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AIDS TO REFL.ECTION, 
 
 IJV THE 
 
 FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, 
 
 ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF 
 
 PRUDENCE, MORALITY, AND RELIGION: 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 SELECT PASSAGES FROM OUR ELDER DIVINES, ESPECIALLY 
 FROM ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. 
 
 BY S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN, FROM THE FIRST LONDON EDITION ; 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX, AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM OTHER WORKS OF THE SAME 
 
 AUTHOR ; TOGETHER WITH A 
 
 PRELIMINARY ESSAY, AND ADDITIONAL NOTES, 
 
 BY JAMES MARSH, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT. 
 
 BURLINGTON: 
 
 CHAUNCEY GOODRICH 
 M ^ C C C \ M \ . 
 
DISTRICT OF VERMONT, TO WIT: 
 
 I BE it remembered, that on the twenty-seventh day of Oc- 
 tober, in the fifty-fouith year of the Independence of tlie 
 United States of America, Chadncey Goodrich, of the 
 'said District, hath deposited in this office, the title of a book, 
 the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words following, to wit : 
 " Aids to Re/lection, in the fomiation of a manly character, on the several 
 grounds of prudence, morality, and Religion ; illustrated by select passages 
 from the elder Divines, especially from Archbishop Leighton. By S. T. Cole- 
 ridge. First American, from the first London edition ; loith an Appendix and 
 Illustrations from other fVorks of the same Author ; together ivith a Prelimina- 
 ry Essay, and Additional JVotes, By James Marsh, President of the Uni- 
 versity of Vermont.^'' 
 
 In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled 
 " An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of 
 Maps, Charts, and Books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, 
 during the times therein mentioned." 
 
 JESSE GOVE, 
 Clerk of the District of Vermont. 
 A true Copy of Record. Examined and sealed by me. 
 
 J. GOVE, CUrk. 
 
 Chauncey Goodrich, Printer, Burlington, Vt. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 0^ 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Advertisement by the American Editor v 
 
 Preliminary Essay vii 
 
 Advertisement by the Author Iv 
 
 Preface . Ivii 
 
 Introductory Aphorisms i 
 
 Prudential Aphorisms . .17 
 
 Reflections respecting Morality 31^ 
 
 Moral and Religious Aphorisms 37 
 
 Elements of Religious Philosophy, preliminary to the Apho- 
 risms on Spiritual Religion- 85 
 
 Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion 55 
 
 Aphorisms on that which is IxNdeed Spiritual Religion . . 103 
 
 Notes 252 
 
 Appendix . . • 343 
 
auivog avTLC JOFI^ MO^ , Sixagtjg aypvnroc tavruv yinTai. JTr, nctnt-^r^v ; Ti 
 d'tQt^u ; y.ai bv ra^Jt rrj inrur^r av(x).uy^uvwv a^nr^c inxa utixliQwv tuvruv avfir- 
 (pojvwg roig nQoy.tniivotg Inoig SiriVtQtvourra, t>;? dnug tiipnoovrt^g roig yMOTiOi^ 
 avaSti. nuna tii?.og Ss n noacaiTu (pv>f>uaag luonfo not (paofiaxotc ruig ly. T),5 
 fiixavotag \'Ov&iTriasaiv tntgvipti. 
 
 Hierodes, as quoted hy Renatus Vcdlinus in notes on Boetkius. 
 
 Neque esse mens divina sine ratione potest, nee ratio dmna non lianc 
 vim in rectis pravisque sanciendis habere. ** Erat enim ratio profecta a 
 rerum natura, et ad recte faciendum impellens, et a delicto avocans 5 quae 
 non timi denique incipit lex esse, cum scripta est, sed tum cum orta est. 
 Orta autem simul est cum mente divina. 
 
 Cicero de Legibus, Lib. ii. c. 4. 
 
 Hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth, and with la- 
 bour do we find the things that are at hand ; but the things that are in 
 heaven who hath searched out ? And thy counsel who hath known, 
 except thou give wisdom, and send thy holy spirit from above ? 
 For so the ways of them Avhich lived on the eaith were reformed, and 
 men were taught the things that are pleasing unto thee, and were saved 
 through wisdom. Wisdom of Solomon, ix. IG, 17. 18. 
 
ADVERTISE MEJVT. 
 
 In repiib]jsliing the " Aids to Reflection," I have aimed to adapt it, as 
 far as possible, to the circumstances, in which it will be placed, and to the 
 wishes of those readers who will be most likely to seek instruction from 
 the work. As the philosophical views of the author, and what are con- 
 sidered his peculiarities of thought and language, are less knov\Ti, and his 
 other writings less accessible here, than in the community for whicli he 
 wrote, I su})posed it might increase the usefulness of an edition for the 
 American public to connect with it such extracts from his other works, as 
 would sei've to explain his language, and render moie intelligiWe the es- 
 sential yu-jnciples of his !?ystem. Passages selected for this pui-jiose will 
 be fomid attached to many of the author's notes, as well as to other notes 
 which have been ad<led. These constitute the principal addition to this 
 ])art of the volume, though a few extracts are inserted in note 59 from 
 Henry More's Philosophical Works. I have thrown in occasional re- 
 marks of my own, and in a few instances have hazarded my thoughts 
 more at large. Notes merely exi)lanatory could not be multiplied without 
 compromising my respect for the understanding either of the author or of 
 the reader. I am persuaded, moreover, that if parts of the work are found 
 difficult to understand, a littl« reflection will show the difficulty to be in- 
 herent in the subject, and such as could not be removed by multiplying il- 
 lustrations. No language and no illustration can help the reader to under- 
 stand himself without the labour of serious and persevering re/lection. I 
 have endeavoured to furnish, however, that sort of help, which I thought 
 would be most effectual with regard to the views of the author, by giving 
 references, in the notes on important topics, to all the parts of the work, 
 where the same topic is treated of The notes for obvious reasons are 
 thrown together after the text of the work, and the additions which have 
 been made in this edition are so designated, as to distinguish them from 
 the original notes of the author. An Api)en{lix is added consisting of 
 matter which it was thought would serve the same })uii)ose of illustration 
 with the notes, and otherwise increase the usefulness of the volume. 
 
 The Prelinfmary Essay, which 1 have prefixed, must bo allowed for the 
 most ])art to speak for itself. The views which it exhibits will be found, 1 
 believe, as far as they go, nearly coincident with the system of tlie author, 
 as my chief purpose in writing it has been to draw attention to the au- 
 
VI AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 thor's work. I have aimed aspecially, botli in this and in the notes, to 
 awaken the minds of thinking men to certain great and all-important dis- 
 tinctions of a philosophical nature, which the author has exhibited, as it 
 Hcems to me witli convincing clearness, both in this and in his other works. 
 I might perhaps have left others to make the application of the doctrines 
 taught in the work to the opinions and discussions now prevailing among 
 ourselves, had I not believed the application would be more likely than 
 any tiling else to arouse attention to the doctrines themselves. If in ma- 
 king it I shall be thought to have spoken too freely, I hope at least to have 
 the credit of honest intentions, and of being miinfluenced by any con- 
 siderations of a personal nature. 
 
 For the manner in which the text of the work was made up the rea- 
 der must of course be referred to the author's advertisement. I have 
 mentioned it for the purpose of adding, that however disconnected and 
 miscellaneous it may at first appear, it will be found on perusal to con- 
 tain a connected train of discussions, and to be strictly methodical 
 in its anangement. I cannot but add a request, that the author's pre- 
 face may receive a far more attentive perusal, than prefaces are generally 
 favoured with. The whole work will be found partly philosophical and 
 partly rehgious, or rather both combined in one, and that upon a princi- 
 ple and in a manner, I trust, which both reason and rehgion will approve. 
 "Naturam hominis banc Deus ipse voluit,' ut duarum rerum cupidus 
 et appetens esset — religionis et sapientise. Sed homines ideo falluntur, 
 quod aut religionem suscipiunt omissa sapientia ; aut sapientiae soli stu- 
 dent omissa religione, cum alterum sine altero esse non possit verum." 
 
 Lactantius de Falsa Sapientia, Lib. III. B. 11. 
 The whole is committed to the candour of the Christian public with 
 the hope and prayer, that it may i)romote among us the interests, which 
 cannot be long separated from each other, of sound philosophy and of 
 true religion. 
 
 JAMES MARSH. 
 
 University of f^erniont, JVov. l&h^ 1829. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 
 
 Whether the present state of religious feeling, and the 
 prevailing topics of theological enquiry among us, are particu- 
 larly favourable to the success of the work herewith offered to 
 the public, can be determined onlj^ by the result. The ques- 
 tion, however, has not been left unconsidered ; and however 
 that may be, it is not a work, whose value depends essentially 
 uponjts relation~tothe^passing controversies of tjie day. Un- 
 less I ^i^trust my own "leelings ana convictions altogether, I 
 must suppose, that for some, I hope for many, minds, it will 
 have ^ deep and enduring interest. Of those classes, for 
 whose use it is more especially designated in the author's 
 preface, I trust there are many also in this country, who will 
 justly appreciate the objects at which it aims, and avail them- 
 selves of its instruction and assistance. L could wish it might 
 be received, by all who concern themselves in religious inqui- 
 ries and instruction especially, in the spirit, which seems to 
 me to have animated its great and admirable author ; and I 
 hesitate not to say, that to all of every class, who shall so re- 
 ceive it, and peruse it with the attention and thoughtfulness, 
 which it demands and deserves, it will be found by experi- 
 ence to furnish what its title imports, "Aids to Reflection" 
 on subjects, upon which every man is bound to reflect deeply 
 and in earnest. 
 
 What the specific objects of the work are, and for whom it 
 is written, may be learned in few words from the preface of 
 the author. From this too, it will be seen to be professedly 
 didactic. It is designed to aid those, who wish for instruction, 
 or assistance in the instruction of others. The plan and com- 
 
via ' AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 position of tiie work will to most readers probably appear 
 somewhat anomalous; but reflection upon the nature of the 
 objects aimed at, and some little experience of its results, may 
 convince them, that the method adopted is not without its ad- 
 vantages. It is important to observe, that it is designed, as its 
 general characteristic, to aid reflection, and for the most 
 part upon subjects, which can be learned and understood only 
 by the exercise of reflection in the strict and proper sense of 
 that term. It was not so much to teach a speculative system 
 of doctrines built upon established premises, for which a dif- 
 ferent method would have been obviously preferable, as to 
 tiirn the mind continually back upon the premises themselves — 
 upon the inherent grounds of truth and error in its own being. 
 The only way, in .which it is possible for anyone to learn the 
 science of words, which is one of the objects to be sought iii 
 the present work, and the true import of those words espe- 
 cially, which most concern us as rational ^nd accountable be- 
 ings, is by reflecting upon, and bringing forth into distinct con- 
 sciousness, those mental acts, which the words are intended 
 to designate. We must discover and distinctly apprehend 
 different meanings, before we can appropriate to each a several 
 word, or understand the words so appropriated by others. Now 
 it is not too much to say, that most men, and even a large 
 proportion of educated men, do not reflect sufficiently upon 
 their own inward being, upon the constituent laws of their 
 own understanding, upon the mysterious powers and agencies 
 of reason, and conscience, and will, to apprehend with much 
 distinctness the objects to be named, or of course to refer the 
 names with correctness to their several objects. Hence the 
 necessity of associating the study of words with the study of 
 morals and religion ; and that is the most effectual method of 
 instruction, which enables the teachei most especially to fix 
 the attention upon a defmite meaning, that is, in these studies, 
 upon a particular act, or process, or law of the mind — to call it 
 into distinct coiisciousness, and assign to it its proper name, so 
 that the name shall thenceforth have for the learner a distinct, 
 definite, and intelligi1)le sense. To impress upon the reader 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. IX 
 
 the importance of this, and to exemplify it in the particular 
 subjects taken up in the work, is a leading aim of the author 
 throughout; and it is obviously the only possible way by which 
 we can arrive at any satisfactory and conclusive results on sub- 
 jects of philosophy, morals, and religion. The first principles, 
 the ultimate grounds of these, so far as they are possible objects 
 of knowledge for us, must be sought and found in the laws of 
 our being, or they are not found at all. The knowledge of 
 these terminates in the knowledge of ourselves, of our ration- 
 al and personal being, of our proper and distinctive humanity, 
 and of that Divine Being, in whose image we are created. 
 "We must retire inwaid,'' says St. Bernard, "if we would as- 
 cend upward." It is by self-inspection, by reflecting upon the 
 mysterious grounds of our ow^n being, alone, that we can ar- 
 rive at any rational knowledge of the central and absolute 
 ground of all being. It is by this only, that we can discover 
 that prmciple of unity and consistency, which reason instinct- 
 ively seeks after, which shall reduce to a harmonious system all 
 our views of truth and of being, and destitute of w hich all the 
 knowledge, that comes to us from without, is fragmentary, and 
 in its relation to our highest interests as rational beings, but 
 the patch- work of vanity. 
 
 Now, of necessity, the only method, by which another can 
 aid our efforts in the work of reflection, is by first reflecting 
 himself, and so pointing out the process and marking the re- 
 sult by loords^ that we can repeat it, and try the conclusions 
 by our owni consciousness. If he have reflected aright, if he 
 have excluded all causes of self-deception, and directed his 
 thoughts by those principles of truth and reason, and by those 
 laws of the understanding, which belong in common to all 
 men, his conclusions must be true for all. We have only to 
 repeat the process, impartially to reflect ourselves, unbiassed by 
 received opinions, and undeceived by the idols of our own 
 understandings, and w^ e shall find the same truths in the deptlis 
 of our own self-consciousness. I am persuaded that such for 
 the most part, will be found to be the case with regard to the 
 principles developed in the present work, and that those, who, 
 
 B 
 
:^ AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 with serious reflection and an unbiassed love of truth, will re- 
 fer them to the laws of thought in their own minds, to the re- 
 quirements of their own reason, will find there a witness to 
 their truth. 
 
 Viewing the work in this manner, therefore, as an instruc- 
 tive and safe guide to the knowledge of what it concerns all 
 men to know, I cannot but consider it in itself, as a work of 
 great and permanent value to any christian community. What- 
 ever indeed tends to awaken and cherish the power, and to 
 form the habit, of reflection upon the great constituent piin- 
 ciples of our own permanent being and proper humanity, and 
 upon the abiding laws of truth and duty, as revealed in our 
 reason and conscience, cannot but promote our highest inter- 
 ests as moral and rational beings. Even if the particular con- 
 clusions, to which the author has arrived, should prove erro- 
 neous, the evil is comparatively of little importance, if he 
 have at the same time communicated to our minds such pow- 
 ers of thought, as will enable us to detect his errors, and attain 
 by our own efforts to a more perfect knowledge of the truth. 
 That some of his views may not be erroneous, or that they 
 are to be received on his authority, the author, I presume, 
 would be the last to affirm ; and although in the nature of the 
 case it was impossible for him to aid reflection without antici- 
 pating and in some measure influencing the results, yet the 
 primary tendency and design of the work is, not to establish 
 this or that system, but to cultivate in every mind the power 
 and the will to seek earnestly and steadfastly for the truth in 
 the only direction, in which it can ever be found. The work 
 is no farther controversial, than every work must be, " that 
 is writ with freedom and reason" upon subjects of the same 
 kind ; and if it be found at variance with existing opinions and 
 modes of philosophizing, it is not necessarily to be considered 
 the fault of the writer. 
 
 In republishing the work in this country, I could wish that 
 it might be received by all, for whose instruction it was de- 
 signed, simply as a didactic work, on its own merits, and with- 
 out controversy. I must not, however, be supposed ignorant 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XI 
 
 of its bearing upon those questions, which have so often been, 
 and still are, the prevailing topics of theological controversy 
 among us. It was indeed incumbent on me, before inviting 
 the attention of the religious community to the work, to con- 
 sider its relation to existing opinions, and its probable influence 
 on the progress of truth. This I have done with as severe 
 thought as I am capable of bestowing upon any subject, and 1 
 trust too with no want of deference and conscientious regard 
 to the feelings and opinions of others, I have not attempted 
 to disguise from myself, nor do I wish to disguise from the 
 readers of the work, the inconsistency of some of its leading 
 principles with much that is taught and received in our theo- 
 logical circles. Should it gain much of the public attention in 
 any way, it will become, as it ought to do, an object of special 
 and deep interest to all, who would contend for the truth, and 
 labour to establish it upon a permanent basis, I venture to 
 assure such, even those of them who are most capable of 
 comprehending the philosophical grounds of truth in our spec- 
 ulative systems of theology, that in its relation to this whole 
 subject they will find it to be a work of great depth and pow- 
 er, and whether right or wrong, eminently deserving of their 
 attention. It is not to be supposed, that all who read, or 
 even all who comprehend it, will be convinced of the sound- 
 ness of its views, or be prepared to abandon those, which they 
 have long considered essential to the truth. To those, whose 
 understandings by long habit have become limited in their 
 powers of apprehension, and as it were identified with certain 
 schemes of doctrine, certain modes of contemplating all that 
 pertains to religious truth, it may appear novel, strange, and 
 unintelligible, or even dangerous in its tendency, and be to 
 them an occasion of offence. But I have no fear, that any 
 earnest and single-hearted lover of the truth as it is in Jesus, 
 who will free his mind from the idols of preconceived opinion, 
 and give himself time and opportunity to understand the work 
 by such reflection as the nature of the subject renders una- 
 voidable, will find in it any cause of oft*ence, or any source of 
 alarm. If the work become the occasion of controversy at all, 
 
XU AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 I should expect it from those, who, instead of reflecting deep- 
 ly upon the first principles of truth in their own reason and 
 conscience and in the word of God, are more accustomed to 
 speculate — that is, from premises given or assumed, but consid- 
 ered unquestionable, as the constituted point of observation, 
 to look abroad upon the whole field of their intellectual vis- 
 ions, and thence to decide upon the true form and dimensions 
 of all which meets their view. To such I would say with de- 
 ference, that the merits of this work cannot be determined by 
 the merely relative aspect of its doctrines, as seen from the 
 high ground of any prevailing metaphysical or theological sys- 
 tem. Those on the contrary who will seek to comprehend it 
 by reflection, to learn the true meaning of the whole and of 
 all its parts, by retiring into their own minds and finding there 
 the true point of observation for each, will not be in haste to 
 question the truth or the tendency of its principles. I make 
 these remarks, because I am anxious, as far as may be, to an- 
 ticipate the causeless fears of all, who earnestly pray and la- 
 bour for the promotion of the truth, and to preclude that un- 
 profitable controversy, that might arise from hasty or prejudi- 
 ced views of a work like this. At the same time I should be 
 far from deprecating any discussion, which might tend to un- 
 fold more fully the principles, which it teaches, or to exhibit 
 more distinctly its true bearing upon the interests of theolo- 
 gical science and of spiritual religion. It is to promote this 
 object, indeed, that I am induced in the remarks which follow 
 to offer some of my own thoughts on these subjects, imperfect 
 I am well aware, and such as, for that reason, as well as others, 
 worldly prudence might require me to suppress. If, however, 
 I may induce reflecting men, and those who are engaged in 
 theological enquiries especially, to indulge a suspicion, that all 
 truth, which it is important for them to know, is not contained 
 in the systems of doctrine usually taught, and that this work 
 maybe worthy of their serious and reflecting perusal, my chief 
 object will be accomplished. I shall of course not need to an- 
 ticipate in detail the contents of the work itself, but shall aim 
 simply to point out what I consider its distinguishing and cs- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. Xlll 
 
 sential character and tendency, and then direct the attention 
 of my readers to some of those general feelings and views on 
 the subject of religious truth, and of those particulars in the 
 prevailing philosophy of the age, which seem to me to be ex- 
 erting an injurious influence on the cause of theological sci- 
 ence and of spiritual religion, and not only to furnish a fit oc- 
 casion, but to create an imperious demand, for a work like that 
 which is here offered to the public. 
 
 In regard then to the distinguishing character and tendency 
 of the work itself, it has already been stated to be didactic, 
 and designed to aid reflection on the principles and grounds 
 of truth in our own being; but, in another point of view, and 
 with reference to my present object, it might rather be denom- 
 inated A PHILOSOPHICAL STATEMENT AND VINDICATION OF THE 
 DISTINCTIVELY SPIRITUAL AND PECULIAR DOCTRINES OF THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. In Order to understand more clearly the 
 import of this statement and the relation of the author's views 
 to those exhibited in other systems, the reader is requested 
 to examine in the first place, what he considers the peculiar 
 doctrines of Christianity^ and what he means by the terms 
 spirit and spiritual, A synoptical view of what he considers 
 peculiar to Christianity as a revelation is given on pp. 127 — 
 128, and, if I mistake not, will be found essentially to co- 
 incide, though not perhaps in the language employed, with 
 what among us are termed the evangelical doctrines of reli- 
 gion. Those who are anxious to examine farther into the 
 orthodoxy of the work in connexion with this statement, may 
 consult the articles on original sin and redemption beginning 
 at pp. 159 and 187, though I must forewarn them, that it will 
 require much study in connexion with the other parts of the 
 work, before one unaccustomed to the author's language and 
 unacquainted with his views, can fully appreciate the merit of 
 what may be peculiar in his mode of treating those subjects. 
 With regard to the term spiritual^ it may be sufficient to re- 
 mark here, that he regards it as having a specific import, and 
 maintains that in the sense of the N. T. spiritual and natural 
 are contradistinguished, so that what is spiritual is dift'erent ' 
 
XIV * Aids to reflection. 
 
 i/i kind from that which is natural, and is in fact super-ndtursLi. 
 So, too, while morality is something more than prudence, re- 
 ligion, the spiritual life, is something more than morality. 
 For his views at large, the reader may recur to note 29, and 
 the references there made. 
 
 In vindicating the peculiar doctrines of the christian system 
 so stated, and a faith in the reality of agencies and modes of 
 being essentially spiritual or supernatural, he aims to show 
 their consistency with reason and with the true principles of 
 philosophy, and that indeed, so far from being irrational, chris- 
 tian FAITH IS THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN REASON. By re- 
 flection upon the subjective grounds of knowledge and faith 
 in the human mind itself, and by an analysis of its faculties, 
 he developes the distinguishing characteristics and necessary 
 relations of the natural and the spiritual in our modes of being 
 and knowing, and the all-important fact, that although the for- 
 mer does not comprehend the latter, yet neither does it pre- 
 clude its existence. He proves, that " the scheme of Chris- 
 tilanity, though not discoverable by reason, is yet in accordance 
 with it — that link follows link by necessary consequence — that 
 religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye 
 of reason has reached its own horizon — and that faith is then 
 but its continuation." Instead of adopting, like the popular 
 metaphysicians of the day, a system of philosophy at war with 
 religion, and which tends inevitably to undermine our belief 
 in the reality of any thing spiritual in the only proper sense 
 of that word, and then coldly and ambiguously referring us 
 for the support of our faith to the authority of revelation, he 
 boldly asserts the reality of something distinctively spiritual in 
 man, and the futility of all those modes of philosophizing, in 
 which this is not recognized, or which are incompatible with 
 it. He considers it the highest and most rational purpose of 
 any system of philosophy, at least of one professing to be 
 christian, to investigate those higher and peculiar attributes, 
 which distinguish us from the brutes that perish — which are the 
 image of God in us, and constitute our proper humanity. It 
 is in his view the proper business and the duty of the Chris- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XV 
 
 tian philosopher to remove all appearance of contradiction be- 
 tween the several manifestations of the one Divine Word, to 
 reconcile reason with revelation, and thus to justify the ways 
 of God to man. The methods by which he accomplishes this, 
 either in regard to the terms in which he enunciates the great 
 doctrines of the gospel, or the peculiar views of philosophy, 
 by which he reconciles them with the subjective grounds of 
 faith in the universal reason of man, need not be stated here. 
 I will merely observe, that the key to his system will be found 
 in the distinctions, which he makes and illustrates between 
 nature and free-ivill, and between the understanding and r'ea- 
 son. For the first of these distinctions the reader may con- 
 sult note 29, and for the other, pp. 135 — 154, and note 59. It 
 may meet the prejudices of some to remark farther, that in 
 philosophizing on the grounds of our faith he does not profess 
 or aim to solve all mysteries^ and to bring all truth within 
 the comprehension of the understanding. A truth may be 
 mysterious, and the primary ground of all truth and reality 
 must be so. But though we may believe what " passeth all 
 understanding,^^ we cannot believe what is absurd, or contra- 
 dictory to reason. 
 
 Whether the work be well executed, according to the idea 
 of it, as now given, or whether the author have accomplished 
 his purpose, must be determined by those who are capable of 
 judging, when they shall have examined and reflected upon 
 the whole as it deserves. The inquiry which I have now to 
 propose to my readers is, whether the idea itself be a rational 
 one, and whether the purpose of the author be one, which a 
 wise man and a christian ought to aim at, or which in the pre- 
 sent state of our religious interests, and of our theological sci- 
 ence specially needs to be accomplished. 
 
 No one, who has had occasion to observe the general feel- 
 ings and views of our religious community for a few years 
 past, can be ignorant, that a strong prejudice exists against 
 the introduction of philosophy, in any form, in the discussion of 
 theological subjects. The terms j)liilosophy and metaphysics, 
 even reasan and rational seem, in the minds of those most de- 
 
XVI AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 voted to the support of religious truth, to have forfeited their 
 original, and to have acquired a new, import, especially in their 
 relation to matters of faith. By a philosophical view of reli- 
 gious truth would generally be understood, a view, not only 
 varying from the religion of the bible in the form and manner 
 of presenting it, but at war with it ; and a rational religion is 
 supposed to be of course something diverse from revealed re- 
 ligion. A philosophical and rational system of religious truth 
 would by most readers among us, if I mistake not, be suppo- 
 sed a system deriving its doctrines not from revelation, but 
 from the speculative reason of men, or at least relying on that 
 only for their credibility. That these terms have been used 
 to designate such systems, and that the prejudice against rea- 
 son and philosophy so employed, is not, therefore, without 
 cause, I need not deny ; nor would any friend of revealed 
 truth be less disposed to give credence to such systems, than 
 the author of the work before us. 
 
 But, on the other hand, a moment's reflection only can be 
 necessary to convince any man, attentive to the use of lan- 
 guage, that we do at the same time employ these terms in re- 
 lation to truth generally in a better and much higher sense. 
 Rational, as contradistinguished from irrational and absurd, 
 certainly denotes a quality, which every man would be dispo- 
 sed to claim, not only for himself, but for his religious opin- 
 ions. Now, the adjective reasonable, having acquired a dif- 
 ferent use and signification, the word rational is the adjective 
 corresponding in sense to the substantive reason, and signifies 
 what is conformed to reason. In one sense, then, all men 
 would appeal to reason, in behalf of their religious faith : they 
 would deny that it was irrational or absurd. If we do not in 
 this sense adhere to reason, we forfeit our prerogative as ra- 
 tional beings, and our faith is no better than the bewildered 
 dream of a man who has lost his reason. Nay, I maintain 
 that when we use the term in this higher sense, it is impossible 
 for us to believe on any authority what is directly contradic- 
 tory to reason and seen to be so. No evidence from another 
 source, and no authority could convince us, that a proposition 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XVll 
 
 in Geometry, for example, is false, which our reason intuitive- 
 ly discovers to be true. Now supposin*!:;, (and we may at 
 least suppose this,) that reason has the same power of intui- 
 tive insight in relation to certain moral and spiritual truths, as 
 in relation to the truths of Geometry, then it will be equally 
 impossible to divest us of our belief of those truths. 
 
 Furthermore, we are not only unable to believe the same 
 proposition to be false, which our reason sees to be true, but 
 we cannot believe another proposition^ which by the exercise 
 of the same rational faculty we see to be incompatible with 
 the former, or to contradict it. We may, and probably often 
 do, receive with a certain kind and degree of credence opin- 
 ions, which reflection would show to be incompatible. But 
 when we have reflected, and discovered the inconsistency, we 
 cannot retain hoth. We cannot believe two contradictory 
 propositions knowing them to be such. It would be irration- 
 al to do so. 
 
 Again, we cannot conceive it possible, that what by the 
 same power of intuition we see to be universally and neces- 
 sarily true should appear otherwise to any other rational 
 being. We cannot, for example, but consider the propo- 
 sitions of Geometry, as necessarily true, for all rational be- 
 ings. So, too, a little reflection, I think, will convince any 
 one, that we attribute the same necessity of reason to the 
 principles of moral rectitude. What in the clear day-light of 
 our reason, and after mature reflection, we see to be right, we 
 cannot believe to be wrong in the view of other rational be- 
 ings in the distinct exercise of their Reason. Nay, in regard 
 to those truths, which are clearly submitted to the view of 
 our reason, and w^hich we behold with distinct and steadfast 
 intuitions, we necessarily attribute to the Supreme Reason^ to 
 the Divine Mind, views the same, or coincident, with those 
 of our own reason. We cannot, ( I say it with reverence and 
 I trust with some apprehension of the importance of the asser- 
 tion) we cannot believe that to be right in the view of the su- 
 preme reason which is clearly and decidedly wrong in the view 
 of our own. It would be contradictory to reason, it would be ir- 
 
XVlll AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 rational to believe it, and therefore we cannot do so, till we 
 lose our reason, or cease to exercise it. * 
 
 I would ask now, whether this be not an authorized use 
 of the words reason and rational, and whether so used they do 
 not mean something. If it be so — and I appeal to the mind of 
 every man capable of reflection, and of understanding the use 
 of language, if it be not — then there is meaning in the terms 
 universal reason, and unity of reason, as used in this work. 
 There is, and can be, in this highest sense of the word, but 
 one reason, and whatever contradicts that reason, being seen 
 to do so, cannot be received as matter either of knowledge or 
 faith. To reconcile religion with reason used in this sense, 
 therefore, and to justify the ways of God to man, or in the 
 view of reason, is so far from being irrational, that reason im- 
 peratively demands it of us. We cannot, as rational beings, 
 believe a proposition on the grounds of reason, and deny it 
 on the authority of revelation. We cannot believe a proposi- 
 tion in philosophy, and deny the same proposition in theology ; 
 nor can we believe two incompatible propositions on the dif- 
 ferent gix)unds of reason and revelation. So fast, and so far, 
 as we compare our thoughts, the objects of our knowledge and 
 faith, and by reflection refer them to their common measure in 
 the universal laws of reason, so far the instinct of reason im- 
 pels us to reject whatever is contradictory and absurd, and to 
 bring unity and consistency into all our views of truth. Thus, 
 in the language of the author of this work, (p. 6,) though " the 
 word rational has been strangely abused of late times, this 
 must not disincline us to the weighty consideration, that 
 thoughtfulness, and a desire to rest all our convictions on 
 grounds of right reason, are inseparable from the character of 
 a Christian." 
 
 But I beg the reader to observe, that in relation to the doc- 
 trines of spiritual religion — to all that he considers the peculiar 
 doctrines of the Christian revelation, the author assigns to rea- 
 son only a negative validity. It does not teach us, what those 
 doctrines are, or what they are not, except that they are not, 
 and cannot be, such as contradict the clear convictions of right 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XIX 
 
 reason. But his views on this point aie fully stated in the 
 work, and may he found hy the references in note 43. The 
 general office of reason in relation to all, that is proposed for 
 our belief, is given with philosophical precision in the Appen- 
 dix, pp. 390—391. 
 
 If then it be our prerogative, as rational beings, and our 
 duty as Christians, to think, as well as to act, rationally to 
 see that our convictions of truth rest on grounds of right rea- 
 son ; and [{ it be one of the clearest dictates of reason, that 
 we should endeavor to shun, and on discovery should reject, 
 whatever is contradictory to the universal laws of thought, or 
 to doctrines already established, I know not by what means we 
 are to avoid the application of philosophy, at least to some ex- 
 tent, m the study of theology. For to determine what arz 
 the grounds of right reason, what are those ultimate truths, 
 and those universal laws of thought, which we cannot ration- 
 ally contradict, and by reflection to compare with these what- 
 ever is proposed for our belief, is in fact to philosophize ; and 
 whoever does this to a greater or less extent, is so far a philo- 
 sopher in the best and highest sense of the word. To this 
 extent we are bound to philosophize in Theology, as well as 
 in every other science. For what is not rational in theology, 
 is, of course, irrational, and cannot be of the household of 
 faith ; and to determine whether it be rational in the sense al- 
 ready explained or not, is the province of philosophy. It is 
 in this sense, that the work before us is to be considered a 
 philosophical work, viz. that it proves the doctrines of the 
 Christian faith to be rational, and exhibits philosophical grounds 
 for the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. The reality oi 
 those experiences, or states of being, which constitute exper- 
 imental or spiritual religion, rests on other grounds. It is in- 
 cumbent on the philosopher to free them from the contradic- 
 tions of reason, and nothing more ; and who will deny, that 
 to do this is a purpose worthy of the ablest philosopher and 
 the most devoted christian ! Is it not desirable to convince all 
 men, that the doctrines, which we affirm to be revealed in the 
 gospel, are not contradictory to the requirements of reason 
 
XX AIDS TO KEFLECTIOi^. 
 
 and conscience. Is it not, on the other hand, vastly important 
 to the cause of religious truth, and even to the practical in- 
 fluence of religion on our own minds, and the minds of com- 
 munity at large, that we should attain and exhibit views of 
 philosophy and doctrines in metaphysics, which are at least 
 compatible with, if they do not specially favour those views 
 of religion, wdiich, on other grounds, we find it our duty to be- 
 lieve and maintain. For, I beg it may be observed, as a point 
 of great moment, that it is not the method of the genuine phi- 
 losopher to separate his philosophy and religion, and adopting 
 his principles independently in each, leave them to be reconci- 
 led or not, as the case may be. He has and can have rationally 
 but one system, in which his philosophy becomes religious, 
 and his religion philosophical. Nor am I disposed in compli- 
 ance with popular opinion to limit the application of this re- 
 mark, as is usually done, to the mere external evidences of 
 revelation. The philosophy which we adopt will and must 
 influence not only our decision of the question, whether a 
 book be of divine authority, but our views also of its mean- 
 ing. 
 
 But this is a subject, on which, if possible, I would avoid 
 being misunderstood, and must, therefore, exhibit it more fully, 
 even at the risk of repeating what was said before, or is else- 
 where found in the work. It has been already, I believe, dis- 
 tinctly enough stated, that reason and philosophy ought to 
 prevent our reception of doctrines claiming the authority of 
 revelation only so far as the very necessities of our rational 
 being require. However mysterious the thing aflirmed may 
 be, though " it passeth all understanding^'''' if it cannot be shown 
 to contradict the unchangeable principles of right reason, its 
 being incomprehensible to our understandings is not an obsta- 
 cle to our faith. If it contradict reason, we cannot believe it, 
 but must conclude, either that the writing is not of divine au- 
 thority, or that the language has been misinterpreted. So far 
 it seems to me, that our philosophy ought to modify our views 
 of theological doctrines, and our mode of interpreting the 
 language of an inspired writer. But then we must be cautious. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXI 
 
 that we philosophize rightly, and "do not call that reason, 
 which is not so." (See p. 205.) Otherwise we may be led -^ 
 by the supposed requirements of reason to interpret meta- 
 phorically, what ought to be received literally, and evacuate 
 the Scriptures of their most important doctrines. But what I 
 mean to say here is, that we cannot avoid the application of 
 our philosophy in the interpretation of the language of Scrip- 
 ture, and in the explanation of the doctrines of religion gen- 
 erally. We cannot avoid incurring the danger just alluded to 
 of philosophizing erroneously, even to the extent of rejecting 
 as irrational that, which tends to the perfection of reason itself. 
 And hence I maintain, that instead of pretending to exclude 
 philosophy from our religious enquiries, it is vastly important, 
 that we philosophize in earnest — that we endeavor by profound 
 reflection to learn the real requirements of reason, and attain 
 a true knowledge of ourselves. 
 
 If any dispute the necessity of thus combining the study of 
 philosophy with that of religion, I would beg them to point 
 out the age since that of the Apostles, in which the prevailing 
 metaphysical opinions have not distinctly manifested them- 
 selves in the prevailing views of religion ; and if, as I fully 
 believe will be the case, they fail to discover a single system of 
 theology, a single volume on the subject of the christian religion, 
 in which the author's views are not modified by the metaphysic- 
 al opinions of the age or of the individual, it would be desirable 
 to ascertain, whether this influence be accidental or necessary. 
 The metaphysician analyzes the faculties and operations of the 
 human mind, and teaches us to arrange, to classify, and to 
 name them, according to his views of their various distinctions. 
 The language of the Scriptures, at least to a great extent, 
 speaks of subjects, that can be understood only by a leference 
 to those same powers and processes of thought and feeling, 
 which we have learned to think of, and to name, according to 
 our particular system of metaphysics. IIow" is it possible then 
 to avoid interpreting the one by the other? Let us suppose,, 
 for example, that a man has studied and adopted the philoso- ^ 
 phy of Brown, is it possible for him to interpret the 8th chap- 
 
xxu Aids to reflection. 
 
 ter of Romans, without having his views of its meaning in- 
 fluenced by his philosophy ? Would he not unavoidably inter- 
 pret the language and explain the doctrines, which it contains, 
 differently from one, who should have adopted such views of 
 the human mind, as are taught in this work ? I know it is cus- 
 tomary to disclaim the influence of philosophy in the business 
 of interpretation, and every writer now-a-days on such sub- 
 jects wall assure us, that he has nothing to do with metaphys- 
 ics, but is guided only by common sense and the laws of in- 
 terpretation. But I would like to know how a man comes by 
 any common sense in relation to the movements and laws of 
 his intellectual and moral being without metaphysics. What 
 is the common sense of a Hottentot on subjects of this sort ? 
 I have no hesitation in saying, that from the very nature of the 
 case, it is nearly, if not quite, impossible for any man entirely 
 to separate his philosophical view s of the human mind from 
 his reflections on religious subjects. Probably no man has 
 endeavored more faithfully to do this, perhaps no one has suc- 
 ceeded better in giving the truth of Scripture free from the 
 glosses of metaphysics, than Professor Stuart. Yet, I should 
 risk little in saying, that a reader deeply versed in the lan- 
 guage of metaphysics, extensively acquainted with the philos- 
 ophy of different ages, and the peculiar phraseology of differ- 
 ent schools, might ascertain his metaphysical system from 
 many a passage of his commentary on the Epistle to the He- 
 brews. What then, let me ask, is the possible use to the cause 
 of truth and of religion, from thus perpetually decrying phi- 
 losophy in theological enquiries, when we cannot avoid it if 
 we would ? Every man, who has reflected at all, hag his met- 
 aphysics ; and if he reads on religious subjects, he interprets 
 and understands the language, which he employs, by the help 
 of his metaphysics. He cannot do otherwise. — And the prop- 
 er enquiry is, not whether we admit our philosophy into our 
 theological and religious investigations, but whether our phi- 
 losophy be right and true. For myself, I am fully convinced, 
 that we can have no right views of theology, till we have right 
 views of the human mind ; and that these are to be acquired 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXill 
 
 only by laborious and persevering reflection. My belief is, 
 that the distinctions unfolded in this work will place us in the 
 way to truth, and relieve us from numerous perplexities, in 
 which we are involved by the philosophy, which we have so 
 long taken for our guide. For we are greatly deceived, if we 
 suppose for a moment, that the systems of theology, which 
 have been received among us, or even the theoretical views, 
 which are now most popular, are free from the entanglements 
 of wordly wisdom. The readers of this work will be able to 
 see, I think, more clearly the import of this remark, and the 
 true bearing of the received views of philosophy on our 
 theological enquiries. Those, who study the work without 
 prejudice and adopt its principles to any considerable extent, 
 will understand too how deeply an age may be ensnared in the 
 metaphysical w^ebs of its own weaving, or entangled in the 
 net, which the speculations of a former generation have thrown 
 over it, and yet suppose itself blessed with a perfect immuni- 
 ty from the dreaded evils of metaphysics. 
 
 But before I proceed to remark on those particulars, in 
 which our prevailing philosophy seems to me dangerous in its 
 tendency, and unfriendly to the cause of spiritual leligion, 
 I must beg leave to guard myself and the work from misappre- 
 hension on another point, of great importance in its relation 
 to the whole subject. While it is maintained that reason and 
 philosophy, in their true character, ought to have a certain 
 degree and extent of influence in the formation of our reli- 
 gious system, and that our metaphysical opinions, whatever 
 they may be, will^ almost unavoidably, modify more or less 
 our theoretical views of religious truth generaUy^ it is yet a 
 special object of the author of the work to show, that the 
 spiritual life, or what among us is termed experimental reli- 
 gion, is, in itself, and in its own proper growth and develope- 
 ment, essentially distinct from the forms and processes of the 
 understanding; and that, although a true faith cannot contra- 
 dict any universal principle of speculative reason, it is yet in 
 a certain sense independent of the discursions of philosophy, 
 and in its proper nature beyond the reach " of positive science 
 
XXIV AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and theoretical insighty " Christianity is not a Theory^ or a 
 Speculation; but a Life. Not a Philosophy of Life, but a 
 Life and a living process." It is not, therefore, so properly a 
 species of knowledge, as a form of being. And although the 
 theoretical views of the understanding, and the motives of 
 prudence which it presents, may be, to a certain extent, con- 
 nected with the developement of the spiritual principle of re- 
 ligious life in the Christian, yet a true and living faith is not 
 incompatible with at least some degree of speculative error. 
 As the acquisition of merely speculative knowledge cannot of 
 itself communicate the principle of spiritual life, so neither 
 does that principle, and the living process of its growth, de- 
 pend w^hoUy, at least, upon the degree of speculative knowl- 
 edge with which it co-exists. That religion, of which our 
 blessed Saviour is himself the essential Form and the living 
 Word, and to which he imparts the actuating Spirit, has a prin- 
 ciple of unity and consistency in itself, distinct from the unity 
 and consistency of our theoretical views. This we have evi- 
 dence of in every day's observation of Christian chaiacter ; 
 for how often do we see and acknowledge the power of reli- 
 gion, and the growth of a spiritual life, in minds but little gift- 
 ed with speculative knowledge, and little versed in the forms 
 of logic or philosophy. How obviously, too, does the living 
 principle of religion manifest tlie same specific character, the 
 same essential form, amidst all the diversities of condition, of 
 talents, of education, and natural disposition, with which it is 
 associated ; every where rising above nature, and the powers 
 of the natural man, and unlimited in its goings on by the forms 
 in which the understanding seeks to comprehend and confine its 
 spiritual energies. "There are diversities of gifts, but the same 
 spirit ;" and it is no less true now, than in the age of the Apos- 
 tles, that in all lands, and in every variety of circumstances, 
 the manifestations of spiritual life are essentially the same ; 
 and all who truly believe in heart, however diverse in natu- 
 ral condition, in the character of their understandings, and 
 even in their theoretical views of truth, arc one in Christ Je- 
 sus. The essential faith is not to be found in the understand- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXV 
 
 ing or the speculative theory, but " the Life^ the Substance^ 
 the Hope, the Love — in one word, the Faith — these are De- 
 rivatives from the practical, moral, and Spiritual Nature and 
 Being of Man." Speculative systems of theology indeed 
 have often had little connexion with the essential spirit of 
 religion, and are usually little more than schemes resulting 
 from the strivings of the finite understanding to comprehend 
 and exhibit under its own forms and conditions a mode of be- 
 ing and spiritual truths essentially diverse from their proper 
 objects, and with which they are incommensurate. 
 
 This I am aware is an imperfect, and I fear may be an un- 
 intelligible view, of a subject exceedingly difficult of appre- 
 hension at the best. If so, I must beg the reader's indulgence, 
 and request him to suspend his judgment, as to the absolute 
 intelligibility of it, till he becomes acquainted with the lan- 
 guage and sentiments of the work itself. It will, however, I 
 hope, be so far understood, at least, as to answer the purpose 
 for which it was introduced — of precluding the supposition, 
 that, in the remarks which preceded, or in those which follow, 
 any suspicion is intended to be expressed, with regard to the 
 religious principles or the essential faith of those who hold 
 the opinions in question. According to this view of the inhe- 
 rent and essential nature of Spiritual Religion, as existing in 
 the practical reason of man, we may not only admit, but 
 can better understand, the possibility of what every charita- 
 ble christian will acknowledge to be a fact, so far as human 
 observation can determine facts of this sort — that a man may 
 be truly religious, and essentially a believer at heart, while his 
 understawding is sadly bewildered with the attempt to com- 
 prehend and express philosophically, what yet he feels and 
 knows spiritually. It is indeed impossible for us to tell, how 
 far the understanding may impose upon itself by partial views 
 and false disguises, without perverting the will, or estranging 
 it from the laws and the authority of reason and the Divine 
 Word. We cannot say, to what extent a false system of phi- 
 losophy and metaphysical opinions, which in their natural and 
 uncounteracted tendency would go to destroy all religion, may 
 
 D 
 
XXVI AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 be received in a christian community, and yet the power of 
 spiritual religion retain its hold and its efficacy in the hearts 
 of the people. We may perhaps believe that, in opposition to 
 all the might of false philosophy, so long as the great body of 
 the people have the Bible in their hands, and are taught to 
 reverence and receive its heavenly instructions, though the 
 church may suifer injury from unwise and unfruitful specu- 
 lations, it will yet be preserved ; and that the spiritual seed of 
 the Divine Word, though mingled with many tares of worldly 
 wisdom, and philosophy falsely so called, will yet spring up, 
 and bear fruit unto everlasting life. 
 
 But though we may hope and believe this, we cannot avoid 
 believing, at the same time, that injury must result from an un- 
 suspecting confidence in metaphysical opinions, which are es- 
 sentially at variance with the doctrines of revelation. Espe- 
 cially must the effect be injurious, where those opinions lead 
 gradually to alter our views of religion itself, and of all that is 
 peculiar in the Christian system. The great mass of commu- 
 nity, who know little of metaphysics and whose faith in reve- 
 lation is not so readily influenced by speculations not iimnedi- 
 ately connected with it, may, indeed, for a time, escape the 
 evil, and continue to " receive with meekness the ingrafted 
 word." But in the minds of the better educated, especially 
 those w^ho think, and follow out their conclusions with resolute 
 independence of thought, the result must be either a loss of 
 confidence in the opinions themselves, or a rejection of all 
 those parts of the christian system which are at variance with 
 them. Under particular circumstances, indeed, where both 
 the metaphysical errors, and the great doctrines of the chris- 
 tian faith, have a strong hold upon the minds of a community, 
 a protracted struggle may take place, and earnest and long 
 continued efforts may be made to reconcile opinions, which 
 we are resolved to maintain, with a faith which our conscien- 
 ces will not permit us to abandon. B.ut so long as the effort 
 continues, and such opinions retain their hold upon our confi- 
 dence, it must be with some diminution of the fulness and 
 simplicity of our faith. To a greater or less degree, accord* 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXV 11 
 
 ing to the education and habits of thought in different individ- 
 uals, the Word of God is received with doubt, or with such 
 glozing modifications as enervate its power. Thus the Hght 
 from heaven is intercepted, and we are left to a shadow-fight 
 of metaphysical schemes and metaphorical interpretations. 
 While one party, with conscientious and earnest endeavors, 
 and at great expense of talent and ingenuity, contends for the 
 faith, and among the possible shapings of the received meta- 
 physical system, seeks that which will best comport with the 
 simplicity of the gospel, another more boldly interprets the 
 language of the gospel itself, in conformity with those views 
 of religion to which their philosophy seems obviously to con- 
 duct them. The substantial being, and the living energy, of 
 that Word, which is not only the light but the life of men, is 
 either misapprehended or denied by all parties ; and even those 
 who contend for what they conceive the literal import of the 
 gospel, do it — as they must to avoid too glaring absurdity — with 
 such explanations of its import, as make it to become, in no 
 small degree, the " w^ords of man's wisdom," rather than a 
 simple " demonstration of the spirit, and of power." Hence, 
 although such as have experienced the spiritual and life-giving 
 power of the Divine Word, may be able, through the promis- 
 ed aids of the spirit, to overcome the natural tendency of 
 speculative error, and, by "the law of the spirit of life" which 
 is in them, may at length be made " free from the law of sin 
 and death," yet who can tell how much they may lose of the 
 blessings of the gospel, and be retarded in their spiritual growth 
 when they are but too often fed with the lifeless and starve- 
 ling products of the human understanding, instead of that 
 " living bread which came down from heaven." Who can tell, 
 moreover, how^ many, through the prevalence of such philo- 
 sophical errors as lead to misconceptions of the truth, or cre- 
 ate a prejudice against it, and thus tend to intercept the light 
 from heaven, may continue in their ignorance, "alienated from 
 the life of God," and groping in the darkness of their own un- 
 derstandings. 
 
 But however that may be, enlightened christians, and cspe- 
 
XXVm AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 cially christian instructers, know it to be their duty, as far as 
 possible, to prepare the way for the full and unobstructed in- 
 fluence of the Gospel, to do all in their power to remove those 
 natural prejudices, and those errors of the understanding, 
 which are obstacles to the truth, that the word of God may 
 find access to the heart, and conscience, and reason of every 
 man, that it may have " free course, and run, and be glorified. '^ 
 My own belief, that such obstacles to the influence of truth 
 exist in the speculative and metaphysical opinions generally 
 adopted in this country, and that the present work is in some 
 measure at least calculated to remove them, is pretty clearly 
 indicated by the remarks which I have already made. But, to 
 be perfectly explicit on the subject, I do not hesitate to express 
 my conviction, that the natural tendency of some of the lead- 
 ing principles of our prevailing system of metaphysics, and 
 those which must unavoidably have more or less influence on 
 our theoretical views of religion, are of an injurious and dan- 
 gerous tendency, and that so long as we retain them, however 
 we may profess to exclude their influence from our theological 
 enquiries, and from the interpretation of vScripture, we can 
 maintain no consistent system of Scriptural theology, nor clear- 
 ly and distinctly apprehend the spiritual import of Scripture 
 language. The grounds of this conviction I shall proceed to 
 exhibit, though only in a very partial manner, as I could not 
 do more without anticipating the contents of the work itself, 
 instead of merely preparing the reader to peruse them with 
 attention. I am aware, too, that some of the language, which 
 I have already employed, and shall be obliged to employ, will 
 not convey its full import to the reader, till he becomes ac- 
 quainted with some of the leading principles and distinctions 
 unfolded in the work. But this, also, is an evil, which I saw 
 no means of avoiding without incurring a greater, and wTiting 
 a book instead of a brief essay. 
 
 Let it be understood, then, without farther prefiice, that by 
 the prevailing system of metaphysics, I mean the system, of 
 which in modern times Locke is the reputed author, and the 
 leading principles of which, with various modifications, more 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXlX 
 
 or less important, but not altering its essential character, have 
 been almost universally received in this country. It should be 
 observed, too, that the causes enumerated in the Ap}3endix of 
 this work, pp. 393 — 395, as having elevated it to its "pride of 
 place" in Europe, have been aided by other favouring circum- 
 stances here. In the minds of our religious community espe- 
 cially some of its most important doctrines have become asso- 
 ciated with names justly loved and revered among ourselves, 
 and so connected with all our theoretical views of religion, 
 that one can hardly hope to question their validity without 
 hazarding his reputation, not only for orthodoxy, but even for 
 common sense. To controvert, for example, the prevailing doc- 
 trines with regard to the freedom of the will, the sources of 
 our knowledge, the nature of the understanding as containing 
 the controlling principles of our whole being, and the univer- 
 sality of the law of cause and effect, even in connexion with 
 the arguments and the authority of the most powerful intellect 
 of the age, may even now be worse than in vain. Yet I have 
 reasons for believing there are some among us, and that their 
 number is fast increasing, who are willing to revise their opin- 
 ions on these subjects, and who will contemplate the views 
 presented in this w^ork with a liberal, and something of a pre- 
 pared feeling, of curiosity. The difileulties, in which men find 
 themselves involved by the received doctrines on these sub- 
 jects, in their most anxious efforts to explain and defend the 
 peculiar doctrines of spiritual religion, have led many to sus- 
 pect, that there must be some lurking error in the premises. 
 It is not, that these principles lead us to mysteries^ which we 
 cannot comprehend — they are found, or believed at least by 
 many, to involve us in absurdities^ which we can comprehend. 
 It ii necessary, indeed, only to form some notion of the distinc- 
 tive and appropriate import of the term spiritual, as opposed 
 to natural in the N. T., and then to look at the writings, or 
 hear the discussions, in which the doctrines of the spirit and of 
 spiritual influences are taught and defended, to see the insur- 
 mountable nature of the obstacles, which these metaphysical 
 dogmas throw in the way of the most powerful minds. To 
 
XXX AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 those who shall read this work with any degree of reflection, 
 it must, I think, be obvious, that something more is implied in 
 the continual opposition of these terms in the N. T., than can 
 be explained consistently with the prevailing opinions on the 
 subjects above enumerated ; and that, through their influence 
 our highest notions of that distinction have been rendered con- 
 fused, contradictory, and inadequate. I have already directed 
 the attention of the reader to those parts of the w^ork, where 
 this distinction is unfolded ; and had I no other grounds than 
 the arguments and views there exhibited, I should be convin- 
 ced, that so long as we hold the doctrines of Locke and the 
 Scotch metaphysicians respecting power, cause and eff*ect, mo- 
 tives, and the freedom of the will, we not only can make and 
 defend no essential distinction between that which is natural, 
 and that which is spiritual j but we cannot even find rational 
 grounds for the feeling of moral obligation, and the distinction 
 between regret and remorse. 
 
 According to the system of these authors, as nearly and 
 distinctly as my limits will permit me to state it, the same law 
 of cause and effect is the law of the universe. It extends to 
 the moral and spiritual — if in courtesy these terms may still 
 be used — no less than to the properly natural powers and agen- 
 cies of our being. The acts of the free-will are pre-deter- 
 mined by a cause out of the will, according to the same law of 
 cause and efl'ect, which controls the changes in the physical 
 world. We have no notion of power but uniformity of ante- 
 cedent and consequent. The notion of a power in the will 
 to act freely, is therefore nothing more than an inherent capa- 
 city of being acted upon, agreeably to its nature, and accord- 
 ing to a fixed law, by the motives which are present in the 
 understanding. I feel authorized to take this statement partly 
 from Brown's philosophy, because that wojk has been deci- 
 dedly approved by our highest theological authorities ; and in- 
 deed it would not be essentially varied, if expressed in the 
 precise terms used by any of the writers most usually quoted 
 in reference to these subjects. 
 
 I am aware that variations may be found in the mode of 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. X\Xl 
 
 stating these doctrines, but I think every candid reader, who 
 is acquainted with the metaphysics and theology of this coun- 
 try, will admit the above to be a fair representation of the form 
 in which they are generally received. I am aware, too, that 
 much has been said and written to make out consistently with 
 these general principles, a disfincHoPj between natural and 
 moral causes, natural and moral ability, and inability, &c. But 
 I beg all lovers of sound and rational philosophy to look care- 
 fully at the general principles, and see whether there be, in 
 fact, ground left for any such distinctions of this kind os arc 
 worth contending for. My first step in arguing with a defend- 
 er of these principles, and of the distinctions in question, as 
 connected with them, would be to ask for his definition oi na- 
 ture and natural. And when he had arrived at a distinctive 
 general notion of the import of these, it would appear, if I 
 mistake not, that he had first subjected our whole being to the 
 law of nature, and then contended for the existence of some- 
 thing which is not nature. For in their relation to the law of 
 moral rectitude, and to the feeling of moral responsibility, 
 what difference is there, and what difference can there be, be- 
 tween what are called natural and those which are called mo- 
 ral powers and affections, if they are all under the control of 
 the same universal law of cause and effect. If it still be a mere 
 nature, and the determinations of our will be controlled by 
 causes out of the will, according to our nature, then I main- 
 tain that a moral nature has no more to do with the feeling of 
 responsibility than any other nature. 
 
 Perhaps the difficulty may be made more obvious in this 
 way. It will be admitted that brutes are possessed of various 
 natures^ some innocent or useful, others noxious, but all alike 
 irresponsible in a moral point of view. But why ? Simply be- 
 cause they act in accordance w^ith their natures. They pos- 
 sess, each according to its proper nature, certain appetites and 
 susceptibilities, which are stimulated and acted upon by their 
 appropriate objects in the w^orld of the senses, and the rela- 
 tion — the law of action and reaction — subsisting between these 
 specific susceptibilities and their corresponding outward ob- 
 
XXXU AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 jects, constitutes their nature. They have a power of select- 
 ing and choosing in the world of sense the objects appropriate 
 to the wants of their nature ; but that nature is the sole law 
 of their being. Their power of choice is but a part of it^ in- 
 strumental in accomplishing its ends, but not capable of ris- 
 sing above it, of controlling its impulses, and of determining 
 itself with reference to a purely ideal law^ distinct from their 
 nature. They act in accordance with the law of cause and 
 effect, which constitutes their several natures, and cannot do 
 otherwise. They are, there/ore, not responsible — not capable 
 of guilt J or of remorse. 
 
 Now let us suppose another being, possessing, in addition to 
 the susceptibilities of the brute, certain other specific suscep- 
 tibilities with their correlative objects, either in the sensible 
 world, or in a future world, but that these are subjected, like 
 the other to the same binding and inalienable law of cause and 
 effect. What, I ask, is the amount of the difference thus sup- 
 posed between this being and the brute ? The supposed addi- 
 tion, it is to be understood, is merely an addition to its nature; 
 and the only power of will belonging to it is, as in the case of 
 the brute, only a capacity of choosing and acting uniformly in 
 accordance with its nature. These additional susceptibilities 
 still act but as they are acted upon ; and the will is determined 
 accordingly. What advantage is gained in this case by calling 
 these supposed additions moral afl'ections, and their correlative 
 stimulants moral causes? Do we thereby find any ration- 
 al ground for the feeling of moral responsibility, for conscience, 
 for remorse ? The being acts according to its nature^ and 
 why is it blameworthy more than the brute ? If the moral 
 cause existing out of the ivill be a power or cause which, in 
 its relation to the specific susceptibility of the moral being, 
 produces under the same circumstances uniformly the same re- 
 sult, according to the law of cause and effect ; if the acts of the 
 will be subject to the same law, as mere links in the chain of 
 antecedents and consequents, and thus a part of our nature, 
 what is gained, I ask again, by the distinction of a moral and 
 a physical nature. It is still only a nature under the law of 
 
PRELIMIZyTARY ESSAY. XXXIII 
 
 cause and clTect, and the liberty of the moral being is under 
 the same condition with the liberty of the brute. Both are 
 free to follow and fulfd the law of their nature, and both are ^ 
 alike bound by that law, as by an adamantine chain. The 
 very conditions of the law preclude the possibility of a power 
 to act otherwise than according to their nature. They pre- 
 clude the very idea of a free-will, and render the feeling of 
 moral responsibiUty not an enigma merely, not a mystery, but 
 a self-contradiction and an absurdity. 
 
 Turn the mattei as we will — call these correlatives, viz. the 
 inherent susceptibilities and the causes acting on them from 
 without, natural, or moral, or spiritual — so long as their action 
 and reaction, or the law of reciprocity, (see note 67), which 
 constitutes their specific natures, is considered as the controll- 
 ing law of our ivhole being, so long as we refuse to admit the 
 existence in the will of a power capable of rising above this 
 law, and controlling its operation by an act of absolute self- 
 determination, so long we shall be involved in perplexities 
 both in morals and religion. At all events, the only method 
 of avoiding them wdll be to adopt the creed of the necessita- 
 rians entire, to give man over to an irresponsible nature as a 
 better sort of animal, and resolve the will of the Supreme 
 Reason into a blind and irrational fate. 
 
 I am well aware of the objections that will be made to this 
 statement, and especially the demonstrated incompiehensible- 
 ness of a self-determining power. To this I may be permitted 
 to answer, that, admitting the power to originate an act or 
 state of mind to be beyond the capacity of our understandings 
 to comprehend, it is still not contradictory to reason ; and that 
 I find it more easy to believe the existence of that, which is ^ 
 simply incomprehensible to my understanding, than of that, 
 which involves an absurdity for my reason. I venture to af- 
 firm, moreover, that however we may bring our understand- 
 ings into bondage to the more comprehensible doctrine, sim- 
 ply because it is comprehensible under the forms of the under- 
 standing, every man does, in fact, believe himself possessed 
 of freedom in the higher sense of self-determination. Every 
 
 E 
 
XXXIV AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 man's conscience commands him to believe it, whenever for 
 a moment he indulges the feeling either of moral self-appro- 
 bation, or of remorse. Nor can we on any other grounds 
 justify the ways of God to man upon the supposition, that he 
 inflicts or will inflict any other punishment, than that which is 
 simply remedial or disciplinary. But this subject will be found 
 more fully explained in the course of the work. My present 
 object is merely to show the necessity of some system in re- 
 lation to these subjects different from the received one. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought, that the language used above is 
 too strong and too positive. But I venture to ask every can- 
 did man, at least every one, who has not committed himself 
 by writing and publishing on the subject, whether, in consider- 
 ing the great questions connected with moral accountability 
 and the doctrine of rewards and punishments, he has not felt 
 himself pressed with such difficulties as those above stated ; 
 and whether he has ever been able fully to satisfy his reason, 
 that there was not a lurking contradiction in the idea of a be- 
 ing created and placed under the law of its nature, and pos- 
 sessing at the same time a feeling of moral obligation to fulfil 
 a law above its nature. That many have been in this state of 
 mind I know. I know, too, that some, whose moral and reli- 
 gious feelings had led them to a full belief in the doctrines of 
 spiritual religion, but who at the same time had been taught 
 to receive the prevailing opinions in metaphysics, have found 
 these opinions carrying them unavoidably, if they would be 
 consequent in their reasonings, and not do violence to their 
 reason, to adopt a system of religion which does not profess to 
 be spiritual, and have thus been compelled to choose between 
 their philosophy and their religion. In most cases indeed, 
 where men reflect at all, I am satisfied that it requires all the 
 force of authority, and all the influence of education, to carry 
 the mind over these difficulties ; and that then it is only by a 
 vague belief, that, though we cannot see how, yet there must be 
 some method of reconciling what seems to be so contradictory. 
 
 If examples were wanting to prove that serious and trying 
 difficulties are felt to exist here, enough may be found, as it 
 
PRELI3IINARY ESSAY. XXXV 
 
 has appeared to mc, in the controversy respecting the nature 
 and origin of sin, which is at this moment interesting thepuh- 
 lic mind. Let any impartial observer trace the progress of 
 that discussion, and after examining the distinctions, which are 
 made or attempted to be made, decide whether the subject, as 
 there presented, be not involved in difficulties, which cannot 
 be solved on the principles, to which, hitherto, both parties 
 have adhered ; whether, holding as they do the same premi- 
 ses in regard to the freedom of the will, they can avoid coming 
 to the same conclusion in regard to the nature and origin 
 of sin ; whether, in fact, the distinctions aimed at must not 
 prove merely verbal distinctions, and the controversy a fruit- 
 less one. But in the September number of the Christian 
 Spectator, the reader will find remarks on this subject, to 
 which I beg leave to refer him, and which 1 could wish him 
 attentively to consider in connexion with the remarks which 
 I have made. I allude to the correspondence with the editors 
 near the end of the number. The letter there inserted is said 
 to be, and obviously is, from the pen of a very learned and able 
 writer ; and 1 confess it has been no small gratification and en- 
 couragement to me, while labouring to bring this work and this 
 subject before the public, to find such a state of feeling express- 
 ed, concerning^the great question at issue, by such a writer. It 
 will be seen by reference to p. 545 of the C. S., that he pla- 
 ces the " nucleus of the dispute" just where it is placed in this 
 work and in the above remarks. It will be seen, too, that by 
 throwing authorities aside, and studying his own mind, he has 
 " come seriously to doubt," whether the received opinions 
 with regard to motives^ the law of cause and effect^ and the 
 freedom of the loill, may not be erroneous. They appear to 
 him " to be bordenng on fatalism, if not actually embracing 
 it." He doubts, whether the mind may not have within itself 
 the adequate cause of its own acts ; whether indeed it have not 
 a self-determining power, "for the power in question involves 
 the idea of originating volition. Less than this it cannot be 
 conceived to involve, and yet be /ree agency." Now this is 
 just the view offered in the present work ; and, as it seems to 
 
XXXVl AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 me, these are just the doubts and conclusions, which every 
 one will entertain, who lays aside authority, and reflects upon 
 the goings-on of his own mind, and the dictates of his own 
 reason and conscience. 
 
 But let us look for a moment at the remarks of the editors 
 in reply to the letter above quoted. They maintain, in relation 
 to original sin and the perversion of the will, that from either 
 the original or the acquired strength of certain natural appe- 
 tites, principles of self-love, &c., "left to themselves," the 
 corruption of the heart will certainly follow. " In every in- 
 stance the will does, in fact, yield to the demands of these. 
 But whenever it thus yielded, there was poiuer to the contrary ; 
 otherwise there could be no freedom of moral action." Now 
 I beg leave to place my finger on the phrase in italics, and ask 
 the editors what they mean by it. If they hold the common 
 doctrines with regard to the relation of cause and effect, and 
 with regard to poiver as connected with that relation, and 
 apply these to the acts of the will, I can see no more possi- 
 bility of conceiving a poiver to the contrary in this case, than 
 of conceiving such a power in the current of a river. But if 
 they mean to assert the existence in the will of an actual pow- 
 er to rise above the demands of appetite, &c., above the law 
 of nature, and to decide arbitrarily^ whether to yield or not 
 to yield, then they admit, that the will is not determined abso- 
 lutely by the extraneous cause, but is in fact 5e//'-determined. 
 They agree with the letter-writer ; and the question for them 
 is at rest. Thus, whatever distinctions may be attempted 
 here, there can be no real distinction, but between an irres- 
 ponsible nature and a will that is self-determined. The read- 
 er will find a few additional remarks on this topic in note 45, 
 and for the general views of the work is again referred to note 
 29, and the references there made. To the subject of that note 
 and to the great distinction between nature and the will, be- 
 tween the natural and the spiritual, as imfolded in the work, 
 I must beg leave, also, again to request the special and candid 
 attention^of the reader. I must beg, too, the unprejudiced atten- 
 tion of every reader, friendly to the cause of practical and 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXX Vll 
 
 spiritual religion, to the tendency of this part of the autlior's 
 system, and of the remarks hazarded above. 
 
 I cannot but be aware, that the views of the will here ex- 
 hibited will meet with strong prejudices in a large portion, at 
 least, of our religious community. I could wish that all such 
 would carefully distinguish between the author's views of the 
 doctrines of religion, and the philosophical grounds, on which 
 he supposes those doctrines are to be defended. If no one 
 disputes, and I trust no one will dispute, the substantial ortho- 
 doxy of the work, without first carefully examining w^hat has 
 been the orthodoxy of the church in general, and of the great 
 body of the reformers, then I could hope it may be wisely 
 considered, whether, as a question of philosophy, the meta- 
 physical principles of this work are not in themselves more in 
 accordance with the doctrines of a spiritual religion, and bet- 
 ter suited to their explanation and defence, than those above 
 treated of. If on examination it cannot be disputed that they 
 are, then, if not before, I trust the two system.s may be com- 
 pared without undue partiality, and the simple question of the 
 truth of each may be determined by that calm and persevering 
 reflection, which alone can determine questions of this sort. 
 
 If the system here taught be true, then it will follow, not, 
 be it observed, that our religion is necessarily wrong, or our 
 essential faith erroneous, but that the philosophical grounds^ 
 on which we are accustomed to defend our faith, are unsafe, 
 and that their natural tendency is to error. If the spirit of 
 the gospel still exert its influence ; if a truly spiritual religion 
 be maintained, it is in opposition to our philosophy, and not 
 at all by its aid. I know it will be said, that the practical re- 
 sults of our peculiar forms of doctrine are at variance w-ith 
 these remarks. But this I am not prepared to admit. True, 
 religion and religious institutions have flourished ; the gospel, 
 in many parts of our country, has been aff'ectionately and faith- 
 fully preached by great and good men ; the word and the spi- 
 rit of God have been communicated to us in rich abundance ; 
 and I rejoice, with heartfelt joy and thanksgiving, in the belief, 
 that thereby multitudes have been regenerated to a new and 
 
XXXVlll AIDS TO REFLECTION". 
 
 spiritaal life. But so were equal or greater effects produced 
 under the preaching of Baxter, and Howe, and other good 
 and faithful men of the same age, with none of the peculiari- 
 ties of our theological systems. Neither reason nor experi- 
 ence indeed furnish any ground for believing, that the living 
 and life-giving power of the Divine Word has ever derived 
 any portion of its efficacy, in the conversion of the heart to 
 God, from the forms of metaphysical theology, with which the 
 human understanding has invested it. It requires, moreover, 
 but little knowledge of the history of philosophy, and of the 
 writings of the 16th and 17th centuries to know, that the 
 opinions of the reformers and of all the great divines of that 
 period, on subjects of this sort, were far different from those of 
 Mr. Locke and his followers, and were in fact essentially the 
 same with those taught in this work. This last remark ap- 
 plies not only to the views entertained by the eminent phi- 
 losophers and divines of that period on the particular subject 
 above discussed, but to the distinctions made, and the language 
 employed, by them with reference to other points of no less 
 importance in the constitution of our being. 
 
 It must have been observed by the reader of the foregoing 
 pages, that I have used several words, especially understand- 
 ing and reason, in a sense somewhat diverse from their pre- 
 sent acceptation ; and the occasion of this I suppose would be 
 partly understood from my having already directed the attention 
 of the reader to the distinction exhibited between these words 
 in the work, and from the remarks made on the ambiguity of 
 the word reason in its common use. I now proceed to remark, 
 that the ambiguity spoken of, and the consequent perplexity 
 in regard to the use and authority of reason, have arisen from 
 the habit of using, since the time of Locke, the terms under- 
 standing and reason indiscriminately, and thus confounding a 
 distinction clearly marked in the philosophy and in the lan- 
 guage of the older writers. Alas ! had the terms only been 
 confounded, or had we suffered only an inconvenient ambigui- 
 "^ ty of language, there would be comparatively little cause for 
 earnestness upon the subject ; or had our views of the things 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XXXIX 
 
 signified by these terms been only partially confused, and had 
 we still retained correct notions of our prerogative, as ration- 
 al and spiritual beings, the consequences might have been less 
 deplorable. But the misfortune is, that the powers of under- 
 standing and reason have not merely been blended and con- 
 founded in the view of our philosophy, the higher and far more 
 characteristic, as an essential constituent of our proper human- 
 ity, has been as it were o1)Scured and hidden from our obser- 
 vation in the inferior power, which belongs to us in common 
 with the brutes that perish. According to the old, the more 
 spiritual, and genuine philosophy, the distinguishing attributes 
 of our humanity — that "image of God" in which man alone 
 was created of all the dwellers upon earth, and in virtue of 
 which he was placed at the head of this lower world, was said 
 to be found in the reason and free'ivill. But understanding 
 these in their strict and proper sense and according to the true 
 ideas of them, as contemplated by the older metaphysicians, 
 we have literally, if the system of Locke and the popular phi- 
 losophy of the day be true, neither the one nor the other of 
 these — neither reason nor free-will. What they esteemed the 
 image of God in the soul, and considered as distinguishing us 
 specifically, and so vastly too, above each and all of the irra- 
 tional animals, is found, according to this system, to have in 
 fact no real existence. The reality neither of the free-will, 
 nor of any of those laws or ideas, which spring from, or ra- 
 ther constitute, reason, can be authenticated by the sort of 
 proof which is demanded, and we must therefore relinquish 
 our prerogative, and take our place with becoming humility 
 among our more unpretending companions. In the ascending 
 series of powers, enumerated by Milton, with so much philo- 
 sophical truth, as well as beauty of language, in the fifth book 
 of Paradise Lost, he mentions 
 
 Fcmcy and understanding, wlience the soul 
 Reasojv receives. And reason is her being, 
 Discursive or intuitive. 
 
