Chapter III: Preface (3)

The miracles that God wrought in times past by them made many to
attribute more to them than was fit, as if they had a generality of
presence, knowledge, and working; but the wisest and best advised
never durst attribute any such thing unto them.

To a truly pious mind awfully impressed with the surpassing excellency of God's ineffable love to fallen man, in the revelation of himself to the inner man through the reason and conscience by the spiritual light and substantiality--(for the conscience is to the spirit or reason what the understanding is to the sense, a substantiative power); this consequence of miracles is so fearful, that it cannot but redouble his zeal against that fashion of modern theologists which would convert miracles from a motive to attention and solicitous examination, and at best from a negative condition of revelation, into the positive foundation of Christian faith.

Ib. c.22. p.116.

But if this be as vile a slander as ever Satanist devised, the Lord
reward them that have been the authors and advisers of it according
to their works.

O no! no! this the good man did not utter from his heart, but from his passion. A vile and wicked slander it was and is. O may God have turned the hearts of those who uttered it, or may it be among their unknown sins done in ignorance, for which the infinite merits of Christ may satisfy! I am most assured that if Dr. Field were now alive, or if any one had but said this to him, he would have replied--"I thank thee, brother, for thy Christian admonition. Add thy prayer, and pray God to forgive me my inconsiderate zeal!"

Ib. c. 23. p. 119.

For what rectitude is due to the specifical act of hating God? or what
rectitude is it capable of?

Is this a possible act to any man understanding by the word God what we mean by God?

Ib. p. 129.

It is this complicated dispute, as to the origin and permission of evil, which supplies to atheism its most plausible, because its only moral, arguments; but more especially to that species of atheism which existed in Greece in the form of polytheism, admitting moral and intelligent shapers and governors of the world, but denying an intelligent ground, or self-conscious Creator of the universe; their gods being themselves the offspring of chaos and necessity, that is, of matter and its essential laws or properties.

The Leibnitzian distinction of the Eternal Reason, or nature of God, [Greek: tò theion](the [Greek: nous kaì anágkae] of Timæus Locrus) from the will or personal attributes of God--([Greek: thélaema kaì boúlaesis--agathou patròs agathòn boúlaema])--planted the germ of the only possible solution, or rather perhaps, in words less exceptionable and more likely to be endured in the schools of modern theology, brought forward the truth involved in Behmen's too bold distinction of God and the ground of God;--who yet in this is to be excused, not only for his good aim and his ignorance of scholastic terms, but likewise because some of the Fathers expressed themselves no less crudely in the other extreme; though it is not improbable that the meaning was the same in both.

At least Behmen constantly makes self-existence a positive act, so as that by an eternal [Greek: perich_óraesis] or mysterious intercirculation God wills himself out of the 'ground' ([Greek: tò theion--tò hèn kaì pan],--'indifferentia absoluta realitatis infinitæ et infinitæ potentialitatis')--and again by his will, as God existing, gives being to the ground, [Greek: autogenàes--autophylàes--uhios heautou]. 'Solus Deus est;--itaque principium, qui ex seipso dedit sibi ipse principium. Deus ipse sui origo est, suæque causa substantiæ, id quod est, ex se et in se continens. Ex seipso procreatus ipse se fecit', &c., of Synesius, Jerome, Hilary, and Lactantius and others involve the same conception.

Ib. c. 27. p. 140.

The seventh is the heresy of Sabellius, which he saith was revived by
Servetus. So it was indeed, that Servetus revived in our time the
damnable heresy of Sabellius, long since condemned in the first ages
of the Church. But what is that to us? How little approbation he found
amongst us, the just and honourable proceeding against him at Geneva
will witness to all posterity.

Shocking as this act must and ought to be to all Christians at present; yet this passage and a hundred still stronger from divines and Church letters contemporary with Calvin, prove Servetus' death not to be Calvin's guilt especially, but the common 'opprobrium' of all European Christendom,--of the Romanists whose laws the Senate of Geneva followed, and from fear of whose reproaches (as if Protestants favoured heresy) they executed them,--and of the Protestant churches who applauded the act and returned thanks to Calvin and the Senate for it. [7]

Ib. c. 30. p. 143.

The twelfth heresy imputed to us is the heresy of Jovinian, concerning
whom we must observe, that Augustine ascribeth unto him two opinions
which Hierome mentioneth not; who yet was not likely to spare him, if
he might truly have been charged with them. The first, that Mary
ceased to be a virgin when she had borne Christ; the second, that all
sins are equal.

Neither this nor that is worthy the name of opinion; it is mere unscriptural, nay, anti-scriptural gossiping. Are we to blame, or not rather to praise, the anxiety manifested by the great divines of the church of England under the Stuarts not to remove further than necessary from the Romish doctrines? Yet one wishes a bolder method; for example, as to Mary's private history after the conception and birth of Christ, we neither know nor care about it.

Ib. c. 31. p. 146.

For the opinions wherewith Hierome chargeth him, this we briefly
answer. First, if he absolutely denied that the Saints departed do
pray for us, as it seemeth he did by Hierome's reprehension, we think
he erred.

Yet not heretically; and if he meant only that we being wholly ignorant, whether they do or no, ought to act as if we knew they did not, he is perfectly right; for whatever ye do, do it in faith. As to the ubiquity of saints, it is Jerome who is the heretic, nay, idolater, if he reduced his opinion to practice. It perplexes me, that Field speaks so doubtingly on a matter so plain as the incommunicability of omnipresence.

Ib. c. 32. p. 147.

