Chapter XVIII: Part IV: p. 1 (1)

The religion of genuine Christianity is a revelation so distinct and
specific in its design, and so clear and intelligible in its rules,
that a man of philosophic and retired thought is apt to wonder by what
means the endless systems of error and hostility which divide the
world were ever introduced into it.

What means this hollow cant--this fifty times warmed-up bubble and squeak? That such parts are intelligible as the Barrister understands? That such parts as it possesses in common with all systems of religion and morality are plain and obvious? In other words that ABC are so legible that they are legible to every one that has learnt to read? If the Barrister mean other or more than this, if he really mean the whole religion and revelation of Christ, even as it is found in the original records, the Gospels and Epistles, he escapes from the silliness of a truism by throwing himself into the arms of a broad brazenfaced untruth. What! Is the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel so distinct and specific in its design, that any modest man can wonder that the best and most learned men of every age since Christ have deemed it mysterious? Are the many passages concerning the Devil and demoniacs so very easy? Has this writer himself thrown the least light on, or himself received one ray of light from, the meaning of the word Faith;--or the reason of Christ's paramount declarations respecting its omnific power, its absolutely indispensable necessity? If the word mean only what the Barrister supposes, a persuasion that in the present state of our knowledge the evidences for the historical truth of the miracles of the Gospel outweigh the arguments of the Sceptics, will he condescend to give us such a comment on the assertion, that had we but a grain of mustard seed of it, we might control all material nature, without making Christ himself the most extravagant hyperbolist that ever mis-used language? But it is impossible to make that man blush, who can seriously call the words of Christ as recorded by St. John, plain, easy, common sense, out of which prejudice, artifice, and selfish interest alone can compose any difficulty. The Barrister has just as much right to call his religion Christianity, as to call flour and water plum pudding:--yet we all admit that in plum pudding both flour and water do exist.

Ib. p. 7.

Socinus can have no claim upon my veneration: I have never concerned
myself with what he believed nor with what he taught &c.

The Scripture is my authority, and on no other authority will I ever,
knowingly, lay the foundation of my faith.

Utterly untrue. It is not the Scripture, but such passages of Scripture as appear to him to accord with his Procrustean bed of so called reason, and a forcing of the blankest contradictions into the same meaning, by explanations to which I defy him to furnish one single analogy as allowed by mankind with regard to any other writings but the Old and New Testament. It is a gross and impudent delusion to call a Book his authority, which he receives only so far as it is an echo of his own convictions. I defy him to adduce one single article of his whole faith, (creed rather) which he really derives from the Scripture. Even the arguments for the Resurrection are and must be extraneous: for the very proofs of the facts are (as every 'tyro' in theology must know) the proofs of the authenticity of the Books in which they are contained. This question I would press upon him:--Suppose we possessed the Fathers only with the Ecclesiastical and Pagan historians, and that not a page remained of the New Testament,--what article of his creed would it alter?

Ib. p. 10.

If the creed of Calvinistic Methodism is really more productive of
conversions than the religion of Christianity, let them openly and at
once say so.

But Calvinistic Methodism? Why Calvinistic Methodism? Not one in a hundred of the Methodists are Calvinists. Not to mention the impudence of this crow in his abuse of black feathers! Is it worse in a Methodist to oppose Socinianism to Christianity, that is, to the doctrines of Wesley or even Whitfield, which are the same as those of all the Reformed Churches of Christendom, and differ only wherein the most celebrated divines of the same churches have differed with each other,--than for the Barrister to oppose Methodism to Christianity (his Christianity)--that is, to Socinianism, which in every peculiar doctrine of Christianity differs from all divines of all Churches of all ages? For the one tenet in which the Calvinist differs from the majority of Christians, are there not ten in which the Socinian differs from all? To what purpose then this windy declamation about John Calvin? How many Methodists, does the Barrister think, ever saw, much less read, a work of Calvin's? If he scorns the name of Socinus as his authority, and appeals to Scripture, do not the Methodists the same? When do they refer to Calvin? In what work do they quote him? This page is therefore mere dust in the eyes of the public. And his abuse of Calvin displays only his own vulgar ignorance both of the man, and of his writings. For he seems not to know that the humane Melancthon, and not only he, but almost every Church, Lutheran or Reformed, throughout Europe, sent letters to Geneva, extolling the execution of Servetus, and returning their thanks. Yet it was a murder not the less: Yes! a damned murder: but the guilt of it is not peculiar to Calvin, but common to all the theologians of that age; and, 'Nota bene,' Mr. Barrister, the Socini not excepted, who were prepared to inflict the very same punishment on F. Davidi for denying the adorability of Christ. If to wish, will, resolve, and attempt to realize, be morally to commit, an action, then must Socinus and Calvin hunt in the same collar. But, O mercy! if every human being were to be held up to detestation, who in that age would have thought it his duty to have passed sentence 'de comburendo heretico' on a man, who had publicly styled the Trinity "a Cerberus," and "a three-headed monster of hell," what would the history of the Reformation be but a list of criminals? With what face indeed can we congratulate ourselves on being born in a more enlightened age, if we so bitterly abuse not the practice but the agents? Do we not admit by this very phrase "enlightened," that we owe our exemption to our intellectual advantages, not primarily to our moral superiority? It will be time enough to boast, when to our own tolerance we have added their zeal, learning, and indefatigable industry. [7]

