t7 ■ / **T 6r. •4:. ./ifr fMrnnj af (Sangria." ^^states^ofTmerica: V.--V %fc» • AIDS TO REFLECTION, BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, WITH A PRELIMINARY ESSAY, BY JAMES MARSH, D. D FIIOM THE FOURTH LONDON EDITION, WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS, EDITED BY HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ., M. A. BURLINGTON: < 11 A V N < E Y G O O D R I t II 1840. AC* *V Entered according to act of Congress, in tlie year 1840, by Chauncey Goodrich, in the Clerk's office of the District Court, for the District of Vermont. 4 CONTENTS. Pago. Editor's Advertisement . . 7 Preliminary Essay by James Marsh, D. D. . . . ■ . 9 Author's Address to the Reader 50 Author's Preface 61 Introductory Aphorisms ......... 67 On Sensibility - 88 Prudential Aphorisms ......... 93 Moral and Religious Aphorisms ....... 101 Elements of Religious Philosophy ....... 153 Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion ....... 161 Aphorisms on that which is indeed Spiritual Religion . . . 167 On the difference in kind of Reason and the Understanding . . 211 On Instinct in connection with the Understanding .... 232 On Original Sin 242 On Redemption 297 On Baptism 317 Conclusion ••-........ 333 Appendix 353 Index 355 THIS MAKES, THAT WHATSOEVER HERE BEFALLS, YOU IN THE REGION OF YOURSELF REMAIN NEIGHB'RING ON HEAVEN ) AND THAT NO FOREIGN LAND. DANIEL. ADVERTISEMENT. The edition of the Aids to Reflection published here in 1829, experienced a more favorable reception with the pub- lic than could have been anticipated, and has been for some time exhausted. — The demand for the work, indeed, as well as for the other productions of its author, has been steadily increasing, and another edition would have been issued soon- er, but for causes, which the editor could not control. — Among these an expectation of the author's latest additions and corrections was not the least These are at length re- ceived in the fourth London edition edited by H. N. Cole- ridge Esq., and though not very numerous or important are yet the last. The volume herewith offered to the American public is simply a reprint of that edition, containing, in addi- tion to the work of the author, the Preliminary Essay pub- lished here in 1829, and some few notes by the editor. — The appendix and notes added to the former American edi- tion, consisting chiefly of selections from other works of the author then but little known here, are now less needed and are not therefore added to this. It is to be hoped, indeed, from the increasing demand for them, that we shall soon be furnished with a uniform edition of all the author's prose wri- tings, when he will be found, by all who wish to understand his views, his own best commentator. Of the character of his writings, and their influence upon the cause of truth in philosophy and religion, my views have been strongly expressed in the preliminary essay here repub- lished, nor have I found cause to think of them with less in- terest in the more thorough knowledge, which ten years has enabled me to acquire, of his principles and their application. On the contrary, while a more extended acquaintance with the speculative and practical works of the most celebrated German writers has taught me to regard them very different- ly from those who sneer at their mysticism, and condemn, D ADVERTISEMENT. without pretending, or using the means, to understand them, I still reverence Coleridge, as combining with their profound learning and logic, sound English sense, that correctness in the search after truth, and that true humility, which are so especially necessary in reference to the great subjects treated of in the work before us. Again, in their application to the passing state and con- flict of opinions in philosophy and theology among ourselves, one who has qualified himself to observe, will find continually new occasion to admire the soundness of his distinctions, and to appreciate their vast practical importance. He will see more and more clearly, that the lines of distinction, which he draws between the understanding, and the reason, between the natural and the spiritual, the individual and the universal, and the relation of the personal will in man to Him, in whom " we live and move and have our being," as exhibited by him in the " Aids " and elsewhere, are such as cannot be disre- garded without danger of great practical error. He will ap- preciate them more and more, as consistent with, and guid- ing to, the reception of the whole truth as it is in Christ ; — guarding him, on the one hand, against the self-deceiving humility of those, who disparage the authority of reason and conscience, while they " lean to their own understanding," and " trust in their own devices ;" and, on the other, against that pride, which discourses of the " higher nature of man," and arrogates to every man, as inherent in that nature, the power of spiritual life, which we can receive only " through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Thus, as the au- thor showed himself both living and dying to be eminently, in his speculative views a philosopher, and in spirit a chris- tian, there will be found in his writings a philosophy that is religious, and a religion that is philosophical. With these views the work is again commended to the Christian public, in the belief that it will ever be received with favor by the reflecting and the candid of all parties, and that whenever it is read in the spirit that dictated it, it will be eminently useful. Burlinaton, Dec. 26, 1839. J. M. \ I) V E RT r S E M E NT T O T H E F O U R T II I- () N I) N EDITION This corrected edition of the Aids to Reflection is commen- ded to Christian readers, in the hope and the trust that the power which the book has already exercised over hundreds, it may, by God's furtherance, hereafter exercise over thou- sands. 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 dan- ger 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 disregarded to depreciate the appointed ordinances of grace ; — between those who, confounding the sensuous Understand- ing varying in every individual, with the universal Reason, the image of God, the same in all men, inculcate a so-called faith, having no demonstrated harmony with the attributes of God, or the essential laws of humanity, and being some- times inconsistent with both ; and those again who, requiring a logical proof of that which, though not contradicting, does in its very kind transcend, our reason, virtually deny the ex- istence of true faith altogether ; — between these almost equal enemies of the truth, Coleridge — in all his worlff , but pre-eminently in this — has kindled an inextinguishable bea- con of warning and of guidance. In so doing, he has taken ADVERTISEMENT. 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. The Editor had intended to offer to the reader a few words by way cf introduction to some of the leading points of philosophy contained in this volume. But he has been de- lighted to find the work already done to his hand, in a man- ner superior to anything he could have hoped to accomplish himself, by an affectionate disciple of Coleridge on the other side of the Atlantic. The following Essay- was written by the Rev. James Marsh, President of the University of Ver- mont, United States of America, and prefixed by him to his edition of the Aids to Reflection, published at Burlington in 1S29. The Editor has printed this Essay entire ; — as well out of respect for its author, as believing that the few para- graphs in it, having a more special reference to the state of opinion in America, will not be altogether without an inter- est of their own to the attentive observers of the progress of Truth in this or any other country. Lincoln's Inn, 25th April, 1839, PRELIM IN A RY ESSAY IJY JAMKI3 MARS]!, D. D. Whethkh the present state of religious feeling, and the pre- vailing topics of theological inquiry among us, are particu- larly favorable to the success of the Work herewith offered to the Public, can be determined only by the result. The question, however, has not been left unconsidered ; and how- ever that may be, it is not a work, the value of which de- pends essentially upon its relation to the passing controver- sies of the day. Unless I distrust my own feelings and con- victions altogether, I must suppose, that for some, I hope for many, minds, it will have a deep and enduring interest. Of those classes, for whose use it is more especially designated in the Author's Preface, I trust there are many also in this country, who will justly appreciate the objects at which it aims, and avail themselves of its instruction and assistance. I could wish it might be received, by all who concern them- selves in religious inquiries and instruction especially, in the spirit which seems to me to have animated its great and admira- ble author ; and I hesitate not to say, that to all of every class, who shall so receive it, and peruse it with the attention and thoughtfulness, which it demands and deserves, it will be found by experience to furnish, what its title imports, " Aids to Reflection" on subjects, upon which every man is bound to reflect deeply and in earnest. What the specific objects of the Work are, and for whom it is written, may be learned in a few words from the Preface of the Author. From this, too, it will be seen to be profes- sedly It i.-. designed to aid those who wis! struction, 01 .ice in th tin i The 10 AIDS TO REFLECTION. plan and composition of the Work will to most readers pro- bably appear somewhat anomalous ; but reflection upon the nature of the objects aimed at, and some little experience of its results, may convince them that the method adopted is not without its advantages. It is important to observe, that it is designed, as its general characteristic, to aid reflection, and for the most part upon subjects which can be learned and understood only by the exercise of reflection in the strict and proper sense of that term. It was not so much to teach a speculative system of doctrines built upon established premi- ses, for which a different method would have been obviously preferable, as to turn the mind continually back upon the pre- mises themselves — upon the inherent grounds of truth and error in its own being. The only way, in which it is possi- ble for any one to learn the science of words, which is one of the objects to be sought in the present Work, and the true import of those words especially, which most concern us as rational and accountable beings, is by reflecting upon, and bringing forth into distinct consciousness, those mental acts which the words are intended to designate. We must disco- ver and distinctly apprehend different meanings, before we can appropriate to each a several word, or understand the words so appropriated by others. Now it is not too much to say, that most men, and even a large proportion of educated men, do not reflect sufficiently upon their own inward being, upon the constituent laws of their own understanding, upon the mysterious powers and agencies of reason, and conscience, and will, to apprehend with much distinctness the objects to be named, or of course to refer the names with correctness to their several objects. Hence the necessity of associating the study of words with the study of morals and religion ; and that is the most effectual method of instruction, which ena- bles the teacher most successfully to fix the attention upon a definite meaning, that is, in these studies, upon a particulai act, or process, or law of the mind — to call k into distinct consciousness, and assign to it its proper name, so that the PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 11 name shall thenceforth have for the learner a distinct, defi- nite, and intelligible sense. To impress upon the reader the importance of this, and to exemplify it in the particular sub- jects taken up in the Work, is a leading aim of the Author throughout ; and it is obviously the only possible way by which we can arrive at any satisfactory and conclusive re- sults on subjects of philosophy, morals, and religion. The first principles, the ultimate grounds, of these, so far as they are possible objects of knowledge for us, must be sought and found in the laws of our being, or they are not found at all. The knowledge of these terminates in the knowledge of our- selves, of our rational and personal being, of our proper and distinctive humanity, and of that Divine Being, in whose image we are created. " We must retire inward," says St. Bernard, " if we would ascend upward." It is by self-in- spection, by reflecting upon the mysterious grounds of our own being, that we can alone arrive at any rational know- ledge of the central and absolute ground of all being. It is by this only, that we can discover that principle of unity and consistency, which reason instinctively seeks after, which shell reduce to an harmonious system all our views of truth and of being, and destitute of which all the knowledge that comes to us from without is fragmentary, and in its relation to our highest interests as rational beings but the patch-work of vanity. Now, of necessity, the only method, by which another can aid our efforts in the work of reflection, is by first reflecting himself, and so pointing out the process and marking the re- sult by words, that we can repeat it, and try the conclusion by our own consciousness. If he have rejected aright, if he have excluded all causes of self-deception, and directed his thoughts by those principles of truth and reason, and by those laws of the understanding, which belong in common to all men, his conclusions must be true for all. We have only to repeat the process, impartially to reflect ourselves, unbiassed by received opinions, and undeceived by the idols of our own 12 UDS TO REFLECTION. understandings, and we shall find the same truths in the dvpths of onr own self-consciousness. I am persuaded that such for the most part, will be found to be the case with re- gard to the principles developed in the present Work, and that those who, with serious reflection and an unbiassed love of truth, will refer them to the laws of thought in their own minds, to the requirements of their own reason, will find there a witness to their truth. Viewing the Work in this manner, therefore, as an instruc- tive and safe guide to the knowledge of what it concerns all men to know, I cannot but consider it in itself as a work of great and permanent value to any Christian community. Whatever indeed tends to awaken and cherish the power, and to form the habit, of reflection upon the great constituent principles of our own permanent being and proper humanity, and upon the abiding laws of truth and duty, as revealed in our reason and conscience, cannot but promote our highest interests as moral and rational beings. Even if the particu- lar conclusions, to which the Author has arrived, should prove erroneous, the evil is comparatively of little importance, if he have at the same time communicated to our minds such powers of thought, as will enable us to detect his errors, and attain by our own efforts to a more perfect knowledge of the truth. That some of his views may not be erroneous, Or that they are to be received on his authority, the Author, I presume, would be the last to affirm ; and although in the nature of the case it was impossible for him to aid reflection without anticipating and in some measure influencing the re- sults, yet the primary tendency and design of the Work is, not to establish this or that system, but to cultivate in every mind the power and the will to seek earnestly and steadfast- ly for the truth in the only direction, in which it can ever be found. The work Is no further controversial, than every work must be, " that is writ with freedom and reason" upon subjects of the same kind ; and if it be found at variance with existing opinions and modes of philosophizing, it is not necessarily to be considered the fault of the writer. PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 13 In republishing the Work in this country, I could wish that it might be received by nil, for whose instruction it was de- signed, simply as a didactic work, on its own merits, and without controversy. I must not, however, be supposed ig- norant of its bearing upon those questions, which have so often been, and still are, the prevailing topics of theological controversy among us. It was indeed incumbent on me, be- fore inviting the attention of the religious community to the Work, to consider its relation to existing opinions, and its probable influence on the progress of truth. This I have done with as severe thought as I am capable of bestowing up- on any subject, and I trust too with no want of deference and conscientious regard to the feelings and opinions of oth- ers. I have not attempted to disguise from myself, nor do 1 wish to disguise from the readers of the Work, the inconsis- tency of some of its leading principles with much that is taught and received in our theological circles. Should it gain much of the public attention in any way, it will become, as it ought to do, an object of special and deep interest to all, who would contend for the truth, and labor to establish it upon a permanent basis. I venture to assure such, even those of them who arc most capable of comprehending" the philo- sophical grounds of truth in our speculative systems of the- ology, thai in its relation to this whole subject they will find it to be a Work of great depth and power, and whether right or wrong, eminently deserving their attention. It is not to be supposed that all who read, or even all who compre- hend it, will be convinced of the soundness of its views, or be prepared to abandon those which they have long consid- ered essential to the truth. To those, whose understandings by long habit have become limited in their powers of appre- hension, and as it were identified with certain schemes of doctrine, certain modes of contemplating all that pertains to religious truth, it may appear novel, strange, and unintelligi- ble, or even dangerous in its tendency, and be to them an oc- casion of offence, lint I have no fear that anv earnest and 14 AIDS TO REFLECTION. single-hearted lover of the truth as it is in Jesus, who will free his mind from the idols of preconceived opinion, and give himself time and opportunity to understand the Work by such reflection as the nature of the subject renders una- voidable, will find in it any cause of offence, or any source of alarm. If the work become the occasion of controversy at all, I should expect it from those, who, instead of reflec- ting deeply upon the first principles of truth in their own reason and conscience and in the word of God, are more accustomed to speculate — that is, from premisses given or as- sumed, but considered unquestionable, as the constituted point of observation, to look abroad upon the whole field of their intellectual vision, and thence to decide upon the true form and dimensions of all which meets their view. To such 1 would say with deference, that the merits of this work cannot be determined by the merely relative aspect of its doctrines, as seen from the high ground of any prevailing metaphysical or theological system. Those on the contrary who will seek to comprehend it by reflection, to learn the true meaning of the whole and of all its parts, by retiring into their own minds and finding there the true point of observa- tion for each, will not be in haste to question the truth or the tendency of its principles. I make these remarks, because I am anxious, as far as may be, to anticipate the causeless fears of all, who earnestly pray and labor for the promotion of the truth, and to preclude that unprofitable controversy, which might arise from hasty or prejudiced views of a Work like this. At the same time I should be far from deprecating any discussion which might tend to unfold more fully the principles which it teaches, or to exhibit more distinctly its true bearing upon the interests of theological science and of spiritual religion. It is to promote this object, indeed, that I am induced in the remarks which follow to offer some ol my own thoughts on these subjects, imperfect I am well aware, and such as, for that reason, as well as others, world- ly prudence might require me to suppress. If. however, I PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 15 may induce reflecting men, and those who are engaged in theological inquiries especially, to indulge a suspicion that all truth, which it is important for them to know, is not con- tained in the systems of doctrine usually taught, and that this Work may be worthy of their serious and reflecting perusal, my chief object will be accomplished. I shall of course not need to anticipate in detail the contents of the Work itself, but shall aim simply to point out what I consider its distin- guishing and essential character and tendency, and then di- rect the attention of my readers to some of those general feelings and views on the subjects of religious truth, and of those particulars in the prevailing philosophy of the age, which seem to me to be exerting an injurious influence on the cause of theological science and of spiritual religion, and not only to furnish a fit occasion, but to create an impe- rious demand, for a work like that which is here offered to the public. In regard then to the distinguishing character and tenden- cy of the Work itself, it has already been stated to be di- dactic, and designed to aid reflection on the principles and grounds of truth in our own being ; but, in another point of view, and with reference to my present object, it might rath- er be denominated a philosophical statement and vindi- cation OF THE DISTINCTIVELY SPIRITUAL AND PECULIAR DOC- TRINES of the christian system. In order to understand more clearly the import of this statement, and the relation ol the Author's views to those exhibited in other systems, the reader is requested to examine in the first place, what he considers the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and what he means by the terms spirit and spiritual. A synoptical view of what he considers peculiar to Christianity as a reve- lation is given in Aph. VII. on Spiritual