Touching the second objection, that Bucer and Calvin deny original
sin, though not generally, as did Zuinglius, yet at least in the
children of the faithful. If he had said that these men affirm the
earth doth move, and the heavens stand still, he might have as soon
justified it against them, as this he now saith.

Very noticeable. A similar passage occurs even so late as in Sir Thomas Brown, just at the dawn of the Newtonian system, and after Kepler. What a lesson of diffidence! [8]

Ib. p. 148.

For we do not deny the distinction of venial and mortal sins; but do
think, that some sins are rightly said to be mortal and some venial;
not for that some are worthy of eternal punishment and therefore named
mortal, others of temporal only, and therefore judged venial as the
Papists imagine: but for that some exclude grace out of that man in
which they are found and so leave him in a state wherein he hath
nothing in himself that can or will procure him pardon: and other,
which though in themselves considered, and never remitted, they be
worthy of eternal punishment, yet do not so far prevail as to banish
grace, the fountain of remission of all misdoings.

Would not the necessary consequence of this be, that there are no actions that can be pronounced mortal sins by mortals; and that what we might fancy venial might in individual cases be mortal and 'vice versa'.

Ib.

First, because every offence against God may justly be punished by him
in the strictness of his righteous judgments with eternal death, yea,
with annihilation; which appeareth to be most true, for that there is
no punishment so evil, and so much to be avoided, as the least sin
that may be imagined. So that a man should rather choose eternal
death, yea, utter annihilation, than commit the least offence in the
world.

I admit this to be Scriptural; but what is wanted is, clearly to state the difference between eternal death and annihilation. For who would not prefer the latter, if the former mean everlasting misery?

Ib. c. 41. p. 62.

But he will say, Cyprian calleth the Roman Church the principal Church
whence sacerdotal unity hath her spring; hereunto we answer, that the
Roman Church, not in power of overruling all, but in order is the
first and principal; and that therefore while she continueth to hold
the truth, and encroacheth not upon the right of other Churches, she
is to have the priority; but that in either of these cases she may be
forsaken without breach of that unity, which is essentially required
in the parts of the Church.

This is too large a concession. The real ground of the priority of the Roman see was that Rome, for the first three or perhaps four centuries, was the metropolis of the Christian world. Afterwards for the very same reason the Patriarch of New Rome or Constantinople claimed it; and never ceased to assert at least a co-equality. Had the Apostolic foundation been the cause, Jerusalem and Antioch must have had priority; not to add that the Roman Church was not founded by either Paul or Peter as is evident from the epistle to the Romans.

Append. B. III. p. 205.

I do not think the attack on Transubstantiation the most successful point of the orthodox Protestant controversialists. The question is, what is meant in Scripture, as in 'John' vi. by Christ's body or flesh and blood. Surely not the visible, tangible, accidental body, that is, a cycle of images and sensations in the imagination of the beholders; but his supersensual body, the 'noumenon' of his human nature which was united to his divine nature.

In this sense I understand the Lutheran ubiquity. But may not the "oblations" referred to by Field in the old canon of the Mass, have meant the alms, offerings always given at the Eucharist? If by "substance" in the enunciation of the article be meant 'id quod vere est', and if the divine nature be the sole 'ens vere ens', then it is possible to give a philosophically intelligible sense to Luther's doctrine of consubstantiation; at least to a doctrine that might bear the same name;--at all events the mystery is not greater than, if it be not rather the same as, the assumption of the human by the divine nature.

Now for the possible conception of this we must accurately discriminate the 'incompossibile negativum' from the 'incompatibile privativum'. Of the latter are all positive imperfections, as error, vice, and evil passions; of the former simple limitation.

Thus if '(per impossible)' human nature could make itself sinless and perfect, it would become or pass into God; and if God should abstract from human nature all imperfection, it might without impropriety be affirmed, even as Scripture doth affirm, that God assumed or took up into himself the human nature.

Thus, to use a dim similitude and merely as a faint illustration, all materiality abstracted from a circle, it would become space, and though not infinite, yet one with infinite space. The mystery of omnipresence greatly aids this conception; 'totus in omni parte': and in truth this is the divine character of all the Christian mysteries, that they aid each other, and many incomprehensibles render each of them, in a certain qualified sense, less incomprehensible.

Ib. p. 208.

But first, it is impious to think of destroying Christ in any sort.
For though it be true, that in sacrificing of Christ on the altar of
the cross, the destroying and killing of him was implied, and this his
death was the life of the world, yet all that concurred to the killing
of him, as the Jews, the Roman soldiers, Pilate, and Judas sinned
damnably, and so had done, though they had shed his blood with an
intention and desire, that by it the world might be redeemed.

Is not this going too far? Would it not imply almost that Christ himself could not righteously sacrifice himself, especially when we consider that the Romanists would have a right to say, that Christ himself had commanded it? But Bellarmine's conceit [9] is so absurd that it scarce deserves the compliment of a serious confutation. For if sacramental being be opposed to natural or material, as 'noumenon' to 'phænomenon', place is no attribute or possible accident of it 'in se'; consequently, no alteration of place relatively to us can affect, much less destroy, it; and even were it otherwise, yet translocation is not destruction; for the body of Christ, according to themselves, doth indeed nourish our souls, even as a fish eaten sustains another fish, but yet with this essential difference, that it ceases not to be and remain itself, and instead of being converted converts; so that truly the only things sacrificed in the strict sense are all the evil qualities or deficiencies which divide our souls from Christ.

Ib. p. 218.