 But the highest power here, that which is the Being of the 
 soul, considered as any thing diflering in kind from the under- 
 
Xl AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 standing, has no place in our popular metaphysics. Thus we 
 have only the imclerstandijigj " the faculty judging according 
 to sense," a faculty of abstracting and generalizing, of contri- 
 vance and forecast, as the highest of our intellectual powers ; 
 and this we are expressly taught belongs to us in common with 
 brutes. Nay, these views of our essential being, consequen- 
 ces and all, are adopted by men, whom one would suppose 
 religion, if not philosophy, should have taught their utter in- 
 adequateness to the true and essential constituents of our hu- 
 manity. Dr. Paley tells us in his Nat. Theology, that only 
 " CONTRIVANCE," a power obviously and confessedly belong- 
 ing to brutes, is necessary to constitute personality. His 
 whole system both of theology and morals neither teaches, 
 nor implies, the existence of any specific difference either be- 
 tween the understanding and reason, or between nature and 
 the will. It does not imply the existence of any power in 
 man, which does not obviously belong in a greater or less de- 
 gree to irrational animals. Dr. Fleming, another reverend 
 prelate in the English church, in his "Philosophy of Zoology," 
 maintains in express terms, that we have no faculties differing 
 in kind from those which belong to brutes. How many other 
 learned, and reverend, and wise men adopt the same opinions, I 
 know not: though these are are obviously not the peculiar viev/s 
 of the individuals, but connclusions resulting from the essential 
 principles of their system. If, then, there is no better ^?/s/em, 
 if this be the genuine philosophy, and founded in the nature 
 of things, there is no help for us, and we must believe it — if 
 we can. But most certainly it will follow, that we ought, as 
 fast as the prejudices of education will permit, to rid ourselves 
 of certain notions of prerogative, and certain feelings of our 
 own superiority, which somehow have been strangely preva- 
 lent among our race. For though we have indeed, according 
 to this system, a little mo7X understanding than other animals — 
 can abstract and generalize and fore-cast events, and the con- 
 sequences of our actions, and compare motives mo7'e skilfully 
 than they ; though we have thus more knowledge and can cir- 
 cumvent them ; though we have more power and can subdue 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAT. 
 
 xli 
 
 them; yet, as to any distinctive and j)eculiar characteristic — 
 as to any inherent and essential worthy we are after all but lit- 
 tle better — though we may be better off — than our dogs and 
 horses. There is no essential difference, and we may ration- 
 ally doubt — at least we might do so, it by the supposition we 
 were rational beings — whether our fellow animals of the ken- 
 nel and the stall are not unjustly deprived of certain ^personal 
 rightSj and whether a dog charged with trespass may not ra- 
 tionally claim to be tried by a jury of his peers. Now how- 
 ever trifling and ridiculous this may appear, I would ask in 
 truth and soberness, if it be not a fair and legitimate inference 
 from the premises, and whether the absurdity of the one does 
 not demonstrate the utter falsity of the other. And where, I 
 would beg to know, shall we look, according to the popular 
 system of philosophy, for that "image of God" in which we 
 are created? Is it a thing of degrees? and is it simply be- 
 cause we have something more of the same faculties which 
 belong to brutes, that we become the objects of God's special 
 and fatherly care, the distinguished objects of his Providence, 
 and the sole objects of his Grace ? — " Doth God take care for 
 oxen ?" But why not ? 
 
 I assure my readers, that I have no desire to treat with dis- 
 respect and contumely the opinions of great or good men ; but 
 the distinction in question, and the assertion and exhibition of 
 the higher prerogatives of reason, as an essential constituent 
 of our being, are so vitally important, in my apprehension, to 
 the formation and support of any rational system of philoso- 
 phy, and — no less than the distinction before treated of — so 
 pregnant of consequences to the interests of truth, in morals, 
 and religion, and indeed of all truth, that mere opinion and 
 the authority of names may well be disregarded. The discus- 
 sion, moreover, relates to facts, and to such facts, too, as are 
 not to be learned from the instruction, or received on the au- 
 thority, of any man. They must be ascertained by every man 
 for himself, by reflection upon the processes and laws of his 
 own inward being, or they are not learned at all to any valua- 
 ble purpose. We do indeed i\nd in ourselves then, as no one 
 
 F 
 
xlii 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 will deny, certain powers of intelligence, which w^e have 
 abundant reason to believe the brutes possess in common with 
 us in a greater or less degree. The functions of the under- 
 standing, as treated of in the popular systems of metaphysics, 
 its Acuities of attention, of abstraction, of generalization, the 
 power of forethought and contrivance, of adapting means to 
 ends, and the law of association, may be, so far as we can 
 judge, severally represented more or less adequately in the 
 instinctive inteUigence of the higher orders of brutes. But, 
 not to anticipate too far a topic treated of in the work, do 
 these, or any and all the faculties which we discover in irra- 
 tional animals, satisfactorily account to a reflecting mind for 
 all the pheenomena, which are presented to our observation 
 in our own consciousness ? Would any supposable addition to 
 the degree merely of those powers which we ascribe to brutes 
 render them rational he'mgs^ and remove the sacred distinction, 
 which law and reason have sanctioned, between things and 
 persons ? Will any such addition account for our having — 
 what the brute is not supposed to have — the pure ideas of the 
 geometrician, the power of ideal construction, the intuition of 
 geometrical or other necessary and universal truths ? Would 
 it give rise, in irrational animals, to a laiv of "moral rectitude 
 and to conscience — to the feelings of moral responsibility and 
 remorse 9 Would it awaken them to a reflective self-conscious- 
 ness, and lead them to form and contemplate the ideas of the 
 soul^ o( free-ivillj of immortality^ and of God. It seems to 
 me, that we have only to reflect for a serious hour upon what 
 w^e mean by these, and then to compare them with our no- 
 tion of what belongs to a brute, its inherent powers and their 
 correlative objects, to feel that they are utterly incompatible — 
 that in the possession of these we enjoy a prerogative, which 
 we cannot disclaim without a violation of reason, and a volun- 
 tary abasement of ourselves — and that we must therefore be 
 possessed of some peculiar powers — of some source of ideas 
 distinct from the understanding, differing in kind from any and 
 all of those which belong to us in common with inferior and 
 irrational animals. 
 
PRELIMINARY lOSSAY. xHii 
 
 But what these powers are, or what is the precise nature of 
 the distinction hetween the understanding and reason, it is not 
 my province, nor have 1 undertaken, to show. My object is 
 merely to illustrate its necessity, and the palpable obscurity, 
 vagueness, and deficiency, in this respect, of the mode of phi- 
 losophizing, which is held in so high honour among us. The 
 distinction itself will be found illustrated with some of its im- 
 portant bearings in the work, and in the notes and Appendix at- 
 tached to it ; and cannot be too carefully studied — in connex- 
 ion with that between nature and the will — by the student who 
 would acquire distinct and intelligible notions of what consti- 
 tutes the truly spiritual in our being, or find rational grounds for 
 the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. Indeed, could I suc- 
 ceed in fixing the attention of the reader upon this distinction, 
 in such a way as to secure his candid and reflecting perusal of 
 the work, I should consider any personal effort oi sacrifice 
 abundantly recompensed. Nor am I alone in this view of its 
 importance. A literary friend, whose opinion on this subject 
 would be valued by all who know the soundness of his schol- 
 arship, says, in a letter just now received, " if you can once 
 get the attention of thinking men fixed on his distinction be- 
 tween the reason and the understanding, you will have done 
 enough to reward the labour of a life. As prominent a place 
 as it holds in the writings of Coleridge, he seems to me far 
 enough from making too much of it." No person of serious 
 and philosophical mind, I am confident, can reflect upon the 
 subject, enough to understand it in its various aspects, without 
 arriving at the same views of the importance of the distinction, 
 whatever may be his conviction with regard to its truth. 
 
 But indeed the only g^-ound, which I find, to apprehend that 
 the reality of the distinction and the importance of the conse- 
 quences resulting from it will be much longer denied and re- 
 jected among us, is in the overweening assurance, which pre- 
 vails with regard to the adequateness and perfection of the 
 system of philosophy which is already received. It is taken 
 for granted, as a fact undisputed and indisputable, that this is 
 the most enliditened aire of (he \\orld, not onlv in regard to 
 
Xliv AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the more general diffusion of certain points of practical knowl- 
 edge, in which, probably, it may be so, but in all respects ; 
 that our whole system of the philosophy of mind as derived from 
 Ld. Bacon, especially, is the only one, which has any claims 
 to common sense ; and that all distinctions not recognized in 
 that are consequently unworthy of our regard. What those 
 reformers, to whose transcendent powers of mind, and to 
 whose characters as truly spiritual divines, we are accustomed 
 to look with feelingsj^of so much general regard, might find to 
 say in favour of their philosophy, few take the pains to inquire. 
 Neither they nor the great philosophers, with whom they held 
 communion on subjects of this sort, can appear among us to 
 speak in their own defence ; and even the huge Folios and 
 Quartos, in which, though dead, they yet speak — and ought to 
 be heard — have seldom strayed to this side of the Atlantic. 
 All our information respecting their philosophical opinions, and 
 the grounds on which they defended them, has been received 
 from writers, v.'ho were confessedly advocating a system of 
 recent growth, at open war with every thing more ancient, 
 and who, in the great abundance of their self-complacency, 
 have represented their own discoveries as containing the sum 
 and substance of all philosophy, and the accumulated treasures 
 of ancient wisdom as unworthy the attention of "this enlight- 
 ened age." Be it so. — Yet the "foolishness" of antiquity, if 
 it be " of God," may prove " wiser than men." It may be 
 found, that the philosophy of the reformers and their religion 
 are essentially connected, and must stand or fall together. It 
 may at length be discovered, that a system of religion essen- 
 tially spiritual, and a system of philosophy that excludes the 
 very idea of all spiritual power and agency, in their only dis- 
 tinctive and proper character, cannot be consistently associated 
 together. 
 
 It is our peculiar misfortune in this country, that while the 
 philosophy of Locke and the^Scottislr, writers has been receiv- 
 ed in full faith, as the only rational system, and its leading 
 principles especially passed off as unquestionable, the strong 
 attachment to religion, and the fondness for speculation, by 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. XlV 
 
 both of which we are strongly characterized, have led us to 
 combine and associate these principles, such as they are, with 
 our religious interests and opinions, so variously and so inti- 
 mately, that by most persons they are considered as necessa- 
 ry parts of the same system ; and from being so long contem- 
 plated together, the rejection of one seems impossible without 
 doing violence to the other. Yet how much evidence might 
 not an impartial observer find in examining the theological dis- 
 cussions that have prevailed, the speculative systems, that 
 have been formed and arrayed against each other, for the last 
 seventy years, to convince him, that there must be some discord- 
 ance in the elements, some principle of secret but irreconcila- 
 ble hostility between a philosophy and a religion, which, under 
 every ingenious variety of form and shaping, still stand aloof 
 from each other, and refuse to cohere. For is it not a fact, 
 that in regard to every speculative system, which has been 
 formed on these philosophical principles, — to every new sha- 
 ping of theory, which has been devised and gained its adhe- 
 rents among us, — is it not a fact, I ask, that, to all, except those 
 adherents, the system — the philosophical theory — has seemed 
 dangerous in its tendency, and at war with orthodox views of 
 religion — perhaps even with the attributes of God. Nay, to 
 bring the matter still nearer and more plainly to view, I ask, 
 whether at this moment the organs and particular friends of 
 our leading theological seminaries in New England, both de- 
 votedly attached to an orthodox and spiritual system of reli- 
 gion, and expressing mutual confidence as to the essentials of 
 their mutual faith, do not each consider the other as holding a 
 philosophical theory subversive of orthodoxy ? If I am not 
 misinformed, this is the simple fact. 
 
 Now, if these things be so, I would ask again with all earnest- 
 ness, and out of regard to the interests of truth alone, whether 
 serious and reflecting men may not be permitted, without the 
 charge of heresy in Religion, to stand in doubt of this Phi- 
 losophy altogether ; wliether these facts, which will not be 
 disputed, do not furnish just ground for suspicion, that the 
 principles of our philoso})hy may be erroneous, or at least in- 
 
Xlvi AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 duce us to look with candour and impartiality at the claims of 
 another and a different system. 
 
 What are the claims of the system, to which the attention 
 of the public is invited in this work, can be understood fully, 
 only by a careful and reflecting examination of its principles 
 in connexion with the conscious wants of our own inward be- 
 ing — the requirements of our own reason and consciences. 
 Its purpose and tendency, I have endeavoured in some meas- 
 ure to exhibit; and if the influence of authority, which the 
 prevailing system furnishes against it can, and must be coun- 
 teracted by any thing of a like kind — ( and whatever profes- 
 sions we may make, the influence of authority produces at 
 least a predisposing eflect upon our minds) — the remark which 
 I have made, will show, that the principles here taught are not 
 wholly unauthorized by men, whom we have been taught to 
 reverence among the great and good. I cannot but add, as a 
 matter of simple justice to the question, that however our 
 prevailing system of philosophizing may have appealed to the 
 authority of Lord Bacon, it needs but a candid examination of 
 his writings, especially the first part of his Novum Organum, 
 to be convinced, that such an appeal is without grounds ; and 
 that in fact the fundamental principles of his philosophy are 
 the same with those taught in this work. The great distinction, 
 especially, between the understanding and the reason is clear- 
 ly and fully recognized ; and as a philosopher he would be far 
 more properly associated with Plato or even Aristotle, than 
 with the modern philosophers, who have miscalled their sys- 
 tems by his name. For farther remarks on this point, the 
 reader is requested to refer to notes 50 and 59. In our own 
 times, moreover, there is abundant evidence, whatever may 
 be thought of the principles of this work here, that the same 
 general views of philosophy are regaining their ascendancy 
 elsewhere. In Great Britain there are not a few, who begin 
 to believe, that the deep toned and sublime eloquence of Cole- 
 ridge on these great subjects may have something to claim 
 their attention besides a few peculiarities of language. At 
 Paris, the doctrines of a rational and spiritual system of phi- 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. xlvii 
 
 losophy arc taught to listening and admiring thousands by one 
 of the most learned and eloquent philosophers of the age : 
 and in Germany, if I mistake not, the same general views are 
 adopted by the serious friends of religious truth among her 
 great and learned men. 
 
 Such — as I have no doubt — must be the case, wherever 
 thinking men can be brought distinctly and impartially to ex- 
 amine their claims ; and indeed, to those who shall study and 
 comprehend the general history of philosophy, it must always 
 be matter of special wonder, that in a christian community, anx- 
 iously striving to explain and defend the doctrines of Christian- 
 ity in their spiritual sense, there should have been a long con- 
 tinued and tenacious adherence to philosophical principles, so 
 subversive of their faith in every thing distinctively spiritual ; 
 while those of an opposite tendency, and claiming a near rela- 
 tionship and correspondence with the truly spiritual in the 
 christian system, and the mysteries of its sublime faith, were 
 looked upon wdth suspicion and jealousy, as unintelligible or 
 dangerous metaphysics. 
 
 And here I must be allowed to add a few remarks with re- 
 gard to the popular objections against the system of philoso- 
 phy, whose claims I am urging, especially against the writings 
 of the author, under w^hose name it appears in the present 
 work. These are various and often contradictory, but usually 
 have reference either to his peculiarities of language, or to the 
 depth — whether apparent or real, — and the uninteUigibleness, 
 of his thoughts. 
 
 To the first of these it seems to me a sufficient answer, for 
 a mind that w^ould deal honestly and frankly by itself, to sug- 
 gest that in the very nature of things it is impossible for a wri- 
 ter to express by a single word any truth, or to mark any dis- 
 tinction, not recognized in the language of his day, unless 
 he adopts a word entirely new, or gives to one already in use a 
 new and more peculiar sense. Now in communicating truths, 
 which the writer deems of great and fundamental importance, 
 shall he thus appropriate a single word old or new, or trust to 
 the vagueness of perpetual circumlocution ? Admitting for 
 
Xlviii AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 example, the existence of the important distinction, for which 
 this writer contends, between the understanding and reason, 
 and that this distinction, when recognized at all, is confounded 
 in the common use of language by employing the words in- 
 discriminately, shall he still use these words indiscriminately, 
 and either invent a new word, or mark the distinction by de- 
 scriptive circumlocutions, or shall he assign a more distinctive 
 and precise meaning to the words already used ? It seems to 
 me obviously more in accordance with the laws and genius 
 of language to take the course, which he has adopted. But in 
 this case and in many others, where his language seems pecul- 
 iar, it cannot be denied that the words had already been em- 
 ployed in the same sense, and the same distinctions recogni- 
 zed, by the older and many of the most distinguished writers 
 in the language. But the reader will find the author's own 
 views of the subject in the Appendix, pp. 347 — 348, and pp. 
 355—357, and p. 397. See also note 22. 
 
 j^ With regard to the more important objection, that the 
 ( thoughts of Coleridge are unintelligible^ if it be intended to 
 ./imply, that his language is not in itself expressive of an intel- 
 ligible meaning, or that he affects the appearance of depth and 
 mystery, while his thoughts are common-place, it is an objec- 
 tion, which no one who has read his works attentively, and 
 acquired a feeling of interest for them, will treat their author 
 with so much disrespect as to answer at all. Every such rea- 
 der knoivSj that he uses words uniformly with astonishing pre- 
 cision, and that language becomes, in his use of it — in a de- 
 gree, of which few writers can give us a conception — a living 
 powder, " consubstantial" with the power of thought, that gave 
 birth to it, and awakening and calling into action a correspon- 
 ding energy in our own minds. There is little encourage- 
 ment, moreover, to answer the objections of any man, who 
 will permit himself to be incurably prejudiced against an au- 
 thor by a few peculiarities of language, or an apparent difficul- 
 ty of being understood, and without enquiring into the cause of 
 that difficulty, where at the same time he cannot but see and 
 acknowledge the presence of great intellectual and moral pow- 
 er. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. xHx 
 
 But if it be intended by the objection to say simply, that the 
 thoughts of the author are often difficult to be apprehended — ^ 
 that he makes large demands not only upon the attention, but 
 upon the reflecting and thinking powers, of his readeis, the 
 fact is not, and need not be, denied ; and it will only remain to 
 be decided, whether the instruction offered, as the reward, 
 will repay us for the expenditure of thought required, or can 
 be obtained for less. 1 know it iscustomaiy in this country, 
 as well as in Great Britain — and that too among men from 
 whom different language might be expected — to affect either 
 contempt or modesty, in regard to all that is more than com- 
 mon-place in philosophy, and especially " Coleridge's Meta- 
 physics," as "too deep for them." Now it may not be eve- 
 ry man^s duty, or in every man's power, to devote to such 
 studies the time and thought necessary to understand the deep 
 things of philosophy. But for one, who professes to be a 
 scholar, and to cherish a manly love of truth for the truth's 
 sake, to object to a system of metaphysics because it is "too 
 deep for him," must be either a disingenuous insinuation, that 
 its depths are not worth exploring — which is more than the 
 objector knows — or a confession, that — with all his professed 
 love of truth and knowledge — he prefers to " sleep after din- 
 ner." The misfortune is, that men have been cheated into a 
 belief, that all philosophy and metaphysics worth knowing are 
 contained in a few volumes, which can be understood with lit- 
 tle expense of thought ; and that they may very well spare 
 themselves the vexation of trying to comprehend the depths 
 of " Coleridge's Metaphysics." According to the popular no- 
 tions of the day, it is a very easy matter to understand the 
 philosophy of mind. A new work on philosophy is as easy to 
 read as the last new novel ; and superficial, would-be scholars, 
 who have a very sensible horror at the thought of studying 
 Algebra, or the doctrine of fluxions, can yet go through a 
 course of moral sciences, and know all about the philosophy 
 of the mind. 
 
 Now why will not men of sense, and men who have any 
 just pretensions to scholarship, see that there must of neces- 
 
1 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sity be gross sophistry somewhere in any system of metaphys- 
 ics, which pretends to give us an adequate and scientific self- 
 knowledge — to render comprehensible to us the mysterious 
 laws of our own inward being, w^ith less manly and persever- 
 ing effort of thought on our part, than is confessedly required 
 to comprehend the simplest of those sciences, all of which 
 are but some of the phsenomena, from which the laws in ques- 
 tion are to be inferred ? Why will they not see and acknowl- 
 edge — what one would suppose a moment's reflection would 
 teach them — that to attain true self-knowledge by reflection 
 upon the objects of our inward consciousness — not merely to 
 understand the motives of our conduct as conscientious chris- 
 tians, but to know ourselves scientifically as philosophers — 
 must, of necessity, be the most deep and diflicult of all our 
 attainments in knowledge ? I trust that what I have already 
 said will be sufficient to expose the absurdity of objections 
 against metaphysics in general, and do something towards 
 showing, that we are in actual and urgent need of a system 
 somewhat deeper than those, the contradictions of which have 
 not w^ithout reason made the name of philosophy a terror to 
 the friends of truth and of religion. " False metaphysics can 
 be effectually counteracted by true metaphysics alone ; and if 
 the reasoning be clear, solid, and pertinent, the truth dedu- 
 eed caM never be the less valuable on account of the depth 
 from which it may have been drawn." It is a fact, too, of 
 great importance to be kept in mind, in relation to this sub- 
 ject, that in the study of ourselves — in attaining a knowledge 
 of our own being, there are truths of vast concernment, and 
 living at a great depth, which yet no man can draw foi ano- 
 ther. However the depth may have been fathomed, and the 
 same truth brought up by others, for a light and a joy to their 
 own minds, it must still remain, and be sought for by us, each 
 for himself, at the bottom of the well. 
 
 The system of philosophy here taught does not profess to 
 make men philosophers, or — which ought to mean the same 
 hing — to guide them to the knowledge of themselves, without 
 the labour both of attention and of severe thinking. If it 
 
PRELIMINARY ES&AY. H 
 
 did SO, it would have, like the more popular works of philoso- 
 phy, far less affinity, than it now has, with the mysteries of 
 religion, aud those profound truths concerning our spiritual he- 
 ing and destiny, which are revealed in the " things hard to be 
 understood" of St. Paul and of the " beloved disciple." For 
 I cannot but remind my readers again, that the author does 
 not undertake to teach us the philosophy of the human mind, 
 with the exclusion of the truths and influences of religion. 
 He would not undertake to philosophize respecting the being 
 and character of man, and at the same time exclude from his 
 view the very principle which constitutes his proper humani- 
 ty : he would not, in teaching the doctrine of the solar sys- 
 tem, omit to mention the sun, and the law of gravitation. He 
 professes to investigate and unfold the being of man as man, in 
 his higher, his peculiar, and distinguishing attributes. These it 
 is, which are "hard to be understood," and to apprehend which 
 requires the exercise of deep reflection and exhausting thought. 
 Nor in aiming at this object would he consider it very philo- 
 sophical to reject the aid and instruction of eminent writers 
 on the subject of religion, or even of the volume of revelation 
 itself. He would consider St. Augustine as none the less a 
 philosopher, because he became a christian. The Apostles 
 John and Paul were, in the view of this system of philosophy, 
 the most rational of all writers, and the New Testament the 
 most philosophical of all books. They are so, because they 
 unfold more fully, than any other, the true and essential prin- 
 ciples of our being ; because they give us a clearer and deeper 
 insight into those constituent laws of our humanity, which as 
 men, and therefore as philosophers, we are most concerned to 
 know. Not only to those, who seek the practical self-knowl- 
 edge of the humble, spiritually minded, christian, but to those 
 also, who are impelled by the " heaven descended yvuGi tfsaurov" 
 to study themselves as philosophers, and to make self-knowl- 
 edge a science, the truths of Scripture are a hght and a reve- 
 lation. The more earnestly we reflect upon these and refer 
 them, whether as christians or as philosophers, to the move- 
 ments of our inward being — to the laws which reveal them- 
 
Hi AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 selves ill our own consciousness, the more fully shall we un- 
 derstand, not only the language of Scripture, but all that most 
 demands and excites the curiosity of the genuine philosopher 
 in the mysterious character of man. It is by this guiding light, 
 that we can but search into and apprehend the constitution of 
 that '' marvellous microcosm," which, the more it has been 
 known, has awakened more deeply the wonder and admiration 
 of the true philosopher in every age. 
 
 Nor would the author of this work, or those who have im- 
 bibed the spirit of his system, join with the philosophers of 
 the day in throwing aside and treating with a contempt, as 
 ignorant as it is arrogant, the treasures of ancient wisdom. 
 " He," says the son of Sirach, " that giveth his mind to the 
 law of the Most High, and is occupied in the meditation thereof, 
 will seek out the wisdom of all the ancient." In the estima- 
 tion of the true philosopher, the case should not be greatly 
 altered in the present day ; and now that two thousand years 
 have added such rich and manifold abundance to those ancient 
 " sayings of the wise," he will still approach them with reve- 
 rence, and receive their instruction with gladness of heart. 
 In seeking to explore and unfold those deeper and more sol- 
 emn mysteries of our being, which inspire us with awe, while 
 they baffle our comprehension, he will especially beware of 
 trusting to his own understanding, or of contradicting, in com- 
 pliance with the self-flattering inventions of a single age, the 
 universal faith and consciousness of the human race. On such 
 subjects, though he would call no man master, yet neither 
 would he willingly forego the aids to be derived, in the seaich 
 after truth, from those great oracles of human wisdom — those 
 giants in intellectual power, who from generation to genera- 
 tion were admired and venerated by the great and good. Much 
 less could he think it becoming, or consistent with his duty, to 
 hazard the publication of his own thoughts on subjects of the 
 deepest concernment, and on which minds of greatest depth 
 and power had been occupied in former ages, while confessed- 
 ly ignorant alike of their doctrines, and of the arguments by 
 which they are sustained. 
 
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. lul 
 
 It is in this spirit, that the author of the work here oftered 
 to the public has prepared himself to deserve the candid and 
 even confiding attention of his readers, with reference to the 
 great subjects of which he treats. 
 
 And although the claims of the work upon our attention, as 
 of every other work, must depend more upon its inherent and 
 essential character, than upon the worth and authority of its 
 author, it may yet be of service to the reader to know, that 
 he is no hasty or unfurnished adventurer in the department of 
 authorship, to which the work belongs. The discriminating 
 reader of this work cannot fail to discover his profound knowl- 
 edge of the philosophy of language, the principles of its con- 
 struction, and the laws of its interpretation. In others of his 
 works, perhaps more fully than in this, there is evidence of 
 an unrivalled mastery over all that pertains both to logic and 
 philology. It has been already intimated, that he is no con- 
 temner of the great writers of antiquity and of their wise sen- 
 tences; and probably few English scholars, even in those days 
 when there were giants of learning in Great Britain, had minds 
 more richly furnished with the treasures of ancient lore. But 
 especially will the reader of his works observe with admira- 
 tion the profoundness of his philosophical attainments, and his 
 thorough and intimate knowledge, not only of the works and 
 systems of Plato and Aristotle, and of the celebrated philoso- 
 phers of modern times, but of those too much neglected wri- 
 tings of the Greek and Roman Fathers, and of the great lea- 
 ders of the reformation, which more particularly qualify him 
 for discussing the subjects of the present work. If these 
 qualifications, and — with all these, and above all — a disposi- 
 tion professed and made evident seriously to value them, chief- 
 ly as they enable him more fully and clearly to apprehend and 
 illustrate the truths of the christian system, — if these, I say, 
 can give an author a claim to a serious and thoughtful atten- 
 tion, then may the work here offered urge its claims upon the 
 reader. My own regard for the cause of truth, for the inter- 
 ests of philosophy, of reason, and of religion, lead me to hope 
 that they may not be uiged in vain. 
 
liV AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Of his general claims to our regard, whether from exalted 
 personal and moral worth, or from the magnificence of his intel- 
 lectual powers, and the vast extent and variety of his accumula- 
 ted stores of knowledge, I shall not venture to speak. If it be 
 true indeed, that a really great mind can be worthily com- 
 mended, only by those, who adequately both appreciate and 
 comprehend its greatness, there are few, who should under- 
 take to estimate, and set forth in appropriate terms, the intel- 
 lectual power and moral worth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 Neither he, nor the public, would be benefited by such com- 
 mendations as I could bestow. The few among us who have 
 read his works with the attention which they deserve, are at 
 no loss what rank to assign him among the writers of the 
 present age ; to those, who have not, any language, which I 
 might use, would appear hyperbolical and extravagant. The 
 character and influence of his principles as a philosopher, a 
 moralist, and a christian, and of the writings by which he is 
 enforcing them, do not ultimately depend upon the estimation 
 in which they may now be held ; and to posterity he may safe- 
 ly entrust those "productive ideas" and "living words" — 
 those 
 
 " truths that wake," 
 
 " To perish never," 
 
 the possession of which will be for their benefit, and connect- 
 ed with which, in the language of the son of Sirach, — " His 
 own memorial shall not depart away, and his name shall live 
 from generation to generation." 
 
 J. M. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 In the bodies of several species of Animals tliere are found certain Parts 
 of which neither the office, the functions, nor the relations could be ascer- 
 tained by the Comparative Anatomist, till he had become acquainted with 
 the state of the Animal before birth. Something sufficiently like this (for 
 the purpose of an illustration, at least) applies to the Work here offered to 
 the Public. In the introductory portion there occur several passages, 
 which the Reader will be puzzled to decypher, ^vithout some information 
 respecting the original design of the Volume, and the Changes it has un- 
 dergone during its immature and embryonic state. On this account only, 
 I think myself bound to make it kno\vn, that the Work was proj)osed and 
 begun as a mere Selection from the Writings of Archbishop Leighton, un- 
 der the usual title of The Beauties of Archbishop Leighton, with a few 
 notes and a biographical preface by the Selector. Hence the term, Editor^ 
 subscribed to the notes, and prefixed alone or conjointly to the Aphorisms, 
 accordingly as the Passage was written entirely by myself, or only modi- 
 fied and [avowedly) interpolated. I continued the use of the word on the 
 plea of uniformity : though like most other deviations from propriety of 
 language, it would probably have been a wiser choice to have omitted or 
 exchanged it. The various Reflections, however, that pressed on me 
 while I was considering the motives for selecting this or that passage ; the 
 desire of enforcing, and as it were integrating, the truths contained in the 
 Original Author, by adding those which the words suggested or recalled to 
 my own mind ; the conversation with men of eminence in the Literaiy 
 and Religious Circles, occasioned by the Objects which I had in view ; 
 and lastly, the increasing disproportion of the Commcntaiy to the Text, 
 and the too marked difference in the frame, character, and color of the two 
 styles ; soon induced me to recognize and adopt a revolution in my plan 
 and object, which had in fact actually taken place without my intention, 
 and almost miawares. It would indeed be more coiTect to say, that the 
 present Volume owed its accidental origin to the intention of compiling 
 one of a difterent description, than to s])eak of it as the same Work. It is 
 not a change in the child, but a changeling. 
 
 Still, however, the selections from Leighton, which will be found in the 
 prudential and moral Sections of this Work, and which I could retain 
 consistently with its ])resent form and matter, will both from the hitrinsic 
 
Ivi ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 excellence and from the characteristic beauty of the passages, suffice to 
 answer two prominent purposes of the original plan ; that of placing in a 
 clear hght the principle, which pervades all Leighton's Writings — his sub- 
 lime View, I mean, of Religion and Morality as the means of reforming 
 the human Soul in the Divine Image [Idea] ; and that of exciting an in- 
 terest in the Works, and an aifectionate reverence for the name and me- 
 mory, of this severely tried and truly primitive Churchman. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 An Author has three points to settle : to what sort his Work 
 belongs, for what Description of Readers it is intended, and 
 the specific end or object, which it is to answer. There is 
 indeed a preliminary Interrogative respecting the end which 
 the Writer himself has in view, whether the Number of Pur- 
 chasers, or the Benefit of the Readers. But this may be 
 safely passed by ; since where the book itself or the known 
 principles of the writer do not supersede the question, there 
 will seldom be sufiicient strength of character for good or^for 
 evil, to afford much chance of its being either distinctly put or 
 fairly answered. 
 
 I shall proceed therefore to state as briefly as possible the 
 intentions of the present volume in reference to the three first- 
 mentioned, viz. What? For IVhom? and For what? 
 
 I. What? The answer is contained in the Title-page. It 
 belongs to the class of didactic Works. Consequently, those 
 who neither wish instruction for themselves, nor assistance in 
 instructing others, have no interest in its contents. Sis Sus^ 
 sis Divus : Sum Caltha, et non tibi spiro ! 
 
 II. For Whom ? Generally, for as many in all classes as 
 wish for aid in disciplining their minds to habits of reflec- 
 tion — for all who, desirous of building up a manly character 
 in the light of distinct consciousness, are content to study the 
 principles of moral Architecture on the several grounds of 
 prudence, morality and religion. And lastly, for all who feel 
 an interest in the Position, I have undertaken to defend — this, 
 namely, that the Christian Faith ( in which I include every 
 
 H 
 
Iviii AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 article of belief and doctrine professed by the first Reformers 
 in common) is the Perfection of Human Intelligence: 
 an interest sufficiently strong to ensure a patient attention to 
 the arguments brought in its support. 
 
 But if I am to mention any particular class or description of 
 Readers, that were prominent in my thoughts during the com- 
 position of the volume, my Reply must be : that it was espe- 
 cially designed for the studious Young at the close of their 
 education or on their first entrance into the duties of manhood 
 and the rights of self-government. And of these, again, in 
 thought and wish I destined the work ( the latter and larger 
 portion, at least) yet more particularly to Students intended 
 for the Ministry ; first, as in duty bound, to the members of 
 our two Universities: secondly, (but only in respect of this 
 mental precedency second) to all alike of whatever name, 
 who have dedicated their future lives to the cultivation of 
 their Race, as Pastors, Preachers, Missionaries, or instructors 
 of Youth. 
 
 III. For What ? The Worth of the Author is estimated by 
 the ends, the attainment of which he proposed to himself by the 
 particular work : while the Value of the Work depends on its 
 fitness, as the Means. The Objects of the present volume 
 are the following, arranged in the order of their comparative 
 importance. 
 
 1 . To direct the Reader's attention to the value of the Sci- 
 ence of Words, their use and abuse ( see Note 4 ) and the in- 
 calculable advantages attached to the habit of using them ap- 
 propriately, and with a distinct knowledge of their piimary, 
 derivative, and metaphorical senses. And in furtherance of 
 this Object I have neglected no occasion of enforcing the max- 
 im, that to expose a sophism and to detect the equivocal or 
 double meaning of a word is, in the great majority of cases, 
 one and the same thing. Home Tooke entitled his celebrated 
 
PREFACE. hx 
 
 work, E-TTca <7rT£^o£VTa, Winged Words : or Language, not only 
 the Vehicle of Thought but the Wheels. With my convic- 
 tions and views, for eirsa I should substitute Xoyoj, i. e. Words se- 
 lect and determinate^ and for -TTTS^oevTa, ^uovrsg, i. e. living Words. 
 The Wheels of the intellect 1 admit them to be ; but such as 
 Ezekiel beheld in " the visions of God" as he sate among the 
 Captives by the river of Chebar. " Whithersoever the Spirit 
 was to go, the Wheels went, and thither was their Spirit to 
 go : for the Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels al- 
 so.'' 
 
 2. To establish the distinct characters of Prudence, Moral- 
 ity, and Religion : and to impress the conviction, that though 
 the second requires the first, and the third contains and sup- 
 posei both the former ; yet still Moral Goodness is other and 
 more than prudence, or the Principle of Expediency ; and 
 higher than Morality. For this distinction the better Schools 
 even of Pagan Philosophy contended. [See pp. 14 — 15.) 
 
 3. To substantiate and set forth at large the momentous dis- 
 tinction between Reason and Understanding. Whatever is 
 atchievable by the Understanding for the purposes of world- 
 ly interest, private or public, has in the present age been pur- 
 sued with an activity and a success beyond all foriner experi- 
 ence, and to an extent which equally demands my admiration 
 and excites my wonder. But likewise it is, and long has been, 
 my conviction, that in no age since the first dawning of Sci- 
 ence and Philosophy in this Island have the Truths, Interests, 
 and studies that especially belong to the Rkason, contempla- 
 tive or practical, sunk into such utter neglect, not to say con- 
 tempt, as during the last century. It is therefore one main 
 Object of this Volume to establish the position, that whoever 
 transfers to the Understanding the primacy due to the Reason, 
 loses the one and spoils the other. 
 
 4. To exhibit a full and consistent Scheme of the ChiisJian 
 
Ix AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Dispensation, and more largely of all the peculiar doctrines of 
 the Christian Faith; and to answer all the Objections to the 
 same, that do not originate in a corrupt Will rather than er- 
 ring Judgement ; and to do this in a manner inteUigible for all 
 who, possessing the ordinary advantages of education, do in 
 good earnest desire to form their religious creed in the light 
 of their own convictions, and to have a reason for the faith 
 which they profess. There are indeed Mysteries, in evidence 
 of which no reasons can be brought. But it has been my en- 
 deavour to show, that the true solution of this problem is, that 
 these Mysteries are Reason, Reason in its highest form of 
 Self-affirmation. 
 
 Such are the special Objects of these "Aids to Reflection." 
 Concerning the general character of the work, let me be per- 
 mitted to add the few following sentences. St. Augustine, in 
 one of his Sermons, discoursing on a high point of Theology, 
 tell his auditors — Sic accipite, ut mereamini intelligere. Fides 
 enim debet przecedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei praem- 
 ium*. Now without a certain portion of gratuitous and (as it 
 were ) experimentative faith in the Writer, a Reader will scarce- 
 ly give that degree of continued attention, without which no 
 didactic Work worth reading can be read to any wise or pro- 
 fitable purpose. In this sense, therefore, and to this extent 
 every Author, who is competent to the office he has underta- 
 ken, may without arrogance repeat St. Augustine's words in 
 his own right, and advance a similar claim on similar grounds. 
 But I venture no farther than to imitate the sentiment at a 
 humble distance, by avowing my belief that He, who seeks 
 instruction in the following pages, will not fail to find enter- 
 tainment likewise ; but that whoever seeks entertainment only 
 will find neither. 
 
 ^Translation. So receive this, that you may deserve to understand it. 
 For the faith ought to precede the Understanding, so that the Understand 
 ing may be the reward of the faith. 
 
PREFACE. Ixi 
 
 Reader ! — You have been bred in a land abounding with 
 men, able in arts, learning, and knowledges manilbld, this man 
 in one, this in another, few in many, none in all. But there 
 is one art, of which every man should be master, the art of 
 REFLECTION. If you are not a'Jhinking man, to what purpose 
 are you a man at all ? In like manner, there is one knowl- 
 edge, which it is every man's interest and duty to acquire, 
 namely, self-knowledge : or to what end was man alone, of 
 all animals, indued by the Creator with the faculty of self-con- 
 sciousness? Truly said the Pagan moralist, E ccelo descen- 
 di, rvw^» Ssaurov. 
 
 But you are likewise born in a christian land : and Reve- 
 lation has provided for you new subjects for reflection, and 
 new treasures of knowledge, never to be unlocked by him 
 who remains self-ignorant. Self-knowledge is the key to this 
 casket ; and by reflection alone can it be obtained. Reflect 
 on your own thoughts, actions, circumstances, and — which will 
 be of especial aid to you in forming a habit of reflection — ac- 
 custom yourself to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read, 
 their birth, derivation, and history. For if words are not 
 THINGS, they are living powers, by which the things of most 
 importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and humani- 
 zed. Finally, by reflection you may draw from the fleeting 
 facts of your worldly trade, art, or profession, a science perma- 
 nent as your immortal soul ; and make even these subsidiary 
 and preparative to the reception of spiritual truth, " doing as 
 the dyers do, who having first dipt their silks in colours of less 
 value, then give them the last tincture of crimson in grain." 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 m 
 
AIDS TO REPLECTIOIV. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 
 
 i 
 
 ■m 
 
MARINUS. 
 
 Omnis divinae atqiie humana3 criiditionis clementa tria, Nosse, Velle, 
 Posse: quorum. pj-incipium imum Mens, sive Spiritus ; ciijus Ocvlus est 
 Ratio ; cui luvien pra?bet Deus. Vita di G. B. Vico, p. 50. 
 
 m, 
 
AIDS 
 
 TO 
 
 REFLECTION. 
 
 INTROPUCTORY APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM I. EDITOR. 
 
 It is the prerogative of Genius to produce novel impressions 
 from familiar objects : and seldom can philosophic genius be 
 more usefully employed than in thus rescuing admitted truths 
 from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their 
 universal admission. Extremes meet. Truths, of all others 
 the most awful and interesting, are too often considered jis so 
 true, that they lose all the ppw^r of truth, and lie bed-ridden 
 in the dormitory of the soul, side b^ side with the naost des- 
 pised and exploded errors, 
 
 APHORISM II, EDITOR. 
 
 There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance 
 ^>to the most common-place maxims — that of reflecting on them 
 in direct reference to our own state s^nd conduct, to our own 
 past and future being. 
 
 APHORISM III, EDITOR, 
 
 To restore a common-place truth to its first uncommon lus- 
 tre, you need only translate it into action. But to do this, 
 you m.ust have reflected on its truth, 
 
 APHORISM IV, LEIGHTON. 
 
 * It is the advice of the wise man, ' Dwell at home,' or, with 
 'yourself; and though there are very few that do this, yet it 
 Ms jiurprisin^ th^t the greatest part of mjinkind Ciinn<)t hf- 
 
2 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 * prevailed upon, at least to visit themselves sometimes; but, 
 ' according to the saying of the wise Solomon, The eyes of 
 ' the fool are in the ends of the earth.'' 
 
 A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and 
 source of every good thing. (^' Omnis boni principium intel- 
 lectus cogitabundus.^ ) It is at once the disgrace and the mis- 
 ery of men, that they live without fore-thought. Suppose 
 yourself fronting a glass mirror. Now what the Objects be- 
 hind you are to their images at the same apparent distance be- 
 fore you, such is Reflection to Fore-thought. As a man with- 
 out Fore-thought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so 
 Fore-thought without Reflection is but a metaphorical phrase 
 for the instinct of a beast. ed. 
 
 APHORISM V. EDITOR, 
 
 As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its fruits 
 singly, or even than all its fruits of a single season, so the 
 noblest object of reflection is the mind itself, by which we re- 
 flect. 
 
 And as the blossoms, the green, and the ripe fruit, of an 
 ©range-tree are more beautiful to behold when on the tree and 
 seen as one with it, than the same growth detached and seen 
 successively, after their importation into another country and 
 diflerent clime ; so is it with the manifold objects of reflection, 
 when they are considered principally in reference to the re- 
 flective power, and as part and parcel of the same. No ob- 
 ject, of whatever value our passions may represent it, but be- 
 comes foreign to us, as soon as it is altogether unconnected 
 with our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life.. To be ours^ it 
 must be referred to the mind either as motive, or conseq^uence, 
 or symptom. / 
 
 APHORISM VI. LErcHTON.j 
 
 He who teaches men the principles and precepts of spiritual 
 wisdom, before their minds are called off from foreign objects, 
 and turned inwajjd upon themselves, might as well write his 
 instructions, as the sybil wrote her prophecies, on the loose 
 leaves of trees, and commit them to the mercy of Ihe incon~> 
 stant winds. 
 
 ^' 
 
 I 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. O 
 
 APHORISM VII. EDITOR. 
 
 In order to learn, we must attend : in order to profit by what 
 we have learnt, we must think — i. e. reflect. He only thinks 
 who reflects, 
 
 APHORISM VIII. L. AND ED. 
 
 It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordinary 
 skill and address, to fix the attention of men (especially of 
 young men[l] ) on the world within them, to induce them to 
 study the processes and superintend the works which they 
 are themselves carrying on in their own minds : in short, to 
 awaken in them both the faculty of thought [2] and the in- 
 clination to exercise it. For alas ! the largest part of mankind 
 are nowhere greater strangers than at home. 
 
 ' APHORISM IX. EDITOR. 
 
 Life is the one universal soul, which by virtue of the en- 
 livening Breath, and the informing Word, all organized bod- 
 ies have in common, each after its kind[S]. This, therefore, 
 all animals possess, and man as an animal. But, in addition 
 to this, God transfused into man a higher gift, and specially 
 imbreathed : — even a living (that is, self-subsisting) soul, a 
 soul having its life in itself. " And man became a living soul." 
 He did not merely possess it, he became it. It was his proper 
 heing^ his truest self the man in the man. None then, not 
 one of human kind, so poor and destitute, but there is provi- 
 ded for him, even in his present state, a house not built tvith 
 hands. Aye, and spite of the philosophy ( falsely so called ) 
 which mistakes the causes, the conditions, and the occasions 
 of our becoming conscious of certain truths and realities for 
 the truths and realities themselves — a house gloriously fur- 
 nished. Nothing is wanted but the eye, wiiich is the light of 
 this house, the light which is the eye of this soul. This see- 
 ing light, this enlightening eye, is Reflection. It is more, in- 
 deed, than is ordinarily meant by that word ; but is what a 
 Christian ought to mean by it, and to know too, whence it 
 first came, and still continues to come — of what light even 
 this light is but a reflection. This, too, is thought 3 and all 
 
4 AIDS TO REFLECTION- 
 
 thought is but unthinking that does notfldw out of this, or tend 
 towards it^ 
 
 APHORISM X. EDITOR. 
 
 Self-superintendence I that any thing should overlook itself! 
 Is not this a paradox, and hard to understand ? It is, indeed, 
 difficult, and to the imbruted sensualist a direct contradiction : 
 and yet most truly does the poet exclaim, 
 
 •< UnleBS aboi)e himself he can 
 
 Erect bifjiselfj hoW hiekfi h thing is raan ! 
 
 AMOHISM XL KuiToi*, 
 
 An hour oi solitude passed in sincere and earnest prayer, 
 ^r the conflict with, and conquest over, a single passion or 
 ** subtle bosom sin," will teach us more of thought, will more 
 feffectually awaken the faculty^ and form the habit^ of reflec- 
 tion, than a year's study in the schools without them* 
 
 APHORISM XIK EDITOR; 
 
 In a world, whose opinions are drawn from outside shows^ 
 many things may be paradoxical^ (that is, contrary to the 
 fcOmmOn notion ) and nevertheless true : nay, because they are 
 true. How should it he Otherwise, as long as the imagination 
 of the Worldling is wholly occupied by surfaces, while the 
 Chi-istian^s thoughts are fixed on the substance, that which is 
 and abides^ and whichj becausiB it is the substance [4], the 
 olitward senses cannot recognize. TertuUian had good reason 
 fof his assertion, that the simplest Christian ( if indeed a Chris- 
 tian ) knows more than the most accomplished irreligious phi- 
 losopher. 
 
 Comment* 
 
 Let it not, however, be forgotten, that the powers of the 
 Understanding and the intellectual graces are precious gifts of 
 Dod ', and that every Christian, according to the opportunities 
 vouchsafed to him, is bound to cultivate the one and to ac- 
 tjuire the other. Indeed, he is scarcely d Christian who wil- 
 fully neglects so to do. What says the apostle f Add to your 
 faith knoivledge^ ;^nd to knowledge manly rners:ih {n^i^^Yiv) fot' 
 
 f 
 
INTRODUCTORYT APHORISMS. 9 
 
 this is the proper rendering, and not virtue^ at least in the 
 present and ordinary acceptation oi the word[5]. 
 
 APHORISM XIII. EDiTOK. 
 
 Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word 
 (by whoin light^ as well as immortality, was brought into the 
 world,) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified 
 the heart : which did not multiply the aims and objects of the 
 understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the de- 
 sires and passions[6]. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 if acquiesence without insight ; if warmth without light ; if 
 an immunity from doubt, given and guaranteed by a resolute 
 ignorance ; if the habit of taking for granted the words of a 
 catechism, remembered or forgotten ; if a mere sensation of 
 positiveness substituted — I will not say for the sense of cer- 
 tainty, but — for that calm assurance, the very means and 
 conditions of which it supersedes ; if a belief that seeks the 
 darkness, and yet strikes no root, immoveable as the limpet 
 from the rock, and, lik6 the limpet) fixed there by mere force 
 of adhesion ; — if these suffice to make men Christians, in 
 what sense could the apostle affirm that believers receive, not 
 indeed worldly wisdom, that comes to nought, but the wisdom 
 of God, that we might know and comprehend the things that 
 are freely given to us of God ? On what grounds could he 
 denounce the sincerest fervor of spirit as defective^ where it 
 does not likewise bring forth fruits in the understanding ? 
 
 APHORISM XIV. EDITOR. 
 
 In our present state, it is little less tban imposssible that the 
 affections should be kept constant to an object which gives no 
 employment to the understanding, and yet cannot be made 
 manifest to the senses. The exercise of the reasoning and 
 reflecting powers, increasing insight, and enlarging views, are 
 requisite to keep alive the substantial faith in the heart. 
 
 APHORISM XV. EDITOR. 
 
 in the stat6 of perfection^ perhaps, all other facUltirs mav 
 
6 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 be swallowed up in love, or superseded by immediate vision ; 
 but it is on the wings of the cherubim, i. e. ( according to the 
 interpretation of the ancient Hebrew doctors,) the intellectual 
 powers and energies, that we must first be borne up to the 
 "pure empyrean." It must be seraphs, and not the hearts of 
 imperfect mortals, that can burn unfuelled and self-fed. Give 
 me understanding J (is the prayer of the Royal Psalmist) and 
 I shall observe thy law with my ivhole heart. Thy law is ex- 
 ceeding broad — that is, comprehensive, pregnant, containing 
 far more than the apparent import of the words on a first pe- 
 rusal. It is my meditation all the day. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 It is worthy of especial observation, that the Scriptures are 
 distinguished from all other writings pretending to inspiration, 
 by the strong and frequent recommendations of knowledge, 
 and a spirit of inquiry. Without reflection, it is evident that 
 neither the one can be acquired nor the other exercised. 
 
 APHORISM XVI. EDITOR. 
 
 The word rational has been strangely abused of late times. 
 This must not, however, disincline us to the weighty conside- 
 ration, that thoughtfulness, and a desire to rest all our con- 
 victions on grounds of right reason, are inseparable from the 
 character of a Christian. 
 
 APHORISM XVII. EDITOR. 
 
 A reflecting mind is not a flower that grows wild, or comes 
 up of its own accord. The difficulty is indeed greater than 
 many, who mistake quick recollection for thought, are dispo- 
 sed to admit ; but how much less than it would be, had we 
 not been born and bred in a Christian and Protestant land, the 
 fewest of us are sufficiently aware. Truly may we, and 
 thankfully ought we to exclaim with the Psalmist : The entrance 
 of thy words giveth light ; it giveth understanding even to the 
 
 simple. 
 
 APHORISM XVIII. EDITOR. 
 
 Examine the journals of zealous missionaries, I will not 
 say among the Hottentots or Esquimaux, but in the high- 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 7 
 
 ly civilized, though fearfully uncultivated, inhabitants of an- 
 cient India. How often, and how feelingly, do they de- 
 scribe the difficulty of rendering the simplest chain of thought 
 intelligible to the ordinary natives, the rapid exhaustion of 
 their whole power of attention, and with what distressful ef- 
 fort it is exerted while it lasts ! Yet it is among these that 
 the hideous practices of self-torture chiefly prevail. if fol- 
 ly were no easier than wisdom, it being often so very much 
 more grievous, how certainly might these unhappy slaves of 
 superstition be converted to Christianity ! But, alas ! to 
 swing by hooks passed through the back, or to walk in shoes 
 with nails of iron pointed upwards through the soles — all this 
 is so much less difficult, demands so much less exertion of the 
 will than to reflect, and by reflection to gain knowledge and 
 tranquility ! 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 It is not true, that ignorant persons have no notion of the 
 advantages of truth and knowledge. They confess, they 
 see and bear witness to these advantages in the conduct, the 
 immunities, and the superior powers of the possessors. Were 
 they attainable by pilgrimages the most toilsome, or penances 
 the most painful, we should assuredly have as many pilgrims 
 and self-tormentors in the service of true religion, as now ex- 
 ist under the tyranny of papal or Brahman superstition. 
 
 ^ APHORISM XIX. EDITOR. 
 
 In countries enlightened by the gospel, however, the most 
 formidable and (it is to be feared) the most frequent impedi- 
 ment to men's turning the mind inward upon themselves 
 is that they arc afraid of what they shall find there. There 
 is an aching hollowness in the bosom, a dark cold speck at the 
 heart, an obscure and boding sense of a somewhat, that must 
 be kept out of sight of the conscience ; some secret lodger, 
 whom they can neither resolve to eject or retain [7]. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Few are so obdurate, few have sufficient strength of char- 
 acter, to be able to draw forth an evil tendency or immoral 
 
ft * AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 practice into distinct consciousness, without bringing it in the 
 same moment before an awaking conscience. But for this 
 very reason it becomes -a duty of conscience to form the min^ 
 to a habit of distinct consciousness. An unreflecting Chris- 
 tian walks in twilight among snares and pitfalls ! He entreats 
 the heavenly Father not to lead him into temptation, and yet 
 places himself on the very edge of it, because he will not kin- 
 dle the torch which his Father had given into his hands, as a 
 means of prevention, and lest he should pray too late, 
 
 APHORISM XX, EDITOR, 
 
 Among the various undertakings of nien, can there be men- 
 tioned one more important, can there be conceived one more 
 sublime, than an intention to form the human mind anew after 
 the DIVINE IMAGE ? The very intention, if it be sincere, 
 is a ray of its dawning. 
 
 The requisites for the execution of this high intent may be 
 comprised under three heads ; the prudential, the pioa'al, and 
 the spiritual : 
 
 APHORISM XXI. EDITOR, 
 
 First, PRUDENCE — religious prudence, I mean ; a prudence 
 in the service of Religion. What this is, will be bestexplaip- 
 ed by its effects and operations. It consists then in the prer 
 vention or abatement of hinderances and distractions ; and 
 consequently in avoiding, or removing, all such circumstances 
 as, by diverting the attention of the workman, retard the pro- 
 gress and hazard the safety of the work. It is likewise ( we 
 deny not) a part of this unworldly prudence, to place our- 
 selves as much and as often as it is in our power so to do, in 
 circumstances directly favourable to our great design ; and to 
 avail ourselves of all the positive hel^s and furtherances which 
 these circumstances afford. But neither dare we, as Chris- 
 tians, forget whose and under what dominion the things are, 
 quae nos circumstant , i. e.. that sta7icl ctround us, We are to 
 remember, that it is the World that constitutes our outward 
 circumstances ; that in the form of the World, which is ever- 
 ijiore at variance vdth the Divine Form (or idea) they ar^ 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 9 
 
 cast and moulded ; and that of the means and measures which 
 prudence requires in the forming anew of the Divine Image 
 in the soul, the far greater numher suppose the World at en- 
 mity with our design. We are to avoid its snares, to repel its 
 attacks, to suspect its aids and succours, and even when com- 
 pelled to receive them as allies within our trenches, yet to 
 commit the outworks alone to their charge, and to keep them 
 at a jealons distance from the citadel. The powers of the 
 world are often christened, but seldom christianized. They 
 are but proselytes of the outer gate : or, like the Saxons of 
 old, enter the land as auxiliaries, and remain in it as conquer- 
 ors and lords. 
 
 APHORISM XXII. EDITOR, 
 
 The rules of prudence in general, like the laws of the stone 
 tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou shalt not is 
 their characteristic formula : and it is an especial part of Chris- 
 tian prudence that it should be so. Nor woidd it be diflicult 
 to bring under this head, all the social obligations that arise 
 out of the lelations of the present life, which the sensual un- 
 derstanding ( TO (ppov'/ifxa T7]s 2a|xog, Romans viii. 6.) is of itself 
 able to discover, and the performance of which, under favour- 
 able worldly circumstances, the merest worldly self-interest, 
 without love or faith, is sufficient to enforce ; but which 
 Christian prudence enlivens by a higher principle, and renders 
 symbolic and sacramental. (Ephesiansv. 32.) 
 
 COMMENT, 
 
 This then comprising the prudentials of religion, comes 
 first under consideration. Next follow the moral Requisites. 
 If in the j^rs^ we have the shrine and frame-work for that Di- 
 vine Imao;e, into which the Wordlv-human is to be transform- 
 ed ; in the second, we are to bring out the Portrait itself — 
 the distinct features of its countenance, as a sojourner among 
 men ; its benign aspect turned towards its fellow-pilgrims, the 
 extended arm, and the hand that blesseth and healeth. 
 
 APHORISM XXIIL EDITOR. 
 
 The outward service (9py]o'x£ja[8] ) of ancient religion, the 
 
10 AIDS TO REFluECTION. 
 
 rites, ceremonies and ceremonial vestments of the old law, 
 had morality for their substance. They were the letter , of 
 which morality was the spirit ; the enigma, of which morality 
 was the meaning. But morality itself is the service and cere- 
 monial (cultus exterior, &^(ixsiu)oi the Christian religion. The 
 scheme of grace and truth that became[9) through Jesus 
 Christ, the faith that looks[\0] down into the perfect law of 
 liberty, has " light for its garment ;" its very " robe is right- 
 eousness." 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Herein the Apostle places the pre-eminency, the peculiar 
 and distinguishing excellence, of the Christian religion. The 
 ritual is of the same kind, (ojulo^o'iov) though not of the same 
 order, with the religion itself — not arbitrary or conventional, 
 as types and hieroglyphics are in relation to the things express- 
 ed by them; but inseparable, consubstantiated (as it were,) 
 and partaking therefore of the same life, permanence, and in- 
 trinsic worth with its spirit and principle. 
 
 APHORISM XXIV. EDITOR. 
 
 Morality is the body, of which the faith in Christ is the 
 soul — so far indeed its earthly body, as it is adapted to its state 
 of warfare on earth, and the appointed form and instrument of 
 its communion with the present world ; yet not " terrestrial," 
 nor of the world, but a celestial body, and capable of being 
 transfigured from glory to glory, in accordance with the vary- 
 ing circumstances and outward relations of its moving and in- 
 forming spirit. 
 
 APHORISM XXV. EDITOR, 
 
 Woe to the man, who will believe neither power, freedom, 
 nor morality ; because he no where finds either entire, or un- 
 mixed with sin, thraldom and infirmity. In the natural and 
 intellectual lealms, we distinguish what we cannot separate ; 
 and in the moral world, we must distinguish in order to sepa- 
 rate. Yea, in the clear distinction of good from evil the pro- 
 cess of separation commences. 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 11 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 It was customary with religious men in former times, to 
 make a rule of taking every morning some text or aphorism[l 1 ] 
 for their occasional meditation during the day, and thus to fill 
 up the intervals of their attention to husiness. I do not point 
 it out for imitation, as knowing too well, how apt these self- 
 imposed rules are to degenerate into superstition or hollow- 
 ness : or I would have recommended the following as the first 
 exercise. 
 
 APHORISM XXVI. EDITOR. 
 
 It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to 
 distinguisli ; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order 
 to divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of 
 superstition and[12] idolatry ; in the latter, of schism, heresy 
 [13], and a seditious and sectarian spirit [14]. 
 
 APHORISM XXVII. EDITOR. 
 
 Exclusive of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest 
 portion of our knowledge consists of ajihorisms : and the 
 greatest and best of men is but an aphorism. 
 
 APHORISM XXVIII. EDITOR. 
 
 On the prudential influence which the fear or foresight of 
 the consequences of his actions, in respect of his own loss or 
 gain, may exert on a newly converted Believer. 
 
 Precautionary Remark. — We meddle not with the dis- 
 pute respecting conversion^ whether, and in what sense, neces- 
 sary in all Christians. It is sufficient for our purpose, that a 
 very large number of men, even in Christian countries need, to 
 be converted, and that not a few, we trust, have been. The 
 t^net becomes fanatical and dangerous, only when rare and ex- 
 traordinary exceptions are made to be the general rule ; — w hen 
 what was vouchsafed to the apostle of the Gentiles by espe- 
 cial grace, and for an especial purpose, viz. a conversion [15] 
 begun and completed in the same moment, is demanded or ex- 
 pected of all men, as a necessary sign and pledge of their 
 election. Late observations have shown, that under many 
 
12 Ains TO REFLECTION. 
 
 circumstances the magnetic needle, even after the disturbing 
 influence has been removed, will keep wavering, and require 
 many days before it points aright, and remains steady to the 
 pole. So is it ordinarily with the soul, after it has begun to 
 free itself from the disturbing forces of the flesh and the world 
 and to convert [16] itself towards God. 
 
 APHORISM XXIX. EDITOR. 
 
 Awakened by the cock-crow, ( a sermon, a calamity, a sick 
 bed, or a providential escape ) the Christian pilgrim sets out in 
 the morning twilight, while yet the truth ( the vo/xog <rsX£»og b Trig 
 sXsv&s^ias) is below the horizon. Certain necessary conse- 
 quences of his past life and his present undertaking will be 
 seen by the refraction of its light : more will be apprehended 
 and conjectured. The phantasms, that had predominated du- 
 ring the hours of darkness, are still busy. No longer present 
 as Forms, they will yet exist as moulding and formative Mo- 
 tions in the Pilgrim's soul. The Dream of the past night will 
 transfer its shapes to the objects in the distance, while the ob- 
 jects give outwardness and reality to the shapings of the 
 Dream. The fears inspired by long habits of selfishness and 
 self-seeking cunning, though now purifying into that fear which 
 is the beginning of wisdom, and ordained to be our guide and 
 safeguard, till the sun of love, the perfect law of liberty, is 
 fully arisen — these fears will set the fancy at work, and haply, 
 for a time transform the mists of dim and imperfect knowledge 
 into determinate superstitions. But in either case, whether 
 seen clearly or dimly, whether beheld or only imagined, the 
 consequences contemplated in their bearings on the individual's 
 inherent[17] desire of happiness and dread of pain become 
 motives : and ( unless all distinction in the words be done away 
 with, and either prudence or virtue be reduced to a superflu- 
 ous synonyme, a redundancy in all the languages of the civili- 
 zed world,) these motives, and the acts and forbearances di- 
 rectly proceeding from them, fall under the head of prudence, 
 as belonging to one or other of its three very distinct species. 
 It may be a prudence, that stands in opposition to a higher mo- 
 ral life, and tends to preclude it, and to prevent the soul from 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. IS 
 
 ever arriving at the hatred of sin for its own exceeding sinful- 
 ness {Rom. vii. 13J : and this is an evil prudence. Or it 
 may be a neutral prudence, not incompatible with spiritual 
 growth : and to this we may, with especial propriety, apply the 
 words of our lord, " What is not against us is for us." It is 
 therefore an innocent, and (being such) a proper and com- 
 mendable PRUDENCE. 
 
 Or it may lead and be subservient to a higher principle than 
 itself. The mind and conscience of the individual may be re- 
 conciled to it, in the foreknowledge of the higher principle, 
 and w^ith a yearning towards it that implies a foretaste of fu- 
 ture freedom. The enfeebled convalescent is reconciled to his 
 crutches, and thankfully makes use of them, not only because 
 they are necessary for his immediate support, but likew^ise, be- 
 cause they are the means and conditions of exercise ; and by 
 exercise of establishing, gradatim paulatim^ that strength, 
 flexibility, and almost spontaneous obedience of the muscles, 
 which the idea and cheering presentiment of health hold out 
 to him. He finds their value in their present necessity, and 
 their worth as they are the instruments of finally superseding 
 it. This is a faithful, a wise prudence, having indeed, its 
 birth-place in the world, and the wisdom of this world for its 
 Father; but naturalized in a better land, and having the Wis- 
 dom from above for its Sponsor and Spiritual Parent. To steal 
 a dropt feather from the spicy nest of the Phoenix, (the fond 
 humour, I mean, of the mystic divines and allegorizers of Ho- 
 ly Writ ) it is the son of Terah from Ur of the Chaldees, ^^ lio 
 gives a tithe of all to the King of Righteousness, without fa- 
 ther, without mother, without descent, (Nof^og au-Tovojuioj, ) and 
 receives a blessing on the remainder. 
 
 Lastly, there is a prudence that co-exists with morality, as 
 morality co-exists with the spiritual life : a prudence that is 
 the organ of both, as the understanding is to the reason and 
 the will, or as the lungs are to the heart and brain. This is a 
 HOLY prudence, the steward faithful and discreet ( oixovojxog '^■lios 
 xai 9povifxog, Luke xii. 42), the 'eldest servant' in the family of 
 faith, born in the house, and ' made the ruler over his lord's 
 household.' 
 
14 AIDS TO REFLBOTION. 
 
 Let not then, I entreat you, my purpose be misunderstood ; 
 as if, in distinguishing virtue from prudence, I wished to di- 
 vide the one from the other. True morality is hostile to that 
 prudence only, which is preclusive of true morality. The 
 teacher who subordinates prudence to virtue, cannot be sup- 
 posed to dispense with it ; and he who teaches the proper con- 
 nexion of the one with the other, does not depreciate the low- 
 er in any sense ; while by making it a link of the same chain 
 with the higher, and receiving the same influence, he raises it. 
 
 In Greek, Logos ( Anglice, Word), means likewise the Un- 
 derstanding. If the same idiom existed in our language, only 
 with the substitution of the practical for the intellectual, I 
 would say: the word[18] ('i. e. Practical Rectitude,) has 
 Virtue ( or Morality ) for its Consonants and Prudence for the 
 Vowels. Though the former can scarcely be pronounced with- 
 out the latter, yet we ought to acquaint ourselves with their 
 true nature and force. But this we can do only by a distinct 
 knowledge of the latter, that is, what they are of themselves, 
 and sounded separately from the consonants. In like manner, 
 to understand aright what morality is, we must first learn what 
 prudence is, and what acts and obligations are prudential ; 
 and having removed these to a class of their own, we shall 
 find it comparatively easy to determine what acts and duties 
 belong to morality. 
 
 APHORISM XXX. EDITOR. 
 
 What the duties of morality are, the apostle instructs the 
 believer in full, reducing them under two heads : negative, to 
 keep himself pure from the world ; and positive, beneficence 
 with sympathy and loving-kindness, i. e. love of his fellow-men 
 (his kind) as himself. 
 
 APHORISM XXXI. EDITOR. 
 
 Last and highest, come the spiritual^ comprising all the 
 
 truths, acts and duties that have an especial reference to the 
 
 Timeless, the Permanent, the Eternal ; to the sincere love of 
 
 the True, as truth, of the Good, as good : and of God as both 
 
 in one. It comprehends the whole ascent from uprightness 
 
INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. 15 
 
 ( morality, virtue, inward rectitude J to godlikcncss^ \>ith all 
 the acts, exercises, and disciplines of mind, will and affection, 
 that are requisite or conducive to the great design of our re- 
 demption from the form of the evil one, and of our second 
 creation or birth in the divine Image [19]. 
 
 APHORISM XXXII. EDITOR. 
 
 It may be an additional aid to reflection, to distinguish the 
 three kinds severally, according to the faculty to which each 
 corresponds, the faculty or part of our human nature which 
 is more particularly its organ. Thus : the prudential corres- 
 ponds to the sense and the understanding ; the moral to the 
 heart and the conscience ; the spiritual to the will and the 
 reason, i. e. to the finite will reduced to harmony with, and in 
 subordination to, the reason, as a ray from that true light 
 which is both reason and will, universal reason, and will abso- 
 lute. 
 
 I have now, I trust, effected the two purposes of this intro- 
 ductory chapter, viz : 
 
 1. That of explaining the true nature and evincing the ne- 
 cessity of reflection in the constitution of a Christian charac- 
 ter. 
 
 2. That of assigning my reasons why, having proposed to 
 select from Archbishop Leighton's Works the most striking 
 
 ^irudential, moral, and spiritual maxims, I have separated the 
 prudential from the two following, and interpolated the ex- 
 tracts with mementos of my own. 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM I. L. AND ED. 
 
 You will not be offended, nor think I intend to insult you, 
 if once and again, with great earnestness and sincerity, I wish 
 you and myself a sound and serious temper of mind ; for, if 
 we may represent things as they really are, very few men are 
 possessed of so valuable a blessing. The far greater part of 
 them are intoxicated either with the pleasures or the caies of 
 this world ; they stagger about with a tottering and unstable 
 pace, and, as Solomon expresses it. The labour of the foolish 
 wearieth every one of them ; because he knoiveth not how to 
 go to the city : Eccl. x. 15 : — the heavenly city, and the vision 
 of peace, which very few have a just notion of, or are at 
 pains to seek after. Nay, they know not what it is they are 
 seeking. They flutter from one object to another, and live at 
 hazard. They have no certain harbour in view, nor direct 
 their course by any fixed star. But to him that knoweth not 
 the port to which he is bound, no wind can be favourable ; 
 neither can he who has not yet determined at what mark he 
 is to shoot, direct his arrow aright. 
 
 I assert, then, that there is a proper object to aim at ; and 
 if this object be meant by the term happiness, (though I think 
 that not the most appropriate term for a state, the perfection 
 of which consists in the exclusion of all hap {i. e. chance,) 
 and should greatly prefer the Socratic Eupraxy^ as expressing 
 the union of well-being and well, ) I assert that there is such 
 a thing as human happiness. This is indeed imphed in the 
 belief of an infmitely wise Author of our being. 
 
 APHORISM II. LEIGHTON. 
 
 The whole human race must have been created in misery, 
 and exposed to unavoidable torments, from which thev could 
 
18 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 never have been relieved, had they been formed not only ca- 
 pable of a good, quite unattainable and altogether without 
 their reach, but also with strong and restless desires towards 
 that impossible good. Now, as this is by no means to be ad- 
 mitted, there must necessarily be some full, permanent, and, 
 satisfying good, that may be attained by man, and in the pos- 
 session of which he must be truly happy. 
 
 APHORISM III. LEIGHTON. 
 
 What this is, the Bible alone shows clearly and certainly, 
 and points out the way that leads to the attainment of it. This 
 is that which prevailed with St. Augustine to study the Scrip- 
 tures, and engaged his affection to them. 'In Cicero, and 
 ' Plato, and other such writers,' says he, ' I meet with many 
 ' things acutely said, and things that excite a certain warmth 
 ' of emotion, but in none of them do I find these words. Come 
 * unto me, all ye that labour^ and are heavy laden^ and I will 
 ' give you rest [ 20 ] . 
 
