this fearful predicament the Son of 
 God took compassion on mankind, and resolved to pay 
 the debt for us, and to satisfy the divine justice by a 
 perfect equivalent. Accordingly, by a strange yet strict 
 consequence, it has been holden by more than one of 
 these divines, that the agonies suffered by Christ were 
 equal in amount to the sum total of the torments of all 
 mankind here and hereafter, or to the infinite debt, which 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 255 
 
 in an endless succession of instalments we should have 
 been paying to the olivine justice, had it not been paid 
 in full by the Son of God incarnate ! 
 
 It is easy to say — " but I do not hold this, or we 
 do not make this an article of belief ! " The true ques- 
 tion is : "Do you take any part of it; and can you reject 
 the rest without being inconsequent ?" Are debt, satis- 
 faction, payment in full, creditor's rights, and the like, 
 nomina propria, by which the very nature of Redemp- 
 tion and its occasion is expressed ; — or are they, with 
 several others, figures of speech for the purpose of illus- 
 trating the nature and extent of the consequences and 
 effects of the redemptive act, and to excite in the re- 
 ceivers a due sense of the magnitude and manifold ope- 
 ration of the boon, and of the love and gratitude due to 
 the Redeemer ? If still you reply, the former : then, as 
 your whole theory is grounded on a notion of justice, I 
 ask you — Is this justice a moral attribute ? But morality 
 commences with, and begins in, the sacred distinction 
 between thing and person. On this distinction all law, 
 human and divine, is grounded : consequently, the law 
 of justice. If you attach any meaning to the term jus- 
 tice, as applied to God, it must be the same to which 
 you refer when you affirm or deny it of any other per- 
 sonal agent — save only, that in its attribution to God, 
 you speak of it as unmixed and perfect. For if not, 
 what do you mean 1 And why do you call it by the same 
 name ? I may, therefore, with all right and reason, put 
 the case as between man and man. For should it be 
 found irreconcilable with the justice which the light of 
 reason, made law in the conscience, dictates to man, 
 how much more must it be incongruous with the all- 
 perfect justice of God ! Whatever case I should imagine 
 would be felt by the reader as below the dignity of the 
 
256 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 subject, and in some measure jarring with his feelings ; 
 and in other respects the more familiar the case, the bet- 
 ter suited to the present purpose. 
 
 A sum of £1000 is owing from James to Peter, for 
 which James has given a bond. He is insolvent, and 
 the bond is on the point of being put in suit against him, 
 to James's utter ruin. At this moment Matthew steps 
 in, pays Peter the thousand pounds, and discharges the 
 bond. In this case, no man would hesitate to admit, 
 that a complete satisfaction had been made to Peter. 
 Matthew's £1000 is a perfect equivalent for the sum 
 which James was bound to have paid, and which Peter 
 had lent. It is the same thing : and this is altogether 
 a question of things. Now instead James's being in- 
 debted to Peter for a sum of money, which (he having 
 become insolvent) Matthew pays for him, let me put 
 the case, that James had been guilty of the basest and 
 most hardhearted ingratitude to a most worthy and af- 
 fectionate mother, who had not only performed all the 
 duties and tender offices of a mother, but whose whole 
 heart was bound up in this her only child — who had 
 foregone all the pleasures and amusements of life in 
 watching over his sickly childhood, had sacrificed her 
 health and the far greater part of her resources to rescue 
 him from the consequences of his follies and excesses 
 during his youth and early manhood ; and to procure for 
 him the means of his present rank and affluence — all 
 which he had repaid by neglect, desertion, and open 
 profligacy. Here the mother stands in the relation of 
 the creditor: and here too, I will suppose the same 
 generous friend to interfere, and to perform with the 
 greatest tenderness and constancy all those duties of a 
 grateful and affectionate son, which James ought to 
 have performed. Will this satisfy the mother's claims 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 257 
 
 on James, or entitle him to her esteem, approbation, 
 and blessing ? Or what if Matthew, the vicarious son, 
 should at length address her in words to this purpose : 
 " Now, I trust, you are appeased, and will be hencefor- 
 ward reconciled to James. I have satisfied all your 
 claims on him. I have paid his debt in full : and you 
 are too just to require the same debt- to be paid twice 
 over. You will therefore regard him with the same 
 complacency, and receive him into your presence with 
 the same love, as if there had been no difference between 
 him and you. For I have made it up." What other 
 reply could the swelling heart of the mother dictate than 
 this : " O misery ! and is it possible that you are in 
 league with my unnatural child to insult me ? Must not 
 the very necessity of your abandonment of your proper 
 sphere, form an additional evidence of his guilt ? Must 
 not the sense of your goodness teach me more fully to 
 comprehend, more vividly to feel, the evil in him ? Must 
 not the contrast of your merits magnify his demerit in 
 his mother's eye, and at once recall and embitter the 
 conviction of the canker worm in his soul ?" 
 
 If indeed, by the force of Matthew's example, by per- 
 suasion, or by additional and more mysterious influences, 
 or by an inward co-agency, compatible with the existence 
 of a personal will, James should be led to repent ; if 
 through admiration and love of this great goodness grad- 
 ually assimilating his mind to the mind of his benefactor, 
 he should in his own person become a grateful and 
 dutiful child — then doubtless the mother would be 
 wholly satisfied ! But then the case is no longer a 
 question of things, or a matter of debt payable by another. 
 Nevertheless, the effect, — and the reader will remember, . 
 that it is the effects and consequences of Christ's me- 
 diation, on which St. Paul is dilating — the effect to 
 
 22* 
 
258 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 James is similar in both cases, that is, in the case of 
 James, the debtor, and of James, the undutiful son. In 
 both cases, James. is liberated from a grievous burthen: 
 and in both cases, he has to attribute his liberation to 
 the act and free grace of another. The only difference 
 is, that in the former case (namely, the payment of the 
 debt) the beneficial act is, singly and without requiring 
 any re-action or co-agency on the part of James, the 
 efficient cause of his liberation ; while in the latter case 
 (namely, that of Redemption) the beneficial act is the 
 first, the indispensable condition, and then, the co- 
 efficient. 
 
 The professional student of theology will, perhaps, 
 understand the different. positions asserted in the pre- 
 ceding argument more readily if they are presented 
 synoptically, that is, brought at once within his view, in 
 the form of answers to four questions, comprising the 
 constituent parts of the Scriptural doctrine of Redemp- 
 tion. And I trust that my lay readers of both sexes 
 will not allow themselves to be scared from the perusal 
 of the following short catechism, by half a dozen Latin 
 words, or rather words with Latin endings, that translate 
 themselves into English, when I dare assure them, that 
 they will encounter no other obstacle to their full and 
 easy comprehension of the contents. 
 
 Synopsis of the constituent points in the doctrine of 
 Redemption, in four questions, with correspondent 
 answers. 
 
 Questions. 
 
 C 1 . Agens causator ? 
 
 Who (or What) is the J J ^f 5 causativus ? \ 
 3. Effectum causatum ? 
 
 . 4. Consequentia ab effecto ? 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 259 
 
 Answers. 
 
 I. The agent and personal cause of the Redemption 
 of mankind is — the co-eternal Word and only begotten 
 Son of the Living God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing 
 (agonistes it^mitji^sot^ crucified, submitting to death, 
 resurgent, communicant of his Spirit, ascendent, and 
 obtaining for his Church the descent and communion of 
 the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. 
 
 II. The causative act is — a spiritual and transcendant 
 mystery, that passeth all understanding. 
 
 III. The effect caused is — the being born anew : as 
 before in the flesh to the world, so now born in the spirit 
 to Christ. 
 
 IV. The consequences from the effect are — sanctifi- 
 cation from sin, and liberation from the inherent and 
 penal consequences of sin in the world to come, with all 
 the means and processes of sanctification by the Word 
 and the Spirit : these consequents being the same for 
 the sinner relatively to God and his own soul, as the 
 satisfaction of a debt for a debtor relatively to his cred- 
 itor ; as the sacrificial atonement made by the priest for 
 the transgressor of the Mosaic Law ; as the reconcilia- 
 tion to an alienated parent for a son who had estranged 
 himself from his father's house and presence ; and as a 
 redemptive ransom for a slave or captive. 
 
 Now I complain, that this metaphorical naming of 
 the transcendant causative act through the medium of 
 its proper effects from actions and causes of familiar 
 occurrence connected with the former by similarity of 
 result, has been mistaken for an intended designation of 
 the essential character of the causative act itself ; and 
 that thus divines have interpreted de omni what was 
 
260 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 spoken de singulo, and magnified a partial equation into 
 a total identity. 
 
 I will merely hint to my more learned readers, and 
 to the professional students of theology, that the origin 
 of this error is to be sought for in the discussions of the 
 Greek Fathers, and (at a later period) of the Schoolmen, 
 on the obscure and abysmal subject of the divine A-seity, 
 and the distinction between the 6sXtj^.u and the pevXri, 
 that is, the Absolute Will, as the universal ground of all 
 being, and the election and purpose of God in the Per- 
 sonal Idea, as the Father. And this view would have 
 allowed me to express what I believe to be the true im- 
 port and Scriptural idea of Redemption in terms much 
 more nearly resembling those used ordinarily by the 
 Calvinistic divines, and with a conciliative show of coin- 
 cidence. But this motive was outweighed by the re- 
 flection, that I could not rationally have expected to be 
 understood by those, to whom I most wish to be intel- 
 ligible : et si non vis intelligi, cur vis legi ? 
 
 Not to countervene the purpose of a Synopsis, I have 
 detached the confirmative or explanatory remarks from 
 the answers to questions II. and III., and place them 
 below as scholia. A single glance of the eye will enable 
 the reader to re-connect each with the sentence it is 
 supposed to follow. 
 
 SCHOLIUM TO ANSWER II. 
 
 Nevertheless, the fact or actual truth having been as- 
 sured to us by revelation, it is not impossible, by stedfast 
 meditation on the idea and supernatural character of a 
 personal will, for a mind spiritually disciplined to satisfy 
 itself, that the redemptive act supposes (and that our 
 redemption is even negatively conceivable only on the 
 supposition of) an agent who can at once act on the will 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 261 
 
 as an exciting cause, quasi ah extra ; and in the will, as 
 the condition of its potential, and the ground of its actual, 
 being. 
 
 SCHOLIUM TO ANSWER III. 
 
 Where two subjects, that stand to each other in the 
 relation of antithesis or contradistinction, are connected 
 by a middle term common to both, the sense of this 
 middle term is indifferently determinable by either ; the 
 preferability of the one or the other in any given case 
 being decided by the circumstance of our more frequent 
 experience of, or greater familiarity with, the term in 
 this connexion. Thus, if I put hydrogen and oxygen 
 gas, as opposite poles, the term gas is common to both; 
 and it is a matter of indifference by which of the two 
 bodies I ascertain the sense of the term. But if, for the 
 conjoint purposes of connexion and contrast, I oppose 
 transparent crystallized alumen to opaque derb or un- 
 crystallized alumen ; — it may easily happen to be far 
 more convenient for me to shew the sense of the middle 
 term, that is, alumen, by a piece of pipe-clay than by a 
 saphire or ruby ; especially if I should be describing the 
 beauty and preciousness of the latter to a peasant 
 woman, or in a district where a ruby was a rarity which 
 the fewest only had an opportunity of seeing. This is 
 a plain rule of common logic directed in its application 
 by common sense. 
 
 Now let us apply this to the case in hand. The two 
 opposites here are flesh and spirit : this in relation to 
 Christ, that in relation to the world ; and these two 
 opposites are connected by the middle term, birth, which 
 is of course common to both. But for the same reason, 
 as in the instance ast mentioned, the interpretation of 
 the common term is to be ascertained from its known 
 
AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sense, in the more familiar connexion — birth, namely, 
 in relation to our natural life and to the organized body, 
 by which we belong to the present world. Whatever 
 the word signifies in this connexion, the same essentially 
 (in kind though not in dignity and value) must be its 
 signification in the other. How else could it be (what 
 yet in this text it undeniably is,) the punctum indifferens, 
 or nota communis, of the thesis, flesh or the world and 
 the antithesis Spirit or Christ? We might therefore, 
 upon the supposition of a writer having been speaking 
 of river-water in distinction from rain-water, as rationally 
 pretend that in the latter phrase the term, water, was to 
 be understood metaphorically, as that the word, birth, is 
 a metaphor, and means only so and so in the Gospel 
 according to St. John. 
 
 There is, I am aware, a numerous and powerful 
 party in our Church, so numerous and powerful as not 
 seldom to be entitled the Church, who hold and publicly 
 teach, that " Regeneration is only Baptism." Nay, the 
 writer of the article on the lives of Scott and Newton, 
 in our ablest and most respectable review, is but one 
 among many who do not hesitate to brand the contrary 
 opinion as heterodoxy, and schismatical superstition. I 
 trust, that I think as seriously as most men of the evil 
 of schism ; but with every disposition to pay the utmost 
 deference to an acknowledged majority, including, it is 
 said, a very large proportion of the present dignitaries 
 of our Church, I cannot but think it a sufficient reply, 
 that if Regeneration means Baptism, Baptism must 
 mean Regeneration ; and this too, as Christ himself has 
 declared, a regeneration in the spirit. Now I would ask 
 these divines this simple question : Do they believingly 
 suppose a spiritual regenerative power and agency in- 
 hering in or accompanying the sprinkling a few drops 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 263? 
 
 of water on an infant's face 1 They cannot evade the 
 question by saying that Baptism is a type or sign. For 
 this would be to supplant their own assertion, that Re- 
 generation means Baptism, by the contradictory admis- 
 sion, that Regeneration is the signification, of which 
 Baptism is the significant. Unless, indeed, they would 
 incur the absurdity of saying, that Regeneration is a type 
 of Regeneration, and Baptism a type of itself — or that 
 Baptism only means Baptism ! And this indeed is the 
 plain consequence to which they might be driven, should 
 they answer the above question in the negative. 
 
 But if their answer be, " Yes ! we do suppose and 
 believe this efficiency in the Baptismal act" — I have not 
 another word to say. Only, perhaps, I might be per- 
 mitted to express a hope that, for consistency's sake 
 they would speak less slightingly of the insufflation, and 
 extreme unction, used in the Romish Church ; notwith- 
 standing the not easily to be answered arguments of our 
 Christian Mercury, the all-eloquent Jeremy Taylor, 
 respecting the latter, — "which, since it is used when the 
 man is above half dead, when he can exercise no act of 
 understanding, it must needs be nothing. For no rational 
 man can think, that any ceremony can make a spiritual 
 change without a spiritual act of him that is to be 
 changed ; nor thai it can work by way of nature, or by 
 charm, but morally and after the manner of reasonable 
 creatures."* 
 
 It is too obvious to require suggestion, that these 
 words here quoted apply with yet greater force and pro- 
 priety to the point in question ; as the babe is an un- 
 conscious subject, which the dying man need not be 
 supposed to be. My avowed convictions respecting 
 
 * Dedicat. to Holy Dying. Ed. 
 