Ib. p. 13, 14.

If religion consists in listening to long prayers, and attending long
sermons, in keeping up an outside appearance of devotion, and
interlarding the most common discourse with phrases of Gospel
usage:--if this is religion, then are the disciples of Methodism pious
beyond compare. But in real humility of heart, in mildness of temper,
in liberality of mind, in purity of thought, in openness and
uprightness of conduct in private life, in those practical virtues
which are the vital substance of Christianity,--in these are they
superior? No. Public observation is against the fact, and the
conclusion to which such observation leads is rarely incorrect. * *
The very name of the sect carries with it an impression of meanness
and hypocrisy. Scarce an individual that has had any dealings with
those belonging to it, but has good cause to remember it from some
circumstance of low deception or of shuffling fraud. Its very members
trust each other with caution and reluctance. The more wealthy among
them are drained and dried by the leeches that perpetually fasten upon
them. The leaders, ignorant and bigoted--I speak of them collectively
--present us with no counter-qualities that can conciliate respect.
They have all the craft of monks without their courtesy, and all the
subtlety of Jesuits without their learning.

In the whole 'Bibliotlieca theologica' I remember no instance of calumny so gross, so impudent, so unchristian. Even as a single robber, I mean he who robs one man, gets hanged, while the robber of a million is a great man, so it seems to be with calumny. This worthy Barrister will be extolled for this audacious slander of thousands, for which, if applied to any one individual, he would be in danger of the pillory. This paragraph should be quoted: for were the charge true, it is nevertheless impossible that the Barrister should know it to be true. He positively asserts as a truth known to him what it is impossible he should know:--he is therefore doubly a slanderer; for first, the charge is a gross calumny; and were it otherwise, he would still be a slanderer, for he could have no proof, no ground for such a charge.

Ib. p. 15.

Amidst all this spirit of research we find nothing--comparatively nothing--of improvement in that science of all others the most important in its influence * * *. Religion, except from the emancipating energy of a few superior minds, which have dared to snap asunder the cords which bound them to the rock of error * * * has been suffered to remain in its principles and in its doctrines, just what it was when the craft of Catholic superstition first corrupted its simplicity. So, so. Here it comes out at last! It is not the Methodists; no; it is all and each of all Europe, Infidels and Socinians excepted! O impudence! And then the exquisite self-conceit of the blunderer!

Ib. p. 29.

--If of 'different denominations', how were they thus conciliated to a
society of this ominous nature, from which they must themselves of
necessity be excluded by that indispensable condition of admittance,
"'a union' of religious sentiment in the 'great doctrines':" which
very want of union it is that creates these 'different denominations'?

No, Barrister! they mean that men of different denominations may yet all believe in the corruption of the human will, the redemption by Christ, the divinity of Christ as consubstantial with the Father, the necessity of the Holy Spirit, or grace (meaning more than the disposition of circumstances), and the necessity of faith in Christ superadded to a belief of his actions and doctrines,--and yet differ in many other points. The points enumerated are called the great points, because all Christians agree in them excepting the Arians and Socinians, who for that reason are not deemed Christians by the rest. The Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Arminian, the Greek, with all their sub-divisions, do yet all accord in these articles:--the booksellers might have said, all who repeat the Nicene Creed. N. B. I do not approve, or defend, nay, I dislike, these "United Theological Booksellers": but this utter Barrister is their best friend by attacking them so as to secure to them victory, and all the advantages of being known to have been wickedly slandered;--the best shield a faulty cause can protend against the javelin of fair opposition.

Ib. p. 56.

Our Saviour never in any single instance reprobated the exercise of
reason: on the contrary, he reprehends severely those who did not
exercise it. Carnal reason is not a phrase to be found in his Gospel;
he appealed to the understanding in all he said, and in all he taught.
He never required 'faith' in his disciples, without first furnishing
sufficient 'evidence' to justify it. He reasoned thus: If I have done
what no 'human power' could do, you must admit that my power is 'from
above', &c.