 APHORISM IV. LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is the wisdom of mankind to know God, and their indis- 
 pensable duty to worship Him. Without this, men of the 
 brightest parts and greatest learning seem to be born with ex- 
 cellent talents only to make themselves miserable ; and accor- 
 ding to the expression of the wisest of kings, He that increa- 
 seth knowledge increaseth sorrow^ Eccl. i. 18. We must, 
 therefore, first of all, consider this as a sure and settled point, 
 that religion is the sole foundation of human peace and felici- 
 ty. This, even the profane scoffers at religion are, in some 
 sort, obliged to own, though much against their will, even 
 while they are pointing their wit against it ; for nothing is 
 more commonly to be heard from them, than that the whole 
 doctrine of religion was invented by some wise men, to en- 
 courage the practice of justice and virtue through the world. 
 Surely then, religion, whatever else may be said of it, must 
 be a matter of the highest value, since it is found necessary 
 to secure advantages of so very great importance. But, in 
 the meantime, how unhappy is the case of integrity and vir- 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 19 
 
 tue, if what they want to support them is merely fictitious, 
 and they cannot keep their ground but by means of a mon- 
 strous forgery ! But far be it from us to entertain such an ab- 
 surdity ! For the first rule of righteousness cannot be other- 
 wise than right, nor is there any thing more nearly allied or 
 more friendly to virtue, than truth. 
 
 APHORISM V. LEIGHTON. 
 
 And it is, indeed, very plain, that if it were possible en- 
 tirely to dissolve all the bonds and ties of religion, yet, that 
 it should be so, w^ould certainly be the interest of none but 
 the worst and most abandoned part of mankind. All the good 
 and wise, if the matter was freely left to their choice, w^ould 
 rather have the world governed by the Supreme and Most 
 Perfect Being, mankind subjected to His just and righteous 
 laws, and all the affairs of men superintended by His watch- 
 ful providence, than that it should be otherwise. Nor do 
 they believe the doctrines of religion with aversion or any 
 sort of reluctancy, but embrace them with pleasure, and are 
 excessively glad to find them true. So that, if it was possi- 
 ble, to abolish them entirely, and any person, out of mere 
 good- will to them, should attempt to do it, they would look 
 upon the favour as highly prejudicial to their interest, and 
 think his good- will more hurtful than the keenest hatred. 
 Nor would any one, in his wits, choose to live in the w^orld, at 
 large, and without any sort of government, more than he 
 would think it eligible to be put on board a ship without a 
 helm or pilot, and, in this condition, to be tossed amidst rocks 
 and quicksands. On the other hand, can any thing give grea- 
 ter consolation, or more substantial joy [21], than to be firmly 
 persuaded, not only that there is an infinitely good and wise 
 Being, but also that this Being preserves and continually gov- 
 erns the universe w^hich Himself has framed, and holds the 
 reins of all things in His powerful hand ; that He is our fa- 
 ther, that we and all our interests are His constant concern ; 
 and that, after we have sojourned a short while here below, 
 we shall be again taken into His immediate presen( e? Or 
 
20 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 can this wretched life be attended with any sort of satisfaction, 
 if it is divested of this divine faith, and bereaved of such a 
 blessed hope ? 
 
 APHORISM VI. EDITOR. 
 
 Felicity, in its proper sense, is but another word for fortu- 
 nateness, or happiness ; and I can see no advantage in the im- 
 proper use of words, when proper terms are to be found, but, 
 on the contrary, much mischief. For, by familiarizing the 
 mind to equivocal expressions, that is, such as may be taken 
 in two or more different meanings, we introduce confusion of 
 thought, and furnish the sophist with his best and handiest 
 tools. For the juggle of sophistry consists, for the greater 
 part, in using a word in one sense in the premise, and in anoth- 
 er sense in the conclusion. We should accustom ourselves to 
 think and reason^ in precise and steadfast terms ; even when 
 custom, or the deficiency, or the corruption of the language 
 will not permit the same strictness in speaking. The mathe- 
 matician finds this so necessary to the truths which he is seek- 
 ing, that his science begins with, and is founded on, the defini- 
 tion of his terms. The botanist, the chemist, the anatomist, 
 &c., feel and submit to this necessity at ail costs, even at the 
 risk of exposing their several pursuits to the ridicule of the 
 many, by technical terms, hard to be remembered, and alike 
 quarrelsome to the ear and the tongue. In the business of 
 moral and religious reflection, in the acquisition of clear and 
 distinct conceptions of our duties, and of the relations in which 
 we stand to God, our neighbour and ourselves, no such difficul- 
 ties occur. At the utmost we have only to rescue words, al- 
 ready existing and familiar, from the false or vague meanings 
 imposed on them by carelessness, or by the clipping and de- 
 basing misusage of the market. And surely happiness, duty, 
 faith, truth, and final blessedness, are matters of deeper and 
 dearer interest for all men, than circles to the geometrician, or 
 the characters of plants to the botanist, or the affinities and 
 combining principle of the elements of bodies to the chemist, 
 or even than the mechanism (fearful and wonderful though it 
 be ! ) of the perishable Tabernacle of the Soul can be to the 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 21 
 
 anatomist. Among the aids to reflection, place the following 
 maxim prominent : let distinctness in expression advance side 
 by side with distinction in thought. For one useless subtlety 
 in our elder divines and moralists, I will produce ten sophisms 
 of eqivocation in the writings of our modern preceptors : and 
 for one error resulting from excess in distinguishing the indif- 
 ferent, I would show ten mischievous delusions from the habit 
 of confounding the diverse. 
 
 APHORISM VII. EDITOR. 
 
 Whether you are reflecting for yourself, or reasoning with 
 another, make it a rule to ask yourself the precise meaning of 
 the word, on which the point in question appears to turn ; 
 and if it may be (i. e. by writers of authority has been) used in 
 several senses, then ask which of these the word is at present 
 intended to convey. By this mean, and scarcely without ii^ 
 you will at length acquire a facility in detecting the quid pro 
 quo. And believe me, in so doing you will enable yourself to 
 disarm and expose four-fifths of the main arguments of our 
 most renowned irreligious philosophers, ancient and modern. 
 For the quid pro quo is at once the rock and quarry, on and 
 w ith w^hich the strong-holds of disbelief, materialism, and ( more 
 pernicious still) epicurean morality, are l)uilt. 
 
 APHORISM VIII. LEIGHTON. 
 
 If we seriously consider what religion is, we shall find the 
 saying of the wise king Solomon to be unexceptionably true : 
 Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are 
 peace. 
 
 Doth religion require any thing of us more than that we 
 live soberly., righteously., and godly in this jnesent ivorld? 
 Now wdiat, I pray, can be more pleasant or peaceable than 
 these ? Temperance is always at leisure, luxury always in a 
 hurry : the latter weakens the body and pollutes the soul, the 
 former is the sanctity, purity, and sound state of both. It is 
 one of Epicurus' fixed maxims, 'That life can never be plea- 
 sant without virtue.' Vices bcize upon men with the violence 
 and rage of furies ; but the Christ iun virtues replcni.'^h the 
 
22 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 breast which they inhabit, with a heavenly peace and abund- 
 ant joy, and thereby render it like that of an angel. The 
 slaves of pleasure and carnal affections, have within them, 
 even now, an earnest of future torments ; so that, in this pre^ 
 sent life, we may truly apply to them that expression in the 
 Revelations, They that worship the beast have no rest day nor 
 night. 'There is perpetual peace with the humble,' says the 
 most devout A Kempis ; 'but the proud and the covetous are 
 'never at rest.' 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 In the works of moralists, both Christian and Pagan, it is 
 often asserted (indeed there are few common-places of more 
 frequent recurrence ) that the happiness even of this life con- 
 sists solely, or principally, in virtue ; that virtue is the only 
 happiness of this life ; that virtue is the truest pleasure^ &c. 
 
 I doubt not that the meaning, which the writers intended to 
 convey by these and the like expressions, was true and wise. 
 But I deem it safer to say, nor do I doubt that in diverting 
 men from sensual and dishonest courses it will often be expe- 
 dient to say, that in all the outward relations of this life, in 
 all our outward conduct and actions, both in what we should 
 do, and in what we should abstain from, the dictates of virtue 
 are the very same with those of self-interest ; that though the 
 incitements of virtue do not proceed from the same point, 
 yet they tend to the same point with the impulses of a reflec- 
 ting and consistent selfishness ; that the outward object of 
 virtue being the greatest producible sum of happiness of all 
 men, it must needs include the object of an intelligent self- 
 love, which is the greatest possible happiness of one individu- 
 al ; for what is true of all, must be true of each. Hence, you 
 cannot become better, (i. e. more virtuous), but you will be- 
 come happier : and you cannot become worse, (i. e. more vi- 
 cious), without an increase of misery (or at the best a propor- 
 tional loss of enjoyment) as the consequence. If the thing 
 were not inconsistent with our well-being, and known to be so, 
 it would not have been classed as a vice. Thus what in an 
 enfeebled and disorded mind is called prudence, is the voice 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 23 
 
 of nature in a healthful state ; as is proved by the known fact, 
 that the prudential duties, {i. e. those actions which are com- 
 manded by virtue because they are prescribed by prudence), 
 the animals fulfil by natural instinct. 
 
 The pleasure that accompanies or depends on a healthy and 
 vigorous body will be the consequence and reward of a tem- 
 perate life and habits of active industry, whether this pleasure 
 were or were not the chief or only determining motive there- 
 to. Virtue may, possibly, add to the pleasure a good of ano- 
 ther kind, a higher good, perhaps, than the worldly mind is ca- 
 pable of understanding, a spiritual complacency, of which in 
 your present sensualized state you can form no idea. It may 
 ddd^ I say, but it cannot detract from it. Thus the reflected 
 rays of the sun that give light, distinction, and endless multi- 
 formity to the mind, give at the same time the pleasurable 
 sensation of icarmth to the body. If then the time has not 
 yet come for any thing higher, act on the maxim of seeking 
 the most pleasure with the least pain : and, if only you do 
 not seek where you yourself knoio it will not be found, this 
 very pleasure and this freedom from the disquietude of pain, 
 existing in conjunction with their immediate causes and ne- 
 cessary conditions, and with the other almost certain con- 
 sequences of of these causes, (for instance, the advantages of 
 good character, the respect and sympathy of your neighbours, 
 sense of increasing power and influence, &c.) may produce in 
 you a state of being directly and indirectly favourable to the 
 germination and up-spring of a nobler seed. They may pre- 
 pare and predispose you to the sense and acknowledgement of 
 a principle, differing not merely in degree but in kind from the 
 faculties and instincts of the higher and more intelligent spe- 
 cies of animals, (the ant, the beaver, the elephant), and which 
 principle is therefore your proper humanity. And on this ac- 
 count and with this view alone may certain modes of pleasure- 
 able or agreeable sensation, without confusion of terms, be hon- 
 oured with the title of refined, intellectual, ennobling pleasures. 
 For Pleasure ( and happiness in its proper sense is but the 
 continuity and sum-total of the pleasure which is allotted or 
 
24 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 happens to a man, and hence by the Greeks called eurux'a, i. e. 
 good-hap, or more religiously s\j6aiiiovia, i. e. favourable provi- 
 dence ) — Pleasure I say, consists in the harmony between the 
 specific excitability of a living creature, and the exciting cau- 
 ses correspondent thereto. Considered, therefore, exclusively 
 in and for itself, the only question is, quantum ? not, quale ? 
 Hoiv much on the ivhole 9 the contrary, i. e. the painful and 
 disagreeable, having been subtracted. The quality is a mat- 
 ter of taste : et de gicstihus non est disputandum. No man 
 can judge for another. 
 
 This, I repeat, appears to me a safer language than the sen- 
 tences quoted above (that virtue alone is happiness ; that hap- 
 piness consists in virtue, &c. ) sayings which I find it hard to 
 reconcile with other positions of still more frequent occurrence 
 in the same divines, or with the declaration of St. Paul : " If 
 in this life, only, we have hope, we are of all men most misera- 
 ble." Such language the soundest moralists were obliged to 
 employ, before grace and truth were brought into the world 
 by Jesus Christ. And such language may, I doubt not, even 
 now be profitably addressed both to individuals and to classes 
 of men ; though in what pi^oportion it should be dwelt on, and 
 to what extent it is likely to be efficacious, a leview of the 
 different epochs memorable for the turning of many from their 
 evil ways, and a review of the means by which this reforma- 
 tion of life has been principally effected, renders me scrupu- 
 lous in deciding. 
 
 At all events, I should rely far more confidently on the con- 
 verse, viz. that to be vicious is to be miserable. Few men 
 are so utterly reprobate, so imbruted by their vices, as not to 
 have some lucid, or at least quiet and sober intervals ; and in 
 such a moment, dum descBviunt ircB, few can stand up unshaken 
 against the appeal to their own experience — what have been 
 the wages of sin ? what has the devil done for you ? What 
 sort of master have you found him ? Then let us in befitting 
 detail J and by a series of questions that ask no loud, and are 
 secure against any false^ answer, urge home the proof of the 
 position, that to be vicious is to be wretched: adding the fear- 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 25 
 
 ful corollary, that if even in the body, wliich as long as life is 
 in it can never be wholly bereaved of pleasurable sensations, 
 vice is found to be misery, what must it not be in the world to 
 come ? There, where even the crime is no longer possible, 
 much less the gratifications that once attended it — where no- 
 thing of vice remains but its guilt and its misery — vice must 
 be misery itself, all and utter misery. — So best, if I err not, 
 may the motives of prudence be held forth, and the impulses 
 of self-love be awakened, in alliance with truth, and free from 
 the danger of confounding things (the Laws of Duty, I mean, 
 and the Maxims of Interest) which it deeply concerns us to 
 keep distinct, inasmuch as this distinction and the faith therein 
 are essential to our moral nature [23] , and this again the ground- 
 work and pre-condition of the spiritual state, in which the 
 Humanity strives after Godliness and, in the name and power, 
 and through the prevenient and assisting grace of the Media- 
 tor, will not strive in vain. 
 
 APHOJUSM IX. EDITOR. 
 
 The advantages of a life passed in conformity with the pre- 
 cepts of virtue and religion, and in how many and various re- 
 spects they recommend virtue and religion, even on grounds 
 of prudence, form a delightful subject of meditation, and a 
 source of refreshing thought to good and pious men. Nor is 
 it strange if^ transported w^ith the view, such persons should 
 sometimes discourse on the charm of forms and colours to men 
 whose eyes are not yet couched; or that they occasionally 
 seem to invert the relations of cause and effect, and forget that 
 there are acts and determinations of the will and aftections, 
 the consequences of which may be plainly foreseen, and yet 
 cannot be made our proper and primary motwes for such acts 
 and determinations, without destroying or entirely altering the 
 distinct nature and character of the latter. Sophron is well 
 informed that wealth and extensive patronage will be the con- 
 sequence of his obtaining the love and esteem of Constantia. 
 But if the foreknowledge of this consequence were, and were 
 found out to be, Sophron's main and determining motive for 
 seeking this love and esteem ; and if Constantia were a woman 
 
 4 
 
26 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 that merited, or was capable of feeling, either one or the other, 
 would not Sophron find ( and deservedly too ) aversion and con- 
 tempt in their stead ? Wherein, if not in this, differs the 
 friendship of worldlings from true friendship ? Without kind 
 offices and useful services, wherever the power and opportu- 
 nity occur, love would be a hollow pretence. Yet what noble 
 mind would not be offended, if he were thought to value the 
 love for the sake of the services, and not rather the services 
 for the sake of the love ? 
 
 Dissertations on the profitableness of righteousness, that 
 "her ways are ways of pleasantness," we possess many and 
 eloquent, and in our most popular works. Many such passa- 
 ges, and of great beauty, occur in the volumes of Archbishop 
 Leighton ; but they are not particularly characteristic of his 
 mind and genius. For these reasons, therefore, in addition to 
 the scruples avowed in the preceding pages, I have confined 
 my selection to a few specimens ; and shall now conclude what 
 I have thought expedient to observe in my own person, by 
 guarding against any possible misinterpretation of my senti- 
 ments by the two following aphorisms : 
 
 APHORISM X. ' EDITOR. 
 
 Though prudence in itself is neither virtue nor spiritual ho- 
 liness, yet without prudence, or in opposition to it, neither vir- 
 tue nor holiness can exist. 
 
 APHORISM XL EDITOR. 
 
 Art thou under the tyranny of sin ? a slave to vicious habits ? 
 at enmity with God, and a skulking fugitive from thy own con- 
 science ? O, how idle the dispute, whether the listening to the 
 dictates of prudence from prudential and self-interested motives 
 be virtue or merit, when the not listening is guilt, misery, mad- 
 ness, and despair ! The best, the most Christianlike pity thou 
 canst show, is to take pity on thy own soul. The best and most 
 acceptable service thou canst render, is to do justice and show 
 mercy to thyself. 
 
 APHORISM XII. LEIGHTON. 
 
 What, you will say, have I beasts within me .^ Yes, you 
 
 i 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 27 
 
 have beasts, and a vast number of them. And, that you may not 
 think I intend to insult you, is anger an inconsiderable beast, 
 when it barks in your heart ? What is deceit, when it lies hid 
 in a cunning mind ; is it not a fox ? Is not the man who is fu- 
 riously bent upon calumny, a scorpion ? Is not the person 
 who is eagerly set on resentment and revenge, a most venom- 
 ous viper ? What do you say of a covetous man ; is he not a 
 ravenous wolf.'* And is not the luxurious man, as the prophet 
 expresses it, a neighing horse ? Nay, there is no wild beast 
 but is found within us. And do you consider yourself as lord 
 and prince of the wild beasts, because you command those that 
 are without, though you never think of subduing or setting 
 bounds to those that are within you ? What advantage have 
 you by your reason, which enables you to overcome lions, if, 
 after all, you, yourself, are overcome by anger ? To what pur- 
 pose do you rule over the birds, and catch them with gins, if 
 you, yourself, with the inconstancy of a bird, or hurried hither 
 and thither, and sometimes flying high, are ensnared by pride, 
 sometimes brought down and caught by pleasure ^ But as it is 
 shameful for him who rules over nations, to be a slave at home, 
 and for the man who sits at the helm of the state, to be mean- 
 ly subjected to the beck of a contemptible harlot, or even of 
 an imperious wife ; will it not be, in like manner, disgraceful 
 for you who exercise dominion over the beasts that are with- 
 out you, to be subject to a great many, and those of the worst 
 sort, that roar and domineer in your distempered mind ? 
 
 APHORISM XIII. LEIGHTON. 
 
 There is a settled friendship, nay, a near relation and simili- 
 tude between God and good men ; he is even their father ; but, 
 in their education, he inures them to hardships. Wlien, there- 
 fore, says Seneca, you see them struggling with difficulties, 
 sweating, and employed in up-hill w^ork ; while the wicked, 
 on the other hand, are in high spirits, and swim in pleasures ; 
 consider, that we are pleased with modesty in our children, 
 and forwardness in our slaves : the former we keep under by 
 severe discipline, while wc encourage impudence in the hitter. 
 
28 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Be persuaded that God takes the same method. He does not 
 pamper the good man with delicious fare, but tries him ; he 
 accustoms him to hardships, and, (which is a wonderful express- 
 ion in a heathen) prepares him for himself. 
 
 APHORISM XIV. LEiCxHTOiv. 
 
 If what we are told concerning that glorious city, obtain 
 credit with us, we shall cheerfully travel towards it, nor shall 
 we be at all deterred by the difficulties that may be in the way. 
 But, however, as it is true, and more suitable to the weakness 
 of our minds, which are rather apt to be affected with things 
 present and near, than such as are at a great distance, we ought 
 not to pass over in silence, that the way to the happiness re- 
 served in heaven, which leads through this earth, is not only 
 agreeable because of the blessed prospect it opens, and the 
 glorious end to v/hich it conducts, but also for its own sake, 
 and on account of the innate pleasure to be found in it, far 
 preferable to any other way of life that can be made choice of, 
 or, indeed, imagined. Nay, that we may not, by low express- 
 ions, derogate from a matter so grand and so conspicuous, that 
 holiness and true religion which leads directly to the highest 
 felicity, is itself the only happiness, as far as it can be enjoyed 
 on this earth. Whatever naturally tends to the attainment of 
 any other advantage, participates, in some measure, of the na- 
 ture of that advantage. Now, the way to perfect felicity, if 
 any thing can be so, is a means that, in a very great measure, 
 participates of the nature of its end ; nay, it is the beginning of 
 that happiness, it is also to be considered a part of it, and dif- 
 fers from it, in its completest state, not so much in kind, as in 
 degree. 
 
 APHORISM XV. LEIGHTON. 
 
 'We are always resolving to live, and yet never set about 
 'life in good earnest [24].' Archimedes was not singular in 
 his fate ; but a great part of mankind die unexpectedly, while 
 they are poring upon the figures they have described in the 
 sand. wretched mortals ! who having condemned them- 
 selves, as it were, to the mines, seem to make it their chief 
 
PRUDENTIAL APHORISMS. 29 
 
 study to prevent their ever regaining their liberty. Hence, 
 new employments are assumed in the place of old ones ; and, 
 as the Roman philosopher truly expresses it, ' one hope suc- 
 ' ceeds another, one instance of ambition makes way for ano- 
 ' ther ; and we never desire an end of our misery, but on- 
 My that it may change its outward form[25]-^ When we 
 cease to be candidates, and to fatigue ourselves in soliciting 
 interest, we begin to give our votes and interest to those who 
 solicit us in their turn. When we are wearied of the trouble 
 of prosecuting crimes at the bar, we commence judges our- 
 selves ; and he who is grown old in the management of other 
 men's affairs for money, is at last employed in improving his 
 own wealth. At the age of fifty, says one, I will retire, and 
 take my ease ; or the sixtieth year of my life shall entirely 
 disengage me from public offices and business. Fool ! art thou 
 not ashamed to reserve to thyself the last remains and dregs 
 of life ? Who will stand surety that thou shalt live so long ? 
 And what immense folly is it, so far to forget mortality, as to 
 think of beginning to live at that period of years, to which a 
 few only attain ! 
 
REFLECTIONS RESPECTING MORALITY. 
 
 If Prudence, though practically inseparable from Morality, 
 is not to be confounded with the Moral Principle ; still less 
 may Sensibility, i. e. a constitutional quickness of Sympathy 
 with Pain and Pleasure, and a keen sense of the gratifications 
 that accompany social intercourse, mutual endearments, and 
 reciprocal preferences, be mistaken, or deemed a Substitute 
 for either. They are not even sure pledges of a good heart, 
 though among the most common meanings of that many-mean- 
 ing and too commonly misapplied expression. 
 
 So far from being either morality, or one with the Moral 
 Principle, they ought not even be placed in the same rank 
 with Prudence. For Prudence is at least an offspring of the 
 Understanding; but Sensibility (the Sensibility, I mean, here 
 spoken of), is for the greater part a quality of the nerves, and 
 a result of individual bodily temperament. 
 
 Prudence is an active Principle, and implies a sacrifice of 
 Self, though only to the same Self projected^ as it were, to a 
 distance. But the very term sensibility, marks its passive 
 nature ; and in its mere self, apart from Choice and Reflec- 
 tion, it proves little more than the coincidence or contagion 
 of pleasureable or painful Sensations in different persons. 
 
 Alas ! how many are there in this over-stimulated age, in 
 which the occurrence of excessive and unhealthy sensitive- 
 ness is so frequent, as even to have reversed the current 
 meaning of the word, nervous — how many are [26] there 
 whose sensibility prompts them to remove those evils alone, 
 which by hideous spectacle or clamorous outcry are present 
 to their senses and disturb their selfish enjoyments. Provi- 
 ded the dunghill is not before their parlour window, they are 
 well contented to know that it exists, and perhaps as the hot- 
 
32 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 bed on which their own luxuries are reared. Sensibility is 
 not necessarily Benevolence. Nay, by rendering us trem- 
 blingly alive to trifling misfortunes, it frequently prevents it, 
 and induces an eifeminate Selfishness instead ; 
 
 Pampering the coward heart 
 
 With feelings all too delicate for use. 
 
 Sweet are the Tears, that from a Howard's eye 
 
 Drop on the cheek of one, he lifts from earth : 
 
 And He, who works me good with unmoved face, 
 
 Does it but half. He chills me, while he aids. 
 
 My Benefactor, not my Brother man. 
 
 But even this, this cold benevolence, 
 
 Seems Worth, seems Manhood, when there rise before me 
 
 The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving Tribe, 
 
 Who sigh for wretchedness yet shun the wretched, 
 
 Nursing in some delicious Solitude 
 
 Their Slothful Loves and dainty Sympathies. 
 
 Sibylline Leaves ^ p. 180. 
 
 Lastly, where Virtue is, Sensibility is the ornament and be- 
 coming Attire of Virtue. On certain occasions it may almost 
 be said to become[21] Virtue. But Sensibility and all the 
 amiable Qualities may likewise become, and too often have 
 become, the panders of Vice and the instruments of Seduc- 
 tion. 
 
 So must it needs be with all qualities that have their rise 
 only in parts and fragments of our nature. A man of warm 
 passions may sacrifice half his estate to rescue a friend from 
 Prison : for he is naturally sympathetic, and the more social 
 part of his nature happened to be uppermost. The same man 
 shall aftei-wards exhibit the same disregard of money in an at- 
 tempt to seduce that friend's Wife or Daughter. 
 
 All the evil achieved by Hobbes and the whole School of 
 Materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with 
 the mischief effected and occasioned by the Sentimental Phi- 
 
REFLECTIONS RESPECTING MORALITY. 33 
 
 losophy of Sterne, and his numerous Imitators. The vilest 
 appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their 
 objects, acquired the titles of the Hearty the irresistible Feel- 
 ings, the tfio tender Sensibility : and if the Frosts of Prudence, 
 the icy chains of Human Law thawed and vanished at the 
 genial warmth of Human Nature, who could help it? It was 
 an amiable weakness ! 
 
 About this time too the profanation of the word, Love, rose 
 to its height. The French Naturalists, Buffon and others 
 borrowed it from the sentimental Novelists : the Swedish and 
 English Philosophers took the contagion ; and the muse of 
 Science condescended to seek admission into the Saloons of 
 Fashion and Frivolity, rouged like an Harlot, and with the 
 Harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the Annals of Guilt 
 could be better forced into the service of Virtue, than by such 
 a Comment on the present paragraph, as would be afforded by 
 a selection from the sentimental correspondence produced in 
 Courts of Justice within the last thirty years, fairly translated 
 into the true meaning of the words, and the actual Object and 
 Purpose of the infamous writers. Do you in good earnest aim 
 at Dignity of Character ? By all the treasures of a peaceful 
 mind, by all the charms of an open countenance, I conjure 
 you, O youth ! turn away from those who live in the Twilight 
 between Vice and Virtue. Are not Reason, Discrimination, 
 Law, and deliberate Choice, the distinguishing Characters of 
 Humanity ? Can aught then worthy of a human Being pro- 
 ceed from a Habit of Soul, which would exclude all these and 
 (to borrow a metaphor from Paganism) prefer the den of Tro- 
 phoniusto the Temple and Oracles of the God of Light? Can 
 any thing manly, I say, proceed from those, who for Law and 
 Light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impul- 
 ses, which as far as they differ from the vital workings in the 
 brute animals owe the difference to their former connexion 
 with the proper Virtues of Humanity ; as Dendrites derive 
 the outlines, that constitute their value above other clay- 
 stones, from the casual neighbourhood and pressure of the 
 Plants, the names of which they assume ! Remember, that 
 
 5 
 
34 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Love itself in its highest earthly Bearing, as the ground of the 
 marriage union[28], becomes Love by an inward fiat of the 
 Will, by a completing and sealing Act of Moral Election, and 
 lays claim to permanence only under the form of duty. 
 
 Again, I would impress it on the reader, that in order to the 
 full understanding of any Whole, it is necessary to have learnt 
 the nature of the component parts, of each severally and, as 
 far as is possible, abstracted from the changes it may have un- 
 dergone in its combination with the others. On this account I 
 have deferred in order to give effectually the more interesting 
 and far more cheering contemplation of the same Subjects in 
 the reverse order ; Prudence, namely, as it flows out of Mo- 
 rality, and Morality as the natural Overflowing of Religion ; 
 for 7'eligious principle is always the true though sometimes 
 the hidden Spring and Fountain head of all true Morality. 
 
 I have hitherto considered Prudence and Morality as two 
 Streams from different sources, and traced the former to its 
 supposed confluence with the latter. And if it had been my 
 present purpose and undertaking to have placed Fruits from 
 my own Garden before the Reader, 1 should in like manner 
 have followed the course of Morality from its Twin Sources, 
 the Affections and the Conscience, till (as the main Feeder 
 into some majestic Lake rich with hidden Springs of its own ) 
 it flowed into, and became one with, the Spiritual Life. 
 
 But without a too glaring Breach of the promise, that the 
 Banquet for the greater part should consist of Choice Clusters 
 from the Vineyards of Archbishop Leighton, this was not 
 practicable, and now, 1 trust, with the help of these introduc- 
 tory pages, no longer necessary. 
 
 Still, however, it appears to me of the highest use and of 
 vital importance to let it be seen, that Religion or the Spirit- 
 ual Life is a something in itself, for which mere Morality, 
 were it even far more perfect in its kind than experience au- 
 thorises us to expect in unaided human Nature, is no Substi- 
 tute, though it cannot but be its Accompaniment. So far, 
 therefore, I have adapted the arrangement of the extracts to 
 this principle, that though 1 have found it impossible to sepa- 
 
REFLECTIONS RESPECTING MORALITY. 35 
 
 rate the Moral from the Religious, the morality and moral 
 views of Leighton being every where taken from the point 
 of Christian Faith, I have yet brought together under one 
 head, and in a separate Chapter, those subjects of Reflection, 
 that necessarily suppose or involve the faith in an eternal 
 state, and the probationary nature of our existence under 
 Time and Change, 
 
 These whether doctrinal or ascetic ( disciplinary ^ from the 
 Greek aCxsw, to exercise J whether they respect the obstacles 
 to the attainment of the Eternal, irremoveable by the unre- 
 newed and unaided Will of Man ; or the removal of these 
 Obstacles, with its Concurrents and Consequents ; or lastly, 
 the Truths, necessary to a rational belief in the Future, and 
 which alone can interpret the Past, or solve the Riddle of the 
 Present ; are especially meant in the term Spiritual. 
 
 Amply shall I deem myself remunerated if either by the 
 holy Charm, the good Spell of Leighton's Words, than which 
 few if any since the Apostolic age better deserve the name of 
 Evangelical^ or by my own notes and interpolations, the re- 
 flecting Reader should be enabled to apprehend — for we may 
 rightly apprehend what no finite mind can fully comprehend — 
 and attach a distinct meaning to, the Mysteries into which his 
 Baptism is the initiation ; and thus to feel and know, that 
 Christian Faith is the perfection of Human Reason. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 
 
 APHORISM I. LEIGHTON. 
 
 What the Apostles were in an extraordinary way befitting 
 the first annunciation of a Religion for ail Mankind, this all 
 Teachers of Moral Truth, who aim to prepare for its recep- 
 tion by calling the attention of men to the Law in their own 
 hearts, may^ without presumption, consider themselves to be 
 under ordinary gifts and circumstances : namely, Ambassadors 
 for the Greatest of Kings, and upon no mean employment, 
 the great Treaty of Peace and Reconcilement betwixt him 
 and Mankind. 
 
 APHORISM II. LElGHTOIf. 
 
 OF THE FEELINGS NATURAL TO INGENUOUS MINDS TOWARDS 
 THOSE WHO HAVE FIRST LED THEM TO REFLECT. 
 
 Though Divine Truths are to be received equally from eve- 
 ry Minister alike, yet it must be acknowledged that there is 
 something ( we know not what to call it ) of a more accepta- 
 ble reception of those who at first were the means of bring- 
 ing men to God, than of others ; like the opinion some have 
 of physicians, whom they love. 
 
 APHORISM III. L. AND ED. 
 
 The worth and value of Knowledge is in proportion to the 
 worth and value of its object. What, then, is the best knowl- 
 edge ? 
 
 The exactest knowledge of things, is, to know them in their 
 causes ; it is then an excellent thing, and worthy of their en- 
 deavours who are most desirous of knowledge, to know the 
 best things in their highest causes ; and the happiest way of 
 attaining to this knowledge, is to possess those things, and to 
 know them in experience. 
 
38 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM IV. LEIGHTON. 
 
 It is one main point of happiness, that he that is happy doth 
 know and judge himself to be so. This being the pecuUar 
 good of a reasonable creature, it is to be enjoyed in a reason- 
 able way. It is not as the dull resting of a stone, or any oth- 
 er natural body in its natural place ; but the knowledge and 
 consideration of it is the fruition of it, the very relishing and 
 tasting of its sweetness. 
 
 REMARK. 
 
 As in a Christian Land we receive the lessons of Morality 
 in connexion with the Doctrines of Revealed Religion, we 
 cannot too early free the mind from prejudices widely spread 
 in part through the abuse, but far more from ignorance, of the 
 true meaning of doctrinal Terms, which, however they may 
 have been perverted to the purposes of Fanaticism, are not 
 only scriptural, but of too frequent occurrence in Scripture to 
 be overlooked or passed by in silence. The following extract 
 therefore, deserves attention, as clearing the doctrine of Sal- 
 vation, in connexion with the divine Foreknowledge, from all 
 objections on the score of Morality, by the just and impressive 
 view which the Archbishop here gives of those occasional 
 revolutionary moments, that Turn of the Tide in the mind 
 and character of certain Individuals, which ( taking a religious 
 course, and referred immediately to the Author of all Good) 
 were in his day, more generally than at present, entitled ef- 
 fectual CALLING. The theological interpretation and the 
 philosophic validity of this Apostolic Triad, Election, Salva- 
 tion, and Effectual Calling, (the latter being the intermediate) 
 will be found among the Editor's Comments on the Aphorisms 
 of Spiritual Import. For our present purpose it will be suffi- 
 cient if only we prove, that the Doctrines are in themselves 
 innocuous^ and may be both held and taught without any prac- 
 tical ill consequences, and without detriment to the moral 
 frame. 
 
 APHORISM V. LEIGHTON. 
 
 Two Links of the Chain (viz. Election and Salvation) arc 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 39 
 
 up in heaven in God's own hand; but this middle one (i. e. 
 Effectual Calling) is let down to earth, into the hearts of his 
 children, and they laying hold on it have sure hold on the oth- 
 er two : for no power can sever them. If, therefore, they can 
 read the characters of God's image in their own souls, those 
 are the counter-part of the golden characters of His Love, in 
 which their names are written in the book of life. Their be- 
 lieving writes their names under the promises of the revealed 
 book of life (the Scriptures) and thus ascertains them, that 
 the same names are in the secret book of life which God hath 
 by himself from eternity. So that finding the stream of 
 grace in their hearts, though they see not the fountain whence 
 it flows, nor the ocean into which it returns, yet they know 
 that it hath its source in their eternal election, and shall empty 
 itself into the ocean of their eternal salvation. 
 
 If election^ effectual calling and salvation be inseparably 
 linked together, then, by any one of them a man may lay 
 hold upon all the rest, and may know that this hold is sure ; 
 and this is the way wherein we may attain, and ought to seek, 
 the comfortable assurance of the love of God. Therefore 
 make your calling sure^ and by that, your election ; for that 
 being done, this follows of itself. We are not to pry imme- 
 diately into the decree, but to read it in the performance. 
 Though the mariner sees not the pole-star^ yet the neeedle of 
 the compass which points to it, tells him which way he sails ; 
 thus the heart that is touched with the loadstone of divine 
 love, trembling with godly fear, and yet still looking towards 
 God by fixed believing, interprets the fear by the love in the 
 fear, and tells the soul that its course is heavenward, towards 
 the haven of eternal rest. He that loves, may be sure he was 
 loved first ; and he that chooses God for his delight and por- 
 tion, may conclude confidently, that God hath chosen him to be 
 one of those that shall enjoy him, and be happy in him for ev- 
 er ; for that our love and electing of him is but the return and 
 repercussion of the beams of his love shining upon us. 
 
 Although from present unsanctification, a man cannot infer 
 that he is not elected ; for the decree may, for part of a man's 
 
40 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 life, run (as it were) underground ; yet this is sure, that that 
 estate leads to death, and unless it be broken, will prove the 
 black line of reprobation. A man hath no portion amongst 
 the children of God, nor can read one word of comfort in all 
 tlie promises that belong to them, while he remains unholy, 
 
 REMARK. 
 
 In addition to the preceding, I select the following para- 
 graphs as having no where seen the term. Spirit, the Gifts of 
 the Spirit, and the like, so effectually vindicated from the 
 sneers of the Sciolist on one hand, and protected from the 
 perversions of the Fanatic on the other. In these paragraphs 
 the Archbishop at once shatters and precipitates the only 
 draw-bridge between the fanatical and the orthodox doctrine 
 of Grace, and the Gifts of the Spirit. In Scripture the term. 
 Spirit, as a power or property seated in the human soul, never 
 stands singly, but is always specified by a genitive case follow- 
 ing ; this being an Hebraism instead of the adjective which 
 the Writer would have used if he had thought^ as well aa 
 written, in Greek. It is "the Spirit of Meekness^' (a meek 
 Spirit), or "the Spirit of Chastity/' and the like. The mo- 
 ral Result, the specific Form and Character in which the Spirit 
 manifests its presence, is the only sure pledge and token of 
 its presence : which is to be, and which safely may be, infer- 
 red from its practical eft'ects, but of which an immeJia/e knowl- 
 edge or consciousness is impossible ; and every Pretence to 
 such knowledge is either hypocrisy or fanatical delusion. 
 
 APHORISM YI. I.EIGHTON, 
 
 If any pretend that they have the Spirit, and so turn away 
 from the straight rule of the holy Scriptures, they have a spirit 
 indeed, but it is a fanatical spirit, a spirit of delusion and gid- 
 diness : but the Spirit of God, that leads his children in the 
 w^ay of truth, and is for that purpose sent them, from heaven 
 to guide them thither, squares their thoughts and ways to that 
 rule whereof it is author, and that word which was inspired 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 41 
 
 by it, and sanctifies them to obedience. He that saith I know 
 him, and keepeth not his commandments j is a liar, and the 
 truth is not in him. ( 1 John ii. 4.) 
 
 Now this Spirit which sanctifieth, and sanctifieth to obedi- 
 ence, is within us the evidence of our election, and the ear- 
 nest of our salvation. And whoso are not sanctified and led 
 by this Spirit, the Apostle tells us what is their condition : If 
 any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. The 
 stones which are appointed for that glorious temple above, are 
 hewn, and polished, and prepared for it here ; as the stones 
 were wrought and prepared in the mountains, for building the 
 temple at Jerusalem. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 There are many serious and sincere Christians who have 
 not attained to a fullness of knowledge and insight, but are 
 well and judiciously employed in preparing for it. Even these 
 may study the master-works of our elder Divines with safety 
 and advantage, if they will accustom themselves to translate 
 the theological terms into their moral equivalents ; saying to 
 themselves — This may not be all that is meant, but this is 
 meant, and it is that portion of the meaning, which belongs to 
 me in the present stage of my progress. For example : ren- 
 der the words, sanctification of the Spirit, or the sanctifying 
 influences of the Spirit, by. Purity in Life and Action from a 
 pure Principle. 
 
 We need only reflect on our own experience to be convin- 
 ced, that the Man makes the motive, and not the motive the 
 Man. What is a strong motive to one man, is no motive at 
 all to another. If, then, the man determines the motive, what 
 determines the Man — to a good and worthy act, we will say, 
 or a virtuous Course of Conduct ? The intelligent Will, or 
 the self-determining Power ? True, in part ii is ; and there- 
 fore the Will is pre-eminently the Sj^in/wfl/ Constituent in our 
 Being. But will any reflecting man admit, that his own Will 
 is the only and sufiicient determinant of all he is, and all he 
 does ? Is nothing to be attributed to the harmony of the sys- 
 
 6 
 
42 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tern to which he belongs, and to the pre-established Fitness 
 of the Objects and Agents, known and unknown, that sur- 
 round him, as acting on the will, though doubtless, with it 
 likewise ? a process, which the co-instantaneous yet recipro- 
 cal action of the Air and the vital Energy of the Lungs in 
 Breathing may help to render intelligible. 
 
 Again : in the World we see every where evidences of a 
 Unity, which the component Parts are so far from explaining 
 that they necessarily pre-suppose it as th^ cause and condition 
 of their existing as those parts : or even of their existing at 
 all. This antecedent Unity, or Cause and Principle of each 
 Union, it has since the time of Bacon and Kepler been cus- 
 tomary to call a Law. This Crocus, for instance : or any 
 other Flower, the Reader may have in sight or choose to 
 bring before his fancy. That the root, stem, leaves, petals, 
 &c. cohere to one plant, is owing to an antecedent Power or 
 Principle in the Seed, w^hich existed before a single particle of 
 the matters that constitute the size and visibility of the Cro- 
 cus, had been attracted from the surrounding soil, Air, and 
 Moisture. Shall we turn to the seed ? Here too the same 
 necessity meets us. An antecedent Unity (I speak not of the 
 parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in the order of op- 
 perance, yet remaining present as the conservative and repro- 
 ductive Power) must here too be supposed. Analyse the 
 Seed with the finest tools, and let the Solar Microscope come 
 in aid of your senses, what do you find ? Means and instru- 
 ments, a wondrous Fairy-tale of Nature, Magazines of Food, 
 Stores of various sorts. Pipes, Spiracles, Defences — a House 
 of Many Chambers, and the Owner and Inhabitant invisible ! 
 Reflect further on the countless MiUions of Seeds of the same 
 Name, each more than numerically difierenced from every 
 other : and further yet, reflect on the requisite harmony of all 
 surrounding Things, each of which necessitates the same pro- 
 cess of thought, and the coherence of all of which to a Sys- 
 tem, a World, demands its own adequate Antecedent Unity, 
 whicii must therefore of necessity be present to all and in all, 
 yet in no wise excluding or suspending the individual Law or 
 
 I 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 43 
 
 Principle of Union in each. Now will Reason, will Common 
 Sense, endure the assumption, that in the material and visible 
 system it is highly reasonable to believe a Universal Power, 
 as the cause and pre-condition of the harmony of all particular 
 Wholes, each of which involves the working Principle of its 
 own Union, that it is reasonable, I say, to believe this respect- 
 ing the Aggregate of Objects, which without a Subject (i. e. 
 a sentient and intelligent Existence) would be purposeless 
 and yet unreasonable and even superstitious or enthusiastic to 
 entertain a similar belief in relation to the System of intelli- 
 gent and self-conscious Beings, to the moral and personal 
 World ? But if in this too, in the great Community of Per- 
 sons, it is rational to infer a One universal Presence, a One 
 present to all and in all, is it not most irrational to suppose 
 that a finite will can exclude it ? Whenever, therefore, the 
 man is determined (i. e. impelled and directed) to act in har- 
 mony of intercommunion, must not something be attributed to 
 this all-present power as acting in the Will ? and by what fit- 
 ter names can we call this than the law, as empowering ; the 
 WORD, as informing ; and the spirit, as actuating ? 
 
 What has been here said amounts ( I am aware ) only to a 
 negative Conception ; but this is all that is required for a 
 mind at that period of its growth which we are now suppo- 
 sing, and as long as Religion is contemplated under the form 
 of Morality. A positive Insight belongs to a more advanced 
 stage : for spiritual truths can only spiritually be discerned. 
 This we know from Revelation, and (the existence of spiritu- 
 al truths being granted ) Philosophy is compelled to draw the 
 same conclusion. But though merely negative, it is sufficient 
 to render the union of Rehgion and IMorality conceivable ; suf- 
 ficient to satisfy an unprejudiced Inquirer, that the spiritual 
 Doctrines of the Christian Religion are not at war with the 
 reasoning faculty, and that if they do not run on the same 
 Line (or Radius) with the Understanding, yet neither do they 
 cut or cross it. It is sufficient, in short, to prove, that some 
 disrinct and consistent meaning may be attached to the asser- 
 tion of the learned and philosophic Apostle, that '-the spirit 
 
44- AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 beareth witness with our spirit" — i. e. with the Will^ as the 
 Supernatural in Man and the Principle of our Personalty — of 
 that, I mean, by which we are responsible Agents ; Persons^ 
 and not merely living Things [29], 
 
 It will suffice to satisfy a reflecting mind, that even at the 
 porch and threshold of Revealed Truth there is a great and 
 worthy sense in which we may believe the Apostle's assur- 
 ance, that not only doth " the Spirit aid our infirmities ;" that 
 is act on the Will by a predisposing influence from without, 
 as it were, though in a spiritual manner, and without suspen- 
 ding or destroying its freedom, (the possibility of which is 
 proved to us in the influences of Education, of pro^ddential 
 Occurrences, and above all, of Example) but that in regene- 
 rate souls it may act in the will ; that uniting and becoming 
 one [30] with our will or spirit it may "make intercession for 
 us ; " nay, in this intimate union taking upon itself the form of 
 our infirmities, may intercede for us " with groanings that can- 
 not be uttered." Nor is there any danger of Fanaticism or 
 Enthusiasm as the consequence of such a belief, if only the 
 attention be carefully and earnestly drawn to the concluding 
 words of the sentence (Romans, viii. v. 26.) ; if only the due 
 force and the full import be given to the term unutterable or 
 incommunicable^ in St. Paul's use of it. In this, the strictest 
 and most proper use of the term, it signifies, that the subject, 
 of which it is predicated, is something which I cannot^ which 
 from the nature of the thing it is impossible that I should, com- 
 municate to any human mind ( even of a person under the same 
 conditions with myself) so as to make it in itself the object of 
 his direct and immediate consciousness. It cannot be the ob- 
 ject oimy own direct and immediate Consciousness; but must 
 be inferred. Inferred it may be from its workings : it cannot 
 be perceived in them. And, thanks to God in all points in 
 w^hich the knowledge is of high and necessary concern to our 
 moral and religious welfare, from the Effects it may safely be 
 inferred by us, from the Workings it may be assuredly known ; 
 and the Scriptures furnish the clear and unfailing Rules for 
 directing the inquiry, and for drawing the conclusion. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 45 
 
 If any reflecting mind be surprised that the aids of the Di- 
 vine Spirit should be deeper than our Consciousness can reach, 
 it must arise from the not having attended sufficiently to the 
 nature and necessary limits of human Consciousness. For 
 the same impossibility exists as to the first acts and movements 
 of our own will — the farthest back our recollection can follow 
 the traces, never leads us to the first foot-mark — the lowest 
 depth that the light of our Consciousness can visit even with 
 a doubtful Glimmering, is still at an unknown distance from 
 the Ground : and so, indeed, must it be wdth all Truths, and 
 all modes of Being that can neither be counted, coloured, or 
 delineated. Before and After, when applied to such Subjects, 
 are but allegories, which the Sense or Imagination supply to 
 the Understanding. The Position of the Aristotelians, Nihil 
 in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, on which Mr. Locke's 
 Essay is grounded, is irrefragable : Locke erred only in taking 
 half the truth for a whole Truth. Conception is consequent 
 on Perception. What we cannot imagine^ we cannot, in the 
 proper sense of the word, conceive. 
 
 I have already given one definition of Nature. Another, 
 and differing from the former in words only, is this : Whatever 
 is representable in the forms of Time and Space, is Nature. 
 But whatever is comprehended in Time and Space, is included 
 in the Mechanism of Cause and Effect, And conversely, 
 whatever, by whatever means, has its principle in itself, so 
 far as to originate its actions, cannot be contemplated in any 
 of the forms of Space and Time — it must, therefore, be con- 
 sidered as Spirit or Spiritual by a mind in that stage of its 
 Developement which is here supposed, and which we have 
 agreed to understand under the name of morality, or the Mo- 
 ral State : for in this stage we are concerned only with the 
 forming of negative conceptions, negative convictions ; and by 
 spiritual I do not pretend to determine what the Will is, but 
 what it is not — namely, that it is not Nature. And as no man 
 who admits a Will at all, (for we may safely presume, that no 
 man not meaning to speak figuratively, would call the shifting 
 Current of a stream the will[31] of the River), will suppose 
 
46 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it beloio Nature, we may safely add, that it is super-natural ; 
 and this without the least pretence to any positiv^e Notion or 
 Insight. 
 
 Now Morality accompanied with Convictions like these, I 
 have ventured to call Religious Morality. Of the importance 
 I attach to the state of mind implied in these convictions, for 
 its own sake, and as the natural preparation for a yet higher 
 state and a more substantive knowledge, proof more than suf- 
 ficient, perhaps, has been given in the length and minuteness 
 of this introductory Discussion, and in the foreseen risk which I 
 run of exposing the volume at large to the censure which every 
 work, or rather which every writer, must be prepared to un- 
 dergo, who, treating of subjects that cannot be seen, touched, 
 or in any other way made matters of outward sense, is yet 
 anxious both to attach and to convey a distinct meaning to the 
 words he makes use of — the censure of being dry, abstract, and 
 (of all qualities most scaring and opprobrious to the ears of 
 the present ^eneYniion) metaphysical : though how is it pos- 
 sible that a work not physical^ that is, employed on Objects 
 known or believed on the evidence of Sense, should be oth- 
 er than 7we/aphysical, that is, treating on Subjects, the evidence 
 of which is not derived from the Senses, is a problem which 
 Critics of this order find it convenient to leave unsolved. 
 
 The Editor and Annotator of the present Volume, will, in- 
 deed, have reason to think himself fortunate, if this be all the 
 Charge ! How man}^ smart quotations, which ( duly cemented 
 by personal allusions to the Author\s supposed Pursuits, Attach- 
 ments, and Infirmities), would of themselves make up "A 
 ' Review" of the Volume, might be supplied from the works 
 of Butler, Swift and Warburton. For instance : ' It may not 
 ' be amiss to inform the Public, that the Compiler of the Aids 
 'to reflection, and Commenter on a Scotch Bishop's platonico- 
 ' calvinistic commentary on St. Peter, belongs to the Sect of 
 ' the JEolists^ whose fruitful imaginations lead them into cer- 
 'tain notions, which although in appearance very unaccounta- 
 ^ble, are not without their mysteries and their meanings ; fur- 
 'nishing plenty of Matter for buch, ivhose converting Imagi- 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 47 
 
 ^ nations disjiose them to reduce all things into types; xuho 
 '■can make shadows, no thanks to the Sun: and then mould 
 ' them into substances, no tha^iks to Philosophy : whose pe- 
 'culiar' Talent lies infixing tropes and allegories to the 
 'letter, and refining what is literal into figure and mys- 
 'tery.' — Tale of the Tuh^ Sect. xi. 
 
 And would it were my lot to meet with a Critic, who, in 
 the might of his own Convictions, and with arms of equal 
 Point and Efficiency from his own Forge, would come forth as 
 my assailant ; or who, as a friend to my purpose, would set 
 forth the Objections to the matter and pervading Spirit of these 
 Aphorisms, and the accompanying Elucidations. Were it my 
 task to form the mind of a young man of Talent, desirous to 
 establish his opinions and belief on solid principles, and in the 
 light of distinct understanding, I would commence his theolo- 
 gical studies, or, at least, that most important part of them re- 
 specting the aids which Religion promises in our attempts to 
 realize the ideas of Morality, by bringing together all the pas- 
 sages scattered throughout the Writings of Swift and Butler, 
 that bear on Enthusiasm, Spiritual Operations, and pretences 
 to the Gifts of the Spirit, w^ith the whole train of New Lights, 
 Raptures, Experiences, and the like. For ail that the richest 
 Wit, in intimate union with profound Sense and steady Obser- 
 vation, can supply on these Topics, is to be found in the works 
 of these Satirists ; though unhappily alloyed w^ith much that 
 can only tend to pollute the Imagination. 
 
 Without stopping to estimate the degree of caricature m 
 the Portraits sketched by these bold Masters, and without at- 
 tempting to determine in how many of the Enthusiasts, brought 
 forward by them in proof of the influence of false Doctrines, 
 a constitutional Insanity, that would probably have show^n it- 
 self in some other form, would be the truer Solution, I would 
 direct my Pupil's attention to one feature common to the whole 
 Group — the pretence, namely, of possessing, or a Belief and 
 Expectation grounded on other men's assurances of their pos- 
 sessing, an immediate Consciousness, a sensible Experience, 
 of the Spirit in and during its operation on the soul. It is not 
 
48 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 enough that you grant them a consciousness of the Gifts and 
 Graces infused, or an assurance of the Spiiitual Origin of the 
 same, grounded on their correspondence to the Scripture Pro- 
 mises^ and their conformity with the Idea of the divine Giver. 
 No! They all alike, it will be found, lay claim (or at least 
 look forward ) to an inward perception of the Spirit itself and 
 of its operating. 
 
 Whatever must be misrepresented in order to be ridiculed, 
 is in fact not ridiculed ; but the thing substituted for it. It is 
 a Satire on something else, coupled with a Lie on the part of 
 the Satirist, who knowing, or having the means of knowing 
 the truth, chose to call one thing by the name of another. The 
 Pretensions to the Supernatural, pilloried by Butler, sent to 
 Bedlam by Swift, and (on their re-appearance in public) gib- 
 betted by Warburton, and anatomized by Bishop Lavington, 
 one and all have this for their essential character, that the 
 Spirit is made the immediate Object of Sense or Sensation. 
 Whether the Spiritual Presence and agency are supposed cog- 
 nizable by an indescribable Feeling or in unimaginable Vision 
 by some specific visual energy ; whether seen, or heard, or 
 touched, smelt, and tasted — for in those vast Storehouses of 
 fanatical assertion, the volumes of Ecclesiastical History and 
 religious Auto-biography, Instances are not wanting even of 
 the three latter extravagancies— this variety in the mode may 
 render the several pretensions more or less offensive to the 
 Ta^te ; but with the same Absurdity for the Reason, this be- 
 ing derived from a contradiction in terms common and radical 
 to them all alike, the assumption of a something essentially 
 supersensual, that is nevertheless the object of sense, i. e, not 
 supersensual. 
 
 Well then ! — for let me be allowed still to suppose the Reader 
 present to me, and that I am addressing him in the character 
 of Companion and Guide — the positions recommended for your 
 examination not only do not involve, but exclude, this incon- 
 sistency. And for aught that hitherto appears, we may see 
 with complacency the Arrows of Satire feathered with Wit, 
 weighted with Sense, and discharged by a strong Arm, fly 
 
 >« 
 
f^7 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 49 
 
 home to their mark. Our Conceptions of a possible Spiritual 
 Communion, though they are but negative, and only prepara- 
 tory to a faith in its actual existence, stand neither in the Le- 
 vel nor the Direction of the Shafts. 
 
 If it be objected, that Swift and Warburton did not choose 
 openly to set up the interpretations of later and more rational 
 Divines against the decisions of their own Church, and from 
 prudential considerations did not attack the doctrine in toto : 
 that is /^eir concern (1 would answer), and it is more charita- 
 ble to think otherwise. But we are in the silent school of Re- 
 
 ^ flection, in the secret confessional of Thought. Should we 
 'lie for God,' and that to our own Thoughts? They indeed, 
 who dare do the one, will soon be able to do the other. So 
 did the Comforters of Job : and to the Divines, who resemble 
 Job's Comforters, we will leave both attempts. 
 
 But (it may be said), a possible Conception is not necessa- 
 rily a true one ; nor even a probable one, where the Facts can 
 be otherwise explained. In the name of the supposed Pupil 
 I would reply — That is the very question I am preparing 
 myself to examine ; and am now seeking the Vantage-ground 
 where I may best command the Facts. In my own person, I 
 would ask the Objector, whether he counted the Declarations of 
 Scripture among the Facts to be explained. But both for my- 
 self and my pupil, and in behalf of all rational Enquiry, I would 
 demand that the Decision should not be such, in itself or in 
 its effects, as would prevent our becoming acquainted with the 
 most important of these Facts ; nay, such as would, for the 
 mind of the Decider, preclude their very existence. Unless 
 ye believe^ says the Prophet, ye cannot understand. Suppose 
 ( what is at least possible ) that the facts should be consequent 
 
 )jt on the belief, it is clear that without the belief the materials, 
 on which the understanding is to exert itself, would be want- 
 ing. 
 
 The reflections that naturally arise out of this last remark, 
 are those that best suit the stage at which we last halted, and 
 from which we now recommence our progress — the state of a 
 Moral Man, who has already welcomed certain truths of Re- 
 
 if 
 
 ■^■- 
 
TH' 
 
 50 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ligion, and is enquiring after other and more special Doctrines : 
 still however as a Moralist, desirous indeed to receive them 
 into combination with Morality, but to receive them as its Aid, 
 not as its Substitute. Now, to such a man I say ; Before you 
 reject the Opinions and Doctrines asserted and enforced in the 
 following Extract from our eloquent Author, and before you 
 give way to the Emotions of Distaste or Ridicule, which the 
 Prejudices of the Circle in which you move, or your own fa- 
 miliarity with the mad perversions of the doctrine by Fanat- 
 ics in all ages, have connected with the very words. Spirit, 
 Grace, Gifts, Operations, &c. re-examine the arguments ad- 
 vanced in the first pages of this Introductory Comment, and 
 the simple and sober View of the Doctrine, contemplated in 
 the first instance as a mere Idea of the Reason, flowing natu- 
 rally from the admission of an infinite omnipresent Mind as the 
 Ground of the Universe. Reflect again and again, and be sure 
 that you understand the Doctrine before you determine on re- 
 jecting it. That no false judgments, no extravagant conceits, 
 no practical ill-consequences need arise out of the Belief of 
 the Spirit, and its possible communion with the Spiritual Prin- 
 ciple in Man, or can arise out of the right Belief, or are com- 
 patible with the Doctrine truly and scripturally explained, 
 Leighton, and almost every single Period in the Passage here 
 transcribed from him, will suffice to convince you. 
 
 On the other hand, reflect on the consequences of rejecting 
 it. For surely it is not the act of a reflecting mind, nor the part 
 of a Man of Sense to disown and cast out one Tenet, and yet 
 persevere in admitting and clinging to another that has neither 
 sense nor purpose, that does not suppose and rest on the truth 
 and reality of the former ! If you have resolved that all be- 
 lief of a divine Comforter present to our inmost Being and 
 aiding our infirmities, is fond and fanatical — if the Scriptures 
 promising and asserting such communion are to be explained 
 away into the action of circumstances, and the necessary move- 
 ments of the vast machine, in one of the circulating chains of 
 which the human Will is a petty link — in what better light can 
 Prayer appear to you, than the groans of a wounded Lion in 
 
 «: 
 
 _ ■*■ 
 
 t 
 
MORAL ANH RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 51 
 
 his solitary Den, or the howl of a Dog with his eyes on the 
 Moon ? At the best, you can regard it only as a transient be- 
 wilderment of the Social Instinct, as a Social Habit misapplied ! 
 Unless indeed you should adopt the theory which I remember 
 to have read in the writings of the late Dr. Jebb, and for some 
 supposed beneficial re-action of Praying on the Prayer's own 
 Mind, should practise it as a species of Animal- Magnetism to be 
 brought about by a wilful eclipse of the Reason, and a tempo- 
 rary make-believe on the part of the Self-magnetizer ! 
 
 At all events, do not prejudge a Doctrine, the utter rejec- 
 tion of which must oppose a formidable obstacle to your ac- 
 ceptance of Christianity itself, when the Books, from which 
 ilone we can learn what Christianity is and teaches, are so 
 strangely written, that in a series of the most concerning points, 
 including (historical facts excepted) all the peculiar Tenets of 
 the Religion, the plain and obvious meaning of the words, that 
 in which they were understood by Learned and Simple for at 
 least sixteen Centuries, during the far larger part of which the 
 language was a living language, is no sufficient guide to their 
 actual sense or to the Writer's own Meaning ! And this too, 
 where the literal and received Sense involves nothing impossi- 
 ble, or immoral, or contrary to reason. With such a persuasion. 
 Deism would be a more consistent Creed. But, alas ! even 
 this will fail you. The utter rejection of all present and liv- 
 ing communion with the Universal Spirit impoverishes Deism 
 itself, and renders it as cheerless as Atheism, from which in- 
 deed it would differ only by an obscure impersonation of what 3>£? 
 the Atheist receives unpersonified under the name of Fate or v 
 Nature. 
 
 APHORISM VII. L. AND ED. 
 
 The proper and natural Effect, and in the absence of all dis- 
 turbing or intercepting forces, the certain and sensible accom- 
 paniment of Peace (or Reconcilement) with God, is our own 
 inward Peace, a calm and quiet temper of mind. And where 
 there is a consciousness of earnestly desiring, and of having 
 sincerely striven after the former, the latter may be consider- 
 
52 #" 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ed as a Sense of its presence. In this case, I say, and for a 
 soul watchful, and under the discipline of the Gospel, the 
 Peace with a man's self may be the medium or organ through 
 which the assurance of his Peace with God is conveyed. We 
 will not therefore condemn this mode of speaking, though we 
 dare not greatly recommend it. Be it, that there is, truly and 
 in sobriety of speech, enough of just Analogy in the subjects 
 meant, to make this use of the words, if less than proper, yet 
 something more than metaphorical ; still we must be cautious 
 not to transfer to the Object the defects or the deliciency of 
 the Organ, which must needs partake of the imperfections of 
 the imperfect Beings to whom it belongs. Not without the 
 co-assurance of other senses and of the same sense in other 
 men, dare we affirm that what our Eye beholds, is verily there 
 to be beheld. Much less may we conclude negatively, and 
 from the inadequacy or suspension or affections of the Sight 
 infer the non-existence, or departure, or changes of the Thing 
 itself. The Chameleon darkens in the shade of him that bends 
 over it to ascertain its colours. In like manner, but with yet 
 greater caution, ought we to think respecting a tranquil habit of 
 the inward life, considered as a spiritual Sense^ as the medial Or- 
 gan in and by which our peace with God, and the lively v»'ork- 
 ing of his Grace on our Spirit, are perceived by us. This 
 Peace which we have with God in Christ, is inviolable ; but 
 because the sense and persuasion of it may be interrupted, the 
 soul that is truly at peace with God may for a time be disqui- 
 eted in itself, through weakness of faith, or the strength of 
 temptation, or the darkness of desertion, losing sight of that 
 grace, that love and light of God's countenance, on which its 
 tranquillity and joy depend. Thoii didst hide thy face^ saith 
 David, and I was troubled. But when these eclipses are over 
 the soul is revived with new consolation, as the face of the 
 earth is renewed and made to smile with the return of the 
 sun in the spriilg ; and this ought always to uphold Christians 
 in the saddest times, viz. that the grace and love of God to- 
 wards them depend not on their sense, nor upon any thing in 
 them, but is still in itself, incapable o( I he tmallcst alteration. 
 
MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 53 
 
 A holy heart that gladly entertains grace, shall find that it 
 and peace cannot dwell asunder ; while an ungodly man may 
 sleep to death in the lethargy of carnal presumption and im- 
 penitency ; but a true, lively, solid peace he cannot have. 
 There is no peace to the ivickedj saith my God^ Isa. Ivii. 21. 
 
 APHORISM yiir. LEIGHTON. 
 
 WORLDLY HOPES. 
 
 Worldly hopes are not living, but lying hopes ; they die oft- 
 en before us, and we live to bury them, and see our own folly 
 and infelicity in trusting to them ; but at the utmost, they die 
 with us when we die, and can accompany us no further. But 
 the lively Hope, which is the Christian's Portion, answers ex- 
 pectation to the full, and much beyond it, and deceives no way 
 but in that happy way of far exceeding it. 
 
 A living hope^ living in death itself ! The world dares say 
 no more for its device, than Durn spiro spero ; but the chil- 
 dren of God can add, by virtue of this living hope, Durn ex- 
 spiro spero, 
 
 APHORISM IX. LEIGHTON. 
 
 THE worldling's FEAR. 
 
 It is a fearful thing when a man and all his hopes die to- 
 gether. Thus saith Solomon of the wicked, Prov. xi. 7., 
 When he dieth, then die his hopes; (many of them before^ 
 but at the utmost ^/ien[32], all of them ;) but the righteous 
 hath hope in his death^ Prov. xiv. 32. 
 
 APHORISM X. L. AND ED. 
 
 WORLDLY MIRTH. 
 
 As he that taketh away a garment in cold tveathcr, and as 
 vinegar uponnitre., so is he that singeth songs to a heavy hearty 
 Prov. xxv. 20. Worldl}' mirth is so far from curing spiritual 
 grief, that even worldly grief, where it is great and takes deep 
 root, is not allayed but increased by it. A man who is full of 
 inward heaviness, the more he is encompassed about with 
 mirth, it exasperates and enrages his grief the more ; like in- 
 
54 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 effectual weak physic, which removes not the humour, but stirs 
 it and makes it more unquiet. But spiritual joy is seasonable 
 for all estates : in prosperity, it is pertinent to crown and sanc- 
 tify all other enjoyments, with this which so far surpasses 
 them ; and in distress, it is the only Nepenthe^ the cordial of 
 fainting spirits : so, Psal. iv. 7, He hath put joy into my heart. 
 This mirth makes way for itself, which other mirth cannot do. 
 These songs are sweetest in the night of distress. 
 
 There is something exquisitely beautiful and touching in the 
 first of these similes : and the second, though less pleasing to 
 the imagination, has the charm of propriety, and expresses the 
 transition with equal force and liveliness. A grief of recent 
 birth is a sick infant that must have its medicine administered 
 in its Milk, and sad Thoughts are the sorrowful Heart's natu- 
 ral food. This is a Complaint that is not to be cured by op- 
 posites, which for the most part only reverse the symptoms 
 while they exasperate the Disease — or like a rock in the Mid 
 Channel of a River swoln by a sudden rain-flush from the 
 mountain, which only detains the excess of Waters from their 
 proper outlet, and make them foam, roar, and eddy. The 
 Soul in her desolation hugs the sorrow close to her, as her 
 sole remaining garment : and this must be drawn off so grad- 
 ually, and the garment to be put in its stead so gradually slipt 
 on and feel so like the former, that the Sufferer shall be sensi- 
 ble of the change only by the refreshment. The true Spirit 
 of Consolation is well content to detain the tear in the eye, 
 and finds a surer pledge of its success in the smile of Resig- 
 nation that dawns through that, than in the liveliest shows of 
 
 a forced and alien exhilaration. 
 
 ■*■' 
 
 APHORISM XI. EDITOR. 
 
 Plotinus thanked God, that his Soul was not tied to an im- 
 mortal body. 
 
 APHORISM XII. L. AND ED. 
 
 What a full Confession do we make of our dissatisfaction 
 with the Objects of our bodily senses, that in our attempts to 
 
 ■^ 
 
 I 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 55 
 
 express what we conceive the Best of Beings, and the great- 
 est of Felicities to be, we describe by the exact Contraries of 
 all, that we experience here — the one as Infinite, /ncompre- 
 hensible, //^mutable, &c. the other as incorruptible, wndefiled, 
 and that passeth not away. At all events, this Coincidence, 
 say rather. Identity of Attributes is sufficient to apprize us, 
 that to be inheritors of Bliss we must become the children of 
 God. 
 
 This Remark of Leighton'sis ingenious and startling. Ano- 
 ther, and more fruitful, perhaps more solid, inference from the 
 fact would be, that there is something in the human mind 
 which makes it know ( as soon as it is sufficiently awakened 
 to reflect on its own thoughts and notices), that in all finite 
 Quantity there is an Infinite, in all measures of Time an Eter- 
 nal ; that the latter are the basis, the substance, the true and 
 abiding reality of the former ; and that as we truly are, only 
 as far as God is with us, so neither can we truly possess (i. e. 
 enjoy) our Being or any other real Good, but by living in the 
 sense of his holy presence. 
 
 A Life of Wickedness is a Life of Lies : and an Evil Be- 
 ing, or the Being of Evil, the last and darkest mystery. 
 
 APHORISM XIII. LEIGHTON. 
 
 THE WISEST USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 It is not altogether unprofitable ; yea, it is great wisdom in 
 Christians to be arming themselves against such temptations 
 as may befal them hereafter, though they have not as yet 
 met with them ; to labour to overcome them before-hand, to 
 suppose the hardest things that may be incident to them, and 
 to put on the strongest resolutions they can attain unto. Yet 
 all that is but an imaginary effort ; and therefore there is no 
 assurance that the victory is any more than imaginary too, 
 till it come to action, and then, they that have spoken and 
 thought very confidently, may prove but (as one said of the 
 Athenians) fortes in ^a6w/a, patient and courageous in picture, 
 or fancy ; and notwithstanding all their arms, and dexterity in 
 
 1^ 
 
56 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 handling them by way of exercise, may be foully defeated 
 when they are to fight in earnest. 
 
 APHORISM XIY. EDITOR. 
 
 THE LANGUAGE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The Word of God speaks to Men, and therefore it speaks 
 the language of the Children of Men. This just and preg- 
 nant Thought was suggested to Leighton by Gen. xxii. 12. 
 The same Text has led the Editor to unfold and expand the 
 Remark. — On moral subjects, the Scriptures speak in the lan- 
 guage of the Affections which they excite in us ; on sensible 
 objects, neither metaphysically, as they are known by supe- 
 rior intelligences : nor theoreticall}', as they would be seen 
 by us were we placed in the Sun ; but as they are represented 
 by our human senses in our present relative position. Lastly, 
 from no vain, or worse than vain, Ambition of seeming "to 
 walk on the Sea" of Mystery in my way to Truth, but in the "^ 
 hope of removing a difficulty that presses heavily on the 
 minds of many who in Heart and Desire are believers, and 
 which long pressed on my own mind, I venture to add : that 
 on spiritual things, and allusively to the mysterious union or 
 conspiration Of the Divine with the Human in the Spirits of 
 the Just, spoken of in Romans, viii. 27., the Word of God at- 
 tributes the language of the Spirit sanctified to the Holy One, 
 the Sanctifier. 
 
 Now the Spirit in Man (that is, the Will) knows its own 
 State in and by its Acts alone : even as in geometrical reason- 
 ing the Mind knows its constructive faculty in the act of con- 
 structing, and contemplates the act in the jiroduct (i. e. the 
 mental figure or diagram) which is inseparable from the act 
 
 and co-instantaneous. '*; 
 
 » 
 
 Let the Reader join these two positions : first, that the Di- 
 vine Spirit acting m the Human Will is described as one with 
 the Will so filled and actuated : secondly, that our actions are 
 the means, by which alone the Will becomes assured of its 
 own state : and he will understand, though he may not per- 
 haps adopt my suggestion, that the Verse, in which God speak- 
 
 M .A 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. Oi 
 
 ing of himself, says to Abraham, Now I know that thou fcar- 
 est God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy Son, thy only vSon 
 from me — may be more than merely figurative. An accom- 
 modation I grant ; but in the thing expressed, and not alto- 
 gether in the Expressions. In arguing with intidels, or with 
 the weak in faith, it is a part of religious Prudence, no less 
 than of religious Morality, to avoid whatever looks like an 
 evasion. To retain the literal sense, wherever the harmony 
 of Scripture permits, and reason does not forbid, is ever the 
 honester, and nine times in ten, the more rational and preg- 
 nant interpretation. 
 