264 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Regeneration with the spiritual Baptism, as its condition 
 and initiative, (Luke iii, 16; Matt, i, 7; Matt, iii, 11,) 
 and of which the sacramental rite, the Baptism of John, 
 was appointed by Christ to remain as the sign and 
 figure ; and still more, perhaps, my belief respecting the 
 mystery of the Eucharist, (concerning which I hold the 
 same opinions as Bucer,* Peter Martyr, and presumably 
 Cranmer himself — these convictions and this belief will, 
 I doubt not, be deemed by the orthodox de more Grotii, 
 who improve the letter of Arminius with the spirit of 
 Socinus, sufficient data to bring me in guilty of irrational 
 and superstitious mysticism. But I abide by a maxim 
 which I learned at an early period of my theological 
 studies, from Benedict Spinoza. Where the alternative 
 lies between the absurd and the incomprehensible, no 
 wise man can be at a loss which of the two to prefer. 
 To be called irrational, is a trifle : to be so, and in 
 matters of religion, is far otherwise : and whether the 
 irrationality consists in men's believing (that is, in having 
 persuaded themselves that they believe) against reason, 
 or without reason, I have been early instructed to con- 
 sider it as a sad and serious evil, pregnant with mis- 
 chiefs, political and moral. And by none of my numer- 
 ous instructors so impressively as by that great and 
 shining light of our Church in the aera of her intellectual 
 splendor, Bishop Jeremy Taylor : from one of whose 
 works, and that of especial authority for the safety as 
 well as for the importance of the principle, inasmuch as 
 it was written expressly ad populum, I will now, both for 
 its own intrinsic worth, and to relieve the attention, wearied, 
 perhaps, by the length and argumentative character of the 
 preceding discussion, interpose the following Aphorism. 
 
 * Strype — Cranmer, Append. Ed, 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 265 
 
 APHORISM XX. 
 
 TAYLOR. 
 
 Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can 
 oblige us to believe. For though reason is not the posi- 
 tive and affirmative measure of our faith, and our faith 
 ought to be larger than (speculative)* reason, and take 
 something into her heart, that reason can never take into 
 her eye ; yet in all our creed there can be nothing 
 against reason. If reason justly contradicts an article, 
 it is not of the household of faith. In this there is no 
 difficulty, but that in practice we take care that we do 
 not call that reason, which is not so.f For although 
 reason is a right judge,:}: yet it ought not to pass sen- 
 tence in an inquiry of faith, until all the information be 
 brought in ; all that is within, and all that is without, all 
 that is above, and all that is below ; all that concerns it 
 in experience, and all that concerns it in act ; whatso- 
 ever is of pertinent observation, and whatsoever is re- 
 vealed. For else reason may argue very well, and yet 
 conclude falsely. It may conclude well in logic, and 
 yet infer a false proposition in theology .§ But when 
 our judge is fully and truly informed in all that whence 
 she is to make her judgment, we may safely follow her 
 whithersoever she invites us. 
 
 * Which it could not be in respect of spiritual truths and objects 
 super-sensuous, if it were the same with, and merely another name for 
 the faculty judging according to sense— that is, the understanding, or 
 (as Taylor most often calls it in distinction from reason) discourse (dis- 
 cursus seu facultas discursiva vel discursoria) . The reason, so instructed 
 and so actuated as Taylor requires in the sentences immediately follow- 
 ing, is what I have called the spirit. 
 
 t See ante p. 136. Ed. 
 
 t See ante pp. 127-8, 174—5. Ed 
 
 § See ante p. 127. Ed. 
 
 23 
 
266 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XXI. 
 
 TAYLOR. 
 
 He that speaks against his own reason, speaks against 
 his own conscience : and therefore it is certain, no man 
 serves God with a good conscience, who serves him 
 against his reason. 
 
 APHORISM XXII. 
 
 TAYLOR. 
 
 By the eye of reason through the telescope of faith, 
 that is, revelation, we may see what without this tele- 
 scope we could never have known to exist. But as one 
 that shuts the eye hard, and with violence curls the eye- 
 lid, forces a fantastic fire from the crystalline humor, 
 and espies a light that never shines, and sees thousands 
 of little fires that never burn ; so is he that blinds the 
 eye of reason, and pretends to see by an eye of faith. 
 He makes little images of notions, and some atoms dance 
 before him ; but he is not guided by the light, nor in- 
 structed by the proposition, but sees like a man in his 
 sleep. In no case can true reason and a right faith 
 oppose each other. 
 
 NOTE PREFATORY TO 
 APHORISM XXIII. 
 
 Less on my own account, than in the hope of fore- 
 arming my youthful friends, I add one other transcript 
 from Bishop Taylor, as from a writer to whose name no 
 taint or suspicion of Calvinistic or schismatical tenets 
 can attach, and for the purpose of softening the offence 
 which, I cannot but foresee, will be taken at the posi- 
 tions asserted in the first paragraph of Aphorism VII, 
 p. 145, and the documental proofs of the same in pp. 
 148 — 149 : and this by a formidable party composed of 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 267 
 
 men ostensibly of the most dissimilar creeds, regular 
 Church-divines, voted orthodox by a great majority of 
 suffrages, and the so-called free-thinking Christians, and 
 Unitarian divines. It is the former class alone that I 
 wish to conciliate : so far at least as it may be done by 
 removing the aggravation of novelty from the offensive 
 article. And surely the simple re-assertion of one of 
 " the two great things," which Bishop Taylor could assert 
 as a fact, — which, he took for granted, that no Christian 
 would think of controverting, — should at least be con- 
 troverted without bitterness to his successors in the 
 Church. That which was perfectly safe and orthodox 
 in 1657, in the judgment of a devoted Royalist and 
 Episcopalian, ought to be at most but a venial hetero- 
 doxy in 1825. For the rest, I am prepared to hear in 
 answer — what has already been so often and with such 
 theatrical effect dropped as an extinguisher on my argu- 
 ments — the famous concluding period of one of the chap- 
 ters in Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, declared 
 by Dr. Parr to be the finest prose passage in English 
 literature. Be it so. I bow to so great an authority. 
 But if the learned doctor would impose it on me as the 
 truest as well as the finest, or expect me to admire the 
 logic equally with the rhetoric — k<pi<rT<ty.at — I start off. 
 As I have been un-English enough to find in Pope's 
 tomb-epigram on Sir Isaac Newton nothing better than 
 a gross and wrongful falsehood, conveyed in an enormous 
 and irreverent hyperbole ; so with regard to this passage 
 in question, free as it is from all faults of taste, I have 
 yet the hardihood to confess, that in the sense in which 
 the words " discover" and " prove," are here used and 
 intended, I am not convinced of the truth of the princi- 
 ple, (that he alone discovers who proves) and I question 
 the correctness of the particular case, brought as instance 
 
268 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and confirmation. I doubt the validity of the assertion 
 as a general rule ; and I deny it, as applied to matters 
 of faith, to the verities of religion, in the belief of which 
 there must always be somewhat of moral election, " an 
 act of the will in it as well as of the understanding, as 
 much love in it as discursive power. True Christian 
 faith must have in it something of in-evidence, something 
 that must be made up by duty and by obedience." — * 
 But most readily do I admit, and most fervently do I 
 contend, that the miracles worked by Christ, both as 
 miracles and as fulfilments of prophecy, both as signs 
 and as wonders, made plain discovery, and gave unques- 
 tionable proof, of his divine character and authority ; that 
 they were to the whole Jewish nation true and appro- 
 priate evidences, that He was indeed come who had pro- 
 mised and declared to their forefathers, Behold your 
 God will come with vengeance, even God with a re- 
 compense. He will come and save you.\ I receive 
 them as proofs, therefore, of the truth of every word 
 which he taught who was himself The Word ; and as 
 sure evidences of the final victory over death and of the 
 life to come, in that they were manifestations of Him, 
 who said : I" am the resurrection and the life ! 
 
 The obvious inference from the passage in question, 
 if not its express import, is : Miracula experimenta 
 crucis esse, quibus solis probandum erat, homines non, 
 pecudum instar, omnino perituros esse. Now this doc- 
 trine I hold to be altogether alien from the spirit, and 
 without authority in the letter, of Scripture. I can re- 
 call nothing in the history of human belief that should 
 induce me, I find nothing in my own moral being that 
 
 * J. Taylor's Worthy Communicant. Ed. 
 
 t Isaiah xxxiv, compared with Matt, x, 34, and Luke xii, 49. Ed. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 269 
 
 enables me, to understand it. I can, however, perfectly 
 well understand, the readiness of those divines in hoc 
 Paleii dictum ore pleno jurare, qui nihil aliud in toto 
 Evangelio invenire posse prqfitentur. The most un- 
 qualified admiration of this superlative passage I find 
 perfectly in character for those, who while Socinianism 
 and Ultra-Socinianism are spreading like the roots of an 
 elm, on and just below the surface, through the whole 
 land, and here and there at least have even dipped under 
 the garden-fence of the Church, and blunted the edge of 
 the labourer's spade in the gayest parterres of our Baal- 
 hamon, — who, — while heresies, to which the framers 
 and compilers of our Liturgy, Homilies, and Articles 
 would have refused the very name of Christianity, meet 
 their eyes on the list of religious denominations for every 
 city and large town throughout the kingdom — can yet 
 congratulate themselves with Dr. Paley, in his book on 
 the Evidences,* that the rent has not reached the foun- 
 dation ; — that is, that the corruption of man's will ; that 
 the responsibility of man in any sense in which it is not 
 equally predicable of dogs and horses ; that the divinity 
 of our Lord, and even his pre-existence ; that sin, and 
 redemption through the merits of Christ; and grace; 
 and the especial aids of the Spirit ; and the efficacy of 
 prayer ; and the subsistency of the Holy Ghost ; may 
 all be extruded without breach or rent in the essentials 
 of Christian Faith ; — that a man may deny and renounce 
 them all, and remain a fundamental Christian, notwith- 
 standing ! But there are many who cannot keep up 
 with Latitudinarians of such a stride ; and I trust that 
 the majority of serious believers are in this predicament. 
 Now for all these it would seem more in character to be 
 
 * Conclusion, Part III, ch. 8. Ed. 
 23* 
 
270 Alf)S TO REFLECTION. 
 
 of Bishop Taylor's opinion, that the belief in question is 
 presupposed in a convert to the truth in Christ — but at 
 all events not to circulate in the great whispering gal- 
 lery of the religious public suspicions and hard thoughts 
 of those who, like myself, are of this opinion ; who do 
 not dare decry the religious instincts of humanity as a 
 baseless dream ; who hold, that to excavate the ground 
 under the faith of all mankind, is a very questionable 
 method of building up our faith, as Christians ; who fear, 
 that instead of adding to, they should detract from, the 
 honour of the Incarnate Word by disparaging the light 
 of the Word, that was in the beginning, and which light- 
 eth every man ; and who, under these convictions, can 
 tranquilly leave it to be disputed, in some new Dialogues 
 in the shades, between the fathers of the Unitarian 
 Church on the one side, and Maimonides, Moses Men- 
 delssohn, and Lessing on the other, whether the famous 
 passage in Paley does or does not contain the three dia- 
 lectic flaws, petitio principii, argumentum in circulo, 
 and argum.en.tum contra rem a premisso rem ipsam in- 
 cludente. 
 
 Yes ! fervently do I contend, that to satisfy the under- 
 standing that there is a future state, was not the specific 
 object of the Christian Dispensation ; and that neither 
 the belief of a future state, nor the rationality of this 
 belief, is the exclusive attribute of the Christian religion. 
 An essential, a fundamental, article of all religion it is, 
 and therefore of the Christian ; but otherwise than as in 
 connexion with the salvation of mankind from the ter- 
 rors of that state, among the essential articles peculiar 
 to the Gospel Creed (those, for instance, by which it is 
 contra-distinguished from the creed of a religious Jew) 
 I do not place it. And before sentence is passed against 
 me, as heterodox, on this ground, let not my judges for- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 271 
 
 get who it was that assured us, that if a man did not 
 believe in a state of retribution after death, previously 
 and on other grounds, neither would he believe, though 
 a man should be raised from the dead. 
 
 Again, I am questioned as to my proofs of a future 
 state by men who are so far, and only so far, professed 
 believers, that they admit a God and the existence of a 
 law from God. I give them: and the questioners turn 
 from me with a scoff or incredulous smile. Now should 
 others of a less scanty creed infer the weakness of the 
 reasons assigned by me from their failure in convincing 
 these men ; may I not remind them, who it was, to whom 
 a similar question was proposed by men of the same 
 class ? But at all events it will be enough for my own 
 support to remember it; and to know that He held such 
 questioners, who could not find a sufficing proof of this 
 great all-concerning verity in the words, The God of 
 AbraJiam, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, un- 
 worthy of any other answer — men not to be satisfied by 
 any proof — by any such proofs, at least, as are compati- 
 ble with the ends and purposes of all religious convic 
 tion; — by any proofs that would not destroy the faith 
 they were intended to confirm, and reverse the whole 
 character and quality of its effects and influences. But 
 if, notwithstanding all here offered in defence of my 
 opinion, I must still be adjudged heterodox and in error, — 
 what can I say but that malo cum Platone errare, and 
 take refuge behind the ample shield of Bishop Jeremy 
 Taylor. 
 
 APHORISM XXIII. 
 
 TAYLOR. 
 