That which we do is done in remembrance of that which was then done;
for he saith, 'Do this in remembrance of me.'

This is a 'metastasis' of Scripture. 'Do this in remembrance of me', that is, that which Christ was then doing. But Christ was not then suffering, or dying on the cross.

Ib. p.223.

That the Saints do pray for us 'in genere', desiring God to be
merciful to us, and to do unto us whatsoever in any kind he knoweth
needful for our good, there is no question made by us.

To have placed this question in its true light, so as to have allowed the full force to the Scriptures asserting the communion of Saints and the efficacy of their intercession without undue concessions to the 'hierolatria' of the Romish church, would have implied an acquaintance with the science of transcendental analysis, and an insight into the philosophy of ideas not to be expected in Field, and which was then only dawning in the mind of Lord Bacon. The proper reply to Brerely would be this: the communion and intercession of Saints is an idea, and must be kept such. But the Romish church has changed it away into the detail of particular and individual conceptions, and imaginations, into names and fancies.

N.B. Instead of the 'Roman Catholic' read throughout in this and all other works, and everywhere and on all occasions, unless where the duties of formal courtesy forbid, say, the 'Romish anti-Catholic Church;' Romish--to mark that the corruptions in discipline, doctrine and practice do for the worst and far larger part owe both their origin and their perpetuation to the court and local tribunals of the city of Rome, and are not and never have been the catholic, that is, universal faith of the Roman empire, or even of the whole Latin or Western church; and anti-Catholic,--because no other Church acts on so narrow and excommunicative a principle, or is characterized by such a jealous spirit of monopoly and particularism, counterfeiting catholicity by a negative totality and heretical self-circumscription, cutting off, or cutting herself off from, all the other members of Christ's Body.

12th March, 1824.

It is of the utmost importance, wherever clear and distinct conceptions are required, to make out in the first instance whether the term in question, or the main terms of the question in dispute, represents or represent a fact or class of facts simply, or some self-established and previously known idea or principle, of which the facts are instances and realizations, or which is introduced in order to explain and account for the facts. Now the term 'merits,' as applied to Abraham and the saints, belongs to the former. It is a mere 'nomen appellativum' of the facts.

Ib. c. 5. p. 252.

The Papists and we agree that original sin is the privation of
original righteousness; but they suppose there was in nature without
that addition of grace, a power to do good, &c.

Nothing seems wanting to this argument but a previous definition and explanation of the term, 'nature.' Field appears to have seen the truth, namely, that nature itself is a peccant (I had almost said an unnatural) state, or rather no State at all, [Greek: ou stásis all' apóstasis].

Ib. c. 6. p. 269.

And surely the words of Augustine do not import that she had no sin,
but that she overcame it, which argueth a conflict; neither doth he
say he will acknowledge she was without sin, but that he will not move
any question touching her, in this dispute of sins and sinners.

Why not say at once, that this anti-Scriptural superstition had already begun? I scarcely know whether to be pleased or grieved with that edging on toward the Roman creed, that exceeding, almost Scriptural, tenderness for the divines of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, which distinguishes the Church of England dignitaries, from Elizabeth inclusively to our Revolution in 1688, from other Protestants.

Ib. c. 10. p. 279.

Derwent! should this page chance to fall under your eye, for my sake read, fag, subdue, and take up into your proper mind this chapter 10 of Free Will.

Ib. p. 281.

Of these five kinds of liberty, the two first agree only to God, so
that in the highest degree [Greek: to autexoúsion], that is, freedom
of will is proper to God only; and in this sense Calvin and Luther
rightly deny that the will of any creature is or ever was free.

I add, except as in God, and God in us. Now the latter alone is will; for it alone is 'ens super ens'. And here lies the mystery, which I dare not openly and promiscuously reveal.

Ib.

Yet doth not God's working upon the will take from it the power of
dissenting, and doing the contrary; but so inclineth it, that having
liberty to do otherwise, yet she will actually determine so.

This will not do. Were it true, then my understanding would be free in a mathematical proportion; or the whole position amounts only to this, that the will, though compelled, is still the will. Be it so; yet not a free will. In short, Luther and Calvin are right so far. A creaturely will cannot be free; but the will in a rational creature may cease to be creaturely, and the creature, [Greek: apóstasis], finally cease in consequence; and this neither Luther nor Calvin seem to have seen. In short, where omnipotence is on one side, what but utter impotence can remain for the other? To make freedom possible, the 'antithesis' must be removed. The removal of this 'antithesis' of the creature to God is the object of the Redemption, and forms the glorious liberty of the Gospel. More than this I am not permitted to expose.

Ib. p. 283.

It is not given, nor is it wanting, to all men to have an insight into the mystery of the human will and its mode of inherence on the will which is God, as the ineffable 'causa sui'; but this chapter will suffice to convince you that the doctrines of Calvin were those of Luther in this point;--that they are intensely metaphysical, and that they are diverse 'toto genere' from the merely moral and psychological--tenets of the modern Calvinists. Calvin would have exclaimed, 'fire and fagots!' before he had gotten through a hundred pages of Dr. Williams's Modern Calvinism.

Ib. c. 11. p. 296.

Neither can Vega avoid the evidence of the testimonies of the Fathers,
and the decree of the Council of Trent, so that he must be forced to
confess that no man can so collectively fulfil the law as not to sin,
and consequently, that no man can perform that the law requireth.