 Of the Figures of Speech in the sacred Volume, that are 
 only Figures of Speech, the one of most frequent occurrence 
 is that which describes an effect by the name of its most usual 
 and best known cause : the passages, for instance, in which 
 Grief, Fury, Repentance, &c., are attributed to the Deity. 
 But these are far enough from justifying the (I had almost 
 said dishonest ) fashion of metaphorical Glosses, in as well as 
 out of the Church ; and which our fashionable Divines have 
 carried to such an extent, as, in the doctrinal part of their 
 Creed, to leave little else but Metaphors. But the Reader 
 who wishes to find this latter subject, and that of the Apho- 
 rism, treated more at large, is referred to Southey's Omniana, 
 Vol. II, p. 7—12. and to the Note in p. 62—67. of the Edi- 
 tor's second Lay-Sermon [33]. 
 
 APHORISM XV, L, A.VDED. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN NO STOIC. 
 
 Seek not altogether to dry up the stream of Sorrow, but to 
 bound it, and keep it within its banks. Religion doth not des- 
 troy the life of nature, but adds to it a life more excellent ; 
 yea, it doth not only permit, but requires some feeling of af- 
 flictions. Instead of patience, there is in some men an affect- 
 ed pride of spirit suitable only to the doctrine of the Stoics as 
 it is usually taken. They strive not to feel at all the afflic- 
 tions that are on them ; but where there is no feeling at all^ 
 there can be no patience. 
 
 8 
 
58 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic is, doubtless, 
 the nearest to Christianity. Yet even to this Christianity is 
 fundamentally opposite. For the Stoic attaches the highest 
 honour (or rather attaches honour solely) to the person that 
 acts virtuously in spite of his feelings, or who has raised him- 
 self above the conflict by their extinction ; while Christianity 
 instructs us to place small reliance on a Virtue that does not 
 begin by bringing the Feelings to a conformity with the Com- 
 mands of the Conscience, Its especial aim, its characteristic 
 operation, is to moralize the affections. The Feelings, that 
 oppose a right act, must be wrong Feelings. The act^ indeed, 
 whatever the Agent's feelings might be, Christianity would 
 command : and under certain circumstances would both com- 
 mand and commend it,— commend it, as a healthful symp- 
 tom in a sick Patient ; and command it, as one of the ways 
 and means of changing the Feelings, or displacing them by 
 calling up the opposite. 
 
 APHORISM XVI. LEIGHTON. 
 
 As excessive eating or drinking both makes the body sickly 
 and lazy, fit for nothing but sleep, and besots the mind, as it 
 clogs up with crudities the way through which the spirit should 
 pass[34], bemiring them, and making them move heavily, as a 
 coach in a deep way ; thus doth all immoderate use of the 
 world and its delight wrong the soul in its spiritual condition, 
 makes it sickly and feeble, full of spiritual distempers and in- 
 activity, benumbs the graces of the Spirit, and fills the soul 
 with sleepy vapours, makes it grow secure and heavy in spirit- 
 ual exercises, and obstructs the way and motion of the Spirit 
 of God, in the Soul. Therefore, if you would be spiritual, 
 healthful, and vigorous, and enjoy much of the consolations of 
 Heaven, be sparing and sober in those of the earth, and what 
 you abate of the one, shall be certainly made up in the other. 
 
 APHORISM XVII L. AND ED. 
 
 INCONSISTENCY. 
 
 It is a most unseemly and unpleasant thing, to see a man's 
 life full of ups and downs, one step like a Christian, and ano- 
 
 ■■-.A 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 59 
 
 ther like a worldling ; it cannot choose but both pain himself 
 and mar the edification of others. 
 
 The same sentiment, only with a special application to the 
 maxims and measures of our Cabinet and Statesmen, had been 
 finely expressed by a sage Poet of the preceding Generation, 
 in lines which no Generation will find inapplicable or super- 
 annuated. 
 
 God and the World we worship both together, 
 
 Draw not our Laws to Him, but His to ours ; 
 Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither, 
 
 The imperfect Will brings forth but barren Flowers ! 
 Unwise as all distracted Interests be, 
 Strangers to God, Fools in Humanity : 
 Too good for great things, and too great for good. 
 While still, " 1 dare not" waits upon " I wou'd." 
 
 APHORISM XVII. CONTINUED. LEIGHTON. 
 
 THE ORDINARY MOTIVE TO INCONSISTENCY. 
 
 What though the polite man count thy fashion a little odd 
 and too precise, it is because he knows nothing above that mo- 
 del of goodness which he hath set himself, and therefore ap- 
 proves of nothing beyond it : he knows not God, and there- 
 fore doth not discern and esteem what is most like Him. 
 When courtiers come down into the country, the common 
 home-bred people possibly think their habit strange ; but they 
 care not for that, it is the fashion at court. What need, then, 
 that Christians should be so tender-foreheaded, as to be put 
 out of countenance because the world looks on holiness as a 
 singularity ? It is the only fashion in the highest court, yea, 
 of the King of Kings himself. 
 
 APHORISM XVIII. LEIGHTON. 
 
 SUPERFICIAL RECONCILIATIONS, AND THE SELF DECEIT IN 
 
 FORGIVING. 
 
 When, after variances, men are brought to an agreement, 
 
60 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 they are much subject to this, rather to cover their remaining 
 malices with superficial verbal forgiveness, than to dislodge 
 them, and free the heart of them. This is a poor self-deceit. 
 As the philosopher said to him, who being ashamed that he was 
 espied by him in a tavern in the outer room, withdrew him- 
 self to the inner, he called after him, ' That is not the way 
 'out ; the more you go that way, you will be the further in !' 
 So when hatreds are upon admonition not thrown out, but re- 
 tire inward to hide themselves, they grow deeper and strong- 
 er than before ; and those constrained semblances of recon- 
 cilement are but a false healing, do but skin the wound over, 
 and therefore it usually breaks forth worse again. 
 
 APHORISM XIX. LEiaHTo^. 
 
 OF THE WORTH AND THE DUTIES OF THE PREACHER. 
 
 The stream of custom and our profession bring us to the 
 Preaching of the Word, and we sit out our hour under the sound ; 
 but how few consider and prize it as the great ordinance of 
 God for the salvation of souls, the beginner and the sustainer 
 of the Divine life of grace within us ! And certainly, until 
 we have these thoughts of it, and seek to feel it thus ourselves, 
 although we hear it most frequently, and let slip no occasion, 
 yea, hear it with attention and some present delight, yet still 
 we miss the right use of it, and turn it from its true end, while 
 we take it not as that ingrafted ivord which is able to save our 
 souls, James i. 21. 
 
 Thus ought they who preach to speak the word ; to endeav- 
 our their utmost to accommodate it to this end, that sinners 
 may be converted, begotten again, and believers nourished 
 and strengthened in their spiritual life ; to regard no lower end, 
 but aim steadily at that mark. Their hearts and tongues ought 
 to be set on fire with holy zeal for God and love to souls, 
 kindled by the Holy Ghost, that came down on the apostles in 
 the shape of fiery tongues. 
 
 And those that hear, should remember this as the end of 
 their hearing, that tlicy may receive spiritual life and strengtii 
 by the w>i;l. I*^)r l]inui.:;li i( s<'onis ;i poor <lrspi('nl)l(> business. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 61 
 
 that a frail sinful man like yourselves should speak a few 
 words in your hearing, yet, look upon it as the way wherein 
 God communicates happiness to those who believe, and works 
 that believing unto happiness, alters the whole frame of the 
 soul, and makes a new creation, as it begets it again to the in- 
 heritance of glory. Consider it thus, which is its true notion ; 
 and then, what can be so precious ? 
 
 APHORISM XX. LEIGHTOJf. 
 
 The difference is great in our natural life, in some persons 
 especially ; that they who in infancy were so feeble, and wrap- 
 ped up as others in swaddling clothes, yet, afterwards come to 
 excel in wisdom and in the knowledge of sciences, or to be 
 commanders of great armies, or to be kings : but the distance 
 is far greater and more admirable, betwixt the small begin- 
 nings of grace, and our after perfection, that fulness of knowl- 
 edge that we look for, and that crown of immortality which 
 all they are born to, who are born of God. 
 
 But as in the faces or actions of some children, characters 
 and presages of their after greatness have appeared ( as a sin- 
 gular beauty in Moses's face, as they write of him, and as Cy- 
 rus was made king among the shepherd's children with whom 
 he was brought up, &c. ) so also, certainly, in these children 
 of God, there be some characters and evidences that they are 
 born for Heaven by their new birth. That holiness and meek- 
 ness, that patience and faith Avhich shine in the actions and 
 sufferings of the saints, are characters of their Father's image, 
 and show their high original, and foretel their glory to come ; 
 such a glory as doth not only surpass the world's thoughts, but 
 the thoughts of the children of God themselves. 1. John 
 iii. 2. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 ON AN INTERMEDIATE STATE OR STATE OF TRANSITION FROM 
 
 MORALITY TO SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 This Aphorism would, it moy seem, have been placed more 
 fitly in the Chnjitcr follow inu;. In piMcinu; it here, I have been 
 
©3 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 determined by the following Convictions: 1. Every State, 
 and consequently that which we have described as the State 
 of Religious Morality, which is not progressive, is dead or re- 
 trogade. 2. As a pledge of this progression, or, at least, as 
 the form in which the propulsive tendency shows itself, there 
 are certain Hopes, Aspirations, Yearnings, that, with more or 
 less of consciousness, rise and stir in the Heart of true moral- 
 ity as naturally as the Sap in the full-formed stem of a Rose 
 flows towards the Bud, within which the flower is maturing. 
 3. No one, whose own experience authorizes him to confirm 
 the truth of this statement, can have been conversant with 
 the Volumes of Religious Biography, can have perused (for 
 instance) the Lives of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Wishart, 
 Sir Thomas More, Bernard Gilpin, Bishop Bedel, or of Egede, 
 Swartz, and the Missionaries of the Frozen world, without an 
 occasional conviction, that these men lived under extraordina- 
 ry influences, that in each instance and in all ages of the Chris- 
 tian sera bear the same characters, and both in the accompa- 
 niments and the results evidently refer to a common origin. 
 And what can this be ? is the Question that must needs force 
 itself on the mind in the first moment of reflection on a phe- 
 'nomenon so interesting and apparently so anomalous. The 
 answer is as necessarily contained in one or the other of two 
 assumptions. These influences are either the Product of De- 
 lusion (Insania Amabilis, and the Re-action of disordered 
 Nerves), or they argue the existence of a Relation to some 
 real Agency, distinct from Avhat is experienced or acknowl- 
 edged by the world at large, for which as not merely natural 
 on the one hand, yet not assumed to be 'miraculous[^b'\ on the 
 other, we have no apter name than spiritual. Now if neither 
 analogy justifies nor the moral feelings permit the former as- 
 sumption ; and we decide therefore in favour of the Reality 
 of a State other and higher than the mere Moral Man, whose 
 Religion [36] consists in Morality, has attained under these 
 convictions ; can the existence of a transitional state appear 
 other than probable ? or that these very Convictions, when 
 accompanied by correspondent dispositions and stirrings of the 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 63 
 
 Heart, are among the Marks and Indications of such a state ? 
 And thinking it not unlikely that among the Readers of this 
 Volume, there may be found some Individuals, whose inward 
 State, though disquieted by Doubts and oftener still perhaps 
 by blank Misgivings, may, nevertheless, betoken the com- 
 mencement of a Transition from a not irreligious Morality to 
 a Spiritual Religion, with a view to their interests I placed 
 this Aphorism under the present Head. 
 
 APHORISM XXI. LEIGHTOX. 
 
 The most approved teachers of wisdom, in a human way, 
 have required of their scholars, that to the end their minds 
 might be capable of it, they should be purified from vice and 
 wickedness. And it was Socrates' s custom, when any one 
 asked him a question, seeking to be informed by him, before 
 he would answer them, he asked them concerning their own 
 qualities and course of life. 
 
 APHORISM XXII. L. AND ED. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE NOT THE ULTIMATE END OF RELIGIOUS PUR-^ 
 
 SUITS. 
 
 The Hearing and Reading of the Word, under which I 
 comprize theological studies generally, are alike defective 
 when pursued without increase of Knowledge, and when pur- 
 sued chiefly /or increase of Knowledge. To seek no more 
 than a present delight, that evanisheth with the sound of the 
 words that die in the air, is not to desire the word as meat, 
 but as music, as God tells the prophet Ezekiel of his people, 
 Ezek, xxxiii- 32. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely 
 song of one that hath a pleasant voice^ and can j)lay well ujion 
 an instrument ; for they hear thy ivords^ and they do them 
 not. To desire the word for the increase of knowledge, al- 
 though this is necessary and commendable, and, being rightly 
 qualified, is a part of spiritual accretion, yet, take it as going 
 no further, it is not the true end of the word. Nor is the 
 venting of that know^ledge in speech and frequent discourse 
 of the word and the divine truths that are in it ; which, where 
 
64 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it is governed with Christian prudence, is not to be despised 
 but commended ; yet, certainly, the highest knowledge, and 
 the most frequent and skilful speaking of the word, severed 
 from the growth here mentioned, misses the true end of the 
 word. If any one's head or tongue should grow apace, and 
 all the rest stand at a stay, it would certainly make him a mon- 
 ster ; and they are no other, who are knowing and discour- 
 sing Christians, and grow daily in that respect, but not at all 
 in holiness of heart and life, which is the proper growth of the 
 children of God. Apposite to their case is Epictetus's com- 
 parison of the sheep ; they return not what they eat in grass, 
 but in wool. 
 
 APHORISM XXin. LEIGHTON. 
 
 THE SUM or CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 In times of peace, the Church may dilate more, and build 
 as it were into breadth, but in times of trouble, it arises more 
 in height ; it is then built upwards : as in cities where men 
 are straitened, they build usually higher than in the country. 
 
 APHORISM XXIV. L. AND ED. 
 
 WORTHY TO BE FRAMED AND HUNG UP IN THE LIBRARY OF 
 EVERY THEOLOGICAL STUDENT. 
 
 Where there is a great deal of smoke, and no clear flame, 
 it argues much moisture in the matter, yet it witnesseth cer- 
 tainly that there is fire there ; and therefore dubious question- 
 ing is a much better evidence, than that senseless deadness 
 which most take for believing. Men that know nothing in 
 sciences, have no doubts. He never truly believed, who was 
 not made first sensible and convinced of unbelief. 
 
 Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition 
 to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing 
 the Truth. I will venture to add in my own name and from 
 my own conviction the following : 
 
 APHORISM XXV. EDITOR, 
 
 He, who boglns by loving Christianity better than Truth,. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 65 
 
 will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than 
 Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. 
 
 APHORISM XXVI. L. AND ED. 
 
 THE ABSENCE OF DISPUTES, AND A GENERAL AVERSION TO 
 RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES, NO PROOF OF TRUE UNANIM- 
 ITY. 
 
 The boasted Peaceableness about questions of Faith too 
 often proceeds from a superficial Temper, and not seldom from 
 a supercilious Disdain of whatever has no marketable use or 
 value, and from indifference to Religion itself. Toleration is 
 an Herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of Indifference ; 
 but the Weed has none of the Virtues of the Medicinal Plant, 
 reared by Humility in the Garden of Zeal. Those, who re- 
 gard Religions as matters of Taste, may consistently include 
 all religious differences in the old Adage, De gustibus non est 
 disputandum. And many there be among these of Gallio's 
 temper, who care for none of these things^ and who account 
 all questions in religion, as he did, but matter of words and 
 names. And by this all religions may agree together. But 
 that were not a natural union produced by the active heat of 
 the spirit, but a confusion rather, arising from the want of it ; 
 not a knitting together, but a freezing together, as cold con- 
 gregates all bodies, how heterogeneous soever, sticks, stones, 
 and water; but heat makes first a separation of different 
 things, and then unites those that are of the same nature. 
 
 Much of our common union of minds, I fear, proceeds from 
 no other than the aforementioned causes, want of knowledge, 
 and want of affection to religion. You that boast you live 
 conformably to the appointments of the Church, and that no 
 one hears of your noise, we may thank the ignorance of your 
 minds for that kind of quietness. 
 
 The preceding Extract is particularly entitled to our serious 
 reflections, as in a tenfold degree more applicable to the pre- 
 sent times than to the age in which it was written. We all 
 know, that Lovers are apt to take offence and wrangle on oc- 
 casions that perhaps are but trifles, and which assuredly would 
 
 9 
 
66 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 appear such to those who regard Love itself as Folly. These 
 Quarrels may, indeed, be no proof of Wisdom : but still, in 
 the imperfect state of our Nature the entire absence of the 
 same, and this too on far more serious provocations, would 
 excite a strong suspicion of a comparative indifference in the 
 Parties who can love so coolly where they profess to love so 
 well. I shall believe our present religious Tolerancy to pro- 
 ceed from the abundance of our charity and good sense, when 
 I see proofs that we are equally cool and forbearing as Liti- 
 gants and Political Partizans. 
 
 APHORISM XXVIL ' LEiGHToif, 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF WORLDLY VIEWS (OR WHAT ARE CALLED 
 A man's prospects in life), the bane of the CHRISTIAN 
 MINISTRY. 
 
 It is a base, poor thing for a man to seek himself : far be- 
 low that royal dignity that is here put upon Christians, and 
 that priesthood joined with it. Under the Law, those who 
 were squint-eyed were incapable of the priesthood : truly, 
 this squinting toward our own interest, the looking aside to 
 that, in God's affairs especially, so deforms the face of the soul, 
 that it makes it altogether unworthy the honour of this spirit- 
 ual priesthood. Oh ! this is a large task, an infinite task. The 
 several creatures bear their part in this; the sun says some- 
 what, and moon and stars, yea, the lowest have some share in 
 it ; the very plants and herbs of the field speak of God ; and 
 yet, the very highest and best, yea all of them together, the 
 whole concert of Heaven and earth, cannot show forth all His 
 praise to the full. No, it is but apart, the smallest part of that 
 glory, which they can reach* 
 
 APHORISM XXVin. LEIGHTON. 
 
 despise none : despair of none. 
 
 The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece 
 of paper in their way, but took it up ; for possibly, said they, 
 the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 67 
 
 superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good reli- 
 gion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any ; there 
 may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. 
 The name of God may be written upon that soul thou tread- 
 est on ; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to 
 give His precious blood for it ; therefore despise it not. 
 
 APHORISM XXIX. LEiGHTox 
 
 MEN OF LEAST MERIT MOST APT TO BE CONTEMPTUOUS, BE- 
 CAUSE MOST IGNORANT AND MOST OVERWEENING OF THEM- 
 SELVES. 
 
 Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves ; for 
 they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of others, 
 and scarcely give their good qualities half an eye, while, on 
 the contrary in themselves, they study to the full their own 
 advantages, and their weaknesses and defects, (as one says), 
 they skip over, as children do their hard words in their lesson, 
 that are troublesome to read ; and making this uneven parallel 
 what wonder if the Result be a gross mistake of themselves ! 
 
 APHORISM XXX. LEiGHTo.v. 
 
 VANITY MAY STRUT IN RAGS, AND HUMILITY BE ARRAYED IN 
 PURPLE AND FINE LINEN. 
 
 It is not impossible that there may be in some an aft'ected 
 pride in the meanness of apparel, and in others, under either 
 neat or rich attire, a very humble unaffected mind : using it 
 upon some of the aforementioned engagements, or such like, 
 and yet, the heart not at all upon it. Magnus qui fictilihus 
 utitur tanquam argento, nee ill minor qui argento tanquam 
 fictilihus^ says Seneca : Great is he who enjoys his earthen- 
 ware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom 
 all his plate is no more than earthenware. 
 
 APHORISM XXXL l. a>d ed. 
 
 OF DETRACTION AMONG RELIGIOUS PROFESSORS. 
 
 They who have attained to a self-pleasing pitch of ei\'ility 
 or formal religion, have usually that point of presumption with 
 
68 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it, that they make their own size the model and rule to exam- 
 ine all by. What is below it, they condemn indeed as pro- 
 fane ; but what is beyond it, they account needless and affected 
 preciseness : and therefore are as ready as others to let fly 
 invectives or bitter taunts against it, which are the keen and 
 poisoned shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that shall be 
 called to a strict account. 
 
 The slanders, perchance, may not be altogether forged or 
 untrue : they may be the implements, not the inventions of 
 Malice. But they do not on this account escape the guilt of 
 Detraction. Rather, it is characteristic of the evil spirit in 
 question, to work by the advantage of real faults ; but these 
 stretched and aggravated to the utmost. It is not expressi- 
 ble HOW DEEP A WOUND A TONGUE SHARPENED TO THIS WORK 
 WILL. GIVE, WITH NO NOISE AND A VERY LITTLE WORD. This 
 
 is the true white gunpowder, which the dreaming Projectors of 
 silent Mischiefs and insensible Poisons sought for in the Lab- 
 oratories of Art and Nature, in a World of Good ; but which 
 was to be found, in its most destructive form, in " the World 
 of Evil, the Tongue." 
 
 APHORISM XXXII. LEIGHTON. 
 
 THE REMEDY. 
 
 All true remedy must begin at the heart ; otherwise it will 
 be but a mountebank cure, a false imagined conquest. The 
 weights and wheels are there^ and the clock strikes according 
 to their motion. Even he that speaks contrary to what is 
 within him, guilefully contrary to his inward conviction and 
 knowledge, yet speaks conformably to what is within him in 
 the temper and frame of his heart, which is double, a heart 
 and a hearty as the Psalmist hath it, Psal. xii. 2. 
 
 APHORISM XXXIII. L. AND ED. 
 
 It is an argument of a candid ingenuous mind, to delight in 
 the good name and commendation of others ; to pass by their 
 defects, and take notice of their virtues ; and to speak and 
 hear of those willingly, and not endure cither to speak or hear 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 69 
 
 of the other ; for in this indeed you may be little less guilty 
 than the evil speaker, in taking pleasure in it, though you 
 speak it not. He that willingly drinks in tales and calumnies, 
 will, from the delight he hath in evil hearing, slide insensibly 
 into the humor of evil speaking. It is strange hov/ most per- 
 sons dispense with themselves in this point, and that in scarce- 
 ly any societies shall we find a hatred of this ill, but rather 
 some tokens of taking pleasure in it ; and until a Christian sets 
 himself to an inward watchfulness over his heart, not suffering 
 in it any thought that is uncharitable, or vain self-esteem, up- 
 on the sight of others' frailties, he will still be subject to 
 somewhat of this, in the tongue or ear at least. So, then, as 
 for the evil of guile in the tongue, a sincere heart, truth in 
 the inward parfs^ powerfully redresses it ; therefore it is ex- 
 pressed, Psal. XV. 2. That speaketh the truth from his heart ; 
 thence it flows. Seek much after this, to speak nothing v^'ith 
 God, nor men, but what is the sense of a single unfeigned 
 heart. O sweet truth ! excellent but rare sincerity ! he that 
 loves that truth within^ and who is himself at once the truth 
 and THE LIFE, He alone can work it there ! Seek it of him. 
 
 It is characteristic of the Roman Dignity and Sobriety, that 
 in the Latin to favour the tongue ( favere linguae ) means, to 
 he silent. We say. Hold your tongue ! as if it were an in- 
 juuction, that could not be carried into effect but by manual 
 force, or the pincers of the Forefinger and Thumb ! And ve- 
 rily — I blush to say it — it is not Women and Frenchmen only 
 that would rather have their tongues bitten than bitted, and 
 feel their souls in a strait-waistcoat, when they are obliged to 
 remain silent. 
 
 APHORISM XXXIV, leighton 
 
 ON THE PASSION FOR NEW AND STRIKING THOUGHTS. 
 
 In conversation seek not so much either to vent thy knowl- 
 edge, or to increase it, as to know more spiritually and effec- 
 tually what thou dost know. And in this w^ay those mean 
 despised truths, that every one thinks he is sufficiently seen 
 in, will have a new sweetness and use in them, which thou 
 
70 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 didst not so well perceive before (for these flowers cannot be 
 sucked dry), and in this humble sincere way thou shalt grow 
 in grace and in knowledge too. 
 
 APHORISM XXXV. l. and ed. 
 
 THE RADICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GOOD MAN AND THE 
 
 VICIOUS MAN. 
 
 The godly man hates the evil he possibly by temptation 
 hath been drawn to do, and loves the good he is frustrated of, 
 and, having intended, hath not attained to do. The sinner, 
 who hath his denomination from sin as his course, hates the 
 good which sometimes he is forced to do, and loves that sin 
 which many times he does not, either wanting occasion and 
 means, so that he cannot do it, or through the check of an en- 
 lightened conscience possibly dares not do ; and though so 
 bound up from the act, as a dog in a chain, yet the habit, the 
 natural inclination and desire in him, is still the same, the 
 strength of his affection is carried to sin. So in the weakest 
 sincere Christian, there is that predominant sincerity and de- 
 sire of holy walking, according to which he is called a right- 
 eous person^ the Lord is pleased to give him that name, and 
 account him so, being upright in heart, though often failing. 
 
 Leighton adds, "There is a Righteousness of a higher 
 " strain." I do not ask the Reader's full assent to this posi- 
 tion : I do not suppose him as yet prepared to yield it. But 
 thus much he will readily admit, that here, if any where, we 
 are to seek the fine Line which, like stripes of Light in Light, 
 distinguishes, not divides, the summit of religious Morality 
 from Spiritual Religion. 
 
 " A Righteousness (Leighton continues), that is not in him, 
 but upon him. He is clothed with it." This, Reader ! is the 
 controverted Doctrine, so warmly asserted and so bitterly de- 
 cried under the name of " imputed righteousness." Our 
 learned Archbishop, you see, adopts it ; and it is on this ac- 
 count principally, that by many of our leading Churchmen his 
 Orthodoxy has been more than questioned, and his name put 
 in the List of proscribed Divnies, as a Calvinist. That Leigh- 
 
3IORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 71 
 
 ton attached a definite sense to the words above quoted, it 
 would be uncandid to doubt ; and the general Spirit of his 
 Writings leads me to presume that it was compatible with the 
 eternal distinction between Things and Pei^sons^ and there- 
 fore opposed to modern Calvinism. But what it was, I have 
 not (I own) been able to discover. The sense, however, in 
 which I think he might have received this doctrine, and in 
 which I avow myself a believer in it, I shall have an opportu- 
 nity of showing in another place. My present Object is to 
 open out the Road by the removal of prejudices, so far at 
 least as to throw some disturbing Doubts on the secure Ta- 
 king-for-granted^ that the peculiar Tenets of the Christian 
 Faith asserted in the Articles and Homilies of our National 
 Church are in contradiction to the Common Sense of Man- 
 kind. And with this view, (and not in the arrogant expecta- 
 tion or wish, that a mere ipse dixit should be received for ar- 
 gument) I here avow my conviction, that the doctrine of im- 
 puted Righteousness, rightly and scripturally interpreted, is 
 so far from being either irrational or immoral^ that Reason 
 itself prescribes the idea in order to give a meaning and an 
 ultimate Object to Morality ; and that the Moral Law in the 
 Conscience demands its reception in order to give reality and 
 substantive existence to the idea presented by the Reason. 
 
 APHORISM XXXVI. leighton. 
 
 Your blessedness is not, — no, believe it, it is not where 
 most of you seek it, in things below you. How can that be ^ 
 It must be a higher good to make you happy. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Every rank of Creatures, as it ascends in the scale of Cre- 
 ation, leaves Death behind it, or under it. The Metal at its 
 height of Being seems a mute Prophecy of the coming Vege- 
 tation, into a mimic semblance of which it crystallizes. The 
 Blossom and Flower, the Acme of Vegetable Life, divides in- 
 to correspondent Organs with reciprocal functions, and by in- 
 stinctive motions and approximations seems impatient of that 
 
72 • AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 fixture, by which it is differenced in kind from the flower-sha- 
 ped Psyche, that flutters with free wing above it. And won- 
 derfully in the insect reahn doth the IrritabiUty, the proper 
 seat of Instinct, while yet the nascent Sensibility is subordi- 
 nated thereto — most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscular 
 Life in the Insect, and the musculo-arterial in the Bird, imi- 
 tate and typically rehearse the adaptive Understanding, yea 
 and the moral affections and charities, of Man. Let us carry 
 ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious Week, the teem- 
 ing Work-days of the Creator : as they rose in vision before 
 the eye of the inspired Historian of " the Generations of the 
 Heaven and the Earth, in the days that the Lord God made 
 the Earth and the Heavens." And who that hath watch- 
 ed their ways with an understanding heart, could contemplate 
 the filial and loyal Bee ; the home-building, wedded, and di- 
 vorceless Swallow ; and above all the manifoldly intelligent 
 [37] Ant tribes, with their Commonwealths and Confedera- 
 cies, their Warriors and Miners, the Husbandfolk, that fold in 
 their tiny flocks on the hone} ed Leaf, and the Virgin Sisters 
 v/ith the holy Instincts of Maternal Love, detached and in 
 selfless purity — and not say to himself. Behold the Shadow of 
 approaching Humanity, the Sun rising from behind, in the 
 kindling Morn of Creation ! Thus all lower Natures And 
 their highest Good in semblances and seekings of that which 
 is higher and better. All things strive to ascend, and ascend 
 in their striving. And shall man alone stoop ? Shall his pur- 
 suits and desires, the reflections of his inward life, be like the 
 reflected Image of a Tree on the edge of a Pool, that grows 
 downward, and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable clement 
 beneath it, in neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds and 
 oozy bottom-grass that are yet better than itself and more no- 
 ble, in as far as Substances that appear as Shadows are pre- 
 ferable to Shadows mistaken for Substance ! No ! it must be 
 a higher good to make you happy. While you labour for any 
 thing below 3^our proper Humanity, you seek a happy Life in 
 the region of Death. W^ell saith the moral Poet — 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is nian I 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 73 
 
 APHORISM XXXVII. leighto>-. 
 
 There is an imitation of men that is impious and wicked, 
 which consists in taking the copy of their sins. Again, there 
 is an imitation which though not so grossly evil, yet, is poor 
 and servile, being in mean things, yea, sometimes descending 
 to imitate the very imperfections of others, as fancying some 
 comeliness in them , as some of Basil's scholars, who imitated 
 his slow speaking, which he had a little in the extreme, and 
 could not help. But this is always laudable, and worthy of 
 the best of minds, to be imitators of that tvhich is good, 
 wheresoever they find it ; for that stays not in any man's per- 
 son, as the ultimate pattern, but rises to the highest grace, 
 being man's nearest likeness to God, His image and resem- 
 blance, bearing his stamp and superscription, and belonging pe- 
 culiarly to Him, in what hand soever it be found, as carrying 
 the mark of no other owner than Him. 
 
 APHORISM XXXVIII. leighton. 
 
 Those who think themselves high-spirited, and will bear 
 least, as they speak, are often, even by that, forced to bow 
 most, or to burst under it ; while humility and meekness es- 
 cape many a burden, and many a blow, always keeping pace 
 within, and often without too. 
 
 APHORISM XXXIX. LEIGHTON. 
 
 Our condition is universally exposed to fears and troubles, 
 and no man is so stupid but he studies and projects for some 
 fence against them, some bulwark to break the incursion of 
 evils, and so to bring his mind to some ease, ridding it of the 
 fear of them. Thus, men seek safety in the greatness, or 
 multitude, or supposed faithfulness of friends ; they seek by 
 any means to be strongly underset this way, to have many and 
 powerful, and trust-worthy friends. But wiser men, perceiv- 
 ing the unsafety and vanity of these and all external things, 
 have cast about for some higher course. They see a necessi- 
 ty of withdrawing a man from externals, which do nothing but 
 mock and deceive those most who trust most to them ; but 
 
 10 
 
74 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 they cannot tell whither to direct him. The best of them 
 bring him into himself, and think to quiet him so, but the 
 truth is, he finds as little to support him there ; there is noth- 
 ing truly strong enough within him, to hold out against the 
 many sorrows and fears which still from without do assault 
 him. So then, though it is well done, to call off a man from 
 outward things, as moving sands, that he build not on them, 
 yet, this is not enough ; for hiSs own spirit is as unsettled a 
 piece as is in all the world, and must have some higher strength 
 than its own, to fortify and fix it. This is the way that is here 
 taught. Fear not their fear, but sanctify the Lord your God 
 in your hearts ; and if you can attain this latter, the former 
 will follow of itself. 
 
 APHORISM XL. LEIGHTON. 
 
 WORLDLY TROUBLES IDOLS. 
 
 The too ardent Love or self-willed Desire of Power, or 
 Wealth, 01 Credit in the World, is (an Apostle has assured us) 
 Idolatry. Now among the words or synonimes for Idols, in 
 the Hebrew Language, there is one that in its primary sense 
 signifies Troubles (Tegirim), other two that signify Terrors 
 (Miphletzeth and Emim). And so it is certainly. All our 
 Idols prove so to us. They fill us with nothing but anguish 
 and Troubles, with cares and fears, that are good for nothing 
 but to be fit punishments of the Folly, out of which they 
 arise. 
 
 APHORISM XLI. L.AND ED. 
 
 ON THE RIGHT TREATMENT OF INFIDELS. 
 
 A regardless contempt of Infidel writings is usually the fit- 
 test answer ; Spreta vilescerent. But where the holy profes- 
 sion of Christians is likely to receive either the main or the 
 indirect blow, and a word of defence may do any thing to 
 ward it oft, there we ought not to spare to do it. 
 
 Christian prudence goes a great way in the regulating of 
 this. Some are not capable of receiving rational answers, 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 75 
 
 especially in Divine things ; they were not only lost upon 
 them, but religion dishonored by the contest. 
 
 Of this sort are the vulgar Railers at Religion, the foul- 
 mouthed Beliers of the Christian Faith and History. Impu- 
 dently false and slanderous Assertions can be met only by 
 Assertions of their impudent and slanderous falsehood ; and 
 Christians will not, must not condescend to this. How can 
 mere Railing be answered by them who are forbidden to re- 
 turn a railing answer ? Whether or on what provocations such 
 offenders may be punished or coerced on the score of Incivili- 
 ty, and Ill-neighbourhood, and for the abatement of a Nui- 
 sance, as in the case of other Scolds and Endangerers of the 
 public Peace, must be trusted to the Discretion of the Civil 
 Magistrate. Even then, there is danger of giving them im- 
 portance, and flattering their vanity, by attracting attention to 
 their works, if the punishment be slight ; and if severe, of 
 spreading far and wide their reputation as Martyrs, as the 
 smell of a dead dog at a distance is said to change into that of 
 Musk. Experience hitherto seems to favour the plan of trea- 
 ting these Betes puantes and Enfans de Diable, as their four- 
 footed Brethren, the Skink and Squash, are treated [38] by 
 the American Woodmen, who turn their backs upon the fetid 
 Intruder, and make appear not to see him, even at the cost of 
 suffering him to regale on the favourite viand of these animals, 
 the brains of a stray goose or crested Thraso of the Dunghill. 
 At all events, it is degrading to the majesty, and injurious to 
 the character of Religion, to make its safety the plea for their 
 punishment, or at all to connect the name of Christianity with 
 the castigation of Indecencies that properly belong to the 
 Beadle, and the perpetrators of which would have equally de- 
 served his Lash, though the Religion of their fellow citizens, 
 thus assailed by them, had been that of Fo or of Jaggernaut. 
 
 On the other hand, we are to answer every one that in- 
 quires a reason^ or an account ; which supposes something re- 
 ceptive of it. We ought to judge ourselves engaged to give 
 it, be it an enemy if he will hear ; if it gain him not, it may in 
 part convince and cool him ; much more, should it be one who 
 
to AIDS TO KEFLECTIOX. 
 
 ingenuously inquires for satisfaction, and possibly inclines to 
 receive the truth, but has been prejudiced by false misrepresen- 
 tations of it. 
 
 APHORISM XLH. ixighto.x, 
 
 PASSIOX NO miEXD TO TBUTH. 
 
 Truth needs not the service of passion ; yea, nothing so 
 disserves it, as passion when set to serve it. The Spirit of 
 truth is withal the Spirit of meekness. The Dove that rested 
 on that great Champion of truth, who is The Truth itself, is 
 from Him derived to the lovers of truth, and they ought to 
 seek the participation of it. Imprudence makes some kind of 
 Christians lose much of their labour, in speaking for religion, 
 and drive those further off, whom they would draw into it. 
 
 The confidence that attends a Christian's belief makes the 
 believer not fear men, to whom he answers, but still he fears 
 his God, for whom he answers, and whose interest is chief in 
 those tilings he speaks of. The soul thai hath the deepest 
 sense of spiritual things, and the truest knowledge of God, 
 is most afraid to miscarry in speaking of Him, most tender and 
 wary how to acquit itself when engaged to speak of and for 
 God'[39]. 
 
 APHORISM XLin. LEiGHTO--^. 
 
 , ox THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 It is a fruitless verbal Debate, whether Conscience be a 
 Faculty or a Habit, ^^llen all is examined. Conscience will 
 be found to be no other than the mind of a man^ wider the 
 notion of a particular reference to himself and his own ac- 
 tions. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Whut Conscience is, and that it is the ground and antece- 
 dent of human ( or self- ) consciousness, and not any modifica- 
 tion of the latter, I have shown at large in a Work announced 
 for the Press, and described in the Chapter following. I have 
 selected the preceding Extract as an Exercise for Reflection ; 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. / / 
 
 and because I think that in too closely following Thomas a 
 Kempis, tlie Archbishop has strayed from his own judgment. 
 The Definition, for instance, seems to say all, and in fact says no- 
 thing ; for if 1 asked. How do you define the humanmind 9 the 
 answer must at least contain^ if not consist of, the words, " a 
 mind capable of Conscience.'^'* For Conscience is no synonime 
 of Consciousness, nor any mere expression of the same as mod- 
 ified by the particular Object. On the contrary, a Conscious- 
 ness properly human, (t. e. <Se//'-consciousness), with the sense 
 of moral responsibility, presupposes the Conscience, as its an- 
 tecedent Condition and Ground. Lastly, the sentence, 't It is 
 a fruitless verbal Debate," is an assertion of the same com- 
 plexion with the contemptuous Sneers at Verbal Criticism by 
 the Contemporaries of Bentley. In Questions of Philosophy 
 or Divinity, that have occupied the Learned and been the 
 subjects of many successive Controversies, for one instance of 
 mere Logomachy I could bring ten instances of Logodadaly 
 or verbal Legerdemain, which have perilously confirmed Prej- 
 udices, and withstood the advancement of Truth, in conse- 
 quence of the neglect of verbal debate^ i. e. strict discussion of 
 Terms. In whatever sense, however, the term Conscience 
 may be used, the following aphorism is equally true and im- 
 portant. It is worth noticing, likewise, that Leighton himself 
 in a following page (vol. ii. p. 97 ), tells us, that A good Con- 
 science is the Root of a good Conversation : and then quotes 
 from St. Paul a text, Titus i. 15, in which the mind and the 
 Conscience are expressly distinguished. 
 
 APHORISM XLIV. leightox 
 
 THE LIGHT OF KNOW^LEDGE A NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENT OF 
 
 A GOOD CONSCIENCE. 
 
 If you would have a good conscience, you must by all means 
 have so much light, so much knowledge of the will of God 
 as may regulate you, and show you your way, may teach you 
 how to do, and speak, and think, as in His presence. 
 
78 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 APHORISM XLV. jleightow. 
 
 YET THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULE, THOUGH ACCOMPANIED 
 BY AN ENDEAVOR TO ACCOMMODATE OUR CONDUCT TO THIS 
 RULE, WILL NOT OF ITSELF FORM A GOOD CONSCIENCE. 
 
 To set the outward actions right, though with an honest in- 
 tention, and not so to regard and find out the inward disorder 
 of the heart, whence that in the actions flows, is but to be still 
 putting the index of a clock right with your finger, while it is 
 foul, or out of order within, which is a continual business, and 
 does no good. Oh ! but a purified conscience, a soul renewed 
 and refined in its temper and affections, will make things go 
 right without, in all the duties and acts of our callings. 
 
 APHORISM XL VI. editor. 
 
 THE DEPTH OF THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 How deeply seated the Conscience is in the human Soul, 
 is seen in the effect which sudden Calamities produce on guil- 
 ty men, even when unaided by any determinate notion or fears 
 of punishment after death. The wretched Criminal, as one 
 rudely awakened from a long sleep, bewildered with the new 
 light, and half recollecting, half striving to recollect, a fearful 
 something, he knows not what, but which he will recognize as 
 soon as he hears the name, already interprets the calamities in- 
 to judgments, Executions of a Sentence passed by an invisi- 
 ble Judge ; as if the vast Pyre of the Last Judgment were al- 
 ready kindled in an unknown Distance, and some Flashes of 
 it, darting forth at intervals beyond the rest, w^ere flying and 
 lighting upon the face of his Soul. The calamity may consist 
 in loss of fortune, or Character, or Reputation ; but you hear 
 no regrets from him. Remorse extinguishes all Regret; and 
 Remorse is the implicit Creed of the Guilty. 
 
 APHORISM XL VII. l. and ed. 
 
 God hath suited every creature He hath made with a con- 
 venient good to which it tends, and in the obtainment of which 
 it rests and is satisfied. Natural bodies have all their own 
 natural place, whither, if not hindered, they move incessantly 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 79 
 
 till they be in it ; and they declare, by resting there, that they 
 are (as I may say) where they would be. Sensitive creatures 
 are carried to seek a sensitive good, as agreeable to their 
 rank in being, and, attaining that, aim no further. Now, in 
 this is the excellency of Man, that he is made capable of a 
 communion with his Maker, and, because capable of it, is un- 
 satisfied without it ; the soul, being cut out (so to speak) to 
 that largeness, cannot be filled with less. Though he is fallen 
 from his right to that good, and from all right desire of it, yet, 
 not from a capacity of it, no, nor from a necessity of it, for the 
 answering and filling of his capacity. 
 
 Though the heart once gone from God turns continually fur- 
 ther away from him, and moves not towards Him till it be re- 
 newed, yet, even in that wandering, it retains that natural re- 
 lation to God, as its centre, that it hath no true rest elsewhere, 
 nor can by any means find it. It is made for Him, and is there- 
 fore still restless till it meet with him. 
 
 It is true, the natural man takes much pains to quiet his 
 heart by other things, and digests many vexations with hopes 
 of contentment in the end and accomplishment of some de- 
 sign he hath ; but still the heart misgives. Many times he at- 
 tains not the thing he seeks ; but if he do, yet he never at- 
 tains the satisfaction he seeks and expects in it, but only learns 
 from that to desire something further, and still hunts on after 
 a fancy, drives his own shadow before him, and never over- 
 takes it ; and if he did, yet it is but a shadow. And so, in 
 running from God, besides the sad end, he carries an interwo- 
 ven punishment with his sin, the natural disquiet and vexa- 
 tion of his spirit, fluttering to and fro, and finding no 7'estfor 
 the sole of his foot ; the tvaters of inconstancy and vanity cov- 
 ering the whole face of the earth. 
 
 These things are too gross and heavy. The soul, the im- 
 mortal soul, descended from heaven, must either be more hap- 
 py, or remain miserable. The Highest, the Increated Spirit, 
 is the proper good, the Father of spirits, that pure and full 
 good, which raises the soul above itself; whereas all other 
 things draw it down below itself. So, then, it is never well 
 
80 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 with the soul, but when it is near unto God, yea, in its union 
 with Him, married to Him : mismatching itself elsewhere, it 
 hath never any thing but shame and sorrow. All that forsake 
 Thee shall be ashamed^ says the Prophet, Jer. xvii. 13 : and 
 the Psalmist; They that are far offfj'om thee shall perish^ Psal. 
 Ixxiii. 27. And this is indeed our natural miserable condition, 
 and it is often expressed this way, by estrangedness and dis~ 
 tance from God. 
 
 The same sentiments are to be found in the works of Pagan 
 Philosophers and Moralists. Well then may they be made a 
 Subject of Reflection in our days. And well may the pious 
 Deist, if such a character now exists, reflect that Christianity 
 alone both teaches the way, and provides the means, of fulfil- 
 ling the obscure promises of this great Instinct for all men, 
 which the Philosophy of boldest Pretensions confined to the 
 sacred Few. 
 
 APHORISM XLVIIL leighton. 
 
 A CONTRACTED SPHERE, OR WHAT IS CALLED RETIRING FR03I 
 THE BUSINESS OF THE WORLD, NO SECURITY FROM THE SPIRIT 
 OF THE WORLD. 
 
 The heart may be engaged in a little business as much, if 
 thou watch it not, as in many and great affairs. A man may 
 drown in a little brook or pool, as well as in a great river, if 
 he be down and plunge himself into it, and put his head un- 
 der water. Some care thou must have, that thou mayest not 
 care. Those things that are thorns indeed, thou must make a 
 hedge of them, to keep out those temptations that accompany 
 sloth, and extreme want that waits on it ; but let them be the 
 hedge : suffer them not to grow within the garden. 
 
 APHORIS3I XLIX. LEienTON. 
 
 ON CTURCH-GOING, AS A PART OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY, WHEN 
 NOT IN REFERENCE TO A SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 It is a strange folly in multitudes of us, to set ourselves no 
 mark, to propound no end in the hearing of the Gospel. The 
 merchant sails not n^erely that he may sail, but for trafi&c, and 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 81 
 
 traffics that he may be rich. The husbandman plows not 
 merely to keep himself busy, with no further end, but plows 
 that he may sow, and sows that he may reap with advantage. 
 And shall we do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitless- 
 ly^ — hear only to hear, and look no further ? This is indeed 
 a great vanity, and a great misery, to lose that labour, and 
 gain nothing by it, which duly used, would be of all others 
 most advantageous and gainful : and yet all meetings are full 
 of this ! 
 
 APHORISM L. LEIGHTON. 
 
 ON THE HOPES AND SELF-SATISFACTION OF A RELIGIOUS MORA- 
 LIST, INDEPENDENT OF A SPIRITUAL FAITH ON WHAT ARE 
 
 THEY GROUNDED ? 
 
 There have been great disputes one way or another, about 
 the merit of good works ; but I truly think they who have la- 
 boriously engaged in them have been very idly, though very 
 eagerly, employed about nothing, since the more sober of the 
 schoolmen themselves acknowledge there can be no such thing 
 as meriting from the blessed God, in the human, or, to speak 
 more accurately, in any created nature whatsoever : nay so 
 far from any possibility of merit, there can be no room for re- 
 ward any otherwise than of the sovereign pleasure and gra- 
 cious kindness of God ; and the more ancient writers, when 
 they use the word merit, mean nothing by it but a certain cor- 
 relaie to that reward which God both promises and bestows of 
 mere grace and benignity. Otherwise, in order to constitute 
 what is properly called merit, many things must concur, which 
 no man in his senses will presume to attribute to human 
 works, though ever so excellent ; particularly, that the thing 
 done must not previously be matter of debt, and that it be en- 
 tire, or our own act, unassisted by foreign aid ; it must also be 
 perfectly good, and it must bear an adequate proportion to the 
 reward claimed in consequence of it. If all these things do 
 not concur, the act cannot possibly amount to merit. Whereas 
 I think no one will venture to assert, that any one of these 
 
 11 
 
82 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 can take place in any human action whatever. But why 
 should I enlarge here, when one single circumstance over- 
 throws all those titles : the most righteous of mankind would 
 not be able to stand, if his works were weighed in the balance 
 of strict justice ; how much less then could they deserve that 
 immense glory which is now in question ! Nor is this to be 
 denied only concerning the unbeliever and the sinner, but 
 concerning the righteous and pious believer, who is not only 
 free from all the guilt of his former impenitence and lebellion 
 but endowed with the gift of the Spirit. " For the time is 
 come that judgment must begin at the house of God : and if 
 it first begin at as, what shall the end be of them that obey 
 not the Gospel of God ? And if the righteous scarcely be 
 saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ?" 1 Pe- 
 ter iv, 17, 18. The Apostle's interrogation expresses the 
 most vehement negation, and signifies that no mortal, in 
 whatever degree he is placed, if he be called to the strict 
 examination of Divine Justice, without daily and repeated for- 
 giveness could be able to keep his standing, and much less 
 could he arise to that glorious height. ' That merit,' says 
 Bernard, ' on which my hope relies, consists in these three 
 ' things ; the love of adoption, the truth of the promise, and 
 * the power of its performance.' This is the threefold cord 
 which cannot be broken. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Often have I heard it said by advocates for the Socinian 
 Scheme — True ! we are all sinners; but even in the Old Tes- 
 tament God has promised Forgiveness on Repentance. One 
 of the Fathers (I forget which) supplies the Retort — True ! 
 God has promised Pardon on Penitence : but has he promised 
 Penitence on Sin ? — He that repenteth shall be forgiven : but 
 where is it said. He that sinneth shall repent ? But Repen- 
 tance, perhaps, the Repentance required in Scripture, the Pas- 
 sing into a new niind^ into a new and contrary Principle of 
 Action, this Metanoia[40], is in the Sinner's own power ? 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS APHORISMS. 83 
 
 at his own Liking ? He has but to open his eyes to the sin, 
 and the Tears are close at hand to wash it away ! — Verily, 
 the exploded Tenet of Transubstantiation is scarcely at great- 
 er variance with the common Sense and Experience of Man- 
 kind, or borders more closely on a contradiction in terms, than 
 this volunteer Transmentation^ this Self-change, as the easy 
 [41] means of Self-salvation! But the Reflections of our 
 evangelical Author on this su])ject will appropriately com- 
 mence the Aphorisms relating to Spiritual Religion. 
 
ELEMENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 PRELIMIx\ARY TO THE 
 
 APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
Philip saitli unto liim : Lord show us the Fatlier, and it sufficeth us. 
 Jesus saith unto hiin, He tliat hath seen me hath seen the Father : and 
 how sayest thou then, Show us the Father ? BeUevest thou not, tliat I am 
 in the Father and the Father in me ? And I will pray tlie Father and he 
 shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth : whom the 
 world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But 
 ye know him (for he dwclleth with you and shall be in you). And in that 
 day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you. 
 John xiv. 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 20. 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 If there be aught Spiritual in Man, the Will must be such. 
 
 If there be a Will, there must be Spirituality in Man. 
 
 I suppose both positions granted. The Reader admits the 
 reality of the power, agency, or mode of Being expressed in 
 the term, Spirit ; and the actual existence of a Will, He sees 
 clearly, that the idea of the former is necessary to the con- 
 ceivability of the latter ; and that, vice versa, in asserting tlie 
 fact of the latter he presumes and instances the truth of the 
 former — just as in our common and received Systems of Nat- 
 ural Philosophy, the Being of imponderable Matter is assu- 
 med to render the Lode-stone intelligible, and the Fact of 
 the Lode-stone adduced to prove the reality of imponderable 
 Matter. 
 
 In short, I suppose the Reader, whom I now invite to the 
 third and last Division of the work, already disposed to reject 
 for himself and his human Brethren the insidious title of 
 " Nature's noblest Animal^^^'' or to retort it as the unconscious 
 Irony of the Epicurean Poet on the animalizing tendency of 
 his own philosophy. I suppose him convinced, that there is 
 more in man than can be rationally referred to the life of Na- 
 ture and the Mechanism of Organization ; that he has a will 
 not included in this mechanism ; and that the Will is in an es- 
 pecial and pre-eminent sense the spiritual part of our Human- 
 
 Unless then we have some distinct notion of the W^ill, and 
 some acquaintance with the prevalent errors respecting the 
 same, an insight into the nature of Spiritual Religion is scarce- 
 ly possible ; and our reflections on the particular truths and 
 evidences of a spiritual State will remain obscure, perplexed. 
 
88 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and unsafe. To place my reader on this requisite Vantage- 
 ground, is the purpose of the following Exposition. 
 
 We have begun, as in geometry, with defining our Terms ; 
 and we proceed, like the Geometricians, with stating our 
 postulates; the diflfei enee being, that the Postulates of Ge- 
 ometry no man can deny, those of Moral Science are such as 
 no good man will deny. For it is not in our power to dis- 
 claim our Nature, as sentient Beings ; but it is in our power to 
 disclaim our Prerogative as Moral Beings. It is possible ( barely 
 possible, I admit) that a man may have remained ignorant or 
 unconscious of the Moral Law within him : and a man need 
 only persist in disobeying the Law of Conscience to make it 
 possible for himself to deny its existence, or to reject and re- 
 pel it as a phantom of Superstition. Were it othenvise the 
 Creed would stand in the same relation to Morality as the Mul- 
 tiplication Table. 
 
 This then is the distinction of Moral Philosophy — not that 
 I begin with one or more Assumptions , for this is common to 
 all science ; but — that I assume a something, the proof of 
 which no man can give to another, yet every man may find for 
 himself. If any man assert, that he can not find it, I am bound 
 to disbelieve him ! I cannot do otherwise without unsettling 
 the very foundations of my own moral Nature. For I either 
 find it as an essential of the Humanity common to Him and 
 Me : or I have not found it at all, except as an Hypochon- 
 driast finds Glass Legs. If, on the other hand, he tvill not 
 find it, he excommunicates himself. He forfeits his personal 
 Plights, and becomes a Things i. e. one who may rightfully be 
 employed or used, as a [42] means to an end, against his will, 
 and without regard to his interest. 
 
 All the significant objections of the Materialist and Neces- 
 sitarian are contained in the term, Morality, all the Objections 
 of the Infidel in the term. Religion ? The very terms, I say 
 imply a something granted, which the Objection supposes not 
 granted. The term presumes what the Objection denies, and 
 in denying j?)*esumes the contrary. For it is most important 
 to observe, that the Reasoncrs on both sides commence by ta- 
 
PRELIMINARY. , 89 
 
 king something for granted, our Assent to which they ask or 
 demand : i. e. both set off with an Assumption in the form of 
 a Postulate. But the Epicurean assumes what according to 
 himself he neither is nor can be under any obligation to as- 
 sume, and demands what he can have no right to demand : 
 for he denies the reality of all moral Obligation, the existence 
 of any Right. If he use the words^ Right and Obligation, he 
 does it deceptively, and means only Compulsion and Power. 
 To overthrow the Faith in aught higher or other than Nature 
 and physical Necessity, is the very purpose of his argument. 
 He desires you only to take for granted^ that all reality is in- 
 cluded in Nature, and he may then safely defy you to ward off 
 his canclusion — that nothing is concluded ! 
 
 But as he cannot morally demand, neither can he rationally 
 expect, your Assent to this premise: for he cannot be ignorant 
 that the best and greatest of Men have devoted their lives to 
 the enforcement of the contrary ; that the vast majority of the 
 human race in all ages and in all nations have believed in the 
 contrary ; and that there is not a language on Earth, in which 
 he could argue, for ten minutes, in support of his scheme with- 
 out sliding into words and phrases, that imply the contrary. It 
 has been said, that the Arabic has a thousand names for a Li- 
 on ; but this would be a trifle compared with the number of 
 superfluous words and useless Synonimes that would be found 
 in an index Expurgatorius of any European Dictionary con- 
 structed on the principles of a consistent and strictly conse- 
 quential Materialism ! 
 
 The Christian likewise grounds hi& philosophy on asser- 
 tions ; but with the best of all reasons for making them — viz. 
 that he ought so to do. He asserts what he can neither prove 
 nor account for, nor himself comprehend ; but with the strong- 
 est of inducements^ that of understanding thereby whatever 
 else it most concerns him to understand aright. And yet his 
 Assertions have nothing in them of Theory or Hypothesis ; 
 but are in immediate reference to three ultimate Facts ; name- 
 ly, the Reality of the law of conscience ; the existence of a 
 RESPONSIBLE WILL, as the subject of that law^ ; and lastly, the 
 
 12 
 
90 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 existence of Evil — of Evil essentially such, not by accident 
 of outward circumstances, not derived from its physical con- 
 sequences, or from any cause, out of itself. The first is a 
 Fact of Consciousness ; the second a Fact of Reason neces- 
 sarily concluded from the first ; and the third a Fact of Histo- 
 ry interpreted by both. 
 
 Omnia exeunt in mysterium^ says a Schoolman : i. e. There 
 is nothing, the absolute ground of which is not a Mystery. 
 The contrary were indeed a contradiction in terms : for how 
 can that, which is to explain all things, be susceptible of an 
 explanation ? It would be to suppose the same thing first and 
 second at the same time. 
 
 If I rested here, I should merely have placed my Creed in 
 direct ^opposition to that of the Necessitarians, who assume 
 (for observe both parties begin in an Assumption, and cannot 
 do otherwise) that motives act on the Will, as bodies act on 
 bodies ; and that whether mind and matter are essentially the 
 same or essentially different, they are both alike under one 
 and the same law of compulsory Causation. But this is far 
 from exhausting my intention. I mean at the same time to 
 oppose the Disciples of Shaftesbury and those who, substitu- 
 ting one Faith for another, have been well called the pious 
 Deists of the last Century, in order to distinguish them from 
 the Infidels of the present age, who persuade themselves, (for 
 the thing itself is not possible ) that they reject all Faith. I 
 declare my dissent from these too, because they imposed upon 
 themselves an J6?ea for a Reality : a most sublime Idea indeed, 
 and so necessary to Human Nature, that without it no Virtue 
 is conceivable ; but still an Idea ! In contradiction to their 
 splendid but delusory Tenets, I profess a deep conviction that 
 Man was and is a fallen Creature, not by accidents of bodily 
 constitution, or any other cause, which human Wisdom in a 
 course of ages might be supposed capable of removing ; but 
 diseased in his Will, in that Will which is the true and only 
 strict synonime of the Word, I, or the intelligent Self. Thus 
 at each pf these two opposite Roads ( the Philosophy of Hob- 
 bes, and that of Shaftesbury), I have placed a directing Post, 
 
PRELIMINARY. 91 
 
 informing my Fellow-travellers, that on neither of these 
 Roads can they see the Truths to which I would direct their 
 attention. 
 
 But the place of starting was at the meeting of four Roads, 
 and one only was the right road. I proceed therefore to pre- 
 clude the opinion of those likewise, who indeed agree with 
 me as to the moral Responsibility of Man in opposition to Hob- 
 bes and the Anti-moralists, and that He was a fallen Creature, 
 essentially diseased, in opposition to Shaftesbury and the Mis- 
 interpreters of Plato ; but who differ from me in exaggerating 
 the diseased weakness of the Will into an absolute privation 
 of all Freedom, thereby making moral responsibility, not a 
 mystery above comprehension, but a direct contradiction, of 
 which we do distinctly comprehend the absurdity. Among the 
 consequences of this Doctrine, is that direful one of swallow- 
 ing up all the Attributes of the Supreme Being in the one 
 Attribute of Infinite Power, and thence deducing that Things 
 are good and wise because they were created, and not created 
 through Wisdom and Goodness. Thence too the awful Attri- 
 bute of Justice is explained away into a mere right of abso- 
 lute Property ; the sacred distinction between Things and 
 Persons is erased ; and the selection of Persons for Virtue and 
 Vice in this Life, and for eternal Happiness or Misery in the 
 next, is represented as the result of a mere Will^ acting in 
 the blindness and solitude of its own Infinity. The Title of a 
 Work written by the great and pious Boyle is " Of the Awe, 
 which the human mind owes to the supreme Reason." This, 
 in the language of these gloomy Doctors, must be translated 
 into — " the horror, which a Being capable of eternal Pleas- 
 ure or Pain is compelled to feel at the idea of an infinite Pow- 
 er, about to inflict the latter on an immense majority of hu- 
 man souls, without any power on their part either to prevent 
 it or the actions which are (not indeed its causes but) its as- 
 signed signals J and preceding links of the same iron chain ! 
 
 Against these Tenets I maintain, that a Will conceived se-"^ 
 parate from Intelligence is a Non-entity, and a mere Phantasm 
 of Abstraction ; and that a Will, the state of which does in no 
 
92 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sense originate in its own act, is an absolute contradiction. It 
 might be an instinct, an Impulse, a plastic Power, and if ac- 
 companied with consciousness, a Desire ; but a Will it could 
 not be ! And this every human being knows with equal clear- 
 QiesSj though different minds may reflect on it with different de- 
 grees of distinctness ; for who would not smile at the notion 
 of a Rose willing to put forth its Buds and expand them into 
 Flowers ? That such a phrase would be deemed di poetic Li- 
 cence proves the difference in the things : for all metaphors 
 are grounded on an apparent likeness of things essentially dif- 
 ferent. I utterly disclaim the idea, that any human Intelli- 
 gence, with whatever power it might manifest itself, is alone 
 adequate to the office of restoring health to the Will : but at 
 the same time I deem it impious and absurd to hold, that the 
 Creator would have given us the faculty of reason, or that 
 the Redeemer would in so many varied forms of Argument 
 and Persuasion have appealed to it, if it had been either totally 
 useless or wholly impotent. Lastly, I find all these several 
 Truths reconciled and united in the belief, that the imperfect 
 human understanding can be effectually exerted only in sub- 
 ordination to, and in a dependent alliance with, the means and 
 aidances supplied by the all-perfect and Supreme Reason ; but 
 that under these conditions it is not only an admissible, but a 
 necessary instrument of ameliorating both ourselves and others. 
 
 We may now proceed to our reflections on the Spirit of 
 Religion. The first three or four Aphorisms I have selected 
 from the Theological Works of Dr. Henry More, a contem- 
 porary of Archbishop Leighton's, and like him, held in suspi- 
 cion by the Calvinists of that time as a Latitudinarian and 
 Platonizing Divine, and probably, like him, would have been 
 arraigned as a Calvinist by the Latitudinarians ( I cannot say, 
 Platonists) of this Day, had the suspicion been equally ground- 
 less. One or two the Editor has ventured to add from his 
 own Reflections. The })urpose, however, is the same in all — 
 
PRELIMINARY. 93 
 
 that of declaring, in the first place, what Religion is not, what 
 is not a Religious Spirit, and what are not to be deemed in- 
 fluences of the Spirit. If after these Disclaimers the Editor 
 shall without proof be charged by any with favouring the er- 
 rors of the Familists, Vanists, Seekers, Behmenists or by 
 whatever other names Church History records the poor be- 
 wildered Enthusiasts, who in the swarming time of our Repub- 
 lic turned the facts of the Gospel into allegories, and superse- 
 ded the written Ordinances of Christ by a pretended Teach- 
 ing and sensible Presence of the Spirit, he appeals against 
 them to their own consciences, as wilful Slanderers. But if with 
 proof, I have in these Aphorisms signed and sealed my own 
 Condemnation. 
 
 " These things I could not forbear to write. For the Light 
 within me, that is, my Reason and Conscience, does assure me 
 that the Ancient and Apostolic Faith according to the histo- 
 rical Meaning thereof, and in the literal sense of the Creed, is 
 solid and true : and that Familism in its Fairest form and un- 
 der whatever disguise is a smooth Tale to seduce the simple 
 from their Allegiance to Christ." 
 
 Henry More's Theological Works, p. 372. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION- 
 
And here it will not be impertinent to observe, that what the eldest 
 Greek Philosophy entitled the Reason (N0T2) and ideas, the Philosophic 
 Apostle names the Spirit and Truths spiritually discerned : while to those 
 who in tlie pride of Learning or in the over-weening meanness of mod- 
 em Metaphysics decry the doctrine of the Spirit in Man and its possible 
 coimiiunion with the Holy Spirit, as vulgar enthusiasm ! I submit the fol- 
 lowing Sentences from a Pagan Philosopher, a Nobleman and a Minister 
 of State — "Ita dico, Lucili ! sacrr intra nos Spiritus sedet, malonmi 
 bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos. Hie prout a nobis tractatus 
 est, ita nos ipse tractat. Bonus vir sine Deo nemo est." Seneca. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 APHORISM I. H. MORE. 
 
 Every one is to give a reason of his faith : but Priests 
 and Ministers more punctually than any, their province being 
 to make good every sentence of the Bible to a rational en- 
 quirer into the truth of these oracles. Enthusiasts find it an 
 easy thing to heat the fancies of unlearned and unreflecting 
 Hearers; but when a sober man would be satisfied of the 
 Grounds from whence they speak, he shall not have one syl- 
 lable or the least title of a pertinent answer. Only they will 
 talk big of THE SPIRIT, and inveigh against Reason w^ith bitter 
 Reproaches, calling it carnal or fleshly, though it be indeed no 
 soft flesh, but enduring and penetrant steel, even the sword of 
 the Spirit, and such as pierces to the heart. 
 
 APHORISM II. H. MORE. 
 
 There are two very bad things in this resolving of men's 
 Faith and Practice into the immediate suggestion of a Spirit 
 not acting on our Understandings, or rather into the illumina- 
 tion of such a Spirit as they can give no account of, such as 
 does not enlighten their reason or enable them to render their 
 doctrine intelligible to others. First, it defaces and makes 
 useless that part of the Image of God in us, which we call 
 REASON : and secondly, it takes away that advantage which 
 raises Christianity above all other Religions, that she dare ap- 
 peal to" so solid a faculty. 
 
 APHORISM III. EDITOR. 
 
 It is the glory of the Gospel Charter and the Christian Con- 
 stitution, that its Author and Head is the Spirit of Truth, Es- 
 
 13 
 
98 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sential Reason as well as Absolute and Incomprehensible Will. 
 Like a just Monarch, he refers even his own causes to the 
 Judgment of his high Courts. — He has his King's Bench in 
 the Reason, his Court of Equity in the Conscience; that the 
 representative of his Majesty and universal Justice, this the 
 nearest to the King's heart, and the Dispenser of his particu- 
 lar Decrees. He has likewise his Court of Common Pleas in 
 the Understanding, his Court of Exchequer in the Prudence. 
 The Laws are his Laws. And though by Signs and Miracles 
 he has mercifully condescended to interline here and there 
 with his own hand the great Statute-book, which he had dic- 
 tated to his Amanuensis, Nature : yet has he been graciously 
 pleased to forbid our receiving as the King''s Mandates aught 
 that is not stamped with the Great Seal of the Conscience, and 
 countersigned by the Reason [43]. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 ON AN UNLEARNED MINISTRY, UNDER PRETENCE OF A CALL OF 
 THE SPIRIT, AND INWARD GRACES SUPERSEDING OUTWARD 
 HELPS. 
 
 Tell me, Ye high-flown Perfectionists^ Ye Boasters of the 
 Light within you, could the highest perfection of your inward 
 Light ever show to you the History of past Ages, the state 
 of the World at present, the Knowledge of Arts and Tongues 
 without Books or Teachers ? How then can you understand 
 the Providence of God, or the age, the purpose, the fulfilment 
 of Prophecies, or distinguish such as have been fulfilled from 
 those to the fulfilment of which we are to look forward ? How^ 
 can you judge concerning the authenticity and uncorrupted- 
 H'ess of the Gospels, and the other sacred Scriptures ? And 
 how without this knowledge can you support the truth of 
 Christianity ? How can you either have, or give a reason for 
 the faith which you profess ? This Light within, that loves 
 Darkness, and would exclude those excellent Gifts of God to 
 Mankind, Knowledge and Understanding, what is it but a sullen 
 self-sufTiciency within you, engendering contempt of Superi- 
 ors, pride and a vSpirit of Division, and inducing you to reject 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 99 
 
 for yourselves and to undervalue in others the Helps without, 
 which the Grace of God has provided and appointed for his 
 Church — nay, to make them grounds or pretexts of your dis- 
 like or suspicion of Christ's Ministers who have fruitfully 
 availed themselves of the Helps afforded them ? — Henry 
 More. 
 
 APHORISM V. 
 
 There are Wanderers, whom neither pride nor a perverse 
 humour have led astray; and whose condition is such, that 1 
 think few more worthy of a man's best directions. For the 
 more imperious Sects having put such unhandsome vizards on 
 Christianity, and the sincere Milk of the Word having been 
 every where so sophisticated by the humours and inventions of 
 men, it has driven these anxious Melancholists to seek for a 
 Teacher that cannot deceive, the Voice of th^ eternal Word 
 within them ; to which if they be faithful, they assure them- 
 selves it will be faithful to them in return. Nor would this 
 be a groundless Presumption, if they had sought this Voice in 
 the Reason and the Conscience, with the Scripture articulating 
 the same, instead of giving heed to their Fancy and mistaking 
 bodily disturbances, and the vapors resulting therefrom, for in- 
 spiration and the teaching of the Spirit. — Henry More. 
 
 APHOrJSM VI. 
 
 When every man is his own end, all things will come to a 
 bad end. Blessed were those days, when every man thought 
 himself rich and fortunate by the good success of the public 
 wealth and glory. We want public Souls, we want them. I 
 speak it with compassion : there is no sin and abuse in the 
 world that affects my thought so much. Every man thinks, 
 that he is a whole Commonwealth in his private Family. Om- 
 nes quae sua sunt quaerunt. All seek their own. — Bishop 
 Hacket's Sermons, p. 449. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Selfishness is common to all ages and countries. In all 
 ages Self-seeking is the Rule, and self-sacrifice the Exception. 
 
100 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 But if to seek our private advantage in harmony with, and by 
 the furtherance of, the pubUc prosperity, and to derive a por- 
 tion of our happiness from sympathy with the prosperity of 
 our fellow men — if this be Public Spirit, it would be morose 
 and querulous to pretend that there is any want of it in this 
 country and at the present time. On the contrary, the num- 
 ber of "public souls" and the general readiness to contribute 
 to the public good, in science and in religion, in patriotism 
 and in philanthropy, stand prominent [44] among the charac- 
 teristics of this and the preceding generation. The habit of 
 referring Actions and Opinions to fixed laws ; Convictions 
 rooted in Principles ; Thought, Insight, System ; these, had 
 the good Bishop lived in our times, would have been his De- 
 siderata, and the theme of his Complaints. "We yva.nt think- 
 ing Souls, we 2va7it themP 
 
 This and the three preceding extracts will suffice as precau- 
 tionary Aphorisms. And here again, the Reader may exem- 
 plify the great advantages to be obtained fiom the habit of tra- 
 cing the proper meaning and history of Words. We need 
 only recollect the common and idiomatic phrases in which the 
 word " Spirit" occurs in a physical or material sense (ex. gr. 
 fruit has lost its spirit and flavour), to be convinced that its 
 property is to improve, enliven, actuate some other thing, not 
 to be or constitute a thing in its own name. The enthusiast 
 may find one exception to this where the material itself is 
 called Spirit. And when he calls to mind, how this spirit acts 
 when taken alone by the unhappy persons who in their first 
 exultation will boast that it is Meat, Drink, Fire, and Clo- 
 thing to them, all in one — when he reflects that its properties 
 are to inflame, intoxicate, madden, with exhaustion, lethargy, 
 and atrophy for the Sequels — well for him, if in some lucid 
 interval he should fairly put the question to his own mind, 
 how far this is analogous to his own case, and whether the 
 Exception does not confirm the Rule. The Letter without 
 the Spirit killeth ; but docs it follow, that the Spirit is to kill 
 the Letter ? To kill that which it is its appropriate oflice to 
 enliven ? 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL. RELIGION. 101 
 
 However, where the Ministry is not invaded, and the plain 
 sense of the Scriptures is left undisturbed, and the Believer 
 looks for the suggestion of the Spirit only or chiefly in apply- 
 ing particular passages to his own individual case and exigen- 
 cies ; though in this there may be much weakness, some de- 
 lusion and imminent Danger of more, I cannot but join with 
 Henry More in avowing, that I feel knit to such a man in the 
 bonds of a common faith far more closely, than to those who 
 receive neither the Letter, nor the Spirit, turning the one into 
 metaphor and oriental hyperbole, in order to explain away the 
 other into the influence of motives suggested by their own 
 understandings, and realized by their own strength. 
 