Good heavens! did he not uniformly require faith as the condition of obtaining the "evidence," as this Barrister calls it--that is, the miracle? What a shameless perversion of the fact! He never did reason thus. In one instance only, and then upbraiding the base sensuality of the Jews, he said: "If ye are so base as not to believe what I say from the moral evidence in your own consciences, yet pay some attention to it even for my works' sake." And this, an 'argumentum ad hominem,' a bitter reproach (just as if a great chemist should say;--Though you do not care for my science, or the important truths it presents, yet, even as an amusement superior to that of your jugglers to whom you willingly crowd, pay some attention to me)--this is to be set up against twenty plain texts and the whole spirit of the whole Gospel! Besides, Christ could not reason so; for he knew that the Jews admitted both natural and demoniacal miracles, and their faith in the latter he never attacked; though by an 'argumentum ad hominem' (for it is no argument in itself) he denied its applicability to his own works. If Christ had reasoned so, why did not the Barrister quote his words, instead of putting imaginary words in his mouth?

Ib. 60, 61.

Religion is a system of 'revealed' truth; and to affirm of any
revealed truth, that we 'cannot understand' it, is, in effect, either
to deny that it has been revealed, or--which is the same thing--to
admit that it has been revealed in vain.

It is too worthless! I cannot go on. Merciful God! hast thou not revealed to us the being of a conscience, and of reason, and of will;--and does this Barrister tell us, that he "understands" them? Let him know that he does not even understand the very word understanding. He does not seem to be aware of the school-boy distinction between the [Greek: hóti esti] and the [Greek: dióti]? But to all these silly objections religion must for ever remain exposed as long as the word Revelation is applied to any thing that can be 'bona fide' given to the mind 'ab extra', through the senses of eye, ear, or touch. No! all revelation is and must be 'ab intra'; the external 'phænomena' can only awake, recall evidence, but never reveal. This is capable of strict demonstration.

Afterwards the Barrister quotes from Thomas Watson respecting things above comprehension in the study of nature: "in these cases, the 'fact' is evident, the cause lies in obscurity, deeply removed from all the knowledge and penetration of man." Then what can we believe respecting these causes? And if we can believe nothing respecting them, what becomes of them as arguments in support of the proposition that we ought, in religion, to believe what we cannot understand?

Are there not facts in religion, the causes and constitution of which are mysteries?

[Footnote 1: Hints to the Public and the Legislature on the nature and effect of Evangelical Preaching. By a Barrister. Fourth Edition, 1808.]

[Footnote 2: See Aids to Reflection, p. 14, 4th edition.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: Quart. Review, vol. ii. p. 187.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See vol. i., p. 217.--Ed.]

[Footnote 5:

"And from this account of obligation it follows, that we can he
obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something
by; for nothing else can be a violent motive to us. As we should not
be obliged to obey the laws, or the magistrate, unless rewards or
punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other depended upon our
obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged
to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of
God."

'Paley's Moral and Polit. Philosophy', B. II. c. 2.

"The difference, and the only difference, ('between prudence and
duty',) is this; that in the one case we consider what we shall gain
or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what
we shall gain or lose in the world to come."

Ib. c. 3.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: Friend, Vol. I. Essays X. and XI. 3rd edition--Ed.]

[Footnote 7: See Table Talk, pp. 282 and 304. 2d edit.--Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON DAVISON'S DISCOURSES ON PROPHECY. 1825. [1]

Disc. IV. Pt. I. p. 140.

As to systems of religion alien from Christianity, if any of them have
taught the doctrine of eternal life, the reward of obedience, as a
dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden
and difficulty; inasmuch as they could never defend it. They could
never justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce
their warrant and authority to teach it. In such precarious and
unauthenticated principles it may pass for a conjecture, or pious
fraud, or a splendid phantom: it cannot wear the dignity of truth.

Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of thinking from p. 134 ('Since Prophecy', &c.) to p. 139. ('that mercy') of this discourse? A fact is no subject of scientific demonstration speculatively: we can only bring analogies, and these Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and others did bring; but their main argument remains to this day the main argument--namely, that none but a wicked man dares doubt it. When it is not in the light of promise, it is in the law of fear, at all times a part of the conscience, and presupposed in all spiritual conviction.

Ib. p. 160.