 In order to his own glory, and for the manifestation 
 of his goodness, and that the accidents of this world 
 might not overmuch trouble those good men who suf- 
 
272 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 fered evil things, God was pleased to do two great 
 things. The one was: that he sent his Son into the 
 world to take upon him our nature, that every man 
 might submit to a necessity, from which God's own 
 Son was not exempt, when it behoved even Christ to 
 suffer, and so to enter into glory. The other great thing 
 was : that God did not only by revelation and the ser- 
 mons of the Prophets to his Church, but even to all 
 mankind competently teach, and effectively persuade, 
 that the soul of man does not die ; that though things 
 were ill here, yet to the good who usually feel most of 
 the evils of this life, they should end in honour and ad- 
 vantages. And therefore Cicero had reason on his side 
 to conclude, that there is a time and place after this life, 
 wherein the wicked shall be punished, and the virtuous 
 rewarded ; when he considered that Orpheus and So- 
 crates, and many others, just men and benefactors of 
 mankind, were either slain or oppressed to death by evil 
 men. And all these received not the promise. But 
 when virtue made men poor, and free speaking of brave 
 truths made the wise to lose their liberty : when an ex- 
 cellent life hastened an opprobrious death, and the obey- 
 ing reason and our conscience lost us our lives, or at 
 least all the means and conditions of enjoying them: it 
 was but time to look about for another state of things 
 where justice should rule, and virtue find her own por- 
 tion. And therefore men cast out every line, and turned 
 every stone, and tried every argument : and sometimes 
 proved it well, and when they did not, yet they believed 
 strongly; and they were sure of the thing, when they 
 were not sure of the argument.* 
 
 Sermon at the Funeral of Sir George Dalston. Ed. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 273 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 A fact may be truly stated, and yet the cause or rea- 
 son assigned for it mistaken, or inadequate, ox pars pro 
 toto, — one only or few of many that might or should 
 have been adduced. The preceding Aphorism is an 
 instance in point. The phenomenon here brought for- 
 ward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion of 
 men's belief of a future state — namely, the frequent, not 
 to say ordinary, disproportion between moral worth and 
 worldly prosperity — must, indeed, at all times and in all 
 countries of the civilized world have led the observant 
 and reflecting few, the men of meditative habits and 
 strong feelings of natural equity, to a nicer considera- 
 tion of the current belief, whether instinctive or tradi- 
 tional. By forcing the soul in upon herself, this enigma 
 of Saint and Sage from Job, David and Solomon, to 
 Claudian and Boetius, — this perplexing disparity of 
 success and desert, — has, I doubt not, with such men 
 been the occasion of a steadier and more distinct con- 
 sciousness of a something in man different in kind, and 
 which not merely distinguishes but contra-distinguishes 
 him from brute animals — at the same time that it has 
 brought into closer view an enigma of yet harder solu- 
 tion — the fact, I mean, of a contradiction in the human 
 being, of which no traces are observable elsewhere, in 
 animated or inanimate nature. A struggle of jarring 
 impulses ; a mysterious diversity between the injunctions 
 of the mind and the elections of the will ; and (last not 
 least) the utter incommensurateness and the unsatisfy- 
 ing qualities of the things around us, that yet are the 
 only objects which our senses discover, or our appetites 
 require us to pursue : — hence for the finer and more 
 contemplative spirits the ever-strengthening suspicion, 
 
274 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 that the -two phcenomena must in some way or other 
 stand in close connexion with each other, and that the 
 riddle of fortune and circumstance is but a form or 
 effluence of the riddle of man : — and hence again, the 
 persuasion, that the solution of both problems is to be 
 sought for — hence the presentiment, that this solution 
 will be found — in the contra-distinctive constituent of 
 humanity, in the something of human nature which is 
 exclusively human : — and — as the objects discoverable 
 by the senses, as all the bodies and substances that we 
 can touch, measure, and weigh, are either mere totals, 
 the unity of which results from the parts, and is of 
 course only apparent; or substances, the unity of action 
 of which is owing to the nature or arrangement of the 
 partible bodies which they actuate or set in motion 
 (steam for instance, in a steam-engine) ; — as on the one 
 hand the conditions and known or conceivable proper- 
 ties of all the objects which perish and utterly cease to 
 be, together with all the properties which we ourselves 
 have in common with these perishable things, differ in 
 kind from the acts and properties peculiar to our hu- 
 manity, so that the former cannot even be conceived, 
 cannot without a contradiction in terms be predicated, 
 of the proper and immediate subject of the latter — (for 
 who would not smile at an ounce of truth, or a square 
 foot of honour?) — and as, on the other hand, whatever 
 things in visible nature have the character of perma- 
 nence, and endure amid continual flux unchanged like a 
 rainbow in a fast-flying shower, (for example, beauty, 
 order, harmony, finality, law,) are all akin to the peculia 
 of humanity, are all congenera of mind and will, without 
 which indeed they would not only exist in vain, as pic- 
 tures for moles, but actually not exist at all : — hence, 
 finally, the conclusion that the soul of man, as the sub- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 275 
 
 ject of mind and will must likewise possess a principle 
 of permanence, and be destined to endure. And were 
 these grounds lighter than they are, yet as a small weight 
 will make a scale descend, where there is nothing in the 
 opposite scale, or painted weights, which have only an 
 illusive relief or prominence ; so in the scale of immor- 
 tality slight reasons are in effect weighty, and sufficient 
 to determine the judgment, there being no counter- 
 weight, no reasons against them, and no facts in proof 
 of the contrary, that would not prove equally well the 
 cessation of the eye on the removal or diffraction 
 of the eye-glass, and the dissolution or incapacity of 
 the musician on the fracture of his instrument or its 
 strings. 
 
 But though I agree with Taylor so far, as not to 
 doubt that the misallotment of worldly goods and for- 
 tunes was one principal occasion, exciting well-disposed 
 and spiritually-awakened natures by reflections and rea- 
 sonings, such as I have here supposed, to mature the 
 presentiment of immortality into full consciousness, into 
 a principle of action and a well-spring of strength and 
 consolation ; I cannot concede to this circumstance any 
 thing like the importance and extent of efficacy which 
 he in this passage attributes to it. I am persuaded, that 
 as the belief of all mankind, of all* tribes, and nations, 
 
 * I say, all : for the accounts of one or two travelling French philoso- 
 phers, professed atheists and partisans of infidelity, respecting one or two 
 African hordes, Caffres, and poor outlawed Boschmen, hunted out of 
 their humanity, ought not to be regarded as exceptions. And as to 
 Hearne's assertion respecting the non-existence and rejection of the be- 
 lief among the Copper-Indians, it is not only hazarded on very weak and 
 insufficient grounds, but he himself, in another part of his work, uncon- 
 sciously supplies data, from whence the contrary may safely be concluded. 
 Hearne, perhaps, put down his friend Motannabbi's Fort-philosophy for 
 
276 AIDS TO REFLECTION'. 
 
 and languages, in all ages, and in all states of social 
 union, it must be referred to far deeper grounds, com- 
 mon to man as man ; and that its fibres are to be traced 
 to the tap-root of humanity. I have long entertained, 
 and do not hesitate to avow, the conviction that the argu- 
 ment from universality of belief urged by Barrow and 
 others in proof of the first article of the Creed, is neither 
 in point of fact — for two very different objects may be 
 intended, and two or more diverse and even contradictory 
 conceptions may be expressed, by the same name — nor 
 in legitimacy of conclusion as strong and unexceptiona- 
 ble, as the argument from the same ground for the con- 
 tinuance of our personal being after death. The bull- 
 calf butts with smooth and unarmed brow. Throughout 
 animated nature, of each characteristic organ and faculty 
 there exists a pre-assurance, an instinctive and practical 
 anticipation ; and no pre-assurance common to a whole 
 species does in any instance prove delusive.* All other 
 prophecies of nature have their exact fulfilment — in every 
 other ingrafted word of promise, nature is found true to 
 her word ; and is it in her noblest creature, that she tells 
 her first lie ? — (The reader will, of course, understand, 
 that I am here speaking m the assumed character of a 
 
 the opinion of his tribe ; and from his high appreciation of the moral 
 character of this murderous gymnosophist, it might, I fear, be inferred, 
 that Hearne himself was not the very person one would, of all others, 
 have chosen for the purpose of instituting the inquiry. 
 
 * See Baron Field's Letters from New South Wales. The poor 
 natives, the lowest in the scale of humanity, evince no symptom of any 
 religion, or the belief of any superior power as the maker of the world ; 
 but yet have no doubt that the spirits of their ancestors survive in the 
 form of porpoises, and mindful of their descendants, with imperishable 
 affection, drive the whales ashore for them to feast on. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 27? 
 
 mere naturalist, to whom no light of revelation had been 
 vouchsafed: one, who 
 
 -with gentle heart 
 
 Had worshipp'd nature in the hill and valley, 
 Not knowing what he loved, but loved it all.) 
 
 Whether, however, the introductory part of the Bishop's 
 argument is to be received with more or less qualifica- 
 tion, the fact itself, as stated in the concluding sentence 
 of the Aphorism, remains unaffected, and is beyond ex- 
 ception true. 
 
 If other argument and yet higher authority where re- 
 quired, I might refer to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 
 and to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which whether writ- 
 ten by Paul, or, as Luther conjectured, by Apollos, is 
 out of all doubt the work of an Apostolic man filled with 
 the Holy Spirit, and composed while the Temple and 
 the glories of the Temple worship were yet in existence. 
 Several of the Jewish and still Judaizing converts had 
 begun to vacillate in their faith, and to stumble at the 
 stumbling-stone of the contrast between the pomp and 
 splendour of the old Law, and the simplicity and humility 
 of the Christian Church. To break this sensual charm, 
 to unfascinate these bedazzled brethren, the writer to the 
 Hebrews institutes a comparison between the two reli- 
 gions, and demonstrates the superior spiritual grandeur, 
 the greater intrinsic worth and dignity of the religion of 
 Christ. On the other hand, at Rome where the Jews 
 formed a numerous, powerful, and privileged class (many 
 of them, too, by their proselyting zeal and frequent dis- 
 putations with the priests and philosophers trained and ex- 
 ercised polemics) the recently-founded Christian Church 
 was, it appears, in greater danger from the reasonings 
 of the Jewish doctors and even of its own Judaizing 
 
 24 
 
278 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 members, respecting the use of the new revelation. Thus 
 the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove 
 the superiority of the Christian religion ; the object of 
 the Epistle to the Romans to prove its necessity. Now 
 there was one argument extremely well calculated to 
 stagger a faith newly transplanted and still loose at its 
 roots, and which, if allowed, seemed to preclude the pos- 
 sibility of the Christian religion, as an especial and im- 
 mediate revelation from God — on the high grounds, at 
 least, on which the Apostle of the Gentiles placed it, 
 and with the exclusive rights and superseding character, 
 which he claimed for it. " You admit" (said they) " the 
 divine origin and authority of the Law given to Moses, 
 proclaimed with thunders and lightnings and the voice 
 of the Most High heard by all the people from Mount 
 Sinai, and introduced, enforced, and perpetuated by a 
 series of the most stupendous miracles. Our religion, 
 then, was given by God : and can God give a perishable 
 imperfect religion ? If not perishable, how can it have a 
 successor ? If perfect, how can it need to be superseded? 
 The entire argument is indeed comprised in the latter 
 attribute of our law. We know, from an authority 
 which you yourselves acknowledge for divine, that our 
 religion is perfect. He is the rock, and his work is per- 
 fect. (Deut. xxxii, 4.) If then the religion revealed by 
 God himself to our forefathers is perfect, what need have 
 we of another ?" — This objection, both from its import- 
 ance and from its extreme plausibility, for the persons 
 at least, to whom it was addressed, required an answer 
 in both Epistles. And accordingly, the answer is in- 
 cluded in the one (that to the Hebrews) and it is the 
 especial purpose and main subject of the other. And 
 how does the Apostle answer it? Suppose — and the 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 279 
 
 case is not impossible* — a man of sense, who had 
 studied the evidences of Priestley and Paley with War- 
 burton's Divine Legation, but who should be a perfect 
 stranger to the writings of St. Paul ; and that I put this 
 question to him : — " What do you think, will St. Paul's 
 answer be ?" " Nothing," he would reply, " can be more 
 obvious. It is in vain, the Apostle will urge, that you 
 bring your notions of probability and inferences from 
 the arbitrary interpretation of a word in an absolute 
 rather than a relative sense, to invalidate a known fact. 
 It is a fact, that your religion is (in your sense of the 
 word) not perfect : for it is deficient in one of the two 
 essential constituents of all true religion, the belief of a 
 future state on solid and sufficient grounds. Had the 
 doctrine indeed been revealed, the stupendous miracles, 
 which you most truly affirm to have accompanied and 
 attested the first promulgation of your religion, would 
 have supplied the requisite proof. But the doctrine was 
 not revealed ; and your belief of a future state rests on 
 no solid grounds. You believe it (as far as you believe 
 it, and as many of you as profess this belief) without 
 
 * The case here supposed actually occurred in my own experience in 
 the person of a Spanish refugee, of English parents, hut from his tenth 
 year resident in Spain, and bred in a family of wealthy, but ignorant and 
 bigoted, Roman Catholics. In mature manhood he returned to England, 
 disgusted with the conduct of the priests and monks, which had indeed 
 for some years produced on his mind its so common effect among the 
 better-informed natives of the South of Europe — a tendency to Deism. 
 The results, however, of the infidel system in France, with his oppor- 
 tunities of observing the effects of irreligion on the French officers in 
 Spain, on the one hand ; and the undeniable moral and intellectual su- 
 periority of Protestant Britain on the other, had not been lost on him : 
 and here he began to think for himself and resolved to study the subject. 
 He had gone through Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation, and Paley's 
 Evidences ; but had never read the New Testament consecutively, and 
 the Epistles not at all. 
 
280 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 revelation, and without the only proper and sufficient 
 evidence of its truth. Your religion, therefore, though 
 of divine origin, is (if taken in disjunction from the new 
 revelation, which I am commissioned to proclaim) but 
 a religio dimidiata ; and the main purpose, the proper 
 character, and the paramount object of Christ's mission 
 and miracles, is to supply the missing half by a clear 
 discovery of a future state ; and (since ' he alone dis- 
 covers who proves') by proving the truth of the doctrine, 
 now for the first time declared with the requisite au- 
 thority, by the requisite, appropriate, and alone satisfac- 
 tory evidences." 
 
 But is this the Apostle's answer to the Jewish oppugrc- 
 ers, and the Judaizing false brethren, of the Church of 
 Christ ? It is not the answer, it does not resemble the 
 answer, returned by the Apostle. It is neither parallel 
 nor corradial with the line of argument in either of the 
 two Epistles, or with any one line ; but it is a chord that 
 traverses them all, and only touches where it cuts across. 
 In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the directly contrary po- 
 sition is repeatedly asserted : and in the Epistle to the 
 Romans, it is every where supposed. The death to 
 which the Law sentenced all sinners (and which even 
 the Gentiles without the revealed law had announced to 
 them by their consciences, the judgment of God having 
 been made known even to them) must be the same death, 
 from which they were saved by the faith of the Son of 
 God ; or the Apostle's reasoning would be senseless, his 
 antithesis a mere equivoque, a play on a word, quod 
 idem sonat, aliud vult. Christ redeemed mankind from 
 the curse of the law : and we all know, that it was not 
 from temporal death, or the penalties and afflictions of 
 the present life, that believers have been redeemed. 
 The Law, of which the inspired sage of Tarsus is 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 281 
 
 speaking, from which no man can plead excuse ; the 
 Law miraculously delivered in thunders from Mount 
 Sinai, which was inscribed on tables of stone for the 
 Jews, and written in the hearts of all men {Rom. xi, 
 15) — the law holy and spiritual ! "What was the great 
 point, of which this law, in its own name, offered no 
 solution ; — the mystery, which it left behind the veil, or 
 in the cloudy tabernacle of types and figurative sacri- 
 fices ? Whether there was a judgment to come, and 
 souls to suffer the dread sentence ? Or was it not far 
 rather — what are the means of escape; where may grace 
 be found, and redemption ? St. Paul says, 'the latter. 
 The law brings condemnation : but the conscience-sen- 
 tenced transgressor's question, " What shall I do to be 
 saved ? Who will intercede for me ?" she dismisses as 
 beyond the jurisdiction of her court, and takes no cog- 
 nizance thereof, save in prophetic murmurs or mute out- 
 shadowings of mystic ordinances and sacrificial types. 
 Not, therefore, that there is a life to come, and a future 
 state ; but what each individual soul may hope for itself 
 therein ; and on what grounds : and that this state has 
 been rendered an object of aspiration and fervent desire, 
 and a source of thanksgiving and exceeding great joy ; 
 and by whom, and through whom, and for whom, and by 
 what means, and under what conditions — these are the 
 peculiar and distinguishing fundamentals of the Chris- 
 tian Faith ! These are the revealed lights and obtained 
 privileges of the Christian Dispensation. Not alone the 
 knowledge of the boon, but the precious inestimable boon 
 itself, is the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. 
 I believe Moses, I believe Paul ; but I believe in Christ. 
 