APHORISMS 
 
 ON THAT 
 
 WHICH IS INDEED SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 In the selection of the Extracts that form the remainder of 
 this Volume and of the Comments affixed, the Editor had the 
 following Objects principally in view. First, to exhibit the 
 true and scriptural meaning and intent of several Articles of 
 Faith, that are rightly classed among the Mysteries and pecu- 
 liar Doctrines of Christianity. Secondly, to show the perfect 
 rationality of these Doctrines, and their freedom from all just 
 Objection when examined by their proper Organ, the Reason 
 and Conscience of Man. Lastly, to exhibit from the Works 
 of Leighton, who perhaps of all our learned protestant The- 
 ologians best deserves the title of a Spiritual Divine, an in- 
 structive and affecting picture of the contemplations, reflec- 
 tions, conflicts, consolations and monitory experiences of a 
 philosophic and richly-gifted mind, amply stored with all the 
 knowledge that Books and long intercourse with men of the 
 most discordant characters can give, under the convictions, 
 impressions, and habits of a Spiritual Religion. 
 
 To obviate a possible disappointment in any of my Readers, 
 who may chance to be engaged in theological studies, it may 
 be well to notice, that in vindicating the peculiar tenets of our 
 Faith, I have not entered on the Doctrine of the Trinity, or 
 the still profounder Mystery of the Origin of Moral Evil — 
 and this for the reasons following : 1 . These Doctrines are 
 not (strictly speaking) subjects of Reflection, in the proper 
 
104 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 sense of this word : and both of them demand a power and 
 persistency of Abstraction, and a previous discipline in the 
 highest forms of human thought, which it would be unwise, 
 if not presumptuous, to expect from any, who require " Aids 
 to Reflection," or would be likely to seek them in the present 
 Work. 2. In my intercourse with men of various ranks and 
 ages, I have found the far larger number of serious and inqui- 
 ring Persons little if at all disquieted by doubts respecting 
 Articles of Faith, that are simply above their comprehension. 
 It is only where the Belief required of them jars with their 
 moral feelings ; where a doctrine in the sense, in which they 
 have been taught to receive it, appears to contradict their 
 clear notions of Right and Wrong, or to be at variance with 
 the divine Attributes of Goodness and Justice ; that these men 
 are surprised, perplexed, and alas ! not seldom offended and 
 alienated. Such are the Doctrines of Arbitrary Election and 
 Reprobation ; the Sentence to everlasting Torment by an 
 eternal and necessitating Decree ; vicarious Atonement, and 
 the necessity of the Abasement, Agony and ignominious Death 
 of a most holy and meritorious Person, to appease the Wrath 
 of God. Now it is more especially for such Persons, unwil- 
 ling Sceptics, who believing earnestly ask help for their un- 
 belief, that this Volume was compiled, and the Comments 
 written : and therefore, to the Scripture doctrines, intended 
 by the above mentioned, my principal attention has been di- 
 rected. 
 
 But lastly, the whole Scheme of the Christian Faith, inclu- 
 ding all the Articles of Belief common to the Greek and Lat- 
 in, the Roman and the Protestant Church, with the threefold 
 proof, that it is ideally , morally^ and historically true, will be 
 found exhibited and vindicated in a proportionally larger 
 Work, the Principal Labour of my Life since Manhood, and 
 which I am now preparing for the Press under the title, As- 
 sertion of Religion, as necessarily involving Revelation ; and 
 of Christianity, as the only Revelation of permanent and uni- 
 versal validity. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 105 
 
 APHORISM I. LEIGHTON. 
 
 Where, if not in Christ, is the Power that can persuade a 
 Sinner to return, that can bring home a heart to God 9 
 
 Common mercies of God, though they have a leading fac- 
 ulty to repentance, (Rom. ii. 4.) yet, the rebellious heart will 
 not be led by them. The judgments of God, public or per- 
 sonal, though they ought to drive us to God, yet the heart, 
 unchanged, runs the further from God. Do we not see it by 
 ourselves and other sinners about us ? They look not at all 
 towards Him who smites, much less do they return ; or if any 
 more serious thoughts of returning arise upon the surprise of 
 an affliction, how soon vanish they, either the stroke abating, 
 or the heart, by time, growing hard and senseless under it ! 
 Leave Christ out, I say, and all other means work not this 
 way ; neither the works nor the word of God sounding daily 
 in his ear. Return^ return. Let the noise of the rod speak it 
 too, and both join together to make the cry the louder, yet 
 the ivicked tvill do wickedly^ Dan. xii. 10. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 By the pln-ase "in Christ," I mean all the supernatural Aids 
 vouchsafed and conditionally promised in the Christian Dis- 
 pensation : and among them the Spiiit of Truth, which the 
 world cannot receive, were it only that the knowledge of 
 spiritucd Truth is of necessity immediate and intuitive : and 
 the World or Natural Man possesses no higher intuitions than 
 those of the pure Sense^ which are the subjects of Mathemat- 
 ical Science. But Aids^ observe ! Therefore, not hy the 
 Will of Man alone ; but neither ivithout the Will. The doc- 
 trine of modern Calvinism, as laid down by Jonathan Ed- 
 wards and the late Dr. Williams, which represents a Will ab- 
 solutely passive, clay in the hands of a Potter, destroys all Will, 
 takes away its essence and definition, as effectually as in say- 
 ing — This Circle is square — I should deny the figure to be a 
 Circle at all. It was in strict consistency therefore, that these 
 Writers supported the Necessitarian Scheme, and nuade the 
 
 14 
 
106 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 relation of Cause and Effect the Law of tlie Universe, sul^- 
 jecting to its Mechanism the moral World no less than the ma- 
 terial or physical. It follows, that all is Nature [45]. Thus, 
 though few writers use the term Spirit more frequently, they 
 in effect deny its existence, and evacuate the term of all its 
 proper meaning. With such a system not the Wit of Man 
 nor all the Theodices ever framed by human ingenuity, before 
 and since the attempt of the celebrated Leibnitz, can recon- 
 cile the Sense of Responsibility, nor the fact of the difference 
 in kmd between regret and remorse. The same compul- 
 sion of Consequence drove the Fathers of Modern (or Pseu- 
 do-)Calvinism to the origination of Holiness in Power, of Jus- 
 tice in Right of Property, and whatever outrages on the com- 
 mon sense and moral feelings of Mankind they have sought to 
 cover, under the fair name of Sovereign Grace. 
 
 I will not take on me to defend sundry harsh and inconven- 
 ient Expressions in the Works of Calvin. Phrases equally 
 strong and Assertions not less rash and startling are no rari- 
 ties in the Writings of Luther : for Catachresis was the fa- 
 vourite Figure of Speech in that age. But let not the opin- 
 ions of either on this most fundamental Subject be confound- 
 ed with the New-England System, now entitled Calvinistic. 
 The fact is simply this. Luther considered the Pretensions 
 to Free-will boastful^ and better suited to the budge Doctors 
 of the Stoic Fur, than to the Preachers of the Gospel, whose 
 great Theme is the Redemption of the Will from Slavery; 
 the restoration of the Will to perfect Freedom being the end 
 and consummation of the redemptive Process, and the same 
 with the entrance of the Soul into Glory, t. e. its union with 
 Christ : "glory" (John xvii. 5.) being one of the names of 
 the Spiritual Messiah. Prospectively to this we are to under- 
 stand the words of our Lord, At that day ye shall know that 
 I am in my Father, and ye in me, John xiv. 20 ; the freedom 
 of a finite will being possible under this condition only, that it 
 has become one with the will of God. Now as the difference 
 of a captive and enslaved Will, and no Will at all, such, is the 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 107 
 
 difference between the Lutheranism of Calvin and the Cal- 
 vinism of Jonathan Edwards. 
 
 APHORISM II. LEIGHTON. 
 
 There is nothing in religion farther out of Nature's reach, 
 and more remote from the natural man's liking and believing, 
 than the doctrine of Redemption by a Saviour, and by a cru- 
 cified Saviour. It is comparatively easy to persuade men of 
 the necessity of an amendment of conduct ; it is more diffi- 
 cult to make them see the necess'ty of Repentance in the 
 Gospel sense, the necessity of a change in the principle of ac- 
 tion ; but to convince men of the necessity of the Death of 
 Christ is the most difficult of all. And yd the first is but 
 varnish and white-wash without the second ; and the second 
 but a barren notion without the last. Alas ! of those who ad- 
 mit the doctrine in words, how large a number evade it in fact 
 and empty it of all its substance and efficacy, making the effect 
 the efficient cause, or attributing their election to vSalvation to 
 a supposed Foresight of their Faith, and Obedience. But it is 
 most vain to imagine a faith in such and such men, which be- 
 ing foreseen by God, determined him to elect them for salva- 
 tion ; were it only that nothing at all is future^ or can have 
 this imagined fufurition^ but as it is decreed^ and because it is 
 decreed by God so to be. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 No impartial person, competently acquainted with the His- 
 tory <jf the Reformation, and the works of the earlier protest- 
 ant Divines at home and abroad, even to the close of Eliza- 
 beth's reign, will deny that the Doctrines of Calvin on Re- 
 demption and the natural state of fallen man, are in all essen- 
 tial points the same as those of Luther, Zuinglius, and the 
 first reformers collectively. These doctrines have, however, 
 since the re-establishment of the Episcopal Church at the re- 
 turn of the second Charles, been as generally [46] exchanged 
 for what is commonly entitled Arminianism, but which, taken 
 as a complete and explicit Scheme ol Relief, it would be both 
 
108 
 
 AIDS TO KEFLECTION. 
 
 historically and theologically more accurate to call Grotianism^ 
 or Christianity according to Grotius. The change was not, we 
 may readily believe, effected without a struggle. In the Ro- 
 mish Church this latitudinarian System, patronized by the Je- 
 suits, was manfully resisted by Jansenius, Arnauld, and Pas- 
 cal ; in our own Church by the Bishops Davenant, Sanderson, 
 Hall, and the Archbishops Usher and Leighton : and in the 
 latter half of the preceding Aphorism the Reader has a spe- 
 cimen of the reasonings by which Leighton strove to invalidate 
 or counterpoise the reasonings of the Innovators. 
 
 Passages of this sort are, however, of rare occurrence in 
 Leighton's works. Happily for thousands, he was more use- 
 fully employed in making his Readers feel, that the Doctrines 
 in question, scripturally treated^ and taken as co-organized 
 parts of a great organic whole^ need no such reasonings. 
 And better still would it have been, had he left them altogeth- 
 er for those, who severally detaching the great Features of 
 Revelation from the living Context of Scripture, do by that 
 very act destroy their life and purpose. And then, like the 
 eyes of the Aranea prodigiosa[47] they become clouded micro- 
 scopes, to exaggerate and distort all the other parts and propor- 
 tions. No offence will be occasioned, I trust, by the frank 
 avowal that I have given to the preceding passage a place 
 among the Spiritual Aphorisms for the sake of the Comment : 
 the following Remark having been the first marginal Note I 
 had pencilled on Leighton's Pages, and thus, (remotely, at 
 least), the occasion of the present Work. 
 
 Leighton, I observed, throughout his inestimable Work, 
 avoids all metaphysical views of Election, relatively to God, 
 and confines himself to the Doctrine in its relation to Man : 
 and in that sense too, in which every Christian may judge who 
 strives to be sincere with his own heart. The following may, 
 I think, be taken as a safe and useful Rule in religious inqui- 
 ries. Ideas, that derive their origin and substance from the 
 Moral Being, and to the reception of which as true objectivc- 
 lij {i. e. as corresponding to a reality out of the human mind) 
 we are dete» jviincd by a practical interest exclusively, may 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 109 
 
 not, like theoretical or speculative Positions, be pressed on- 
 ward into all their possible logical consequences. The Law 
 of Conscience, and not the Canons of discursive Reasoning, /f 
 must decide in such cases. At least, the latter has no validi- 
 ty, which the single Veto of the former is not sufficient to nul- 
 lify. The most pious conclusion is here the most legitimate. 
 
 It is too seldom considered, though most worthy of consid- 
 eration, how far even those Ideas or Theories of pure Spec- 
 ulation, that bear the same name with the Objects of Religious 
 Faith, are indeed the same. Out of the principles necessari- 
 ly presumed in all discursive Thinking, and which being, in 
 the first place, universal^ and secondly, antecedent to every 
 particular exercise of the Understanding, are therefore refer- 
 red to the Reason, the human Mind (wherever its powers are 
 sufficiently developed, and its attention strongly directed to 
 speculative or theoretical inquiries), forms certain Essences, 
 to which for its own purposes it gives a sort of notional Sub- 
 sistence. Hence they are called Entia rationalia : the con- 
 version of which into Entia realia^ or real Objects, by aid of 
 the Imagination, has in all times been the fruitful stock of ^ 
 empty Theories, and mischievous Superstitions, of surrepti- 
 tious Premises and extravagant Conclusions. For as these 
 substantiated Notions were in many instances expressed by 
 the same terms, as the objects of religious Faith ; as in most 
 instances they were applied, though deceptively, to the ex- 
 planation of real experiences ; and lastly, from the gratifica- 
 tions, which the pride and ambition of man received from the 
 supposed extension of his Knowledge and Insight it was too 
 easily forgotten or overlooked, that the stablest and most in- 
 dispensable of these notional Beings were but the necessary 
 forms of Thinking, taken abstractedly : and that like the 
 breadthless Lines, depthless Surfaces, and perfect Circles of 
 Geometry, they subsist wholly and solely in and for the Mind, 
 that contemplates them. Where the evidence of the Senses 
 fails us, and beyond the precincts of sensible experience, there 
 is no Reality attributable to any Notion, but what is given to 
 
110 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it by Revelation, or the Law of Conscience, or the necessary 
 interests of Morality. 
 
 Take an instance : 
 
 It is the office, and as it were, the instinct of Reason to 
 bring a unity into all our conceptions and several knowledges. 
 On this all system depends : and without this we could reflect 
 connectedly neither on nature or our own minds. Now this 
 is possible only on the assumption or hypothesis of a one as 
 the ground and cause of the Universe, and which in all suc- 
 cession and through all changes is the subject neither of Time 
 or Change. The one must be contemplated as Eternal and - 
 Immutable. 
 
 Well ! the Idea, which is the basis of Religion, commanded 
 by the Conscience and required by Morality, contains the 
 same truths, or at least Truths that can be expressed in no 
 other terms ; but this idea presents itself to our mind with ad- 
 ditional Attributes, and these too not formed by mere Abstrac- 
 tion and Negation, with the Attributes of Holiness, Providence, 
 Love, Justice, and Mercy. It comprehends, moreover, the ^ 
 independent (extra-mundane) existence and personality of _ 
 the supreme one, as our Creator, Lord, and Judge. 
 
 The hypothesis of a one Ground and Principle of the Uni- 
 verse ( necessary as an hypothesis ; but having only a logical 
 and conditional necessity) is thus raised into the idea of the 
 LIVING GOD, the supreme Object of our Faith, Love, Fear, 
 and Adoration. Religion and Morality do indeed constrain us 
 to declare him Eternal and Immutable. But if from the Eter- 
 nity of the Supreme Being a Reasoncr should^ deduce the 
 impossibility of a Creation; or conclude with Aristotle, that 
 the Creation was co-eternal; or, like the later Platonists, 
 should turn Creation into Emanation^ and make the universe 
 proceed from Deity, as the Sunbeams from the Solar Orb ; — 
 or if from the divine Immutability he should infer, that all 
 Prayer and Supplication must be vain and superstitious : then 
 however ev ident and logically necessary such conclusions may 
 appear, it is scarcely worth our while to examine, whether 
 they are bo or not. The Position;? themselves must be fabe. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. Ill 
 
 For were they true, the idea would lose the sole ground of its 
 reality. It would be no longer the Idea intended by the Be- 
 liever in his premise — in the Premise, with which alone Re- 
 ligion and Morality are concerned. The very subject of the 
 discussion would be changed. It would no longer be the God 
 in whom we believe ; but a stoical fate, or the superessential 
 ONE of Plotinus, to whom neither Intelligence, or Self-con- 
 sciousness, or Life, or even Being dare be attributed : or last- 
 ly, the World itself, the indivisible one and only substance 
 (substantia una et unica) of Spinoza, of which all Phenome- 
 na, all particular and individual Things, Lives, Minds, Thoughts 
 and Actions are but modifications. 
 
 Let the Believer never be alarmed by Objections wholly 
 speculative, however plausible on speculative grounds such 
 objections may appear, if he can but satisfy himself, that the 
 Result is repugnant to the dictates of Conscience, and irre- 
 concilable with the interests of Morality. For to baffle the 
 Objector we have only to demand of him, by what right and 
 under w<hat authority he converts a Thought into a Substance, 
 or asserts the existence of a real somewhat corresponding to a 
 Notion not derived from the experience of his Senses. It 
 will be of no purpose for him to answer, that it is a legitimate 
 Notion. The Notion may have its mould in the understand- 
 ing ; but its realization must be the work of the fancy. 
 
 A reflecting Reader will easily apply these remarks to the 
 subject of Election, one of the stumbling stones in the ordi- 
 nary conceptions of the Christian Faith, to which the Infidel 
 points in scorn, and which far better men pass by in silent per- 
 plexity. Yet surely, from mistaken conceptions of the Doc- 
 trine. I suppose the person, with w^hom I am arguing, already 
 so far a believer, as to have convinced himself, both that a 
 state of enduring bliss is attainable under certain conditions ; 
 and that these conditions consist in his compliance with the 
 directions given and rules prescribed in the Christian Scrip- 
 tures. These rules he likewise admits to be such, that, by 
 the very law and constitution of the human mind, a full and 
 faithful compliance with them cannot hut have consequences: 
 
112 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 of some sort or other. But these consequences are moreover 
 distinctly described, enumerated and promised in the same 
 Scriptures, in which the conditions are recorded ; and though 
 some of them may be apparent to God only, yet the greater 
 number are of such a nature that they cannot exist unknown 
 to the Individual, in and for whom they exist. As little possi- 
 ble is it, that he should find these consequences in himself, and 
 not find in them the sure marks and the safe pledges, that he 
 is at the time in the right road to the Life promised under these 
 conditions. Now I dare assert, that no such man, however 
 fervent his charity, and however deep his humility, may be, 
 can peruse the records of History wit!y a reflecting spirit, or 
 " look round the world" with an observant eye, and not find 
 himself compelled to admit, that all men are not on the right 
 Road. He cannot help judging, that even in Christian coun- 
 tries Many, a fearful Many ! have not their faces turned to- 
 ward it. 
 
 This then is mere matter of fact. Now comes the ques- 
 tion. Shall the Believer, who thus hopes on the appointed 
 grounds of Hope, attribute this distinction exclusively to his 
 own resolves and strivings ? or if not exclusively yet primari- 
 ly and principally ? Shall he refer the first movements and 
 preparations to his own Will and Understanding, and bottom 
 his claim to the Promises on his own comparative excellence ? 
 If not, if no man dare take this honour to himself, to whom 
 shall he assip,n it, if not to that Being in whom the Promise 
 originated and on whom its Fulfilment depends ? If he stop 
 here, who shall blame him ? By what argument shall his rea- 
 soning be invalidated, that might not be urged with equal 
 force against any essential difference between Obedient and 
 Disobedient, Christian and Worldling, that would not imply 
 that both soi'ts alike are, in the sight of God, the sons of God 
 by adoption ? If he stop here, who shall drive him from his 
 position ? For thus far he is practically concerned — this the 
 Conscience requires, this the highest interests of Morality de- 
 mand. It is a question of Facts, of the Will and the Deed, 
 to argue against which on the abstract notions and possibilities 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 113 
 
 of the speculative Reason is as unreasonable, as an attempt to 
 decide a question of Colours by pure Geometry, or to unsettle 
 the classes and specific characters of Natural History by the 
 Doctrine of Fhixions. 
 
 But if the self-examinant will abandon this position, and. 
 exchange the safe circle of Religion and practical Reason for 
 the shifting Sand- wastes and Mirages of Speculative Theolo- 
 gy ; if instead of seeking after the marks of Election in him- 
 self he undertakes to determine the ground and origin, the 
 possibility and mode of Election itself in relation to God ;— 
 in this case, and whether he does it for the satisfaction of cu- 
 riosity, or from the ambition of answering those, who would 
 call God himself to account, why and by what right certain 
 Souls were born in Africa instead of England ? or why (see- 
 ing that it is against all reason and goodness to choose a worse 
 when being omnipotent he could have created a better) God 
 did not create Beasts Men, and Men Angels ? or why God 
 created any men but with pre-knowledge of their obedience, 
 and why he left any occasion for Election ? — in this case, I 
 say, we can only regret, that the Inquirer had not been better 
 instructed in the nature, the bounds, the true purposes and 
 proper objects of his intellectual faculties, and that he had not 
 previously asked himself, by what appropriate Sense, or Or- 
 gan of Knowledge, he hoped to secure an insight into a Na- 
 ture w^hich was neither an Object of his Senses, nor a part of 
 his Self-consciousness ! and so leave him to ward off shadowy 
 Spears with the shadow of a Shield, and to retaliate the non- 
 sense of Blasphemy with the Abracadabra of Presumption. 
 He that will fly without wings must fly in his dreams ; and till 
 he awakes, will not find out, that to fly in a dream is but to 
 dream of flying. 
 
 Thus then the Doctrine of Election is in itself a necessary 
 inference from an undeniable fact — necessary at least for ail 
 who hold that the best of Men are what they are through the 
 grace of God. In relation to the Believer it is a i/o/je, which 
 if it spring out of Christian Principles, be examined by the 
 tests and nourished by the means prescribed in Scripture, will 
 
 15 
 
114 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 become a lively, an assured Hope, but which cannot in this 
 life pass into knowledge, much less certainty of Fore-knowl- 
 edge. The contrary belief does indeed make the article of 
 Election both tool and parcel of a mad and mischievous fanati- 
 cism. But with what force and clearness does not the Apos- 
 tle confute, disclaim, and prohibit the pretence, treating it as 
 a downwright contradiction in terms ! See Rom. viii. 24. 
 
 But though I hold the doctrine handled as Leighton han- 
 dles it (that is practically, morally, humanly) rational, safe, 
 and of essential importance, 1 see many [48] reasons resulting 
 from the peculiar circumstances, under which St. Paul prea- 
 ched and wrote, why a discreet Minister of the Gospel should 
 avoid the frequent use of the term, and express the meaning 
 in other words perfectly equivalent and equally scriptural : lest 
 in saying truth he might convey error. 
 
 Had my purpose been confined to one particular Tenet, an 
 apology might be required for so long a Comment. But the 
 Reader will, I trust, have already perceived, that my object 
 has been to establish a general Rule of interpretation and vin- 
 dication applicable to all doctrinal Tenets, and especially to 
 the ( so called ) Mysteries of the Christian Faith : to provide 
 a Safety-lamp for religious inquirers. Now this I find in the 
 principle, that all revealed Truths are to be judged of by us, 
 as far as they are possible subjects of human Conception, or 
 grounds of Practice, or in some way connected with our mo- 
 ral and spiritual Interests. In order to have a reason for for- 
 ming a judgment on any given article, we must be sure that 
 we possess a Reason, by and according to which a judgment 
 may be formed. Now in respect of all Truths, to which a 
 real independent existence is assigned, and which yet are not 
 contained in, or to be imagined under, any form of Space or 
 Time, it is strictly demonstrable, that the human Reason, con- 
 sidered abstractly as the source of positive Science and theo- 
 retical Insight, is not such a Reason. At the utmost, it has 
 only a negative voice. In other words, nothing can be allow- 
 ed as true for the human Mind, which directly contradicts this 
 Reason. But even here, before we admit the existence of 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL, RELIGION. 115 
 
 any such contradiction, we must be careful to ascertain, that 
 there is no equivocation in play, that two different subjects 
 are not confounded under one and the same word. A striking 
 instance of this has been adduced in the difference between 
 the notional One of the Ontologists, and the idea of the Liv- 
 ing God. 
 
 But if not the abstractor speculative Reason, and yet area- 
 son there must be in order to a rational Belief — then it must 
 be the Practical Reason of Man, comprehending the Will, the 
 Conscience, the Moral Being with its inseparable Interests 
 and Affections — that Reason, namely, which is the Organ of 
 Wisdom^ and (as far as Man is concerned) the Source of liv- 
 ing and actual Truths. 
 
 From these premises we may further deduce, that every 
 doctrine is to be interpreted in reference to those, to whom 
 it has been revealed, or who have or have had the means of 
 knowing or hearing the same. For instance : the Doctrine 
 that there is no name under Heaven, by which a man can be 
 saved, but the name of Jesus. If the word here rendered 
 Name^ may be understood (as it well may, and as in other 
 texts it must be) as meaning the Power, or originating Cause, 
 I see no objection on the part of the Practical Reason to our 
 belief of the declaration in its whole extent. It is true uni- 
 versally or not true at all. If there be any redemptive pow- 
 er not contained in the Power of Jesus, then Jesus is not the 
 Redeemer: not the redeemer of the World, not the Jesus (i. 
 e. Saviour) of Mankind. But if with Tertullian and Augus- 
 tin we make the Text assert the condemnation and misery of 
 all who are not Christians by Baptism and explicit Belief in 
 the Revelation of the New Covenant — then I say, the doc- 
 trine is true to all intents and piiryoses. It is true, in every 
 respect, in which any practical, moral, or spiritual Interest or 
 End can be connected with its truth. It is true in respect to 
 every man who has had, or who might have had, the Gospel 
 preached to him. It is true and obligatory for every Chris- 
 tian community and for every individual Believer, wherever 
 the opportunity is afforded of spreading the Light of the Gos- 
 
J16 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 pel and making known the name of the only Saviour and Re- 
 deemer. For even though the uninformed Heathens should 
 not perish, the guilt of their Perishing will attach to those 
 who not only had no certainty of their safety, but who were 
 commanded to act on the supposition of the contrary. But if 
 on the other hand, a theological Dogmatist should attempt to 
 persuade me, that this Text was intended to give us an histor- 
 ical knowledge of God's future Actions and Dealings — -and 
 for the gratification of our curiosity to inform us, that Socrates 
 and Phocion, together with all the Savages in the untravelled 
 Woods and Wilds of Africa and America, will be sent to keep 
 company with the Devil and his Angels in everlasting Tor- 
 ments — I should remind him, that the purpose of Scripture 
 was to teach us our duty, not to enable us to sit in Judgment 
 on the souls of our fellow creatures. 
 
 One other instance will, I trust, prevent all misconception 
 of my meaning. I am clearly convinced, that the scriptural 
 and only true [49] Idea of God will, in its developement, be 
 found to involve the Idea of the Triunity. But I am likewise 
 convinced, that previous to the promulgation of the Gospel 
 the Doctrine had no claim on the Faith of Mankind : though 
 it might have been a legitimate contemplation for a specula- 
 tive philosopher, a Theorem in Metaphysics valid in the 
 Schools. 
 
 I form a certain notion in my mind, and say : this is what / 
 understand by the term, God. From books and conversation 
 I find, that the Learned generally connect the same notion 
 with the same word. I then apply the Rules, laid down by 
 the Masters of Logic, for the involution and evolution of terms 
 and prove ( to as many as agree with me in my premises ) that 
 the Notion, God, involves the Notion, Trinity. I now pass 
 out of the Schools, and enter into discourse with some friend 
 or neighbour, unversed in the formal sciences, unused to the 
 processes of Abstraction, neither Logician or Metaphysician ; 
 but sensible and singleminded, " an Israelite indeed," trust- 
 ing in " the Lord God of his Fathers, even the God of Abra- 
 ham, of Isaac, and of .lacob." If I speak of God to Mm, what 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL, RELIGION. 117 
 
 will he understand me to be speaking of? What does he 
 mean, and suppose me to mean, by the word ? An Accident 
 or Product of the reasoning faculty, or an Abstraction which 
 the human Mind makes by reflecting on its own thoughts and 
 forms of thinking ? No. By God he understands me to mean 
 an existing and self-subsisting reality [50], a real and personal 
 Being — even the Person^ the i am, who sent Moses to his 
 Forefathers in Egypt. Of the actual existence of this divine 
 Person he has the same historical assurance as of theirs ; con- 
 firmed indeed by the Book of Nature, as soon and as far as 
 that stronger and better Light has taught him to read and con- 
 strue it — confirmed by it, 1 say, but not derived from it. Now 
 by what right can I require this Man ( and of such men the 
 great majority of serious Believers consisted, previous to the 
 Light of the Gospel) to receive a Notion of mine, wholly al- 
 ien from his habits of thinking, because it may be logicallyde- 
 duced from another Notion, with which he was almost as little 
 acquainted, and not at all concerned ? Grant for a moment, 
 that the latter (i. e. the Notion, with which I first set out) as 
 soon as it is combined with the assurance of a corresponding 
 Reality becomes identical with the true and effective Idea of 
 God ! Grant, that in thus realizing the Notion J am warran- 
 ted by Revelation, the Law of Conscience, and the interests 
 and necessities of my Moral Being ! Yet by what authority, 
 by what inducement, am I entitled to attach the same reality 
 to a second Notion, a Notion drawn from a Notion ? It is evi- 
 dent, that if I have the same Right, it must be on the same 
 grounds. Revelation must have assured it, my conscience re- 
 quired it — or in some way or other I must have an interest in 
 this belief. It must concern me, as a moral and responsible 
 Being. Noav these grounds were first given in the Redemp- 
 tion of Mankind by Christ, the Saviour and Mediator : and by 
 the utter incompatibility of these offices with a mere Crea- 
 ture. On the doctrine of Redemption depends the Faith, the 
 Duty, of believing in the Divinity of our Lord. And this 
 again is the strongest Ground for the reality of that Idea, in 
 which alone this Divinity can be received without breach of 
 
118 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the faith in the unity of the Godhead. But such is the Idea 
 of the Trinity. Strong as the motives are that induce me to 
 defer the full discussion of this great Article of the Christian 
 Creed, I cannot withstand the request of several Divines, 
 whose situation and extensive services entitle them to the ut- 
 most deference, that I should so far deviate from my first in- 
 tention as at least to indicate the point on which I stand, and 
 to prevent the misconception of my purpose : as if I held the 
 doctrine of the Trinity for a Truth w hich Men could be called 
 on to believe by mere force of Reasoning, independently of 
 any positive Revelation, In short, it had been reported in cer- 
 tain circles, that I considered this doctrine as a demonstrable 
 part of the Religion of Nature. Now though it might be suf- 
 ficient to say, that I regard the very phrase " Revealed Reli- 
 gion" as a pleonasm, inasmuch as a religion not revealed is, 
 in my judgment, no religion at all ; I have no objection to an- 
 nounce more particularly and distinctly what I do and what I 
 do not maintain on this point : provided that in the following 
 paragraph, with this view inserted, the reader will look for 
 nothing more than a plain statement of my opinions. The 
 grounds on which they rest, and the arguments by which they 
 are to be vindicated, are for another place. 
 
 I hold then, it is true, that all the (so called) Demonstra- 
 tions of a God either prove too little, as that from the Order 
 and apparent Purpose in Nature ; or too much, viz. that the 
 World is itself God ; or they clandestinely involve the con- 
 clusion in the Premises, passing off the mere analysis or expli- 
 cation of an Assertion for the Proof of it — a species of logical 
 legerdemain not unlike that of the Jugglers at a Fair, who 
 putting into their mouths what seems to be a walnut, draw out 
 a score yards of Ribbon. On this sophism rest the pretended 
 " Demonstrations of a God" grounded on the Postulate of a 
 First Cause. And lastly in all these Demonstrations the au- 
 thors presuppose the Idea or Conception of a God without be- 
 ing able to authenticate it, i. e. to give an account whence 
 they obtained it. For it is clear, that the proof first mention- 
 ed and the most natural and convincing of all (the Cosmolo- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 119 
 
 gical I mean or that from the Order in Nature ) presupposes 
 the Ontological — i. e. the proof of a God from the necessity 
 and necessary Objectivity of the Idea. If the latter can as- 
 sure us of a God as an existing Reality, the former will go far 
 to prove his Power, Wisdom and Benevolence. All this I 
 hold. But I also hold, that this Truth, the hardest to demon- 
 strate, is the one which of all others least needs to be demon- 
 strated ; that though there may be no conclusive demonstra- 
 tions of a good, wise, living and personal God, there are so 
 many convincing reasons for it, within and without — a grain of 
 sand sufficing, and a whole universe at hand to echo the deci- 
 sion ! — that for every mind not devoid of all reason, and despe- 
 rately conscience-proof, the Truth which it is the least possi- 
 ble to prove, it is little less than impossible not to believe ! 
 only indeed just so much short of impossible, as to leave some 
 room for the will and the moral election, and thereby to keep 
 it a truth of Rehgion, and the possible subject of a Command- 
 ment[51]. 
 
 On this account I do not demand of a Dm/, that he should 
 adopt the doctrine of the Trinity. For he might very well 
 be justified in replying, that he rejected the doctrine, not be- 
 cause it could not be demonstrated^ nor yet on the score of 
 any incomprehensibilities and seeming contradictions that 
 might be objected to it, as knowing that these might be, and 
 in fact had been, urged with equal force against a personal 
 God under any form capable of Love and Veneration ; but 
 because he had not the same theoretical necessity, the same 
 interests and instincts of Reason for the one hypothesis as for the 
 other. It is not enough, the Deist might justly say, that there is 
 no cogent reason why I should not believe the Trinity : you 
 must show me some cogent reason why I should. 
 
 But the case is quite different with a Christian, who accepts 
 the Scriptures as the Word of God, yet refuses his assent to 
 the plainest declarations of#these Scriptures, and explains 
 away the most express texts into metaphor and hyperbole, 
 because the literal and obvious interpretation is (according to 
 his notions) absurd and contrary to reason. He is bound to 
 
120 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 show, that it is so in any sense, not equally applicable to the 
 texts asserting the Being, Infinity, and Personality of God the 
 Father, the Eternal and Omnipresent one, who created the 
 Heaven and the Earth. And the more is he bound to do this, 
 and the greater is my right to demand it of him, because the 
 doctrine of Redemption from Sin supplies the Christian with 
 motives and reasons for the divinity of the Redeemer far more 
 concerning and coercive subjectively^ i. e. in the economy of 
 his own Soul, than are all the inducements that can influence 
 the Deist objectively^ i, e. in the interpretation of Nature. 
 
 Do I then utterly exclude the speculative Reason from The- 
 ology ? No ! It is its office and rightful privilege to deter- 
 mine on the negative truth of whatever we are required to be- 
 lieve. The Doctrine must not contradict diny universal prin- 
 ciple : for this would be a Doctrine that contradicted itself. 
 Or Philosophy ? No. It may be and has been the servant 
 and pioneer of Faith by convincing the mind, that a doctrine 
 is cogitable, that the soul can present the Idea to itself: and 
 that if we determine to contemplate, or think of, the subject 
 at all, so and in no other form can this be effected. So far 
 are both Logic and Philosophy to be received and trusted. 
 But the diiiy^ and in some cases and for some persons even 
 the right, of thinking on subjects beyond the bounds of sen- 
 sible experience ; the grounds of the 7'eal truth ; the Life, the 
 Substance, the Hope, the Love, in one word, the Faith ; these 
 are Derivatives from the practical, moral, and spiritual Nature 
 and Being of Man. 
 
 APHORISM III. 
 
 That Religion is designed to improve the nature and facul- 
 ties of Man, in order to the right governing of our actions, to 
 the securing the peace and progress, external and internal, of 
 Individuals and of Communities, and lastly, to the rendering 
 us capable of a more perfect state, entitled the kingdom of 
 God, to which the present Life is probationai'y — this is a truth 
 which all who have truth only in view, will receive on its own 
 evidence. If such then be the main end of Religion altogeth- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. f^l 
 
 er (the improvement namely of our nature and faculties), it 
 is plain, that every part of Religion is to be judged by its re- 
 lation to this main end. And since the Christian Scheme is 
 Religion in its most perfect and effective Form, a revealed 
 Religion, and therefore, in a special sense proceeding from 
 that being who made us and knows what we are, of course 
 therefore adapted to the needs and capabilities of Human Na- 
 ture ; nothing can be a part of this holy faith that is not duly 
 proportioned to this end. Extracted with slight alterations 
 from BurneVs Preface to Vol. ii. of the Hist, of the Refor- 
 mation. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 This Aphorism should be borne in mind, whenever a theo- 
 logical Resolve is proposed to us as an article of Faith. Take, 
 for instance, the Determinations passed at the Synod of Dort, 
 concerning the Absolute Decrees of God in connexion with 
 his Omniscience and Fore-knowledge. Or take the Decision 
 in the Council of Trent on the Difference between the two 
 kinds of Transubstantiation, the one in which both the Sub- 
 stance and the Accidents are changed, the same matter re- 
 maining — as in the conversion of Water to Wine at Cana : 
 the other, in which the Matter and Substance are changed, 
 the Accidents remaining unaltered, as in the Eucharist — this 
 latter being Transubstantiation par eminence ! Or rather take 
 the still more tremendous Dogma, that it is indispensable to 
 a saving Faith carefully to distinguish the one kind from the 
 other, and to believe both, and to believe the necessity of be- 
 lieving both in order to Salvation ! For each or either of 
 these extra-scriptural Articles of Faith the preceding Apho- 
 rism supplies a safe criterion. Will the belief tend to the im- 
 provement of any of my moral or intellectual faculties? But 
 before I can be convinced that a Faculty will be improved^ I 
 must be assured that it exists. On all these dark sayings, 
 therefore, of Dort or Trent, it is quite sufficient to ask, by 
 what faculty^ organ^ or inlet of knowledge we are to assure 
 ourselves, that tlie words inean any thing, or correspond to 
 
 16 
 
182 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 any object out of our own mind or even in it : unless indeed 
 the mere craving and striving to think on, after all the mate- 
 rials for thinking have been exhausted, can be called an object. 
 When a number of trust-worthy Persons assure me, that a 
 portion of fluid which they saw to be Water, by some change 
 in the fluid itself, or in their Senses, suddenly acquired the 
 Colour, Taste, Smell, and exhilarating property of Wine, I 
 perfectly understand what they tell me, and likewise by what 
 faculties they might have come to the knowledge of the Fact. 
 But if any one of the number not satisfied with my acquies- 
 cence in the Fact, should insist on my believing, that the Mat- 
 ter remained the same, the Substance and the Accidents hav- 
 ing been removed in order to make way for a different Sub- 
 stance with different Accidents, I must entreat his permission 
 to wait till I can discover in myself any faculty, by which 
 there can be presented to me a matter distinguishable from 
 Accidents, and a Substance that is different from both. It is 
 true, I have a faculty of articulation ; but 1 do not see that it 
 can be improved by my using it for the formation of words 
 without meaning, or at best, for the utterance of Thoughts, 
 that mean only the act of so thinking, or of trying so to think. 
 But the end of Religion is the improvement of our Nature 
 and Faculties. Ergo, &c. Q. E. D. I sum up the whole in 
 one great practical Maxim. The Object of religious Contem- 
 plation, and of a truly spiritual Faith, is the ways of God to 
 Man. Of the Workings of the Godhead, God himself has 
 told us, My Ways are not as your ways, nor my Thoughts as 
 your Thoughts. 
 
 APHORISM IV. 
 
 THE CHARACTEHISTIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DISCIPLINE 
 OF THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS AND THE DISPENSATION OF 
 THE GOSPEL. 
 
 By undeceiving, enlarging, and informing the Intellect, Phi- 
 losophy sought to purify, and to elevate the floral Character. 
 Of course, those alone could receive the latter and incompara- 
 bly greater Benefit, who by natural capacity and favourable 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGIOX. 123 
 
 contingencies of Fortune were fit Recipients of the former. 
 How small the number, we scarcely need the evidence of His- 
 tory to assure us. Across the Night of Paganism, Philosophy 
 flitted on, like the Lanthorn-fly of the Tropics, a Light to itself, 
 and an Ornament, but alas! no more than an ornament, of th^ 
 surrounding Darkness. 
 
 Christianity reversed the order. By means accessible to 
 all, by inducements operative on all, and by convictions, the 
 grounds and materials of which all men might find in them- 
 selves her first step was to cleanse the Heart. But the bene- 
 fit did not stop here. In preventing the rank vapours that 
 steam up from the corrupt Heart Christianity restores the /n- 
 /e/ZecHikewise to its natural clearness. By relieving the mind 
 from the distractions and importunities of the unruly pas- 
 sions, she improves the quality of the Understanding : while 
 at the same time she presents for its contemplations Ob- 
 jects so great and so bright as cannot but enlarge the Organ, 
 by which they are contemplated. The Fears, the Hopes, the 
 Remembrances, the Anticipations, the inward and outward Ex- 
 perience, the Belief and the Faith, of a Christian form of them- 
 selves a Philosophy and a sum of Knov»ledge, which a Life 
 spent in the Grove of Academus, or the "painted Porch," 
 could not have attained or collected. The result is contained 
 in the fact of a wide and still widening Christendom. 
 
 Yet I dare not say, that the effects have been proportionate 
 to the divine wisdom of the Scheme. Too soon did the Doc- 
 tors of the Church forget that the Hearty the Moral Nature, was 
 the Beginning and the End ; and that Truth, Knowledge and 
 Insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the 
 true and first apostasy — when in Council and Synod the divine 
 Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, 
 and Religion became a Science of Shadows under the name 
 of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without 
 life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the ma- 
 jority of Christians. For these therefore there remained only 
 rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. 
 Thus among the learned the substance of things hoped for 
 (Heb. xi. 1.) passed off into Notions ; and for the Unlearned 
 
124 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the surfaces of Things became [52] Substance. The Chris- 
 tian world was for centuries divided into the Many, that did 
 not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but //linA; — both 
 alike mirejlecting^ the one from defect of the Act^ the other 
 from the absence of an Object. 
 
 APHORISM V. 
 
 There is small chance of Truth at the goal where there is 
 not child-like Humility at the Starting-post. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Humility is the safest Ground of Docility : and Docility the 
 surest Promise of Docibility. Where there is no working of 
 Self-love in the heart that secures a leaning beforehand ; where 
 the great Magnet of the Planet is not overwhelmed or obscur- 
 ed by partial masses of Iron in close neighbourhood to the 
 Compass of the Judgment, though hidden or unnoticed ; there 
 will this great Desideratum be found of a child-like Humility. 
 Do I then say, that I am to be influenced by no Interest ? Far 
 from it ! There is an Interest of Truth : or how could there 
 be a Love of Truth ? And that a love of Truth for its own 
 sake, and merely as Truth, is possible, my Soul bears witness 
 to itself in its inmost recesses. But there are other Inter- 
 ests — those of Goodness, of Beauty, of Utility. It would be 
 a sorry proof of the Humility I am extolling, were I to ask for 
 Angels' wings to overfly my own Human Nature. I exclude 
 none of these. It is enough if the ^' lene clinamen,^^ the gen- 
 tle Bias, be given by no interest that concerns myself other 
 than as I am a Man, and included in the great family of Man- 
 kind ; but which does therefore especially concern me, be- 
 cause being a common Interest of all men it must needs con- 
 cern the very essentials of my Bfeing, and because these ea- 
 sentials, as existing in me, are especially intrusted to my- par- 
 ticular charge. 
 
 Widely diff'erent from this social and truth attracted Bias, 
 different both in its nature and its effects, is the Interest con- 
 nected with the desire of distingimhing yourself from other 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 125 
 
 men, in order to be distinguished by them. Hoc revera est 
 inter te et veritatem. This Interest does indeed stand be- 
 tween thee and truth. I might add between thee and thy own 
 soul. It is scarcely more at variance with the love of truth 
 than it is unfriendly to the attainment that deserves that name. 
 By your own act you have appointed the Many as your Judg- 
 es and Appraisers : for the anxiety to be admired is a loveless 
 passion, ever strongest with regard to those by whom we are 
 least known and least cared for, loud on the Hustings, gay 
 in the Ball-room, mute and sullen at the family Fireside. 
 What you have acquired by patient thought and cautious dis- 
 crimination, demands a portion of the same effort in those who 
 are to receive it from you. But Applause and Preference are 
 things of Barter ; and if you trade in them. Experience will 
 soon teach you that there are easier and less unsuitable ways 
 to win golden judgments than by at once taxing the patience 
 and humiliating the self-opinion of your judges. To obtain 
 your end, your woids must be as indefinite as their Thoughts : 
 and how vague and general these are even on objects of sense, 
 the few who at a mature age have seriously set about the dis- 
 cipline of their faculties, and have honestly taken stock, best 
 know by recollection of their own state. To be admired you 
 must make your auditors believe at least that they understand 
 what you say ; which, be assured, they never will, if it be /, 
 worth understanding, or if you understand your own soul. 
 But while your prevailing motive is to be compared and ap- 
 preciated, is it credible, is it possible, that you should in ear- 
 nest seek for a knowledge which is and must remain a hidden 
 Light, a secret Treasure ? Have you children, or have you 
 lived among children, and do you not know, that in all things, 
 in food, in medicine, in all their doings and abstainings they 
 must believe in order to acquire a reason for their belief? But* 
 so is it with religious truths for all men. These we must all 
 learn as children. The ground of the prevailing error on this 
 point is the ignorance, that in spiritual concernments to be- 
 lieve and to understand are not diverse things, but the same 
 thing in different periods of its growth. Belief is the seed, 
 
126 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 received into the will, of which the Understanding or Knowl- 
 edge is the Flower, and the thing believed is the fruit. Un- 
 less ye believe (saith the Prophet) ye cannot understand : and 
 unless ye be humble as children, ye not only will not, but ye 
 cannot believe. Of such therefore is the Kingdom of Hea- 
 ven. Yea, blessed is the calamity that makes us humble : 
 though so repugnant thereto is our nature, in our present state 
 that after a while, it is to be feared, a second and sharper ca- 
 lamity would be wanted to cure us of our pride in having be- 
 come so humble. 
 
 Lastly, there are among us, though fewer and less in fash- 
 ion than among our ancestors. Persons who, like Shaftesbury, 
 do not belong to " the herd of Epicurus," yet prefer a philo- 
 sophic Paganism to the morality of the Gospel. Now it would 
 conduce, methinks, to the child-like Humility, we have been 
 discoursing of, if the use of the term, Virtue, in that high 
 comprehensive, and notional seiise in which it was used by 
 the ancient Stoics, were abandoned, as a relic of Paganism, to 
 these modern Pagans : and if Christians restoring the word to 
 its original import, viz. Manhood or Mmliness, used it exclu- 
 sively to express the quality of Fortitude ; Strength of Char- 
 acter in relation to the resistance opposed by Nature and the 
 irrational Passions to the Dictates of Eeason ; Energy of will 
 in preserving the Line of Rectitude tense and firm against the 
 warping forces and treacheries of Temptation, Surely, it 
 were far less unseemly to value ourselves on this moral 
 Strength than on Strength of Body, or even Strength of In- 
 tellect. But we will rather value it for ourselves : and bear- 
 ing in mind the old adage, Quis custodiet ipsum Custodem ? 
 we will value it the more, yea, then only will we allow it true 
 spiritual Worthy when we possess it as a gift of Grace^ a boon 
 of Mercy undeserved, a fulfilment of a free Promise ( 1 Cor- 
 inth. X. 13.) What more is meant in this last paragraph, let 
 the venerable Hooker say for me in the following 
 
 APHORISM VI. 
 
 What is Virtue but a Medicine, and Vice but a Wound ? 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIBITUAL RELIGION. 127 
 
 Yea, we have so often deeply wounded ourselves with Medi- 
 cine, that God hath been fain to make wounds medicinable ; 
 to cure by Vice where Virtue hath stricken ; to suffer the 
 just man to fall, that being raised he may be taught what pow- 
 er it was which upheld him standing. I am not afraid to af- 
 firm it boldly with St. Augustine, that Men puffed up through 
 a proud Opinion of their own Sanctity and Holiness receive a 
 benefit at the hands of God, and are assisted with his Grace 
 when with his Grace they are not assisted, but permitted (and 
 that grievously) to transgress. Whereby, as they were through 
 over-great Liking of themselves supplanted (tripped up)^ so 
 the dislike of that which did supplant them may establish 
 them afterwards the surer. Ask the very Soul of Peter, 
 and it shall undoubtedly itself make you this answer : My 
 eager protestations made in the glory of my spiritual strength, 
 I am ashamed of. But my shame and the Tears, with which 
 my Presumption and my Weakness were bewailed, recur in 
 the songs of my Thanksgiving. My Strength had been my 
 Ruin, my Fall hath proved my Stay. Sermon on the Nature 
 of Pride, Hooker's Works, p. 521. 
 
 APHORISiAI VII. 
 
 The Being and Providence of One Living God, Holy, Gra- 
 cious, Merciful, the Creator and Preserver of all Things, and 
 a Father of the Righteous ; the Moral Law in ^ its utmost 
 height, breadth and purity ; a State of Retribution after death ; 
 the 2 Resurrection of the Dead ; and a Day of Judgment — all 
 these were known and received by the Jewish People, as 
 established articles of the National Faith, at or before the Pro- 
 claiming of Christ by the Baptist. They are the ground-work 
 of Christianity, and essentials in the Christian Faith, but not 
 its characteristic and peculiar Doctrines : except indeed as they 
 are confirmed, enlivened, realized and brought home to the 
 whole Being of Man, Head, Heart, and Spirit, hy the truths 
 and influences of the Gospel. 
 
 Peculiar to Christianity are : 
 
 I. The belief that a Means of Salvation has been effected 
 
128 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and provided for the Human Race by the incarnation of the 
 Son of God in the person of Jesus Christ ; and that his Life 
 on earth, his Sufferings, Death, and Resurrection are not only- 
 proofs and manifestations, but likewise essential and effective 
 parts of the great Redemptive Act, whereby also the Obstacle 
 from the corruption of our Nature is rendered no longer insur- 
 mountable. 
 
 II. The belief in the possible appropriation of this benefit 
 by Repentance and Faith, including the Aids that render an 
 effective Faith and Repentance themselves possible. 
 
 III. The belief in the reception (by as many as " shall be 
 Heirs of Salvation") of a living and spiritual Principle, a seed 
 of Life capable of surviving this natural life, and of existing 
 in a divine and immortal State. 
 
 IV. The belief in the awakening of the Spirit [53] in them 
 that truly believe, and in the communion of the Spirit, thus 
 awakened, with the Holy Spirit. 
 
 y. The belief in the accompanying and consequent gifts, 
 graces, comforts, and privileges of the Spirit, which acting 
 primarily on the heart and will cannot but manifest themselves 
 in suitable works of Love and Obedience, i. e. in right acts 
 with right affections, from right principles. 
 
 Further, as Christians, we are taught, that these Works are 
 the appointed signs and evidences of our Faith ; and that un- 
 der limitation of the power, the means, and the opportu- 
 nities afforded us individually, they are the rule and measure, 
 by which we are bound and enabled to judge, of what spirit 
 we are : and all these together with the doctrine of the Fa- 
 thers reproclaimed in the everlasting Gospel, we receive in 
 the full assurance, that God beholds and will finally judge us 
 with a merciful consideration of our infirmities, a gracious ac- 
 ceptance of our sincere though imperfect strivings, a forgive- 
 ness of our defects through the mediation, and a completion of 
 our deficiencies by the perfect righteousness, of the Man 
 Christ Jesus, even the Word that was in the beginning with 
 God, and who, being God, became Man for the redemption of 
 Mankind. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL, RELIGION. 129 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 I earnestly entreat the Reader to pause awhile, and to join 
 with me in reflecting on the preceding Aphorism. It hasbeen 
 my aim throughout this work to enforce two points : 1. That 
 Morality arising out of the Reason and Conscience of Men, 
 and Prudence, which in like manner flows out of the Under- 
 standing and the natural Wants and Desires of the Individual, 
 are two distinct things ; 2. That Morality with prudence as 
 its instrument has, considered abstractedly, not only a value 
 but a worth in itself. Now the question is ( and it is a ques- 
 tion which every man must answer for himself) " From what 
 you know of yourself; of your own heart and Strength ; and 
 from what History and personal Experience have led you to 
 conclude of mankind generally ; dare you trust to it ? Dare 
 you trust to it ? To if, and to it alone ? If so, well ! It is 
 at your own risk. I judge you not. Before Him, who can- 
 not be mocked, you stand or fall. But if not, if you have had 
 too good reason to know, that your heart is deceitful and your 
 strength weakness : if you are disposed to exclaim with Paul — 
 the Law indeed is holy, just, good, spiritual; but I am car- 
 nal, sold under sin : for that which I do, I allow not ; and what 
 I would, that do I not ? — in this case, there is a voice that 
 says. Come unto me : and I will give you rest. This is the 
 Voice of Christ : and the Conditions, under which the prom- 
 ise was given by him, are that you believe in him, and believe 
 his words. And he has further assured you, that if you do 
 so, you will obey. You are, in short, to embrace the Chris- 
 tian Faith as your Religion — those truths which St. Paul be- 
 lieved after his conversion, and not those only which he be- 
 lieved no less undoubtingly while he was persecuting Christ, 
 and an enemy of the Christian Religion. With what consis- 
 tency could I offer you this volume as Aids to Reflection if I 
 did not call on you to ascertain in the first instance what these 
 truths are ? But these 1 could not lay before you without first 
 enumerating certain other points of belief, which though truths, 
 indispensable truths, and truths comprehended or rather pre- 
 
 17 
 
130 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 supposed in the Christian Scheme, are yet not these Truths. 
 John i. 17. 
 
 While doing this, I was aware that the Positions, in the first 
 paragraph of the preceding Aphorism, to which the numerical 
 marks are affixed, will startle some of my Readers. Let the 
 following sentences serve for the notes corresponding to the 
 marks , 
 
 I Be you holy : even as God is holy. — What more does he 
 require of thee, man ! than to do justice, love mercy, and 
 walk humbly with the Lord thy God ? To these summary 
 passages from Moses and the Prophets (the first exhibiting the 
 closed, the second the expanded. Hand of the Moral Law), I 
 might add the Authorities of Grotius and other more orthodox 
 and not less learned Divines, for the opinion, that the Lord's 
 Prayer was a selection^ and the famous Passage [The Hour is 
 now coming, John v. 28, 29.] a citation by our Lord from the 
 Liturgy of the Jewish Church. But it will be sufficient to re- 
 mind the reader that the apparent difference between the prom- 
 inent moral truths of the Old and those of the New Testament 
 results from the latter having been written in Greek ; while 
 the conversations recorded by the Evangelists took place in 
 Hebrew or Syro-chaldaic. Hence it happened that where 
 our Lord cited the original text, his Biographers substituted 
 the Septuagint Version, while our English Version is in both 
 instances immediate and literal — in the Old Testament from 
 the Hebrew Original, in the New Testament from the freer 
 Greek Translation. The text, " I give you a new command- 
 ment," has no connexion with the present subject. 
 
 2There is a current mistake on this point likewise, though 
 this article of the Jewish Belief is not only asserted by St. 
 Paul, but is elsewhere spoken of as common to the Twelve 
 Tribes. The mistake consists in supposing the Pharisees to 
 have been a distinct Sect^ and in strangely over-rating the num- 
 ber of the Sadducees. The former were distinguished not by 
 holding, as matters of religious belief, articles diiferent from 
 the Jewish Church at large ; but by their pretences to a more 
 rigid orthodoxy, a more scrupulous performance. They were, 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL. RELIGION. 131 
 
 ill short (if I may dare use a phrase which I dislike as profane 
 and denounce as uncharitable), the Evangelicals and strict 
 Professors of the Day. The latter, the Sadducees, whose 
 opinions much more nearly resembled those of the Stoics than 
 the Epicureans ( a remark that will appear paradoxical to those 
 only who have abstracted their notions of the Stoic Philoso- 
 phy from Epictetus, Mark Antonine, and certain brilliant in- 
 consistencies of Seneca), were a handful of rich men, roman- 
 ized Jews, not more numerous than Infidels among us, and held 
 by the People at large in at least equal Abhorrence. Their 
 great argument was : that the Belief of a future State of re- 
 wards and punishments injured or destroyed the purity of the 
 Moral Law for the more enlightened Classes, and weakened 
 the influence of the Laws of the Land for the People, the vul- 
 gar Multitude. 
 
 1 will now suppose the Reader to have thoughtfully re-pe- 
 rused the Paragraph containing the Tenets peculiar to Chris- 
 tianity, and^if he have his religious principles yet to form, 1 
 should expect to overhear a troubled IMurmur : How can I 
 comprehend this ? How is this to be proved ? To the first 
 question I should answer : Christianity is not a Theory, or a 
 Speculation ; but a Life. Not a Philosophy of Life, but a 
 Life and a living process. To the second : Try it. It has 
 been eisjhteen hundred Years in existence : and has one Indi- 
 vidual left a record, like the following ? [I tried it; audit 
 did not answer. I made the experiment faithfully according to 
 the directions ; and the result has been, a conviction of my own 
 credulity.] Have you, in your own experience, met with any 
 one in whose words you could place full confidence, and who 
 has seriously affirmed, [I have given Christianity a fair trial. 
 I was aware, that its promises were made only conditionally. 
 But my heart bears me witness, that I have to the utmost of 
 my power complied with the^e conditions. Both outwardly 
 
132 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and in the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have 
 performed the duties which it enjoins, and I have used the 
 means, which it prescribes. Yet my Assurance of its truth 
 has received no increase. Its promises have not been fulfil- 
 led : and I repent me of my delusion !] If neither your own 
 experience nor the History of almost two thousand years has 
 presented a single testimony to this purport ; and if you have 
 read and heard of many who have lived and died bearing wit- 
 ness to the contrary : and if you have yourself met with some 
 one, in whom on any other point you would place unqualified 
 trust, who has on his own experience made report to you, that 
 " he is faithful who promised, and what he promised he has 
 proved himself able to perform :" is it bigotry, if I fear that 
 the Unbelief, which prejudges and prevents the experiment, 
 has its source elsewhere than in the uncorrupted judgment; 
 that not the strong free Mind, but the enslaved Will, is the true 
 original Infidel in this instance ? It would not be the first 
 time, that a treacherous Bosom-Sin had Suborned the Under- 
 standings of men to bear false witness against its avowed ene- 
 my, the right though unreceived Owner of the House, who 
 had long ivarned it out, and waited only for its ejection to en- 
 ter and take possession of the same. 
 
 I have elsewhere in the present Work, though more at large 
 in the "Elements of Discourse" which, God permitting, will 
 follow it, explained the difference between the Understanding 
 and the Reason, by Reason meaning exclusively the specula- 
 tive or scientific Power so called, the Nous or Mens of the 
 Ancients. And wider still is the distinction between the Un- 
 derstanding and the Spiritual Mind. But no Gift of God does 
 or can contradict any other Gift, except by misuse or misdirec- 
 tion. Most readily therc-'fore do I admit, that theie can be no 
 contrariety between Revelation and the Understanding; un- 
 less you call the fact, that the Skin, though sensible of the 
 warmth of the Sun, can convey no notion of its figure, or its 
 joyous light, or of the colors, it impresses on the clouds, a con- 
 trariety between the Skin and the Eye ; or infer that the cu- 
 taneous and the optic nerves contradict each other. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 133 
 
 But we have grounds to believe, that there are yet other 
 Rays or Effluences from the Sun, which neither Feeling nor 
 Sight can apprehend, but which are to be inferred from the ef- 
 fects. And were it even so with regard to the Spiritual Sun, 
 how would this contradict the Understanding or the Reason ? 
 It is a sufficient proof of the contrary, that the Mysteries in 
 question are not in the direction of the Understanding or the 
 (speculative) Reason. They do not move on the same line 
 or plane with them, and therefore cannot contradict them. But 
 besides this, in the Mystery that most immediately concerns 
 the Believer, that of the birth into a new and spiritual life, 
 the common sense and experience of mankind come in aid of 
 their faith. The analogous facts which we know to be true, 
 not only facilitate the apprehension of the facts promised to 
 us, and expressed by the same words in conjunction with a 
 distinctive epithet ; but being confessedly not less incompre- 
 hensible, the certain knowledge of the one disposes us to the 
 belief of the other. It removes at least all objections to the 
 truth of the doctrine derived from the mysteriousness of its 
 subject. The Life we seek after, is a mystery ; but so both 
 in itself and in its origin is the Life we have. In order to meet 
 this question, however, with minds duly prepared, there are 
 two preliminary enquiries to be decided ; the first respecting 
 the purport^ the second respecting the language of the Gospel. 
 
 First then of the purport^ viz. what the Gospel does wo/, 
 and what it does profess to be. The Gospel is not a system of 
 Theology, nor a Syntagma of Theoretical propositions and 
 conclusions for the enlargement of speculative knowledge, eth- 
 ical or metaphysical. But it is a History, a series of Facts and 
 Events related or announced. These do indeed, involve, or 
 rather I should say they at the same time are^ most important 
 doctrinal Truths; but still Facts and Declaration oi Facts. 
 
 Secondly of the language. This is a wide subject. But 
 the point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of tho- 
 roughly understanding the distinction between analogous and 
 metaphorical language. Analogies are used in aid of Convic- 
 lion : Metaphors J as means of Illustration. The language is 
 
134 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 analogous, wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher 
 dignity is expressed by the same thing, power, or principle in 
 a lower but moie known form. Such, for instance, is the lan- 
 guage of John iii. 6. That which is horn of the Fleshy is 
 Flesh ; that ivhich is bom of the Spirit, is Spirit. The latter 
 half of the verse contains the fact asserted ; the former half 
 the analogous fact, by which it is rendered intelligible. If 
 any man choose to call this metaphorical or figurative, I ask 
 him whether with Hobbs and Bolingbroke he applies the same 
 rule to the moral attributes of the Deity ? Whether he re- 
 gards the divine Justice, for instance, as a metaphorical term, 
 a mere figure of speech ? If he disclaims this, then I answer, 
 neither do I regard the v7ords, born again^ or spiritual life^ as 
 figures or metaphors. I have only to add, that these analogies 
 are the material, or (to speak chemically) the base^ of Sym- 
 bols and symbolical expressions ; the nature of which as al- 
 ways towtegorical (i. e. expressing the same subject but with 
 a difference) in contra-distinction from metaphois and simili- 
 tudes, that are always aZ/egorical (i. e. expressing a different 
 subject but with a resemblance) will be found explained at 
 large in the Statesman's Manual, p. 35 — 38, [54]. 
 
 Oi metaphorical language, on the other hand, let the follow- 
 ing be taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, Ave 
 will suppose, of an Act, which in its own nature, and as a pro- 
 ducing and efficient cause^ is transcendent ; but which produ- 
 ces sundry effects^ each of which is the same in kind with an 
 effect produced by a Cause well known and of ordinary occur- 
 rence. Now when I characterize or designate this transcen- 
 dent Act, in exclusive reference to these its effects, by a suc- 
 cession of names borrowed from their ordinary causes ; not 
 for the purpose of rendering the Act itself, or the manner of 
 the Agency, conceivable, but in order to show the nature and 
 magnitude of the Benefits received from it, and thus to excite 
 the due admiration, gratitude, and love in the Receivers; — in 
 this case I should be rightly described as speaking metaphori- 
 cally. And in this case to confound the similarity in respect 
 of the effects relatively to the Recipients with an identify in 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 135 
 
 respect of the causes or modes of causation relatively to the 
 transcendent Act or the divine Agent, is a confusion of meta- 
 phor with analogy, and of figurative with literal ; and has been 
 and continues to be a fruitful source of superstition or enthu- 
 siasm in Believers, and of objections and prejudices to Infidels 
 and Sceptics. But each of these points is worthy of a sepa- 
 rate consideration: and apt occasions will be found of revert- 
 ing to them severally in the following Aphorisms or the com- 
 ments thereto attached. 
 
 APHORISM VIII. LEIGHTOX. 
 
 Faith elevates the soul not only above Sense and sensible 
 things, but above Reason itself. As Reason corrects the er- 
 rors which Sense might occasion, so supernatural Faith cor- 
 rects the errors of natural reason judging according to sense. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 The Editor's remarks on this aphorism from Archbishop 
 Leighton cannot be better introduced, or their purport more 
 distinctly announced, than by the following sentence from 
 Harrington, with no other change than was necessary to make 
 the words express without aid of the context, what from the 
 context it is evident was the Writer's meaning. " The defini- 
 tion and proper character of Man — that, namely, which should 
 contra-distinguish him from the Animals — is to be taken from 
 his Reason rather than from his Understanding : in regard that 
 in other creatures there may be something of Understanding 
 but there is nothing of Reason." See the Friend, vol. i. p. 
 263 — 277; and the Appendix (Note C.) to the Statesman's 
 Manual, p. [55.] 
 
 Sir Thomas Brown, in his Religio Medici, complains, that 
 there are not impossibilities enough in Religion for his active 
 faith ; and adopts by choice and in free preference such inter- 
 pretations of certain texts and declarations of Holy Writ, as 
 place them in irreconcilable contradiction to the demonstrations 
 of science and experience of mankind, because ( says he ) I love 
 to lose m3'self in a mystery, and 'tis my solitary recreation to 
 pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles 
 
136 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 of the Trinity and Incarnation — "and because he delights (as 
 thinking" it no vulgar part of faith) to believe a thing not on- 
 \y above but contrary to Reason, and against the evidence of 
 our proper senses. For the worthy knight could answer all 
 the objections of the Devil and Reason ( ! ! ) " with the odd reso- 
 lution he had learnt of TertuUian : Certum est quia impos- 
 sibile est. It is certainly true because it is quite imposible !" 
 Now this I call Ultra-fidianism[56]. 
 
 Again, there is a scheme constructed on the principle of re- 
 taining the social sympathies, that attend on the name of Be- 
 liever, at the least possible expenditure of Belief — a scheme 
 of picking and choosing Scripture texts for the support of doc- 
 trines that had been learned beforehand from the higher oracle 
 of Common Sense; which, as applied to the truths of Religion, 
 means the popular part of the philosophy in fashion. Of course, 
 the scheme differs at different times and in different Individuals 
 in the number of articles excluded ; but, it may always be recog- 
 nized by this permanent character, that its object is to draw re- 
 ligion down to the Believer's intellect, instead of raising his in- 
 tellect up to religion. And this extreme I call Minimifidian- 
 
 ISM. 
 
 Now if there be one Preventive of both these extremes more 
 efficacious than another, and preliminary to all the rest, it is 
 the being made fully aware of the diversity of Reason and Un- 
 derstanding. And this is the more expedient, because though 
 there is no want of authorities ancient and modern for the dis- 
 tinction of the faculties and the distinct appropriation of the terms, 
 yet our best writers too often confound the one with the other. 
 Even Lord Bacon himself, who in his Novum Organum has so 
 incomparably set forth the nature of the difference, and the un- 
 fitness of the latter faculty for the objects of the former, does 
 nevertheless in sundry places use the term Reason where he 
 means the Understanding, and sometimes, though less frequent- 
 ly. Understanding for Reason. In consequence of thus con- 
 founding the two terms, or rather of wasting both words for 
 the expression of one and the same faculty, he left himself no 
 appropriate term for the other and higher gift of Reason, and 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 137 
 
 was thus under the necessity of adopting fantastic and mystical 
 phrases, ex. gr. the dry light (lumen siccum), the lucific vis- 
 ion, &c., meaning thereby nothing more than Reason in con- 
 tra-distinction from the Understanding. Thus too in the prece- 
 ding Aphorism, by Reason Leighton means the human Un- 
 derstanding, the explanation annexed to it being (by a notice- 
 able coincidence ) word for word the very definition which the 
 Founder of the Critical Philosophy gives of the Understand- 
 ing — namely, " the Faculty judging according to Sense." 
 
 On the contrary. Reason is the Power of universal and neces- 
 sary Convictions, the Source and Substance of Truths above 
 Sense, and having their evidence in themselves. Its pres- 
 ence is always marked by the necessity of the position affirmed : 
 this necessity being conditional^ when a truth of Reason is ap- 
 plied to Facts of Experience or to the rules and maxims of the 
 Understanding, but absolute, when the subject matter is itself 
 the growth or offspring of the Reason. Hence arises a distinc- 
 tion in the Reason itself, derived from the different mode of 
 applying it, and from the objects to which it is directed : accor- 
 ding as we consider one and the same gift, now as the ground 
 of formal principles, and now as the origin of ideas. Contem- 
 plated distinctively in reference to formal (or abstract) truth, 
 it is the speculative Reason ; but in reference to actual (or mor- 
 al) truth, as the fountain of ideas and the Light of the Con- 
 science, we name it th.e practical Reason. Whenever by self- 
 subjection to this universal Light, the Will of the Individual, 
 the particular Will, has become a Will of Reason, the man is 
 regenerate : and Reason is then the Spirit of the regenerated 
 man, whereby the Person is capable of a quickening inter- 
 communion with the Divine Spirit. And herein consists the 
 mystery of Redemption, that this has been rendered possible 
 for us. "And so it is written: the first man Adam was made 
 a living soul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit." ( 1 Cor. xv. 
 45). We need only compare the passages in the writings of 
 the Apostles, Paul and John, concerning the Spirit and Spiri- 
 tual Gifts, with those in the Proverbs and in the Wisdom of 
 Solomon respecting Reason, to be convinced that the terms 
 
 18 
 
138 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 are synonymous. In this at once most comprehensive and 
 most appropriate acceptation of the word, Reason is preemi- 
 nently spiritual, and a Spirit, even our Spirit, through an 
 eilluence of the same grace by which we are privileged to say 
 Our Father ! 
 
 On the other hand, the Judgments of the Understanding are 
 binding only in relation to the objects of our Senses, which we 
 reflect under the forms of the Understanding. It is, as Leighton 
 rightly defines it, " the Faculty judging according to Sense." 
 Hence we add the epithet A,wman, without tautology : and speak 
 of the human Understanding, in disjunction from that of Be- 
 ings higher or lower than man. But there is, in this sense, no 
 human Reason. There neither is nor can be but one Reason, 
 one and the same : even the Light that lighteth every man's 
 individual Understanding, (Discursus) and thus maketh it a 
 reasonable Understanding, Discourse of Reason — " one only, 
 yet manifold ; it goeth through all understanding, and remain- 
 ing in itself regenerateth all other powers." (Wisdom of Solo- 
 mon, c. 8). The same writer calls it likewise "an influence 
 from the Glory of the Almighty ^^"^ this being one of the names 
 of the Messiah, as the Logos, or co-eternal Filial Word. And 
 most noticeable for its coincidence is a fragment of Heraclitus, 
 as I have indeed already noticed elsewhere. "To discourse 
 rationally it behooves us to derive strength from that which is 
 common to all men : for all human Understandings are nour- 
 ished by the one Divine Word." 
 