Some indeed have sought the 'star' and the 'sceptre' of Balaam's
prophecy, where they cannot well be found, in the reign of David; for
though a sceptre might be there, the star properly is not.

Surely this is a very weak reason. A far better is, I think, suggested by the words, 'I shall see him--I shall behold him';--which in no intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.

Ib. p. 162.

The Israelites could not endure the voice and fire of Mount Sinai.
They asked an intermediate messenger between God and them, who should
temper the awfulness of his voice, and impart to them his will in a
milder way.

'Deut'. xviii. 15. Is the following argument worthy our consideration? If, as the learned Eichhorn, Paulus of Jena, and others of their school, have asserted, Moses waited forty days for a tempest, and then, by the assistance of the natural magic he had learned in the temple of Isis, 'initiated' the law, all our experience and knowledge of the way in which large bodies of men are affected would lead us to suppose that the Hebrew people would have been keenly excited, interested, and elevated by a spectacle so grand and so flattering to their national pride. But if the voices and appearances were indeed divine and supernatural, well must we assume that there was a distinctive, though verbally inexpressible, terror and disproportion to the mind, the senses, the whole 'organismus' of the human beholders and hearers, which might both account for, and even in the sight of God justify, the trembling prayer which deprecated a repetition.

Ib. p. 164.

To justify its application to Christ, the resemblance between him and
Moses has often been deduced at large, and drawn into a variety of
particulars, among which several points have been taken minute and
precarious, or having so little of dignity or clearness of
representation in them, that it would be wise to discard them from the
prophetic evidence.

With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to evolve the full contents of the word 'like'; but I cannot help thinking that the contemporaries of Moses (if not otherwise orally instructed,) must have understood it in the first and historical sense, at least, of Joshua.

Ib. p. 168.

A distinguished commentator on the laws of Moses, Michaelis,
vindicates their temporal sanctions on the ground of the Mosaic Code
being of the nature of a civil system, to the statutes of which the
rewards of a future state would be incongruous and unsuitable.

I never read either of Michaelis's Works, but the same view came before me whenever I reflected on the Mosaic Code. Who expects in realities of any kind the sharp outline and exclusive character of scientific classification? It is the predominance of the characterizing constituent that gives the name and class. Do not even our own statute laws, though co-existing with a separate religious Code, contain many 'formulæ' of words which have no sense but for the conscience? Davison's stress on the word 'covet', in the tenth commandment, is, I think, beyond what so ancient a Code warrants;--and for the other instances, Michaelis would remind him that the Mosaic constitution was a strict theocracy, and that Jehovah, the God of all, was their 'king'. I do not know the particular mode in which Michaelis propounds and supports this position; but the position itself, as I have presented it to my own mind, seems to me among the strongest proofs of the divine origin of the Law, and an essential in the harmony of the total scheme of Revelation.

Disc. IV. Pt. II. p. 180.

But the first law meets him on his own terms; it stood upon a present
retribution; the execution of its sentence is matter of history, and
the argument resulting from it is to be answered, before the question
is carried to another world.

This is rendered a very powerful argument by the consideration, that though so vast a mind as that of Moses, though perhaps even a Lycurgus, might have distinctly foreseen the ruin and captivity of the Hebrew people as a necessary result of the loss of nationality, and the abandonment of the law and religion which were their only point of union, their centre of gravity,--yet no human intellect could have foreseen the perpetuity of such a people as a distinct race under all the aggravated curses of the law weighing on them; or that the obstinacy of their adherence to their dividuating institutes in persecution, dispersion, and shame, should be in direct proportion to the wantonness of their apostasy from the same in union and prosperity.

Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234.

Except under the dictate of a constraining inspiration, it is not easy
to conceive how the master of such a work, at the time when he had
brought it to perfection, and beheld it in its lustre, the labour of
so much opulent magnificence and curious art, and designed to be
'exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all
countries', should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and
dilapidation, and that too under the 'opprobrium' of God's vindictive
judgment upon it, nor to imagine how that strain of sinister prophecy,
that forebodes of malediction, should be ascribed to him, if he had no
such vision revealed.

Here I think Mr. Davison should have crushed the objection of the Infidel grounded on Solomon's subsequent idolatrous impieties. The Infidel argues, that these are not conceivable of a man distinctly conscious of a prior and supernatural inspiration, accompanied with supernatural manifestations of the divine presence.

Disc. VI. Pt. I. p. 283.

In order to evade this conclusion, nothing is left but to deny that
Isaiah, or any person of his age, wrote the book ascribed to him.