The paralogism of Vega as to this perplexing question seems to lurk in the position that God gives a law which it is impossible we should obey collectively. But the truth is, that the law which God gave, and which from the essential holiness of his nature it is impossible he should not have given, man deprived himself of the ability to obey. And was the law of God therefore to be annulled? Must the sun cease to shine because the earth has become a morass, so that even that very glory of the sun hath become a new cause of its steaming up clouds and vapors that strangle the rays? God forbid! 'But for the law I had not sinned'. But had I not been sinful the law would not have occasioned me to sin, but would have clothed me with righteousness, by the transmission of its splendour. 'Let God be just, and every man a liar'.

B. iv. c. 4. p. 346.

The Church of God is named the 'Pillar of Truth;' not as if truth did
depend on the Church, &c.

Field might have strengthened his argument, by mention of the custom of not only affixing records and testimonials to the pillars, but books, &c.

Ib. c. 7. p. 353.

Others therefore, to avoid this absurdity, run into that other before
mentioned, that we believe the things that are divine by the mere and
absolute command of our will, not finding any sufficient motives and
reasons of persuasion.

Field, nor Count Mirandula have penetrated to the heart of this most fundamental question. In all proper faith the will is the prime agent, but not therefore the choice. You may call it reason if you will, but then carefully distinguish the speculative from the practical reason, and the reason itself from the understanding.

Ib. c. 8. p. 356.

'Illius virtute' (saith he) 'illuminati, jam non aut nostro, aut
aliorum judicio credimus a Deo esse Scripturam, sed supra humanum
judicium certo certius constituimus, non secus ac si ipsius Dei numen
illic intueremur, hominum ministerio ab ipsissimo Dei ore fluxisse.'

Greatly doth this fine passage need explanation, that knowing what it doth mean, the reader may understand what it doth not mean, nor of necessity imply. Without this insight, our faith may be terribly shaken by difficulties and objections. For example; If all the Scripture, then each component part; thence every faithful Christian infallible, and so on.

Ib. p. 357.

In the second the light of divine reason causeth approbation of that
they believe: in the third sort, the purity of divine understanding
apprehendeth most certainly the things believed, and causeth a
foretasting of those things that hereafter more fully shall be enjoyed.

Here too Field distinguishes the understanding from the reason, as experience following perception of sense. But as perception through the mere presence of the object perceived, whether to the outward or inner sense, is not insight which belongs to the 'light of reason,' therefore Field marks it by 'purity' that is unmixed with fleshly sensations or the 'idola' of the bodily eye. Though Field is by no means consistent in his 'epitheta' of the understanding, he seldom confounds the word itself. In theological Latin, the understanding, as influenced and combined with the affections and desires, is most frequently expressed by 'cor', the heart. Doubtless the most convenient form of appropriating the terms would be to consider the understanding as man's intelligential faculty, whatever be its object, the sensible or the intelligible world; while reason is the tri-unity, as it were, of the spiritual eye, light, and object.

Ib. c. 10. p. 358.

Of the Papists preferring the Church's authority before the Scripture.

Field, from the nature and special purpose of his controversy, is reluctant to admit any error in the Fathers,--too much so indeed; and this is an instance. We all know what we mean by the Scriptures, but how know we what they mean by the Church, which is neither thing nor person? But this is a very difficult subject.

Ib. p. 359.

First, so as if the Church might define contrary to the Scriptures, as
she may contrary to the writings of particular men, how great soever.

Verbally, the more sober divines of the Church of Rome do not assert this; but practically and by consequence they do. For if the Church assign a sense contradictory to the true sense of the Scripture, none dare gainsay it. [10]

Ib.

This we deny, and will in due place 'improve' their error herein.

That is, prove against, detect, or confute.

Ib. c. 11. p. 360.

If the comparison be made between the Church consisting of all the
believers that are and have been since Christ appeared in the flesh,
so including the Apostles, and their blessed assistants the
Evangelists, we deny not but that the Church is of greater authority,
antiquity, and excellency than the Scriptures of the New Testament, as
the witness is better than his testimony, and the law-giver greater
than the laws made by him, as Stapleton allegeth.

The Scriptures may be and are an intelligible and real one, but the Church on earth can in no sense be such in and through itself, that is, its component parts, but only by their common adherence to the body of truth made present in the Scripture. Surely you would not distinguish the Scripture from its contents?

Ib. c. 12. p. 361.

For the better understanding whereof we must observe, as Occam fitly
noteth, that an article of faith is sometimes strictly taken only for
one of those divine verities, which are contained in the Creed of the
Apostles: sometimes generally for any catholic verity.

I am persuaded, that this division will not bear to be expanded into all its legitimate consequences 'sine periculo vel fidei vel charitatis'. I should substitute the following:

1. The essentials of that saving faith, which having its root and its proper and primary seat in the moral will, that is, in the heart and affections, is necessary for each and every individual member of the church of Christ:--

2. Those truths which are essential and necessary in order to the logical and rational possibility of the former, and the belief and assertion of which are indispensable to the Church at large, as those truths without which the body of believers, the Christian world, could not have been and cannot be continued, though it be possible that in this body this or that individual may be saved without the conscious knowledge of, or an explicit belief in, them.

Ib.

And therefore before and without such determination, men seeing
clearly the deduction of things of this nature from the former, and
refusing to believe them, are condemned of heretical pertinacy.

Rather, I should think, of a nondescript lunacy than of heretical pravity. A child may explicitly know that 5 + 5 = 10, yet not see that therefore 10 - 5 = 5; but when he has seen it how he can refrain from believing the latter as much as the former, I have no conception.

Ib. c. 16. p. 367.