 Beasts, we have said, partake of Understanding. If any 
 man deny this, there is a ready way of settling the question. 
 Let him give a careful perusal to Hiiber's two small volumes, 
 on Bees and on Ants (especially the latter), and to Kirby and 
 vSpence's Introduction to Entomology : and one or other of 
 two things must follow. He will either change his opinion as 
 irreconcilable with the facts: or he must deny the facts, which 
 yet I cannot suppose, inasmuch as the denial would be tanta- 
 mount to the no less extravagant than uncharitable assertion, 
 that Hiiber, and the several eminent Naturalists, French and 
 English^ Swiss, German, and Italian, by whom Hiiber's ob- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 139 
 
 servations and experiments have been repeated and confirmed, 
 had all conspired to impose a series of falsehoods and fairy- 
 tales on the world. I see no way at least, by which he can get 
 out of this dilemma, but by over-leaping the admitted Rules 
 and Fences of all legitimate Discussion, and either transfer- 
 ring to the word. Understanding, the definition already appro- 
 priated to Reason, or defining Understanding in genere by the 
 specific and accessional perfections which the human Under- 
 standing derives from its co-existence with Reason and Free- 
 will in the same individual person : in plainer words, from its 
 being exercised by a self-conscious and res}K)nsible Crea- 
 ture. And after all, the supporter of Harrington's position 
 would have a right to ask him, by what other name he would 
 designate the faculty in the instances referred to ? If it be 
 not Understanding, what is it ? 
 
 In no former part of this volume has the Editor felt the 
 same anxiety to obtain a patient Attention. For he does not 
 hesitate to avow, that on his success in establishing the validi- 
 ty and importance of the distinction between Reason and Un- 
 derstanding, he rests his hopes of carrying the Reader along 
 with him through all that is to follow. Let the Student but 
 clearly see and comprehend the diversity in the things them- 
 selves, the expediency of a correspondent distinction and ap- 
 propriation of the words will follow of itself. Turn back for a 
 moment to the Aphorism, and having re-perused the first para- 
 graph of this Comment thereon, regard the two following nar- 
 ratives as the illustration. I do not say proof: for I take these 
 from a multitude of facts equally striking for the one only pur- 
 pose of placing my meaning out of all doubt, 
 
 I. Hiiber put a dozen Humble-bees under a Bell-glass along 
 with a comb of about ten silken cocoons, so unequal in height 
 as not to be capable of standing steadily. To remedy this two 
 or three of the Humble-bees got upon the comb, stretched 
 themselv^es over its edge, and with their heads downwards 
 fixed their fore feet on the table on which the comb stood, 
 and so with their hind feet kept the comb from falling. When 
 these were weary others took their places. In this constrained 
 
140 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades at in- 
 tervals, and each w^orking in its turn, did these affectionate lit- 
 tle insects support the comb for nearly three days, at the end 
 of which they had prepared sufficient wax to build pillars with. 
 But these pillars having accidentally got displaced, the bees 
 had recourse again to the same manoeuvre (or rather pedodu- 
 vre),till Hiiber pitying their hard case, &c. 
 
 II. " I shall at present describe the operations of a single ant 
 that I observed sufficiently long to satisfy my curiosity. 
 
 " One rainy day, I observed a Labourer digging the ground 
 near the aperture which gave entrance to the ant-hill. It 
 placed in a heap the several fragments it had scraped up, and 
 formed them into small pellets, which it deposited here and 
 there upon the nest. It returned constantly to the same place, 
 and appeared to have a marked design, for it laboured with 
 ardour and perseverance. I remarked a slight furrow, excava- 
 ted in the ground in a straight line, representing the plan of 
 a path or gallery. The Labourer, the whole of whose move- 
 ments fell under my immediate observation, gave it greater 
 depth and breadth, and cleared out its borders: and I saw at 
 length, in which I could not be deceived, that it had the inten- 
 tion of establishing an avenue which was to lead from one of 
 the stories to the under-ground chambers. This path, which was 
 about two or three inches in length, and formed by a single ant, 
 was opened above and bordered on each side by a buttress of 
 earth ; its concavity en forme de gouttiere was of the most 
 perfect regularity, for the architect had not left an atom too 
 much. The work of this ant was so well followed and under- 
 stood, that I could almost to a certainty guess its next proceed- 
 ing, and the very fragment it was about to remove. At the side 
 of the opening where this path terminated, was a second opening 
 to which it was necessary to arrive by some road. The same 
 ant engaged in and executed alone this undertaking. It fur- 
 rowed out and opened another path, parallel to the first, leav- 
 ing between each a little wall of three or four lines in height. 
 Those ants who lay the foundation of a wall, a chamber, or 
 gallery, from working separately occasion now and then a want 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 
 
 141 
 
 of coincidence in the parts of the same or different objects. 
 Such examples are of no unfrequent occurrence, but thej by- 
 no means embarrass them. What follows proves that the 
 workman, on discovering his error, knew how to rectify 
 it. A wall had been erected with the view of sustaining a 
 vaulted ceiling, still incomplete, that had been projected from 
 the wall of the opposite chamber. The workman who began 
 constructing ft, had given it too little elevation to meet the op- 
 posite partition upon which it was to rest. Had it been con- 
 tinued on the original plan, it must infallibly have met the wall 
 at about one half of its height, and this it was necessary to 
 avoid. This state of things very forcibly claimed my atten- 
 tion, when one of the ants arriving at the place, and visiting 
 the works, appeared to be struck by the difficulty which pre- 
 sented itself; but this it as soon obviated, by taking down the 
 ceiling and raising the wall upon which it reposed. It then in 
 my presence, constructed a new ceiling with the fragments of 
 the former one." — Hiiber's Nat, Hist, of Ants, p. 38 — 41. 
 
 Now I assert, that the faculty manifested in the acts here 
 narrated does not differ in kind from Understanding, and that 
 it does so differ from Reason. What I conceive the former to 
 be. Physiologically considered, will be shown hereafter. In 
 this place I take the Understanding as it exists in Men, and in 
 exclusive reference to its intelligential functions; and it is in 
 this sense of the word that I am to prove the necessity of con- 
 tra-distinguishing it from Reason. 
 
 Premising then, that two or more Subjects having the same 
 essential characters are said to fall under the same General 
 Definition, I lay it down, as a self-evident truth, (it is, in fact, 
 an identical proposition), that whatever subjects fall under one 
 and the same General Definition are of one and the same 
 kind : consequently, that which does not fall under this defini- 
 tion, must differ in kind from each and all of those that 
 do. Difference in degree does indeed suppose sameness in 
 kind : and difference in kind precludes distinction from differ- 
 ences of degree. Heterogenea non comparari er'go nee distin- 
 gui possunt. The inattention to this Rule gives rise to the 
 
142 AIDS TO REFLECTION* 
 
 numerous Sophisms comprised by Aristotle under the head of 
 Msra/DaCig £i^ aXXo ysvog, i. c. Transition into a new kind, or the 
 falsely appljdng to X what had been truly asserted of A, and 
 might have been true of X had it differed from A in its degree 
 only. The sophistry consists in the omission to notice what 
 not being noticed will be supposed not to exist ; and where 
 the silence respecting the difference in kind is tantamount to 
 an assertion that the difference is merely in degree. But 
 the fraud is especially gross, where the heterogeneous subject, 
 thus clandestinely slipt in^ is in its own nature insusceptible of 
 degree : such as, for instance, Certainty or Circularity, contrast- 
 ed with Strength, or Magnitude, 
 
 To apply these remarks for our present purpose, we have 
 only to describe Understanding and Reason, each by its char- 
 acteristic qualities. The comparison will show the difference. 
 
 UNDERSTANDING. REASON. 
 
 1. Understanding is discur- 1. Reason is fixed, 
 sive. 
 
 2. The Understanding in all 2. The Reason in all its de- 
 its judgments refers to some cisions appeals to itself, as the 
 other Faculty as] its ultimate ground and substance of their 
 Authority. truth. (Hehrews^\i, \.V^). 
 
 3. Understanding is the 3. Reason of Contempla- 
 Faculty of Reflection. tion. Reason indeed is far 
 
 nearer to sense than to Un- 
 derstanding : for Reason ( says 
 our great Hooker) is a direct 
 Aspect of Truth, an inward 
 Beholding, having a similar 
 relation to the Intelligible or 
 Spiritual, as Sense has to the 
 Material or Phenomenal. 
 
 The Result is, that neither falls under the definition of the 
 other. They differ in A;mrf : and had my object been confined 
 to the establishment of this fact, the preceding Columns would 
 have superseded all further disquibition. But 1 have ever in 
 
APHORISMS OX SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 14 
 
 t> 
 
 view the especial interests of my youthful Readers, whose re- 
 fiectiv e poivei' is to be cultivated, as well as their particular re- 
 flections to be called forth and guided. Now the main chance 
 of their reflecting on religious subjects aright j and of their at- 
 taining to the contemplation of spiritual truths at allj rests on 
 their insight into the nature of this disparity still more than 
 on their conviction of its existence. I now, therefore, proceed 
 to a brief analysis of the Understanding, in elucidation of the 
 definitions already given. 
 
 The Understanding then (considered exclusively as an or- 
 gan of human intelligence), is the Faculty by which we re- 
 flect and generalize. Take, for instance, any Object consist- 
 ing of many parts, a House, or a Group of Houses : and if it 
 be contemplated, as a Whole, i. e. (as many constituting a 
 One), it forms what in the technical language of Psychology 
 is called a total impression. Among the various component 
 parts of this, we direct our attention especially to such as we 
 recollect to have noticed in other total impressions. Then, by 
 a voluntary Act we withhold our attention from all the rest to 
 reflect exclusively on these : and these we henceforward use 
 as common characters^ by virtue of which the several Objects 
 are referred to one and the same sort, [57]. Thus, the whole 
 Process may be reduced to three acts, all depending on and sup- 
 posing a previous impression on the Senses : first, the appro- 
 priation of our Attention ; 2. (and in order to the continuance 
 of the first) Abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the 
 Attention . and 3. Generalization. And these are the proper 
 Functions of the Understanding : and the power of so doing is 
 what we mean when we say w^e possess Understanding, or are 
 created with the Faculty of Understanding. 
 
 [It is obvious, that the third Function includes the act of 
 comparing one object with another. In a note (for, not to in- 
 terrupt the argument, I avail myself of this most useful con- 
 trivance), I have shown, that the act of comparing supposes 
 in the comparing Faculty certain inherent Forms, that is. 
 Modes of Reflecting not referable to the Objects reflected on, 
 but pre-determined by the Constitution and (as it were) me- 
 
144 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 chanism of the Understanding itself. And under some one or 
 other of these Forms[58], the Resemblances and Differences 
 must be subsumed in order to be conceivable, and a fortiori 
 therefore in order to be comparable. The Senses do not 
 compare, but merely furnish the materials for comparison. But 
 this the Reader will iind explained in the Note : and will now 
 cast his eye back to the sentence immediately preceding this 
 parenthesis]. 
 
 Now when a person speaking to us of any particular Object 
 or Appearance refers it by means of some common character 
 to a known class (which he does in giving it a name), we say, 
 that we understand him ; e, e. we understand his words. The 
 Name of a thing, in the original sense of the word Name, 
 (Nomen^ Nou/xsvov, to mtelligibile, id quod intelligitur ) express- 
 es that which is understood in an appearance, that which we 
 place (or make to stand) under it, as the condition of its real 
 existence, and in proof that it is not an accident of the Senses, 
 or affection of the Individual, not a phantom or Apparition^ i, 
 c. an Appearance that is only an Appearance. ( See Gen. ii. 
 19, 20. Thus too, in Psalm xx. v. 1. and in fifty other places 
 of the Bible, the identity of nomen with numen, i. e. invisible 
 power and presence, the nomen substantivum of all real Ob- 
 jects, and the ground of their reality, independent of the Af- 
 fections of Sense in the Percipient). In like manner, in a 
 connected succession of Names, as the Speaker passes from 
 one to the other, we say that we understand his discourse (i, 
 e. discursio intellectus, discursus from discurso or discurro, to 
 course or pass rapidly from one thing to another). Thus, in 
 all instances, it is words, names, or, if images, yet images used 
 as words or names, that are the alone subjects of Understand- 
 ing. In no instance do we understand a thing in itself; but 
 only the name to which it is referred. Sometimes indeed, 
 when several classes are recalled conjointly, we identify the 
 words with the Object — though by courtesy of idiom rather 
 than in strict propriety of language. Thus, we may say that 
 we understand a Rainbow, when recalling successively the 
 several Names for the several sorts of Colours, we know that 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 145 
 
 they are to be applied to one and the same Phasnomenon, at 
 once distinctly and simTiitaneousiy ; but even in common par- 
 lance we should not say this of a single colour. No one would 
 say he understands Red or Blue. He sees the Colour, and 
 had seen it before in a vast number and variety of objects ; 
 and he understands the word red, as referring his fancy or me- 
 mory to this his collective experience. 
 
 If this be so and so it most assuredly is, if the proper functions 
 of the understanding be that of generalizing the notices recei- 
 ved from the Senses in order to the construction of Names ; of 
 referring particular notices {i. e. impressions or sensations) to 
 their proper Name ; and vice versa, names to their correspond- 
 ent class or kind of Notices — then it follows of necessity, that 
 the understanding is truly and accurately defined in the words 
 of Leighton and Kant, a Faculty judging according to Sense^ 
 Now whether in defining the speculative Reason {i. e. the 
 Reason considered abstractedly as an intellective Power) we 
 call it " the source of necessary and universal Principles, ac- 
 cording to which the Notices of the Senses are either affirm- 
 ed or denied ;" or describe it as " the Power by which we are 
 enabled to draw from particular and contingent Appearances 
 universal and necessary conclusions[59]: it is equally evident 
 that the two definitions differ in their essential characters, and 
 consequently (by Axiom, p. 142) the subjects differ in kind. 
 
 Q. E. D. 
 
 The dependence of the Understanding on the representa- 
 tions of the Senses, and its consequent posteriority thereto, as 
 contrasted with the independence and antecedency of Reason, 
 are strikingly exemplified in the Ptolemaic System ( that truly 
 wonderful product and highest boast of the Faculty, judging 
 according to the Senses ! ) compared with the Newtonian, as 
 the Offspring of a yet higher Power, arranging, correcting, and 
 annulling the representations of the Senses according to its 
 own inherent Laws and constitutive Ideas. 
 
 APHORISM IX. EDITOR. 
 
 In Wonder all Philosophy began : in Wonder it ends : and 
 
 19 
 
146 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Admiration fills up the interspace. But the first Wonder is 
 the Offspring of Ignorance : the last is the Parent of Adora- 
 tion. The First is the biith-throe of our knowledge : the 
 Last is its euthanasy and apotheosis. 
 
 SEQUELS : OR THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE PBKCKDIlirG 
 
 APHORISM. 
 
 As in respect of the first Wonder we are all on the same 
 Level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should in all 
 ages be the privilege of a Few ? The most obvious reason is 
 this : The Wonder takes place before the period of Reflection, 
 and (with the great Mass of Mankind) long before the Indi- 
 vidual is capable of directing his attention freely and conscious- 
 ly to the Feeling, or even to its excitiiig Causes. Surprise 
 (the form and dress which the Wonder of Ignorance usually 
 puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by Custom and Fa- 
 miliarity. So is it with the Objects of the Senses, and the 
 ways and fashions of the World around us : even as Avith the 
 Beat of our own hearts, which we notice only in moments of 
 Fear and Perturbation. But with regard to the concerns of 
 our inward Being, there is jet another cause that acts in con- 
 cert with the power in Custom to prevent a fair and equal ex- 
 ertion of reflective Thought. The great fundamental Truths 
 and Doctrines of Religion, the existence and attributes of God, 
 and the Life after Death, are in Christian Countries taught so 
 early, under such circumstances, and in such close and vital 
 association with whatever makes or marks reality for our in- 
 fant minds, that the words ever after represent sensations, 
 feelings, vital assurances, sense of reality — rather than thoughts, 
 or any distinct conception. Associated, / had almost said 
 identified, with the parental Voice, Look, Touch, with the 
 living warmth and pressure of the Mother, on whose lap the 
 Child is first made to kneel, within whose palms its little hands 
 are folded, and the motion of whose eyes its eyes follow and 
 imitate — (yea, what the blue sky is to the Mother, the Mo- 
 ther's upraised Eyes and Brow" are to the Child, the Type and 
 Symbol of an invisible Heaven ! ) — from w ithin and from with- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 147 
 
 out, these great First Truths, these good and gracious Tidings, 
 these holy and humanizing Spells, in the preconformity to 
 which our very humanity may be said to consist, are so infu- 
 sed, that it were but a tame and inadequate expression to say, 
 we all take them for granted. At a later period, in Youth or 
 early Manhood, most of us, indeed, (in the higher and middle 
 classes at least ) read or hear certain Proofs of these truths — 
 which we commonly listen to, when we listen at all, with much 
 the same feelings as a popular Prince on his Coronation Day, 
 in the centre of a fond and rejoicing Nation, may be supposed 
 to hear the Champion's challenge to all the Non-existents, that 
 deny or dispute his Rights and Royalty. In fact, the order of 
 Proof is most often reversed or transposed. As far, at least, 
 as I dare judge from the goings on in my own mind, when with 
 keen delight I first read the works of Derham, Niewentiet, 
 and Lyonet, I should say, that the full and life-like conviction 
 of a gracious Creator is the Proof ( at all events, performs the 
 office and answers all the purpose of a proof) of the wisdom 
 and benevolence in the construction of the Creature. 
 
 Do 1 blame this ? Do I wish it to be otherwise ? God forbid ! 
 It is only one of its accidental, but too frequent, consequences, 
 of which I complain, and against which I protest. I regret 
 nothing that tends to make the Light become the Life of men, 
 even as the Life in the eternal Word is their alone true light. 
 But I do regret, that in after years — when by occasion of some 
 new dispute on some old heresy, or any other accident, the 
 attention has for the first time been distinctly attracted to the 
 superstructure raised on these fundamental truths, or to truths 
 of later revelation supplemental of these and not less impor- 
 tant — all the doubts and difficulties, that cannot but arise where 
 the Understanding, " the mind of the fleshj^^ is made the mea- 
 sure of spiritual things ; all the sense of strangeness and seem- 
 ing contradiction in terms ; all the Marvel and the Mystery 
 that belong equally to both ; are first thought of and applied 
 in objection exclusively to the latter. I would disturb no 
 man's faith in the great articles of the (falsely so called) Re- 
 ligion of Nature. But before the man rejects, and calls on 
 
148 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 other men to reject, the revelations of the Gospel and the Re- 
 ligion of all Christendom, I would have him place himself in 
 the state and under all the privations of a Simonides, when on 
 the fortieth day of his meditation the sage and philosophic Po- 
 et abandoned the Problem in despair. Ever and anon he seem- 
 ed to have hold of the truth ; but when he asked himself, what 
 he meant by it, it escaped from him, or resolved itself into 
 meanings, that destroyed each other. I would have the Scep- 
 tic, while yet a Sceptic only, seriously consider whether a Doc- 
 trine, of the truth of which a Socrates could obtain no other 
 assurance than what he derived from his strong ivish that it 
 should be true ; or that which Plato found a Mystery hard to 
 discover, and when discovered, communicable only to the few- 
 est of men ; can, consonantly v/ith History or Common Sense, 
 be classed among the Articles, the belief of which is ensured 
 to all men by their mere common sense ? Whether, without 
 gross outrage to fact, they can be said to constitute a Religion 
 of nature, or a Natural Theology antecedent to Revelation or 
 superseding its necessity? Yes! in prevention (for there is 
 little chance, I fear, of a cure) of the pugnacious dogmatism 
 of partial Reflection, I would prescribe to every man, who 
 feels a commencing alienation from the Catholic Faith, and 
 whose studies and attainments authorise him to argue on the 
 subject at all, a patient and thoughtful perusal of the arguments 
 and representations which Bayle supposes to have passed 
 through the mind of Simonides. Or I should be fully satisfied 
 if I could induce these Eschewers of Mystery to give a pa- 
 tient, manly, and impartial perusal to the single Treatise of 
 Pomponatius, De Fato[60]. 
 
 When they have fairly and satisfactorily overthrown the ob- 
 jections and cleared away the difficulties urged by this sharp- 
 witted Italian against the Doctrines which they profess to re- 
 tain, then let them commence their attack on those which they 
 reject. As far as the supposed irrationality of the latter is the 
 ground of Argument, I am much deceived if on reviewing 
 their forces they would not find the ranks woefully thinned by 
 the success of their own fire in the preceding Engagement — 
 
APHORISMa ON SPIRITUJ.L RELIGION. 149 
 
 unless, indeed, by pure heat of Controversy, and to storm the 
 lines of their Antagonists, they can bring to life again the Argu- 
 ments, which they had themselves killed off in the defence of 
 their own positions. In vain shall we seek for any other mode 
 of meeting the broad facts of the scientific Epicurean, or the re- 
 quisitions and queries of the all-analysing Pyrrhonist, than by 
 challenging the tribunal to which they appeal, as incompetent 
 to try the question. In order to non-suit the infidel Plaintiff, 
 we must remove the cause from the Faculty, that judges accord- 
 ing to Sense, and whose judgments, therefore, are valid only 
 on objects of Sense, to the Superior Courts of Conscience and 
 intuitive Reason ! " The words I speak unto you^ are Spirit,''^ 
 and such only " are Ufe^^'' i. e. have an inward and actual power 
 abiding in them. 
 
 But the same truth is at once Shield and Bow. The Shaft of 
 Atheism glances aside from it to strike and pierce the breast- 
 plate of the Heretic. Well for the Latter, if plucking the 
 weapon from the wound he recognizes an arrow from his own 
 Quiver, and abandons a cause that connects him with such 
 Confederates ! Without further rhetoric, the sum and sub- 
 stance of the Argument is this : an insight into the proper 
 functions and subaltern rank of the Understanding may not, 
 indeed, disarm the Psilanthropist of his metaphorical Glosses, 
 or of his Versions fresh from the forge and with no other stamp 
 than the private mark of the individual Manufacturer ; but it 
 will deprive him of the only rational pretext for having re- 
 course to tools so liable to abuse, and of such perilous exam- 
 ple. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 Since the preceding pages were composed, and during an 
 interim of depression and disqualification, I heard with a de- 
 light and an interest, that I might without hyperbole call me- 
 dicinal, that the contra-distinction of Understanding from Rea- 
 son, for which during twenty years I have been contending, 
 "casting my bread upon the Waters" with a perseverance, 
 which in the existing state of the public taste nothing but the 
 
150 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 deepest conviction of its importance could have inspired — has 
 been lately adopted and sanctioned by the present distinguish- 
 ed Professor of Anatomy, in the Course of Lectures given 
 by him at the Royal College of Surgeons, on the Zoological 
 part of Natural History ; and if I am rightly informed, in one 
 of the eloquent and impressive introductory Discourses. In 
 explaining the Nature of Instinct, as deduced from the actions 
 and tendencies of animals successively presented to the Ob- 
 servation of the Comparative Physiologist in the ascending 
 Scale of Organic Life — or rather, I should have said, in an at- 
 tempt to determine that precise import of the Term, w^hich is 
 required by the facts [61] — the Professor explained the nature 
 of what I have elsewhere called the Adaptive Power, i. e. the 
 faculty of adapting means to proximate ends. [N. B. I mean 
 here a relative end — that which relatively to one thing is an 
 end, though relatively to some other it is itself a means. It is 
 to be regretted, that we have no single word to express these 
 ends, that are not the end : for the distinction between these 
 and an end in the proper sense of the term is an important 
 one.] The Professor, I say, not only explained, first, the Na- 
 ture of the Adaptive Power in genere, and, secondly, the dis- 
 tinct character of the same Power as it exists specifically and 
 exclusively in the human being, and acquires the name of Un- 
 derstanding ; but he did it in a way which gave the whole sum 
 and substance of my convictions, of all I had so long wished, 
 and so often, but with such imperfect success, attempted to 
 convey, free from all semblance of Paradoxy, and from all oc- 
 casion of offence — omnem offendiculi[62] ansam praecidens. 
 It is, indeed for the fragmentar^y reader only that I have any 
 scruple. In those who have had the patience to accompany 
 me so far on the up-hill road to manly Principles, I can have 
 no reason to guard against that disposition to hasty offence 
 from Anticipation of Consequences, that faithless and loveless 
 spirit of fear which plunged Galilseo into a Prison [63] — a spi- 
 rit most unworthy of an educated man, who ought to have 
 learnt that the Mistakes of scientific men have never injured 
 Christianity, while every new truth discovered by them has 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 151 
 
 either added to its evidence, or prepared the mind for its re- 
 ception. 
 
 ON INSTINCT IN CONNEXION WITH THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 It is evident that the definition of a Genus or Class is an 
 adequate definition onlj of the lowest species of that Genus : 
 for each higher species is distinguished from the lower by some 
 additional character, while the General Definition includes only 
 the characters common to all the Species. Consequently it 
 describes the lowest only. Now I distinguish a Genus or kind 
 of Powers under the name of Adaptive Power, and give as its 
 generic definition — the Power of selecting, and adapting means 
 to proximate ends ; and as an instance of the lowest species of 
 this Genus, I take the stomach of a Caterpillar. I ask myself, 
 under what words I can generalize the action of this Organ ; 
 and I see, that it selects and adapts the appropriate means [i. 
 e. the assimilable part of the vegetable congesta) to the prox- 
 imate end, i. e. the growth or reproduction of the Insect's Bo- 
 dy. This we call vital power, or vita propria of the Stom- 
 ach ; and this being the lowest species, its definition is the 
 same with the definition of the kind. 
 
 Well! from the Power of the Stomach I pass to the Power 
 exerted by the whole animal. I trace it wandering from spot 
 to spot, and plant to plant, till it finds the appropriate vegeta- 
 ble; and again on this chosen vegetable, I mark it seeking out 
 and fixing on the part of the plant, bark, leaf, or petal, suited 
 to its nourishment: or (should the animal have assumed the 
 butterfly form), to the deposition of its eggs, and the sustenta- 
 tion of the future Larva. Here I see a power of selecting and 
 adapting means to proximate ends according to circumstances : 
 and this higher species of Adaptive Power we call Instinct. 
 
 Lastly, I reflect on the facts narrated and described in the 
 preceding extracts from Hiiber, and see a power of selecting 
 and adapting the proper means to the proximate ends, accord- 
 ing to varying circumstances. And what shall we call this yet 
 higher species ? We name the former. Instinct : we must call 
 this Instinctive Intelligence. 
 
152 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Here then we have three Powers of the same kind, Life, 
 Instinct, and instinctive Intelligence : the essential characters 
 that define the genus existing equally in all three. But in 
 addition to these, I find one other character common to the 
 highest and lowest: viz. that the purposes are all manifestly 
 pre-deterniined by the peculiar organization of the Animals ; 
 and though it may not be possible to discover any such imme- 
 diate dependency in all the Actions, yet the Actions being de- 
 termined by the purposes, the result is equivalent : and both 
 the Actions and Purposes are all in a necessitated reference to 
 the preservation and continuance of the particular Animal or 
 of the Progeny. There is selection, but not choice : volition 
 rather than Will. The possible knowledge of a thing, or the 
 desire to have the thing representable by a distinct correspon- 
 dent Thought^ does not, in the animal, suffice to render the 
 thing an object^ or the ground of a purpose. I select and 
 adapt the proper means to the separation of a stone from a 
 rock, which I neither can, or desire to, make use of for food, 
 shelter, or ornament : because, perhaps, I wish to measure 
 the angles ofits primary crystals, or perhaps, for no better reason 
 than the apparent difficulty of loosening the stone — stat pro 
 ratione Voluntas — and thus make a motive out of the absence 
 of all motive, and a reason out of the arbitrary will to act with- 
 out any reason. 
 
 Now what is the conclusion from these premises ? Evident- 
 ly this: that if I suppose the Adaptive Power in its highest 
 species or form of Instinctive Intelligence to co-exist with 
 Reason, Free will, and Self-consciousness, it instantly becomes 
 understanding: in other words, that Understanding differs 
 indeed from the noblest form of Instinct, but not in itself or in 
 its own essential properties, but in consequence of its co-exis- 
 tence with far higher Powers of a diverse kind in one and the 
 same Subject. Instinct in a rational, lesponsible, and self- 
 conscious Animal, is Understanding. 
 
 Such I apprehend to have been the Professor's View and 
 Exposition of Instinct — and in confirmation of its truth, I would 
 merely request my Readers, from the numerous well-authen- 
 
ATHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION". 153 
 
 ticated instances on record, to recall some one of the extraor- 
 dinary actions of Dogs for the preservation of their Masters' 
 lives, and even for the avenging of their deaths. In these in- 
 stances we have the third species of the Adaptive Power, in 
 connexion with an apparently 7)ioral end — with an end in the 
 proper sense of the word. Here the Adaptive Power co-ex- 
 ists with a purpose apparently voluntary^ and the action seems 
 neither pre-determined by the organization of the Animal, nor 
 in any direct reference to his own preservation, or to the con- 
 tinuance of his race. It is united with an imposing semblance 
 of Gratitude, Fidelity, and disinterested Love. We not only 
 value the faithful brute ; we attribute worth to him. This, I 
 admit, is a problem, of which I have no solution to offer. One 
 of the wisest of uninspired men has not hesitated to declare 
 the Dog a great mystery, on account of this dawning of a moral 
 nature unaccompanied by any the least evidence of Reason, 
 in whichever of the two senses we interpret the w ord — wheth- 
 er as the practical Reason, i. e. the power of proposing an ul- 
 timate end, the determinability of the Will by ideas : or as 
 the sciential Reason, i. e. the faculty of concluding universal 
 and necessary truths from particular and contingent appearan- 
 ces. But in a question respecting the possesion of Reason, 
 the absence of all proof is tantamount to a proof of the contra- 
 ry. It is, however, by no means equally clear to me, that the 
 Dog may not possess an analogon of Words, which I have 
 elsewhere shown to be the proper objects of the '' Faculty, 
 judging according to Sense." 
 
 But to return to my purpose: I entreat the Reader to re- 
 flect on any one fact of this kind, whether occurring in his own 
 experience, or selected from the numerous anecdotes of the 
 Dog preserved in the writings of Zoologists. I will then con- 
 fidently appeal to him, whether it is in his power not to con- 
 sider the faculty displayed in these actions as the same in kind 
 with the Understanding, however inferior in degree. Or 
 should he even in these instances prefer calling it Instinct, and 
 this in con/ra-distinction from Understanding , I call on him 
 to point out the boundary between the two, the cliasm or par- 
 
 20 
 
154 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tition-wall that divides or separates the one from the other. 
 If he can, he will have done what none before him have been 
 able to do, though many and eminent men have tried hard for 
 it : and my recantation shall be among the first trophies of 
 his success. If he cannot, I must infer that he is controlled 
 by his dread of the consequences, by an apprehension of some 
 injury resulting to Religion or Morality from this opinion ; and 
 I shall console myself with the hope, that in the sequel of this 
 work he will find proofs of the direct contrary tendency. Not 
 only is this view of the Understanding, as differing in degree 
 from Instinct and in kind from Reason, innocent in its possible 
 influences on the religious character, but it is an indispensible 
 preliminary to the removal of the most formidable obstacles to 
 an intelligent Belief of the pecidiar Doctrines of the Gospel, of 
 the characteristic Articles of the Christian Faith, with which 
 the Advocates of the truth in Christ have to contend ; the evil 
 heart of Unbelief alone excepted. 
 
 REFLECTIONS BY THE EDITOR INTRODUCTORY TO APHORISM 
 
 THE TENTH. 
 
 The most momentous question a man can ask is. Have I a 
 Saviour ! And yet, as far as the individual Querist is con- 
 cerned it is premature and to no purpose, except another ques- 
 tion has been previously put and answered (alas ! too generally 
 put after the wounded Conscience has already given the an- 
 swer!) viz. Have I any need of a Saviour? For him who 
 needs none, ( O, bitter irony of the Evil Spirit, whose whis- 
 pers the proud Soul takes for its own thoughts, and knows not 
 how the Tempter is scofiing the while ! ) there is none, as long 
 as he feels no need. On the other hand, it is scarce possible 
 to have answered this question in the affirmative, and not ask — 
 first, in ivhat the necessity consists ? secondly, ivhence it pro- 
 ceeded ? and, thirdly, how far the answer to this second ques- 
 tion is or is not contained in the answer to the first ! I entreat 
 the intelligent Reader, who has taken me as his temporary 
 guide on the strait, but yet, from the number of cross roads, 
 difficult way of religious Inquiry, to halt a moment, and con- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL, RELIGION. 155 
 
 sider the main points that in this last division of our work 
 have been aheady offered for his reflection. I have attempted 
 then to fix the proper meaning of the words Nature and Spirit, 
 the one being the antithesis to the other : so that the most 
 general and negative definition of Nature is, Whatever is not 
 Spirit ; and vice versa of Spirit, That \\ hich is not compre- 
 hended in Nature : or in the language of our elder Divines, 
 that which transcends Nature. But Nature is the term in 
 which we comprehend all things that are representable in the 
 forms of Time and Space, and subjected to tl\c Relations of 
 Cause and Eft'ect : and the cause of whose existence therefore 
 is to be sought for perpetually in something Antecedent. The 
 word itself expresses this in the strongest manner possible : 
 Natura, that which is about to be born, that which is always 
 becoming. It follows, therefore, that whatever originates its 
 own acts, or in any sense contains in itself the cause of its own 
 state, must be spiritual^ and consequently super -natural : jet 
 not on that account necessarily miraculous. And such must 
 the responsible Will in us be, if it be at all. ( See p. 87 — 92. ) 
 
 A prior step had been to remove all misconceptions from 
 tho subject ; to show the reasonableness of a belief in the real- 
 ity and real influence of a universal and divine Spirit ; the 
 compatibility and possible communion of such a Spirit with the 
 Spiritual Piinciple in Individuals; and the analogy off'ered by 
 the most undeniable truths of Natural Philosophy [64]. (See 
 p. 41—46). 
 
 These Views of the Spirit, and of the Will as Spiritual, 
 form the ground- work of our Scheme. Among the numerous 
 Corollaries or Appendents, the first that presented itself re- 
 spects the question, Whether there is any faculty in man hy 
 which a knowledge of spiritual truths or of any truths not ab- 
 stracted from Nature, is rendered possible? and an Answer is 
 attempted in Comment on Aphorism Vlllth. And here I beg 
 leave to remark, that in this Comment the only Novelty, and, 
 if there be Merit, the only Merit is — that there being two very 
 different Meanings, and two different W^ords, I have here and 
 in former Works appropriated one meaning to one oi the 
 
156 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Words, and the other to the other — instead of using the words 
 indifferently and by hap-hazard : a confusion, the ill effects of 
 which in this instance are so great and of such frequent occur- 
 rence in the works of our ablest Philosophers and Divines, that 
 I should select it before all others in proof of Hobbes's Maxim : 
 that it is a short and downhill passage from errors in words to 
 errors in things. The distinctness of the Reason from the Un- 
 derstanding, and the imperfection and limited sphere of the lat- 
 ter, have been asserted by many both before and since Lord 
 Bacon [65] ; but still the habit of using Reason and Understand- 
 ing as synonymes, acted as a disturbing force. Some it led 
 into mysticism, others it set on explaining away a clear differ- 
 ence in kind into a mere superiority in degree : and it partially 
 eclipsed the truth for all. 
 
 In close connexion with this, and therefore forming the 
 Comment on the Aphorism next following, is the Subject of 
 the legitimate exercise of the Understanding and its limitation 
 to Objects of Sense ; with the errors both of unbelief and 
 of misbelief, that result from its extension beyond the sphere 
 of possible Experience. Wherever the forms of Reasoning 
 appropriate only to the natural world are applied to spiritnal 
 realities, it may be truly said, that the more strictly logical the 
 Reasoning is in all its parts, the more irrational it is as a whole. 
 
 The Reader thus armed and prepared, I now venture to pre- 
 sent the so called mysteries of Faith, i. e. the peculiar tenets 
 and especial Constituents of Christianity, or Religion in spirit 
 and in truth. In right order I must have commenced with the 
 Articles of the Trinity and the Apostacy, including the ques- 
 tion respecting the Origin of Evil, and the Incarnation of the 
 Word. And could I have followed this order, some difficul- 
 ties that now press on me would have been obviated. But (as 
 has already been explained) the limits of the present Volume 
 rendered it alike impracticable and inexpedient ; for the ne- 
 cessity of my argument would have called forth certain hard, 
 though most true sayings, respecting the hollowness and trick- 
 sy sophistry of the so called " Natural Theology," '' Religion 
 of Nature," '' Light of Nature^" &c. which a brief exposition 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 157 
 
 could not save from innocent misconceptions, much less pro- 
 tect against plausible misinterpretation. And yet both Reason 
 and Experience have convinced me, that in the greater num- 
 ber of our Alogi, who feed on the husks of Christianity, the 
 disbelief of the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ included, has 
 its origin and support in the assumed self-evidence of this Na- 
 tural Theology, and in their ignorance of the insurmountable 
 difficulties which (on the same mode of reasoning) press upon 
 the fundamental articles of their own Remnant of a Creed. 
 But arguments, which would prove the falsehood of a known 
 truth, must themselves be false, and can prove the falsehood of 
 no other position in eodem genere. 
 
 This hint I have thrown out as a Spark that may perhaps 
 fall where it will kindle. The Reader desirous of more is 
 again referred to the Work already announced. And worthi- 
 ly might the wisest of men make inquisition into the three mo- 
 mentous points here spoken of, for the purposes of speculative 
 Insight, and for the formation of enlarged and systematic views 
 of the destination of Man, and the dispensation of God. But 
 the practical Inquirer (I speak not of those who inquire for 
 the gratification of Curiosity, and still less of those who labour 
 as students only to shine as disputants ; but of one, who seeks 
 the truth, because he feels the want of it), the practical Inqui- 
 rer, I say, hath already placed his foot on the rock, if he have 
 satisfied himself that whoever needs not a Redeemer is more 
 than human. Remove for him the difficulties and objections, 
 that oppose or perplex his belief of a crucified Saviour ; con- 
 vince him of the reality of Sin, which is impossible without a 
 knowledge of its true nature and inevitable Consequences ; 
 and then satisfy him as to the fact historically, and as to the 
 truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom by Christ ; do this 
 for him, and there is little fear that he will permit either logi- 
 cal quirks or metaphysical puzzles to contravene the plain dic- 
 tate of his Common Sense, the Sinless One that redeemed 
 Mankind from Sin, must have been more than Man ; and that 
 He who brought Light and Immortality into the World, could 
 not in his own nature have been an inheritor of Death and 
 
158 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Darkness. It is morally impossible, that a man with these con- 
 victions should suffer the Objection of Incomprehensibility (and 
 this on a subject of Faith) to overbalance the manifest absurd- 
 ity and contradiction in the'notion of a mediator between God 
 and the Human Race, at the same infinite distance from God 
 as the Race for whom he mediates. 
 
 The Origin of Evil, meanw^hile, is a question interesting 
 only to the Metaphysician, and in a system of moral and reli- 
 gious Philosophy. The man of sober mind, who seeks for 
 truths that possess a moral and practical interest, is content to 
 be cei'tain^ first, that Evil must have had a beginning, since 
 otherwise it must either be God, or a co-eternal and co-equal 
 Rival of God ; both impious notions, and the latter foolish to 
 boot. 2dly, That it could not originate in God ; for if so, it 
 would be at once Evil and not Evil, or God would be at once 
 God (that is, infinite Goodness) and not God — both alike im- 
 possible positions. Instead therefore of troubling himself with 
 this barren controversy, he more profitably turns his enquiries 
 to that Evil which most concerns himself, and of which he 
 may find the origin. 
 
 The entire Scheme of necessary Faith may be reduced to 
 two heads, 1. the Object and Occasion, and 2. the fact and ef- 
 fect, of our redemption by Christ : and to this view does the 
 order of the following Comments correspond. I have begun 
 with Original Sin, and proceeded in the following Aphorism 
 to the doctrine of Redemption. The Comments on the re- 
 maining Aphorisms are all subsidiary to these, or written in 
 the hope of making the minor tenets of general belief be be- 
 lieved in a spirit worthy of these. They are, in short, intend- 
 ed to supply a febrifuge against aguish Scruples and Horrors, 
 the hectic of the Soul ! and " for servile and thrall-like fear 
 to substitute that adoptive and cheerful boldness, which our 
 new alliance with God requires of us as Christians." (Mil- 
 ton). Not the Origin of Evil, not the Chronology of Sin, 
 or the chronicles of the original Sinner ; but Sin originant, un- 
 derived from without, and no passive link in the adamantine 
 chain of Effects, each of which is in its turn an instrument of 
 
APHORIS3IS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 159 
 
 Causation, but no one of them a Cause ! not with Sin inflict- 
 ed^ which would be a Calamity! not with Sin [i. e. an evil 
 tendency) implanted^ for which let the Planter be responsible ! 
 But I begin with Original Sin. And for this purpose I have 
 selected the Aphorism from the ablest and most formidable 
 Antagonist of this Doctrine, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and 
 from the most eloquent work of this most eloquent of Divines. 
 Had I said, of Men, the Soul of Cicero would forgive me, 
 and Demosthenes nod assent [66]! 
 
 APHORISM X. JEREMY TAYLOR. 
 
 ON ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 Is there any such thing ? That is not the question. For it 
 is a Fact acknowledged on all hands almost : and even those 
 who will not confess it in words, confess it in their complaints. 
 For my part I connot but confess that to 6c, which I feel and 
 groan under, and by which all the world is miserable. 
 
 Adam turned his back on the Sun, and dwelt in the Dark 
 and the Shadow. He sinned, and brought evil into his Super- 
 natural endowments, and lost the Sacrament and instrument 
 of Immortality, the Tree of Life in the centre of the Garden. 
 He then fell under the evils of a sickly Body, and a passion- 
 ate and ignorant Soul. His Sin made him sickly, his Sickness 
 made him peevish : his Sin left him ignorant, his Ignorance 
 made him foolish and unreasonable. His sin left him to his 
 Nature : and by Nature, whoever was to be born at all was to 
 be born a child, and to do before he could understand, and to 
 be bred under laws to which he was always bound, but which 
 could not always be exacted ; and he was to choose when he 
 could not reason, and had passions most strong when he had 
 his understanding most weak ; and the more need he had of a 
 curb, the less strength he had to use it ! And this being the 
 case of all the world, what was every man's evil became all 
 men's greater evil ; and though alone it was very bad, yet 
 when they came together it was made much worse. Like 
 ships in a storm, every one alone hath enough to do to outride 
 
160 . AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it ; but when they meet, besides the evils of the Storm, they 
 find the intolerable calamity of their mutual concussion ; and 
 every Ship that is ready to be oppressed vi^ith the tempest, is 
 a worse Tempest to every Vessel against which it is violently 
 dashed. So it is in Mankind. Every man hath evil enough 
 of his own, and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of 
 his own Reason and Conscience. But when he hath Parents 
 and Children, Friends and Enemies, Buyers and Sellers, Law- 
 yers and Clients, a Family and a Neighbourhood — then it is 
 that every man dashes against another, and one relation re- 
 quires what another denies ; and when one speaks another 
 will contradict him ; and that which is well spoken is some- 
 times innocently mistaken ; and that upon a good cause pro- 
 duces an evil effect ; and by these and ten thousand other con- 
 current causes, man is made more than most miserable. 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 The first question we should put to ourselves, when we 
 have read a passage that perplexes us in a work of authority, 
 is : What does the Writer mean by all this ? And the second 
 question should be. What does he intend by all this ? In the 
 passage before us, Taylor's meaning is not quite clear. A Sin 
 is an Evil which has its ground or origin in the Agent, and 
 not in the compulsion of Circumstances. Circumstances are 
 compulsory from the absence of a power to resist or control 
 them : and if this absence likewise be the efiect of circum- 
 stance (t. e. if it have been neither directly nor indirectly 
 caused by the Agent himself) the Evil derives from the Cir- 
 cumstances ; and therefore (in the Apostle's sense of the 
 word. Sin, w^hen he speaks of the exceeding sinfulness of Sin) 
 such evil is not sin ; and the person who suffers it, or w ho is 
 the compelled instrument of its infliction on others, may feel 
 regret but cannot feel remorse. So likewise of the word ori- 
 gin, original, or originant. The reader cannot too early be 
 warned that it is not applicable, and, without abuse of lan- 
 guage, can never be applied, to a mere link in a chain of ef- 
 fects, where each, indeed, stands in the relation of a cause to 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 161 
 
 those that follow, but is at the same time the effect of all that 
 precede. For in these cases a cause amounts to little more 
 than an antecedent. At the utmost it means only a conductor 
 of the causative influence : and the old axiom, Causa causae 
 causa causati, applies, with a never-ending regress to each se- 
 veral link, up the whole chain of nature. But this (as I have 
 elsewhere shown at large ) is Nature : and no Natural thing 
 or act can be called originant, or be truly said to have an ori- 
 ^in[67] in any other. The moment we assume an Origin in 
 Nature, a true Beginning^ an actual First — that moment we 
 rise above Nature, and are compelled to assume a supernatural 
 Power. (Gen. I. v. 1.) 
 
 It will be an equal convenience to myself and to my Read- 
 ers, to let it be agreed between us, that we will generalize 
 the word Circumstance so as to understand by it, as often as it 
 occurs in this Comment, all and every thing not connected 
 with the Will, past or present, of a Free Agent. Even though 
 it were the blood in the chambers of his Heart, or his ow^n in- 
 most Sensations, we will regard them as circumstantial^ ex- 
 trinsic^ or from without. 
 
 In this sense of the word Original, and in the sense before 
 given of Sin, it is evident that the phrase. Original Sin, is 
 a Pleonasm, the epithet not adding to the thought, but only 
 enforcing it. For if it be Sin, it must be original: and a State 
 or Act, that has not its origin in the will, may be calamity, de- 
 formity, disease, or mischief; but a Sin it cannot be. It is not 
 enough that the Act appears voluntary; or that it is intention- 
 al; or that it has the most hateful passions or debasing appetite 
 for its proximate cause and accompaniment. All these may 
 be found in a Mad-house, where neither law nor humani- 
 ty peimit us to condemn the Actor of Sin. The Reason of 
 Law declares the Maniac not a Free- A gent ; and the Verdict 
 follows of course — Not guilty. Now Mania, as distinguished 
 from Idiocy, Frenzy, Delirium, Hypochondria, and Derange- 
 ment (the last term used specifically to express a suspension or 
 disordered state of the Understanding or Adaptive Power) is 
 the Occultation or Eclipse of Reason, as the Power of ul- 
 
 21 — - - 
 
162 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 timate ends. The Maniac, it is well known, is often found 
 clever and inventive in the selection and adaptation of means 
 to his ends ; but his ends are madness. He has lost his Rea- 
 son. For though Reason, in finite beings, is not the Will— - 
 or how could the will be opposed to the Reason? — yet it is 
 the condition^ the sine qua non of a /Vee-will. 
 
 We will now return to the Extract from Jeremy Taylor on 
 a theme of deep interest in itself, and trebly important from 
 its hearings. For without just and distinct views respecting 
 the Article of Original Sin, it is impossible to understand aright 
 any one of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. Now my 
 first complaint is, that the eloquent Bishop, while he admits 
 the fact as established beyond controversy by universal expe- 
 rience, yet leaves us wholly in the dark as to the main point, 
 supplies us with no answer to the principal question — why he 
 names it Original Sin? It cannot be said, We know what the 
 Bishop meanSj and what matters the name ? for the nature of 
 the fact, and in what light it should be regarded by us, depends 
 on the nature of our answer to the question, whether Original 
 vSin is or is not the right and proper designation. I can ima- 
 gine the same quantum of Sufferings and yet if I had reason to 
 regard them as symptoms of a commencing Change, as pains 
 of growth, the temporary deformity and misproportions of im- 
 maturity, or (as in the final sloughing of the Caterpillar) as 
 throes and struggles of the waxing or evolving Psyche, I 
 should think it no stoical flight to doubt, how far I was 
 authorised to declare the Circumstance an Evil at all. Most 
 assuredly I would not express or describe the fact as an evil 
 having an origin in the Sufferers themselves, or as Sin. 
 
 Let us, however, waive this objection. Let it be supposed 
 that the Bishop uses the word in a different and more compre- 
 hensive Sense, and that by Sin he understands Evil of all kind 
 connected with or resulting from Actions — though I do not 
 see how we can represent the properties even of inanimate 
 Bodies (of poisonous substance, for instance) except as Acts 
 resulting from the constitution of such bodies ! Or if this sense, 
 though not unknown to the Mystic Divines, should be too 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL. RELIGION. ' 163 
 
 comprehensive and remote, we will suppose the Bishop to com- 
 prise under the term Sin, the Evil accompanying or conse- 
 quent on human Actions and Pui*poses : — though here too, 1 
 have a right to be informed, for what reason and on what 
 grounds Sin is thus limited to human Agency ? And truly, 1 
 should be at no loss to assign the reason. But then this rea- 
 son would instantly bring me back to my first definition ; and 
 any other reason, than that the human Agent is endowed with 
 Reason, and with a Will which can place itself either in sub- 
 jection or in opposition to his Reason — in other words, that 
 Man is alone of all known Animals a responsible Creatuie — 1 
 neither know or can imagine. 
 
 Thus, then, the Sense which Taylor — and with him the An- 
 tagonists generally of this Article as propounded by the first 
 Reformers — attaches to the words. Original Sin, needs only be 
 carried on into its next consequence^ and it will be found to 
 imply the sense which I have given — namely, that Sin is Evil 
 having an Origin. But inasmuch as it is evil^ in God it can- 
 not originate : and yet in some Spirit (i. e. in some supernalu- 
 rai power) it must. For in Nature there is no origin. Sin 
 therefore is spiritual Evil : but the spiritual in Man is the Will. 
 Now when we do not refer to any particular Sins, l)ut to that 
 state and constitution of the Will, which is the ground, condi- 
 tion and common Cause of all Sins ; and when we would fur- 
 ther express the truth, that this corrupt Nature of the Will 
 must in some sense or other be considered as its own act, that 
 the corruption must have been self-originated ; — in this case 
 and for this purpose we may, with no less propriety than force, 
 entitle this dire spiritual evil and source of all evil, tliat is ab- 
 solutely such. Original Sin. (I have said, "the corrupt Na- 
 ture of the Will." I might add, that the admission of a Na- 
 ture into a spiritual essence by its own act is a corruption.) 
 
 Such, I repeat, would be the inevitable conclusion, if Tay- 
 lor's Sense of the term were carried on into its immediate 
 consequences. But the whole of his most eloquent Treatise 
 makes it certain that Tajlor did not cany it on : and conse- 
 quently Original Sin, according to his conception, is a Calami- 
 
164 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tv which being common to all men must be supposed to result 
 fiom their common Nature : in other words, the universal Ca- 
 lamity of Human Nature I 
 
 Can we wonder, then, that a mind, a heart like Taylor's, 
 should reject, that he should strain his faculties to explain 
 away, the belief that this Calamity, so dire in itself, should ap- 
 pear to the All-merciful God a rightful cause and motive for 
 inflicting on the wretched Sufferers a Calamity infinitely more 
 tremendous ? nay, that it should be incompatible with Divine 
 Justice not to punish it by everlasting torment ? Or need we 
 be surprised if he found nothing, that could reconcile his mind 
 to such a belief, in the circumstance that the acts now conse- 
 quent on this Calamity and either directly or indirectly effects 
 of the same were, five or six thousand years ago in the instance 
 of a certain Individual and his Accomplice, anterior to the Ca- 
 lamity, and the Cause or Occasion of the same ? that what in 
 all other men is Disease^ in these two persons was Guilt 9 that 
 what in us is hereditary, and consequently Nature, in them 
 was original^ and consequently Sin ? Lastly might it not be 
 presumed, that so enlightened, and at the same time so affec- 
 tionate, a Divine, would even fervently disclaim and reject the 
 pretended justifications of God, grounded on flimsy analogies 
 drawn from the imperfections of human ordinances and human 
 justice-courts — some of very doubtful character even as hu- 
 man Institutes, and all of them just only as far as they are ne- 
 cessary, and rendered necessary chiefly by the weakness and 
 wickedness, the limited powers and corrupt passions, of man- 
 kind ? The more confidently might this be presumed of so 
 acute and practised a Logician, as Jeremy Taylor, in addition 
 to his other extra-ordinary Gifts, is known to have been, when 
 it is demonstrable that the most current of these justifications 
 rests on a palpable equivocation : viz. the gross misuse of the 
 word Right[68]. An instance will explain my meaning. In 
 as far as, from the known frequency of dishonest or mischie- 
 vous persons, it may have been found necessary, in so far is the 
 Law justifiable in giving Landowners the Right of proceeding 
 against a neighbour or fellow-citizen for even a slight trespass 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL. RELIGION. 165 
 
 on that which the Law has made their Property : — nay, of pro- 
 ceeding in sundry instances criminally and event[capitally. 
 (Where at least from the known poverty of the Trespasser 
 it is foreknown that the consequences will be penal. Thus : 
 three poor men were fined Twenty Pounds each, the one for 
 knocking down a Hare, the other for picking it up, and the third 
 for carrying it off: and not possessing as many Pence, were 
 sent to Jail.) But surely, either there is no religion in the 
 world, and nothing obligatory in the precepts of the Gospel, 
 or there are occasions in which it would be very ivrong in the 
 Proprietor to exercise the Eighty which yet it may be highly 
 expedient that he should possess. On this ground it is, that , 
 Religion is the sustaining Opposite of Law\ 
 
 That Jeremy Taylor, therefore, should have striven fervent- 
 ly against the Article so interpreted and so vindicated, is (for 
 me, at least,) a subject neither of Surprise nor of Complaint. 
 It is the doctrine which he substitutes^ it is the weakness and 
 inconsistency betrayed in the defence of this substitute, it is 
 the unfairness with which he blackens the established Article — 
 for to give it, as it had been caricatured by a few Ultra -Cal- 
 vinists during the fever of the (so called) quinquarticular 
 Controversy, was in effect to blacken it — and then imposes 
 another scheme, to which the same objections apply with even 
 increased force, a scheme which seems to differ from the for- 
 mer only by adding fraud and mockery to injustice : these are 
 the things that excite my wonder, it is of these that I com- 
 plain ! For what does the Bishop's scheme amount to ? God, 
 he tells us, required of Adam a perfect obedience, and made 
 it possible by endowing him " with perfect rectitudes and su- 
 pernatural heights of grace" proportionate to the obedience 
 which he required. As a consequence of his disobedience, 
 Adam lost this rectitude, this perfect sanity and proportionate- 
 ness of his intellectual, moral and corporeal state, powers and 
 impulses ; and as the penalty of his crime, he was deprived 
 of all super-natural aids and graces. The Death, w^ith what- 
 ever is comprised in the scriptural sense of the word. Death, 
 began from that moment to work in him, and this consequence 
 
IGG AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 he conveyed to liis offspring, and through them to all his pos- 
 terity, *. e. to all mankind. They were born diseased in mind, 
 hody and will. For what less than disease can we call a ne- 
 cessity of error and a predisposition to sin and sickness ? Tay- 
 lor, indeed, asserts^ that though perfect Obedience became in- 
 comparably more difficult, it was not, however, absolutely im- 
 possible. Yet he himself admits that the contrary was uni- 
 vcrsctl ; that of the countless millions of Adam's Posterity, 
 not a single Individual ever realized, or approached to the re- 
 alization of, this possibility ; and (if my memory does not de- 
 ceive me) Taylor himself has elsewhere exposed — and if he 
 have not, yet Common Sense will do it for him — the sophistry in 
 asserting of a whole what may be true, but is true only, of each 
 of its component parts. Any one may snap a horsehair: there- 
 fore, any one may perform the same feat with the horse's tail. 
 On a level floor (on the hardened sand, for instance, of a sea- 
 beach) I chalk two parallel strait lines, with a width of eight 
 inches. It is possible for a man, with a bandage over his eyes, 
 to keep within the path for two or three paces : therefore, it is 
 possible for him to walk blindfold for two or three leagues 
 without a single deviation ! And this possibility would suffice 
 to acquit me of injustice, though I had placed man-traps with- 
 in an inch of one line, and knew that there were pit-falls and 
 deep wells beside the other ! 
 
 This assertion, therefore, without adverting to its discord- 
 ance with, if not direct contradiction to, the tenth and thir- 
 teenth Articles of our Church, I shall not, I trust, be thought 
 to rate below its true value, if 1 treat it as an infinitesimal 
 possibility that may be safely dropped in the calculation : and 
 so proceed with the argument. The consequence then of 
 Adam's Crime was by a natural necessity, inherited by Persons 
 who could not (the Bishop affirms) in any sense have been 
 accomplices in the crime or partakers in the guilt : and yet 
 consistently with the divine Holiness, it was not possible that 
 the same perfect Obedience should not be required of them. 
 Now what would the Idea of Equity, what would the Law 
 ijiscribed by the Creator in the heart of Man, seem to dictate 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 167 
 
 in this case ? Surely that the supplementary Aids, the super- 
 natural Graces correspondent to a Law above Nature, should 
 be increased in proportion to the diminished strength of the 
 Agents, and the increased resistance to be overcome by them ! 
 But no ! not only the consequence of Adam's act, but the pe- 
 nalty due to his crime, was perpetuated. His descendants 
 were despoiled or left destitute of these Aids and Graces, 
 w^hile the obligation to perfect obedience was continued ; an 
 obligation too, the nonfulfilment of which brought with it 
 Death and the unutterable Woe that cleaves to an immortal 
 Soul for ever alienated from its Creator I 
 
 Observe, Reader ! all these results of Adam's Fall enter 
 into Bishop Taylor's scheme of Original Sin equally as into 
 that of the first Reformers. In this respect the Bishop's doc- 
 trine is the same with that laid down in the Articles and Hom- 
 ilies of the Established Church. The only difference that has 
 hitherto appeared, consists in the aforesaid mathematical pos- 
 sibility of fulfilling the whole Law, which in the Bishop's 
 scheme is afliirmed to remain still in human Nature, or (as it is 
 elsewhere expressed) in the Nature of the human Will [69]. 
 But though it were possible to grant this existence of a power 
 in all men, which in no one man was ever exemplified, and 
 where the non-actualization of such power is, a priori, so cer- 
 tain, that the belief or imagination of the contrary in any In- 
 dividual is expressly given us by the Holy Spirit as a test, 
 whereby it may be known that the truth is not in him ! as an 
 infallible sign of imposture or self-delusion ! Though it were 
 possible to grant this, which consistently with Scripture and 
 the principles of reasoning which we apply in all other cases, 
 it is not possible to grant ; and though it were possible like- 
 wise to overlook the glaring sophistry of concluding, in rela- 
 tion to a series of indeterminate length, that whoever can do 
 any one, can therefore do all ; a conclusion, the futility of 
 which must force itself on the common-sense of every man 
 who understands the proposition ; — still the question will arise — 
 Why, and on what principle of equity, were the unofl'ending 
 sentenced to be born with so fearful a disproportion of their 
 
168 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 powers to their duties ? Why were they subjected to a 
 Law, the fulfibnent of which was all but impossible, yet the 
 penalty on the failure tremendous ? Admit that for those 
 who had never enjoyed a happier lot, it was no punish- 
 ment to be made inhabit a ground which the Creator had 
 cursed, and to have been born with a body prone to sickness, 
 and a soul surrounded with temptation and having the worst 
 temptation within itself in its own temptibility ! To have the 
 duties of a Spirit with the wants and appetites of an Animal ! 
 Yet on such imperfect Creatures, with means so scanty and 
 impediments so numerous, to impose the same task-work that 
 had been required of a Creature with a pure and entire na- 
 ture and provided with super-natural Aids — if this be not to 
 inflict a penalty ! — Yet to be placed under a Law, the difficul- 
 ty of obeying and the consequences of not obeying which are 
 both infinite, and to have momently to struggle with this diffi- 
 culty, and to live in momently hazard of these consequences — 
 if this be no punishment! — words have no correspondence 
 with thoughts, and thoughts are but shadows of each other, 
 shadows that own no substance for their anti-type ! 
 
 Of such an outrage on common-sense Taylor was incapable. 
 He himself calls it a penalty ; he admits that in effect it is a 
 punishment : nor does he seek to suppress the question that 
 so naturally arises out of this admission — On what principle of 
 Equity were the innocent offspring of Adam punished at all? 
 He meets it, and puts-in an answer. He states the problem, 
 and gives his solution — namely, that " God on Adam's Account 
 was so exasperated with Mankind^ that being angry he would 
 still continue the punishment!" The case (says the Bishop) 
 is this : "Jonathan and Michal were Saul's Children. It came 
 to pass, that seven of Saul's Issue were to be hanged : all 
 equally innocent, equally culpable." [Before I quote fur- 
 ther , I feel myself called on to remind the Reader, that these 
 two last words were added by Jeremy Taylor without the least 
 ground of Scripture^ according lo ivhich (2 Samuel, Ixxi.) no 
 crime was laid to their charge, no blame imputed to them. 
 Without any pretence of cidpahlc conduct on their jmrt, they 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIfilTUAL. RELIGION. 169 
 
 were arraigned as Children of Saul, and sacrificed to a j)oint 
 of state-expedience. In recommencing the quotation, there- 
 fore, the Reader ought to let the sentence conclude with the 
 words — ] " all equally innocent. David took the fiv^e Sons 
 of Michal, for she had left him unhandsomely. Jonathan was 
 his friend : and therefore he spared his Son, Mephibosheth. 
 Now here it was indifferent as to the guilt of the persons (bear 
 in mind, Reader ! that no guilt was attached to either of 
 them !) whether David should take the Sons of Michal or Jo- 
 nathan's ; but it is likely that as upon the kindness that David 
 had to Jonathan he spared his son ; so upon the just provoca- 
 tion of Michal, he made that evil fall upon them, which, it 
 may be, they should not have suffered if their mother had 
 been kind. Adam was to God as Michal to David.'' (Tay- 
 lor's Polem. Tracts, p. 711.) 
 
 This Answer, this Solution, proceeding too from a Divine so 
 pre-eminently gifted, and occurring ( with other passages not 
 less startling) in a vehement refutation of the received doctrine 
 on the express ground of its opposition to the clearest concep- 
 tions and best feelings of mankind — this it is, that surprises 
 me ! It is of this that I complain ! The Almighty Father ex- 
 asperated with those, whom the Bishop has himself in the 
 same treatise described as "innocent and most unfortunate" — 
 the two things best fitted to concihate love and pity ! Or 
 though they did not remain innocent, yet those whose aban- 
 donment to ameie nature, while they were left amenable to a 
 law above nature, he affirms to be the irresistible cause, that 
 they, one and all, did sin ! And this decree illustrated and 
 justified by its analogy to one of the worst actions of an im- 
 perfect Mortal ! Let such of my Readers as possess the Vol- 
 ume of Polemical Discourses, or the opportunity of consult- 
 ing it, give a thoughtful perusal to the pages from 869 to 893 
 (Third edition enlarged, 1674 J. I dare anticipate their con- 
 currence with the judgment w^hich I here transcribe from the 
 blank space at the end of the Deus Justificatus in my own 
 Copy ; and which, though twenty years have elapsed since it 
 was written, I have never seen reason to recant or modify. 
 
 22 
 
170 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 " This most eloquent Treatise may be compared to a Statue of 
 Janus, with the one face, which we must suppose fronting the 
 Calvinistic Tenet, entire and fresh, as from the Master's hand ; 
 beaming with life and force, a witty scorn on the Lip, and a 
 Brow at once bright and weighty with satisfying reason ! the 
 other, looking toward the ' somef/iin^ to he put in its place ^"^ 
 maimed, featureless, and weatherbitten into an almost vision- 
 ary confusion and indistinctness." 
 
 With these expositions I hasten to contrast the scr'iptural 
 article respecting Original Sin, or the Corrupt and sinful Na- 
 ture of the Human Will, and the belief which alone is requi- 
 red of us, as Christians. And here the first thing to be con- 
 sidered, and which will at once remove a world of error, is : 
 that this is no Tenet first introduced or imposed by Christi- 
 anity ; and which, should a man see reason to disclaim the 
 authority of the Gospel, would no longer have any claim on 
 his attention. It is no perplexity that a man may get rid of 
 by ceasing to be a Christian, and which has no existence for 
 a philosophic Deist. It is a Fact, aflirmed, indeed, in the 
 Christian Scriptures alone with the force and frequency pro- 
 portioned to its consummate importance ; but a fact acknowl- 
 edged in every Religion that retains the least glimmering of 
 the patriarchal faith in a God infinite yet personal ! A fact 
 assumed or implied as the basis of every Religion, of which 
 any relics remain of earlier date than the last and total Apos- 
 tasy of the Pagan World, when the faith in the great I am, 
 the Creator^ was extinguished in the sensual polytheism, which 
 is inevitably the final result of Pantheism or the Worship of 
 Nature ; and the only form under which the Pantheistic 
 Scheme — that, according to which the World is God, and the 
 material universe itself the one only absolute Being — can ex- 
 ist for a People, or become the Popular Creed. Thus in the 
 most ancient Books of the Brahmins, the deep sense of this 
 Fact, and the doctrines grounded on obscure traditions of the 
 promised Remedy, are seen struggling, and now gleaming, 
 now flashing, through the Mist of Pantheism, and producing 
 the incongruities and gross contradictions of the Brahmin My- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUxVL RELIGION. 171 
 
 tliology ; while in the rival Sect — in that most strange Phse- 
 nomenon, the religious Atheism of the Buddheists ! with whom 
 God is only universal Matter considered abstractedly from all 
 particular forms — the fact is placed among the delusions natu- 
 ral to man, which, together with other superstitions grounded 
 on a supposed essential difference between Right and Wrong, 
 the Sage is to decompose and precipitate from the menstruum 
 of his more refined apprehensions ! Thus in denying the fact, 
 they virtually acknowledge it. 
 
 From the remote East turn to the mythology of Minor Asia, 
 to the Descendants of Javan who dwelt in the tents of Shem^ 
 and possessed the Isles. Here again, and in the usual form of 
 an historic Solution, we find the same Fact^ and as character- 
 istic of the Human Race^ stated in that earliest and most ven- 
 erable Mythus (or symbolic Parable) of Prometheus — that 
 truly wonderful Fable, in which the characters of the rebell- 
 ious Spirit and of the Divine Friend of Mankind (Qsog 
 (piXavi^pw^o?) are united in the same Person: and thus in the 
 most striking manner noting the forced amalgamation of the 
 Patriarchal Tradition with the incongruous Scheme of Pan- 
 theism. This and the connected tale of lo, which is but the 
 sequel of the Prometheus, stand alone in the Greek Mythol- 
 ogy, in which elsewhere both Gods and Men are mere Pow- 
 ers and Products of Nature. And most noticeable it is, that 
 soon after the promulgation and spread of the Gospel had awa- 
 kened the moral sense, and had opened the eyes even of its 
 wiser Enemies to the necessity of providing some solution of 
 this great problem of the MoraF World, the beautiful parable 
 of Cupid and Psyche was brought forward as a rival Fall of 
 Man : and the fact of a moral corruption connatural with the 
 human race was again recognized. In the assertion of Orig- 
 inal Sin the Greek Mythology rose and set. 
 
 But not only was the fact acknowledged of a Law in the 
 Nature of Man resisting the Law of God. (And whatever is 
 placed in active and direct Oppugnancy to the Good is, ipso 
 facto, positive Evil. ) It was likewise an acknowledged Mys- 
 tery, and one which by the nature of the Subject must ever 
 
172 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 remain such — a problem, of which any other solution, than 
 the statement of the Fact itself, was demonstrably impossible. 
 That it is so, the least reflection will suffice to convince every 
 man, who has previously satisfied himself that he is a responsi- 
 ble Being. It follows necessarily from the postulate of a res- 
 ponsible Will. Refuse to grant this, and I have not a word to say. 
 Concede this, and you concede all. For this is the essential 
 attribute of a Will, and contained in the very idea, that what- 
 ever determines the Will acquires this power from a previous 
 determination of the Will itself. The Will is ultimately self- 
 determined, or it is no longer a Will under the Law of per- 
 fect Freedom, but a Nature under the mechanism of Cause 
 and Effect. And if by an act, to which it had determined 
 itself, it has subjected itself to the determination of Nature 
 (in the language of St. Paul, to the Law of the Flesh), it re- 
 ceives a nature into itself, and so far it becomes a Nature : 
 and this is a corruption of the Will and a corrupt Nature. It 
 is also a Fall of Man, inasmuch as his Will is the condition of 
 his Personality ; the ground and condition of the attribute 
 which constitutes him Man. And the ground-work of Pei'- 
 sonal Being is a capacity of acknowledging the Moral Law 
 (the Law of the Spirit, the Law of Freedom, the Divine 
 Will) as that which should, of itself, suffice to determine the 
 Will to a free obedience of the Law, the Law working there- 
 on by its own exceeding lawfulness. This, and this alone, is 
 positive Good : good in itself, and independent of all relations. 
 Whatever resists and, as a positive force, opposes this in the 
 Will is therefore evil. But an Evil in the Will is an evil 
 Will ; and as all moral Evil (i. e. all evil that is evil without 
 reference to its contingent physical consequences ) is of the 
 Will, this evil Will must have its source in the Will. And 
 thus we might go back from act to act, from evil to evil, ad 
 infinitum without advancing a step. 
 
 We call an Individual a bad Man, not because an action is 
 contrary to the Law, but because it has led us to conclude 
 from it some Principle opposed to the Law, some private Max- 
 im or By-law in the Will contrnrv to the universal Law o( 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGIOX. 173 
 
 right Reason in the Conscience, as the Ground of the action. 
 But this evil Principle again must be grounded in some other 
 Principle which has been made determinant of the Will bj 
 the Will's own self-determination. For if not, it must have 
 its ground in some necessity of Nature, in some instinct or 
 propensity imposed not acquired, another's work, notour own. 
 Consequently, neither Act nor Principle could be imputed ; 
 and relatively to the Agent, not original^ not Sin. 
 
 Now let the grounds, on which the fact of an Evil inherent 
 in the Will is affirraable in the instance of any one Man, be 
 supposed equally applicable in every instance, and concerning 
 all men : so that the fact is asserted of the Individual, not be- 
 cause he has committed this or that crime, or because he 
 has shown himself to be tliis or that Man, but simply because 
 he is a Man. Let the evil be supposed such as to imply the 
 impossibility of an Individual's referring to any particular time 
 at which it might be conceived to have commenced, or to any 
 period of his existence at w^hich it was not existing. Let it 
 be supposed, in short, that the subject stands in no relation 
 whatever to time, can neither be called in time or out of time ; 
 but that all relations of Time are as alien and heterogeneous 
 in this question, as the relations and attributes of Space (north 
 or south, round or square, thick or thin ) are to our Affections 
 and Moral Feelings. Let the reader suppose this, and he will 
 have before him the precise import of the scriptural doctrine 
 of Original Sin : or rather of the Fact acknowledged in all 
 Ages, and recognized, but not originating, in the Christian 
 Scriptures. 
 