 *4* 
 
282 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM. 
 
 ON BAPTISM. 
 
 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching. — It 
 will suffice for our present purpose, if by these* words 
 we direct the attention to the origin, or at least first 
 Scriptural record, of Baptism, and to the combinement 
 of preaching therewith ; their aspect each to the other, 
 and their concurrence to one excellent end ; the word 
 unfolding the sacrament, and the sacrament sealing the 
 word ; the. word as a light, informing and clearing the 
 sense of the seal ; and this again as a seal, confirming 
 and ratifying the truth of the word ; as you see some 
 significant seals, or engraven signets, have a word about 
 them expressing their sense. 
 
 But truly the word is a light, and the sacraments have 
 in them of the same light illuminating them. This sa- 
 crament of Baptism, the ancients do particularly express 
 by light. Yet are they both nothing but darkness to us, 
 till the same light shine in our hearts ; for till then we 
 are nothing but darkness ourselves, and therefore the 
 most luminous things are so to us. Noonday is as mid- 
 night to a blind man. And we see these ordinances, the 
 word and the sacrament, without profit or comfort for 
 the most part, because we have not that divine light 
 within us. And we have it not,, because we ask it not. 
 
 * By certain Biblical philologists of the Teutonic school (men distin- 
 guished by learnbg, but still more characteristically by hardihood in con- 
 jecture, and who suppose the Gospels to have undergone several succes- 
 sive revisions and enlargements by, or under the. authority of, the sacred 
 historians) these words are contended to have been, in the first delivery, 
 the common commencement of all the Gospels *ara capita (that is, accor- 
 ding to the flesh,) in distinction from St. John's, or the Gospel icard mevpa 
 (that is, according to the Spirit.) 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 283 
 
 COMMENT, 
 
 Or an aid to reflection in the forming of a sound judg- 
 ment respecting the purport and purpose of the Bap- 
 tismal rite, and a just appreciation of its value and 
 importance. 
 
 A born and bred Baptist, and paternally descended 
 from the old orthodox non-conformists, and both in his 
 own and in his father's right a very dear friend of mine, 
 had married a member of the National Church. In con- 
 sequence of an anxious wish expressed by his lady for 
 the Baptism of their first child, he solicited me to put 
 him in possession of my views respecting this contro- 
 versy : though principally as to the degree of importance 
 which I attached to it. For as to the point itself, his 
 natural prepossession in favor of the persuasion in which 
 he was born, had been confirmed by a conscientious 
 examination of the arguments on both sides. As the 
 comment on the preceding Aphorism, or rather as an 
 expansion of its subject-matter, I will give the substance 
 of the conversation : and amply shall I have been re- 
 munerated, should it be read with the interest and satis- 
 faction with which it was heard. More particularly, 
 should any of my readers find themselves under the 
 same or similar circumstances. 
 
 Our discussion is rendered shorter and more easy by 
 our perfect agreement in certain preliminary points. 
 We both disclaim alike every attempt to explain any 
 thing into Scripture, and every attempt to explain any 
 thing out of Scripture. Or if we regard either with a 
 livelier aversion it is the latter, as being the more 
 fashionable and prevalent. I mean the practice of both 
 high and low Grotian divines to explain away positive 
 
284 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 assertions of Scripture on the pretext, that the literal 
 sense is not agreeable to reason, that is, their particular 
 reason. And inasmuch as (in the only right sense of 
 the word) there is no such thing as a particular reason, 
 they must, and in fact they do, mean that the literal 
 sense is not accordant to their understanding, that is, to 
 the notions which their understandings have been taught 
 and accustomed to form in their school of philosophy. 
 Thus a Platonist who should become a Christian would 
 at once, even in texts susceptible of a different inter- 
 pretation, recognise, because he would expect to find, 
 several doctrines which the disciple of the Epicu- 
 rean or mechanic school will not receive on the most 
 positive declarations of the divine word. And as we 
 agree in the opinion that the Minimi-fidian party err 
 grievously in the latter point, so I must concede to you, 
 that too many Psedo-baptists (assertors of Infant Bap- 
 tism) have erred, though less grossly, in the former. I 
 have, I confess, no eye for these smoke-like wreaths of 
 inference, this ever-widening spiral ergo from the nar- 
 row aperture of perhaps a single text ; or rather an inter- 
 pretation forced into it by construing an idiomatic phrase 
 in an artless narrative with the same absoluteness, as if 
 it had formed part of a mathematical problem. I start 
 back from these inverted pyramids, where the apex is 
 the base. If I should inform any one that I had called 
 at a friend's house, but had found nobody at home, the 
 family having all gone to the play ; and if he on the 
 strength of this information should take occasion to 
 asperse my friend's wife for unmotherly conduct in 
 taking an infant six months old to a crowded theatre ; 
 would you allow him to press on the words " nobody" 
 and " all the family," in justification of the slander ? 
 Would you not tell him, that the words were to be inter- 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 285 
 
 preted by the nature of the subject, the purpose of the 
 speaker, and their ordinary acceptation ; and that he 
 must or might have known, that infants of that age would 
 not be admitted into the theatre ? Exactly so, with re- 
 gard to the words, he and all his household. Had Bap- 
 tism of infants at that early period of the Gospel been a 
 known practice, or had this been previously demon- 
 strated, — then indeed the argument, that in all proba- 
 bility there were infants or young children in so large a 
 family, would be no otherwise objectionable than as 
 being superfluous, and a sort of anticlimax in logic. 
 But if the words are cited as the proof, it would be a 
 clear petitio principii, though there had been nothing 
 else against it. But when we turn back to the Scrip- 
 tures preceding the narrative, and find repentance and 
 belief demanded as the terms and indispensable condi- 
 tions of Baptism — then the case above imagined applies 
 in its full force. Equally vain is the pretended analogy 
 from Circumcision, which was no sacrament at all; 
 but the means and mark of national distinction. In the 
 first instance it was, doubtless, a privilege or mark of 
 superior rank conferred on the descendants of Abraham. 
 In the Patriarchal times this rite was confined (the first 
 governments being theocracies) to the priesthood, who 
 were set apart to that office from their birth. At a later 
 period this token of the premier class was extended to 
 kings. And thus, when it was re-ordained by Moses 
 for the whole Jewish nation, it was at the time said — 
 Ye are all priests and kings ; ye are a consecrated 
 people. In addition to this, or rather in aid of this, 
 Circumcision was intended to distinguish the Jews by 
 some indelible sign: and it was no less necessary that 
 Jewish children should be recognisable as Jews than 
 Jewish adults — not to mention the greater safety of th& 
 
£86 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 rite in infancy. Nor was it ever pretended that any 
 grace was conferred with it, or that the rite was signifi- 
 cant of any inward or spiritual operation. In short, an 
 unprejudiced and competent reader need only peruse 
 the first thirty-three paragraphs of the eighteenth section 
 of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying ; and then compare 
 with these the remainder of the section added by him 
 after the Restoration : those, namely, in which he at- 
 tempts to overthrow his own arguments. I had almost 
 said, affects; for such is the feebleness, and so palpable 
 the sophistry, of his answers, that I find it difficult to 
 imagine that Taylor himself could 'have been satisfied 
 with them. The only plausible arguments apply with 
 equal force to Baptist and Psedo-baptist ; and would 
 prove, if they proved any thing, that both were wrong, 
 and the Quakers only in the right. 
 
 Now in the first place, it is obvious, that nothing con- 
 clusive can be drawn from the silence of the New Tes- 
 tament respecting a practice, which, if we suppose it 
 already in use, must yet, from the character of the first 
 converts, have been of comparatively rare occurrence ; 
 and which, from the predominant and more concerning 
 objects and functions of the Apostolic writers ( 1 Cor. i, 
 17,) was not likely to have been mentioned otherwise 
 than incidentally, and very probably therefore might not 
 have occurred to them to mention at all. But, secondly, 
 admitting that the practice was introduced at a later 
 period than that in which the Acts of the Apostles and 
 the Epistles were composed : I should yet be fully satis- 
 fied that the Church exercised herein a sound* discre- 
 
 * That every the least permissible form and ordinance, which at dif- 
 ferent times it might be expedient for the church to enact, are pre- 
 enacted in the New Testament ; and that whatever is not to be found 
 there, ought to be allowed nowhere— this has been asserted. But that 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION, 287 
 
 tion. On either supposition, therefore, it is never with- 
 out regret that I see a divine of our Church attempting 
 to erect forts on a position so evidently commanded by 
 the strong-hold of his antagonists. I dread the use 
 which the Socinians may make of their example, and 
 the Papists of their failure. Let me not, however, de- 
 ceive you. (The reader understands, that I suppose 
 myself conversing with a Baptist.) I am of opinion, 
 that the divines on your side are chargeable with a far 
 more grievous mistake, that of giving a carnal and Juda- 
 izing interpretation to the various Gospel texts in which 
 the terms, baptism and baptize, occur, contrary to the 
 express and earnest admonitions of the Apostle Paul. 
 And this I say without in the least retracting my former 
 concession, that the texts appealed to, as commanding 
 or authorizing Infant Baptism, are all without exception 
 made to bear a sense neither contained nor deducible : 
 and likewise that (historically considered) there exists 
 no sufficient positive evidence, that the Baptism of in- 
 fants was instituted by the Apostles in the practice of 
 the Apostolic age.* 
 
 it has been proved, or even rendered plausible ; or that the tenet is not 
 to be placed among the revulsionary results of the Scripture-slighting 
 will-worship of the Romish Church ; it will be more sincere to say I dis- 
 believe, than that I doubt. It was chiefly, if not exclusively, in reference 
 to the extravagances built on this tenet, that the great Selden ventured 
 to declare, that the words, Scrutamini Scripturas, had set the world in 
 an uproar. _ 
 
 Extremes appear to generate each other ; but if we look steadily, there 
 will most often be found some common error, that produces both as its 
 positive and negative poles. Thus superstitions go by pairs, like the 
 two Hungarian sisters, always quarrelling and inveterately averse, but 
 yet joined at the trunk. 
 
 * More than this I do not consider as necessary for the argument. 
 And as to Robinson's assertions in his History of Baptism, that Infant 
 Baptism did not commence till the time of Cyprian, who, condemning it 
 
288 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Lastly, we both coincide in the full conviction, that it 
 is neither the outward ceremony of Baptism, under any 
 form or circumstances, nor any other ceremony, but such 
 a faith in Christ as tends to produce a conformity to his 
 holy doctrines and example in heart and life, and which 
 faith is itself a declared mean and condition of our par- 
 taking of his spiritual body, and of being clothed upon 
 with his righteousness, — that properly makes us Chris- 
 tians, and can alone be enjoined as an article of faith 
 necessary to salvation, so that the denial thereof may be 
 denounced as a damnable heresy. In the strictest sense 
 of essential, this alone is the essential in Christianity, 
 that the same spirit should be growing in us which was 
 in the fulness of all perfection in Christ Jesus. What- 
 ever else is named essential is such because, and only 
 as far as, it is instrumental to this, or evidently implied 
 herein. If the Baptists hold the visible rite to be indis- 
 pensable to salvation, with what terror must they not 
 regard every disease that befalls their children between 
 youth and infancy ! But if they are saved by the faith 
 of the parent, then the outward rite is not essential to 
 salvation, otherwise than as the omission should arise 
 from a spirit of disobedience : and in this case it is the 
 cause not the effect, the wilful and unbaptized heart, not 
 
 as a general practice, allowed it in particular cases by a dispensation of 
 charity ; and that it did not actually become the ordinary rule of the 
 Church, till Augustine, in the fever of his Anti-Pe]^jian dispute had in- 
 troduced the Calvinistic interpretation of Original Sin, and the dire state 
 of infants dying unbaptized— I am so far from acceding to them, that I 
 reject the whole statement as rash, and not only unwarranted by the au- 
 thorities he cites, but unanswerably confuted by Baxter, Wall, and many 
 other learned Paedo-baptists before and since the publication of his work. 
 I confine myself to the assertion — not that Infant Baptism was not— but 
 that there exist no sufficient proofs that it was — the practice of the 
 Apostolic age. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 289 
 
 the unbaptizing hand, that perils it. And surely it looks 
 very like an inconsistency to admit the vicarious faith 
 of the parents and the therein implied promise, that the 
 child shall be Christianly bred up, and as much as in 
 them lies prepared for the communion of saints — to ad- 
 mit this, as safe and sufficient in their own instance, and 
 yet to denounce the same belief and practice as hazard- 
 ous and unavailing in the Church — the same, I say, es- 
 sentially, and only differing from their own by the pre- 
 sence of two or three Christian friends as additional 
 securities, and by the promise being expressed ! 
 
 But you, my filial friend ! have studied Christ under 
 a better teacher— the spirit of adoption, even the spirit 
 that was in Paul, and which still speaks to us out of his 
 writings. You remember and admire the saying of an 
 old divine, that a ceremony duly instituted is a chain of 
 gold around the neck of faith ; but if in the wish to 
 make it co-essential and consubstantial, you draw it 
 closer and closer, it may strangle the faith it was meant 
 to deck and designate. You are not so unretentive a 
 scholar as to have forgotten the pateris et auro of your 
 Virgil : or if you were, you are not so inconsistent a 
 reasoner, as to translate the Hebraism, spirit and fire in 
 one place by spiritual fire, and yet refuse to translate 
 water and spirit by spiritual water in another place : or 
 if, as I myself think, the different position marks a dif- 
 ferent sense, yet that the former must be ejusdem generis 
 with the latter — the water of repentance, reformation in 
 conduct ; and the spirit that which purifies the inmost 
 principle of action, as fire purges the metal substantially 
 and not cleansing the surface only ! 
 
 But in this instance, it will be said, the ceremony, the 
 outward and visible sign, is a Scripture ordinance. I 
 will not reply that the Romish Priest says the same of 
 
 25 
 
290 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the anointing of the sick with oil and the imposition of 
 hands. No, my answer is ; that this i& a very sufficient 
 reason for the continued observance of a ceremonial rite 
 so derived and sanctioned, even though its own beauty, 
 simplicity, and natural significancy had pleaded less 
 strongly in its behalf. But it is no reason why the Church 
 should forget that the perpetuation of a thing does not 
 alter the nature of the thing, and that a ceremony to be 
 perpetuated is to be perpetuated as a ceremony. It is 
 no reason why, knowing and experiencing even in the 
 majority of her own members the proneness of the 
 human mind to* superstition, the Church might not 
 rightfully and piously adopt the measures best calculated 
 to check this tendency, and to correct the abuse to 
 which it had led in any particular rite. But of supersti- 
 tious notions respecting the Baptismal ceremony, and of 
 abuse resulting, the instances were flagrant and notori- 
 ous. Such, for instance, was the frequent deferring of 
 the Baptismal rite to a late period of life, and even to 
 the deathbed, in the belief that the mystic water would 
 cleanse the baptized person from all sin and (if he died 
 immediately after the performance of the ceremony,) 
 send him pure and spotless into the other world. 
 