And the third of jurisdiction; and so they that have supreme power,
that is, the Bishops assembled in a general Council, may interpret the
Scriptures, and by their authority suppress all them that shall
gainsay such interpretations, and subject every man that shall disobey
such determinations as they consent upon, to excommunication and
censures of like nature.

This would be satisfactory, if only Field had cleared the point of the communion in the Lord's Supper; whether taken spiritually, though in consequence of excommunication not ritually, it yet sufficeth to salvation. If so, excommunication is merely declarative, and the evil follows not the declaration but that which is truly declared, as when Richard says that Francis deserves the gallows, as a robber. The gallows depends on the fact of the robbery, not on Richard's saying.

Ib. c. 29. p. 391.

In the 1 Cor. 15. the Greek, that now is, hath in all copies; 'the
first man was of the earth, earthly; the second man is the Lord from
heaven'. The latter part of this sentence Tertullian supposeth to have
been corrupted, and altered by the Marcionites. Instead of that the
Latin text hath; 'the second man was from heaven, heavenly', as
Ambrose, Hierome, and many of the Fathers read also.

There ought to be, and with any man of taste there can be, no doubt that our version is the true one. That of Ambrose and Jerome is worthy of mere rhetoricians; a flat formal play of 'antithesis' instead of the weight and solemnity of the other. [11] According to the former the scales are even, in the latter the scale of Christ drops down at once, and the other flies to the beam like a feather weighed against a mass of gold.

Append. Part. I. s. 4. p. 752.

And again he saith, that every soul, immediately upon the departure
hence, is in this appointed invisible place, having there either pain,
or ease and refreshing; that there the rich man is in pain, and the
poor in a comfortable estate. For, saith he, why should we not think,
that the souls are tormented, or refreshed in this invisible place,
appointed for them in expectation of the future judgment?

This may be adduced as an instance, specially, of the evil consequences of introducing the 'idolon' of time as an 'ens reale' into spiritual doctrines, thus understanding literally what St. Paul had expressed by figure and adaptation. Hence the doctrine of a middle state, and hence Purgatory with all its abominations; and an instance, generally, of the incalculable possible importance of speculative errors on the happiness and virtue of man-kind.

[Footnote 1: Folio 1628.--Ed.]

[Footnote 2: The following letter was written on, and addressed with, the book to the Rev. Derwent Coleridge.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: 'P. L.' III. 487.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: i. 27. See 'Aids to Reflection'. 3d edit. p. 17. n.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5:

... whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive.

'P. L.' v. 426.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: The reader of the 'Aids to Reflection' will recognize in this note the rough original of the passages p. 313, &c. of the 3d edition of that work.--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: See 'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 283. Melancthon's words to Calvin are:

'Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affirmu etiam vestros magistratus
juste fecisse, quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata,
interfecerunt.'

14th Oct. 1554.--Ed.

[Footnote 8:

"But to circle the earth, 'as the heavenly bodies do',' &c. 'So we may
see that the opinion of Copernicus touching the rotation of the earth,
which astronomy itself cannot correct, because it is not repugnant to
any of the 'phænomena', yet 'natural history may correct'."

'Advancement of Learning', B. II.--Ed.]

[Footnote 9: That Christ had a twofold being, natural and sacramental; that the Jews destroyed and sacrificed his natural being, and that Christian priests destroy and sacrifice in the Mass his sacramental being.--Ed.]

[Footnote 10:

'Fides catholica', says Bellarmine, 'docet omnem virtutem esse bonam,
omne vitium esse malum. Si autem erraret Papa præcipiendo vitia vel
prohibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona et
virtutes malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare.'

'De Pont. Roman'. IV. 5.--Ed.]

[Footnote 11: The ordinary Greek text is:

[Greek: ho deúteros anthropos, ho Kyrios ex ouranou].

The Vulgate is:

'primus homo de terra, terrenus; secundus homo de coelis,
coelestis.'--Ed.]

NOTES ON DONNE. [1]

There have been many, and those illustrious, divines in our Church from Elizabeth to the present day, who, overvaluing the accident of antiquity, and arbitrarily determining the appropriation of the words 'ancient,' 'primitive,' and the like to a certain date, as for example, to all before the fourth, fifth, or sixth century, were resolute protesters against the corruptions and tyranny of the Romish hierarch, and yet lagged behind Luther and the Reformers of the first generation. Hence I have long seen the necessity or expedience of a threefold division of divines. There are many, whom God forbid that I should call Papistic, or, like Laud, Montague, Heylyn, and others, longing for a Pope at Lambeth, whom yet I dare not name Apostolic. Therefore I divide our theologians into,

1. Apostolic or Pauline: 2. Patristic: 3. Papal.

Even in Donne, and still more in Bishops Andrews and Hackett, there is a strong Patristic leaven. In Jeremy Taylor this taste for the Fathers and all the Saints and Schoolmen before the Reformation amounted to a dislike of the divines of the continental Protestant Churches, Lutheran or Calvinistic. But this must, in part at least, be attributed to Taylor's keen feelings as a Carlist, and a sufferer by the Puritan anti-prelatic party.

I would thus class the pentad of operative Christianity:--

'Prothesis'
Christ, the Word

'Thesis' 'Mesothesis' 'Antithesis'
The Scriptures The Holy Spirit The Church

'Synthesis'
The Preacher

The Papacy elevated the Church to the virtual exclusion or suppression of the Scriptures: the modern Church of England, since Chillingworth, has so raised up the Scriptures as to annul the Church; both alike have quenched the Holy Spirit, as the 'mesothesis' of the two, and substituted an alien compound for the genuine Preacher, who should be the 'synthesis' of the Scriptures and the Church, and the sensible voice of the Holy Spirit.