 In addition to this Memento it will be well to remind the 
 Inquirer, that the stedfast conviction of the existence, per 
 sonality, and moral attributes of God is pre-supposed in the 
 acceptance of the Gospel, or required as its indispensable pre- 
 liminary. It is taken for granted as a point which the Hearer 
 had already decided for himself, a point finally settled and put 
 at rest : not by the removal of all difficulties, or by any such 
 increase of Insight as enabled him to meet every objection of 
 the Epicurean or the Sceptic with a full and precise answer ; 
 
174 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 but because he had convinced himself that it was folly as well 
 as presumption in so imperfect a Creature to expect it ; and 
 because these difficulties and doubts disappeared at the beam, 
 when tried against the weight and convictive power of the 
 reasons in the other scale. It is, therefore, most unfair to at- 
 tack Christianity, or any article which the Church has declar- 
 ed a Christian Doctrine, by arguments, which, if valid, are 
 valid against all religion. Is there a Disputant who scorns a 
 mere Postulate, as the basis of any argument in support of the 
 Faith ; who is too high-minded to beg his ground, and will take 
 it by a strong hand ? Let him fight it out with the Atheists, 
 or the Manichseans ; but not stoop to pick up their arrows, and 
 
 then run away to discharge them at Christianity or the 
 Church ! 
 
 The only true way is to state the doctrine, believed equally 
 by Saul of Tarsus, "yet breathing out threatenings and slaugh- 
 ter against" the Church of Christ, as by Paul the Apostle 
 "fully preaching the Gospel of Christ." A moral Evil is an 
 Evil that has its origin in a Will. An Evil common to all 
 must have a ground common to all. But the actual existence 
 of moral evil we are bound in conscience to admit ; and that 
 there is an evil common to all is a Fact ; and this Evil must 
 therefore have a common ground. Now this evil ground can- 
 not originate in the Divine Will : it must therefore be refer- 
 red to the Will of Man. And this evil Ground we call Orig- 
 inal Sin. It is a Mystery, that is, a Fact, which we see, but 
 cannot explain ; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend 
 but can neither comprehend nor communicate. And such by 
 the quality of the Subject (viz. a responsible Will) it must be, 
 if it be truth at all. 
 
 A sick man, whose complaint was obscure as his sufferings 
 were severe and notorious, was thus addressed by a humane 
 Stranger : My poor Friend ! I find you dangerously ill, and 
 on this account only, and having certain information of your 
 being so, and that you have not wherewithal to pay for a phy- 
 sician, I have come to you. Respecting your disease, indeed, 
 I can tell you nothing, that you are capable of understanding. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 175 
 
 more than you know already, or can only be taught by reflec- 
 tion on your own experience. But I have rendered the Dis- 
 ease no longer irremediable. I have brought the remedy with 
 me : and I now offer you the means of immediate relief, with 
 the assurance of gradual convalescence, and a final perfect 
 Cure ; nothing more being required on your part, but your 
 best endeavors to follow the prescriptions I shall leave with 
 you. It is, indeed, too probable, from the nature of your dis- 
 ease, that you will occasionally neglect or transgress them. 
 But even this has been calculated on in the plan of your cure, 
 and the remedies provided, if only you are sincere and in 
 right earnest with yourself, and have your heart in the work. 
 Ask me not, how such a disease can be conceived possible ! 
 Enough for the present that you know it to be real: and I 
 come to cure the disease^ not to explain it. 
 
 Now, what if the Patient or some of his Neighbors should 
 charge this good Samaritan with having given rise to the mis- 
 chievous notion of an inexplicable Disease, involving the hon- 
 our of the King of the Country ? should inveigh against him 
 as the Author and first Introducer of the Notion, though of 
 the numerous medical works composed ages before his arrival, 
 and by Physicians of the most venerable Authority, it was 
 scarcely possible to open a single volume without finding some 
 description of the Disease, or some lamentation of its malig- 
 nant and epidemic character ! And lastly, what if certain 
 pretended Friends of this good Samaritan, in their zeal to vin- 
 dicate him against this absurd charge, should assert that he was 
 a perfect Stranger to this Disease, and boldly deny that he 
 had ever said or done any thing connected with it, or that im- 
 plied its existence ? 
 
 In this Apologue or imaginary Case, Reader ! you have the 
 true bearings of Christianity on the fact and Doctrine of Ori- 
 ginal Sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of a known 
 fact) Christianity has only in common with every Religion, 
 and with every Philosophy, in which the reality of a respon- 
 sible Will and the essential difference between Good and Evil 
 w^ere recognized. Peculiar to the Christian Religion are the 
 
176 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Remedy and (for all purposes but those of a merely specula- 
 tive Curiosity) the Solution ! By the annunciation of the Re- 
 medy it aftbrds all the solution that our moral interests re- 
 quire ; and even in that which remains, and must remain, un- 
 fathomable the Christian finds a new motive to walk humbly 
 with the Lord his God ! 
 
 Should a professed Believer ask you whether that, which 
 is the ground of responsible action in your will, could in any 
 way be responsibly present in the Will of Adam ? Answer 
 him in these words : Fbw, Sir ! can no more demonstrate the 
 Negative, than I can conceive the Affirmative. The Corrup- 
 tion of my will may very warrantably be spoken of as a Con- 
 sequence of Adam's Existence ; as a consequence, a link in 
 the historic Chain of Instances, whereof Adam is the first. But 
 that it is on account of Adam ; or that this evil principle was, 
 a priori, inserted or infused into my Will by the Will of ano- 
 ther — ^ivhich is indeed a contradiction in terms, my Will in 
 such case being no IVill — this is nowhere asserted in Scrip- 
 ture explicitly or by implication. It belongs to the very es- 
 sence of the doctrine, that in respect of Original Sin every 
 man is the adequate representative of all men. What won- 
 der, then, that where no inward ground of preference existed, 
 the choice should be determined by outward relations, and that 
 the first in time should be taken as the Diagram ? Even in 
 Genesis the word, Adam, is distinguished from a Proper Name 
 by an Article before it. It is tke Adam, so as to express the 
 genus^ not the Individual — or rather, perhaps, I should say, as 
 well as the Individual. But that the word with its equivalent 
 the old man, is used symbolically and universally by St. Paul, 
 ( 1 Cor. XV. 22. 45. Eph. iv. 22. Col. iii. 9. Rom. vi. 6. ) is 
 too evident to need any proof. 
 
 I conclude with this remark. The Doctrine of Original 
 Sin concerns all men. But it concerns Christians in partic- 
 ular no otheiwise than by its connexion with the doctrine of 
 Redemption ; and with the Divinity and Divine Humanity of 
 the Redeemer as a corollary or necessary inference from both 
 mysteries. Beware of x\rguments against Christianity, 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 177 
 
 THAT CANNOT STOP THERE, AND CONSEQUENTLY OUGHT NOT 
 
 TO HAVE COMMENCED THERE. Something I might have added 
 to the clearness of the preceding views, if the limits of the 
 work had permited me to clear away the several delusive and 
 fanciful assertions respecting the state [70] of our First Pa- 
 rents, their wisdom, science, and angelic Faculties, assertions 
 without the slightest ground in Scripture ! Or if consistently 
 with the wants and preparatory studies of those, for whose use 
 the volume was especially intended, I could have entered into 
 the momentous subject of a Spiritual Fall or Apostasy ante- 
 cedent to the formation of Man — a belief, the scriptural 
 grounds of which are few and of diverse interpretation, but 
 which has been almost universal in the Christian Church. 
 Enough, however, has been given, I trust, for the Reader to 
 see and (as far as the subject is capable of being understood) 
 to understand this long controverted Article in the sense, in 
 which alone it is binding on his faith. Supposing him, there- 
 fore, to know the meaning of original sin, and to have deci- 
 ded for himself on the fact of its actual existence, as the an- 
 tecedent ground and occasion of Christianity, we may now 
 proceed to Christianity itself, as the Edifice raised on this 
 ground, i. e, to the great Constituent Article of the Faith in 
 Christ, as the Remedy of the Disease — the Doctrine of Re- 
 demption. 
 
 Butbefore we pioceed to this momentous doctrine, let me 
 briefly remind the young and friendly Pupil, to whom I would 
 still be supposed to address myself, that in the Aphorism to 
 follow, the word Science is used in its strict and narrowest 
 sense. By a Science I here mean any Chain of Truths that 
 are either absolutely certain, or necessarily true for the human 
 mind from the laws and constitution of the mind itself. In 
 neither case is our conviction derived ; or capable of receiv- 
 ing any addition, from outward Experience, or empirical da- 
 ta — i. e. matter-of-fact given to us through the medium of our 
 Senses — though these Data may have been the occasion, or 
 may even be an indispensable condition, of "bur reflecting 
 on the former and thereby becoming conscious o( the same. 
 
 23 
 
178 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 On the other hand, a connected series of conclusions grounded 
 on empirical Data, in contra-distinction from Science, I beg 
 leave {no better term occurring) in this place and for this pur- 
 pose, to denominate a Scheme. 
 
 APHORISM XI. EDITOR. 
 
 In whatever age and country, it is the prevailing mind and 
 character of the nation to regard the present life as subordi- 
 nate to a Life to come, and to mark the present state, the 
 World of their Senses^ by signs, instruments and mementos of 
 its connexion with a future state and a spiritual World ; where 
 the Mysteries of Faith are brought within the hold of the peo- 
 ple at large, not by being explained away in the vain hope of 
 accommodating them to the average of their Understanding, 
 but by being made the objects of Love by their combination 
 with events and epochs of History, with national traditions, 
 with the monuments and dedications of Ancestral faith and 
 zeal, with memorial and symbolical observances, with the re- 
 alizing influences of social devotion, and above all, by early 
 and habitual association with Acts of the Will ; there Religion 
 is. TherCj however obscured by the hay and straw of human 
 Will- work, the foundation is safe ! In that country, and un- 
 der the predominance of such Maxims, the national church is 
 no mere State- Institute. It is the State itself in its intensest 
 federal union ; yet a^ the same moment the Guardian and Rep- 
 resentative of all personal individuality. For the Church is the 
 Shrine of Morality : and in Morality alone the Citizen asserts 
 and reclaims his personal independence, his integrity. Our 
 outward Acts are efficient, and most often possible, only by co- 
 alition. As an efficient power, the Agent is but a fraction of 
 unity : he becomes an integer only in the recognition and per- 
 formance of the Moral Law. Nevertheless it is most true 
 (and a truth which cannot with safety be overlooked) that Mo- 
 rality, as Morality, has no existence for a People. It is ei- 
 ther absorbed and lost in the quicksands of Prudential Calcu- 
 lus, or it is taken up and transfigured into the duties and Mys- 
 teries of Religion. And no wonder : since Morality (inclu- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 179 
 
 ding the personal being, the I am, as its su})ject) is itself a 
 Mystery, and the ground and suppositum of all other Myste- 
 ries, relatively to Man. 
 
 APHORISM XII. EDITOR. 
 
 Schemes of conduct, grounded on calculations of Self-inter- 
 est ; or on the average Consequences of Actions, supposing 
 them general ; form a branch of Political Economy, to which 
 let all due honour be given. Their utility is not here ques- 
 tioned. But however estimable within their own sphere such 
 schemes, or any one of them in particular, may be, they do 
 not belong to Moral Science, to which both in kind and pur- 
 pose they are in all cases foreign^ and when substituted for 
 it, hostile. Ethics, or the Science of Morality, does indeed 
 in no wise exclude the consideration of Action ; but it con- 
 templates the same in its originating spiritual Source, without 
 reference to Space or Time or Sensible existence. Whatev- 
 er springs out of "the perfect Law of Freedom," which ex- 
 ists only by its unity with the Will, inherence in the Word, 
 and communion with the Spirit, of God — that (according to 
 the Principles of Moral Science) is good — it is Light and 
 Righteousness and very Truth. Whatever seeks to separate 
 itself from the Divine Principle, and proceeds from a false 
 centre in the Agent's particular Will, is evil — a work of dark- 
 ness and contradiction ! It is Sin and essential Falsehood. 
 Not the outward Deed, constructive, destructive or neutral ; 
 not the Deed as a possible Object of the Senses ; is the Ob- 
 ject of Ethical Science. For this is no Compost, Collectori- 
 um or Inventory of Single Duties : nor does it seek in the 
 " multitudinous Sea," in the predetermined waves, tides and. 
 currents of Nature that freedom, which is exclusively an at- 
 tribute of Spirit. Like all other pure Sciences, whatever it 
 enunciates, and whatever it concludes, it enunciates and con- 
 cludes absolutely. Strictness is its essential Character : and 
 its first Proposition is, " Whosoever shall keep the whole law, 
 and yet oifend in one point, he is guilty of all." James ii. 
 10.) For as the Will or Spirit, the Source and Substance of 
 
180 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Moral Good, is one, and all in every part : so must it be the 
 Totality, the whole articulated Series of Single Acts, taken as 
 Unity, that can alone, in the severity of Science, be recogni- 
 zed as the proper Counterpart and adequate Representative 
 of a good Will. Is it in this or that limb, or not rather in the 
 whole body, the entire Organismus, that the Law of Life re- 
 flects itself ? Much less then can the Law of the Spirit work 
 in fragments. 
 
 APHORISM XIIL EDITOR. 
 
 Wherever there exists a permanent[71] Learned Class, 
 having authority and possessing the respect and confidence of 
 the Country ; and where the Science of Ethics is acknowl- 
 edged and taught in this class as a regular part of a learned 
 education to its future Members generally, but as the special 
 study and indisj3ensable ground-work of such as are intended 
 for Holy Orders ; — there the Article of Original Sin will be an 
 Axiom of Faith in all Classes. Among the Learned an undis- 
 puted truth, and with the People a fact, which no man imag- 
 ines it possible to deny, the Doctrine, thus inwoven in the 
 faith of all and co-eval with the consciousness of each, will 
 for each and all possess a reality, subjective indeed, yet virtu- 
 ally equivalent to that which we intuitively give to the Objects 
 of our Senses. 
 
 With the Learned this will be the case ; because the Arti- 
 cle is the first — I had almost said, spontaneous — product of 
 the Application of Moral Science to History, of which it is 
 the Interpreter. A mystery in its own right, and by the ne- 
 cessity and essential character of its Subject — (for the Will, 
 like the Life, in every act and product pre-supposes itself, a 
 Past always present, a Present that evermore resolves itself 
 into a Past ! ) — the Doctrine of Original Sin gives to all the 
 other Mysteries of Religion a common Basis, a connexion of 
 dependency, an intelligibility of relation, and a total harmo- 
 ny, that supersede extrinsic proof. There is here that same 
 proof from unity of purpose, that same evidence of Symme- 
 try, which in the contemplation of a human skeleton flash- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 181 
 
 ed conviction on the mind of Galen and kindled meditation 
 into a hymn of praise. 
 
 Meanwhile the People, not goaded into doubt by the les- 
 sons and examples of their Teachers and Superiors ; not drawn 
 away from the Fixed Stars of Heaven, the form and Magni- 
 tude of which are the same for the naked eye of the Shep- 
 herd as for the Telescope of the Sage — from the immediate 
 truths, I mean, of Reason and Conscience to an exercise, they 
 have not been trained to, of a Faculty which has been imper- 
 fectly developed, on a subject not within the sphere of the 
 Faculty nor in any way amenable to its judgment ; the Peo- 
 ple will need no arguments to receive a doctrine confirmed 
 by their own experince from within and from without, and in- 
 timately blended with the most venerable Traditions common 
 to all races, and the traces of which linger in the latest Twi- 
 light of Civilization. 
 
 Among the revulsions consequent on the brute bewilder- 
 ments of a godless Revolution, a great and active Zeal for the 
 interests of Religion may be one. I dare not trust it, till I have 
 seen what it is that gives Religion this interest, till I am satis- 
 fied that they are not the interests of this World ; necessary 
 and laudable interests, perhaps, but which may, I dare believe 
 be secured as effectually and more suitably by the Prudence 
 of this World, and by this World's powers and motives. At 
 all events, I find nothing ii\ the fashion of the day to deter me 
 from adding, that the Reverse of the preceding — that where 
 Religion is valued and patronized as a supplement of Law, or 
 an Aid extraordinary of Police ; where Moral Science is ex- 
 ploded as the mystic Jargon of Dark Ages ; where a lax Sys- 
 tem of Consequences, by which every iniquity on earth may 
 be ( and how many have been ? ) denounced and defended with 
 equal plausibility, is publicly and authoritatively taught as Mo- 
 ral Philosophy ; where the Mysteries of Religion, and Truths 
 supersensual, are either cut and squared for the comprehen- 
 sion of the Understanding, " the faculty judging according to 
 Sense" or desperatel}' torn asunder from the Reason, nay, fa- 
 natically opposed to it ; lastly, where Private [72] Interpreta- 
 
182 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tion 13 every thing and the Church nothing — there the Myste- 
 ry of Original Sin will be either rejected, or evaded, or per- 
 verted into the monstrous fiction of Hereditary Sin, Guilt in- 
 herited ; in the Mystery of Redemption metaphors will be 
 obtruded for the reality ; and in the mysterious Appurtenants 
 and Symbols of Redemption (Regeneration, Grace, the Eu- 
 charist, and Spiritual Communion) the realities will be evap- 
 orated into metaphors. 
 
 APHORISM XIV. LEIGHTOM 
 
 As in great Maps or Pictures you will see the border deco- 
 rated with meadows, fountains, flowers, &c. lepresented in it, 
 but in the middle you have the main design ; so amongst the 
 works of God is it with the fore-ordained Redemption of Man. 
 All his other works in the world, all the beauty of the crea- 
 tures, the succession of ages and the things that come to pass 
 in them, are but as the border to this as the Mainpiece. But 
 as a foolish unskilful beholder, not discerning the excellency 
 of the principal piece in such maps or pictures, gazes only on 
 the fair Border, and goes no farther — thus do the greatest part 
 of us as to this great Work of God, the redemption of our 
 personal Being, and the re-union of the Human with the Di- 
 vine, by and through the Divine Humanity of the Incarnate 
 Word. 
 
 APHORISM XV. LUTHER. 
 
 It is a hard matter, yea, an impossible thing for thy human 
 strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance), at 
 such a time when Moses setteth on thee with the Law (see 
 Aphorism XII.), when the holy Law written in thy heart ac- 
 cuseth and condemneth thee, forcing thee to a comparison of 
 thy heart therewith, and convicting thee of the incompatible- 
 ness of thy Will and Nature with Heaven and Holiness and 
 an immediate God — that then thou shouldest be able to be of 
 such a mind as if no Law nor sin had ever been ! I say it is 
 in a manner impossible that a human creature, when he feel- 
 eth himself assaulted with trials and temptations, and the con- 
 
APHORISMS OX SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 183 
 
 science hath to do with God, and the tempted man knoweth 
 that the root of temptation is within him, should obtain such 
 mastery over his thoughts as then to think no otherwise than 
 
 that FROM EVERLASTING NOTHING HATH BEEN BUT ONLY AND 
 
 ALONE Christ, altogether Grace and Deliverance ! 
 
 COMMENT. 
 
 In irrational Agents, viz. the Animals, the Will is hidden or 
 absorbed in the Law. The Law is their Nature. In the ori- 
 ginal purity of a rational Agent the uncorrupted Will is iden- 
 tical with the Law. Nay, inasmuch as a Will perfectly iden- 
 tical with the Law is one with the divine Will, we may say, 
 that in the unfallen rational Agent the Will constitutes the 
 Law. But it is evident that the holy and spiritual Power and 
 Light, which by a lyrolepsis or anticipation we have named 
 Law, is a grace, an inward perfection, and without the com- 
 manding, binding and menacing character which belongs to a 
 Law, acting as a Master or Sovereign distinct from, and exis- 
 ting, as it were, externally for, the Agent who is bound to 
 obey it. Now this is St. Paul's sense of the Word : and on 
 this he grounds his whole reasoning. And hence too arises 
 the obscurity and apparent paradoxy of several texts. That 
 the Law is a Laio for you ; that it acts on the Will not in it ; 
 that it exercises an agency from without^ by fear and coer- 
 cion ; proves the corruption of your Will, and presupposes it. 
 Sin in this sense came by the Law : for it has its essence, as 
 Sin, in that counterposition of the Holy Principle to the Will, 
 which occasions this Principle to be a Law. Exactly ( as in 
 all other points ) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the 
 assertion of John, when speaking of the re-adoption of the 
 redeemed to be Sons of God, and the consequent resumption 
 (I had almost said, re-absorption) of the Law into the Will 
 ( vojULov TsXsjov rov -y;g sXsy^spja^, James i. 25. See page 14) he 
 says — For the Law was given by Moses ; but Grace and 
 Truth came by Jesus Christ. P. S. That by the Law St. Paul 
 meant only the ceremonial Law is a notion, that could origi- 
 
184 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 nate only in utter inattention to the whole strain and gist of 
 the Apostles' Argument. 
 
 APHORISM XVI. LEIGHTON AND ED. 
 
 Christ's Death was hoth voluntary and violent. There was 
 external violence: and that was the accompaniment, or at 
 most the occasion, of his Death. But there was internal will- 
 ingness, the spiritual Will, the Will of the Spirit and this was 
 the proper cause. By this Spirit he was restored from Death : 
 neither indeed " was it possible for him to be holden of it." 
 (Acts ii. V. 24 — 27.). " Being put to death in the flesh, but 
 quickened by the Spirit," says St. Peter. But he is likewise 
 declared elsewhere to have died by that same Spirit, w^hich 
 here in opposition to the violence is said to quicken him. Thus 
 Hebrews ix. 14. Through the eternal Spirit he offered him- 
 self. And even from Peter's words, and without the epithet, 
 eternal, to aid the interpretation, it is evident that the Spirit, 
 here opposed to the Flesh, Body or Animal Life, is of a high- 
 er nature and power than the individual Soul^ which cannot 
 of itself return to re-inhabit or quicken the Body. 
 
 If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in doc- 
 trine, is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, Peter and 
 Paul, with the Author of the Ep. to the Hebrews, would have 
 layed so great stress on them ? But the true Life of Chris- 
 tians is to eye Christ in every step of his life — not only as 
 their Rule but as their Strength ; looking to him as their Pat- 
 tern both in doing and in suffering, and drawing power from 
 him for going through both : being without him able for no- 
 thing. Take comfort then, thou that belie vest ! It is he that 
 lifts up the Soul from the Gates of Death : and he hath said, 
 / ivill raise thee up at the last day. Thou that believest in 
 him, belieA^e him and take comfort. Yea, when thou art most 
 sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and he far off to thy thinking 
 then is he nearest to raise and comfort thee : as sometimes it 
 grows darkest immediately before day. 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 1S5 
 
 AFHORISM XVII. l. a>d editor. 
 
 Would any of jou be cured of that common disease, the 
 fear of Death ? Yet this is not the right name of the Disease, 
 as a mere reference to our armies and navies is sufficient to 
 prove : nor can the fear of death, either as loss of life or pain of 
 dying, be justly held a common disease. But would you be 
 cured of the fear and fearful questionings connected w^ith the 
 approach of death ? Look this way, and you shall find more 
 than you seek. Christ, the Word that was from the beginning, 
 and was made flesh and dwelt among men, died. And he, 
 who dying conquered death in his ow^n person, conquered Sin, 
 and Death which is the Wages of Sin, for thee. And of this 
 thou mayest be assured, if only thou believe in him, and love 
 him. I need not add, keep his commandments : since vdiere 
 Faith and Love are. Obedience in its threefold character, as 
 Effect, Reward, and Criterion, follows by that moral necessity 
 which is the highest form of freedom. The Grave is thy bed 
 of rest, and no longer the cold bed : for thy Saviour has warm- 
 ed it, and made it fragrant. 
 
 If then it be health and comfort to the Faithful that Christ 
 descended into the grave, with especial confidence may we 
 meditate on his return from thence, quickened by the Sjrb'it : 
 this being to those who are in him the certain pledge, yea, the 
 effectual cause of that blessed resurrection, for which they 
 themselves hope. There is that union betwixt them and their 
 Redeemer, that they shall rise by the communication and vir- 
 tue of his rising : not simply by his jjoiver — for so the wicked 
 likewise to their grief shall be raised ; but theij by his life as 
 their life. 
 
 COMMENT 
 ON THE THREE PRECEDING APHORISMS. 
 
 To the Reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my 
 temporary guidance, and who permits me to regard him as my 
 Pupil or Junior Fellow-student, I continue to address myself. 
 Should he exist only in my imagination, let the bread float on 
 
 24 
 
186 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the waters ! If it be the Bread of Life, it will not have been 
 utterly cast away. 
 
 Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have pass- 
 ed over since the Transit from Religious Morality to Spiritual 
 Religion. My first attempt was to satisfy you, that there is a 
 Spiritual principle in Man (p. 87 — 93), and to expose the so- 
 phistry of the arguments in support of the Contrary. Our 
 next step was to clear the road of all Counterfeits, by showing 
 what is not the Spirit, what is not Spiritual Religion (p. 97 — 
 101 ). And this was followed by an attempt to establish a dif- 
 ference in kind between religious truths and the deductions of 
 speculative science ; yet so as to prove, that the former are not 
 only equally rational with the latter, but that they alone appeal 
 to Reason in the fulness and living reality of the Power. This 
 and the state of mind requisite for the formation of right con- 
 victions respecting spiritual Truths, employed our attention 
 from p. 108 — 126. Having then enumerated the Articles of 
 the Christian Faith pecw/ia?' to Christianity, I entered on the 
 great object of the present work : viz. the removal of all valid 
 Objections to these articles on grounds of right Reason or 
 Conscience. But to render this practicable it was necessary, 
 first, to present each Article in its true scriptural purity, by 
 exposure of the caricatures of misinterpreters ; and this, again,, 
 could not be satisfactorily done till we were agreed respecting 
 the Faculty, entitled to sit in judgment on such questions. I 
 early foresaw, that my best chance ( I will not saj^, of giving 
 an insight into the surpassing worth and transcendent reason- 
 ableness of the Christian Scheme ; but) of rendering the very 
 question intelligible depended on my success in determining 
 the true nature and limits of the human Understanding, and 
 in evincing its diversity from Reason. In pursuing this mo- 
 mentous subject, I was tempted in two or three instances into 
 disquisitions, that if not beyond the comprehension, were yet 
 unsuited to the taste, of the persons for whom the Work was 
 principally intended. These, however, I have separated from 
 the running text^ and compressed into Notes. The Reader 
 will at worst, I hope, pass them by as a leaf or two of waste 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 187 
 
 paper, willingly given by him to those, for whom it may not 
 be paper wasted. Nevertheless, I cannot conceal, that the 
 subject itself supposes, on the part of the Reader, a steadiness 
 in self -questioning y a pleasure in referring to his own inward 
 experience for the facts asserted by the Author, that can only 
 be expected from a person who has fairly set his heart on arri- 
 vins: at clear and fixed conclusions in matters of Faith. But 
 where this interest is felt, nothing more than a common Capa- 
 city, with the ordinary advantages of education, is required for 
 the complete comprehension both of the argument and the re- 
 sult. Let but one thoughtful hour be devoted to the pages 
 135 — 146. In all that follows, the Reader will find no difficul- 
 ty in understanding the Author's meaning, whatever he may 
 have in adopting \i. 
 
 The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Ori- 
 ginal Sin and Redemption ; that the Ground, this the Super- 
 structure of our faith. The former I have exhibited, first, 
 according to the scheme of the Westminster Divines and the 
 Synod of Dorp ; then, according to the [73] scheme of a con- 
 temporary Arminian Divine ; and lastly, in contrast with both 
 schemes, I have placed what I firmly believe to be the Scrip- 
 tural Sense of this Article, and vindicated its entire conformity 
 with Reason and Experience. I now proceed to the other mo- 
 mentous Article — from the necessitating Occasion of the Chris- 
 tian Dispensation to Christianity itself ! For Christianity and 
 Redemption are equivalent terms. And here my Comment 
 will be comprised in a few sentences : for I confine my views 
 to the one object of clearing this awful mystery from those too 
 current misrepresentations of its nature and import, that have 
 laid it open to scruples and objections, not to such as shoot 
 forth from an unbelieving heart — ( against these a sick-bed will 
 be a more effectual Antidote than all the Argument in the 
 world ! ) but to such scruples as have their birth-place in the 
 Reason and Moral Sense. Not that it is a Mystery — not that 
 " it passeth all Understanding ! If the doctrine be more than 
 an hyperbolical phrase, it must do so. But that it is at vari- 
 ance with the Law revealed in the Conscience, that it contra- 
 
188 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 diets our moral instincts and intuitions — this is the difficulty, 
 which alone is worthy of an answer ! And what better way 
 is there of correcting the misconceptions than by laying open 
 the source and occasion of them ? What surer way of remo- 
 ving the scruples and prejudices, to which these misconcep- 
 tions have given rise, than by propounding the Mystery itself — 
 namely, the Redemtive Act, as the transcendent Cause of 
 Salvation — in the express and definite words, in which it was 
 enunciated by the Redeemer himself ? 
 
 But here in addition to the three Aphorisms preceding, I in- 
 terpose a view of redemption as appropriated by faith, coinci- 
 dent with Leighton's though for the greater part expressed in 
 my own words. This I propose as the right view. Then 
 follow a few sentences transcribed from Field (an excellent 
 Divine of James the First's reign, of whose work, entitled the 
 Church it would be difficult to speak too highly ) containing the 
 question to be solved, and which is numbered as an Aphorism, 
 rather to preserve the uniformity of appearance, than as being 
 strictly such. Then follows the Comment : as a part and com- 
 mencement of which the Reader will consider the two para- 
 graphs of p. 133 — 1 35, written for this purpose and in the fore- 
 sight of the present inquiry : and I entreat him therefore to 
 begin the Comment by reperusing these. 
 
 APHORISM XVIII. 
 
 Stedfast by Faith. This is absolutely necessary for resis- 
 tance to the Evil Principle. There is no standing out with- 
 out some firm ground to stand on : and this Faith alone sup- 
 plies. By Faith in the Love of Christ the power of God be- 
 comes ours. When the Soul is beleaguered by enemies, 
 Weakness on the Walls, Treachery at the Gates, and Cor- 
 ruption in the Citadel, then by faith she says — Lamb of God, 
 slain from the foundation of the World ! thou art my Strength ! 
 I look to thee for deliverance ! And thus she overcomes. The 
 pollution (miasma) of Sin is precipitated by his Blood, the 
 power of Sin is conquered by his Spirit. The Apostle says 
 not — stedfast by your own resolutions and purposes ; but sted- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 189 
 
 fast by faith. Nor yet stedfast in your Will, but stedfast in 
 the faith. We are not to be looking to, or brooding over our- 
 selves, either for accusation or for confidence, or by a deep 
 yet too frequent self-delusion ) to obtain the latter by making 
 a merit to ourselves of the former. But we are to look to 
 Christ and "him crucified." The Law " that is very nigh 
 Ip thee, even in thy heart ;" the Law that condemneth and 
 hath no promise ; that stoppeth the guilty Past in its swift 
 jflight, and maketh it disown its name ; the Law will accuse 
 thee enough. Linger not in the Justice-court, listening to thy 
 indictment ! Loiter not in waiting to hear the Sentence ! No ! 
 Anticipate the verdict ! Appeal to Ccesar ! Haste to the King 
 for a Pardon ! Struggle thitherward, though in fetters : and 
 cry aloud, and collect the whole remaining strength of thy 
 Will in the outcry — I believe ! Lord ! help my unbelief ! Dis- 
 claim all right of property in thy fetters ! Say, that they be- 
 long to the Old Man, and that thou dost but carry them to 
 the Grave, to be buried with their owner ! Fix thy thought 
 on w^hat Christ did, what Christ suffered, what Christ is — as 
 if thou wouldst fill the hollowness of thy Soul with Christ ! 
 If he emptied himself of Glory to become Sin for thy Salva- 
 tion, must not thou be emptied of thy sinful Self to become 
 Righteousness in and through his agony and the effective mer- 
 its of his Cioss? By what other means, in what other form, 
 is it jjossible for thee to stand in the presence of the Holy One ? 
 With what mind wouldst thou come before God, if not with 
 the Mind of Him, in v/hom alone God loveth the World ? 
 With good advice, perhaps, and a little assistance, thou wouldst 
 rather cleanse and patch up a mind of thy own, and offer it as 
 thy admission-right, thy qualification, to him who " charged 
 his angels with folly !" Oh take counsel of thy Reason ! It 
 will show thee how impossible it is, that even a World should 
 merit the love of Eternal Wisdom and all-sufficing Beatitude, 
 otherwise than as it is contained in that all-perfect Idea, in 
 which the Supreme Mind contemplate th itself and the pleni- 
 tude of its infinity — the only-begotten before all ages ! the be- 
 loved Son in whom the Father is indeed well pleased ! 
 
190 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 And as the Mind, so the Body with which it is to be clo- 
 thed ! as the Indwelier, so the House in which is to be the 
 Abiding-place [74] ! There is but one Wedding-garment, in 
 which we can sit down at the marriage-feast of Heaven : and 
 that is the Bride-groom's own Gift, when he gave himself 
 for us that we might live in him and he in us. There is but 
 one robe of Righteousness, even the Spiritual Body, formed 
 by the assimilative power of faith for whoever eateth the flesh 
 of the Son of Man and drinketh his Blood. Did Christ come 
 from Heaven, did the Son of God leave the Glory which he 
 had with his Father before the World began, only to 5^01^ us 
 a way to life, to teach truths, to tell us of a resurrection ? Or 
 saith he not, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the Resur- 
 rection and the Life ! 
 
 APHORISM XIX. FIELD. 
 
 The Romanists teach that sins committed after baptism (i. 
 e. for the immense majority of Christians having Christian Pa- 
 rents, all their sins from the Cradle to the Grave) are not so 
 remitted for Christ's sake, but that we must suffer that extrem- 
 ity of punishment which they deserve : and therefore either 
 we must afflict ourselves in such sort and degree of extremity 
 as may answer the demerit of our Sins, or be punished by God 
 here or in the World to come, in such degree and sort that his 
 Justice may be satisfied. [N. B, As the encysted venom^ or 
 poison-bag^ beneath the Adder''s fang^ so does this doctrine 
 lie beneath the tremendous power of the Romish Hierarchy. 
 The demoralizing influence of this dogma, and that it curdled 
 the very life-blood in the veins of Christendom, it ivas given to 
 Luther beyond all men since Paul to see, feel, and promul- 
 gate. And yet in his large Treatise on Repentance, how near 
 to the spirit of this doctrine — even to the very walls and gates 
 of Babylon — was Jeremy Taylor driven in recoiling from the 
 fanatical extremes of the opposite error.] But they, that 
 are orthodox, teach that it is injustice to require the payment 
 of one debt twice. * * * It is no less absurd to say, as the 
 Papists do, that our satisfaction is required as a condition, 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 191 
 
 without which Clu^isfs satisfaction is not applicable unto us, 
 than to say, Peter hath paid the debt of John, and He, to 
 whom it was due, accepteth of the same payment on the con- 
 dition that John pay it himself also. * * * The satisfaction of 
 Christ is communicated and applied unto us without suffering 
 the punishment that sin deserveth, [and essentially involveth, 
 Ed.] upon the condition of our Faith and Repentance. [To 
 which the Editor would add : Without faith there is no power 
 of repentance : without a commencing repentance no power 
 to faith ; and that it is in the power of the will either to re- 
 pent or to have faith, in the Gospel Sense of the words, is 
 itself a Consequence of the Redemption of Mankind, a free 
 gift of the Redeemer : the guilt of its rejection, the refusing 
 to avail ourselves of the power, being all that we can consid- 
 er as exclusively attributable to our own act.] Field's Church, 
 p. 58. 
 
 COMMENT 
 (containing an application of the PRIx\CIPLES L.AID DOWN IN 
 
 PAGE 135—136.) 
 
 Forgiveness of Sin, the Abolition of Guilt, through the re- 
 demptive power of Christ's Love, and of his perfect Obedi- 
 ence during his voluntary assumption of Humanity, is expres- 
 sed, on account of the resemblance of the Consequences in 
 both cases, by the payment of a debt for another, which Debt 
 the Payer had not himself incurred. Now the improjjriation 
 of this Metaphor — (i. e. the taking it literally) by tiansferring 
 the sameness from the Consequents to the Antecedents, or 
 inferring the identity of the causes from a resemblance in the 
 effects — this is the point]^on which I am at issue : and the view 
 or scheme of Redemption grounded on this confusion I be- 
 lieve to be altogether unscriptural. 
 
 Indeed, I know not in what other instance I could better 
 exemplify the species of sophistry noticed in p. 141 — 142, as 
 the Aristotelean (x£ra/3a(fjg fig aXko ^^svog, or clandestine passing 
 over into a diverse kind. The purpose of a Metaphor is to 
 illustrate a something less known by a partial identification of 
 
192 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 it with some other thing better understood, or at least more 
 familiar. Now the article of Redemption may be considered 
 in a twofold relation — in relation to the Antecedent , i. e, the 
 Redeemer's Act, as the efficient cause aud condition of Re- 
 demption ; and in relation to the Consequent^ i. e. the effects 
 in and for the Redeemed. Now it is the latter relation, in 
 which the Subject is treated of, set forth, expanded, and en- 
 forced by St. Paul. The Mysterious Act, the Operative cause 
 is transcendent [15] — Factum est: and beyond the informa- 
 tion contained in the enunciation of the Fact, it can be char- 
 acterized only by the Consequences. It is the Consequences 
 of the Act of Redemption, that the zealous Apostle would 
 bring home to the minds and aifections both of Jews and Gen- 
 tiles. Now the Apostle's Opponents and Gainsayers v/ere 
 principally of the former class. They were Jews : not only 
 Jews unconverted, but such as had partially received the Gos- 
 pel, and who sheltering their national prejudices under the 
 pretended authority of Christ's Original Apostles and the 
 Church in Jerusalem, set themselves up against Paul as Fol- 
 lowers of Cephas. Add too, that Paul himself was " a He- 
 brew of the Hebrews;" intimately versed "in the Jew's re- 
 ligion above many, his equals, in his own nation, and above 
 measure zealous of the traditions of his fathers." It might, 
 therefore, have been anticipated, that his reasoning would re- 
 ceive its outward forms and language, that it would take its 
 predominant colours, from his own past^ and his Opponents' 
 present, habits of thinking ; and that his figures, images, anal- 
 ogies, and references would be taken preferably from objects, 
 opinions, events, and ritual observances ever uppermost in the 
 imaginations of his own countrymen. And such we find them : 
 yet so judiciously selected, that the prominent forms, the fig- 
 ures of most frequent recurrence, are drawn from points of 
 belief and practice, from laws, rites and customs, that then 
 prevailed through the whole Roman World, and were common 
 to Jew and Gentile. 
 
 Now it would be difficult if not impossible to select points 
 better suited to this purpose, as being equiilly familiar to all 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION, 193 
 
 and yet having a special interest for the Jewish Converts, than 
 tliose are from which the learned Apostle has drawn the four 
 principal Metaphors, by which he illustrates the blessed Con- 
 sequences of Christ's Redemption of Mankind. These are : 1 
 Sin-offerings, sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, x\tone- 
 ment, IvaTaXXa7r)[76]. 3. Ransom from slavery, Redemption, 
 the buying back again, or being bought back, from r'e and emo. 
 4. Satisfaction of a Creditor's claims by a payment of the debt. 
 To one or other of these four heads all the numerous forms 
 and exponents of Christ's Mediation in St. Paul's writings may 
 be referred. And the very number and variety of the words 
 or periphrases used by him to express one and the same thing 
 furnish the strongest presumptive proof, that all alike were 
 used metaphorically. [In the following notation, let the small 
 letters represent the effects or consequences^ and the Capitals 
 the efficient causes or antecedents. Whether by Causes we 
 mean Acts or Agents, is indifferent. Now let X signify a 
 Transcendent^ i. e. a Cause beyond our Comprehension and 
 not within the sphere of sensible experience : and on the oth- 
 er hand, let A. B. C. and D represent, each some one known 
 and familiar cause in reference to some single and characteris- 
 tic effect: viz. A in reference to k, B to 1, C to m, and D to 
 n. Then I say X+k 1 m n is in different places expressed by 
 (oras=3) A-|-k; B-f-l; C-j-m; D-j-n. And these I should 
 call metaphorical Exponents of X.] 
 
 Now John, the beloved Disciple, who leant on the Lord's 
 Bosom, the Evangelist xoLTa. irvsviia i. e. according to the Spir- 
 it^ the inner and substantial truth of the Christian Creed — 
 John, recording the Redeemer's own words, enunciates the 
 Fact itself, to the full extent in which it is enunciable for the 
 human mind, simply and ivithout any metaphor^ by identifying 
 it in kind with a fact of hourly occurrence — expressing it, I 
 say, by a familiar fact the same in kind with that intended, 
 though of a far lower dignity ; — by a fact of every man's ex- 
 perience, knoion^ to all, yet not better understood than the 
 fact described by it. In the Redeemed it is a re-generation a 
 birth, a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, the germinal 
 
 25 
 
194 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 principle of a higher and enduring Life, of a Spiritual Life — - 
 that is, a Life, the actuality of which is not dependent on the 
 material body, or limited by the circumstances and processes 
 indispensable to its organization and subsistence. Briefly, it 
 is the Differ£,ntial of Immortality, of which the assimilative 
 power of Faith and Love is the Integranty and the Life in 
 Christ the Integration, 
 
 But even this would be an imperfect statement, if we omit- 
 ted the awful truth, that besides that dissolution of our earthly 
 tabernacle which we call death, there is another death, not the 
 mere negation of life, but its positive Opposite. And as there 
 is a mystery of Life and an assimilation to the Principle of 
 Life, even to him who is the Life; so is there a mystery of 
 Death and an assimilation to the Principle of Evil afX(pj2raXy)c; 
 SavaTw! a fructifying of the corrupt seed, of which Death is the 
 germination. Thus the regeneration to spiritual Hfe is at the 
 same time a redemption from the spiritual death. 
 
 Respecting the redemptive act itself, and the Divine Agent, 
 we know from revelation that he "was made a quickening. 
 ( ^wo'Ti'oiouv, life-making) Spirit:" and that in order to this it 
 was necessary, that God should be manifested in the flesh, that 
 the eternal Word, through whom and by whom the World 
 (xotffjLo^, the Order, Beauty, and sustaining Law of visible na- 
 tures) was and is, should be made flesh, assume our humanity 
 personally, fulfil all righteousness, and so sufl"er and so die for 
 us as in dying to conquer Death for as many as should receive 
 him. More than this, the mode, the possibility, we are not 
 competent to know. It is, as hath been already observed con- 
 cerning the primal Act of Apostasy, a mystery by the necessi- 
 ty of the subject — a mystery, which at all events it will be time 
 enough for us to seek and expect to understand, when we un- 
 derstand the mystery of our Natural life, and its conjunction 
 with mind and will and personal identity. Even the truths, 
 that are given to us to know, we can know only through faith 
 in the spirit. They are spiritual things that must be spiritual- 
 ly discerned. Such, however, being the means and the effects 
 of our Redemption, well might the fervent Apostle associate it 
 
ATHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 195 
 
 with whatever was eminently dear and precious to ening and 
 afflicted Mortals, and ( where no expression could be commen- 
 surate, no single title be other than imperfect ) seek from simili- 
 tude of effect to describe the superlative boon by successively 
 transferring to it, as by a superior claim, the name of each sev- 
 eral Act and Ordinance, habitually connected in the minds of 
 all his Hearers with feelings of joy, confidence, and gratitude. 
 
 Do you rejoice when the Atonement made by the Priest 
 has removed the civil stain from your name, restored you to 
 your privileges as a Son of Abraham, and replaced you in the 
 respect of your Brethren ? — Here is an atonement which takes 
 away a deeper, worser stain, an eating Canker-spot in the 
 very heart of your personal Being! This, to as many as re- 
 ceive it, gives the privilege to become the Sons of God (John 
 i. 12), this will admit you to the society of Angels, and ensure 
 you the rights of Brotherhood with Spirits made perfect! 
 (Heb. xii. 22.) Here is a Sacrifice, a Sin-offering for the 
 whole w^orld : and an High Priest, who is indeed a Mediator, 
 who not in type or shadow but in very truth and in his own 
 right stands in the place of Man to God, and of God to Man ; 
 and who receives as a Judge what he offered as an Advocate. 
 
 Would you be grateful to one who had ransomed you from 
 slavery under a bitter foe, or who brought you out of Captivi- 
 ty? Here is redemption from a far direr slavery, the slavery 
 of Sin unto Death! and he, w^io gave himself for the ransom, 
 has taken Captivity Captive ! 
 
 Had you by your own fault alienated yourself from your 
 best, your only sure friend ? Had you, like a Prodigal cast 
 yourself out of your Father's House ? Would you not love 
 the good Samaritan, who should reconcile you to your Friend? 
 Would you not prize above all price the intercession, that had 
 brought you back from Husks and the tending of Swine, and 
 restored you to your Father's Arms, and seated you at your 
 Father's Table ? 
 
 Had you involved yourself in a heavy debt for certain gew- 
 gaws, for high-seasoned meats, and intoxicating drinks, and 
 glistening apparel, and in default of payment had made your- 
 
196 . AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 self over as a bondsman to a hard Creditor, who, it was fore- 
 known, would enforce the bond of Judgment to the last tittle ! 
 With what emotions would you not receive the glad tidings, 
 that a stranger, or a friend whom in the days of your wanton- 
 ness you had neglected and reviled, had paid the debt for 
 you, had made satisfaction to your Creditor? But you have 
 incurred a debt of Death to the Evil Nature ! you have sold 
 yourself over to Sin ! and relatively to you^ and to all your 
 means and resources, the Seal on the Bond is the Seal of Ne- 
 cessity ! Its stamp is the Nature of Evil. But the Stranger 
 has appeared, the forgiving Friend has come, even the Son of 
 God from heaven : and to as many as have faith in his name, 
 I say — The Debt is paid for you 1 the Satisfaction has been 
 
 made. 
 
 Now to simplify the argument and at the same time to bring 
 
 the question to the test, we will confine our attention to the fig- 
 ure last mentioned, viz. the satisfaction of a Debt. Passing by 
 our modern Alogi who find nothing but metaphors in either 
 Apostle, let us suppose for a moment with certain Divines that 
 our Lord's Words, recorded by John, and which in all places 
 repeat and assert the same Analogy, are to be regarded as 
 metaphorical ; and that it is the varied expressions of St. Paul 
 that are to be literally interpreted : ex. gr. that Sin is, or in- 
 volves an infinite Debt, (in the proper and law-court sense of 
 the word, debt) — a debt owing by us to the vindictive Justice 
 of God the Father, which can only be liquidated by the ever- 
 lasting misery of Adam and all his posterity, or by a sum of 
 suifering equal to this. Likewise, that God the Father by his 
 absolute decree, or (as some Divines teach) through the ne- 
 cessity of his unchangeable Justice, had determined to exact 
 the full sum ; which must, therefore, be paid either by our- 
 selves, or by some other in our name and behalf. But besides 
 the Debt which all Mankind contracted in and through Adam, 
 as a Homo Publicus, even as a Nation is bound by the Acts of 
 its Head or its Plenipotentiary, every man (say these Divines) 
 is an insolvent Debtor on his own score. In this fearful pre- 
 dicament the Son of God took compassion on Mankind, and re* 
 
 / 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 197 
 
 solved to pay the debt for us, and to satisfy the divine Justice 
 by a perfect equivalent. Accordingly, by a strange yet strict 
 consequence, it has been held by more than one of these Di- 
 vines, that the agonies suffered by Christ were equal in 
 amount to the sum total of the torments of all Mankind here 
 and hereafter, or to the infinite debt, which in an endless suc- 
 cession of instalments we should have been paying to the di- 
 vine Justice, had it not been paid in full by the Son of God 
 incarnate ! 
 
 It is easy to say — but / do not hold this, or we do not 
 make this an article of our belief! The true question is : Do 
 you take deny i^art of it: and can you reject the rest without 
 being inconsequent ? Are Debt, Satisfaction, Payment in full. 
 Creditors' Rights, &c. nomina propria, by which the very 
 nature of Redemption and its occasion is expressed ? or are 
 they, with several others, figures of speech for the purpose 
 of illustrating the nature and extent of the consequences 
 and effects of the redemptive Act, and to excite in the receiv- 
 ers a due sense of the magnitude and manifold operation of the 
 Boon, and of the Love and gratitude due to the Redeemer? 
 If still you reply, the former : then, as your whole theory is 
 grounded on a notion of Justice, I ask you — Is this Justice a 
 moral Attribute ? But Morality commences with, and begins 
 in, the sacred distinction between Thing and Person : on this 
 distinction all Law human and divine is grounded : conse- 
 quently, the Law of Justice. If jou attach any idea to the 
 term' Justice, as applied to God, it must be the same which you 
 refer to when you affirm or deny it of any other personal 
 Agent — save only, that in its attribution to God, you speak of 
 it as unmixed and perfect. For if not, what do you mean ? 
 And why do you call it by the same name ? I may, therefore, 
 with all right and reason, put the case as between man and 
 man. For should it be found irreconcileable with the Justice, 
 which the Light of Reason, made Law in the Conscience, dic- 
 tates to Man, how much more must it be incongruous with the 
 all-perfect Justice of God ? — Whatever case I should imagine 
 .would be felt by the Reader as below the dignity of the sub- 
 
198 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ject, and in some measure jarring with his feelings : and in 
 other respects the more familiar the case, the better suited to 
 the present purpose. 
 
 A sum of £ 1000 is owing from James to Peter, for which 
 James had given a Bond in Judgment. He is insolvent, and 
 the Bond is on the point of being carried into effect, to James's 
 utter ruin. At this moment Matthew steps in, pays Peter the 
 thousand pounds and discharges the Bond. In this case, no 
 man would hesitate to admit, that a complete satisfaction had 
 been made to Peter. Matthew's £1000 is a perfect equiva- 
 lent of the sum James was bound to have paid, and for the sum^ 
 v/hich Peter had lent. // is the same thing : and this altogeth- 
 er a question of Things. Now instead of James being indebted 
 te Peter for a sum of money, which (he having become insol- 
 vent ) MattheAV pays for him, we will put the case, that James 
 had been guilty of the basest and most hard-hearted ingrati- 
 tude to a most worthy and affectionate Mother, who had not 
 only performed all the duties and tender offices of a mother, 
 but whose whole heart was bound up in this her only child — 
 w'ho had foregone all the pleasures and amusements of life in 
 watching over his sickly childhood, had sacrificed her health 
 and the far greater part of her resources to rescue him from 
 the consequences of his follies and excesses during his youth 
 and early manhood ; and to procure for him the means of his 
 present Rank and Affluence — all which he had repaid by 
 neglect, desertion, and open profligacy. Here the Mother 
 stands in the relation of the creditor : and here too we will 
 suppose the same generous Friend to interfere, and to perform 
 with the greatest tenderness and constancy all those duties 
 of a grateful and affectionate Son, which James ought to have 
 performed. Will this satisfy the Mother's claims on James, 
 or entitle him to her Esteem, Approbation and Blessing ? Or 
 what if Matthew, the vicarious Son, should at length address 
 her in words to this purpose : " Now, I trust, you are appeas- 
 ed, and will be henceforward reconciled to James. I have satis- 
 fied all your claims on him. I have paid his Debt in full: and 
 you are too just to require the same debt to be paid twice 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 199 
 
 over. You will therefore regard him with the same compla- 
 cency, and receive him into your presence with the same love, 
 as if there had been no difference between him and you. For 
 I have made it up^ What other reply could the swelling 
 heart of the Mother dictate than this ? " misery ! and is it 
 possible that you are in league with my unnatural child to 
 insult me ? Must not the very necessity of your abandonment 
 of your proper sphere form an additional evidence of his guilt ? 
 Must not the sense of your goodness teach me more fully to 
 comprehend, more vividly to feel the evil in him? Must 
 not the contrast of your merits magnify his Demerit in his 
 Mother's eye and at once recall and embitter the conviction of 
 the canker-worm in his soul ?" 
 
 If indeed by the force of Matthew's example, by persuasion 
 or by additional and more mysterious influences, or by an in- 
 ward co-agency, compatible with the idea of a personal will, 
 James should be led to repent; if through admiration and love 
 of this great goodness gradually assimilating his mind to the 
 mind of his benefactor, he should in his own person become a 
 grateful and dutiful child — then doubtless the mother would be 
 w^holly satisfied ! But then the case is no longer a question of 
 T/jings [ 77 ] , or a matter of Debt payable by another. Never- 
 theless, the Effect^ — and the reader will remember, that it is 
 the effects and consequences of Christ's mediation, on which St. 
 Paul is dilating — the Effect to James is similar in both cases, 
 i. e. in the case of James, the Debtor, and of James, the undu- 
 tiful Son. In both cases, James is liberated from a grievous 
 burthen ; and in both cases, he has to attribute his liberation 
 to the Act and free grace of another. The only difference is, 
 that in the former case (viz. the payment of the debtj the 
 beneficial Act is, singly and without requiring any re-action or 
 co-agency on the part of James, the efficient cause of his libe- 
 ration; while in the latter case (viz. that of Redemption) the 
 beneficial Act is, first, the indispensable Condition, and then, 
 the Co-efficient. 
 
 The professional Student of Theology will, perhaps, under- 
 stand the different positions asserted in the preceding Argii- 
 
200 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ment more readily if they are presented synoptically^ i. e, 
 brought at once within his view, in the form of Answers to 
 four Questions, comprising the constituent parts of the Scrip- 
 tural Doctrine of Redemption. And I trust that my Lay Read- 
 ers of both sexes will not allow themselves to be scared from 
 the perusal of the following short catechism by half a dozen 
 Latin words, or rather words with Latin endings, that trans- 
 late themselves into English, when I dare assure them, that 
 they will encounter no other obstacle to their full and easy 
 comprehension of the contents. 
 
 Synopsis of the Constituent Points in the Doctrine of Re- 
 demptioriy in Four Questions^ with correspondent Answers, 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 r L Agens Causator? 
 
 Who for Whit^ is thei ^' ^^^^^^^ Causativus? 
 Who (or What; is the j 3^ Effectum Causatum? 
 
 [ 4. Consequentia ab Effecto ? 
 
 Ansicers. 
 
 L The Agent and Personal Cause of the Redemption of 
 Mankind is — the co-eternal Word and only begotten Son of 
 the Living God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing {Agonistes 
 aywvjjo.y-svog), crucified, submitting to Death, resurgent, commu- 
 nicant of his Spirit, ascendent, and obtaining for his Church 
 the Descent and Communion of the Holy Spirit, the Com- 
 forter. 
 
 IL The Causative Act is — a spiritual and transcendent Mys- 
 tery, " that passeth all understanding," 
 
 III. The Effect caused is — the being born anew : as before 
 in the flesh to the World, so now born in the spirit to Christ. 
 
 IV. The Consequents from the Effect are — Sanctification 
 from Sin, and Liberation from the inherent and penal conse- 
 quences of Sin in the World to come, with all the means and 
 processes of Sanctification by the Word and the Spirit : these 
 Consequents being the same for the Sinner relatively to God 
 and his own Soul, as the satisfaction of a debt for a Debtor 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 201 
 
 relatively to his Creditor; as the sacrificial atonement made 
 by the Priest for the Transgressor of the Mosaic Law ; as the 
 reconciliation to an alienated Parent for a Son who had es- 
 tranged himself from his Father's house and presence ; and as 
 a redemptive Ransom for a Slave or Captive. 
 
 Now I complain, that this metaphorical Naming of the 
 transcendent Causative Act through the medium of its proper 
 effects from Actions and Causes of familiar occurrence connect- 
 ed with the former by similarity of Result, has been mistaken 
 for an intended designation of the essential character of the 
 Causative Act itself; and that thus Divines have interpreted 
 de omni what was spoken de singulo, and magnified a partial 
 equation into a total identity. 
 
 I will merely hint, to my more learned readers, and to the 
 professional Students of Theology, that the origin of this error 
 is to be sought for in the discussions of the Greek Fathers, 
 and (at a later period) of the Schoolmen, on the obscure and 
 abysmal subject of the Divine A-seity, and the distinction be- 
 tween the S'oXTjfjia and the /douXv), i. e. the absolute Will, as the 
 universal Ground of all Being, and the Election and purpose 
 of God in the personal Idea, as the Father. And this View 
 would have allowed me to express (what I believe to be) the 
 true import and scriptural idea of Redemption in terms much 
 more nearly resembling those used ordinarily by the Calvinis- 
 tic Divines, and with a conciliative shoio of coincidence. But 
 this motive was outweighed by the reflection, that I could not 
 rationally have expected to be understood by those, to whom 
 I most wish to be intelligible : et si non vis intelligi, cur vis 
 legi ? 
 
 N. B. Not to countervene the purpose of a Synopsis, I 
 have detached the confirmative or explanatory remarks from 
 the Answers to Questions II. and III. and place them below 
 as Scholia. A single glance of the eye will enable the read- 
 er to re-connect each with the sentence it is supposed to fol- 
 low. 
 
 26 
 
202 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Scholium to Ans. II. 
 
 Nevertheless, the fact or actual truth having been assured 
 to us by Revelation^ it is not impossible, by steadfast medita- 
 tion on the idea and super-natural character of a personal 
 Will, for a mind spiritually disciplined to satisfy itself, that 
 the redemptive act supposes (and that our redemption is even 
 negatively conceivable only on the supposition of) an Agent who 
 can at once act on the Will as an exciting cause, quasi ab extra ; 
 and in the Will, as the condition of its potential, and the 
 ground of its actual, Being. 
 
 Scholium to Ans. III. 
 
 Where two subjects, that stand to each other in the relation 
 of antithesis (or contradistinction) are connected by a middle 
 term common to both^ the sense of this middle term is indiffer- 
 ently determinable by either : the preferability of the one or 
 the other in any given case being decided by the circumstance 
 of our more frequent experience of, or greater familiarity withj 
 the Term in this connexion. Thus, if I put Hydrogen and 
 Oxygen Gas, as opposite Poles, the term Gas^ is common to 
 both ; and it is a matter of indifference, by which of the two 
 bodies I ascertain the sense of the Term, But if for the con- 
 joint purposes of connexion and contrast, I oppose transparent 
 crystalized Alumen to opake derb [unchrystalized] Alumen; 
 it may easily happen to be far more convenient for me to show 
 the sense of the middleterm, i. e. Alumen, by a piece of Pipe- 
 clay than by a Sapphire or Ruby ; especially, if I should be de- 
 scribing the beauty and preciousness of the latter to a female 
 Peasant, or in a District, where a Ruby was a rarity which the 
 Fewest only had an opportunity of seeing. This is a plain rule 
 of common Logic directed in its application by Common Sense^ 
 
 Now let us apply this to the case in hand. The two oppo- 
 sites hei^e are Flesh and Spirit, this in relation to Christy that 
 in relation to the World : and these two Opposites are con- 
 nected by the middle term, Birtli^ which is of course common 
 to both. But for the same reason, as in the instance last-men- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 2{Jo 
 
 tioned, the interpretation of the common term is to be ascer- 
 tained from its known sense, in the more familiar connexion — 
 Birth, namelv, in relation to our natural life and to the Organ- 
 ized Body, by which we belong to the present World. What- 
 ever the W'Ord signifies in this connexion, the same cssenfially 
 (in kind though not in dignity and value) must be its signifi- 
 cation in the other. How else could it be (what yet in this 
 text it undeniably t5), the j-)it7i6'^wm indiff evens or nota commu- 
 nis^ of the Thesis (Flesh: the World) and the Antithesis 
 ( Spirit : Christ)? W^e might, therefore, supposing a writer to 
 have been speaking of River-water in distinction from Rain- 
 water, as rationally pretend that in the latter phrase the term. 
 Water, was to be understood metaphorically, as that the word, 
 Birth, is a metaphor^ and " means only " so and so, in the Gos- 
 pel according to St. John. 
 
 There is, I am aware, a numerous and powerful Party in 
 our church, so^ numerous and }X)werful as not seldom to be 
 entitled the Church, who hold and publicly teach, that " Re- 
 generation is only Baptism." Nay, the W'riter of the Article 
 on the Lives of Scott and Newton in our ablest and most re- 
 spectable Review, is but one among many who do not hesi- 
 tate to brand the contrary opinion as heterodoxy, and schis- 
 matical superstition. I trust, that I think as seriously, as most 
 men, of the evil of Schism ; but with every disposition to pay 
 the utmost deference to an acknowledged majority, including, 
 it is said, a very large proportion of the present Dignitaries of 
 our Church, I cannot but think it a sufficient reply, that if Re- 
 generation means baptism. Baptism must mean regeneration : 
 and this too, as Christ himself has declared, a regeneration in 
 the Spirit. Now I would ask these Divines this simple ques- 
 tion. Do they beiievingly suppose a spiritual regenerative 
 power and agency inhering in or accompanying the sprinkling 
 a few drops of water on an infant's face ? They cannot evade 
 the question by saying that Baptism is a type or sign. For 
 this would be to supplant their own assertion, that Regenera- 
 tion means Baptism, by the contradictory admission, that 
 Regeneration is the significatum, of which Baptism is the sig- 
 
204 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 iiificant. Unless, indeed, they would incur the absurdity of 
 saying, that regeneration is a type of regeneration, and Bap- 
 tism a type of itself — or that Baptism only means Baptism ! 
 And this indeed is the plain consequence, to which they might 
 be driven, should they answer the above question in the nega- 
 tive. 
 
 But if their answer be. Yes ! we do suppose and believe 
 this efficiency in the baptismal act — I have not another word 
 to say. Only, perhaps, I might be permitted to express a 
 hope, that for consistency's sake they would speak less slight- 
 ingly of the insufflation and extreme unction used in the Romish 
 Church : notwithstanding the not easily to be answered argu- 
 ments of our Christian Mercury, the all-eloquent Jeremy Tay- 
 lor, respecting the latter, — " which, since it is used when the 
 man is above half dead, when he can exercise no act of under- 
 standing, it must needs be nothing. For no 7'ational man can 
 thinky that any ceremony can make a spii^itual change ivith- 
 out a spiritual act of him that is to be changed ; nor that it 
 can work by loay of nature^ or by chann, but morally and af- 
 ter the manner of reasonable creatures^ 
 
 Taylor's Epist. Dedic. to his Holy Dying, p. 6. 
 
 It is too obvious to require suggestion, that these words 
 here quoted apply with yet greater force and propriety to the 
 point in question : as the babe is an unconscious subject, which 
 the dying man need not be supposed to be. My avowed con- 
 victions respecting Regeneration with the spiritual baptism, as 
 its Condition and Initiative, (Luke iii. 16; Mark i. 8; Matt, 
 iii. 11 ), and of which the sacramental Rite, the Baptism of 
 John, was appointed by Christ to remain as the Sign and Fig- 
 ure; and still more, perhaps my belief respecting the Mystery 
 of the Eucharist, (concerning which I hold the same opinions 
 as Bucer, Strype's Life of Archb. Cranmer, Appendix), Peter 
 Martyr, and presumably Cranmer himself — these convictions 
 and this belief will, I doubt not, be deemed by the Orthodox 
 de more Grotii, who improve the letter of Arminius Avith the 
 spirit of the Socini, sufficient data to bring me in guilty of ir- 
 rational and superstitious Mysticism. But 1 abide by a max- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 205 
 
 im, which I learnt at an early period of my theological studies, 
 from Benedict Spinoza. Where the Alternative lies between 
 the Absurd and the Incomprehensible, no wise man can be at 
 a loss which of the two to prefer. To be called irrational, is a 
 trifle : to be so, and in matters of religion, is far otherwise : 
 and whether the irrationality consists in men's believing (i. e. 
 in having persuaded themselves that they believe) against 
 reason, or ivithout reason, I have been early instructed to con- 
 sider it as a sad and serious evil, pregnant with mischiefs, po- 
 litical and moral. And by none of my numerous Instructors 
 so impressively, as by that great and shining Light of our 
 Church in the sera of her intellectual splendour. Bishop Jeremy 
 Taylor : from one of whose works, and that of especial authori- 
 ty for the safety as well as for the importance of the principle, 
 inasmuch as it was written expressly ad populum, I will now, 
 both for its own intrinsic worth, and to relieve the attention, 
 wearied, perhaps, by the length and argumentative character 
 of the preceding discussion j interpose the following Aphorism. 
 
 APHORISM XX. JER. TAYLOR. 
 
 Whatever is against right reason, that, no faith can oblige 
 us to believe. For though Reason is not the positive and af- 
 firmative measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger 
 than our (speculative) Ytesison^ (see p. 120) and take something 
 into her heart, that Reason can never take into her eye ; yet 
 in all our creed there can be nothing against reason. If Rea- 
 son justly contradicts an article, it is not of the household of 
 Faith. In this there is no difficulty, but that in practice we 
 take care that we do not call that Reason, which is not so (see 
 p. 110, 111, 142). For although Reason is a right Judge[78], 
 yet it ought not to pass sentence in an enquiry of faith, until 
 all the information be brought in ; all that is within, and all that 
 is without, all that is above, and all that is below ; all that con- 
 cerns it in experience and all that concerns it in act ; whatso- 
 ever is of pertinent observation and whatsoever is revealed. 
 For else Reason may argue very well and yet conclude falsely. 
 •it may conclude well in Logic, and yet infer a false proposition 
 
208 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 in Theology {p. 110, line 27). But when our Judge is fully 
 and truly informed in all that, whence she is to make her 
 Judgment, we may safely follow her whithersoever she invites 
 us. 
 
 APHORISM XXI. JER. TAYLOR. 
 
 He that speaks against his own Reason, speaks against 
 his own Conscience: and therefore it is certain, no man 
 serves God with a good conscience, who serves him against 
 his reason. 
 
 APHORISM XXII. THE SAME. 
 
 By the eye of Reason through the telescope of Faith, i. e. 
 Revelation, we may see what without this telescope we could 
 never have known to exist. But as one that shuts the eye 
 hard, and with violence curls the eye-lid, forces a phantastic 
 fire from the chrystaliine humour, and espies a light that never 
 shines, and sees thousands of little fires that never burn ; so is 
 he that blinds the eye of Reason, and pretends to see by an 
 eye of Faith. He makes little images of Notions, and some 
 atoms dance before him ; but he is not guided by the light, nor 
 instructed by the proposition, but sees like a man in his sleep. 
 In no case can true Reason and a right Faith oppose 
 EACH other. 
 
 NOTE PREFATORY TO APHORISM XXIII. 
 
 Less on my own account, than in the hope of fore-arming 
 my youthful friends, I add one other Transcript from Bishop 
 Taylor, as from a Writer to whose name no taint or suspicion 
 of Calvinistic or schismatical tenets can attach, and for the pur- 
 pose of softening the oftence which, I cannot but foresee, will 
 be taken at the positions asserted in paragraph the first of 
 Aphorism VII. p 127, and the documental proofs of the same 
 in p. 130, 131 : and this by a formidable party composed of 
 men ostensibly of the most dissimilar Creeds, regular Church- 
 Divines, voted orthodox by a great majority of suffrages, and 
 the so-called Free-thinking Christians, and Unitarian Divines. 
 It is the former class alone that I wish to conciliate : so far at 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 207 
 
 least as it may be done by removing the aggravation of novelty 
 from the offensive article. And surely the simple re-asscr- 
 tion of one of "the two great things," which Bishop Taylor 
 could assert as a fact, which, he took for granted, no Christian 
 would think of controverting, should at least be controverted 
 without bitterness by his successors in the Church. That 
 which was perfectly safe and ''orthodox in 1657, in the judg- 
 ment of a devoted Royalist and Episcopalian, must be at most 
 but a venial heterodoxy in 1825. For the rest, I am prepared 
 to hear in answer — what has already been so often, and with 
 such theatrical effect dropt, as an extinguisher^ on my argu- 
 ments — the famous concluding period of one of the chapters in 
 Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, declared by Dr, Parr 
 the finest prose passage in English Literature. Be it so ! I 
 bow to so great an authority. But if the learned Doctor would 
 impose it on me as the truest as well as the finest, or expect 
 me to admire the Logic equally with the Rhetoric — a^jtfTa/xai. 
 I start off! As I have been unenglish enough to find in Pope's 
 tomb-epigram on Sir Isaac Newton nothing better than a gross 
 and wrongful falseheod conveyed in an enormous and irreve^ 
 rent hyperbole ; so with regard to this passage in question^ 
 free as it is from all faults of taste, I have yet the hardihood to 
 confess, that in the sense in which the words discover and 
 prove^ are here used and intended, I am not convinced of the 
 truth of the principle, (that he alone discovers who proves),. 
 and I question the correctness of the particular case, brought 
 as instance and confirmation. I doubt the validity of the as- 
 sertion as a general rule ; and I deny it, as applied to matters 
 offaithj to the verities of religion, in the belief of which there- 
 must always be somewhat of moral election, "an act of the 
 Will in |it as well as of the Understanding, as much love in 
 it as discursive power. True Christian Faith must have in it 
 something of in-evidence, something that must be made up by 
 duty and by obedience." — Taylor's Worthy Communicant, p, 
 160. But most readily do I admit, and most fervently do I 
 contend, that the Miracles worked by Christ, both as miracles 
 and as fulfilments of prophecy, both as signs and as wonders, 
 
208 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 made plain discovery, and gave unquestionable proof, of his 
 divine character and authority ; that they were to the whole 
 Jewish nation true and appropriate evidences, that He was in- 
 deed come who had promised and declared to their Forefa- 
 thers, Behold, your God will come with vengeance, {Matt. x. 
 34, Luke xii. 49), even God a recompense! He will come 
 and save you ! (Isaiah xxxv. 4, compared with Matt. x. 34, 
 and Luk^ xii. 49. ) I receive them as proofs, therefore, of the 
 truth of every word, which he taught who was himself The 
 Word : and as sure evidences of the final victory over death 
 and of the life to come, in that they were manifestations of 
 Him, who said: I am the Resurrection and the Life ! 
 
 The obvious inference from the passage in question, if not 
 its express import, is : Miracula experimento crucis esse, quo 
 solo probandum erat. Homines non, pecudum instar, omnino 
 perituros esse. Now this doctrine I hold to be altogether al- 
 ien from the spirit^ and without authority in the letter^ of 
 Scripture. I can recall nothing in the history of human Be- 
 lief, that should induce me, I find nothing in my own moral 
 Being that enables me, to understand it. I can, however, per- 
 fectly well understand, the readiness of those Divines in hoc 
 Paleii Dictum ore pleno jurare, qui nihil aliud in toto Evan- 
 gelio invenire posse profitentur. The most unqualified admira- 
 tion of this superlative passage I find perfectly in character 
 for those, who while Socinianism and Ultra- Socinianism are 
 spreading like the roots of an Elm, on and just below the sur- 
 face, throush the whole land, and hc7X and there at least have 
 even dipt under the garden-fence of the Church, and blunt the 
 edge of the Labourer's spade in the gayest parterres of our 
 Baal-hamon, ( Sol. Song, viii. 1 1 ) — who, while Heresies, to 
 which the Framers and Compilers of our Liturgy, Homilies and 
 Articles would have refused the very name of Christianity, 
 meet their eyes on the List of Religious Denominations for 
 every City and large Town throughout the kingdom — can yet 
 congratulate themselves with Dr. Paley (in his Evidences) 
 that the Rent has not reached the foundation — i. e. that the 
 Corruption of Man's Will; that the responsibility of man in 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 209 
 
 any sense in which it is not equally predicable of Dogs and 
 Horses ; that the Divinity of our Lord, and even liis pie-exis- 
 tence ; that Sin, and Redemption through the merits of Christ ; 
 and Grace ; and the especial aids of the Spirit ; and the effica- 
 cy of Prayer; and the subsistency of the Holy Ghost; may all 
 be extruded without breach or rent in the Essentials of Chris- 
 tian Faith ! — that a Man may deny and renounce them all, and 
 remain di fundamental Christian, notwithstanding ! But there 
 are many that cannot keep up with Latitudinarians of such a 
 stride : and I trust, that the majority of serious Believers are 
 in this predicament. Now for all these it would seem more 
 in character to be of Bishop Taylor's opinion, that the Belief 
 in question is presupposed in a convert to the Truth in Christ, 
 but at all events not to circulate in the great whispering galle- 
 ry of the Religious Public suspicions and hard thoughts of 
 those who, like myself, are of this opinion ! who do not dare 
 decry the religious instincts of Humanity as a baseless dream ; 
 who hold, that to excavate the ground under the faith of all 
 mankind, is a very questionable method of building up our 
 faith, as Christians ; who fear, that instead of adding to, they 
 should detract from the honor of the Incarnate Vv^ord by dis- 
 paraging the light of the Word, that was in the beginning, and 
 which lighteth every man ; and who, under these convictions, 
 can tranquilly leave it to be disputed, in some new "Dialogues 
 in the Shades," between the fathers of the Unitarian Church 
 on one side, and Maimonides, Moses Mendelsohn, and Lessing 
 on the other, whether the famous passage in Paley does or 
 does not contain three dialectic flaws, Petitio principii, Argu- 
 mentum in circulo, and Argumentum contra rem a premisso rem 
 ipsam includente. 
 