Religion, and, if I mistake not, will be found essentially to coincide, though not perhaps in the language employed, with what among us are termed the Evangelical doctrines of religion. Those who arc anxious to examine further into the orthodoxy ]6 AIDS TO REFLECTION. of the Work in connection with this statement, may con- sult the articles on original sin and redemption though I must forewarn them, that it will require much study in con- nexion with the other parts of the Work, before one unac- customed to the Author's language, and unacquainted with his views, can fully appreciate the merit of what may be pe- culiar in his mode of treating those subjects. With regard to the term spiritual, it may be sufficient to remark here, that he regards it as having a specific import, and maintains that in the sense of the New Testament spiritual and nat- ural are contradistinguished, so that what is spiritual is diffe- rent in kind from that which is natural, and is in fact super- natural. So, too, while morality is something more than prudence, religion, the spiritual life, is something more than morality. In vindicating the peculiar doctrines of the Christian sys- tem so stated, and a faith in the reality of agencies and modes of being essentially spiritual or supernatural, he aims to show their consistency with reason and with the true prin- ciples of philosophy, and that indeed, so far from being irra- tional, CHRISTIAN FAITH IS THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN REA- SON. By reflection upon the subjective grounds of know- ledge and faith in the human mind itself, and by an analysis of its faculties, he developes the distinguishing characteris- tics and necessary relations of the natural and the spiritual in our modes of being and knowing, and the all-important fact, that although the former does not comprehend the lat- ter, yet neither does it preclude its existence. He proves, that " the scheme of Christianity, though not discoverable by reason, is yet in accordance with it — that link follows link by necessary consequence — that religion passes out ot the ken of reason only where the eye of reason has readied its own horizon — and thai faith is then but its continuation." Instead of adopting, like the popular metaphysicians of the day, a system of philosophy at war with religion, and which tends inevitably to undermine our belief in die reality of am PRELIMINARY ESSA? I J thing spiritual in the only proper sense of thai word, and then coldly and ambiguously referring as for the support of our faith to the authority of Revelation, he boldly asserts the re ality of something distinctively spiritual in man, and the fu- tility of all those modes of philosophizing, in which this is not recognized, or which are incompatible with it. He con- siders it the highest and most rational purpose of any system of philosophy, at least of one professing to be Christian, to investigate those higher and peculiar attributes, which dis- tinguish us from "brutes that perish — which are the image of God in us, and constitute our proper humanity. It is in his view the proper business and the duty of the Christian phi- losopher to remove all appearance of contradiction between the several manifestations of the one Divine Word, to recon- cile reason with revelation, and thus to justify the ways of God to man. The methods by which he accomplishes this, either in regard to the terms in which he enunciates the great doctrines of the Gospel, or the peculiar views of phi- losophy by which he reconciles them with the subjective grounds of faith in the universal reason of man, need not be stated here. I will merely observe, that the key to his sys- tem will be found in the distinctions, which he makes and il- lustrates between nature and free-will, and between the un- derstanding and reason. It may meet the prejudices of some to remark farther, that in philosophizing on the grounds of our faith he docs not profess nor aim to solve all mysteries, and to bring all truth within the compre- hension of the understanding. A truth may be mysterious, and the primary ground of all truth and reality must be so. But though we may believe what passeth all understand- ing, we cannot believe what is absurd, or contradictory to reason. "\yhether the Work be well executed, according to the idea of it, as now given, or whether the Author have accom- plished his purpose, must be determined by those who are ca- pable of judging, when they shall have examined and reflee- 3 18 AIDS TO REFLECTION. ted upon the whole as it deserves. The inquiry which I have now to propose to my readers is, whether the idea itself be a rational one, and whether the purpose of the Author be one which a wise man and a Christian ought to aim at, or which in the present state of our religious interests, and of our theological science, specially needs to be accom- plished. No one, who has had occasion to observe the general feelings and views of our religious community for a few years past, can be ignorant, that a strong prejudice exists against the introduction of philosophy, in any form, in the discussion of theological subjects. The terms philosophy and meta- physics, even reason and rational, seem, in the minds of those most devoted to the support of religious truth, to have forfeited their original, and to have acquired a new import, especially in relation to matters of faith. By a philosophi- cal view of religious truth would generally be understood a view, not only varying from the religion of the Bible in the form and manner of presenting it, but at war with it ; and a rational religion is supposed to be of course something di- verse from revealed religion. A philosophical and rational system of religious truth would by most readers among us, if I mistake not, be supposed a system deriving its doctrines not from revelation, but from the speculative reason of men, or at least relying on that only for their credibility. That these terms have been used to designate such systems, and that the prejudice against reason and philosophy so employed is not, therefore, without cause, I need not deny ; nor would any friend of revealed truth be less disposed to give credence to such systems, than the Author of the Work before us. But, on the other hand, a moment's reflection only can be necessary to convince any man, attentive to the use of lan- guage, that we do at the same time employ these terms in relation to truth generally in a better and much higher sense. Rational, as contradistinguished from irrational and absurd. certainly denotes a quality, which every man would be dis- PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 19 posed to claim, not only for himself, but for his religious opin- ions. Now, the adjective reasonable having acquired a dif- ferent use and signification, the word rational is the adjec- tive corresponding in sense to the substantive reason, and signifies what is conformed to reason. In one sense, then, all men would appeal to reason in behalf of their religious faith ; they would deny that it was irrational or absurd. If we do not in this sense adhere to reason, we forfeit our pre- rogative as rational beings, and our faith is no better than the bewildered dream of a man who has lost his reason. Nay, I maintain that when we use the term in this higher sense, it is impossible for us to believe on any authority what is directly contradictory to reason and seen to be so. No evidence from another source, and no authority could convince us, that a proposition in geometry, for example, is false, which our rea- son intuitively discovers to be true. Now if we suppose (and we may at least suppose this,) that reason has the same pow- er of intuitive insight in relation to certain moral and spirit- ual truths, as in relation to the truths of geometry, then it would be equally impossible to divest us of our belief of those truths. Furthermore, we are not only unable to believe the same proposition to be false, which our reason sees to be true, but we cannot believe another proposition, which by the exercise of the same rational faculty we see to be incompatible with the former, or to contradict it. We may, and probably often do, receive with a certain kind and degree of credence opin- ions, which reflection would show to be incompatible. But when we have reflected, and discovered the inconsistency, we cannot retain both. We cannot believe two contradictory propositions knowing them to be such. It would be irration- al to do so. Again, we cannot conceive it possible, that what by the same power of intuition we see to be universally and neces- sarily true should appear otherwise to any other rational be- ing. We cannot, for example, but consider the propositions %Q AIDS TO HEFLKCTION. of geometry as necessarily true for all rational beings. So, too, a little reflection, I think, will convince any one, that we attribute the same necessity of reason to the principles of moral rectitude. What in the clear day-light of our reason, and after mature reflection, we see to be right, we cannot believe to be wrong in the view of other rational beings in the distinct exercise of their reason. Nay, in regard to those truths, which are clearly submitted to the view of our reason, and which we behold with distinct and steadfast in- tuitions, we necessarily attribute to the Supreme Reason, to the Divine Mind, views the same, or coincident, with those of our own reason. We cannot, (I say it with reverence and I trust with some apprehension of the importance of the asser- tion,) we cannot believe that to be right in the view of the Su- preme Reason, which is clearly and decidedly wrong in the view of our own. It would be contradictory to reason, it would be irrational, to believe it, and therefore we cannot do so, till we lose our reason, or cease to exercise it. I would ask, now, whether this be not an authorized use of the words reason and rational, and whether so used they do not mean something. If it be so — and I appeal to the mind of every man capable of reflection and of understanding the use of language, if it be not— then there is meaning in the terms universal reason, and unity of reason, as used in this work. There is, and can be, in this highest sense of the word, but one reason, and whatever contradicts that reason, being seen to do so, cannot be received as matter either of knowledge or faith. To reconcile religion with reason used in this sense, therefore, and to justify the ways of God to man, or in the view of reason, is so far from being irrational that reason imperatively demands it of us. We cannot as rational beings, believe a proposition on the grounds of reason, and deny it on the authority of revelation. We cannot be- lieve a proposition in philosophy, and deny the same propo- sition in theology ; nor can we believe two incompatible pro- positions on the different grounds of reason and revelation. PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 21 So far as we compare our thoughts, the objects of our know ledge and faith, and by reflection refer them to their common measure in the universal laws of reason, so far the instinct of reason impels us to reject whatever is contradictory and absurd, and to bring unity and consistency into all our views of truth. Thus, in the language of the Author of this Work, though "the word rational has been strangely abused of late times, this must not disincline us to the weighty considera- tion, that though tfulness, and a desire to rest all our convic- tions on grounds of right reason, arc inseparable from the character of a Christian." But I beg the reader to observe, that in relation to the doc- trines of spiritual religion — to all that he considers the pecu- liar doctrines of the Christian revelation, the Author assigns to reason only a negative validity. It does not teach us what those doctrines are, or what they are not, except that they are not, and cannot be, such as contradict the clear convic- tions of right reason. But his views on this point are fully stated in the Work. If then it be our prerogative, as rational beings, and our duty as Christians, to think, as well as to act, rationally , — to see that our convictions of truth rest on the grounds of right reason ; and if it be one of the clearest dictates of reason, that we should endeavor to shun, and on discovery should re- ject, whatever is contradictory to the universal laws of thought, or to doctrines already established, I know not by what means we are to avoid the application of philosophy, at least to some extent, in the study of theology. For to determine what are the grounds of right reason, what are those ultimate truths, and those universal laws of thought, which we cannot rationally contradict, and by reflection to compare with these whatever is proposed for our belief, is in fact, to philoso- phize ; and whoever does this to a greater or less extent, is so far a philosopher in the best and highest sense of the word. To this extent we are bound to philosophize in the- ology, as well as in every other «;cienre. For what is not ra- AIDS TO REFLECTION. tional in theology, is, of course, irrational, and cannot be of the household of faith : and to determine whether it be rational in the sense already explained or not. is the province of phi- losophy. It is in this sense that the Work before us is to be considered a philosophical work, namely, that it proves the doctrines of the Christian Faith to be rational, and exhibits philosophical grounds for the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. The reality of those experiences, or states of being, winch constitute experimental or spiritual religion, rests on other grounds. It is incumbent on the philosopher to free them from the contradictions of reason, and nothing more ; and who will deny, that to do this is a purpose worthy of the ablest philosopher and the most devoted Christian ? Is it not desirable to convince all men that the doctrines, which we affirm to be revealed in the Gospel, are not contradictory to the requirements of reason and conscience? Is it not, on the other hand, vastly important to the cause of religious truth, and even to the practical influence of religion in our own minds, and the minds of the community at large, that we should attain and exhibit views of philosophy and doc- trines in metaphysics, which are at least compatible with, if they do not specially favour, those views of religion, which, on other grounds, we find it our duty to believe and main- tain ? For, I beg it may be observed, as a point of great moment, that it is not the method of the genuine philoso- pher to separate his philosophy and religion, and adopting his principles independently in each, to leave them to be recon- ciled or not, as the case may be. He has, and can have, rationally but one system, in which his philosophy becomes religious, and his religion philosophical. Nor am I disposed, in compliance with popular opinion, to limit the application of this remark, as is usually done, to the mere external evi- dences of revelation. The philosophy which we adopt will and must influence not only our decision of the question, whether a book be of divine authority, but our views also of its meanine:. PRELIMINARY ESSAY. ^3 But this is a subject, on which, if possible, I would avoid being misunderstood, and must, therefore, exhibit it more fully, even at the risk of repeating what was said before, or is elsewhere found in the Work. It has been already, I be- lieve, distinctly enough slated, that reason and philosophy ought to prevent our reception of doctrines claiming the au- thority of revelation only so far as the very necessities of our rational being require. However mysterious the thing affirm- ed may be, though it passeth all understanding, if it can- not be shown to contradict the unchangeable principles of right reason, its being incomprehensible to our understand- ings is not an obstacle to our faith. If it contradict reason, we cannot believe it, but must conclude, either that the wri- ting is not of divine authority, or that the language has been misinterpreted. So far it seems to me, that our philosophy lit to modify our views of theological doctrines, and our mode of interpreting the language of an inspired writer. But then we must be cautious, that we philosophize rightly, and " do not call that reason which is not so." Otherwise we may be led by the supposed requirements of reason to in- terpret metaphorically, what ought to be received literally, and evacuate the Scriptures of their most important doc- trines. But what I mean to say here is, that we cannot avoid the application of our philosophy in the interpretation of the language of Scripture, and in the explanation of the doc- s of religion generally. We cannot avoid incurring the danger just alluded to of philosophizing erroneously, even to the extent of rejecting as irrational that which tends to the perfection of reason itself. And hence I maintain, that in- stead of pretending to exclude philosophy from our religious inquiries, it is very important that we philosophize in ear- nest — that we should endeavour by profound reflection to learn the real requirements of reason, and attain a true knowledge of ourselves. If any dispute the n of thus combining the study of philosophy with that of religion, 1 would beg them to 24 AIDS TO REFLECTION. point out the age since that of the Apostles, in which the prevailing metaphysical opinions have not distinctly manifes- ted themselves in the prevailing views of religion ; and if, as I fully believe will be the case, they fail to discover a single system of theology, a single volume on the subject of the Christian religion, in which the author's views are not modified by the metaphysical opinions of the age or of the individual, it would be desirable to ascertain, whether this influence be accidental or necessary. The metaphysician analyzes the faculties and operations of the human mind, and teaches us to arrange, to classify, and to name them, according to his views of their various distinctions. The language of the Scriptures, at least to a great extent, speaks of subjects that can be understood only by a reference to those same powers and processes of thought and feeling, which we have learned to think of, and to name, according to our particular system of metaphysics. How is it possible then to avoid interpre- ting the one by the other ? Let us suppose, for example, £hat a man has studied and adopted the philosophy of Brown, is it possible for him to interpret the Sth chapter of Romans, without having his views of its meaning influenced by his philosophy ? Would he not unavoidably interpret the lan- guage and explain the doctrines, which it contains, different- ly from one, who should have adopted such views of the hu- man mind as are taught in this work ? I know it is custo- mary to disclaim the influence of philosophy in the business of interpretation, and every writer now-a-days on such sub- jects will assure us, that he has nothing to do with metaphy- sics, but is guided only by common sense and the laws of interpretation. But I should like to know how a man comes by any common sense in relation to the movements and laws of his intellectual and moral being without metaphysics. What is the common sense of a Hottentot on subjects of this sort ? I have no hesitation in saying, that from the very na- ture of the case, it is nearly if not quite, impossible for any man entirely to separate his philosophical views of the hu- PRELIMINARY ESSA¥. -•"> .'nan mind from li is reflections on religious subjects. Proba- bly no man has endeavoured more faithfully to do this, per- haps no one has succeeded better in giving the truth of Scripture free from the glosses of metaphysics, than Professor Stuart. Yet I should risk little in saying, that a reader deep ly versed in the language of metaphysics, extensively ac- quainted with the philosophy of different ages, and the pe- culiar phraseology of different schools might ascertain his metaphysical system from many a passage of his Commenta- ry oji the Epistle to the Hebrews. What then, let me ask. is the possible use to the cause of truth and of religion, from thus perpetually decrying philosophy in theological inquiries, when we cannot avoid it if we would ? Every man, who has reflected at all, has his metaphysics ; and if he reads on religious subjects, he interprets and understands the lan- guage, which he employs, by the help of his metaphysics. He cannot do otherwise. — And the proper inquiry is, not whether we admit our philosophy into our theological and religious investigations, but whether our philosophy be right and true. For myself, I am fully convinced that we can have no right views of theology till we have right views of the human mind ; and that these are to be acquired only by laborious and persevering reflection. My belief is, that the distinctions unfolded in this Work will place us in the way to truth, and relieve us from numerous perplexities, in which we arc involved by the philosophy which we have so long ta- ken for our guide. For we are greatly deceived, if we sup- pose for a moment that the systems of theology which have been received among us, or even the theoretical views which are now most popular, are free from the entanglements of worldly wisdom. The readers of this Work will be able to see, I think, more clearly the import of this remark, and the true bearing of the received views of philosophy on our theo- logical inquiries. Those who study the Work without pre- judice, and adopt its principles to any considerable extent, will understand too h<>w deeply an age may be ensnared in ! "2(1 AIDS TO REFLECTION. the metaphysical webs of its own weaving, or entangled in the net which the speculations of a former generation have thrown over it, and yet suppose itself blessed with a perfect immunity from the dreaded evils of metaphysics. But before I proceed to remark on those particulars, in which our prevailing philosophy seems to be dangerous in its tendency, and unfriendly to the cause of spiritual religion, I must beg leave to guard myself and the Work from misappre- hension on another point of great importance in its relation to the whole subject. While it is maintained that reason and philosophy, in their true character, ought to have a cer- tain degree and extent of influence in the formation of our religious system, and that our metaphysical opinions, what- ever they may be, will, almost invariably, modify more or less our theoretical views of religious truth generally, it is yet a special object of the Author of this Work to show that the spiritual life, or what among us is termed experimental religion, is, in itself, and in its own proper growth and developement, essentially distinct from the forms and processes of the un- derstanding ; and that, although a true faith cannot contra- dict any universal principle of speculative reason, it is yet in a certain sense independent of the discursions of philosophy, and in its proper nature beyond the reach " of positive science and theoretical insight." " Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation ; but a life. Not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." It is not, therefore, so properly a species of knowledge, as a form of being. And although the theoretical views of the understanding, and the motives of prudence which it presents, may be, to a certain extent, connected with the developememt of the spiritual principle of religious life in the Christain, yet a true and living faith is not incompatible with at least some degree of speculative error. As the acquisition of merely speculative knowledge cannot of itself communicate the principle of spi- ritual life, so neither does that principle, and the living process of its growth, depend wholly, at least, upon the PRELIMINARY ESSA^ , 27 degree of speculative knowledge with which it co-exists. That religion, of which our blessed Saviour is himself the essential Form and the living Word, and to which he imparts the actuating Spirit, has a principle of unity and consistency in itself distinct from the unity and consistency of our theo- retical views. Of this we have evidence in every day's ob- servation of Christian character ; for how often do we see and acknowledge the power of religion, and the growth of a spiritual life, in minds but little gifted with speculative know- ledge, and little versed in the forms of logic or philosophy ! How obviously, too, does the living principle of religion mani- fest the same specific character, the same essential form, amidst all the diversities of condition, of talents, of educa- tion, and natural disposition, with which it is associated ; every where rising above nature, and the powers of the na- tural man, and unlimited in its goings on by the forms in which the understanding seeks to comprehend and confine its spiritual energies. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; and it is no less true now, than in the age of the Apostles, that in all lands, and in every variety of cir- cumstances, the manifestations of spiritual life are essentially the same ; and all who truly believe in heart, however di- verse in natural condition, in the character of their under- standings, and even in their theoretical views of truth, are one in Christ Jesus. The essential faith is not to be found in the understanding or the speculative theory, but " 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." Speculative systems of theolo- gy indeed have often had little connexion with the essential spirit of religion, and are usually little more than schemes resulting from the strivings of the finite understanding to comprehend and exhibit under its own forms and conditions a mode of being and spiritual truths essentially diverse from their proper objects, and with which they are incommensu- rate. 28 AIDS TO REFLECTION. This I am aware is an imperfect, and I fear may be an un- intelligible view of a subject exceedingly difficult of appre- hension at the best. If so, I must beg the reader's indul- gence, and request him to suspend his judgment, as to the absolute intelligibility of it, till he becomes acquainted with the language and sentiments of the Work itself. It will, however, I hope, be so far understood, at least, as to answer the purpose for which it was introduced — of precluding the supposition that, in the remarks which preceded, or in those which follow, any suspicion is intended to be expressed, with regard to the religious principles or the essential faith of those who hold the opinions in question. According to this view of the inherent and essential nature of Spiritual Religion, as ex- isting in the practical reason of man, we may not only ad- mit, but can better understand, the possibility of what every charitable Christian will acknowledge to be a fact, so far as human observation can determine facts of this sort — that a man may be truly religious, and essentially a believer at heart, while his understanding is sadly bewildered with the attempt to comprehend and express philosophically, what yet he feels and knows spiritually. It is indeed impossible for us to tell, how far the understanding may impose upon itself by partial views and false disguises, without perverting the will, or es- tranging it from the laws and the authority of reason and the divine word. We cannot say to what extent a false sys- tem of philosophy and metaphysical opinions, which in their natural and uncounteracted tendency would go to destroy all religion, may be received in a Christian community, and yet the power of spiritual religion retain its hold and its efficacy in the hearts of the people. We may perhaps believe that, in opposition to all the might of false philosophy, so long as the great body of the people have the Bible in their hands and are taught to reverence and receive its heavenly instruc- tions, though the Church may suffer injury from unwise and unfruitful speculations, it will yet be preserved ; and that the spiritual seed of the divine word, though mingled with many PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 2i> tares of worldly wisdom and philosophy falsely so called, will yet spring up, and bear fruit unto everlasting life. But though we may hope and believe this, we cannot avoid believing, at the same time, that injury must result from an unsuspecting confidence in metaphysical opinions, which are essentially at variance with the doctrines of Revelation. Espe- cially must the effect be injurious where those opinions lead gradually to alter our views of religion itself, and of all that is peculiar in the Christian system The great mass of com- munity, who know little of metaphysics, and whose faith in revelation is not so readily influenced by speculations not im- mediately connected with it, may, indeed, for a time, escape the evil, and continue to receive with meekness the ingrafted word. But in the minds of the better educated, especially those who think and follow out their conclusions with reso- lute independence of thought, the result must be either a loss of confidence in the opinions themselves, or a rejection of all those parts of the Christian system which are at variance with them. Under particular circumstances, indeed, where both the metaphysical errors, and the great doctrines of the Christian Faith, have a strong hold upon the minds of a com- munity, a protracted struggle may take place, and earnest and long-continued efforts may be made to reconcile opin- ions, which we are resolved to maintain, with a faith which our consciences will not permit us to abandon. But so long as the effort continues, and such opinions retain their hold upon our confidence, it must be by some diminution of the fulness and simplicity of our faith. To a greater or less de- gree, according to the education and habits of thought in dif- ferent individuals, the word of God is received with doubt, or with such glozing modifications as enervate its power. Thus the light from heaven is intercepted, and we are left to a shadow-fight of mciaphj sical schemes and metaphorical in- terpretations. While one parly, with conscientious and car- nest eadeavours, and at great expense of talent and ingenui- ty, contends for the Faith, and among the possible shapings 30 AIDS TO REFLECTION. of the received metaphysical system, seeks that which will best comport with the simplicity of the Gospel, — another more boldly interprets the language of the Gospel itself in conformity with those views of religion to which their phi- losophy seems obviously to conduct them. The substantial being and the living energy of the Word, which is not only the light but the life of men, is either misapprehended or de- nied by all parties ; and even those who contend for what they conceive the literal import of the Gospel, do it — as they must to avoid too glaring absurdity — with such explanations of its import, as make it become, in no small degree, the words of man's wisdom, rather than a simple demonstra- tion of the Spirit, and of power. Hence, although such as have experienced the spiritual and life-giving power of the Divine Word, may be able, through the promised aids of the Spirit, to overcome the natural tendency of speculative error, and, by the law of the Spirit of life which is in them, may at length be made free from the law of sin and death, yet who can tell how much they may lose of the blessings of the Gospel, and be retarded in their spiritual growth when they are but too often fed with the lifeless and starveling products of the human understanding, instead of that living bread which came down from hearten ? Who can tell, moreover, how many, through the prevalence of such philosophical er- rors as lead to misconceptions of the truth, or create a pre- judice against it, and thus tend to intercept the light from heaven, may continue in their ignorance, alienated from the life of God, and groping in the darkness of their own un- derstandings ? But however that may be, enlightened Christians, and es- pecially Christian instructers, know it to be their duty, as far as possible, to prepare the way for the full and unobstructed influence of the Gospel, to do all in their power to remove those natural prejudices, and those errors of the understan- ding, which are obstacles to the truth, that the word of God mav find access to the heart, and conscience, and reason ol PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 31 every man. that it may have free course, and run, and be glorified. My own belief, that such obstacles to the influ- ence of truth exist in the speculative and metaphysical opin- ions generally adopted in this country, and that the present Work is in some measure at least calculated to remove them, is pretty clearly indicated by the remarks which I have alrea- dy made. But, to be perfectly explicit on the subject, I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the natural ten- dency of some of the leading principles of our prevailing system of metaphysics, and those which must unavoidably have more or less influence on our theoretical views of reli- gion, are of an injurious and dangerous tendency, and that so long as we retain them, however we may profess to exclude their influence from our theological inquiries, and from the interpretation of Scripture, we can maintain no consistent system of Scriptural theology, nor clearly and distinctly ap- prehend the spiritual import of Scripture language. The grounds of this conviction I shall proceed to exhibit, though only in a partial manner, as I could not do more without anti- cipating the contents of the Work itself, instead of merely preparing the reader to peruse them with attention. I am aware, too, that some of the language, which I have already employed, and shall be obliged to employ, will not convey its full import to the reader, till he becomes acquainted with some of the leading principles and distinctions unfolded in the Work. But this, also, is an evil which I saw no means of avoiding without incurring a greater, and writing a book instead of a brief essay. Let it be understood, then, without further preface, that by the prevailing system of metaphysics, I mean the system, of which in modern times Locke is the reputed author, and the leading principles of which, with various modifications, more or less important, but not altering its essential character, have been almost universally received in this country. It should be observed, too, that the causes enumerated by the Author, as having elevated it to its " pride of place" in Europe ,$•> AIDS TO REFLECTION. have been aided by other favouring circumstances here. In the minds of our religious community, especially, some of its most important doctrines have become associated with names justly loved and revered among ourselves, and so con- nected with all our theoretical views of religion, that a man can hardly hope to question their validity without hazarding his reputation, not only for orthodoxy, but even for common sense. To controvert, for example, the prevailing doctrines with regard to the freedom of the will, the sources of our knowledge, the nature of the understanding as containing the controlling principles of our whole being, and the univer- sality of the law of cause and effect, even in connection with the argument and the authority of the most powerful intel- lect of the age, may even now be worse than in vain. Yet I have reasons for believing there are some among us, and that their number is fast increasing, who are willing to revise their opinions on these subjects, and who will contemplate the views presented in this Work with a liberal, and some- thing of a prepared feeling, of curiosity. The difficulties in which men find themselves involved by the received doctrines on these subjects, in their most anxious efforts to explain and defend the peculiar doctrines of spiritual religion, have led many to suspect that there must be some lurking error in the premises. It is not that these principles lead us to mysteries which we cannot comprehend ; they are found, or believed at least by many, to involve us in absurdities which we can com- prehend. It is necessary, indeed, only to form some notion of the distinctive and appropriate import of the term spirit- ual, as opposed to natural in the New Testament, and then to look at the writings, or hear the discussions, in which the doctrines of the Spirit and of spiritual influences are taught and defended, to see the insurmountable nature of the obsta- cles, which these metaphysical dogmas throw in the way of the most powerful minds. To those who shall read this Work with any degree of reflection, it must, I think, be obvious, that something more is implied in the continual opposition of PRELIMINARY tSbW. 33 these terms in the New Testament, than can be explained consistentlj with the prevailing opinions on the subjects above enumerated ; and that through their influence oui highest notions of that distinction have been rendered con- fused, contradictory, and inadequate. I have already direc- ted the attention of the reader to those parts of the Work, where this distinction is unfolded; and had I no other grounds than the arguments and views there exhibited, I should be convinced that so long as we hold the doctrines of Locke and the Scotch metaphysicians respecting power. cause and effect, motives, and tiie freedom of the will, we not only can make and defend no essential distinction be- tween that which is natural, and that which is spiritual, but we cannot even find rational grounds for the feeling of moral obligation, and the distinction between regret and remorse. According to the system of these authors, as nearly and distinctly as my limits will permit me to state it, the same law of cause and efl'ect is the law of the universe. It ex- tends to the moral and spiritual — if in courtesy these terms may still be used — no less than to the properly natural pow- ers and agencies of our being. The acts of the free-will are pre-determined by a cause out of the will, according to the same law of cause and effect which controls the changes in the physical world. We have no notion of power but uniformity of antecedent and consequent. The notion of a power in the will to act freely is therefore nothing more than an inherent capacity of being acted upon, agreeably to its nature, and according io a fixed law, by the motives which ate present in the understanding. I feel authorized to take this statement partly from Brown's Philosophy, be- cause that work lias been decidedly approved by our high- est theological authorities; and indeed it would not be es- sential!} if expressed in the precise terms used by any of the writers most usually quoted i : : l io these subjt i 34 AIDS TO REFLECTION. I am aware that variations may be found in the mode of stating these doctrines, but I think every candid reader, who is acquainted with the metaphysics and theology of this coun- try, will admit the above to be a fair representation of the form in which they are generally received. I am aware, too, that much has been said and written to make out consistently with these general principles, a distinction between natural and moral causes, natural and moral ability, and inability, and the like. But I beg all lovers of sound and rational phi- losophy to look carefully at the general principles, and see whether there be, in fact, ground left for any such distinc- tions of this kind as are worth contending for. My first step in arguing with a defender of these principles, and of the distinctions in question, as connected with them, would be to ask for his definition of nature and natural. And when he had arrived at a distinctive general notion of the import of these, it would appear, if I mistake not, that he had first subjected our whole being to the law of nature, and then contended for the existence of something which is not nature. For in their relation to the law of moral rectitude, and to the feeling of moral responsibility, what difference is there, and what difference can there be, between what are called natural and those which are called moral powers and affections, if they are all under the control of the same universal law of cause and effect ? If it still be a mere nature, and the de- terminations of our will be controlled by causes out of the will, according to our nature, then I maintain that a moral nature has no more to do with the feeling of responsibility than any other nature. Perhaps the difficulty may be made more obvious in this way. It will be admitted that brutes are possessed of various natures, some innocent or useful, otherwise noxious, but all alike irresponsible in a moral point of view. But why ? Simply because they act in accordance with their natures. They possess, each according to its proper nature, certain ap- petites and susceptibilities, which are stimulated and acted PRELIMINARY ESSAT. 3o upon by (heir appropriate objects in the world of the senses; and the relation — the law of action and reaction — subsisting between these specific susceptibilities and their corresponding outward objects, constitutes their nature. They have a pow- er of selecting and choosing in the world of sense the ob- jects appropriate to the wants of their nature ; but that nature is the sole law of their being. The power of choice is but a part of it. instrumental in accomplishing its ends, but not capable of rising above it, of controlling its impulses, and of determining itself with reference to a purely ideal law, distinct from their nature. They act in accordance with the law of cause and effect, which constitutes their several natures, and cannot do otherwise. They are, therefore, not responsible — not capable of guilt, or of remorse. Now lot u£ suppose another beings possessing, in addition to the susceptibilities of the brute, certain other specific susceptibilities with their correlative objects, either in the sen- sible world, or in a future world, but that these are subjected, like the other to the same binding and inalienable law of cause and effect. What, I ask is the amount of the diffe- rence thus supposed between this being and the brute ? The supposed addition, it is to be understood, is merely an addi- tion to its nature ; and the only power of will belonging to it is, as in the case of the brute, only a capacity of choosing and acting uniformly in accordance with its nature. These additional susceptibilities still act but as they are acted upon ; and the will is determined accordingly. What advantage is gained in this case by railing these supposed additions moral affections, and their correlative stimulants moral causes ? Do we thereby find any rational ground for the feeling of moral responsibility, for conscience, for remorse ? The being acts according to its nature, and why is it blameworthy more than the brute ? Tf the moral cause existing out of the will be a power or cause which, in its relation to the specific sus- ceptibility of the moral being, produces under the same cir- cumstances uniformly the «ame result, according to the law of 36 AIDS TO KEFLECTION. causo and effect ; if the acts of the will be subject to tic* same law, as a mere link in the chain of antecedents and consequents, and thus a part of our nature, what is gained, T ask again, by the distinction of a moral and a physical na- ture ? It is still only a nature under the law of cause and effect, and the liberty of the moral being is under the same condition with the liberty of the brute. Both are free to follow and fulfil the law of their nature, and both are alike bound by that law, as by an adamantine chain. The very conditions of the law preclude the possibility of a power to act Otherwise than according to their nature. They preclude the very idea of a free-will, and render the feeling of moral responsibility not an enigma merely, not a mystery; but a self-contradiction and an absurdity. Turn the matter as we will — call these correlatives, name- ly, the inherent susceptibilities and the causes acting on them from without, natural, or moral, or spiritual — so long as their action and reaction, or the law of reciprocity, which consti- tutes their specific natures, is considered as the controlling law of our whole being, so long as We refuse to admit the existence in the will of a power capable of rising above this law, and controlling its operation by an act of absolute self- determination, so long w T e shall be involved in perplexities both in morals and religion. At all events, the only method of avoiding them will be to adopt the creed of the Necessi- tarians entire, to give man over to an irresponsible nature as a better sort of animal, and resolve the will of the Supreme Reason into a blind and irrational fate. I am well aware of the objections that will be made to this statement, and especially the demonstrated incornprehensible- ness of a self-determining power. To this I may be permit- ted to answer, that, admitting the power to originate an act or state of mind to be beyond the capacity of our understan- dings to comprehend, it is still not contradictory to reason ; and that I find it more easy to believe the existence of that, which is simply incomprehensible to my understanding* than PRELIMINARY ESSAT. 