This too is my conclusion, but (if I do not delude myself) from more evident, though not perhaps more certain, premisses. The age of the Cyrus prophecies is the great object of attack by Eichhorn and his compilers; and I dare not say, that in a controversy with these men Davison's arguments would appear sufficient. But this was not the intended subject of these Discourses.

Disc. VI. Pt. II. p. 289.

But how does he express that promise? In the images of the
resurrection and an immortal state. Consequently, there is implied in
the delineation of the lower subject the truth of the greater.

This reminds me of a remark, I have elsewhere made respecting the expediency of separating the arguments addressed to, and valid for, a believer, from the proofs and vindications of Scripture intended to form the belief, or to convict the Infidel.

Disc. VI. Pt. IV. p. 325.

When Cyrus became master of Babylon, the prophecies of Isaiah were
shewn or communicated to him, wherein were described his victory, and
the use he was appointed to make of it in the restoration of the
Hebrew people. ('Ezra' i. 1, 2.)

This I had been taught to regard as one of Josephus's legends; but upon this passage who would not infer that it had Ezra for its authority,--who yet does not expressly say that even the prophecy of the far later Jeremiah was known or made known to Cyrus, who (Ezra tells us) fulfilled it? If Ezra had meant the prediction of Isaiah by the words, 'he hath charged me', &c., why should he not have referred to it together with, or even instead of, Jeremiah? Is it not more probable that a living prophet had delivered the charge to Cyrus? See 'Ezra' vi. 14.--Again, Davison makes Cyrus speak like a Christian, by omitting the affix 'of Heaven to the Lord God' in the original. Cyrus speaks as a Cyrus might be supposed to do,--namely, of a most powerful but yet national deity, of a God, not of God. I have seen in so many instances the injurious effect of weak or overstrained arguments in defence of religion, that I am perhaps more jealous than I need be in the choice of evidences. I can never think myself the worse Christian for any opinion I may have formed, respecting the price of this or that argument, of this or that divine, in support of the truth. For every one that I reject, I could supply two, and these [Greek: anékdota].

Ib. p. 336.

Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel's family, and
of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the
Gospel, was one of the preparations made whereby to manifest more
distinctly the proper glory of it, in the birth of the Messiah.

In whichever way I take this, whether addressed to a believer for the purpose of enlightening, or to an inquirer for the purpose of establishing, his faith in prophecy, this argument appears to me equally perplexing and obscure. It seems, 'prima facie', almost tantamount to a right of inferring the fulfilment of a prophecy in B., which it does not mention, from its entire failure and falsification in A., which, and which alone, it does mention.

Ib. p. 370.

'Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and
dreadful day of the Lord.'

Almost every page of this volume makes me feel my own ignorance respecting the interpretation of the language of the Hebrew Prophets, and the want of the one idea which would supply the key. Suppose an Infidel to ask me, how the Jews were to ascertain that John the Baptist was Elijah the Prophet;--am I to assert the pre-existence of John's personal identity as Elijah? If not, why Elijah rather than any other Prophet? One answer is obvious enough, that the contemporaries of John held Elijah as the common representative of the Prophets; but did Malachi do so?

Ib. p. 373.

I cannot conceive a more beautiful synopsis of a work on the Prophecies of the Old Testament, than is given in this Recapitulation. Would that its truth had been equally well substantiated! That it can be, that it will be, I have the liveliest faith;--and that Mr. Davison has contributed as much as we ought to expect, and more than any contemporary divine, I acknowledge, and honor him accordingly. But much, very much, remains to be done, before these three pages merit the name of a Recapitulation.

Disc. VII. p. 375.

If I needed proof of the immense importance of the doctrine of Ideas, and how little it is understood, the following discourse would supply it.

The whole discussion on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses. I neither do nor ever could see any other difficulty on the subject, than what is contained and anticipated in the idea of eternity.

By Ideas I mean intuitions not sensuous, which can be expressed only by contradictory conceptions, or, to speak more accurately, are in themselves necessarily both inexpressible and inconceivable, but are suggested by two contradictory positions. This is the essential character of all ideas, consequently of eternity, in which the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are included. Now prescience and freewill are in fact nothing more than the two contradictory positions by which the human understanding struggles to express successively the idea of eternity. Not eternity in the negative sense as the mere absence of succession, much less eternity in the senseless sense of an infinite time; but eternity,--the Eternal; as Deity, as God. Our theologians forget that the objection applies equally to the possibility of the divine will; but if they reply that prescience applied to an eternal, 'Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio', is but an anthropomorphism, or term of accommodation, the same answer serves in respect of the human will; for the epithet human does not enter into the syllogism. As to contingency, whence did Mr. Davison learn that it is a necessary accompaniment of freedom, or of free action? My philosophy teaches me the very contrary.