 Nor is this all. The preventive remedy applied by 
 the Church is legitimated as well as additionally recom- 
 mended by the following consideration. Where a cere- 
 mony answered and was intended to answer several pur- 
 poses, which purposes at its first institution were blend- 
 ed in respect of the time, but which afterwards by 
 change of circumstances (as when, for instance, a large 
 
 * Let me be permitted to repeat and apply the note in a former page. 
 Superstition may be defined as superstantium (cujusmodi sunt ceremonies 
 et signa externa, qua, nisi in significando nihili sunt pane nihil) sub- 
 stantiatio. 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 291 
 
 and ever-increasing proportion of the members of the 
 Church, or those who at least bore the Christian name, 
 were of Christian parents) were necessarily disunited — 
 then either the Church has no power or authority dele- 
 gated to her (which is shifting the ground of controversy) 
 or she must be authorized to choose and determine, to 
 which of the several purposes the ceremony should be 
 attached. Now one of the purposes of Baptism was — 
 the making it publicly manifest, first, what individuals 
 were to be regarded by the World {Phil, ii, 15,) as be- 
 longing to the visible communion of Christians : inas- 
 much as by their demeanour and apparent condition, 
 the general estimation of the city set on a hill and not 
 to be hid {Matt, v, 14,) could not but be affected — the 
 city that even in the midst of a crooked and perverse 
 nation was bound not only to give no cause, but by all 
 innocent means to prevent every occasion, of rebuke. 
 Secondly, to mark out, for the the Church itself, those 
 that were entitled to that especial dearness, that watch- 
 ful and disciplinary love and loving-kindness, which over 
 and above the affections and duties of philanthropy and 
 universal charity, Christ himself had enjoined, and with 
 an emphasis" and in a form significant of its great and 
 especial importance, — A new commandment I give unto 
 you, that ye love one another. By a charity wide as 
 sunshine, and comprehending the whole human race, 
 the body of Christians was to be placed in contrast with 
 the proverbial misanthropy and bigotry of the Jewish 
 Church and people : while yet they were to be distin- 
 guished and known to all men, by the peculiar love and 
 affection displayed by them towards the members of 
 their own community ; thus exhibiting the intensity of 
 sectarian attachment, yet by the no less notorious and 
 exemplary practice of the duties of universal benevo- 
 
292 AIDS TO RKFLECTIOW. 
 
 lence, secured from the charge so commonly brought 
 against it, of being narrow and exclusive. " How kind 
 these Christians are to the poor and afflicted, without 
 distinction of religion or country : but how they love 
 each other I 
 
 Now combine with this the consideration before ur- 
 ged — the duty, I mean, and necessity of checking the 
 superstitious abuse of the Baptismal rite : and I then 
 ask, with confidence, in what way could the Church 
 have exercised a sound discretion more wisely, piously, 
 or effectively, than by fixing, from among the several 
 ends and purposes of Baptism, the outward ceremony to 
 the purposes here mentioned ? How could the great 
 body of Christians be more plainly instructed as to the 
 true nature of all outward ordinances 1 What can be 
 conceived better calculated to prevent the ceremony from 
 being regarded as other and more than a ceremony, if 
 not the administration of the same on an object (yea, a; 
 dear and precious object) of spiritual duties, though the 
 conscious subject of spiritual operations and graces only 
 by anticipation and in hope ; — a subject unconscious as 
 a flower of the dew falling on it, or the early rain, and 
 thus emblematic of the myriads who (as in our Indian 
 empire, and henceforward, I trust, in Africa) are tem- 
 porally and even morally benefitted by the outward ex- 
 istence of Christianity, though as yet ignorant of its- 
 saving truth ! And yet, on the other hand, what more 
 reverential than the application of this the common in^ 
 itiatory rite of the East sanctioned and appropriated by 
 Christ — its application, I say, to the very subjects, whom 
 he himself commanded to be brought to him — the chil- 
 dren in arms, respecting whom Jesus was much dis- 
 pleased with his disci-pies, who had rebuked those that 
 brought them ! What more expressive of the true char^ 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 293 
 
 acter of that originant yet generic stain, from which the 
 Son of God, by his mysterious incarnation and agony 
 and death and resurrection, and by the Baptism of the 
 Spirit, came to cleanse the children of Adam, than the 
 exhibition of the outward element to infants, free from 
 and incapable of crime, in whom the evil principle was 
 present only as potential being, and whose outward 
 semblance represented the kingdom of Heaven ? And 
 can it — to a man, who would hold himself deserving of 
 anathema maranaiha (1 Cor. xvi, 22,) if he did not love 
 the Lord Jesus Christ — can it be nothing to such a 
 man, that the introduction and commendation of a new 
 inmate, a new spiritual ward, to the assembled brethren 
 in Christ — (and this, as I have shown above, was one 
 purpose of the Baptismal ceremony) does in the Bap- 
 tism of an infant recall our Lord's own presentation in 
 the Temple on the eighth day after his birth ? Add to 
 all these considerations the known fact of the frequent 
 exposure and the general light regard of infants, at the 
 time when Infant Baptism is by the Baptists supposed 
 to have been first ruled by the Catholic Church, not 
 overlooking the humane and charitable motives that in- 
 fluenced Cyprian's decision in its favour. And then 
 make present to your imagination, and meditatively con- 
 template the still continuing tendency, the profitable, the 
 beautiful effects, of this ordinance now and for so many 
 centuries back, on the great mass of the population 
 throughout Christendom— the softening, elevating ex- 
 ercise of faith and the conquest over the senses, while 
 in the form of a helpless crying babe the presence, and 
 the unutterable worth and value, of an immortal being 
 made capable of everlasting bliss are solemnly proclaim^ 
 ed and carried home to the mind and heart of the hear^ 
 ers and beholders ! Nor will you forget the probably 
 
294 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 influence on the future education of the child, the oppor- 
 tunity of instructing and impressing the friends, relatives 
 and parents in their best and most docile mood. These 
 are, indeed, the mollia temper a fandi. 
 
 It is true, that by an unforeseen accident, and through 
 the propensity of all zealots to caricature partial truth 
 into total falsehood — it is too true, that a tree the very 
 contrary in quality of that shown to Moses (Exod. xv, 
 25,) was afterwards cast into the sweet waters from this 
 fountain, and made them like the waters of Marah, too 
 bitter to be drunk. I allude to the Pelagian controversy, 
 the perversion of the article of Original Sin by Augus- 
 tine, and the frightful conclusions which this durus pater 
 infantum drew from the article thus perverted. It is 
 not, however, to the predecessors of this African, who- 
 ever they were that authorized Paedo-Baptism, and at 
 whatever period it first became general — it is not to the 
 Church at the time being, that these consequences are 
 justly imputable. She had done her best to preclude 
 every superstition, by allowing, in urgent cases, any 
 and every adult, man, and woman, to administer the 
 ceremonial part, the outward rite, of Baptism : but re- 
 serving to the highest functionary of the Church (even 
 to the exclusion of the co-presbyters) the more proper 
 and spiritual purpose, namely, the declaration of repen- 
 tance and belief, the free choice of Christ as his Lord, 
 and the open profession of the Christian title by an indi- 
 vidual in his own name and by his own deliberate act. 
 This office of religion, the essentially moral aneKspi ritual 
 nature of which could not be mistaken, this most solemn 
 office the Bishop alone was to perform. 
 
 Thus — as soon as the purposes of the ceremonial rite 
 were by change of circumstances divided, that is, took 
 place at different periods of the believer's life — to the 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 295 
 
 outward purposes, where the effect was to be produced 
 on the consciousness of others, the Church continued to 
 affix the outward rite ; while to the substantial and spi- 
 ritual purpose, where the effect was to be produced on 
 the individual's own mind, she gave it beseeming dignity 
 by an ordinance not figurative, but standing in the direct 
 cause and relation of means to the end. 
 
 In fine, there are two great purposes to be answered, 
 each having its own subordinate purposes, and desirable 
 consequences. The Church answers both, the Baptists 
 one only. If, nevertheless, you would still prefer the 
 union of the Baptismal rite with the Confirmation, and 
 that the presentation of infants to the assembled Church 
 had formed a separate institution, avowedly prospective 
 — I answer : first, that such for a long time and to a late 
 period was my own judgment. But even then it seemed 
 to me a point, as to which an indifference would be less 
 inconsistent in a lover of truth, than a zeal to the sepa- 
 ration in a professed lover of peace. And secondly, I 
 would revert to the history of the Reformation, and the 
 calamitous accident of the Peasants' War : when the 
 poor ignorant multitude, driven frantic by the intolerable 
 oppressions of their feudal lords, rehearsed all the out- 
 rages that were acted in our own times by the Parisian 
 populace headed by Danton, Marat, Robespierre ; and 
 on the same outrageous principles, and in assertion of 
 the same rights of brutes to the subversion of all the 
 duties of men. In our times, most fortunately for the 
 interests of religion and morality, or of their prudential 
 substitutes at least, the name of Jacobin was every 
 where associated with that of Atheist and Infidel. Or 
 rather, Jacobinism and Infidelity were the two heads of 
 the revolutionary Geryon — connatural mis-growths of the 
 same monster-trunk. In the German convulsion^ on the 
 
296 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 contrary, by a mere but most unfortunate accident, the 
 same code of Caliban jurisprudence, the same sensual 
 and murderous excesses, were connected with the name 
 of Anabaptist. The abolition of magistracy, community 
 of goods, the right of plunder, polygamy, and whatever 
 else was fanatical, were comprised in the word Anabap- 
 tism. It is not to be imagined that the Fathers of the 
 Reformation could, without a miraculous influence, have 
 taken up the question of Infant Baptism with the requi- 
 site calmness and freedom of spirit. It is not to be 
 wished, that they should have entered on the discussion. 
 Nay, I will go farther. Unless the abolition of Infant 
 Baptism can be shown to be involved in some funda- 
 mental article of faith, unless the practice could be 
 proved fatal or imminently perilous to aslvation, the Re- 
 formers would not have been justified in exposing the 
 yet tender and struggling cause of Protestantism to such 
 certain and violent prejudices as this innovation would 
 have excited. Nothing less than the whole substance 
 and efficacy of the Gospel Faith was the prize, which 
 they had wrestled for and won ; but won from enemies 
 still in the field, and on the watch to retake, at all costs, 
 the sacred treasure, and consign it once again to dark- 
 ness and oblivion. If there be a tim.e for all things, 
 this was not the time for an innovation, that would and 
 must have been followed by the triumph of the enemies 
 of Scriptural Christianity, and the alienation of the gov- 
 ernments that had espoused and protected it. 
 
 Remember, I say this on the supposition of the ques- 
 tion's not being what you do not pretend it to be, an 
 essential of the Faith by which we are saved. But 
 should it likewise be conceded that it is a disputable 
 point — and that in point of fact it is and has been dis- 
 puted by divines, whom no pious Christian of any de» 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 297 
 
 nomination will deny to have been faithful and eminent 
 servants of Christ ; should it, I say, be likewise con- 
 ceded that the question of Infant Baptism is a point, on 
 which two Christians, who perhaps differ on this point 
 only, may differ without giving just ground for impeach- 
 ing the piety or competence of either ; in this case I am 
 obliged to infer that the person who at any lime can re- 
 gard this difference as singly warranting a separation 
 from a religious community, must think of schism under 
 another point of view than that in which I have been 
 taught to contemplate it by St. Paul in his Epistles to 
 the Corinthians. 
 
 Let me add a few words on a diversity of doctrine 
 closely connected with this ; — the opinions of Doctors 
 Mant and D'Oyly as opposed to those of the (so called) 
 Evangelical clergy. " The Church of England (says 
 Wall*) does not require assent and consent" to either 
 
 * Conference between two men that had doubts about Infant Baptism, 
 By W. Wall, Author of the History of Infant Baptism, and Vicar of 
 Shoreham in Kent. A very sensible little tract, and written in an ex- 
 cellent spirit : but it failed, I confess, in satisfying my mind as to the 
 existence of any decisive proofs or documents of Infant Baptism having 
 been an Apostolic usage, or specially intended in any part of the New 
 Testament : though deducible generally from many passages, and in per- 
 fect accordance with the spirit of the whole. 
 
 A mighty wrestler in the cause of spiritual religion and Gospel mo- 
 rality, in whom more than in any other contemporary I seem to see the 
 spirit of Luther revived, expressed to me his doubts whether we have a 
 right to deny that an infant is capable of a spiritual influence. To such 
 a man I could not feel justified in returning an answer ex tempore, or 
 without having first submitted my convictions to a fresh revisal. I owe 
 him, however, a deliberate answer ; and take this opportunity of dis- 
 charging the debt. 
 
 The objection supposes and assumes the very point which is denied, 
 or at least disputed — namely, that Infant Baptism is specially enjoined 
 in the Scriptures. If an express passage to this purport had existed in 
 the New Testament — the other passages, which evidently imply a spirit* 
 
298 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 opinion "in order to lay communion." But I will sup- 
 pose the person a minister : but minister of a Church 
 which has expressly disclaimed all pretence to infalli- 
 bility ; a Church which in the construction of its Liturgy 
 and Articles is known to have worded certain passages 
 for the purpose of rendering them subscribable by both 
 A and Z — that is, the opposite parties as to the points 
 in controversy. I suppose this person's convictions 
 those of Z, and that out of five passages there are three, 
 the more natural and obvious sense of which is in his 
 favour; and two of which, though not absolutely preclud- 
 ing a different sense, yet the more probable interpreta- 
 tion is in favour of A, that is, of those who do not con- 
 sider the Baptism of an infant as prospective, but hold 
 
 ual operation under the condition of a preceding spiritual act on the part 
 of the person baptized, remaining as now — then indeed, as the only way 
 of removing the apparent contradiction, it might be allowable to call on 
 the Anti-paedobaptist to prove the negative— namely, that an infant a 
 week old is not a subject capable or susceptible of spiritual agency. 
 And, vice versa, should it be made known to us, that infants are not with- 
 out reflection and self-consciousness ; then, doubtless, we should be 
 entitled to infer that they were capable of a spiritual operation, and con- 
 sequently of that which is signified in the Baptismal rite administered to 
 adults. But what does this prove for those, who (as D. D. Mant and 
 D'Oyly) not only cannot show, but who do not themselves profess to 
 believe, the self-consciousness of a new-born babe, but who rest the de- 
 fence of Infant Baptism on the assertion, that God was pleased to affix 
 the performance of this rite to his offer of salvation, as the indispensable, 
 though arbitrary, condition of the infant's salvability 1 As kings in former 
 ages, when they conferred lands in perpetuity, would sometimes, as the 
 condition of the tenure, exact from the beneficiary a hawk, or some 
 trifling ceremony, as the putting on or off of their sandals, or whatever 
 else royal caprice or the whim of the moment might suggest. But you, 
 honored Irving, are as little disposed, as myself, to favor such doctrine ! 
 