37 of that which involves an absurdity for my reason. I v< - tine to affirm, moreover, that however we may bring our un- derstandings into bondage to the more comprehensible doc- trine, simply because it is comprehensible under the forms of the understanding, every man does, in fact, believe himself possessed of freedom in the higher sense of self-detcrmina- tion. Every man's conscience commands him to believe it, as the only rational ground of moral responsibility. Every man's conscience, too, betrays the fact that he does believe it, whenever for a moment he indulges the feeling either of moral self-approbation, or of remorse. Nor can we on any other grounds justify the ways of God to man upon the sup- position that he inflicts or will inflict any other punishment than that which is simply remedial or disciplinary. But this subject will be found more fully explained in the course of the Work. My present object is merely to show the neces- sity of some system in relation to these subjects different from the received, one. It may perhaps be thought, that the language used above is too strong and too positive. But I venture to ask every candid man, at least every one who has not committed him- self by writing and publishing on the subject, whether, in considering the great questions connected with moral accoun- tability and the doctrine of rewards and punishments, he has not felt himself pressed with such difficulties as those above stated ; and whether he has ever been able fully to satisfy his reason, that there was not a lurking contradiction in the idea of a being created and placed under the law of its nature, and possessing at the same time a feeling of moral obligation to fulfil a law above its nature. That many have been in this state of mind I know. I know, too. that some whose moral and religious feelings had led them to a full belief in the doctrines of spiritual religion, but who at the same time had bren taught to receive the prevailing opinions in meta- physics, have found these opinions carrying ihem unavoidably, if they would be consequent in their reasonings, and not do 38 AIDS TO REFLECTION. violence to their reason, to adopt a system of religion which does not prefess to be spiritual, and thus have been compel- led to choose between their philosophy and their religion. In most cases indeed, where men reflect at all, I am satisfied that it requires all the force of authority, and all the influence of education, to carry the mind over these difficulties ; and that then it is only by a vague belief, that, though we cannot see how, there must be some method of reconciling what seems to be so contradictory. If examples were wanting to prove that serious and trying difficulties are felt to exist here, enough may be found, as it has appeared to me, in the controversy respecting the nature and origin of sin, which is at this moment interesting the public mind. Let any impartial observer trace the progress of that discussion, and after examining the distinctions which are made or attempted to be made, decide whether the sub- ject, as there presented, be not involved in difficulties, which cannot be solved on the principles to which, hitherto, both parties have adhered ; whether, holding as they do the same premises in regard to the freedom of the will, they can avoid coming to the same conclusion in regard to the nature and origin of sin ; whether, in fact, the distinctions aimed at must not prove merely verbal distinctions, and the controversy a fruitless one. But in the September number of the Christian Spectator, for 1829, the reader will find remarks on this sub- ject, to which 1 beg leave to refer him, and which I could wish him attentively to consider in connexion with the re- marks which I have made. I allude to the correspondence with the editors near the end of the number. The letter there inserted is said to be. and obviously is, from the pen of a very learned and able writer: and I confess it has been no small gratification and encouragement to me, while labouring to bring this Work and this subject before the public, to find such a state of feeling expressed, concerning the great ques- tion at issue, by such a writer. It will be seen by a reference to p. 545 of the C. S., that he places the " nucleus of the PRELIMINARY LSSAV. 39 dispute" just where it is plaeed in this Work and in the above remarks. It will be seen, loo, that by throwing authorities aside, and studying his own mind, he has " come seriously to doubt/' whether the received opinions with regard to motives, the law of cause and effect, and the freedom of the will, may not be erroneous. They appear to him " to be border- ing on fatalism, if not actually embracing it." He doubts, whether the mind may not have within itself the adequate cause of its own acts ; whether indeed it have not a self-de- termining power, " for the power in question involves the idea of originating volition. Less than this it cannot be con- ceived to involve, and yet be free agency." Now tins is just the view offered in the present Work : and, as it seems to me, these are just the doubts and conclusions which every one will entertain, who lays aside authority, and reflects upon the aoings-on of his own mind, and the dictates of his own rea- son and conscience. But let us look for a moment at the remarks of the editors in reply to the letter above quoted. They maintain, in rela- tion to original sin and the perversion of the will, that from either the original or the acquired strength of certain natu- ral appetites, principles of self-love, &c, " left to themselves," the corruption of the heart will certainly follow. " In every instance the will does, in fact, yield to the demands of these. But whenever it thus yielded, there was power to the contra- ry ; otherwise there could be no freedom oi moral action." Now I beg leave to place my finger on the phrase in italics, and ask the editors what they mean by it. If they hold the common doctrines with regard to the relation of cause and effect, and with regard to power as connected with that rela- tion, and apply these to the acts of the will, I can see no more possibility of conceiving a power to the contrary in this case, than of conceiving such a power in the current of a river. But if they mean to assert the existence in the will of an actual power to rise above the demands of appetite, &c. above the law of nature, and to decide arbitrarily, whether 40 AIDS TO REFLECTION. to yield or not to yield, then they admit that the will ia not determined absolutely by the extraneous cause, but is in fact seZ/'-determined. They agree with the letter-writer ; and the question for them is at rest. Thus, whatever distinctions may be attempted here, there can be no real distinction but between an irresponsible nature and a will that is self-deter- mined. I cannot but be aware, that the views of the will here ex- hibited will meet with strong prejudices in a large portion, at least, of our religious community. I could wish that all such would carefully distinguish between the Author's views of the doctrines of religion, and the philosophical grounds on which he supposes those doctrines are to be defended. If no one disputes, and I trust no one will dispute, the substantial ortho- doxy of the Work, without first carefully examining what has been the orthodoxy of the Church in general, and of the great body of the Reformers, then I should hope it may be wisely considered, whether, as a question of philosophy, the meta- physical principles of this Work are not in themselves more in accordance with the doctrines of a spiritual religion, and better suited to their explanation and defence, than those above treated of. If on examination it cannot be disputed that they are, then, if not before, I trust the two systems may be compared without undue partiality, and the simple ques- tion of the truth of each may be determined by that calm and persevering reflection, which alone can determine ques- tions of this sort. If the system here taught be true, then it will follow, not, be it observed, that our religion is necessarily wrong, or our essential faith erroneous, but that the ■philosophical grounds. on which we are accustomed to defend our faith, are unsafe, and that their natural tendency is to error. If the spirit of ihe Gospel still exert its influence ; if a truly spiritual reli- gion-be maintained, it is in opposition to our philosophy, and not at all by its aid, I know it will be said, that the practi- cal results of our peculiar forms of doctrine are at variance PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 41 with these remarks. But this I am not prepared to admit. True, religion and religious institutions have flourished ; the Gospel, in many parts of our country, lias been affectionate- ly and faithfully preached by great and good men ; the word and the Spirit of God have been communicated to us in rich abundance; and I rejoice, with heartfelt joy and thanksgiv- ing, in the belief, that thereby multitudes have been regene- rated to a new and spiritual life. But so were equal or grea- ter effects produced under the preaching of Baxter, and Howe, and other good and faithful men of the same age, wilh none of the peculiarities of our theological systems. Neither reason nor experience indeed furnish any ground for believing, that the living and life-giving power of the Divine Word has ever derived any portion of its efficacy, in the con- version of the heart to God, from the forms of metaphysical theology, with which the human understanding has invested it. It requires, moreover, but little knowledge of the histo- ry of philosophy, and of the writings of the 16th and 17th centuries to know, that the opinions of the Reformers and of all the great diyines of that period, on subjects of this sort, were far different from those of Mr. Locke and his followers, and were in fact essentially the same with those taught in this Work. This last remark applies not only to the views entertained by the eminent philosophers and divines of that period on the particular subject above discussed, but to the distinctions made, and the language employed, by them with reference to other points of no less importance in the consti- tution of our being. It must have been observed by the reader of the foregoing es, that I have used several words, especially understan- ding and reason, in a sense somewhat diverse from their present acceptation ; and the occasion of this I suppose would be partly understood from my having already directed the attention of the reader to the distinction exhibited be- tween these words in the Work, and from the remarks made on the ambiguity of the word ' reason 5 in iis common use. 6 42 AIDS TO REFLECTION. I now proceed to remark, that the ambiguity spoken of, and the consequent perplexity in regard to the use and authority of reason have arisen from the habit of using, since the time of Locke, the terms understanding and reason indiscriminate- ly, and thus confounding a distinction clearly marked in the philosophy and in the language of the older writers. Alas ' had the terms only been confounded, or had we suffered only an inconvenient ambiguity of language, there would be com- paratively but little cause for earnestness upon the subject ; or had our views of the things signified by these terms been only partially confused, and had we still retained correct no- tions of our prerogative, as rational and spiritual beings, the consequences might have been less deplorable. But the mis- fortune is, that the powers of understanding and reason have not merely been blended and confounded in the view of our philosophy, the higher and far more characteristic, as an essen- tial constituent of our proper humanity, has been as it were obscured and hidden from our observation in the inferior power, which belongs to us in common with the brutes which perish. According to the old, the more spiritual, and genu- ine philosophy, the distinguishing attributes of our humani- ty — that image of God in which man alone was created of all the dwellers upon the earth, and in virtue of which he was placed at the head of this lower world, was said to be found in the reason and free-will. But understanding these in their strict and proper sense, and according to the true ideas of them, as contemplated by the older metaphysicians, we have literally, if the system of Locke and the popular philosophy of the day be true, neither the one nor the other ol these — neither reason nor free-will. What they esteemed the image of God in the soul, and considered as distinguish- ing us specifically, and so vastly too, above each and all of the irrational animals, is found, according to this system, to have in fact no real existence. The reality neither of the free-will, nor of any of those laws or ideas, which spring from, or rather constitute, reason, can be authenticated by PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 13 the sort of proof which is demanded, and we must therefore relinquish our prerogative, and take our place with becoming humility among our more unpretending companions. In the ascending scries of powers, enumerated by Milton, with so much philosophical truth, as well as beauty of language, in the fifth book of Paradise Lost, he mentions Fancy and understanding, whence the soul Reason receives. And reason is her leing, Discursive or intuitive. But the highest power here, that winch is the being of the soid, considered as any thing differing in kind from the un- derstanding, has no place in our popular metaphysics. Thus we have only the understanding, " the faculty judging ac- cording to sense," a faculty of abstracting and generali- zing, of contrivance and forecast, as the highest of our in- tellecual powers ; and this we are expressly taught belongs to us in common with brutes. Nay, these views of our es- sential being, consequences and all, are adopted by men, whom one would suppose religion, if not philosophy, should Jiave taught their utter inadequateness to the true and essen- tial constituents of our humanity. Dr. Paley tells us in his Natural Theology, that only " contrivance," a power obvi- ously and confessedly belonging to brutes, is necessary to constitute personality. His whole system both of theology and morals neither teaches, nor implies, the existence of an) specific difference either between the understanding and rea- son, or between nature and the will, ft does not imply the existence of any power in man, which does not obviously belong in a greater or less degree to irrational animals. Dr. Fleming, another reverend prelate in the English Church, in his " Philosophy of Zoology," maintains in express terms, that we have no faculties differing in kind from those which belong to brutes. How many other learned, and reverend, and wise men adopt the same opinions. I know not : though 44 AIDS TO REFLECTION. these are obviously not the peculiar views of the individuals, but conclusions resulting' from the essential principles of their system. If, then, there is no better system, if this be the genuine philosophy, and founded in the nature of things, there is no help for us, and we must believe it — if we can. But most certainly it will follow, that we ought, as fast as the prejudices of education will permit, to rid ourselves of cer- tain notions of prerogative, and certain feelings of our own superiority, which somehow have been strangely prevalent among Our race. For though we have indeed, according to this system, a little More understanding than other animals — can abstract and generalize and forecast events, and the con- sequences of our actions, and compare motives more skilfully than they ; though we have thus more knowledge and can circumvent them ; though we have more power and can sub- due them ; yet, as to any distinctive and peculiar character- istic- — as to any inherent and essential worth, we are after all but little better — though we may be better off — than our dogs and horses. There is no essential difference, and we may ration- ally doubt — at least we might do so, if by the supposition we were rational beings — whether our fellow animals of the ken- nel and the stall are not unjustly deprived of certain perso- nal rights, and whether a dog charged with trespass may not rationally claim to be tried by a jury of his peers. Now however trifling and ridiculous this may appear, I would ask in truth and soberness, if it be not a fair and legitimate in- ference from the premises, and whether the absurdity of the one does not demonstrate the utter falsity of the other. And where, I would beg to know, shall we look, according to the popular system of philosophy, for that image of God in which we are created ? Is it a thing of degrees 1 and is it simply because we have something more of the same facul- ties which belong to brutes, that we become the objects of God's special and fatherly care, the distinguished objects of his Providence, and the sole objects of his Grace ? — Doth God take care for oxen 1 But why not ? PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 45 I assure my readers, that T have no desire to treat with dis- respect and contumely the opinions of great or good men but the distinction in question, and the assertion and exhibi- tion of the higher prerogatives of reason, as an essential con- stituent of our being, are so vitally important, in my appre- hension, to the formation and support of any rational system of philosophy, and — no less than the distinction before trea- ted of — so pregnant of consequences to the interests of truth. in morals, and religion, and indeed of all truth, that mere opinion and the authority of names may well be disregarded. The discussion, moreover, relates to facts, and to such facts too, as are not to be learned from the instruction, or received on the authority, of any man. They must be ascertained by every man for himself, by reflection upon the processes and laws of his own inward being, or they are not learned at all to any valuable purpose. We do indeed find in ourselves then, as no one will deny, certain powers of intelligence, which we have abundant reason to believe the brutes possess in common with us in a greater or less degree. The functions of the understanding, as treated of in the popular systems of metaphysics, its faculties of attention, of abstraction, of gene- ralization, the power of forethought and contrivance, of adap- ting means to ends, and the law of association, may be, so far as we can judge, severally represented more or less ade- quately in the instinctive intelligence of the higher orders of brutes. But, not to anticipate too far a topic treated of in the Work, do these, or any and all the faculties which we discover in irrational animals, satisfactorily account to a re- flecting mind for all the phenomena which are presented to our observation in our own consciousness ? Would any sup- posable addition to the degree merely of those powers which we ascribe to brutes, render them rational beings, and remove the sacred distinction, which law and reason have sanctioned, between things and persons? Will any such addition ac- count for our having — what the brute is not supposed to have — the pure ideas of the geometrician, the power of ideal 46 AIDS TO REFLECTION. construction, the intuition of geometrical or other necessary and universal truths ? Would it give rise' in irrational ani- mals, to a law of moral rectitude and to conscience — to the feelings of moral responsibility and remorse ? Would it awa- ken them to a reflective self-consciousness, and lead them to form and contemplate the ideas of the soul, of free-will, of immortality, and of God. It seems to me. that we have only to reflect for a serious hour upon what we mean by these, and then to compare them with our notion of what belongs to a brute, its inherent powers and their correlative objects, to feel that they are utterly incompatible — that in the posses- sion of these we enjoy a prerogative, which we cannot dis- claim without a violation of reason, and a voluntary abase- ment of ourselves — and that we must therefore be possessed of some peculiar powers — of some source of ideas distinct from the understanding, differing in kind from any nnd all of those which belong to us in common with inferior and irrational animals. But what these powers are, or what is the precise nature of the distinction between the understanding and reason, it is not my province, nor have I undertaken, to show. My ob- ject is merely to illustrate its necessity, and the palpable ob- scurity, vagueness, and deficiency, in this respect, of the mode of philosophizing, which is held in so high honour among us. The distinction itself will be found illustrated with some of its important bearings in the Work, and in the notes attached to it ; and cannot be too carefully studied — in connexion with that between nature and the will — by the student who would acquire distinct and intelli- gible notions of what constitutes the truly spiritual in our be- ing, or find rational grounds for the possibility of a truly spi- ritual religion. Indeed, could I succeed in fixing the atten- tion of the reader upon this distinction, in such a way as to secure his candid and reflecting perusal of the Work, I should consider any personal effort or sacrifice abundantly recom- pensed. Nor am I alone in this view of its importance. A PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 47 literary friend, whose opinion on this subject would be valued by all who know the soundness of his scholarship, says, in a letter just now received. — "if