Ib. p. 392.

He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not
within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the
assumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in
Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and
responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are
in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.

I utterly deny contingency except in relation to the limited and imperfect knowledge of man. But the misery is, that men write about freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea [Greek: katt' exochàen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they overlay their reason.

Disc. VIII. p. 416.

It would not be easy to calculate the good which a man like Mr. Davison might effect, under God, by a work on the Messianic Prophecies, specially intended for and addressed to the present race of Jews,--if only he would make himself acquainted with their objections and ways of understanding Scripture. For instance, a learned Jew would perhaps contend that this prophecy of Isaiah (c. ii. 2-4,) cannot fairly be interpreted of a mere local origination of a religion historically; as the drama might be described as going forth from Athens, and philosophy from Academus and the Painted Porch, but must refer to an established and continuing seat of worship, 'a house of the God of Jacob'. The answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, 'in the top of the mountains'; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the whole prediction.

Ib. p. 431.

One point, however, is certain and equally important, namely, that the
Christian Church, when it comes to recognize more truly the obligation
imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, 'Go teach all
nations', &c.

That the duty here recommended is deducible from this text is quite clear to my mind; but whether it is the direct sense and primary intention of the words; whether the first meaning is not negative,--('Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing',)--this is not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is this narrower sense without its practical advantages.

Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.

The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes me. It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional 'infausta tempora scribendi', can account for. I question whether from any modern work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and awkward sentences could be extracted. The paragraph in page 453 and 454, is not a specimen of the worst. In a volume which ought to be, and which probably will be, in every young Clergyman's library, these 'maculæ' are subjects of just regret. The utility of the work, no less than its great comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.

Disc. XII. p. 519.

Four such ruling kingdoms did arise. The first, the Babylonian, was in
being when the prophecy is represented to have been given. It was
followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the
Roman closed the series.

This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or Medo-Persian is the second--if I recollect aright. But it always struck me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own snares. For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire should not have been predicted;--for superhuman predictions, the last two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Cassandra, and later than Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last and most important Empire is inexplicable.

Ib. p. 521.

Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel's prophecies were
read publicly among the Jews in their worship, as well as their other
received Scriptures.

It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the book of Daniel in the third class only, among the Hagiographic --passionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of our Saviour were attached to it.

Ib. p. 522-3.

But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view
in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit
that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy,
this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so
plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.

'Quære'. See Polybius.

Ib.

We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this
fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.

This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I confess, strike me as being. On the contrary, the admission that by a writer of the Maccabaic æra the Roman power could scarcely have been overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires, rather than the idea of a last. In the age of Augustus this might possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source of succession.

[Footnote 1: Discourses on Prophecy, in which are considered its structure, use and inspiration, being the substance of twelve Sermons preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn in the Lecture founded by the Right Rev. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison, B.D. 2nd edit. London, 1825.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON IRVING'S BEN-EZRA. [1] 1827.

Christ the WORD.
|
The Scriptures--The Spirit--The Church.
|
The Preacher.

Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ. The written Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal Word, Christ from everlasting, is the 'prothesis' or identity;--the Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the 'thesis' and 'antithesis'; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the 'synthesis'. And here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a 'tetractys', or a triad equal to a 'tetractys': 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a pentad--God's hand in the world. [2]

It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend, Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.

I. How far? First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the positive assurance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I--even in those points in which my judgment most coincides with his,--profess only to regard them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with orthodoxy. They may be believed, and they may be doubted, 'salva Catholica fide'. Further, from these points I exclude all prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places, of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr. Irving's and of Lacunza's scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza, understands them. Again, I protest against all identification of the coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under Constantine.

II. In what sense? In this and no other, that the objects of the Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;--that the kingdom of God and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine will shall 'be done on earth as it is in heaven', will 'come';--and that the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final cause of the world. Life begins in detachment from Nature, and ends in union with God.

III. Under what conditions? That I retain my former convictions respecting St. Michael, and the ex-saint Lucifer, and the Genie Prince of Persia, and the re-institution of bestial sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem, and the rest of this class. All these appear to me so many pimples on the face of my friend's faith from inward heats, leaving it indeed a fine handsome intelligent face, but certainly not adding to its comeliness.

Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.

P.S. I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. ('Deuteron.' xxv. 1-8.)