Serm. I. Coloss. i. 19, 20. p. 1. Ib. E.

What could God pay for me? What could God suffer? God himself could
not; and therefore God hath taken a body that could.

God forgive me,--or those who first set abroad this strange [Greek: metábasis eis allo génos], this debtor and creditor scheme of expounding the mystery of Redemption, or both! But I never can read the words, 'God himself could not; and therefore took a body that could'--without being reminded of the monkey that took the cat's paw to take the chestnuts out of the fire, and claimed the merit of puss's sufferings. I am sure, however, that the ludicrous images, under which this gloss of the Calvinists embodies itself to my fancy, never disturb my recollections of the adorable mystery itself. It is clear that a body, remaining a body, can only suffer as a body: for no faith can enable us to believe that the same thing can be at once A. and not A. Now that the body of our Lord was not transelemented or transnatured by the 'pleroma' indwelling, we are positively assured by Scripture. Therefore it would follow from this most unscriptural doctrine, that the divine justice had satisfaction made to it by the suffering of a body which had been brought into existence for this special purpose, in lieu of the debt of eternal misery due from, and leviable on, the bodies and souls of all mankind! It is to this gross perversion of the sublime idea of the Redemption by the cross, that we must attribute the rejection of the doctrine of redemption by the Unitarian, and of the Gospel 'in toto' by the more consequent Deist.

Ib. p. 2. C.

And yet, even this dwelling fullness, even in this person Christ
Jesus, by no title of merit in himself, but only 'quia complacuit',
because it pleased the Father it should be so.

This, in the intention of the preacher, may have been sound, but was it safe, divinity? In order to the latter, methinks, a less equivocal word than 'person' ought to have been adopted; as 'the body and soul of the man Jesus, considered abstractedly from the divine Logos, who in it took up humanity into deity, and was Christ Jesus.' Dare we say that there was no self-subsistent, though we admit no self-originated, merit in the Christ? It seems plain to me, that in this and sundry other passages of St. Paul, 'the Father' means the total triune Godhead.

It appears to me, that dividing the Church of England into two æras--the first from Ridley to Field, or from Edward VI. to the commencement of the latter third of the reign of James I, and the second ending with Bull and Stillingfleet, we might characterize their comparative excellences thus: That the divines of the first æra had a deeper, more genial, and a more practical insight into the mystery of Redemption, in the relation of man toward both the act and the author, namely, in all the inchoative states, the regeneration and the operations of saving grace generally;--while those of the second æra possessed clearer and distincter views concerning the nature and necessity of Redemption, in the relation of God toward man, and concerning the connection of Redemption with the article of Tri-unity; and above all, that they surpassed their predecessors in a more safe and determinate scheme of the divine economy of the three persons in the one undivided Godhead. This indeed, was mainly owing to Bishop Bull's masterly work 'De Fide Nicæna', [2] which in the next generation Waterland so admirably maintained, on the one hand, against the philosophy of the Arians,--the combat ending in the death and burial of Arianism, and its descent and 'metempsychosis' into Socinianism, and thence again into modern Unitarianism,--and on the other extreme, against the oscillatory creed of Sherlock, now swinging to Tritheism in the recoil from Sabellianism, and again to Sabellianism in the recoil from Tritheism.

Ib.

First, we are to consider this fullness to have been in Christ, and
then, from this fullness arose his merits; we can consider no merit in
Christ himself before, whereby he should merit this fullness; for this
fullness was in him before he merited any thing; and but for this
fullness he had not so merited. 'Ille homo, ut in unitatem filii Dei
assumeretur, unde meruit'? How did that man (says St. Augustine,
speaking of Christ, as of the son of man), how did that man merit to
be united in one person with the eternal Son of God? 'Quid egit ante?
Quid credidit'? What had he done? Nay, what had he believed? Had he
either faith or works before that union of both natures?

Dr. Donne and St. Augustine said this without offence; but I much question whether the same would be endured now. That it is, however, in the spirit of Paul and of the Gospel, I doubt not to affirm, and that this great truth is obscured by what in my judgment is the post-Apostolic 'Christopædia', I am inclined to think.

Ib.

What canst thou imagine he could foresee in thee? a propensness, a
disposition to goodness, when his grace should come? Either there is
no such propensness, no such disposition in thee, or, if there be,
even that propensness and disposition to the good use of grace, is
grace; it is an effect of former grace, and his grace wrought before
he saw any such propensness, any such disposition; grace was first,
and his grace is his, it is none of thine.

One of many instances in dogmatic theology, in which the half of a divine truth has passed into a fearful error by being mistaken for the whole truth.

Ib. p. 6. D.

God's justice required blood, but that blood is not spilt, but poured
from that head to our hearts, into the veins and wounds of our own
souls: there was blood shed, but no blood lost.