you can once get the atten- tion of thinking men fixed on his distinction between the reason and the understanding, you will have done enough to reward the labour of a life. As prominent a place as it holds in the writings of Coleridge, he seems to me far enough from making too much of it." No person of serious and philoso- phical mind, I am confident, can reflect upon the subject, enough to understand it in its various aspects, without arri- ving at the same views of the importance of the distinction, whatever may be his conviction with regard to its truth. But indeed the only grounds, which I find, to apprehend that the reality of the distinction and the importance of the consequences resulting from it, will be much longer denied and rejected among us, is in the overweening assurance, which prevails with regard to the adequateness and perfection of the system of philosophy which is already received. It is taken for granted, as a fact undisputed and indisputable, that this is the most enlightened age of the world, not only in regard to the more general diffusion of certain points of prac- tical knowledge ; in which, probably, it may be so, but in all respects ; that our whole system of the philosophy of mind, as derived from Lord Bacon especially, is the only one, which has any claims to common sense ; and that all distinc- tions not recognized in that are consequently unworthy of om regard. What those Reformers, to whose transcendant pow- ers of mind, and to whose characters as truly spiritual divines, we are accustomed to look with feelings of so much general regard, might find to say in favour of their philosophy, few take the pains to inquire. Neither the} nor the great philo- sophers with whom they held communion on subjects of this sort, can appear among us to speak in their own defence; and even the huge folios and quartos, in which, though dead, thej yel speak — and ought to be heard — have seldom strayed to this , o'aiara x«i uaXa (ttftalois ituxaQiLnut. Omnis divin n'ui at ton or.i vti.ncer. 80 AIDS TO REFLECTION. ritual is of the same kind, (o^ooytfiov) though not of the same order, with the religion itself — not arbitrary or conventional, as types and hieroglyphics are in relation to the things ex- pressed by them ; but inseparable, consubstantiatcd (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 instru- ment of its communion with the present world ; yet not ' ter- restrial,'' 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 mo- ving and informing spirit. APHORISM XXV. Woe to the man, who will believe neither power, freedom, nor morality, because he no where finds either entire, or un- mixed with sin, thraldom and infirmity. In the natural and intellectual realms, we distinguish what we can separate ; and in the moral world, we must distinguish in order to separate. Yea, in the clear distinction of good from evil the process of separation commences. COMMENT. It was customary with religious men in former times, to make a rule of taking every morning some text, or apho- rism,* for their occasional meditation during the day, and * 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 up, from ; and horizein, to bound or limit; whence our horizon. — in order to get the full sense of INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 81 thus to fill up the intervals of their attention to business. J do not point it out for imitation, as knowing too well, how apt these self-imposed rules are to degenerate into supersti- tion or hollow ness : otherwise I would have recommended the following as the first exercise. ABHORISM XXVI. ft is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish ; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to divide. In the former we may contemplate the source of superstition and idolatry ;* in the latter of schism, heresy ,f and a seditious and sectarian spirit.t- APHORISM XXVII Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and wor- thiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms : and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism. 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 dis- trict can be contemplated apart from the rest, as a whole in itself. This twofold act of circumscribing, and detaching, when it is exerted by the mind on subjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorize, and the result an aphorism. * To rotjTov SirjQijxaOtv elg no/LXwv , c n<-:< iSmxt\raq. — Damasc. dc Myst. Egypt; that is, They divided the intelligible into many and several indi- vidualities. t From ai'oeaig. Though well aware of its formal and apparent deriva- tion from haireo, I am inclined to refer both words to airo, as the primitive term, containing the primary visual image, and therefore should explain hceresis as a wilful raising into public notice, 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. j 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 displayed. A seditious spirit may (it is possible, though not probable), exist in the coun- cil-chamber of a palace as strongly as in a mob in'Palace-Yard ; and a sec- tarinn spirit in a cathedral, no lesn than in n conventicle. 11 8'2 AIDS TO REFLECTION. APHORISM XXVIII. On the prudenti:il influence which the fear or foresight of the conse- quences of his actions, in respect of his own los3 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 exceptions are made to be the general rule ; — when what was vouchsafed to the apostle of the Gentiles by especial grace, and for an especial purpose, namely, a con- version* begun and completed in the same moment, is de- manded 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 waver- ing and require many days before it points aright, and re- mains steady to the pole. So is it ordinarily with the soul, after it has begun to free itself from the disturbing forces of the flesh, and the world, and to convertf 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 vo/xog (' the apostle, con- firmed and illustrated as thej are, by so many harmonies in the spiritual 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 — 1 feed inclined to doubt, whether the plan of celebrating marriages universally by the civil magistrate, in the firsl instance, and leaving the religious covenant, and sacramental pledge to the el< ction 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 ht> in intention, rpverential to Christian!- 92 AIDS TO REFLECTION. comes love by an inward fiat of the will, by a completing and sealing act of moral election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of duty. ty. 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. LEJGHTON AND COLERIDGE. With respect to any final aim or end, the greater part of mankind live at hazard. They have no certain harbour 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 ob- ject to aim at ; and if this object be meant by the term hap- piness, (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 bnnum, or ultimate good. What this is, the Bible 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 emo- tion, but in none of them do I find these words, Come unto 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 fortu- Ipud Ciccronem et Platonem, aliosque ejusmodi scriptores, multa sunt ncute dicta, it leniter calentia, se d in iis omnibus hoc non invenio, Venite nri me, 8,-c. [Matt, xii. 28], 94 AIDS TO REFLECTION. nateness, ! NTIAL APHORISMS. 97 the reflected rays of the sun that gave 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 yourself 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 misera- ble because they are wicked, it is likewise true, that many are wicked because they are miserable. Health, cheerfulness, and easy circumstances, the ordinary consequences of tem- perance 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, respect, 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 acknowledgment of a principle differing, not merely in degree but in kind, from the faculties and in- stincts 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 pleasurable or agreeable sensation, without confusion of terms, be honoured vjjith the title of refined, intellectual, ennobling pleasures. For pleasure (and happiness in its proper sense is but the conti- nuity and sum-total of the pleasure winch is allotted or hap- pens to a man. and hence by the Greeks called surv/ia, that is, good-hap, or more religiously eu&xi/xov/a, that is, favourable providence) — pleasure, I say, consists in the harmony be- tween the specific excitability of a living creature, and the exciting causes correspondent thereto. Considered therefore exclusively in and foi itself, the only question i> quantum. 98 AIDS TO REFLECTION. not quale ? How much on the whole ? the contrary, that is, the painful and disagreeable, having been subtracted. The quality is a matter of taste : et de gustibus non est dispu- tandum. No man can judge for another. This, I repeat, appears to me a safer language than the sentences quoted above (that virtue alone is happiness ; that happiness consists in virtue, &c.) sayings which I find it hard to reconcile with other positions of still more frequent occur- rence in the same divines, or with the declaration of St. Paul : " If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.'" At all events, I should rely far more confidently on the con- verse, namely, that to be vicious is to be miserable. 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 desaviunt ij'ce, 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 wretch- ed : 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 mis- ery. — So best, if I err not, may the motives of prudence be held forth, and the impulses of self-love be awakened, in al- liance with truth, and free from the danger of confounding 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 mo- ral nature, and this again the ground-work and pre-condition PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 99 of the spiritual state, in whirl) the humanity strives after god- liness and, in the name and power, and through the preve- nient and assisting graee, 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 religion 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 occasion- ally seem to invert the relations of cause and effect, and for- get that there are acts and determinations of the will and af- fections, the consequences of which may be plainly foreseen, and yet cannot be made our proper and primary motives for such acts and determinations, without destroying or entirely altering the distinct nature and character of the latter. So- phron 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 deter- mining motive for seeking this love and esteem ; and if Con- stantia 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 ? Where- in, if not in this, differs the friendship of worldlings 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 offen- ded, 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 ! APHORISM III. Though prudence in itself i» neither virtue nor spiritual 100 AIDS TO REFLECTION, 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 hab- its? at enmity with God, and a skulking fugitive from thy own conscience ? O, how idle the dispute, whether the lis- tening 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 ren- der, is to do justice and show mercy to thyself. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS, APHORISM I. ^EIGHTOK. What the apostles were in an extraordinary way befitting 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 reconcilement betwixt him and man- kind. APHORISM II. OV THE FEELINGS NATURAL TO INGENUOUS MINDS TOWARDS THOSE WHO HAVE FIRST LED THEM TO REFLECT. LEICHTOH. 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 accepta- ble reception of those which at first were the means of bring- ing men to God, than of others : like the opinion some have of physicians, whom they love. APHORISM III. LE1GHTON AND COLERIDGE. The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object. What, then, is the best know led" 102 AIDS TO REFLECTION. The exactest knowledge of things, is, to know them in their causes ; it is then an excellent thing, and worthy of their endeavours who a-e most desirous of knowledge, to know the best things in their highest causes ; and the hap- piest way of attaining to this knowledge, is, to possess those things, and to know them in experience. APHORISM IV. LEIGIITON. It is one main point of happiness, that he that is happy doth know and judge himself to be so. This being the pe- culiar good of a reasonable creature, it is to be enjoyed in a reasonable way. It is not as the dull renting of a stone, or any other natural body in its natural place ; but the know- ledge 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 can- not too early free the mind from prejudices 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 overlooked or passed by in silence. The following ex- tract, 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 im- pressive view which the Archbishop here gives of those occa- sional revolutionary moments, that turn of the tide in the mind and character of certain individuals, which (taking a r eligious course, and referred immediately to the author of all good) were in his day, more generally than at present, en- titled effectual calling. The theological interpretation and the philosophic validity of this apostolic triad, election, .salvation, and effectual calling, (the latter being the interme- MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 103 diate) will be found anion.: the comments on tlsc aphorisms of spiritual import. For my present purpose it will be suffi- cient if only I prove that the doctrines are in themselves in- nocuous, and may be both holden and taught without any practical ill-consequences, and without detriment to the mo- ral frame. APHORISM V. I. E I G F7 T O \ . Two links of the chain (namely, election and salvation) 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 characters ot God's image in their own souls, those are the counter-part 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 ascertains 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 itseli into the ocean of their eternal salva- tion. If election, effectual calling, and salvation, be inseparably linked together, then, by any one of them a man may lay hold upon all the rest, and may know that his hold is sure : and this is the way wherein we may attain, and ought to seek, the comfortable assurance of the love of God. There- fore make your calling sure, and by that your election ; for that being done, this follows of itself. We arc 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 wiiich points to it. tells him which way he sails : 104 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 re- turn and repercussion of 'the beams of his love shining upon us. Although from present unsanctification, a man cannot in- fer 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 com- fort in all the promises that belong to them, while he remains unholy. REMARK. In addition to the preceding. I select the following para- graphs as having no where seen the terms, spirit, the gifts of the spirit, and the like, so effectually vindicated from the sneers of the sciolist on the one hand, and protected from the perversions of the fanatic on the other. In these para- graphs the Archbishop at once shatters and precipitates the only draw-bridge between the fanatical and the orthodox doc- trine 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 following ; 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 charact< I the vSjiiri* MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 105 manifests its presence, is the only sure pledge and token of its presence ; which is to be, and which safely may he, in- ferred from its practical effects, but of which an immediate know ledge or consciousness is impossible ; and every pre- tence to such knowledge is either hypocrisy or fanatical de- lusion. 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 obe- dience, is within us the evidence of our election, and earnest of our salvation. And whoso are not sanctified and led by this Spirit, the Apostle tells us what is their condition : If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. The stones which are appointed for that glorious temple above, arc 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 th( >e may study the master-works of our elder divines with safely and advantage, if they will accustom themselves to translate the theological terms into their moral equivalents ; 106 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 state of my progress. For ex- ample : render the words, sanctification of the Spirit, or the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, by purity in life and ac- tion from a pure principle. He needs only reflect on his own experience to be con- vinced, that the man makes the motive, and not the motive the man. What is a strong motive to one man, is no mo- tive at all to another. If, then, the man determines the mo- tive, what determines the man — to a good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous course of conduct ? The intelli- gent will, or the self-determining power ? True, in part it is ; and therefore the will is pre-eminently the spiritual con- stituent 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- established 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-instanta- neous 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 everywhere evidences of a unity, which the component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily pre-suppose it as the cause and con- dition of their existing as those parts ; or even of their existing at all. This antecedent unity, or cause and princi- ple 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 tfORAL AM) RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 101 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 agenc) antecedent in the order of operance, yet remaining present as the conservative and re- productive 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 instru- ments, a wondrous fairy tale of nature, magazines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, defences — a house of many chambers, and the owner and inhabitant invisi- ble ! 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 of all surrounding things, sach of which necessi- tates 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 pre- sent 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 reasonable, 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 ethusiastic to entertain a similar belief in relation to the system of intelli- gent and self-conscious beings, to the moral and personal world ? But if in this too, in the great community of per- sons, 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, im- pelled and directed) to act in harmony of inter-communion, must not something be attributed to this all-present power as 108 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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, and (the existence of spirit- ual truths being granted) philosophy is compelled to draw the same conclusion. But though merely negative, it is suf- ficient to render the union of religion and morality conceiva- ble ; sufficient to satisfy an unprejudiced inquirer, that the spiritual doctrines of the Christian religion are not at war with the reasoning faculty, and that if 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 attached to the assertion of the learned and philosophic Apostle, that the Spirit beareth witness ivith our spirit, that is, with the will, as the supernatural in man and the principle of our per- sonality — 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 * Whatever is comprised in the chain and mechanism of cause and ef- fect, of course necessitated, and having its necessity in some other thing, antecedent or concurrent — this is said to be natural ; and the aggregate and system of all such things is Nature. It is, therefore, a contradiction 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 sense, therefore, which is the sense of St. Paul, and indeed of the New Testament through- out, spiritual and supernatural are synonymous. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. L09 on llie will by a predi posing influence from without, as it w< re, though in a spiritual manner, and without suspending or destroying its freedom (the possibility of which is proved to us in the influences of education, of providential occur- rences, and, above all, of example) but that in regenerate souls it 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 in- firmities, may intercede for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Nor is there any danger of fanaticism or en- thusiasm as the consequence of such a belief, if only the at- tention 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 sub- ject, 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 conditions 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 con- sciousness ; 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 knowledge is of high and necessary concern to our moral and religious welfare, from the effects it may safely be inferred by us, from the workings it may be assuredly known ; and the Scriptures furnish the clear and unfailing rules for directing the inquiry, and for drawing the conclusion. * Some distant and faint similitude c-f thi ;, thai merely as a similitude may be innocently used to quiet the fancy, provided it be not imposed on the understanding as an analogoi I in kind, i to us in thi the magnet to awa] e magnetic power in a bar of iron, and (in the instance of the compound magnet) ac- ting in and with the latter 110 AIDS TO REFLECTION. If* any reflecting mind be surprised that the aids of the di- vine 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 move- ments of our own will — the farthest 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 un- known 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 imagination supplies to the understanding. The position of the Aristoteleans, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, on which Mr. Locke's Essay is grounded, is irrefraga- ble : Locke erred only in taking half the truth for a whole truth. Conception is consequent on perception. 