 Friend pure of heart and fervent ! we have learnt 
 A different lore. We may not thus profane 
 The idea and name of Him whose absolute will 
 Is reason, truth supreme, essential order ! 
 
ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 299 
 
 it to be an opus operans et in prasenti. Then I say, 
 that if such a person regards these two sentences or 
 single passages as obliging or warranting him to aban- 
 don the flock entrusted to his charge, and either to join 
 such as are the avowed enemies of the Church on the 
 double ground of its particular constitution and of its 
 being an establishment, or to set up a separate church 
 for himself — I cannot avoid the conclusion, that either 
 his conscience is morbidly sensitive in one speck to the 
 exhaustion of the sensibility in a far larger portion ; or 
 that he must have discovered some mode, beyond the 
 reach of my conjectural powers, of interpreting the 
 Scriptures enumerated in the following excerpt from the 
 popular tract before cited, in which the writer expresses 
 an opinion, to which I assent with my whole heart : 
 namely, 
 
 " That all Christians in the world that hold the same 
 fundamentals ought to make one Church, though differ- 
 ing in lesser opinions ; and that the sin, the mischief, 
 and danger to the souls of men, that divide into those 
 many sects and parties among us, does (for the most of 
 them) consist not so much in the opinions themselves, 
 as in their dividing and separating for them. And in 
 support of this tenet, I will refer you to some places of 
 Scripture, which if you please now to peruse, I will be 
 silent the while. See what our Saviour himself says, 
 John x, 16; John xvi, 11. And what the primitive 
 Christians practised, Acts ii, 46, and iv, 32. And what 
 St. Paul says, 1 Cor. i, 10, 11, 12, and 2, 3, 4, also the 
 whole twelfth chapter : Eph. ii, 17, &c, to the end. 
 Where the Jewish and Gentile Christians are showed 
 to be one body, one household, one temple fitly framed 
 together : and yet these were of different opinions in 
 several matters. Likewise chap, iii 6, iv, 1 — 13. Phil. 
 
300 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ii, 1, 2, where he uses the most solemn adjurations to 
 this purpose. But I would more especially recommend 
 to you the reading of Gal. v, 20, 21. Phil, iii, 15, 16. 
 The fourteenth chapter to the Romans, and part of the 
 fifteenth, to verse 7, and also Rom. xv, 17. 
 
 Are not these passages plain, full, and earnest ? Do 
 you find, any of the controverted points to be determined 
 by Scripture in words nigh so plain or pathetic ?" 
 
 Marginal note written {in 1816) in a copy of Walls Works. 
 
 This and the two following pages are excellent. If I addressed the 
 ministers recently seceded, I would first prove from Scripture and reason 
 the justness of their doctrines concerning Baptism and conversion. 2. I 
 would show, that even in respect of the Prayer-book, Homilies, &c, of 
 the Church of England, taken as a whole, their opponents were compa- 
 ratively as ill off as themselves, if not worse. 3. That the few mistakes 
 or inconvenient phrases of the Baptismal Service did not impose on the 
 conscience the necessity of resigning the pastoral office. 4. That even 
 if they did, this would by no means justify schism from lay-membership : 
 or else there could be no schism except from an immaculate and infallible 
 Church. Now, as our Articles have declared that no Church is or ever 
 was such, it would follow that there is no such sin as that of schism, that 
 is, that St. Paul wrote falsely or idly. 5. That the escape through the 
 channel of dissent is from the frying-pan to the fire ; or, to use a less 
 worn and vulgar simile, the escape of a leech from a glass-jar of water 
 into the naked and open air. But never, never, would I in one breath 
 allow my Church to be fallible, and in the next contend for her absolute 
 freedom from all error: never confine inspiration and perfect truth to the 
 Scriptures, and then scold for the perfect truth of each and every word 
 in the Prayer-book. Enough for me, if in my heart of hearts, free from 
 all fear of man and all lust of preferment, I believe (as I do) the Church 
 of England to be the most Apostolic Church; that its doctrines and 
 ceremonies contain nothing dangerous to righteousness or salvation ; and 
 that the imperfections in its Liturgy are spots indeed, but spots on the 
 sun, which impede neither its light nor its heat, so as to prevent the good 
 seed from growing in a good soil and producing fruits of redemption. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 I am not so ignorant of the temper and tendency of the 
 age in which I live, as either to be unprepared for the 
 sort of remarks which the literal interpretation of the 
 Evangelist will call forth, or to attempt an answer to 
 them. Visionary ravings, obsolete whimsies, transcen- 
 dental trash, and the like, I leave to pass at the price 
 current among those who are willing to receive abusive 
 phrases as substitutes for argument. Should any subor- 
 ner of anonymous criticism have engaged some literary 
 bravo or buffoon beforehand to vilify this work, as in 
 former instances, I would give a friendly hint to the oper- 
 ative critic that he may compile an excellent article for 
 the occasion, and with very little trouble, out of Warbur- 
 ton's Tract on Grace and the Spirit, and the Preface to 
 the same. There is, however, one objection, which will 
 so often be heard from men, whose talents and reputed 
 moderation must give a weight to their words, that I owe 
 it both to my own character and to the interests of my 
 readers, not to leave it unnoticed. The charge will pro- 
 bably be worded in this way : — There is nothing new in 
 all this ! (as if novelty were any merit in questions of 
 revealed religion !) It is, mysticism, all taken out of 
 William Law, after he had lost his senses, poor man ! 
 in brooding over the visions of a delirious German cob- 
 bler, Jacob Behmen. 
 
 Of poor Jacob Behmen I have delivered my senti- 
 ments at large in another work. Those who have con- 
 
 26 
 
802 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 descended to look into his writings must know that his 
 characteristic errors are ; first, the mistaking the acci- 
 dents and peculiarities of his own overwrought mind for 
 realities and modes of thinking common to all minds : 
 and secondly, the confusion of nature, that is, the active 
 powers communicated to matter, with God the Creator. 
 And if the same persons have done more than merely 
 looked into the present volume, they must have seen, that 
 to eradicate, and, if possible, to preclude both the one and 
 the other, stands prominent among its avowed objects. 
 
 Of Williams Law's Works I am acquainted with the 
 Serious Call ; and besides this I remember to have read 
 a small Tract on Prayer, if I mistake not, as I easily 
 may, it being at least six-and-twenty years since I saw it. 
 He may in this or in other tracts have quoted the same 
 passages from the fourth Gospel which I have done. 
 But surely this affords no presumption that my conclu- 
 sions are the same with his ; still less, that they are 
 drawn from the same premisses ; and least of all, that 
 they were adopted from his writings. Whether Law 
 has used the phrase, assimilation by faith, I know not ; 
 but I know that I should expose myself to a just charge 
 of an idle parade of my reading, if I recapitulated the 
 tenth part of the authors, ancient and modern, Romish 
 and Reformed, from Law to Clemens Alexandrinus and 
 Irenaeus, in whose works the same phrase occurs in the 
 same sense. And after all, on such a subject, how 
 worse than childish is the whole dispute ! 
 
 Is the fourth Gospel authentic ? And is the interpre- 
 tation I have given true or false ? These are the only 
 questions which a wise man would put, or a Christian 
 be anxious to answer. I not only believe it to be the 
 true sense of the texts ; but I assert that it is the only 
 true, rational, and even tolerable sense. And this position 
 
CONCLUSION. 303 
 
 alone I conceive myself interested in defending. I have 
 studied with an open and fearless spirit the attempts of 
 sundry learned critics of the Continent to invalidate the 
 authenticity of this Gospel, before and since Eichhorn's 
 Vindication. The result has been a clearer assurance 
 and (as far as this was possible) a yet deeper conviction 
 of the genuineness of all the writings which the Church 
 has attributed to this Apostle. That those, who have 
 formed an opposite conclusion, should object to the use 
 of expressions which they had ranked among the most 
 obvious marks of spuriousness, follows as a matter of 
 course. But that men, who with a clear and cloudless 
 assent receive the sixth chapter of this Gospel as a faith- 
 ful, nay, inspired record of an actual discourse, should 
 take offence at the repetition of words which the Re- 
 deemer himself in the perfect foreknowledge that they 
 would confirm the disbelieving, alienate the unsteadfast 
 and transcend the present capacity even of his own elect, 
 had chosen as the most appropriate; and which, after 
 the most decisive proofs that they were misinterpreted 
 by the greater number of his hearers, and not understood 
 by any, he nevertheless repeated with stronger emphasis 
 and without comment as the only appropriate symbols 
 of the great truth he was declaring, and to realize which 
 * yevero o-ap£ ;* — that in their own discourses these men 
 
 * Of which our, he was made flesh, is a very inadequate translation. 
 The Church of England in this as in other doctrinal points has preserved 
 the golden mean between the superstitious reverence of the Romanists, 
 and the avowed contempt of the Sectarians, for the writings of the Fa- 
 thers, and the authority and unimpeached traditions of the Church during 
 the first three or four centuries. And how, consistently with this honor- 
 able characteristic of our Church, a minister of the same could, on the 
 Sacramentary scheme now in fashion, return even a plausible answer to 
 Arnauld's great work on Transubstantiation, (not without reason the 
 boast of- the Romish Church,) exceeds my powers of conjecture. 
 
304 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 should hang back from all express reference to these 
 words, as if they were afraid or ashamed of them, though 
 the earliest recorded ceremonies and liturgical forms of 
 the primitive Church are absolutely inexplicable, except 
 in connexion with this discourse, and with the myste- 
 rious and spiritual, not allegorical and merely ethical, 
 import of the same ; and though this import is solemnly 
 and in the most unequivocal terms asserted and taught 
 by their own Church, even in her Catechism, or Com- 
 pendium of doctrines necessary for all her members ; — 
 this I may, perhaps, understand ; but this I am not able 
 to vindicate or excuse. 
 
 There is, however, one opprobrious phrase which it 
 may be profitable for my younger readers that I should 
 explain, namely, Mysticism. And for this purpose I will 
 quote a sentence or two from a dialogue which, had my 
 prescribed limits permitted, I should have attached to the 
 present work ; but which with an Essay* on the Church, 
 as instituted by Christ, and as an establishment of the 
 State, and a series of Letters on the right and the su- 
 perstitious use and estimation of the Bible, will appear 
 in a small volume by themselves, should the reception 
 given to the present volume encourage or permit the 
 publication. 
 
 MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 Antinous. — " What do you call mysticism ? And d& 
 you use the word in a good or in a bad sense ?" 
 
 Nous. — " In the latter only ; as far, at least, as we 
 are concerned with it. When a man refers to inward 
 feelings and experiences, of which mankind at large are 
 not conscious, as evidences of the truth of any opinion — 
 
 * See the Church and State, 3rd edit. 
 
CONCLUSION. 305 
 
 such a man I call a Mystic : and the grounding of any 
 theory or belief on accidents and anomalies of individual 
 sensations or fancies, and the use of peculiar terms in- 
 vented, or perverted from their ordinary significations, 
 for the purpose of expressing these idiosyncrasies and 
 pretended facts of interior consciousness, I name Mys- 
 ticism. Where the error consists simply in the Mystic's 
 attaching to these anomalies of his individual tempera- 
 ment the character of reality, and in receiving them as 
 permanent truths, having a subsistence in the divine 
 mind, though revealed to himself alone ; but entertains 
 this persuasion without demanding or expecting the 
 same faith in his neighbours — I should regard it as a spe- 
 cies of enthusiasm, always indeed to be deprecated, but 
 yet capable of co-existing with many excellent qualities 
 both of head and heart. But when the Mystic, by ambi- 
 tion or still meaner passions, or (as sometimes is the 
 case) by an uneasy and self-doubting state of mind which 
 seeks confirmation in outward sympathy, is led to impose 
 his faith, as a duty, on mankind generally : and when 
 with such views he,„asserts that the same experiences 
 would be vouchsafed, the same truths revealed, to every 
 man but for his secret wickedness and unholy will ; — - 
 such a Mystic is a fanatic, and in certain states of the 
 public mind a dangerous member of society. And most 
 so in those ages and countries in which fanatics of elder 
 standing are allowed to persecute the fresh competitor. 
 For under these predicaments, Mysticism, though origi- 
 nating in the singularities of an individual nature, and 
 therefore essentially anomalous, is nevertheless highly 
 contagious. It is apt to collect a swarm and cluster cir* 
 cum f ana, around the new fane; and therefore merits 
 the name <si fanaticism, or as the Germans say, Schwa?-*, 
 fjierey, that is swarm-making." 
 
306 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 We will return to the harmless species, the enthusi- 
 astic Mystics ; — a species that may again be subdivided 
 into two ranks. And it will not be other than germane 
 to the subject, if I endeavour to describe them in a sort of 
 allegory or parable. Let us imagine a poor pilgrim be- 
 nighted in a wilderness or desert, and pursuing his way 
 in the starless dark with a lantern in his hand. Chance 
 or his happy genius leads him to an oasis or natural 
 garden, such as in the creations of my youthful fancy I 
 supposed Enos, * the child of Cain to have found. And 
 here, hungry and thirsty, the way-wearied man rests at 
 a fountain ; and the taper of his lantern throws its light 
 on an over-shadowing tree, a boss of snow-white blossoms, 
 through which the green and growing fruits peeped, and 
 the ripe golden fruitage glowed. Deep, vivid, and faith- 
 
 * Will the reader forgive me if I attempt at once to illustrate and 
 relieve the subject by annexing the first stanza of the poem composed in 
 the same year in which I wrote the Ancient Mariner and the first book 
 of Christabel 1 
 
 " Encinctur'd with a twine of leaves, 
 That leafy twine his only dress ! 
 A lovely boy was plucking fruits 
 In a moonlight wilderness. 
 The moon was bright, the air was free, 
 And fruits and flowers together grew 
 On many a shrub and many a tree : 
 And all put on a gentle hue, 
 Hanging in the shadowy air 
 Like a picture rich and rare. 
 It was a climate where, they say, 
 The night is more belov'd than day. 
 But who that beauteous boy beguil'd, 
 That beauteous boy, to linger here 1 
 Alone, by night, a little child, 
 In place so silent and so wild — 
 Has he no friend, no loving mother near?" 
 
 Wanderings of Cain. 
 Poet, works, II. p. 100. 
 