It may be long before Edward Irving sees what I seem at least to see so clearly,--and yet, I doubt not, the time will come when he too will see with the same evidentness,--how much grander a front his system would have presented to judicious beholders; on how much more defensible a position he would have placed it,--and the remark applies equally to Ben Ezra (that is, Emanuel Lacunza)--had he trusted the proof to Scriptures of undisputed catholicity, to the spirit of the whole Bible, to the consonance of the doctrine with the reason, its fitness to the needs and capacities of mankind, and its harmony with the general plan of the divine dealings with the world,--and had left the Apocalypse in the back ground. But alas! instead of this he has given it such prominence, such prosiliency of relief, that he has made the main strength of his hope appear to rest on a vision, so obscure that his own author and faith's-mate claims a meaning for its contents only on the supposition that the meaning is yet to come!

Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.

Now of these three, the office of Christ, as our prophet, is the means
used by the Holy Spirit for working the redemption of the
understanding of men; that faculty by which we acquire the knowledge
on which proceed both our inward principles of conduct and our outward
acts of power.

I cannot forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding, 'genere et gradu', given in the Aids to Reflection. [3]

What can be plainer than to say: the understanding is the medial faculty or faculty of means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas or ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end: by the understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to circumstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there can be neither a first nor a last:--all that we can see, smell, taste, touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of our language, entitled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective power, is the source and faculty of words;--and on this account the understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense. However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point, because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness, 'materiam objectivam',) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs], as likewise [Greek: psychikàe synesis], the intellectual power of the living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of the will and the reason;--and this spirit both the Christian and elder Jewish Church named, 'sophia', or wisdom.

Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius name Cerinthusas the inventor of many
corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the
palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his
disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most
important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a Sultan,
&c.

I find very great difficulty in crediting these black charges on Cerinthus, and know not how to reconcile them with the fact that the Apocalypse itself was by many attributed to Cerinthus. But Mr. Hunt is not more famous for blacking than some of the Fathers.

Ib. pp. 73, 4.

Against whom a very eloquent man, Dionysius Alexandrinus, a Father of
the Church, wrote an elegant work, to ridicule the Millennarian fable,
the golden and gemmed Jerusalem on the earth, the renewal of the
Temple, the blood of victims. If the book of St. Dionysius had
contained nothing but the derision and confutation of all we have just
read, it is certain that he doth in no way concern himself with the
harmless Millennarians, but with the Jews and Judaizers. It is to be
clearly seen that Dionysius had nothing in his eye, but the ridiculous
excesses of Nepos, and his peculiar tenets upon circumcision, &c.

Lacunza, I suspect, was ignorant of Greek: and seems not to have known that the object of Dionysius was to demonstrate that the Apocalypse was neither authentic nor a canonical book.

Ib. p. 85.

The ruin of Antichrist, with all that is comprehended under that name,
being entirely consummated, and the King of kings remaining master of
the field, St. John immediately continues in the 20th chapter, which
thus commenceth: 'And I saw an angel come down from heaven, &c. And I
saw thrones, &c. And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be
loosed out of his prison.'

It is only necessary to know that the whole book from the first verse to the last is written in symbols, to be satisfied that the true meaning of this passage is simply, that only the great Confessors and Martyrs will be had in remembrance and honour in the Church after the establishment of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. And observe, it is the souls that the Seer beholds:--there is not a word of the resurrection of the body;--for this would indeed have been the appropriate symbol of a resurrection in a real and personal sense.

Ib. c. vi. p. 108.

Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, 'that they
who have been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of
God, and they who have not worshipped the beast', these shall live,
'or be raised' at the coming of the Lord, 'which is the first
resurrection.'

Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" asserted? The Seer not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word [Greek: psychás], souls, expressly asserts the contrary. In no sense of the word can souls, which descended in Christ's train ('chorus sacer animarum et Christi comitatus') from Heaven, be said 'resurgere'. Resurrection is always and exclusively resurrection in the body;--not indeed a rising of the 'corpus' [Greek: phantastikón], that is, the few ounces of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the 'copula' of which that gave the form no longer exists,--and of which Paul exclaims;--'Thou fool! not this', &c.--but the 'corpus' [Greek: hypostatikòn, àe noúmenon].