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 : What- ever is representable in the forms of time and space, is na- ture. But whatever is comprehended in time and space, is included in the mechanism of cause and effect. And converse- ly, 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 developement 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 form- ing of negative conceptions, negative convictions ; and by spir- itual 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 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. Ill not meaning to speak figuratively, would call the shifting cur- rent 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 minute- ness of this introductory discussion, and in the foreseen risk which I run of exposing the volume at large to the censure which every work, or rather which every writer, must be pre- pared 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 opprobri- ous to the ears of the present generation) metaphysical : though how it is possible that a work not physical, that is ? employed on objects known or believed on the evidence of the senses, should be other than metaphysical, that is treating on subjects, the evidence of which is not derived from the sen- ses, is a problem which critics of this order find it conven- ient to leave unsolved. The author of the present volume, will, indeed, have rea- son to think himself fortunate, if this be all the charge ! — How many smart quotations, which (duly cemented by per- sonal allusions to the author's supposed pursuits, attachments, * " The river windeth at his own sweet will." Wordsworth? s exquisite Sonnet on Westminster Bridge at sun-rise. 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 112 AIDS TO REFLECTION. and infirmaties), 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 Reflec- tion, and commenter on a Scotch Bishop's Platonico-Calvin- istic commentary on St. Peter, belongs to the sect of the JEo- lists, whose fruitful imaginations led them into certain notions w! nch, although in appearance very unaccountable, are not without their mysteries and 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 mystery.' — Tale of the Tub, sec. 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 aph- orisms, and the accompanying 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 theo- logical studies, or, at least, the most important part of them respecting 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 But- ler, that bear on enthusiasm, spiritual operations, and preten- ces 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 profound sense and steady obser- vation, 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 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 1 13 the portraits sketched by these bold masters, and without at- tempting to determine in how many of the enthusiasts brought forward by them in proof of the influence 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 expectation grounded on other men's assurances of t! possessing, an immediate consciousness, a sensible experience, of the Spirit in and during its operation on the soul. It is not enough that you grant them a consciousness of the gifts and graces infused, or an assurance of the spirit- ual origin of the same, grounded on their correspondence to the Scripture promises, and their conformity with the idea of the divine giver. No ! they all alike, it will be found, lay e: im (or at least look forward) to an inward perception of the Spirit itself and of its operating. Whatever must be misrepresented in order to be ridiculed, i in fact not ridiculed ; but the thing substituted for it. It is a satire on something else, coupled with a 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 supernatural, pilloried by Butler, sent to Bedlam by Swift, and (on their re-appearance in public) gibbeted by Warburton, and anatomized by Bish- op Lavingtou, one and all have this for their essential char- acter, 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 unim- aginable 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 ecclesiast- ical history and religious auto-biography, instances are not wanting even of the three latter extravagances ; — this variety in the mode may render the several pretensions more or less offensive to the taste : but with the same absurdity for the 15 114 AIDS TO REFLECTION. reason, tins being derived from a contradiction in terms com- mon and radical to them all alike, the assumption of a some- thing essentially supersensual, that is nevertheless the object of sense, that is. not supersensual. Well then ! — for let me be allowed still to suppose the rea- der present to me, and that I am addressing him in the char- acter of a companion and guide — the positions recommend- ed for your examination not only do not involve, but ex- clude, this inconsistency. And for ought that hitherto ap- pears, 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. If it be objected, that Swift and Warburton did not choose openly to set up the interpretations of later and more ration- al 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 answer), and it is more charit- able 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 re- semble Job's comforters, we will leave both attempts. But (it may be said), a possible conception is not necessa- rily 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 command the facts. In my own person, I would ask the objector, whether he counted the declarations of Scripture 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 MORAL \Mt RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 115 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 prophet, ye cannot understand. Suppose (whai is at least possible^ that the facts should be consequent on the belief, 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 last halted, and from which we now recommence our progress — the state of amoral man, who has already welcomed certain truths of re- ligion, 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 1 say ; — Be- fore you reject the opinions and doctrmes asserted and enfor- ced 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 fa- miliarity with the mad perversions of the doctrine by fanatics in all ages, have connected with the very words, spirit, grace, gifts, operations, etc.. 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 in- stance 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 extravagant conceits, no prac- tical ill-consequences need arise out of the belief of the spirit, and its possible communion 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. 116 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 clinging to another that has neither sense nor purpose, that 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 Scrip- tures promising and asserting such communion are to be ex- plained away into the action of circumstances, and the ne- cessary movements of the vast machine, in one of the circu- lating 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. Jebb, and for some supposed beneficial re-action of praying on the prayer's own mind, should practise it as a species of animal-magnetism 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-judge a doctrine, the utter rejec- tion of which must oppose a formidable obstacle to your accept- ance 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 sixteen 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. With MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 117 such a persuasion, deism would be a more consistent creed. But, alas ! even this will fail you. The utter rejection of all present and ■• ving communion with the universal spirit im- poverishes deism itself, and renders it as cheerless as atheism, from which indeed it would differ only by an obscure imper- sonation of what the atheist receives unpersonified under the name of fate or nature. APHORISM VII. LEIGHTOH AM) COLERIDGE. The proper and natural effect, and in the absence of all dis- turbing or intercepting forces, the certain and sensible ac- companiment 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 earnestly 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 con- veyed. We will not therefore condemn tins mode of speak- ing, though we dare not greatly recommend it. Be it, that there is, truly and in sobriety of speech, enough of just anal- ogy in the subject 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-assurance 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, 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 chameleon darkens in the shade of him that bends over it to ascertain its colours. In like manner, but with yet greater caution, 118 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 it- self, 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 tranquility and joy depend. Thou didst hide thy face, said 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 re- newed 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 anything 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 ungodly man may sleep to death in the lethargy of carnal presumption and im- penitency ; but a true, lively solid peace, he cannot have. — There is no peace to the wicked, saith my God, Tsa. lvii. 21 . APHORISM VIII. WORLDLY HOPES. I.EICillTON. Worldly hopes are not living, but lying hopes ; they die of- ten 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 accompany us no fur- ther. But the lively hope, which is the Christian's portion, answers expectation to the full, and much beyond it, and de- ceives no way but in that^appy way of far exceeding it. A living hope, living in death itself ! The world dares say no more for its device, than Dum spirospero : but the chil- MORAL \M> n \! BORISMS. I I i) (Inn of Clod can add. by virtue of this living hope, Dum ex- spiro spero. APHORISM IX. the worldling's fear. LE1G HTON . - It is a fearful thing when a man and all his hopes die to- gether. 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. I ! K.iri'V \>.T> COLERIDGE. As hethat taketh away a garment in cold toeather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs 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 exasperates and enrages his grief the more ; like ineffectual weak physic, which remove, not the hu- mour, but stirs it and makes it more unquiet. But spiritual joy is seasonable 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 pleas- <> fthe numerous proofs against those who with ;i strange incon sistency hold the Old Testamenl t" have been inspired throughout, and yel '■'ii\ thai thr doctrine of a future state is taught therein. 1;J0 AIDS TO REFLECTION. ing to the imagination, has the charm of propriety, and ex- presses the transition with equal force and liveliness. A grief of recent birth is a sick infant that must have its medi- cine administered in its milk, and sad thoughts are the sor- rowful 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- fiush from the mountain, which only detains the excess of wa- ters from their proper outlet, and makes them foam, roar, and eddy. The soul in her desolation hugs the sorrow closer 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 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 live- liest show of a forced and alien exhilaration. APHORISM XI. Plotinus thanked God, that his soul was not tied to an im- mortal body. APHORISM XII. LEJGHTO.V AND COLERIDGE. What a full confession do we make of our dissatisfaction 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, incomprehensi- ble, immutable, &c. the other as incorruptible, undefiled, and that passeth not away. At all events, this co-incidence, 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 ofLeighton's is ingenious and startling. An- other, and more fruitful, perhaps more solid, inference front MURAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 121 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 abid- ing 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 in a life of lies ; and an evil being, or the being of evil, the last and darkest mystery. APHORISM XIII. THE WISEST USE OF THE IMAGINATION. LEIGIITO*. It is not altogether unprofitable ; yea, it is great wisdom 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 sup- pose the hardest things to 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 side 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 is spoken to men, and therefore it speaks the language of the children of men. This just and pregnant thought was suggested to Leighton In Gen. xxii. 13. The 16 122 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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, nei- ther metaphysically, as they are known by superior intelli- gences ; nor theoretically, 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 walk on the sea of mystery in my way to truth, but in the hope of re- moving a difficulty that presses heavily on the minds of ma- ny who in heart and desire are believers, and which long pressed on my own mind. I venture to add : that on spiritu- al things, and allusively to the mysterious union or conspira- tion 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 ol the spirit sanctified to the Holy One, the Sancti- fier. Now the spirit in man (that is, the will) knows its own state in and by its acts alone : even as in geometrical reason- ing the mind knows its constructive faculty in the act of con- structing, 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 di- vine 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 becomes assured of its own state ; and he will understand, though he may not per- haps adopt my suggestion, that the verse, in which God speaking of himself, says to Abraham, Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, from, me — may be more than merely figurative. An ac- commodation I grant ; but in the thing expressed, and not altogether in the expressions. In arguing with infidels, or with the weak in faith, it is a part of religious prudence, no less than of religious morality, to avoid whatever looks like an MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 123 e\asion. To retain the literal sense, wherever the harmony of Scripture permits, and reason does not forbid, is ever the honester aiici, nine times in ten, the more rational and preg- nant interpretation. The contrary plan is an easy and ap- proved way of getting rid of a difficulty ; but nine times in ten a bad way of solving it. But alas ! there have been too many commentators 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 on- ly figures of speech, the one of most frequent occurrence 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 car- ried to such an extent, as in the doctrinal part of their creed, to leave little else but metaphors. But the reader who wish- es to find this latter subject, and that of the aphorism, treat- ed 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. LEIGHTOH AND COLERIDGE. 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 feeling of afflic- tions. 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. 124 Ains TO REFLECTION. Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic is, perhaps, the nearest to Christianity. Yet even to this sect Christiani- ty is fundamentally opposite. For the Stoic attaches the highest honour (or rather, attaches honor solely) to the per- son 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 bringing 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 Chris- tianity would command ; and under certain circumstances would both command and commend it — commend it, as a healthful symptom in a sick patient ; and command it, as one of the ways and means of changing the feelings, or displac- ing 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 ot 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 with- out a spiritual meaning. There is a sweet and holy blind- ness in Christian 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 supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law with- in 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 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 1 2 5 of this, I had almost said a remote analogy, in organized bod- ies. The lowest class of animals or protozoa, polypi for in- stance, have neither brain nor nerves. Their motive powers are all from without. The sun, light, the warmth, the air 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 appropri- ated ; the spontaneous rises into the voluntary, and finally af- ter 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 with- out, but even against, alien stimulants. That in our present state we have only the dawning of this inward sun (the per- fect law of liberty) will sufficiently limit and qualify the pre- ceding position, if only it have been allowed to produce its two-fold consequence — the excitement of hope and the re- pression of vanity. APHORISM XVI. LF.IGHTOS. An excessive eating or drinking both makes the body sick- ly and lazy, fit for nothing but sleep, and besots the mind, as it clogs up with crudities the way through which the spir- its should pass,* bemiring them, and making them move heav- * 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 he from the theory that has taken its place. 1^6 AIDS TO hEF LECTION. ily, as a coach in a deep way : thus doth all immoderate use of the world and its delights wrong the soul in its spiritual condition, makes it sickly and feeble, full of spiritual distem- pers and inactivity, 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 con- solations 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 Christian, and an- other like a worldling ; it cannot choose but both pain himself and mar the edification of others. 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 preceding generation, in lines which no generation will find inapplicable or super- annuated. God and the world wo 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 woul'd."' MOHAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 1 ^"7 APHORISM XVII. CONTINUED. THE ORDINARY MOTIVE TO INCONSISTENCY. I.RICJHTOff. What though the polite man count thy fashion a little odd and too precise, it is because he knows nothing above the model of goodness which lie hath set himself, and therefore approves of nothing beyond it : he knows not God, and there- fore 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 holi- ness as a singularity ? It :s the only fashion in the highest court, yea, of the King of kings himself. APHORISM XVIII. SUPERFICIAL RECONCILIATIONS, AMD SELF-DECEIT IN FOR- GIVING. LEIGHTON. When after variances, men are brought to an agreement, they are much subject to this, rather to cover their 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. 1:28 AIDS TO REFLECTION. APHORISM XIX. OF THE WORTH AND THE DUTIES OF THE PREACHER. I.EIGHTOW. 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 ordU nance of God for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer of the divine life of grace within us ! And certain- ly, 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 de- light, yet still we miss the right use of it, and turn it from its true end, while we take it not as that ingrafted word ivhichis able to save our souls. (James i. 21.) Thus ought they who preach to speak the word ; to endeav- our their utmost to accommodate it to this end, that sinners may be converted, begotten again, and believers nourished and strengthened in their spiritual life ; to regard no lower end, but aim steadily at that mark. 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 busi- ness, that a frail, sinful man like yourselves should speak a few words in your hearing, yet, look upon it as the way whereinGod communciates 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 inheritance of glory. Consider it thus, which is its true notion ; and then, what can be so precious ? APHORISM XX. LEIGHTON. The difference is great in our natural life, in some persons MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 1*23 especially ; that they who in infancy were so feeble, and wrap- ped up as others in swaddling clothes, yet afterwards come to excel in wisdom and in 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 begin- nings of grace, and our after perfection, that fulness of know- ledge that we look for. and that crown of immortality which all they are born to who arc born of God. But as in the faces or actions of some children, characters 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 shepherd's children with whom he was brought up, &e.) so also, certainly, in these children of God, there be some characters and evidences that they are born for heaven by their new birth. That holiness and meekness, that patience and faith which shine in the ac- tions and sufferings of the saints, are characters of their Fath- er's image, and show their high original, and foretel their glo- ry to come ; such a glory as doth not only surpass the world's thoughts, but the thoughts of the children of God themselves, 1 John iii. 2, COMMENT. This aphorism would, it may see, have been placed more fitly in the chapter following. In placing it here, I 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 re- trograde. 2. As a pledge of this progression, or, at least, as the form in which the propulsive tendency shows itself, there arc certain hopes, aspirations, yearnings, that with more or less of consciousness, rise and stir in the heart of true morality as the sap in the full-formed stem of a rose flows towards the bud, within which the flow is maturing. 