It is affecting to observe how this great man's mind sways and oscillates between his reason, which demands in the word 'blood' a symbolic meaning, a spiritual interpretation, and the habitual awe for the letter; so that he himself seems uncertain whether he means the physical lymph, 'serum,' and globules that trickled from the wounds of the nails and thorns down the sides and face of Jesus, or the blood of the Son of Man, which he who drinketh not cannot live. Yea, it is most affecting to see the struggles of so great a mind to preserve its inborn fealty to the reason under the servitude to an accepted article of belief, which was, alas! confounded with the high obligations of faith;--faith the co-adunation of the finite individual will with the universal reason, by the submission of the former to the latter. To reconcile redemption by the material blood of Jesus with the mind of the spirit, he seeks to spiritualize the material blood itself in all men! And a deep truth lies hidden even in this. Indeed the whole is a profound subject, the true solution of which may best, God's grace assisting, be sought for in the collation of Paul with John, and specially in St. Paul's assertion that we are baptized into the death of Christ, that we may be partakers of his resurrection and life. [3] It was not on the visible cross, it was not directing attention to the blood-drops on his temples and sides, that our blessed Redeemer said, 'This is my body', and 'this is my blood!

Ib. p. 9. A.

But if we consider those who are in heaven, and have been so from the
first minute of their creation, angels, why have they, or how have
they any reconciliation? &c.

The history and successive meanings of the term 'angels' in the Old and New Testaments, and the idea that shall reconcile all as so many several forms, and as it were perspectives, of one and the same truth--this is still a 'desideratum' in Christian theology.

Ib. C.

For, at the general resurrection, (which is rooted in the resurrection
of Christ, and so hath relation to him) the creature 'shall be
delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of
the children of God; for which the whole creation groans, and travails
in pain yet'. (Rom. viii. 21.) This deliverance then from this
bondage the whole creature hath by Christ, and that is their
reconciliation. And then are we reconciled by the blood of his cross,
when having crucified ourselves by a true repentance, we receive the
real reconciliation in his blood in the sacrament. But the most proper
and most literal sense of these words, is, that all things in heaven
and earth be reconciled to God (that is, to his glory, to a fitter
disposition to glorify him) by being reconciled to another in Christ;
that in him, as head of the church, they in heaven, and we upon earth,
be united together as one body in the communion of saints.

A very meagre and inadequate interpretation of this sublime text. The philosophy of life, which will be the 'corona et finis coronans' of the sciences of comparative anatomy and zoology, will hereafter supply a fuller and nobler comment.

Ib. p. 9. A. and B.

The blood of the sacrifices was brought by the high priest 'in sanctum
sanctorum', into the place of greatest holiness; but it was brought
but once, 'in festo expiationis', in the feast of expiation; but in
the other parts of the temple it was sprinkled every day. The blood of
the cross of Christ Jesus hath had this effect 'in sancto sanctorum',
&c. ... '(to)' Christ Jesus.

A truly excellent and beautiful paragraph.

Ib. C.

If you will mingle a true religion, and a false religion, there is no
reconciling of God and Belial in this text. For the adhering of
persons born within the Church of Rome to the Church of Rome, our law
says nothing to them if they come; but for reconciling to the Church
of Rome, for persons born within the allegiance of the king, or for
persuading of men to be so reconciled, our law hath called by an
infamous and capital name of treason, and yet every tavern and
ordinary is full of such traitors, &c.

A strange transition from the Gospel to the English statute-book! But I may observe, that if this statement could be truly made under James I, there was abundantly ampler ground for it in the following reign. And yet with what bitter spleen does Heylyn, Laud's creature, arraign the Parliamentarians for making the same complaint!

Serm. II. Isaiah vii. 14. p. 11.

The fear of giving offence, especially to good men, of whose faith in all essential points we are partakers, may reasonably induce us to be slow and cautious in making up our minds finally on a religious question, and may, and ought to, influence us to submit our conviction to repeated revisals and rehearings. But there may arrive a time of such perfect clearness of view respecting the particular point, as to supersede all fear of man by the higher duty of declaring the whole truth in Jesus. Therefore, having now overpassed six-sevenths of the ordinary period allotted to human life,--resting my whole and sole hope of salvation and immortality on the divinity of Christ, and the redemption by his cross and passion, and holding the doctrine of the Triune God as the very ground and foundation of the Gospel faith,--I feel myself enforced by conscience to declare and avow, that, in my deliberate judgment, the 'Christopædia' prefixed to the third Gospel and concorporated with the first, but, according to my belief, in its present form the latest of the four, was unknown to, or not recognized by, the Apostles Paul and John; and that, instead of supporting the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Filial Godhead of the Incarnate Word, as set forth by John i 1, and by Paul, it, if not altogether irreconcilable with this faith, doth yet greatly weaken and bedim its evidence; and that, by the too palpable contradictions between the narrative in the first Gospel and that in the third, it has been a fruitful magazine of doubts respecting the historic character of the Gospels themselves. I have read most of the criticisms on this text, and my impression is, that no learned Jew can be expected to receive the common interpretation as the true primary sense of the words. The severely literal Aquila renders the Hebrew word [Greek: neanis]. But were it asked of me: Do you then believe our Lord to have been the Son of Mary by Joseph? I reply: It is a point of religion with me to have no belief one way or the other. I am in this way like St. Paul, more than content not to know Christ himself [Greek: katà sárka]. It is enough for me to know that the Son of God 'became flesh', [Greek: sàrx egéneto genómenos ek gynaikòs] [4] and more than this, it appears to me, was unknown to the Apostles, or, if known, not taught by them as appertaining to a saving faith in Christ.

October 1831.

Note the affinity in sound of 'son' and 'sun', 'Sohn' and 'Sonne', which is not confined to the Saxon and German, or the Gothic dialects generally. And observe 'conciliare versöhnen=confiliare, facere esse cum filio', one with the Son.

Ib. p. 17. B.

It is a singular testimony, how acceptable to God that state of
virginity is. He does not dishonor physic that magnifies health; nor
does he dishonor marriage, that praises virginity; let them embrace
that state that can, &c.