But there is yet another and worse wresting of the text. Who that reads Lacunza, p. 108, last line but twelve, would not understand that the Apocalypt had asserted this enthronement of the souls of the Gentile and Judæo-Christian Martyrs which he beheld in the train or suite of the descending Messiah; and that he had first seen them in the descent, and afterward saw thrones assigned to them? Whereas the sentence precedes, and has positively no connection with these souls. The literal interpretation of the symbols c. xx. v. 4, is, "I then beheld the Christian religion the established religion of the state throughout the Roman empire;--emperors, kings, magistrates, and the like, all Christians, and administering laws in the name of Christ, that is, receiving the Scriptures as the supreme and paramount law. Then in all the temples the name of Jesus was invoked as the King of glory, and together with him the old afflicted and tormented fellow-laborers with Christ were revived in high and reverential commemoration," &c. But that the whole Vision from first to last, in every sentence, yea, every word, is symbolical, and in the boldest, largest style of symbolic language; and secondly, that it is a work of disputed canonicity, and at no known period of the Church could truly lay claim to catholicity;--but for this, I think this verse would be worth a cartload of the texts which the Romanist divines and catechists ordinarily cite as sanctioning the invocation of Saints.

Ib. p. 110.

You will say nevertheless, that even the wicked will be raised
incorruptible to inherit incorruption, because being once raised,
their bodies will no more change or be dissolved, but must continue
entire, for ever united with their sad and miserable souls. Well, and
would you call this corruption or incorruptibility? Certainly this is
not the sense of the Apostle, when he formally assures us, yea, even
threatens us, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption. 'Neither
doth corruption inherit incorruption'. What then may this singular
expression mean? This is what it manifestly means;--that no person,
whoever he may be, without any exception, who possesseth a corrupt
heart and corrupt actions, and therein persevereth unto death, shall
have reason to expect in the resurrection a pure, subtile, active and
impassible body.

This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.

Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated chapter (1 'Cor'. xv.) speaks of a partial or of the general resurrection, or even conceding to Lacunza that the former opinion is the more probable; I must still vehemently object to this Jesuitical interpretation of corruption, as used in a moral sense, and distinctive of the wicked souls. St. Paul nowhere speaks dogmatically or preceptively (not popularly and incidentally,) of a soul as the proper 'I'. It is always 'we', or the man. How could a regenerate saint put off corruption at the sound of the trump, if up to that hour it did not in some sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied, unrefracting, 'medium' to the Apostolic assertion, that corruption in this passage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism common to saint and sinner,--standing in precisely the same relation to the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the crab and tortoise. These slightly combined and easily decomponible stuffs are as incapable of subsisting under the altered conditions of the earth as an hydatid in the blaze of a tropical sun. They would be no longer 'media' of communion between the man and his circumstances.

A heavy difficulty presses, as it appears to me, on Lacunza's system, as soon as we come to consider the general resurrection. Our Lord (in books of indubitable and never doubted catholicity) speaks of some who rise to bliss and glory, others who at the same time rise to shame and condemnation. Now if the former class live not during the whole interval from their death to the general resurrection, including the Millennium, or 'Dies Messiæ',--how should they, whose imperfect or insufficient merits excluded them from the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, be all at once fitted for the kingdom of heaven?

Ib. ch. vii. p. 118.

It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively,
means in good language this only, that the word 'quick', which the
Apostles, full of the Holy Spirit, set down, is a word altogether
useless, which might without loss have been omitted, and that it were
enough to have set down the word 'dead': for by that word alone is the
whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.

The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological reading of their 'alumni' is strongly marked in this (in so many respects) excellent work: for example, the "most believing mind," with which Lacunza takes for granted the exploded fable of the Catechumens' ('vulgo' Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic 'pic-nic', to which each of the twelve contributed his several 'symbolum'.

Ib. ch. ix. p. 127.

The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that
that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)

There are serious difficulties besetting the authenticity of the Catholic Epistles under the name of Peter; though there exist no grounds for doubting that they are of the Apostolic age. A large portion too of the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his 'amanuensis', who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this hypothesis. But what is of much greater importance, especially for the point in discussion, is the character of these and other similar descriptions of the 'Dies Messiæ', the 'Dies ultima', and the like. Are we bound to receive them as articles of faith? Is there sufficient reason to assert them to have been direct revelations immediately vouchsafed to the sacred writers? I cannot satisfy my judgment that there is;--first, because I find no account of any such events having been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and because I do find these events asserted, and (for aught I have been able to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles, and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these anticipations had become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their ancient and national religious belief. Now I know of no revealed truth that did not originate in Revelation, and find it hard to reconcile my mind to the belief that any Christian truth, any essential article of faith, should have been first made known by the father of lies, or the guess-work of the human understanding blinded by Paganism, or at best without the knowledge of the true God. Of course I would not apply this to any assertion of any New Testament writer, which was the final aim and primary intention of the whole passage; but only to sentences 'in ordine ad' some other doctrine or precept, 'illustrandi causa', or 'ad hominem', or 'more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice'.