3. No one, whose own experience authorizes him to confirm the truth of this statement, can have been conversant with the IT 1^9 AIDS TO REFLECTION. volumes of religious biography, can have perused (for in- stance) the lives of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Wishart, Sir Thomas More, Bernard Gilpin, Bishop Bedel, or of Egede, Stewart, and the missionaries of the frozen world, without an occasional conviction, that these men lived under extra- ordinary influences, which in each instance and in all ages of the Christian sera bear the same chcracters, and both in the accompaniments and the results evidently refer to a com- mon origin. And what can this be ? is the question that must needs force itself on the mind in the first moment of re- flection on a phenomenon so interesting and apparently so a- nomalous. The answer is as necessarily 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 rela- tion to some real agency, distinct from what is experienced or acknowledged by the world at large, for which as not mere- ly natural on the one hand, and yet not assumed to be mirac- ulous* 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 favor of the reality of a state other and higher than the mere moral man, whose religionf consists in morality, has attained under these convictions ; can the existence of a transitional state appear other than probable ? or that these very convictions when accompanied by correspondent dispositions and stir- rings of the heart, are among the marks and indications of * In check of fanatical pretensions, it is expedient to confine the term mi- raculous, to cases where the senses are appealed to, in proof of something 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 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 appa- rent contradiction to) the inductions of outward experienee, is essentially religious. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 130 such a state ? And thinking it not unlikely that among the readers of this volume, there may be found some individuals, 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 mor- ality to a spiritual religion, with a view to their interests I placed this aphorism under the present head. APHORISM XXL I.EIGHT05. 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' custom, 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. I.EIGHTON. The hearing and reading of the word, under which I com- prise theological sludies generally, are alike defective when pursued without increase of knowledge, and when pursued chiefly for increase of knowledge. To seek no more than a present delight, that evanisheth 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 to them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well upon an instrument ; 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 frequent discourse 131 AIDS TO REFLECTION. of the word and the divine truths that, are in it ; which, where it is governed with Christian prudence, is not to be despised 5 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 monster ; 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 proper growth of the children of God, Apposite to their case is Epictetus's comparison of the sheep ; they return not what they eat in grass, but in wool. APHORISM XXIII. THE SUM OE CHURCH HISTORY. LEIGHTOtt: In times of peace, the Church may dilate more, and build as it were in breadth, but in times of trouble, it arises more in height ; it is then built upwards : as in cities where men are straitened, they build usually higher than in the country. APHORISM XXIV. worthy to be framed and hung up in the library of every theological student. I.E1GHTON AND COLERIDGE. Where there is a great deal of smoke and no clear flame, it argues much moisture in the matter, yet it witnesseth certain- ly that there is a fire there ; and therefore dubious question- ing 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. Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing MOKAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 132 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 better than Christianity, and end in loving himself l>cttcr than all. APHORISM XXVI. THE ABSENCE OF DISPUTES, AND A GENERAL AVEKSION TO RE- LIGIOUS CONTROV^K. IES, NO PROOF OF TRUE UNANIMITY. LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. The boasted peaceableness about questions of faith too of- ten proceeds from a superficial temper, and not seldom from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value, and from indifference to religion. Toleration is an herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of indifference ; but the weed has none of the virtues of the medical plant, reared by humility in the garden of zeal. Those, who regard religions as matters of taste, may consistently include all religious dif- ferences in the old adage, De gustibus non est disputan- dum. And many there be among these of Gallio's temper, who care for none of these things, and who account ; ques- tions in religion, as he did, but matter 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 knit- ting together, but a freezing together, as cold congregates all bodies how heterogeneous soever, sticks, stones, and water ; but heat makes first a separation of different things, and then unites those that are of the same nature. Much of our common union of minds, T 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 133 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 seri- ous reflections, as in a tenfold degree more applicable to the present times than to the age in which it was written. We all know, that 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 pro- ceed 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 LIFtc), THE BANE OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. tEIGHTON.. It is a base, poor thing for a man to seek himself: far be- low 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 : 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 it 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 some- what, 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 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 134 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. i.iuiiri on. The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but take it up; for possibly, said they, the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little superstition in this, yet there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any ; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowestnot of. The name of God may be written upon that, soul thou treadeston; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to give His precious blood for it ; therefore despise it not. APHORISM XXIX. MEN OF LEAST MERIT MOST APT TO BE CONTEMPTUOUS, BECAUSE MOST IGNORANT AND MOST OVERWEENING OF THEMSELVES. LEIGHTON. Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves ; for they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of oth- ers, and scarcely give their good qualities half an eye, while on the contrary in themselves they study to the full their own advantages, and their weaknesses 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 paral- lel, what wonder il the result be a gross mistake of them- selves ! 135 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 engagements, or such like, and yet the heart not at all upon it. Magnus qui fictilibus utitur tanquam argento, nee We minor qui orgento tan- quam fictilibus, says Seneca : Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate and not less greater is the man to whom all his plate is no more than earthernware. APHORISM XXXI. OF THE DETRACTION AMONG RELIGIOUS PROFESSORS. LEIOHTON AND COLERIDGE. They who have attained 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 pre- ciseness : and therefore are as ready as others to let fly invec- tives or bitter taunts against it, which are the keen and poi- soned shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that shall be called to a strict account. The slanders, perchance, may not be altogether forged and untrue ; they may be the implements, not the inventions, 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 expressi- ble 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 mischiefs -and insensible poisons sought for in the MORAL AM> RELIGIOUS A.PHORISMS. IW laboratories of art and nature, mi a world of good ; bu1 which was to be found in its most destructive form, in "the world of evil, the tongue" VPHORISM XXXII. THE REMEDY, I.K1GHTON. All true remedy must begin at the heart ; otherwise it will be but a mountebank cure, a false imagined conquest. The weights and wheels are there,and the clock strikes according to their motion. Even he that speaks contrary to what is within him, guilefully contrary to his inward conviction and know- ledge, yet speaks conformably to what is within him in the temper and frame of his heart, which is double, a heart and q heart, as the Psalmist hath it, Psal. xii. -2, APHORISM X.XXJII. LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. It is an argument of a candid and ingenuous mind, to de- light in the good name and commendations of others : 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 calum- nies, will, from the delight he hath in evil hearing, slide in- sensibly into the humour of evil speaking. It is strange how most persons 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 Chris- tian sets himself to an inward watchfulness over his heart, not suffering in it any thought that is uncharitable, 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 the evil of guile in the tongue, a sincere heart. truth in the inward parts, powerfully redresses it ; therefore 131 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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. O sweet truth ! excellent but rare sinceri- ty ! he that loves that truth within, and who is himself at once the truth and the life, He alone can work it there ! 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 be silent. We say hold your tongue ! as if it were an injunction, that could not be carried into effect but by manual force, cr the pincers of the forefinger and thumb ! — And verily — I blush to say it — it is not women and French- men only that would rather have their tongues bitten than bitted, and feel their souls in a strait-waistcoat, when they are obliged to remain silent. APHORISM XXXIV. ON the passion for new and striking thoughts, LEIGHTON. In conversation seek not so much either to vent thy know- ledge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually and ef- fectually 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 knoivledge 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 temptation hath been drawn to do. and loves the good he is frustrated MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 13H of, and having intended, hath not attained to do. The sin- ner, who hath his denomination from sin us his course, hates the good which somctiir.es ho 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 affections is carried to sin. So in the weak- est sincere Christian, there is that predominant sincerity and desire of holy walking, according to which he is called a righ- teous person, the Lord is pleased to give him that name, and account him so, being uprighl in heart, though often failing. 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, dis- tinguishes, 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 ami so bitterly decried under the name of" imputed righteousness." — Our learned Archbishop, yon see. adopts it. ; and it is on this account principally, thai by many of our leading churchmen his orthodoxy has been more than questioned, and his name put in the list of proscribed 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 tl a eternal distinction between things and persons, and therefore opposed to modern Calvinism. But wliat 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 i*. T shall have an ©ppartu- 139 AIDS To REFLECTION. nity of showing in another place. My present object fe 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 peculiar tenets of the Christian faith assert* ed 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 right- eousness, rightly and scripturally interpreted, is so far from being either irrational or immoral, that reason itself prescribes the idea in order to give a meaning and an ulti- mate object to morality ; and that the moral law in the con- science demands its reception in order to give reality and sub- stantive 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 crea- tion, leaves death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of being seems a mute prophecy of the coming veget- ation, into a mimic semblance of which it crystalizes. The blossom and flower, the acme of vegetable life, divides into correspondent organs with reciprocal functions, and by in- stinctive motions and approximations seems impatient of that fixure, by which it is differenced in kind from the flower-sha- ped Psyche, that flutters with free wing above it. And won- derfully in the insect realm doth the irritability, the proper seat of instinct, while yet the nascent sensibility is subordina- ted thereto — most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscular life in the insect, and the musculo-arterial in the bird, imitate MORAL AM) RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 140 and typically rehearse the adaptive understanding, yea, and the moral affections and charities, 6f man. Let lis carry our- selves 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 historian 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 divorcelcss 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, and the sun ris- ing from behind, in the kin, Ming morn of creation ! Thus all lower natures find their highest good in semblinces and seek- ings 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 beneath 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 arc preferable to shadows mistaken for substance J No! it must be a higher good to make you happy. While you labour for anything below your proper humanity, you seek a happy lite in the region of death. Well saith the mor- al poet — Unless above himself lie can Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ' " Srr Huber on Bees, and on Ants. J41 AIDS TO REFLECTION. APHORISM XXXV II. LEIGHTOH 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, where- soever they find it ; for that stays not in any man's person, as the ultimate pattern, but rises f o the highest grace, being man's nearest likeness to God, His image and resemblance, bearing his stamp and superscription, and belonging peculiar- ly to Him, in what hand soever it be found, as carrying the mark of no other owner but Him. APHORISM XXXVIII. ' LE1GHTOV. Those who think themselves high-spirited, and will bear least, as they speak, are often, and even by that, forced to bow most, or to burst under it ; while humility and meekness es- cape many a burden, and many a blow, always keeping peace within, and often without too. APHORISM XXXIX. LEICHT3N. 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 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. MORAL AN!> RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 143 perceiving the unsafety 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 to 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 sorrows and fears which still from without do as- sault 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 unset- tled 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) idola- try. Now among the words or synonimes for idols, in the Hebrew language, there is one that in its primary sense sig- nifies troubles (tegirim), other two that signify terrors (miphletzeth and emim). And so it is certainly. All our idles prove so to us. They fill us with nothing but anguish and troubles, with cares and fears, that are good for nothing but to be fit punishments of the folly, out of which they arise. APHORISM XLI. ON THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF INFIDELS. ) EIGHTON AM' ( hi | V.IDGE. A regardless contempt of infidel writings is usually the lit- 1. 43 AIDS TO REFLECTION. test answer ; Spreta vilescercnt. But where the holy pro- fession 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 dishonored by the contest. Of this sort are the vulgar railers at religion, the foul-mouth- ed beliefs of the Christian faith and history. Impudently false and slanderous assertions can be met only by assertions of their impudent and slanderous falsehood : 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-neighbourhood, 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 into that of musk. Ex- perience hitherto seems to favour the plan of treating these betes puantes and enfans cle Diable, as their four-footed brethren, the skunk and squash are treated* by the American woodmen, who turn their backs upon the fetid intruder, and * About the end of the same year (says Kalm), another of these animals (Mephitis Americana) crept into our cellar; but did not exhale the smallest scent, because it was not disturbed. A foolish old woman, however, who per- ceived 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 reccommend this anecdote to the consideration of sundry old women, on this side of the Atlantic, who, though they do not wear the appropriate garment, are worthy to sit in their committee -room, like Biokerstaff in the Tatler, under the canopy of their grandam's hoop-petticoat. MORAL AM) RELIGIOUS APH0KISM9. 144 make appear 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 e- vents, 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 de-> served his lash, though the religion of their fellow-citizens, thus assailed by them, had been that of Fo or Juggernaut, On the other hand, we are to answer every one that in? quires a reason, or an account ; which supposes something 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 ; much more, should it be one who ingenuously inquires for satisfaction, and possibly inclines to receive the truth, but has been prejudiced by misrepre- sentations of it, APHORISM XLI1 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 rest- ed 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 reli- gion, 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 interest is chief in those things he speaks of. The soul that hath the deepest sense ofspiritual things, and the truest knowledge of God, is to 145 AIDS TO hEFLECTION. most afraid to miscarry in speaking of Him, most tender and wary how to acquit itself when engaged to speak of and for God.* APHORISM XLI1I. ON THE CONSCIENCE. LElGHTOIf. It is a fruitless verbal debate, whether conscience be a fac- ulty or a habit. When all is examined, conscience will be found to be no other than the mind of a man, under the no- tion of a particular reference to himself and his own actions. COMMENT. What conscience is, and that it is the ground and antece- dent of human for self-)consciousness, and not any modifica- tion 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 extract 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 sy- nonyme of consciousness, nor any mere expression of the same as modified by the particular object. On the contrary, * To the same purpose are the two following sentences from Hilary. Etiam qucc pro religions dicimus, cum grandi metu t.t discipline! dicere debemus. — Hilarius dc Trinit. Lib. 7. A'on relictus est hominum cloquiis de Dei rebus aliius quam Dei scrmo. — Idem. The latter, however, must he 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). MO HAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. H6 a consciousness properly human (that is self-consciousness), with the souse of moral responsibility, pre-supposes the con- science 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 cotemporaries of Bentley. In questions of philosophy or divinity that have occupied the learned and been the subjects of many successive controversies, for one instance of mere logomachy I could bring ten instances of logoda.-daly, or verbal legerdemain, 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 conscience may be used, the following aphorism is equally true and important. It is worth noticing, likewise, that Leigh- ton 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. rrtoHTos, 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. VET THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULE, THOUGH ACCOMPANIED BY AN EXDKAVOUR TO ACCOMMODATE OUR CONDUCT TO THIS RCLE, WILL NOT OF ITSELF FORM A GOOD C<>NS< ITNCE. f.EIGHTOH. To set the outward actions right, though with an honest 147 A1US TO REFLECTION. intention, and not so to regard and find out the inward dis- order 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. Oh ! 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 THK CONSCIENCE* How deeply seated the conscience is in the human soul, is seen in the effect which sudden calamities produce on guilty men, even when unaided by any determinate 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 recollecting, 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 calami- ties into judgments, executions of a sentence passed by an invisible judge ; 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 los3 of fortune, or character, or .reputation ; but you hear no regrets from him, Remorse extinguishes all regret ; and remorse is the implicit creed of the guilty. APHORISM XLVII. LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. God hath suited every creature He hath made with a con- venient 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 inces- santly till they be in it ; and they declare, by resting there that they are (as I may say) where they would be. Sensi- MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS 148 tivc creatures are carried to seek a sensitive good, as agreea- ble to their rank in being, and attaining that, aim no further. Now in this is the excellency of man, that he is made capa- ble of a communion with his Maker, and, because capable of it, is unsatisfied 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 de- sire of it. yet, not from a capacity of it, no, nor from a ne- cessity of it, for the answering and filling of his capacity. Though the heart once gone from God turns continually further away from Him till it be renewed, yet, even in that wandering, it retains that natural relation to God, as its cen- tre, 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 his heart by other things, and digests many vexations with hopes of contentment in the end and accomplishment of some de- sign he hath ; but still the heart misgives. Many times he attains not the thing he seeks ; but if he do, yet he never at- tains 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 nev- er 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 finding no rest for the sole of his foot ; the waters of inconstancy and van ity covering the whole face of the earth. These things are too gross and heavy. The soul, the im- mortal soul, descended from heaven, must either be more hap- py 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 un- 149 AIDS TO REFLECTION. ion with Him, married to Him ; mismatching itself elsewhere it hath never any thing but shame and sorrow. All that for- sake Thee shall he ashamed, says the Prophet, Jer. xvii. 13 ; and the Psalmist, They that are far off from Thee shall per- ish, Psal. lx.viii. 27. And this is indeed our natural misera- ble condition, and it is often expressed this way, by estranged- ness and distance from God. The same sentiments are to be found in the works of Pa_ gan 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, reflect that Chris- tianity 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. LKIGHTOS. 