CONCLUSION. 307 
 
 ful are the impressions, which the lovely imagery com- 
 prised within the scanty circle of light, makes and leaves 
 on his memory. But scarcely has he eaten of the fruits 
 and drunk of the fountain, ere scared by the roar and 
 howl from the desert he hurries forward ; and as he 
 passes with hasty steps through grove and glade, sha- 
 dows and imperfect beholdings and vivid fragments of 
 things distinctly seen blend with the past and present 
 shapings of his brain. Fancy modifies sight. His dreams 
 transfer their forms to real objects ; and these lend a 
 substance and an outness to his dreams. Apparitions 
 greet him ; and when at a distance from this enchanted 
 land, and on a different track, the dawn of day discloses 
 to him a caravan, a troop of his fellow-men, his memory, 
 which is itself half fancy, is interpolated afresh by every 
 attempt to recall, connect, and piece out his recollections. 
 His narration is received as a madman's tale. He shrinks 
 from the rude laugh and contemptuous sneer, and retires 
 into himself. Yet the craving for sympathy, strong in 
 proportion to the intensity of his convictions, impels him 
 to unbosom himself to abstract auditors ; and the poor 
 quietest becomes a penman, and, all too poorly stocked 
 for the writer's trade, he borrows his phrases and figures 
 from the only writings to which he has had access, the 
 sacred books of his religion. And thus I shadow out 
 the enthusiast Mystic of the first sort ; at the head of 
 which stands the illuminated, Teutonic theosopher and 
 shoemaker, honest Jacob Behmen, born near Gorlitz, in 
 Upper Lusatia, in the 17th of our Elizabeth's reign, and 
 who died in the 22nd of her successor's. 
 
 To delineate a Mystic of the second and higher order, 
 we need only endow our pilgrim with equal gifts of na- 
 ture, but these developed and displayed by all the aids 
 and arts of education and favourable fortune. He is on 
 
308 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 his way to the Mecca of his ancestral and national faith, 
 with a well-guarded and numerous procession of mer- 
 chants and fellow-pilgrims, on the established track. At 
 the close of day the caravan has halted : the full moon 
 rises on the desert : and he strays forth alone, out of 
 sight but to no unsafe distance ; and chance leads him, 
 too, to the same oasis or islet of verdure on the sea of 
 sand. He wanders at leisure in its maze of beauty and 
 sweetness, and thrids his way through the odorous and 
 flowering thickets into open spots of greenery, and dis- 
 covers statues and memorial characters, grottoes, and 
 refreshing caves. But the moonshine, the imaginative 
 poesy of Nature, spreads its soft shadowy charm over all, 
 conceals distances, and magnifies heights, and modifies 
 relations ; and fills up vacuities with its own whiteness, 
 counterfeiting substance ; and where the dense shadows 
 lie, makes solidity imitate hollowness ; and gives to all 
 objects a tender visionary hue and softening. Interpret 
 the moonlight and the shadows as the peculiar genius 
 and sensibility of the individual's own spirit : and here 
 you have the other sort : a Mystic, an enthusiast of a 
 nobler breed — a Fenelon. But the residentiary, or the 
 frequent visiter of the favoured spot, who has scanned its 
 beauties by steady daylight, and mastered its true pro- 
 portions and lineaments, he will discover that both pil- 
 grims have indeed been there. He will know, that the 
 delightful dream, which the latter tells, is a dream of 
 truth ; and that even in the bewildered tale of the for- 
 mer there is truth mingled with the dream. 
 
 But the source, the spring-head, of the charges which 
 I anticipate, lies deep. Materialism, conscious and 
 avowed Materialism, is in ill repute : and a confessed 
 Materialist therefore a rare character. But if the faith 
 be ascertained by. the fruits : if the predominant, though 
 
CONCLUSION. 309 
 
 most often unsuspected, persuasion is to be learnt from 
 the influences, under which the thoughts and affections 
 of the man move and take their direction ; I must reverse 
 the position. Only not all are Materialists. Except a 
 few individuals, and those for the most part of a single 
 sect : every one, who calls himself a Christian, holds 
 himself to have a soul as well as a body. He distin- 
 guishes mind from matter, the subject of his conscious- 
 ness from the objects of the same. The former is his 
 mind : and he says, it is immaterial. But though sub- 
 ject and substance are words of kindred roots, nay, little 
 less than equivalent terms, yet nevertheless it is exclu- 
 sively to sensible objects, to bodies, to modifications of 
 matter, that he habitually attaches the attributes of reality, 
 of substance. Real and tangible, substantial and mate- 
 rial, are synonymesfor him. He never indeed asks him- 
 self, what he means by mind? But if he did, and tasked 
 himself to return an honest answer — as to what, at least, 
 he had hitherto meant by it — he would find, that he had 
 described it by negatives, as the opposite of bodies, for 
 example, as a somewhat opposed to solidity, to visibility, 
 and the like, as if you could abstract the capacity of a 
 vessel, and conceive of it as a somewhat by itself, and 
 then give to the emptiness the properties of containing, 
 holding, being entered, and so forth. In short, though 
 the proposition would perhaps be angrily denied in words, 
 yet in fact he thinks of his mind, as a property, or acci- 
 dent of a something else, that he calls a soul or spirit : 
 though the very same difficulties must recur, the mo- 
 ment he should attempt to establish the difference. For 
 either this soul or spirit is nothing but a thinner body, a 
 finer mass of matter : or the attribute of self-subsistency 
 vanishes from the soul on the same grounds, on which it 
 is refused to the mind. 
 
310 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 T am persuaded, however, that the dogmatism of the 
 Corpuscular School, though it still exerts an influence on 
 men's notions and phrases, has received a mortal blow 
 from the increasingly dynamic spirit of the physical sci- 
 ences now highest in public estimation. And it may 
 safely be predicted that the results will extend beyond 
 the intention of those who are gradually effecting this 
 revolution. It is not chemistry alone that will be in- 
 debted to the genius of Davy, Oersted, and their com- 
 peers : and not as the founder of physiology and philo- 
 sophic anatomy alone, will mankind love and revere the 
 name of ( John Hunter.* These men have not only taught, 
 they have compelled us to admit, that the immediate ob- 
 jects of our senses, or rather the grounds of the visibility 
 and tangibility of all objects of sense, bear the same re- 
 lation and similar proportion to the intelligible object — 
 that is, to the object which we actually mean when we 
 say, " It is such or such a thing," or " I have seen this 
 or that." — as the paper, ink, and differently combined 
 straight and curved lines of an edition of Homer bear to 
 what we understand by the words, Iliad and Odyssey. 
 Nay, nothing would be more easy than so to construct 
 the paper, ink, painted capitals, and the like, of a printed 
 disquisition on the eye, or the muscles and cellular tex- 
 ture (that is, the flesh) of the human body, as to bring 
 together every one of the sensible and ponderable stuffs 
 or elements, that are sensuously perceived in the eye 
 itself, or in the flesh itself. Carbon and nitrogen, oxygen 
 and hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and one or two me- 
 tals and metallic bases, constitute the whole. It cannot 
 be these, therefore, that we mean by an eye, by our 
 body. But perhaps it may be a particular combination 
 of these ? But here comes a question : In this term do 
 you or do you not include the principle, the operating 
 
CONCLUSION. 311 
 
 cause, of the combination ? If not, then detach this eye 
 from the body. Look steadily at it — as it might lie on 
 the marble slab of a dissecting room. Say it were the 
 eye of a murderer, a Bellingham : or the eye of a mur- 
 dered patriot, a Sidney ! — Behold it, handle it, with its 
 "various accompaniments or constituent parts, of tendon, 
 ligament, membrane, blood-vessel, gland, humors ; its 
 nerves of sense, or sensation, and of motion. Alas ! all 
 these names like that of the organ itself, are so many 
 anachronisms, figures of speech, to express that which 
 has been : as when the guide points with his finger to a 
 heap of stones and tells the traveller, " That is Babylon, 
 or Persepolis." Is this cold jelly the light of the body ? 
 Is this the micranthropos in the marvellous microcosm ? 
 Is this what you mean when you well define the eye as 
 the telescope and the mirror of the soul, the seat and 
 agent of an almost magical power ? 
 
 Pursue the same inquisition with every other part of 
 the body, whether integral or simply ingredient ; and let 
 a Berzelius or a Hatchett be your interpreter, and de- 
 monstrate to you what it is that in each actually meets 
 your senses. And when you have heard the scanty cata- 
 logue, ask yourself if these are indeed the living flesh, 
 the blood of life ? Or not far rather — I speak of what, 
 as a man of common sense, you really do, not what, as 
 a philosopher, you ought to believe — is it not, I say, far 
 rather the distinct and individualized agency that by the 
 given combinations utters and bespeaks its presence ? 
 Justly and with strictest propriety of language may I say, 
 speaks. It is to the coarseness of our senses, or rather 
 to the defect and limitation of our percipient faculty, that 
 the visible object appears the same even for a moment. 
 The characters, which I am now shaping on this paper, 
 abide. Not only the forms remain the same, but the 
 
312 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 particles of the colouring stuff are fixed, and, for an in- 
 definite period at least, remain the same. But the parti- 
 cles that constitute the size, the visibility of an organic 
 structure, are in perpetual flux. They are to the com- 
 bining and constitutive power as the pulses of air to the 
 voice of a discourser ; or of one who sings a roundelay. 
 The same words may be repeated ; but in each second 
 of time the articulated air hath passed away, and each 
 act of articulation appropriates and gives momentary 
 form to a new and other portion. As the column of blue 
 smoke from a cottage chimney in the breathless summer 
 noon, or the stedfast-seeming cloud on the edge point of 
 a hill in the driving air-current, which momently con- 
 densed and recomposed is the common phantom of a 
 thousand successors ; such is the flesh, which our bodily 
 eyes transmit to us ; which our palates taste ; which our 
 hands touch. 
 
 But perhaps the material particles possess this com- 
 bining power by inherent reciprocal attractions, repul- 
 sions, and elective affinites ; and are themselves the joint 
 artists of their own combinations 1 I will not reply, 
 though well I might, that this would be to solve one 
 problem by another, and merely to shift the mystery. It 
 will be sufficient to remind the thoughtful querist, that 
 even herein consists the essential difference, the contra- 
 distinction, of an organ from a machine ; that not only 
 the characteristic shape is evolved from the invisible 
 central power, but the material mass itself is acquired 
 by assimilation. The germinal power of the plant trans- 
 mutes the fixed air and the elementary base of water 
 into grass or leaves ; and on these the organific principle 
 in the ox or the elephant exercises an alchemy still more 
 stupendous. As the unseen agency weaves its magic 
 eddies, the foliage becomes indifferently the bone and its 
 
CONCLUSION. 313 
 
 marrow, the pulpy brain, or the solid ivory. That what 
 you see is blood, is flesh, is itself the work, or shall I 
 say, the translucence, of the invisible energy, which soon 
 surrenders or abandons them to inferior powers, (for 
 there is no pause nor chasm in the activities of nature) 
 which repeat a similar metamorphosis according to their 
 kind ; — these are not fancies, conjectures, or even hypo- 
 theses, but facts ; to deny which is impossible, not to 
 reflect on which is ignominious. And we need only reflect 
 on them with a calm and silent spirit to learn the utter 
 emptiness and unmeaningness of the vaunted Mechanico- 
 corpuscular philosophy, with both its twins, Materialism 
 on the one hand, and Idealism, rightlier named subjective 
 Idolism, on the other : the one obtruding on us a world 
 of spectres and apparitions ; the other a mazy dream. 
 
 Let the Mechanic or Corpuscular scheme, which in 
 ts absoluteness and strict consistency was first intro- 
 duced by Des Cartes, be judged by the results. By its 
 fruits shall it be known. 
 
 In order to submit the various phenomena of moving 
 bodies to geometrical construction, we are under the ne- 
 cessity of abstracting from corporeal substance all its 
 positive properties, and obliged to consider bodies as 
 differing from equal portions of space * only by figure 
 
 * Such is the conception of body in Des Cartes' own system. Body 
 is every where confounded with matter, and might in the Cartesian sense 
 be defined space or extension, with the attribute of visibility. As Des 
 Cartes at the same time zealously asserted the existence of intelligential 
 beings, the reality and independent self-subsistence of the soul. Berke- 
 leyanism or Spinosism was the immediate and necessary consequence. 
 Assume a plurality of self-subsisting souls, and we have Berkeleyanism ; 
 assume one only (unam et unicam substantiam), and you have Spinosism, 
 that is, the assertion of one infinite self-subsistent, with the two attributes 
 of thinking and appearing. Cogitatio infinita sine centro, et omniformis 
 apparitio. How far the Newtonian vis inertia (interpreted any otherwise 
 than as an arbitrary term = i y z, to represent the unknown but neces- 
 
 23 
 
314 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and mobility. And as a fiction of science, it would be 
 difficult to overvalue this invention. It possesses the 
 same merits in relation to geometry that the atomic the- 
 ory has in relation to algebraic calculus. But in con- 
 tempt of common sense, and in direct opposition to the 
 express declarations of the inspired historian {Gen. i,) 
 and to the tone and spirit of the Scriptures throughout, 
 Des Cartes propounded it as truth of fact : and instead 
 of a world created and filled with productive farces by 
 the almighty Fiat, left a lifeless machine whirled about 
 by the dust of its own grinding ; as if death could come 
 from the living fountain of life ; nothingness and phan- 
 tom from the plenitude of reality, the absoluteness of 
 creative will ! 
 
 . Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! let me be deemed mad by all 
 men, if such be thy ordinance ; but, O ! from such mad- 
 ness save and preserve me, my God ! 
 
 sary supplement or integration of the Cartesian notion of body) has 
 patched up the flaw, I leave for more competent judges to decide. But 
 should any one of my readers feel an interest in the speculative principles 
 of natural philosophy, and should be master of the German language, I 
 warmly recommend for his perusal the earliest known publication of the 
 great founder of the Critical Philosophy, (written in the twenty-second 
 year of his age !) on the then eager controversy between the Leibnitzian 
 and the French and English Mathematicians, respecting the living forces 
 — Gedanken von der wahren Schatzung der lebendigen Krdfte : 1747 — 
 in which Kant demonstrates the right reasoning to be with the latter ; 
 but the truth of the fact, the evidence of experience, with the former ; 
 and gives the explanation, namely : body, or corporeal nature, is some- 
 thing else and more than geometrical extension, even with the addition 
 of a vis inertia. And Leibnitz with the Bernouillis, erred in the attempt 
 to demonstrate geometrically a problem not susceptible of geometrical 
 construction. This tract, with the succeeding Himmels- System, may 
 with propriety be placed, after the Principia of Newton, among the 
 striking instances of early genius ; and as the first product of the dynamic 
 philosophy in the physical sciences, from the time, at least, of Giordano 
 Bruno, whom the idolaters burned for an Atheist, at Rome, in the year 
 1600. See The Friend, vol. i, p. 151-155. 3d edit. 
 