One of the sad relics of Patristic super-moralization, aggravated by Papal ambition, which clung to too many divines, especially to those of the second or third generation after Luther. Luther himself was too spiritual, of too heroic faith, to be thus blinded by the declamations of the Fathers, whom, with the exception of Augustine, he held in very low esteem.

Ib. D.

And Helvidius said, she had children after.

'Annon Scriptura ipsa'? And a 'heresy,' too! I think I might safely put the question to any serious, spiritual-minded, Christian: What one inference tending to edification, in the discipline of will, mind, or affections, he can draw from the speculations of the last two or three pages of this Sermon respecting Mary's pregnancy and parturition? _Can_--I write it emphatically--_can_ such points appertain to our faith as Christians, which every parent would decline speaking of before a family, and which, if the questions were propounded by another in the presence of my daughter, aye, or even of my, no less, in mind and imagination, innocent wife, I should resent as an indecency?

Serm. III. Gal. iv. 4, 5. p. 20.

'God sent forth his Son made of a woman'.

I never can admit that [Greek: genómenon] and [Greek: egéneto] in St. Paul and St. John are adequately, or even rightly, rendered by the English 'made.'

Ib. p. 21, A.

What miserable revolutions and changes, what downfalls, what
break-necks and precipitations may we justly think ourselves ordained
to, if we consider, that in our coming into this world out of our
mothers' womb, we do not make account that a child comes right, except
it come with the head forward, and thereby prefigure that headlong
falling into calamities which it must suffer after?

The taste for these forced and fantastic analogies, Donne, with the greater number of the learned prelatic divines from James I. to the Restoration, acquired from that too great partiality for the Fathers, from Irenæus to Bernard, by which they sought to distinguish themselves from the Puritans.

Ib. C.

That now they (the Jews,) express a kind of conditional acknowledgment
of it, by this barbarous and inhuman custom of theirs, that they
always keep in readiness the blood of some Christian, with which they
anoint the body of any that dies amongst them, with these words; "If
Jesus Christ were the Messias, then may the blood of this Christian
avail thee to salvation!"

Is it possible that Donne could have given credit to this absurd legend! It was, I am aware, not an age of critical 'acumen'; grit, bran, and flour, were swallowed in the unsifted mass of their erudition. Still that a man like Donne should have imposed on himself such a set of idle tales, as he has collected in the next paragraph for facts of history, is scarcely credible; that he should have attempted to impose them on others, is most melancholy.

Ib. p. 22. D. E.

He takes the name of the son of a woman, and 'wanes' the miraculous
name of the son of a virgin.--Christ 'waned' the glorious name of Son
of God, and the miraculous name of Son of a virgin too; which is not
omitted to draw into doubt the perpetual virginity of the blessed
virgin, the mother of Christ, &c.

Very ingenious; but likewise very presumptuous, this arbitrary attribution of St. Paul's silence, and presumable ignorance of the virginity of Mary, to Christ's own determination to have the fact passed over.

N.B. Is 'wane' a misprint for 'wave' or 'waive?' It occurs so often, as to render its being an 'erratum' improbable; yet I do not remember to have met elsewhere 'wane' used for 'decline' as a verb active.

Ib. p. 23. A.

If there were reason for it, it were no miracle.

The announcement of the first comet, that had ever been observed, might excite doubt in the mind of an astronomer, to whom, from the place where he lived, it had not been visible. But his reason could have been no objection to it. Had God pleased, all women might have conceived, [Greek: aneu tou andròs], as many of the 'polypi' and 'planariæ' do. Not on any such ground do I suspend myself on this as an article of faith; but because I doubt the evidence.

Ib. p. 25. A--E.

Though we may think thus in the law of reason, yet, &c.

It is, and has been, a misfortune, a grievous and manifold loss and hindrance for the interests of moral and spiritual truth, that even our best and most vigorous theologians and philosophers of the age from Edward VI. to James II. so generally confound the terms, and so too often confound the subjects themselves, reason and understanding; yet the diversity, the difference in kind, was known to, and clearly admitted by, many of them,--by Hooker for instance, and it is implied in the whole of Bacon's 'Novum Organum'. Instead of the 'law of reason,' Donne meant, and ought to have said, 'judging according to the ordinary presumptions of the understanding,' that is, the faculty which, generalizing particular experiences, judges of the future by analogy to the past.

Taking the words, however, in their vulgar sense, I most deliberately protest against all the paragraphs in this page, from A to E, and should cite them, with a host of others, as sad effects of the confusion of the reason and the understanding, and of the consequent abdication of the former, instead of the bounden submission of the latter to a higher light. Faith itself is but an act of the will, assenting to the reason on its own evidence without, and even against, the understanding. This indeed is, I fully agree, to be brought into captivity to the faith. [5]

Ib. p. 26. A. B.

And therefore to be 'under the Law,' signifies here thus much; to be a
debtor to the law of nature, to have a testimony in our hearts and
consciences, that there lies a law upon us, which we have no power in
ourselves to perform, &c.

This exposition of the term 'law' in the epistles of St. Paul is most just and important. The whole should be adopted among the notes to the epistle to the Romans, in every Bible printed with notes.

Ib. p. 27. A.

And this was his first work, 'to redeem,' to vindicate them from the
usurper, to deliver them from the intruder, to emancipate them from
the tyrant, to cancel the covenant between hell and them, and restore
them so far to their liberty, as that they might come to their first
master, if they would; this was 'redeeming.'