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, rivor, 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 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 gar- den. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 150 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 ourselves no mark, to propound no end in the hearing of the Gospel. — The merchant sails not merely that he may sail, but for traf- fic, and traffics that he may be rich. The husbandman plows not merely to keep himself busy, with no further end, but plows 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 oth- ers most advantageous and gainful; and yet all meetings are full of this ! APHORISM L. ON THE HOPES AND SELF-SATISFACTION OF A RELIGIOUS MORALIST, INDEPhNDENT OF A SPIRITUAL FAITH ON WHAT ARE THEY GROUNDED? LEIGIITON. There have been great disputes one way or another, about the merit of good works ; but I truly think that 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 acknowledge 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 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 wri- ters, when they use the word merit, mean nothing by it but a certain correlate to the reward which God both promises and bestows of mere grace and benignity. Otherwise, in order 151 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 perfectly good, ana 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 action what- ever. But why should I enlarge here, when one single cir- cumstance overthrows all those titles : the most righteous of mankind would not be able to stand, if his works were weigh- ed in the balance of strict justice ; how much less then could they deserve that immense 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 impeni- tence and rebellion, but endowed with the gift of the Spirit. For the time is come t licit 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 1 And if the right- eous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sin- ner appear? 1 Peter iv. 17, 18, The Apostle's interrogation expresses the most vehement negation, and signifies that no mortal in whatever degree he is placed, if he be called to the strict examination of divine justice, without daily and repeat- ed 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 promise, and the power of its performance.' This is the three-fold cord which cannot be broken. COMMENT. Often have I heard it said by advocates for the Socinian MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 152 scheme — True ! we arc all sinners ; but even in the Old Testament God has promised forgiveness on repentance. — One of the Fathers (I forget which) supplies the retort-^- True ! God has promised pardon on penitence : but has he promised penitence on sin ? He that repenteth shall be for- given : but where it is said, He that sinneth shall repent ? But repentance, perhaps, the repentance required in Scrip* ture, the passing into a new and contrary principle of action, this mktanoia,* isln the sinner's own power ? at his own lik- ing ? 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 borders more closely on a contradiction in terms, than this volunteer transmentation, this self-change, as the easy f means of self- salvation ! But the reflections of our evangelical author on this subject will appropriately commence the aphorisms relate ing to spiritual religion. * Mtruvoia, the New Testament word, which we render by repentance, compounded of «stu, trans, and m^, 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 ?— " Salvation made easy ; or, Every man his own Redeemer," •!U ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY, PRELIMINARY TO THE APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. Philip saith unto him: Lord, shcic us the Father, and it sufficeth vs. Jesus saith unto him, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father ; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father ? Belicvest thou not thth. * Araura < 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 ; will always lead to truth as intelligibly as the basis on which such truths respectively rest — While reasoning from finite to infinite, or from infinite to finite, will lead to apparent absurdity, although the basis be true : and is not such appa- rent absurdity another expression for "truth unintelligible by a finite mind?" ON SPIRITUAL ItELlGION. 174 liditv, which the single vetooi the former is not sufficient to nullify. The most pious conclusion is here the most legiti- mate. It is too seldom considered, though most worthy of consid- eration, how far even those ideas or theories of pure specu- lation, that bear the same name with the objects of religious faith, are indeed the same. Out of the principles necessarily presumed in all discursive thinking, and which being, in the first place universal, and secondly, antecedent to every par- ticular exercise of the understanding, arc therefore referred to the reason, the human mind (wherever its powers are suffi- ciently developed, and its attention strongly directed to spec- ulative 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 conver- sion of which into entia rcalia, or real objects, by aid of the imagination, has in all times been the fruitful stock of empty theories and mischievous superstitions, of surreptitious pre- mises and extravagant conclusions. For as these substantia- ted notions were in many instances 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 supposed ex- tension of his knowledge and insight ; it was too easily for- gotten or overlooked, that the stablest and most indispensa- ble of these notional beings were but the necessary forms of thinking, taken abstractedly : and that like the breadthless lines, depthless surfaces, and perfect circles of geometry, they subsist wholly and solely in and for the mind that contem- plates them. Where the evidence of the senses fails us. and beyond the precincts of sensible experience, there is no re- ality attributable to any notion, but what is given to it by Revelation, or the law of conscience, or the necessary inter- ests of morality. 175 AIDS TO KEl'LECTION. 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 assumption or hypothesis of a One as the ground and cause of the universe, and which in all suc- cessions 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, commanded by the conscience and required by morality, contains the same truths, or at least the truths that can be expressed in no oth- er terms ; but this idea presents itself to our mind with addi- tional attributes, and these too not formed by mere abstrac- tion and negation — with the attributes of holiness, providence, love, justice, and mercy. It comprehends, moreover, the in- dependent (extra-mundane) existence and personality of the Supreme One, as our Creator, Lord, and Judge. The hypothesis of a one ground and principle of the uni- verse (necessary as a 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 indeed constrain us to declare him eternal and immutable. But if from the eterni- ty of the Supreme Being a reasoner should deduce the im- possibility of acrsation ; or conclude 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, howr ever evident and logically necessary such conclusions may appear, it is scarcely worth our while to examine, whether they are so or not. The positions themselves must be false. For were they true, the idea would lose the sole around qf its on si-mi ri \i. it.;:.u. [o.v. I t J reality, [t would be no longer the idea intended by the be- liever i;i his premiss — in the premiss, with which alone reli- gion and morality are cpncerncd. The very subject of the discussion would be changed. It would no longer be the God, in whom we 1 : but a stoical Fate, or the super- essential One of Plotinqs, to whom neither inte ligem . noi self-consciousnessj nor life, nor even being can be attributed ; or lastly, the world itself, the indivisible one and only sub- stance (substantia una et uuica) of Spinoza, of which all ptioenorriena, all particular and individual things, live$, minds, thoughts, and actions, are but mociiticai. Let the believer never be alarmed by objections whol- ly speculative, however plausible on speculative gjjrqunds such objections may appear, if he can but satisfy himself, that the result is repugnant to the dictates of conscience . .:■■.>■ ii . citable with the interests of morality. For 10 balile the ob- jector we have only to demand of him, by what right and im- der 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 purpose for him to answer that it. is a legitimate no- tion. The notion may have its mould in the understand but its realization must, be the work of the fancy. A reflecting reader will easily appl) marks to the subject of Election, one of the stumbling stones in iho ordi- nary conceptions of the Christian Faith, to which the Infidel points in score, and which far bettej by in silent perplexity. Yet surely, fro,m mistaken conceptions of the doctrine. I suppose the person, with whom I am arguing, already so far a bt liever, as to have convinced himself, both that a state of enduring bliss is attainable under certain cui- ditiona ; and that these conditions consist in his compliance with the directions given and rules prescribed in the Chris- tian 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 con 1^8 AIDS TO REFLECTION. sequences of souk: sort or other. But these consequences are moreover distinctly described, enumerated, and promised in the same Scriptures, in which the conditions are recorded ; and though some of them may be apparent to God only, yet the greater number of them are of such a nature that they cannot exist unknown to the individual, in and for whom they exist. As little possible is it, that he should find these con- sequences 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 promised under these conditions. Now I dare as- sert that no such man, however fervent his charity and how- ever deep his humility may be, can pursue the records of his- tory 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 many, — a fearful many, — have not their faces turned toward it. This then is a mere matter of fact. Now comes the ques- tion. Shall the believer, who thus hopes on the appointed grounds of hope, attribute this distinction exclusively 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 rea- soning be invalidated, that might not be Urged with equal force against any essential difference between obedient and disobedient, Christian and worldling ; — that would not im- ply 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 con- cerned ; — this the conscience requires : this the highest in- ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 179 ierests of morality demand. It is a question of facts, of the will and the deed, to argue against which on the abstract no- tions and possibilities of the speculative reason is as unreason- able, as an attempt to decide a question of colors by pure ge- ometry, or to unsettle the classes and specific characters of natural 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 speculative theolo- gy ; if instead of seeking after the marks of Election in him- self he undertakes to determine the ground and origin, the possibility and mode of Election itself in relation to God ; — in this case, and whether he does it for ihe satisfaction of cu- riosity, or from the ambition 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 (see- ing that it is against all reason and goodness to choose a worse, when being omnipotent lie could have created a bet- ter) God did not create beasts men, and men angels ; — or why God created any men but with foreknowledge of their obedi- ence, and left any occasion for Election ; — in this case, I say we can only regret that the inquirer had not been better in- structed in the nature, the bounds, the true purposes and proper objects of his intellectual faculties, and that he had not preciously 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 blasphemy 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 necessary inference from an undeniable fact — necessary at least for all who hold that the best of men are what they are through the t(SQ a. US 'i [) HlCFXECa lox. grace of God. In relaiio i to the believer it is a hope, which if it spring out of Christian principles, be examined by the and nourished by the moans prescribed in Scripture, will bgcOme a lively and an assured hope, but which cannot in this life pass into knowledge^ much less certainty of fore- knowledge. The contrary belief does indeed make the arti- cle of Election both tool and parcel of a mad and mischiev- ous fanaticism. But wit!) what force and clearness does not the Apostle confute, disclaim, and prohibit the pretence, treating it as a downright contradiction in terms! See Rom. viii. 24. But though T hold the dockine handled as Leigh ton hand- iest it. (that is practically, morally, humbly) rational, 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 perfectly 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 * For example : at the date of St. Paul's Epistles, the (Roman) world ptiay bo resembled to a mass in the furnace in the first moment of fusion, here a speck and there a spot of the melted metal shinning pure and bril- iant amid the scum arid dross. To have received the name of Christian was a privilege, n high and distinguishing favor. No wonder therefore, that in St. Paul's writings the words, elect and election often, nay, most of- ten, mean the same as eccalumeni\ 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 5 and every Christian, real or nominal, was one of the elect. Add too, that this ambiguity is increased by the accidental circumstance, that tho Kyriak, dries Vominicce, Lord's House, kirk ; and ecclesia, the sum to- tal of the rrrulnmrnt. c-orali, railed -cut : are both rendered by the same word Church. ON SPIRITUAL RELiGlON 181 has been to establish a general rule of interpretation and vin- dication applicable to all doctrinal tenets, and especially to the (so called) mysteries of t!:c Christian faith : to provide a safety-lamp for religious inquiries. Now this T find in the principle, that all revealed truths are to be judged of by us, as far as t hey are possible subjects of human conception, or grounds of practice, or in some way connected with our mor- al and spiritual interests. In order to have a reason for form- ing a judgment on any given article, we must be sure that We possess a reason, by and according to which a judgment may be formed. Now in respect of all truths, to which a real and independent existence is assigned, and which yet arc not con- tained in, or to be imagined under, any form of space or time, it is strictly demonstrable, that the human reason, consider- ed abstractly, as the source of positive science and theoret- ical insight, is not sue!) a reason. At the utmost it has on- ly a negative voice. In other words, nothing can be allow- ed as true for the human mind, which directly contradicts this reason. But even here, before we admit the existence of any such contradiction, we must be careful to ascertain, that there is no equivocation in play, that two different sub- jects arc not confounded under one and the same word. A striking instance of this has been adduced in the difference between the notional One of the Ontologists, and the idea of the living God. But if not the abstract or speculative reason, and yet a rea- son there must be in order to a rational belief — then it must be the practical reason of man, comprehending the will, the conscience, the moral being with its inseparable interests and affections — that reason, namely, which is the organ of wis- dom, and (as far as mail 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 ; the doctrine that 182 AIDS TO REFLECTION. there is no name under heaven, by which a man can be sav- ed, 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 con- tained in the power of Jesus, then Jesus is not the Redeem- er : not the Redeemer of the world, not the Jesus (that is, Saviour) of mankind. But if with Tertullian and Augustine 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 true in respect to every man who has had, or who might have had, the Gospel preach- ed to him. It is true and obligatory for every Christian com- munity and for every individual believer, wherever the op- portunity 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 dogmatist 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 gratifica- tion of our curiosity to inform us, that Socrates and Phocion, together with all the savages in the woods and wilds of Af- rica and America, will be sent to keep company with 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 judgement upon the souls of our fel- low creatures. One other instance will, I trust, prevent all misconcep- ON SPIRITUAL KKLIGIOH. 183 tions of my meaning. I am clearly convinced that the Scrip- tural and only true* idea of God will, in its developement, be found to involve the idea of the Tri-unity. But 1 am like- wise 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 premis- ses) 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, neither logician nor metaphysician ; but sensible and single-minded, on 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 understand me to be speaking of ? What does he mean, and suppose me to mean, by the word ? An accident or product of the reasoning faculty, or an abstrac- tion which the human mind forms by reflecting on its own thoughts and forms of thinking ? No. By God he under- stands me to mean an existing and self-subsisting reality,! a * Or (I may add) any idea which d :es not either identity the Creator with the creation ; or else represent the Supreme Being asa mere imperson- al law or qrdo ordinans, differing from the law of gravitation only by its universality. I I have elsewhere remarked on the assistance which those thai labor af ter distinct conceptions would receive from the re-jntroduction of the terms objective and subjective^ and subjective, and objective reality, and the like, as substitutes for real and notional, and to the exclusion of the false antithe- sis between real and ideal. For t.hp student in thai noblest of 'tin? sciences, the scire teipsum, the advantage would be especially great. The few sen- 184 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 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 lias the same historical assurance as of theirs ; confirmed indeed by the book of Nature, as soon and as far as that stronger and better light has taught him to tences that follow, in illustration of the terms here advocated, will not, ! 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 (his 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 I they can never be per- fectly realized in wood, stone, or iron. Now this assertion of Euler's might be expressed at once, briefly and simply, by saying, that the proper- ties in question were subjectively true, though not objectively — or that the mathematical arch possessed a subjective reality though incapable of b realized objectively. In like manner if I had to expr< my conviction that space was not itself a thing but a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward ground and condi- tion 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 subject; \ space is real in and for the subject alone. If I am asked, Why not say, in and for the mind, which every one woul 1 understand? I reply : we kn T, ami relatively to T, it becomes =A. For the purpose I tfoetic, in which we require terms of most comprehen mport, might not the Noetic Pen tad bo, — I. Prothesis. 2. TJiesis ! ■ Mcsothesis. 3. Antithesis 5 Pros , Sum. Thesis. Mcsothesis. Antithesis Res. Agere. Ago, Patior Synthesis. . Igt ris. 1. Verb substantive= Prothesis. as expressing the identity or co-inher- ence of act and being. 2. Substantive=T/*es£s, expressing being. 3. Vevb=Antithesis, ex- pressing act. 4. Infi.mtive=Mcsothcsis, as being either substantive or verb,orboth at once, only in different i 5. Part'iciple=Synthesis. Thus, in chemistry, sulphuretted hydn gen is an acid relatively to the more powerful alkalis, and an alii .! acid. Yet one oth- er remark and 1 pass to the quei tion. In order to render the constructions of pure mathematics applicable to philosophy, the Pythagoreans,] 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) transcendent to all production, wlucli it, caused but did not partake. Facit nonpatitur. This was the punctum invisible ct prcsuppositum : and in this way the Pythag ireans guarded against the error of Pantheism, into which the later Schools fell. The assumption >f this point I call the logic- al prothesis. We have now therefore lour relati >ns of thought expressed : 1. Prothesis, or the identity of T and A, which is neither because in it as the transcendent ofboth, both are contained and exist as one. Taken ab- solutely, this finds its application in the Supreme Being alone, the Pythago- reans Tetractys ; the ineffable name, to which no image can be attached; the point, which has no (real) opposite or counter-point. Bui relatively ta- ken and inadequately, the germinal power of every seed might be general- ized under the relation of identity. 2. Thesis, or position. 3 Antithesis. or opposition. 4. Indifference. To which when we add the Sini/hrr>'<