CONCLUSION. 315 
 
 When, however, after a short interval, the genius of 
 Kepler expanded and organized in the soul of Newton, 
 and there (if I may hazard so bold an expression) re- 
 fining itself into an almost celestial clearness, had ex- 
 pelled the Cartesian vortices ;* then the necessity of an 
 active power, of positive forces present in the material 
 universe, forced itself on the conviction. For as a 
 law without a lawgiver is a mere abstraction ; so a law 
 without an agent to realize it, a constitution without an 
 abiding executive, is, in fact, not a law but an idea. In 
 the profound emblem of the great tragic poet, it is the 
 powerless Prometheus fixed on a barren rock. And 
 what was the result ? How was this necessity provided 
 for ? God himself — my hand trembles as I write ! Ra- 
 ther, then, let me employ the word, which the religious 
 feeling, in its perplexity, suggested as the substitute — 
 the Deity itself was declared to be the real agentj the 
 actual gravitating power ! The law and the lawgiver 
 were identified. God (says Dr. Priestly) not only does, 
 but is every thing. Jupiter est quodcunque vides . And 
 thus a system, which commenced by excluding all life 
 and immanent activity from the visible universe, and 
 evacuating the natural world of all nature, ended by sub- 
 stituting the Deity, and reducing the Creator to a mere 
 
 * For Newton's own doubtfully suggested ether, or most subtle fluid, 
 as the ground and immediate agent in the phanomena. of universal gravi- 
 tation, was either not adopted or soon abandoned by his disciples ; not 
 only as introducing, against his own canons of right reasoning, an en* 
 imaginarium into physical science, a suffiction in the place of a legiti- 
 mate supposition ; but because the substance (assuming it to exist) must 
 itself form part of the problem which it was meant to solve. Meantime 
 Leibnitz's pre-established harmony, which originated in Spinosa, found 
 no acceptance; and, lastly, the notion of a corpuscular substance, with 
 properties put into it, like a pincushion hidden by the pins, could pass 
 with the unthinking only for any thing more than a confession of igno= 
 jance, or technical terms expressing a hiatus of scientific insight 
 
316 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 anima mundi : a scheme that has no advantage over 
 Spinosism but its inconsistency, which does indeed make 
 it suit a certain order of intellects, who/ like the pleuro- 
 nectcB (or flat fish) in ichthyology which have both eyes 
 on the same side, never see but half of a subject at one 
 time, and forgetting the one before they get to the other 
 are sure not to detect any inconsistency between them. 
 
 And what has been the consequence ? An increasing 
 unwillingness to contemplate the Supreme Being in his 
 personal attributes : and thence a distaste to all the pe- 
 culiar doctrines of the Christian Faith, the Trinity, the 
 Incarnation of the Son of God, and Redemption. The 
 young and ardent, ever too apt to mistake the inward 
 triumph in the detection of error for a positive love of 
 truth, are among the first and most frequent victims to 
 this epidemic fastidium. Alas ! even the sincerest seek- 
 ers after light are not safe from the contagion. Some 
 have I known, constitutionally religious — I speak feel- 
 ingly ; for I speak of that which for a brief period was 
 my own state — who under this unhealthful influence 
 have been so estranged from the heavenly Father, the 
 living God, as even to shrink from the personal pronouns 
 as applied to the Deity. But many do I know, and 
 yearly meet with, in whom a false and^ sickly taste co- 
 operates with the prevailing fashion : many, who find 
 the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, far too real, too 
 substantial ; who feel it more in harmony with their in- 
 definite sensations 
 
 To worship nature in the hill and valley, 
 Not knowing what they love : — 
 
 and (to use the language, but not the sense or purpose 
 of the great poet of our age) would fain substitute for the 
 Jehovah of their Bible 
 
CONCLUSION. 317 
 
 A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air ; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things ! 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 * 
 And this from having been educated to understand the 
 
 divine omnipresence in any sense rather than the only 
 safe and legitimate one, the presence of all things to 
 God! 
 
 Be it, however, that the number of such men is com- 
 paratively small ! And be it (as in fact it often is) but a 
 brief stage, a transitional state, in the process of intellec- 
 tual growth ! Yet among a numerous and increasing 
 class of the higher and middle ranks, there is an inward 
 withdrawing from the life and personal being of God, a 
 turning of the thoughts exclusively to the so-called phy- 
 sical attributes, to the omnipresence in the counterfeit 
 form of ubiquity, to the immensity, the infinity, the im- 
 mutability; — the attributes of space with a notion of 
 power as their substratum, — a Fate, in short not a moral 
 creator and governor! Let intelligence be imagined, and 
 wherein does the conception of God differ essentially 
 from that of gravitation (conceived as the cause of grav- 
 ity) in the understanding of those, who represent the Deity 
 not only as a necessary but as a necessitated being; those, 
 for whom justice is but a scheme of general laws ; and 
 holiness, and the divine hatred of sin, yea and sin itself, 
 are words without meaning, or accommodations to a rude 
 and barbarous race ? Hence, I more than fear the pre- 
 vailing taste for books of natural theology, physico-the-* 
 ology, demonstrations of God from nature, evidences of 
 of Christianity, and the like. Evidences of Christianity ! 
 
 33* 
 
318 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of 
 it ; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge, of his 
 need of it ; and you may safely trust it to its own evi- 
 dence, — remembering only the express declaration of 
 Christ himself: No man cometh to me, unless the Fa- 
 ther leadeth him 1 Whatever more is desirable — I speak 
 now with reference to Christians generally, and not to 
 professed students of theology — may, in my judgment, 
 be far more safely and profitably taught, without contro- 
 versy or the supposition of infidel antagonists, in the 
 form of Ecclesiastical history. 
 
 The last fruit of the Mechanico-corpuscular philoso- 
 phy, say rather of the mode and direction of feeling and 
 thinking produced by it on the educated class of society ; 
 or that result, which as more immediately connected 
 with my present theme I have reserved for the last — is 
 the habit of attaching all our conceptions and feelings, 
 and of applying all the words and phrases expressing 
 reality, to the objects of the senses : more accurately 
 speaking, to the images and sensations by which their 
 presence is made known to us. Now I do not hesitate 
 to assert, that it was one of the great purposes of Chris- 
 tianity, and included in the process of our redemption, 
 to rouse and emancipate the soul from this debasing 
 slavery to the outward senses, to awaken the mind to 
 the true criteria of reality, namely, permanence, power, 
 will manifested in act, and truth operating as life. My 
 words, said Christ, are spirit; and they (that is, the 
 spiritual powers expressed by them) are truth ; — that is, 
 very being. For this end our Lord, who came from 
 heaven to take captivity captive, chose the words and 
 names, that designate the familiar yet most important 
 objects of sense, the nearest and most concerning things 
 and incidents of corporeal nature : water, flesh, blood, 
 
CONCLUSION. 319 
 
 birth, bread ! But he used them in senses, that could 
 not without absurdity be supposed to respect the mere 
 phenomena, water, flesh, and the like, in senses that by 
 no possibility could apply to the color, figure, specific 
 mode of touch or taste produced on ourselves, and by 
 which we are made aware of the presence of the things, 
 and understand them — res, quce sub apparitionibus istis 
 statuendce sunt. And this awful recalling of the drows- 
 ed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensual- 
 ity to actual reality, — how has it been evaded ! These 
 words, that were spirit — these mysteries, which even the 
 Apostles must wait for the Paraclete, in order to compre- 
 hend, — these spiritual things which can only be spiritu- 
 ally discerned, — were mere metaphors, figures of speech, 
 oriental hyperboles ! "All this means only morality !" 
 Ah ! how far nearer to the truth would these men have 
 been had they said that morality means all this ! 
 
 The effect, however, has been most injurious to the 
 best interests of our Universities, to our incomparably 
 constituted Church, and even to our national character. 
 The few who have read my two Lay Sermons, are no 
 strangers to my opinions on this head : and in my trea- 
 tise on the Church and Churches, I shall, if providence 
 vouchsafe, submit them to the public, with their grounds 
 and historic evidences in a more systematic form. 
 
 I have, I am aware, in this present work furnished 
 occasion for a charge of having expressed myself with 
 slight and irreverence of celebrated names, especially of 
 the late Dr. Paley. 0, if I were fond and ambitious of 
 literary honour, of public applause, how well content 
 should I be to excite but one third of the admiration, 
 which, in my inmost being, I feel for the head and heart 
 of Paley ! And how gladly would I surrender all hope 
 of contemporary praise, could I even approach to the in^ 
 
320 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 comparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility of 
 his writings ! But on this very account I believe my- 
 self bound in conscience to throw the whole force of my 
 intellect in the way of this triumphal car, on which the 
 tutelary genius of modern idolatry is borne, even at the 
 risk of being crushed under the wheels ! I have at this 
 moment before my eyes the eighteenth of his Posthu- 
 mous Discourses : the amount of which is briefly this, — 
 that all the words and passages in the New Testament 
 which express and contain the peculiar doctrines of 
 Christianity, the paramount objects of the Christian Rev- 
 elation, all those which speak so strongly of the value, 
 benefit, and efficacy, of the death of Christ, assuredly 
 mean something : but what they mean, nobody, it seems, 
 can tell ! But doubtless we shall discover it, and be 
 convinced that there is a substantial sense belonging to 
 these words — in a future state ! Is there an enigma, or an 
 absurdity, in the Koran or the Vedas, which might not 
 be defended on the same pretence ? A similar impres- 
 sion, I confess, was left on my mind by Dr. Magee's 
 statement or exposition (ad normam Grotianam) of the 
 doctrine of Redemption ; and deeply did it disappoint the 
 high expectations, sadly did it chill the fervid sympathy 
 which his introductory chapter, his manly and masterly 
 disquisition on the sacrificial rites of Paganism, had 
 raised in my mind. 
 
 And yet I cannot read the pages of Paley, here refer- 
 ed to, aloud, without the liveliest sense, how plausible 
 and popular they will sound to the great majority of rea- 
 ders. Thousands of sober, and in their way pious, Chris- 
 tians will echo the words, together with Magee's kindred 
 interpretation of the death of Christ, and adopt the doc- 
 trine for their make-faith : and why ? It is feeble. And 
 whatever is feeble is always plausible ; for it favours 
 
CONCLUSION. 321 
 
 mental indolence. It is feeble : and feebleness, in the 
 disguise of confessing and condescending strength, is, 
 always popular. It flatters the reader, by removing 
 the apprehended distance between him and the superior 
 author; and it flatters him still more by enabling him to 
 transfer to himself, and to appropriate, this superiority : 
 and thus to make his very weakness the mark and evi- 
 dence of his strength. Ay, quoth the rational Chris- 
 tian — or with sighing, self-soothing sound between an 
 Ay and an Ah ! — I am content to think,with the great 
 Dr. Paley, and the learned Archbishop of Dublin — 
 
 Man of sense ! Dr. Paley was a great man, and Dr. 
 Magee is a learned and exemplary prelate ; but You do 
 not think at all ! 
 
 With regard to the convictions avowed and enforced 
 in my own Work, I will continue my address to the 
 man of sense in the words of an old philosopher : — Tu 
 vero crassis auribus et obstinato corde respuis qucefor- 
 sitan vere perhibeantur . Minus hercule calles pravis- 
 simis opinionibus ea putari mendacia, quae, vel auditu 
 na.va, vel visu rudia, vel certe supra captum cogitationis 
 {extemporanece tuce) ardua videantur : qua si paulo ac~ 
 curatius exploraris, non modo compertu evidentia, sed 
 etiamfactu facilia, senties* 
 
 In compliance with the suggestion of a judicious friend, 
 the celebrated conclusion of the fourth book of Paley's 
 Moral and Political Philosophy, referred to in p. 267 of 
 this Volume, is here transprinted for the convenience of 
 the reader :—» . 
 
 i( Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration 
 than the following — ' The hour is coming, in the which 
 
 * Apul. Metam. I. Ed. 
 
322 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall 
 come forth : they that have done good, unto the resur- 
 rection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the re- 
 surrection of damnation ;' — he had pronounced a mes- 
 sage of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that 
 splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which 
 his mission was introduced, and attested ; a message in 
 which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an 
 answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is 
 idle to say, that a future state had been discovered al- 
 ready : — it had been discovered as the Copernican sys- 
 tem was : — it was one guess among many. He alone 
 discovers, who proves ; and no man can prove this point, 
 but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doc- 
 trine comes from God." 
 
 Paedianus says of Virgil,— Usqite adeo expers invi- 
 diam ut siquid erudite dictum inspiceret alterius, non 
 minus gauderet ac si suum esset. My own heart as- 
 sures me that this is less than the truth : that Virgil 
 would have read a beautiful passage in the work of ano- 
 ther with a higher and purer delight than in a work of 
 his own, because free from the apprehension of his 
 judgment being warped by self-love, and without that 
 repressive modesty akin to shame, which in a delicate 
 mind holds in check a man's own secret thoughts and 
 feelings, when they respect himself. The cordial ad- 
 miration with which I peruse the preceding passage as 
 a masterpiece of composition, would, could I convey it, 
 serve as a measure of the vital importance I attach to 
 the convictions which impelled me to animadvert on the 
 same passage as doctrine, 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A SYNOPTICAL SUMMARY OF THE SCHEME OF THE ARGU- 
 MENT TO PROVE THE DIVERSITY IN KIND, OF THE REA- 
 SON AND UNDERSTANDING. SEE P. 161. 
 
 The position to be proved is the difference in kind of 
 the understanding from the reason. 
 
 The axiom, on which the proof rests, is : subjects, 
 which require essentially different general definitions, 
 differ in kind and not merely in degree. For difference 
 in degree forms the ground of specific definitions, but 
 not of generic or general. 
 
 Now reason is considered either in relation to the will 
 and moral being, when it is termed the * practical rea- 
 son = A : or relatively to the intellective and sciential 
 faculties, when it is termed theoretic or speculative rea- 
 son = a. In order therefore to be compared with the 
 reason, the understanding must in like manner be dis- 
 tinguished into the understanding as a principle of action, 
 
 * N. B. The practical reason alone is reason in the full and substan- 
 tive sense. It is reason in its own sphere of perfect freedom ; as the 
 source of ideas, which ideas, in their conversion to the responsible will, 
 become ultimate ends. On the other hand, theoretic reason, as the 
 ground of the universal and absolute in all logical conclusion, is rather 
 the light of reason in the understanding, and known to be such by its 
 contrast with the contingency and particularity which characterize all 
 the proper and indigenous growths of the understanding. 
 
APPENDIX. 324 
 
 in which relation I call it the adaptive power, or the 
 faculty of selecting and adapting means and medial of 
 proximate ends = B : and the understanding, as a mode 
 and faculty of thought, when it is called reflection = b. 
 Accordingly, I give the general definitions of these 
 four : that is, I describe each severally by its essential 
 characters : and I find, that the definition of A differs 
 toto genere from that of B, and the definition of a 
 from that of b. 
 
 Now subjects that require essentially different defini- 
 tions do themselves differ in kind. But understanding, 
 and reason, require essentially different definitions. 
 Therefore understanding and reason differ in kind. 
 
 THE END.