 Yes ! fervently do I contend, that to satisfy the Understand- 
 ing, that there is a Future State, was not the specific Object of 
 'the Christian Dispensation ; and that neither the Belief of a 
 Future State, nor the Ratioyiality of this belief, is the exclu- 
 sive Attribute of the Christian ReKgion. An essential^ a fun- 
 damental^ Article of all Religion it is, and therefore of the 
 Christian ; but otherwise than as in connexion with the Sal- 
 
 27 
 
210 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 vation of Mankind from the terrors of that State, among the 
 essential Articles peculiar to the Gospel Creed ( those, for in- 
 stance, by which it is confra-distinguished from the Creed of 
 a religious Jew) I do not place it. And before sentence is 
 passed against me, as heterodox, on this ground, let not my 
 Judges forget, who it was that assured us, that if a man did not 
 believe in a state of retribution after death, previously and on 
 other grounds, " neither would he believe, though a man 
 should be raised from the dead." 
 
 Again, I am questioned as to my proofs of a future state, by 
 men who are so far, and only so far, professed believers, that 
 they admit a God, and the existence of a Law from God : I 
 give them : and the Questioners turn from me with a scoff or 
 incredulous smile. Now should others of a less scanty Creed 
 infer the weakness of the reasons assigned by me from their 
 failure in convincing thescmew. ; may I not remind them. Who 
 it was, to whom a similar question was proposed by men of 
 the same class ? But at all events it will be enough for my 
 own support to remember it ; and to know that He held such 
 Questioners, who could not find a sufficing proof of this great 
 all-concerning verity in the words, " The God of Abraham, the 
 God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," unworthy of any other 
 answer ! men not to be satisfied by any proof ! — by any such 
 proofs, at least, as are compatible with the ends and purposes 
 of all religious conviction ! by any proofs, that would not de- 
 stroy the faith they were intended to confirm, and reverse the 
 whole character and quality of its effects and influences! But 
 if, notwithstanding all here offered in defence of my opinion, 
 I must still be adjudged heterodox and in error, — what can I 
 say, but malo cum Platone errare, and take refuge behind the 
 ample shield of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 APHORISM XXIII. TAYLOR. 
 
 In order to his own glory, and for the manifestation of his 
 goodness, and that the accidents of this world might not over- 
 much trouble those good men who suffered evil things, God 
 was pleased to do two great things. The one was ; that he 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL, RELIGION. 211 
 
 sent his Son into the World to take upon him our Nature, that 
 every man might submit to a necessity, from which God's own 
 Son was not exempt, when it behoved even Christ to suffer^ 
 and so to enter into glory. The other great thing was : that 
 God did not only by Revelation and the Sermons of the Proph- 
 ets to his Chtirch ; but even to all Mankind competently 
 teach, and effectively persuade, that the Soul of Man does not 
 die ; that though things w'ere ill here, yet to the good who 
 usually feel most of the evils of this life, they should end in 
 honor and advantages. And therefore Cicero had reason on 
 his side to conclude, that there is a time and place after this 
 life, wherein the wicked shall be punished and the virtuous 
 rewarded ; when he considered, that Orpheus and Socrates, 
 and how many others, just men and benefactors of mankind, 
 were either slain or oppressed to death by evil men. ( Com- 
 pare Heb. ch. xi. v. 36 — 39.) " And all these received not the 
 promise.'''' But when Virtue made men poor ; and free speak- 
 ing of brave truths made the wise to lose their liberty ; when 
 an excellent life hastened an opprobrious death, and the obey- 
 ing Reason and our Conscience lost us our Lives, or at least 
 all the means and conditions of enjoying them : it was but 
 time to look about for another state of things, where Justice 
 should rule and Virtue find her own portion. And therefore 
 Men cast out every line, and turned every stone and tried ev- 
 ery argument : and sometimes proved it well., and when they 
 did not., yet they believed strongly ; and they were sure of 
 
 THE THING, EVEN WHEN THEY WERE NOT SURE OF THE ARGU- 
 MENT. — ( Sermon at the Funeral of Sir George Dalston, 2Sth 
 Sept. 1657, Y^. 2.) 
 
 COMMENT 
 
 A fact may be truly stated, and yet the Causes or Reasons 
 assigned foi it mistaken ; or inadequate ; or pars pro toto, one 
 only or few of many that might or should have been adduced. 
 The preceding Aphorism is an instance in point. The Phse- 
 nomenon here brought forw^ard by the Bishop, as the ground 
 and occasion of men's belief of a future state — viz. the fre- 
 
212 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 quent, not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral worth 
 and worldly prosperity — must, indeed, at all times and in all 
 countries of the Civilized World have led the observant and 
 reflecting Few, the men of meditative habits and strong feel- 
 ings of natural equity, to a nicer consideration of the current 
 Belief, whether instinctive or traditional. By forcing the Soul 
 in upon herself, this Enigma of Saint and Sage from Job, David 
 and Solomon to Claudian and Boetius, this perplexing disparity 
 of success and desert, has, I doubt not, with such men been 
 the occasion of a steadier and more distinct consciousness of a 
 Something in man different m kindj and which not merely dis- 
 tinguishes but contra-distinguishes, him from animals — at the 
 same time that it has brought into closer view an enigma of 
 yet haider solution^the fact, I mean, of a Contradiction in the 
 Human Being, of which no traces are observable elsewhere, 
 in animated or inanimate nature [79] ! A struggle of jarring 
 impulses ; a mysterious diversity between the injunctions of 
 the mind and the elections of the will ; and ( last not least ) the 
 utter incommensurateness and the unsatisfying qualities of the 
 things around us, that yet are the only objects which our sens- 
 es discover or our appetites require us to pursue. Hence for 
 the finer and more contemplative spirits the ever-strengthen- 
 ing suspicion, that the two Phsenomena must some way or 
 other stand in close connexion with each other, and that the 
 Riddle of Fortune and Circumstance is but a form or effluence 
 of the Riddle of Man ! And hence again, the persuasion, that the 
 solution of both problems is to be sought for — hence the presen- 
 timent that this solution will be found, in the con/m-distinctive 
 Constituent of Humanity, in the Something of Human Nature 
 which is exclusively human ! And as the objects discoverable by 
 the senses, as all the Bodies and Substances that we can touch, 
 measure, and weigh, are either mere Totals, the unity of which 
 results from the parts, often accidental^ as that of a pebble, and 
 always only apparent ; or Substances, whose Unity of Action 
 is owing to the nature or arrangement of the partible bodies 
 which they actuate or set in motion ; Steam, for instance, in a 
 steam-engine, or the (so called) imponderable fluids; — as on 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 213 
 
 one hand the conditions and known or conceivable properties of 
 all the objects, that cease to be, and whose whole of existence 
 is then a detached and completed Past, that links on to no 
 Present ; as all the properties, that we ourselves have in com- 
 mon with these perishable things, differ in kind from the acts 
 and properties peculiar to our Humanity, so that the former 
 cannot even be conceived, cannot without a contradiction in 
 terms be predicated, of the proper and immediate subject of 
 the latter — for who would not smile at an ounce of Truth, or 
 a square foot of Honor ? — and as whatever things in visible 
 nature have the character of Permanence, and endure amid 
 continual flux unchanged, like a Rainbow in a fast flying show- 
 er, (ex. gr. Beauty, Order, Harmony, Finality, Law) are all 
 akin to the peculia of Humanity, are all congeners of Mind and 
 Will, without which indeed they would not only exist in vain, 
 as Pictures for Moles, but actually not exist at all : hence, fi- 
 nally, the conclusion, that the Soul of Man, as the subject of 
 Mind and Will, must likewise possess a principle of perma- 
 nence, and be destined to endure ! And were these grounds 
 lighter than they are, yet as a small weight will make a 
 Scale descend, where there is nothing in the opposite Scale, 
 or painted Weights, that have only an illusive relief or promi- 
 nence ; so in the vScale of Immortality slight Reasons are in 
 effect weighty, and sufficient to determine the Judgment, there 
 being no counterweight, no reasons against them, and no facts 
 in proof of the contrary, that would not prov6 equally well 
 the cessation of the eye on the removal or diffraction of the 
 Eye-glass, and the dissolution or incapacity of the Musician on 
 the fracture of his instrument or its strings. 
 
 But though I agree with Taylor so far, as not to doubt that 
 the misallotment of worldly goods and fortunes was one prin- 
 cipal occasion, exciting well-disposed and spiritually awakened 
 Natures by reflections and reasonings, such as I have here 
 supposed, to mature the presentiment of immortality into full 
 consciousness, into a principle of action and a well-spring of 
 strength and consolation ; I cannot concede to this circum- 
 jsjtance any thing like the importance and extent of efficacy 
 
214 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 V 
 
 which he in this passage attributes to it. I am persuaded, that 
 as the belief of all mankind, of all [80) tribes, and nations, and 
 languages, in all ages and in all states of social union, it must 
 be referred to far deeper grounds, common to man as man : 
 and that its fibres are to be traced to the tap-root of Humani- 
 ty. 1 have long entertained, and do not hesitate to avow, the 
 conviction, that the argument from Universality of Belief, urg- 
 ed by Barrow and others in proof of the first Article of the 
 Creed, is neither in point of fact — for two very different ob- 
 jects may be intended, and two (or more) diverse and even 
 contradictory conceptions may be expressed, by the same 
 Name — nor in legitimacy of conclusion as strong and unexcep- 
 tionable, as the argument from the same ground for the con- 
 tinuance of our personal being after death. The Bull-calf huts 
 Avith smooth and unarmed Brow. Throughout animated Na- 
 ture, of each characteristic Organ and Faculty there exists a 
 pre-assurance, an instinctive and practical Anticipation : and 
 no Pre-assurance common to a whole species does in any in- 
 stance prove delusive. All other prophecies of Nature have 
 their exact fulfilment — in every other " ingrafted word" of 
 Promise Nature is found true to her Word, and is it in her 
 noblest Creature, that she tells her first Lie? — (The Reader 
 will, of course, understand, that I am here speaking in the as- 
 sumed character of a mere Naturalist, to whom no light of 
 revelation had been vouchsafed : one, who 
 
 with gentle heart 
 
 Had worsbipp'd Nature in the Hill and Valley, 
 Not knowing what he loved, but loved it all !) , 
 
 Whether, however, the introductory part of the Bishop's ar- 
 gument is to be leceived with more or less qualification, the 
 Fact itself, as stated in the concluding sentence of the Apho- 
 rism, remains unaffected, and is beyond exception true. 
 
 If other argument and yet higher authority were required, 
 I might refer to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and to the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, which whether written by Paul, or, 
 as Luther conjectured, by xipoUos, is out of all doubt the 
 work of an Apostolic Man filled with the Holy Spirit, and com- 
 
ATHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 215 
 
 posed while the Temple and the Glories of the Temple Wor- 
 ship were yet in existence. Several of the Jewish and still 
 Judaizing Converts had begun to vacillate in their faith, and 
 to " stumble at the stumbling-stone" of the contrast between 
 the pomp and splendor of the Old Law and the simplicity and 
 humility of the Christian Church. To break this sensual 
 charm, to unfascinate these bedazzled brethren, the Writer to 
 the Hebrews institutes a comparison between the two reli- 
 gions, and demonstrates the superior spiritual grandeur, the 
 greater intrinsic worth and dignity of the Religion of Christ. 
 On the other hand, at Rome where the Jews formed a numer- 
 ous, powerful, and privileged class (many of them, too, by 
 their proselyting zeal and frequent disputations with the 
 Priests aud Philosophers trained and exercised Polemics) the 
 recently-founded Christian Church, was, it appears, in greater 
 danger from the reasonings of the Jewish Doctors and even of 
 its own Judaizing Members, respecting the use of the new 
 revelation. Thus the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 was to prove the superiority of the Christian Religion ; the 
 object of the Epistle to the Romans to prove its necessity. 
 Now there was one argument extremely Avell calculated to 
 stagger a faith newly transplanted and still loose at its roots, 
 and which, if allowed, seemed to preclude the possibility of 
 the Christian Religion, as an especial and immediate revela- 
 tion from God — on the high grounds, at least, on w^hich the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles placed it, and with the exclusive rights 
 and superseding character, which he claimed for it. You ad- 
 mit (said they) the divine origin and authority of the Law 
 given to Moses, proclaimed with thunders and lightnings and 
 the Voice of the Most High heard by all the People from 
 Mount Sinai, and introduced, enforced, and perpetuated by a 
 series of the most stupendous miracles ! Our Religion then 
 was given by God : and can God give a perishable, imperfect 
 religion ? If not perishable, how can it have a successor ? 
 If perfect, how can it need to be superseded ? The entire 
 argument is indeed comprised in the latter attribute of our 
 Law. We know, from an authority which you jourselves 
 
2]G AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 acknowledge for divine, that our Religion is perfect. " He 
 is the Rock, and his Work is perfect." { Deuter. xxxii. 4.) 
 If then the Religion revealed by God himself to our Forefathers 
 is perfect^ what need have we of another ? This objection, both 
 from its importance, and from its (for the persons at least, to 
 whom it was addressed) extreme plausibility, behoved to be 
 answered in both epistles. And accordingly, the answer is 
 included in the one (Hebrews) and it is the especial purpose 
 and main subject of the other. And how does the Apostle 
 answer it ? Suppose — and the case is not impossible [81] — a 
 man of Sense, who had studied the evidences of Priestly and 
 Paley with Warburton's Divine Legation, but who should be a 
 perfect stranger to the Writings of St. Paul : and that I put 
 this question to him : — what, do you think, will St. Paul's an- 
 swer be ? Nothing, he would reply, can be more obvious. It 
 is in vain, the Apostle will urge, that you bring your notions 
 of probability and inferences from the arbitrary interpretation 
 of a word in an absolute rather than a relative sense, to inva- 
 lidate a knoAvn fact. It is a fact^ that your Religion is (in 
 your sense of the word) not perfect: for it is deficient in one 
 of the two essential Constituents of all true Religion^ the Be- 
 lief of a Future State on solid and sufficient grounds. Had 
 the doctrine indeed been revealed, the stupendous Miracles, 
 which you most truly affirm to have accompanied and attested 
 the first promulgation of your Religion, would have supplied 
 the requisite proof. But the doctrine was not revealed : and 
 your belief of a future state rests on no solid grounds. You 
 believe it (as far as you believe it, and as many of you as pro- 
 fess this belief) without revelation, and without the only pro- 
 per and sufficient evidence of its truth. Your Religion, there- 
 fore, though of divine Origin is, (if taken in disjunction from 
 the new revelation, which I am commissioned to proclaim) but 
 a Religio f/imi(/ifl^a; and the main purpose, the proper char- 
 acter, and the paramount object, of Christ's Mission and Mi- 
 racles, is to supply the missing Half by a clear discovery of a 
 future state ; and ( since " he alone discovers ivho proves^'' ) by 
 proving the truth of the doctrine, now for the first time de- 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 217 
 
 dared with the requisite authority, by the lequisite, appropri- 
 ate, and alone satisfactory evidence. 
 
 But is this the Apostle's answer to the Jewish Oppugners, 
 and the Judaizing false brethren, of the Church of Christ ? It 
 is not the Answer, it does not resemble the Answer returned 
 by the Apostle. It is neither parallel nor corradial with the 
 line of Argument in either of the two Epistles, or with any 
 one line ; but it is a choi'd that traverses them all, and only 
 touches where it cuts across. In the Epist. to the Hebrews 
 the direct contrary position is repeatedly asserted : and in the 
 Epist. to the Romans it is every where siipjjosed. The death to 
 which the Law sentenced all Sinners (and which even the Gen- 
 tiles without the revealed Law had announced to them by their 
 consciences, " the judgment of God having been made known 
 even to them") must be the same death, from which they were 
 saved by the faith of the Son of God, or the Apostle's reaso- 
 ning would be senseless, his antithesis a mere equivoque, a 
 play on a word, quod idem sonat^ aliud vult. Christ "redeem- 
 ed mankind from the curse of the Law" ( Galatians, iii. 11 ) : 
 and we all know, that it was not from temporal death, or the 
 penalties and afflictions of the present life, that Believers have 
 been redeemed. The Law, of v/hich the inspired Sage of 
 Tarsus is speaking, from which no man can plead excuse ; the 
 Law miraculously delivered in thunders from Mount Sinai, 
 which was inscribed on tables of stone for the Jews, and writ- 
 ten in the hearts of all men (Rom. xi. 16) — the Law "holy 
 and spiritual /" what was the great point, of which this Law, 
 in its own name, offered no solution ? the mystery, which it 
 left behind the veil, or in the cloudy tabernacle of types and 
 figurative sacrifices ? Whether there was a Judgement to come 
 and Souls to suffer the dread sentence ? Or w^as it not far ra- 
 ther — what are the means of escape ? Where may Grace be 
 found, and Redemption ? St. Pauls says, the latter. The 
 Law brings condemnation : but the conscience-sentenced 
 Transgressor's question. What shall I do to be saved ? Who 
 will intercede for me ? she dismisses as beyond the jurisdic- 
 tion of her Court, and takes no cognizance thereof, save in 
 
 28 
 
218 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 prophetic murmurs or mute out-shadowings of mystic ordinan- 
 ces and sacrificial types. Not, therefore, that there is a Life 
 to come, and a future state ; but what each individual Soul 
 may hope for itself therein ; and on what grounds ; and that 
 this state has been rendered an object of aspiration and fer- 
 vent desire, and a source of thanksgiving and exceeding great 
 joy : and by whom, and through whom, and for whom, and by 
 what means and under what conditions — these are the peculiar 
 and distingitishmg fundamentals of the Christian Faith ! These 
 are the revealed Lights and obtained Privileges of the Chris- 
 tian Dispensation ! Not alone the knoa\4edge of the Boon, but 
 the precious inestimable Boon itself, is the "Grace and Truth 
 that came by Jesus Christ !" I believe Moses, I believe Paul ; 
 but I believe in Christ. 
 
 APHORISM LEIGHTON. 
 
 ON BAPTISM. 
 
 "In those days came John the Baptist preaching ^ — It will 
 suffice for our present purpose, if by these [82] words we di- 
 rect the attention to the origin, or at least first Scriptural Rec- 
 ord, of Baptism, and to the combinement of Preaching there- 
 with ; their aspect each to the other, and their concurrence to 
 one excellent end ; the Word unfolding the Sacrament, and 
 the Sacrament sealing the Word ; the Word as a Light, infor- 
 ming and clearing the sense of the Seal, and this again, as a 
 S«al, confirming and ratifying the truth of the word : as you 
 see some significant Seals, or engraven Signets, have a word 
 about them expressing their Sense. 
 
 But truly the Word is a Light and the Sacraments have in 
 them of the same Light illuminating them. This (sacrament) 
 of Baptism, the Ancients do particularly express by Light. 
 Yet are they both nothing but darkness to us, till the same light 
 shine in our Hearts ; for till then we are nothing but darkness 
 ourselves, and therefore the most luminous things are so to us. 
 Noonday is as midnight to a blind man. And we see these 
 ordinances, the word and the sacrament, without profit orcom- 
 
 A 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 219 
 
 fort for the most part, because we have not of that Divine 
 Light within us.r^ And we have it not, because we ask it not. 
 
 A born and bred Baptist, and paternally descended from the 
 old orthodox Non-conformists, and l>oth in his own and in his 
 father's right a veiy dear friend of mine, had married a Mem- 
 ber of the National Church. In con^quence of an anxious 
 wish expressed by his Lady for the baptism of their first child, 
 he solicited me to put him in possession of my views respec- 
 ting this .controversy : though principally as to the decree of 
 importance which I attached to it. For as to the point itself, 
 his natural pre-possession in favor of the Persuasion, in which 
 he was born, had been confirmed by a conscientious examina- 
 tion of tlie Arguments on both sides. As the Comment os 
 the preceding Aphorism, or rather as an expansion of its sub- 
 ject-matter, I will give the substance of the conversation : aiid 
 amply shaU I have been remunerated, should it be read with 
 the interest and satisfaction with which it was heard. More 
 particularly, should any of my Readers find tliemselves under 
 the same or similar Circumstances. 
 
 COMMENT 
 
 Or Aid to Reflection in the forming of a sound Judgement 
 respecting the purport and purpose of the Baptismal Rite^ 
 and a just apprecialion of its value and importance. 
 Our discussion is rendered shorter and more easy by our 
 perfect agreement in certain preliminary points. We both 
 disclaim alike every attempt to explain any thing into Scrip- 
 ture, and every attempt to explain any thing out of Scripture. 
 Or if we regard either with a livelier aversion, it is the latter 
 2ts being the more fashionable and prevalent. I mean the 
 practice of both high and low Grotian Divines to explain away 
 positive assertions of Scripture on the pretext , that the literal 
 soise is not agreeable io Reason, that is, tujlib. particular Rea- 
 
^20 AIDS TO REFLECTIOK-. 
 
 son. x\nd inasmuch as (in the only right sense of the word) 
 there is no such thing as a particular Reason, they must, and 
 in fact they do mean, that the literal sense is not accordant to 
 their Understanding ^ i, e. to the Notions which their Under- 
 standings have been taught and accustomed to form in their 
 school of Philosophy. Thus a Platonist, who should become 
 a Christian, would at once, even in texts susceptible of a dif- 
 ferent interpretation, recognize, because he would expect to 
 find, several doctrines which the disciple of the Epicurean or 
 Mechanic School will not receive on the most positive decla- 
 rations of the Divine Word. And as we agree in the opinion, 
 that the Minimi-Jidian Party (p. 136) err grievously in the 
 latter point, so I must concede to you, that too many Psedo- 
 baptists (Assertors of Infant Baptism) have erred, though less 
 grossly, in the former. 1 have, I confess, no eye for these 
 smoke-like Wieaths of Inference, this ever-widening spiral 
 Ergo from the narrow aperture of perhaps a single Text : or 
 rather an interpretation forced into it by construing an idio- 
 matic phrase in an artless Narrative with the same absolute- 
 ness, as if it had formed part of a mathematical problem ! I 
 start back from these inverted Pyramids, where the apex is 
 the base ! If I should inform any one that I had called at a 
 friend's house, but had found nobody at home, the Family 
 having all gone to the play ; and if he, on the strength of this 
 information, should take occasion to asperse my friend's wife 
 for unmotherly conduct in taking an infant, six months old, to 
 a crowded theatre ; would you allow him to press on the 
 words, nobody and all the family, in justification of the slander ? 
 Would you not tell him,[that the words were to be interpreted 
 by the nature of the subject, the purpose of the speaker, and 
 their ordinary acceptation ? And that he must or might have 
 known, that Infants of that age would not be admitted into the 
 Theatre ? Exactly so, with regard to the words, " he and all 
 his Household." Had Baptism of Infants at that early period 
 of the Gospel been a known practice, or had this been previ- 
 ously demonstrated, — then indeed the argument, that in all 
 probability there was one or more infants or young children iu 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 221 
 
 SO large a family, would be no otherwise objectionable than as 
 being superfluous, and a sort of anticlimax in Logic. But if 
 the words are cited as the proof, it would be a clear petitio 
 principii^ though there had been nothing else against it. But 
 when we turn back to the Scriptures preceding the narrative, 
 and find Repentance and Belief demanded as the terms and in- 
 dispensable Conditions of Baptism — then the case above ima- 
 gined applies in its full force. Equally vain is the pretended 
 analogy from circumcision, which was no sacrament at all; but 
 the means and mark of national distinction. In the first in- 
 stance it was, doubtless a privilege or mark of superior rank 
 conferred on the Descendants of Abraham. In the patriarchal 
 times this rite was confined (the first Governments being The- 
 ocracies) to the Priesthood, who were set apart to that office 
 from their Birth. At a later period this Token of the premier 
 class was extended to Kings. And thus, when it was re-or- 
 dained by Moses for the whole Jewish Nation, it was at the 
 same time said — Ye are all Priests and Kings — Ye are a con- 
 secrated People. In addition to this, or rather in aid of this, 
 Circumcision was intended to distinguish the Jews by some in- 
 delible sign : and it was no less necessary that Jewish chil- 
 dren should be recognizable as Jews, than Jewish adults — not 
 to mention the greater safety of the rite in infancy. Nor was 
 it ever pretended that any Grace was conferred with it, or that 
 the Rite was significant of any inward or spiritual Operation. 
 In short, an unprejudiced and competent Reader need only pe- 
 ruse the first 33 Paragraphs of the 18th Section of Taylor's 
 Liberty of Prophesying ; and then compare with these the re- 
 mainder of the Section added by him after the Restoration : 
 those, namely, in which he attempts to overthrow his own ar- 
 guments. I had almost said, affects : for such is the feeble- 
 ness, and so palpable the sophistry, of his Answers, that I find 
 it difficult to imagine, that Taylor himself could have been sat- 
 isfied with them. The only plausible arguments apply with 
 equal force to Baptist and Paedo-baptist ; and would prove, if 
 they proved any thing, that both were wrong, and the Qua- 
 kers only in the right. 
 
222 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Now, in the fiist place, it is obvious, that nothing conclusive 
 c m be drawn from the silence of the New Testament respect- 
 ing a practice, which, supposing it already in use, must yet 
 from the character of the first Converts, have been of compara- 
 tively rare occurrence ; and which from the predominant, and 
 more concerning. Objects and Functions of tlie Apostolic 
 Writers (1 Corinth, i. 17) was not likely to have been men- 
 tioned otherwise than incidentally, and very probably therefore 
 might not have occurred to them to mention at all. But, sec- 
 ondly, admitting that the practice was introduced at a later pe- 
 riod than that in which the Acts of the Apostles and the Epis- 
 tles were composed: I should yet be fully satisfied, that the 
 Church exercised herein a sound [83] discretion. On either 
 supposition, therefore, it is never without regret that I see a 
 Divine of our Church attempting to erect forts on a position so 
 evidently commanded by the strong-hold of his Antagonists. 
 I dread the use which the Socinians may make of their exam- 
 ple, and the Papists of their failure. Let me not, however, 
 deceive you. [The Reader understands^ that I suppose n^y- 
 self conversing with a Baptist. ) I am of opinion, that the Di- 
 vines on your side are chargeable with a far more grievous 
 mistake, that of giving a carnal and Judaizing interpretation 
 to the various Gospel Texts in which the terms, baptism and 
 baptize, occur, contrary to the express and earnest admoni- 
 tions of the iVpostle Paul. And this I say without in the least 
 retracting my former concession, that the Texts appealed to, 
 as commanding or authorizing Infant Baptism, are all without 
 exception made to bear a sense neither contained nor deduci- 
 ble: and likewise that ( historically considered) there exists no 
 sufficient positive evidence, that the Baptism of Infants was 
 instituted by the Apostles in the practice of the Apostolic 
 Age [84]. 
 
 Lastly, we both co-incide in the full conviction, that it is nei- 
 ther the outward ceremony of Baptism, under any form or 
 circumstance, nor any other ceremony; but such a faith in 
 Christ as tends to produce a conformity to his holy doctrines 
 and example in heart and life, and which fiiith is itself a de* 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 223 
 
 dared mean and condition of our partaking of his spiritual 
 Body, and of being " clothed upon" with his righteousness ; 
 that properly makes us Christians, and can alone be enjoined 
 as an Article of Faith necessary to Salvation, so that the deni- 
 al thereof may be denounced as "a damnable heresy." In 
 the strictest sense of essential, this alone is the essential in 
 Christianity, that the same spirit should be growing in us which 
 was in the fullness of all perfection in Christ Jesus. What- 
 ever else is named essential is such because, and only as far 
 as, it is instrumental to this or evidently implied herein. If 
 the Baptists hold the visible Rite indispensable to Salvation, 
 Avith what terror must they not regard every disease that befel 
 their children between Youth and Infancy! But if they are 
 saved by the faith of the Parent, then the outward rite is not 
 essential to Salvation, otherwise than as the omission should 
 arise from a spirit of disobedience: and in this case.it is the 
 cause, not the effect, the wilful. and unbaptized Heart, not the 
 unbaptizing Hand, that perils it. And surely it looks very 
 like an inconsistency to admit the vicarious faith of the Pa- 
 rents and the therein implied promise, that the child shall be 
 christianly bred up, and as much as in them lies prepared for 
 the communion of saints — to admit this, as safe and sufficient 
 in their own instance, and yet to denounce the same belief 
 and practice as hazardous and unavailing in the Established 
 Church — the same, I say, essentially, and only differing from 
 their own by the presence of two or three Christian Friends 
 as additional Securities, and by the promise being expressed ! 
 But you, my filial Friend! have studied Christ under a bet- 
 ter Teacher — the Spirit of Adoption, even the spirit that was 
 in Paul, and v/hich still speaks to us out of his writings. You 
 remember and admire the saying of an old Divine, that a cere- 
 mony duly instituted was a Chain of Gold around the Neck of 
 Faith ; but if in the wish to make it co-essential and consub- 
 stantial, you draw it closer and closer, it may strangle the 
 Faith, it was meant to deck and designate. You are not so 
 unretentive a Scholar as to have forgotten the "pateris et au- 
 10 " of your Virgil: or if you were, you are not so inconsis- 
 
224 AIDS TO EEFLECTIOJV. 
 
 tent a reasoner, as to translate the Hebraism, Spirit and Fire, 
 in one place by spiritual fire, and yet refuse to translate Water 
 and Spirit by Spiritual Water in another place : or if, as I my- 
 self think, the different position marks a different sense, yet 
 that the former must be ejusdem generis with the latter — the 
 Water of Repentance, reformation in con Jt/c^; and the Spirit 
 that which purifies the inmost jjrinciple of action, as Fire pur- 
 ges the metal substantially and not cleansing the surface only ! 
 (See Aph. xxiii. p. 9—10.) 
 
 But in this instance, it will be said, the ceremony, the out- 
 ward and visible sign, is a Scripture Ordinance. I will not 
 reply, that the Romish Priest says the same of the anointing 
 the sick with oil and the imposition of hands. No ! my an- 
 swer is : that this is a very sufficient reason for the contin- 
 ued observance of a cermonial Rite so derived and sanction- 
 ed, even though its own beauty, simplicity, and natural signifi- 
 cancy had pleaded less strongly in its behalf! But it is no 
 reason why the Church should forget, that the perpetuation 
 of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing, and that a 
 ceremony to be perpetuated is to be perpetuated as a cere- 
 mony. It is no reaon why, knowing and experiencing even 
 in the majority of her own Members the proneness of the hu- 
 man mind to [85] Superstition, the Church might not rightfully 
 and piously adopt the measures best calculated to check this 
 tendency, and correct the abuse, to which it had led in any 
 particular Rite. But of superstitious notions respecting the 
 baptismal ceremony and of abuse resulting, the instances were 
 flagrant and notorious. Such, for instance, was the frequent 
 deferring of the baptismal rite to a late period of Life, and 
 even to the death-bed, in the belief that the mystic water 
 would cleanse the baptized person from all sin and ( if he died 
 immediately after the performance of the ceremony ) send him 
 pure and spotless into the other World. 
 
 Nor is this all. The preventive remedy applied by the 
 church is legitimated as well as additionally recommended by 
 the following consideration. V\^here a ceremony answered and 
 was intended to answer several purposes, which purposes at 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 225' 
 
 its first institution were blended in respect of the time^ but 
 which afterwards by cliange of circumstances (as when, for 
 instance, a large and ever-increasing proportion of the mem- 
 bers of the Church, or those who at least bore the Christian 
 name, were of Christian Parents) were necessarily disunited- — 
 then either the Church has no power or authority delegated to 
 her (which is shifting the groundof controversy)— or she must 
 be authorized to choose and determine, to which of the several 
 purposes the ceremony should be attached. Now one of the 
 purposes of Baptism was — the making it publicly manifest, 
 first, what Individuals were to be regarded by the Woiid 
 (Phil. ii. 15) as belonging to the visible* Community of Christ- 
 ians : inasmuch as by their demeanour and apparent condition 
 the general estimation of " the City set on a hill and not to be 
 hid" (Math, v. 14) could not be affected — the City that even 
 " in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation" was bound 
 not only to give no cause, but by all innocent means to pre- 
 vent every occasion, of " Rebuke." Secondly, to mark out 
 those that were entitled to that especial Dearness ; that watch- 
 ful and disciplinary Love and Loving-kindness ; which over 
 and above the affections and duties of Philanthropy and Uni- 
 versal Charity, Christ himself had enjoined, and with an em- 
 phasis and in a form significant of its great and especial impor- 
 tance. A New Commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
 one another. By the former the Body of Christians was to be 
 placed in contrast with the notorious misanthropy and bigotry 
 of the Jewish Church and People : and thus without draw-back, 
 and precluding the objection so commonly made to Sectarian 
 Benevolence, to be distinguished and known to all men by 
 their fervid fulfilment of the latter. How kind these Christ- 
 ians are to the poor and afflicted, w-ithout distinction of re- 
 ligion or country ! But how they love each other! 
 
 Now combine with this the consideration before urged — the 
 duty, I mean and necessity of checking the superstitious abuse 
 of the baptismal rite : and I then ask, with confidence, in what 
 way could the Church have exercised a sound discretion more 
 wisely, piously, or effectively, than by affixing, from among 
 
 29 
 
226 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the several ends and purposes of Baptism, the outward cere- 
 mony to the purposes here mentioned ? How could the great 
 Body of Christians be more plainly instructed as to the true 
 nature of all outward ordinances ? What can be conceived bet- 
 ter calculated to prevent the ceremony from being regarded as 
 other and more than a ceremony, if not the administration of 
 the same on an object^ (yea, a dear and precious o&/ec/) of 
 spiritual duties, but a subject oi spiritual operations and graces 
 only by anticipation and in hope ; — a subject, unconscious as a 
 Flower of the dew falling on it or the early rain, and thus em- 
 blematic of the myriads who ( as in our Indian Empire, and 
 henceforward, we trust, in Africa) are temporally and even 
 morally benefited by the outward existence of Christianity, 
 though as yet ignorant of its saving truth ! And yet, on the 
 other hand, what more reverential than the application of this, 
 the common initiatory rite of the East sanctioned and appropri- 
 ated by Christ — its application, I say, to the very subjects, 
 whom he himself commanded to be brought to him — the chil- 
 dren in arms^ respecting whom " Jesus was much displeased 
 with his disciples, who had rebuked those that brought them !" 
 What more expressive of the true character of that originant 
 and generic Stain, fixDm which the Son of God, by his myste- 
 rious incarnation and agony and death and resurrection, and 
 by the baptism of the Spirit, came to cleanse the Children of 
 Adam, than the exhibition of the outward element to Infants 
 free from and incapable of crimCy in whom the evil principle 
 was present only as jpotential being, and whose outward sem- 
 blance represented tlie Kingdom of Heaven ? And can it — to 
 a man, who would hold himself deserving of Anathema Maran- 
 alha (1 Cor.xvi. 22,) if he did not " love the Lord Jesus" — 
 can it be nothing to such a man, that the introduction and com- 
 mendation of a new Inmate, a new spiritual Ward, to the as- 
 sembled Brethren in Christ ( — and this, as I have shown above, 
 was one purpose of the baptismal Ceremony) does in the bap- 
 tism of an Infant recall our Lord's own presentation in the 
 temple on the eighth day after his birth ? Add to all these con- 
 siderations the known fact of the frequent exposure and the 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIUION. 2H 
 
 general light regard of Infants, at the time when Infant Bap- 
 tism is by the Baptists supj^osed to have been first 7'uled bjr 
 the Catholic Church, not overlooking the humane and charita- 
 ble motives, that influenced Cyprian's decision in its favor! 
 And then make present to your imagination, and meditatively 
 contemplate the still continuing tendency, the profitable, the 
 beautiful effects, of this ordinance noiv and for so many cen- 
 turies back on the great Mass of the Pqpulation throughout 
 Christendom — the softening, elevating exercise of Faith and 
 the Conquest over the senses, while in the form of a helpless 
 crying Babe the Presence, and the unutterable Worth and Val- 
 ue, of an immortal Being made capable of everlasting bliss are 
 solemnly proclaimed and carried home to the mind and. heart 
 of the Hearers and Beholders ! Ner will you forget the proba- 
 ble influence on the future education of the Child, the oppor- 
 tunity of instructing and impressing the friends, relatives, and 
 parents in their best and most docile mood ! These are indeed, 
 the mollia tempora fandi. 
 
 It is true, that by an unforeseen accident, and through the 
 propensity of all Zealots to caricature partial truth into total 
 falsehood — it is too true, that a Tree the very contrary in quali- 
 ty of that shown to Moses (Exod. xv. 25) was afterwards 
 " cast into the sweet waters from this fountain," and made 
 them like " the waters of Marah," too bitter to be drunk. ,1 
 allude to the Pelagian Controversy, the perversion of the Ar- 
 ticle of Original Sin by Augustine, and the frightful con-elusions 
 which this durus pater wfantuni drew from the Article tJius 
 perverted. It is not, however, to the predecessors of this 
 African, whoever they were that authorized Paedo-baptism, 
 and at whatever period it first became general— it is not to the 
 Church at the time being, that these consequences are justly 
 imputable. She had done her best to preclude every super- 
 stition, by allowing in urgent cases any and every Adult, Man 
 and Woman, to administer the ceremonial part, the outward 
 rite, of baptism ; but reserving to the highest Functionary of 
 the Church (even to the exclusion of the Co-presbyters) the 
 most proper and spiritual purpose, viz. the declaration of Repen- 
 
228 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tance and Belief, the free Choice of Christ, as his Lord, and 
 the open profession of the Christian Title by an individual in 
 his own name and by his own deliberate act. The admission, 
 and public reception of the Believer into the name of the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — this office of Religion, 
 the essentially moral and spiritual nature of which could not 
 be mistaken, this most solemn office the Bishop alone was to 
 perform. Thus — as soon as the purposes of the ceremonial 
 Rite were by change of circumstance divided, that is, took 
 place at diffijrent periods of the Believer's Life — to the out- 
 ward purposes, where the eifect was to be produced on the 
 minds 'of others, the Church continued to affix the outward 
 rite ; while to the substantial and spiritual purpose, where the 
 effect was to be produced on the Individual's own mind, she 
 gave its beseeming dignity by an ordinance not figurative, but 
 standing in the direct cause and relation of means to the end. 
 
 In fine, there are two great Purposes to be answered, each 
 having its own subordinate purposes, and desirable consequen- 
 ces. The Church answers both, the Baptists one only. If, 
 nevertheless, you would still prefer the union of the baptismal 
 rite with the Confirmation, and the Presentation of Infants to 
 the assembled Church had formed a separate institution, avow- 
 edly prospective — I answer : first, that such for a long time 
 and to a late period was my own Judgment. But even then it 
 seemed to me a point, as to which an indifference would be 
 less inconsistent in a lover of Truth, than a zeal to separation 
 in a professed lover of Peace. And secondly, I would revert 
 to the History of the Reformation, and the calamitous accident 
 of the Peasant's War : when the poor ignorant multitude, 
 driven frantic by the intolerable oppressions of their feudal 
 Lords, rehearsed all the outrages that were acted in our own 
 times by the Parisian Populace headed by Danton, Marat, and 
 Robespierre ; and on the same outrageous Principles, and in 
 assertion of the same Rights of Brutes to the subversion of 
 all the Duties of Men. In our times, most fortunately for 
 the interests of Religion and Morality, or of their prudential 
 Substitutes at least, the Name of Jacobin was every where 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL BELI(/ION. 229 
 
 associated with that of Atheist and Infidel. Or rather, Jaco- 
 binism and Infidelity where the two Heads of the Revolution- 
 ary Geryon — connatural misgrowths of the same Monster- 
 trunk. In the German Convulsion, on the contrary, by a mere 
 but most unfortunate accident^ the same Code of Caliban Juris- 
 prudence, the same sensual and murderous Excesses, were 
 connected with the name of Anabaptist. The Abolition of 
 Magistracy, Community of Goods, the Right of Plunder, 
 Polygamy, and whatever else was fanatical, were comprised 
 in the word, Anabaptism 1 It is not to be imagined, that the 
 Fathers of the Reformation could, without a miraculous influ- 
 ence, have taken up the question of Infant Baptism with the 
 requisite calmness and freedom of Spirit. It is not to be 
 wished, that they should have entered on the discussion. Nay, 
 I will go farther. Unless the Abolition of Infant Baptism can 
 be shown to be involved in some fundamental article of Faith, 
 unless the Practice could be proved fatal or imminently peril- 
 ous to Salvation, the Reformers would not have been justified 
 in exposing the yet tender and struggling cause of Protestantism 
 to such certain and violent prejudices as this Innovation would 
 have excited. Nothing less than the whole substance and 
 efficacy of the Gospel Faith was the prize, which they had 
 wrestled for and won ; but won from enemies still in the field, 
 and on the watch to re-take, at all costs, the sacred Treasure, 
 and consign it once again to darkness and oblivion. If there 
 be a time for all things, this was not the time for an innovation, 
 that would and must have been followed by the triumph of the 
 enemies of scriptural Christianity, and the alienation of the 
 Governments, that had espoused and protected it. 
 
 Remember, I say this on the supposition of the question's 
 not being what you do not pretend it to be, an Essential of 
 the Faith, by which we are saved. But should it likewise be 
 conceded, that it is a disputable point — and that in point of 
 fact it is and has been disputed by Divines, whom no pious 
 Protestant of any denomination will deny to have been faith- 
 ful and eminent servants of Christ — should it, I say, be like- 
 wise conceded that the question of Infant Baptism is a point, 
 
230 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 on which two Christians, w^ho perhaps differ on this point only, 
 may differ without giving just ground for impeaching the piety 
 or competence of either— in this case I am obliged to infer, 
 that the Person who at any time can regard this difference as 
 singly warranting a separation from a religious Community, 
 must think of Schism under another point of View, than I have 
 been taught to contemplate it by St. Paul in his epistles to the 
 Corinthians. 
 
 Let me add a few words on a diversity of doctrine closely 
 connected with this : the opinions of Doctors Mant and D'Oy- 
 ley as opposed to those of the ( so called ) Evangelical Clergy. 
 " The Church of England (says Wall, [86] ) does not require 
 assent and consent" to either opinion " in order to lay com- 
 munion." But I will suppose the person a Minister; but 
 Minister of a Church which has expressly disclaimed all pre- 
 tence to infallibity, a Church which in the construction of its 
 liturgy and articles is known to have worded certain passages 
 for the purpose of rendering them subscribable by both A and 
 Z — i. e. the opposite parties as to the points in controversy. 
 I suppose this person's convictions those of Z, and that out of 
 five passages there are three, the more natural and obvious 
 sense of which is in his favor ; and two, of which though not 
 ahsoluteiy jrreckiding a different sense, yet the more probable 
 interpretation is in favor of A i. e. of those who do not con- 
 sider the Baptism of an Infant as prospective^ but hold it to be 
 an Opus Operans et in prccsenti. Then I say, that if such a 
 person regards these two sentences or single passages as obli- 
 ging or warranting him to abandon the Flock entrusted to his 
 charge, and either to join such, as are the avowed Enemies of 
 the Church on the double ground of its particular Constitution 
 and of its being an Establishment, or to set up a separate 
 Church for himself — I cannot avoid the conclusion, that either 
 his Conscience is morbidly sensitive in one speck to the ex- 
 haustion of the sensibility in a far larger portion ; or that he 
 must have discovered some mode, beyond the reach of my 
 conjectural powers, of interpreting the scriptures enumerated 
 m the following Excerpt from the popubr Tract before cited, 
 
APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 231 
 
 in which the writer expresses an opinion, to which I assent 
 witli my whole heart : viz. 
 
 " That all Christians in the world that hold the same funda- 
 mentals ought to make one church, thoagh differing in lesser 
 opinions ; and that the sin, the mischief, and danger to the 
 souls of men, that divide into those many sects and parties 
 among us, does (for the most of them) consist not so much in 
 the opinions themselves, as in their dividing and separating 
 for them. And in support of this tenet, I will refer you to 
 some plain places of Scripture, which if you please now to 
 peruse, I will be silent the while. See what our Saviour him- 
 self says, Johnx. 16. John xvii. 11. And what the primitive 
 Christians practised, Acts ii. 46, and iv. 32. And what St. 
 Paul says 1 Cor. i. 10, 11, 12, and iii. 2, 3, 4, also the whole 
 12th chapter : Eph. ii. 18, &c. to the end. Where the Jewish 
 and Gentile Christians are showed to be one hody^one household^ 
 one temple fitly framed together : and yet these were of differ- 
 ent opinions in several matters. Likewise chap. iii. 6, iv. 1. 
 to 13, Phil. ii. 1, 2. where he uses the most solemn adjurations 
 to this purpose. But I would more especially recommend to 
 you the reading of Gal. v. 20, 21, Phil. iii. 15, 16. The 14th 
 chapter to the Romans, and part of the 15th, to ver. 7, and 
 also Rom. xvi. 17. 
 
 Are not these passages plain, full, and earnest ? Do you 
 find any of the controverted points to be determined by Scrip- 
 ture in words nigh so plain or pathetic ? 
 
 MARGINAL NOTE WRITTEN (iN 1816) BY THE EDITOR IN HIS OWN COPY OF 
 
 wall's WORK. 
 
 This and the two following pages are excellent. If I addressed the min- 
 isters recently seceded, I would first prove from Scripture and Reason the 
 justness of their doctrines concerning Baptism and Conversion. 2. 1 would 
 show, that even in respect of the Prayer-ijook, Ilomihes, &c. of the Church 
 of England, taken as a wliole, their opponents were comparatively as ill 
 off as themselves, if not worse. 3. That the few mistakes or inconvenient 
 phrases of the Baptismal Sei^vice did not impose on the conscience the ne- 
 cessity of resigning the pastoral office. 4, That even if tliey did, this 
 
232 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 would by no means justify schism from Lay-membership : or else there 
 could be no schism except fiom an immaculate and infallible Church. Now, 
 as our Articles have declared that no Church is or ever was such, it would 
 foUow that there is no such sin as that of Schism — i. e. that St. Paul wrote 
 falsely or idly. 5. That the Escape tln'ough the Channel of Dissent is 
 from the Fiying Pan to the Fire — or to use a less worn and vulgar simile, 
 the Escai)e of a Leech from a glass-jar of Water into the naked and open 
 Air. But never, never, would I in one breath allow my Church to be fal- 
 lible, and in the next contend for her absolute freedom from all error — ne- 
 ver confine inspiration and perfect truth to the Scriptures, and then scold 
 for the perfect Truth of each and eveiy word in the Prayer-book. Enough 
 for me, if in my Heart of Hearts, free from all fear of man and all lust of 
 preferment, I believe (as I do) the Church of England to be the most Apos- 
 tolic Church ; that its doctrines and ceremonies contain nothing dangerous 
 to Righteousness or Salvation ; and that the imperfections in its Liturgy 
 are spots indeed, but spots on the sun, which impede neither its Light nor 
 its Heat, so as to prevent the good seed from growing in a good soil and 
 producing fruits of Redemption. 
 
 \*The author had v^aitten and intended to insert a rfmilar exposition on 
 the Eucharist. But as the leading view has been given in the Comment 
 on Redemption, its length induces him to defer it, together with the arti- 
 cles on Faith and the Philosophy of Prayer, to a small supplementary Vol- 
 ume. 
 
COIVCLUSION. 
 
 I AM not so ignorant of the temper and tendency of the age 
 ill which I live, as either to be unprepared for the S07't of re- 
 marks which the literal interpretation of the Evangelist will 
 call forth, or to attempt an answer to them. Visionary Ra- 
 vings, Obsolete Whimsies, Transcendental Trash, &c. &c. I 
 leave to pass at the price current, among those who are wil- 
 ling to receive abusive phrases as substitutes for argument. 
 Should any Suborner of anonymous Criticism have engaged 
 some literal y Bravo or Buffoon beforehand, to vilify this work, 
 as in former instances, 1 would give a friendly hint to the ope- 
 rative Critic that he may compile an excellent article for the 
 occasion, and with very little trouble, out of Warburton's Bro- 
 chure on Grace and the Spirit, and the preface to the same. — 
 There is, however, one — objection, shall I say ? or accusation ? 
 which will so often be heard from men, whose talents and re- 
 puted moderation must give a weight to their words, that I owe 
 it both to my own character and to the interests of my read- 
 ers, not to leave unnoticed. The charge will probably be 
 worded in this way : — there is nothing new in all this ! {as if 
 novelty were any merit in questions of Revealed Religion ! ) 
 It is Mysticism^ all taken out of William Law, after he had 
 lost his senses, poor Man ! in brooding over the Visions of a 
 delirious German Cobbler, Jacob Behmen. 
 
 Of poor Jacob Behmen I have delivered my sentiments at 
 larse in another work. Those who have condescended to look 
 into his writings must know, that his characteristic errors are : 
 first, the mistaking the accidents and peculiarities of his own 
 over-wrought mind for realities and modes of thinking com- 
 mon to all minds : and secondly the confusion of Nature, i. e. 
 the active powers communicated to matter, with God, the Cre- 
 ator. And if the same persons have done more than merely 
 
 looked into the present volume, they must have seen, that to 
 
 30 
 
234 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 eradicate, and, if possible, to preclude, both the one and the 
 other stands prominent among its avowed objects. ( See p. 
 9i:>— 101: 116—118). 
 
 Of William Law's Works I am acquainted with the Serious 
 Call ; and besides this I remember to have read a small tract, 
 on Prayer, if I mistake not, as I easily may, it being at least 
 six-and-twenty years since I saw it. He may in this or in 
 other tracts have quoted the same passages from the fourth 
 Gospel as I have done. But surely this aftbrds no presumption 
 that my conclusions are the same with his ; still less, that they 
 are drawn from the same premises ; and least of all, that they 
 were adopted from his Writings. Whether Law has used the 
 phrase, assimilation by faith, I know not ; but I know that I 
 should expose myself to a just charge of an idle parade of my 
 Reading if I recapitulated the tenth part of the Authors, An- 
 cient and Modern, Romish and Reformed, from Law to Clem- 
 ens Alexandrinus and Irenaeus, in whose works the same 
 phrase occurs in the same sense. And after all, on such a 
 subject how worse than childish is the whole dispute ! 
 
 Is the fourth Gospel authentic ? And is the interpretation, 
 I have given, true or false ? These are the only questions 
 which a wise man would put, or a Christian be anxious to an- 
 swer. I not only believe it to be the true sense of the texts; 
 but I assert that it is the only true, rational, and even tolera- 
 ble sense. And this position alone I conceive myself interest- 
 ed in defending, I have studied with an open and fearless 
 spirit the attempts of sundry learned Critics of the Continent, 
 to invalidate the authenticity of this Gospel, before and since 
 Eichhorn's Vindication. The result has been a clearer assur- 
 ance, and (as far as this was possible) a yet deeper conviction 
 of the genuineness of all the writings, which the Church has 
 attributed to this Apostle. That those, who have formed an 
 opposite conclusion, should object to the use of expressions 
 which they had ranked among the most obvious marks of spu- 
 riousness, follows as a matter of course. But that men, who 
 with a clear and cloudless assent receive the sixth chapter of 
 this Gospel as a faithful, nay, inspired Record of an actual dis- 
 
CONCLUSION. 235 
 
 course, should take offence at the repetition of words which 
 the Redeemer himself in the perfect foreknowledge that they 
 would confirm the disbelieving, alienate the unsteadfast, and 
 transcend the present capacity even of his own Elect, had cho- 
 sen as the most appropriate ; and which after the most decisive 
 proofs, that they were misinterpreted by the greater number of 
 his Hearers, and not understood by any, he nevertheless re- 
 peated with stronger emphasis and without comment, as the 
 only appropriate symbols of the great truth he was declaring, 
 and to realize which e/evsro o'a^|;[ 87] — that in their own dis- 
 courses these men should hang back from all express reference 
 to these words, as if they were afraid or ashamed of them, 
 though the earliest recorded ceremonies and liturgical forms 
 of the primitive Church are absolutely inexplicable, except in 
 connexion with this discourse, and with the mysterious and 
 spiritual^ not allegorical and merely ethical, import of the 
 same ; and though this import is solemnly and in the most un- 
 equivocal terms asserted and taught by their own Church, even 
 in her Catechism, or compendium of doctrines necessary for 
 all her Members ; this I may, perhaps, understand ; but this I 
 am not able to vindicate or excuse ! 
 
 There is, however, one opprobrious phrase which it may be 
 profitable for my younger Readers that I should explain, viz. 
 Mysticism. And for this purpose I will quote a sentence or 
 two from a Dialogue which, had my prescribed limits permit- 
 ted, I should have attached to the present, Work ; but which 
 with an Essay on the Church, as instituted by Christ, and as 
 an Establishment of the State, and a series of Letters on the 
 right and the superstitious use and estimation of the Bible, 
 will appear in a small volume by themselves, should the re- 
 ception given to the present volume encourage or permit the 
 publication. 
 
 MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 " Anliiioiis. — What do you call Mysticism ? And do you 
 use the word in a good or in a bad sense ?" 
 
 '' Nous. — In the latter only : as far, at least, as we are now 
 
2o6 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 concerned with it. When a man refers to inward feelings and 
 experiences, of which Mankind at large are not conscious, as 
 evidences of the truth of any opinion — such a Man I call a 
 Mystic : and the grounding of any theory or belief on acci- 
 dents and anomalies of individual sensations or fancies, and 
 the use of peculiar terms invented or perverted from their or- 
 dinary significations, for the purpose of expressing these idio- 
 syncracies, and pretended facts of interior consciousness, I 
 name Mysticism. Where the error consists simply in the 
 Mystic's attaching to these anomalies of his individual tempe- 
 rament the character of Reality, and in receiving them as per- 
 manent Truths, having a subsistence in the Divine Mind, 
 though revealed to himself alone ; but entertains this persua- 
 sion without demanding or expecting the same faith in his 
 neighbours — I should regard it as a species of enthusiasm, 
 always indeed to be deprecated but yet capable of co-existing 
 with many excellent qualities both of Head and Heart. But 
 when the Mystic by ambition or still meaner passions, or (as 
 sometimes is the case) by an uneasy and self-doubting state of 
 mind that seeks confirmation in outward sympathy, is led to 
 impose his faith, as a duty, on mankind generally : and when 
 with such views he asserts, that the same experiences would 
 be vouchsafed, the same truths revealed, to evei^y man but for 
 his secret wickedness and unholy will — such a Mystic is a Fa- 
 natic, and in certain states of the public mind a dangerous 
 Member of Society. And most so in those ages and coun- 
 tries in which Fanatics of elder standing are allowed to perse- 
 cute the fresh competitor. For under these predicaments, 
 Mysticism, though originating in the singularities of an indi- 
 vidual Nature, and therefore essentially anomalous, is never- 
 theless highly contagious. It is apt to collect a swarm and 
 cluster circum fana, around the new Fane : and therefore 
 merits the name of Fanaticism, or as the Germans say, 
 Schwarmerey, i. e. Swarni-makingP 
 
 We will return to the harmless species — the enthusiastic 
 INIystics : a species that may again be subdivided into two ranks. 
 And it will not be other than germane to the subject, if 1 cn~ 
 
CONCLUSION. 237 
 
 deavour to describe them in a sort of allegorj, or parable. 
 Let us imagine a poor Pilgrim benighted in a wilderness or 
 desart, and pursuing his way in the starless dark with a Ian- 
 thorn in his hand. Chance or his happy genius leads him to 
 an Oasis or natural Garden, such as in the creations of my 
 youthful fancy I supposed Enos [88] the Child of Cain to have 
 found. And here, hungry and thirsty, the way-wearied Man 
 rests at a fountain ; and the Taper of his Lanthorn throws its 
 Light on an overshadowing Tree, a Boss of snow-white Blos- 
 soms, through which the green and growing Fruits peeped, 
 and the ripe golden Fruitage glowed. Deep, vivid, and faith- 
 ful are the impressions, which the lovely Imagery comprised 
 within the scanty Circle of Light, makes and leaves on his 
 Memory ! But scarcely has he eaten of the fruits and drank of 
 the fountain, ere scared by the roar and howl from the desart 
 he hurries forward : and as he passes with hasty steps through 
 grove and glade, shadows and imperfect beholdings and vivid 
 fragments of things distinctly seen blend with the past and 
 present shapings of his Brain. Fancy modifies Sight. His 
 Dreams transfer their forms to real Objects, and these lend 
 a substance and an outness to his Dreams. Apparitions greet 
 him ; and when at a distance from this enchanted land, and on 
 a different track, the Daw-n of Day discloses to him a Caravan; 
 a troop of his fellow-men, his memory, which is itself half 
 fancy, is interpolated afresh by every attempt to recall, con- 
 nect, and piece out his recollections. His narration is received 
 as a JNIadman's Tale. He shrinks from the rude laugh and con- 
 temptuous Sneer, and retires into himself. Y-et the craving 
 for Sympathy, strong in proportion to the intensity of his 
 Convictions, impels him to unbosom himself to abstract Audi- 
 tors ; and the poor Quietist becomes a Penman, and, all too 
 poorly stocked for the Writer's trade, he borrows his phrases 
 and figures from the only Writings to which he has had access, 
 the sacred Books of his Religion. And thus I shadow out 
 the enthusiast Mystic of the first sort ; at the head of which 
 stands the illuminated Teutonic Thelosopher and Shoemaker, 
 honest Jacob Behmjgn, born near Gorlitz, in iJpper Lusatia, 
 
238 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 in the 17th of our Elizabeth's Reign, and who died in the 
 22d of her Successsor's. 
 
 To delineate a Mystic of the second and higher order, we 
 need only endow our Pilgrim with equal gifts of Nature, but 
 these developed and displayed by all the aids and arts of Educa- 
 tion and favorable Fortune. He is on his way to the Mecca 
 of his ancestral and nationals] Faith, with a well-guarded and 
 numerous Procession of Merchants and Fellow-pilgrims, on 
 the established Track. At the close of Day the Caravan has 
 halted : the full moon rises on the Desart : and he strays forth 
 alone, out of sight, but to no unsafe distance ; and Chance 
 leads him too to the same Oasis or Islet of Verdure on the Sea 
 of Sand. He wanders at leisuie in its maze of Beautv and 
 Sweetness, and thrids his way through the odorous and flow- 
 ering Thickets into open " Spots of Greenery," and discovers 
 statues and memorial characters, grottos, and refreshing Caves. 
 But the Moonshine, the imaginative Poesy of Nature, spreads 
 its soft shadowy charm over all, conceals distances, and mag- 
 nifies heights, and modifies relations; and fills up vacuities 
 with its own whiteness, counterfeiting substance ; and where 
 the dense shadov/s lie, makes solidity imitate Hollowness ; 
 and gives to all objects a tender visionary hue and softening. 
 Interpret the Moonlight and the Shadows as the peculiar 
 genius and sensibility of the Individual's own Spirit : and here 
 you have the other sort : a Mystic, an Enthusiast of a nobler 
 Breed — a Fenelon. But the residentiary, or the frequent 
 visitor of the favored spot, who has scanned its beauties by 
 steady Day-light, and mastered its true proportions and linea- 
 ments, he will discover that both Pilgrims have indeed been 
 there ! He will know, that the delightful Dream, which the 
 latter tells, is a Dream of Truth ; and that even in the be- 
 wildered Tale of the former there is Truth mingled with the 
 Dream. 
 
 But the Source, the Spring-head, of the|Charges which I 
 anticipate, lies deep. Materialism, conscious and avowed Ma- 
 terialism, is in ill-repute : and a confessed Materialist there- 
 fore a rare character. But if the faith be ascertained by the 
 
CONCLUSION 239 
 
 fruits; if the predominant, though most often unsuspected, 
 persuasion is to be learnt from the influences, under which the 
 thoughts and affections of the Man move and take their direc- 
 tion ; I must reverse the position. Only not all are Ma- 
 terialists. Except a few individuals, and those for the most 
 part of a single Sect: and every one, who calls himself a 
 Christian, holds himself to have a Soul as well as a Body. He 
 distinguishes Mind from Matter, the Subject of his conscious- 
 ness from the Objects of the same. The former is his Mind : 
 and he says, it is immaterial. But though Subject and Sub- 
 stance are words of kindred roots, nay, little less than equiv- 
 alent terms, yet nevertheless it is exclusively to sensible Ob- 
 jects, to Bodies, to Modifications of Matter, that he habitu- 
 ally attaches the attributes of reality, of Substance. Real 
 and Tangible, Substantial and Material, are Synonimes for 
 him. He never indeed asks himself, what he means by Mind ? 
 But if he did, and tasked himself to return an honest answer — 
 as to what, at least, he had hitherto meant by it — he would 
 find, that he had described it by negatives, as the opposite of 
 Bodies, ex. gr, as a somewhat opposed to solidity, to visibility 
 &c. as if you could abstract the capacity of a vessel, and con- 
 ceive of it as a somewhat by itself, and then give to the emp- 
 tiness the properties of containing, holding, being entered, 
 and so forth. In short, though the proposition would perhaps 
 be angrily denied in words, yet in fact he thinks of his Mind, 
 as a property J or accident of a something else, that he calls a 
 Soul or Spirit : though the very same difficulties must recur, 
 the moment he should attempt to establish the difference. For 
 either this Soul or Spirit is nothing but a thinner Body, a finer 
 Mass of Matter : or the attribute of Self-subsistency vanishes 
 from the Soul on the same grounds, on which it is refused to 
 the Mind. 
 
 I am persuaded, however, that the dogmatism of the Cor- 
 puscular School, though it still exerts an influence on men's 
 notions and phrases, has received a mortal blow from the in- 
 creasingly dynamic spirit of the physical Sciences now high- 
 est in public estimation. And it may safely be predicted, that 
 
240 AIDS TO RErLECTION. 
 
 the results will extend beyond the intention of those, who are 
 gradually effecting this revolution. It is not Chemistry alone 
 that will be indebted to the Genius of Davy, Oersted, and 
 their compeers : and not as the Founder of Physiology and 
 philosophic Anatomy alone, will Mankind love and revere the 
 name of John Hunter. These men have not only taught^ 
 they have compelled us to admit, that the immediate objects of 
 our senses, or rather the grounds of the visibility and tangibi- 
 lity of all Objects of Sense, bear the same relation and similar 
 proportion to the intelligible object — i. e. to the Object which 
 we actually mean when we say, " It is such or such a thing,^'* 
 or '^ I have seen this or that,^'' — as the paper, ink, and differ- 
 ently combined straight and curved lines of an Edition of Ho- 
 mer bear to what we understand by the words, Iliad and 
 Odyssey. Nay, nothing would be more easy than so to con- 
 struct the paper, ink, painted Capitals, &c. of a printed disqui- 
 sition on the Eye, or the Muscles and Cellular Texture (i. e. 
 the Flesh) of the Human Body, as to bring together every 
 one of the sensible and ponderable Stuff's or Elements, that 
 are sensuously perceived in the Eye itself, or in the Flesh 
 itself. Carbon and Nitrogen, Oxygen and Hydrogen, Sulphur, 
 Phosphorus, and one or two Metals and Metallic Bases, con- 
 stitute the whole. It cannot be these, therefore, that we 
 mean by an Eye, by our Body. But perhaps it may be a par- 
 ticular Combination of these ? But here comes a question : 
 In this term do you or do you not include the Principle, the 
 Operating Cause, of the Combination? If not, then detach 
 this Eye from the Body ! Look steadily at it — as it might lie 
 on the Marble Slab of a dissecting Koom. Say it were the 
 eye of a Murderer, a Bellingham : or the eye of a murdered 
 Patriot, a Sidney ! — behold it, handle it, with its various ac- 
 companiments or constituent parts, of Tendon, Ligament, 
 Membrane, Blood-vessel, Gland, Humors ; its Nerves of Sense, 
 of Sensation, and of Motion. Alas! all these names, like 
 that of the Organ itself, are so many Anachronisms, figures 
 of Speech, to express that which has been : as when the 
 Guide points with his finger to a heap of stones, and tells the 
 
CONCLUSION. 241 
 
 Traveller, "That is Babylon, or Persepolis." — Is this cold 
 "Jelly the Light of the Body ?" Is this the Micranthropos in 
 the marvellous Microcosm ^ Is this what you mean when you 
 well define the Eye as the Telescope and the Mirror of the 
 soul, the Seat and Agent of an almost magical power ? 
 
 Pursue the same inquisition with every other part of the 
 Body, whether integral or simply ingredient ; and let a Ber- 
 zelius or a Hatchett be your interpreter, and demonstrate to 
 you what it is that in each actually meets your Senses. And 
 when you have heard the scanty catalogue, ask yourself if these 
 are indeed the living Fleshy the blood of Life? Or not far 
 rather — I speak of what, as a Man of Common Sense, you re- 
 ally rfo, not what, as a philosopher, you ought to believe — is 
 it not, I say, far rather the distinct and individuahzed Agen- 
 cy that by the given combinations utters and bespeaks its Pres- 
 ence? Justly and with strictest propriety of language may 
 I say, Speaks. It is to the coarseness of our Senses, or rath- 
 er to the defect and limitation of our percipient faculty, that 
 the visible Object appears the same even for a moment. The 
 characters, which I am now shaping on this paper, abide. Not 
 only the forms remain the same, but the particles of color- 
 ing stuft" are fixed, and, for an indefinite period at least, re- 
 main the same. But the particles that constitute the size^ the 
 visibility of an organic structure (see p. 42) are in perpetual 
 flux. They are to the combining and constitutive PoAver as 
 the pulses of air to the Voice of a Discourser; or of one who 
 sings a roundelay. The same words may be repeated; but in 
 each second of time the articulated air hath passed away, 
 and each act of articulation appropriates and gives momentary 
 form to a new and other portion. As the column of blue smoke 
 from a cottage chimney in the breathless Summer Noon, or 
 the steadfast-seeming Cloud on the edge-point of a Hill in the 
 driving air-current, which momently condensed and recomposed 
 is the common phantom of a thousand successors; — such is the 
 flesh, which our bodily eyes transmit to us; which our Palates 
 taste; which our Hands touch. 
 
 But perhaps the material particles possess this combining 
 
 31 
 
242 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 power by inherent reciprocal attractions, repulsions, and elec- 
 tive affinities, and are themselves the joint Artists of their 
 own combinations? I will not reply, though well I might, that 
 this would be to solve one problem by another, and merely to 
 shift the mystery. It will be sufficient to remind the thoughtful 
 Queiist, that even herein consists the essential difference, the 
 contra-distinction, of an Organ from a Machine ; that not on- 
 ly the characteristic Shape is evolved from the invisible cen- 
 tral power, but the material Mass itself is acquired by assimila- 
 tion. The germinal power of the Plant transmutes the fixed 
 air and the elementary Base of Water into Grass or Leaves ; 
 and on these the Organific Principle in the Ox or the Elephant 
 exercises an Alchemy still more stupendous. As the unseen 
 Agency weaves its magic eddies, the foliage becomes indiffer- 
 ently the Bone and its Mairow, the pulpy Brain, or the solid 
 Ivory. That what you see is blood, is flesh, is itself the work, 
 or shall I say, the translucence, of the invisible Energy, which 
 soon surrenders or abandons them to inferior Powers, (for 
 there is no pause nor chasm in the activities of Nature ) which 
 repeat a similar metamorphosis according to their kind. These 
 are not fancies, conjectures, or even hypotheses, but /acfs; 
 to deny which is impossible, not to reflect on w^hich is igno- 
 minious. And we need only reflect on them with a calm and 
 silent spirit to learn the utter emptiness and unmeaningness of 
 the vaunted Mechanico-corpuscular Philsophy, with both its 
 twins. Materialism on the one hand, and Idealism, rightlier 
 named Subjective Holism^ on the other : the one obtruding on 
 us a World of Spectres and Apparitions ; the other a mazy 
 Dream ! 
 
 Let the Mechanic or corpuscular Scheme, which in its abso- 
 luteness and strict consistency was first introduced by Des 
 Cartes, be judged by the results. By its fruits shall it be 
 known. 
 
 In order to submit the various phaenomena of moving bodies 
 to geometrical construction, we are under the necessity of ab- 
 stracting from corporeal substance all its positive properties, 
 and obliged to consider Bodies as differing from equal portions 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 243 
 
 of Space [89] onljr by figure and mobility. And as a Fiction 
 of Science, it would be difficult to overvalue tbis invention. 
 It possesses tbe same merits in relation to Geometry that the 
 atomic theory has in relation to Algebraic Calculus. But in 
 contempt of Common vSense, and in direct opposition to the 
 express declarations of the inspired Historian (Genesis I.), 
 and to the tone and spirit of the Scriptures throughout, Des 
 Cartes propounded it as truth of fact : and instead of a World 
 created and filled with }noductive forces by the Almighty Fiat, 
 left a lifeless Machine whirled about by the dust of its own 
 Grinding : as if Death could come from the living Fountain 
 of Life ; Nothingness and Phantom from the Plenitude of Re- 
 ality ! the Absoluteness of Creative Will ! 
 
 Holy! Holy! Holy! let me be deemed mad by all men, if 
 such be thy ordinance : but, ! from such Madness save and 
 preserve me, my God ! 
 
 When, however, after a short interval, the Genius of Kep- 
 ler, expanded and organized in the soul of Newton, and there 
 (if I may hazard so bold an expression) refining itself into an 
 almost celestial Clearness, had expelled the Cartesian Vorti- 
 ces; [90] then the necessity of an active power, of positive 
 forces present in the Material Universe, forced itself on the 
 conviction. For as a Law without a Law-giver is a mere ab- 
 straction ; so a Laio without an Agent to realize it, a Con- 
 stitution without an abiding Executive, is, in fact, not a Law 
 but an Idea ! In the profound Emblem of the Great Tragic 
 Poet, it is the powerless Prometheus fixed on a barren Rock. 
 And what was the result ? How was this necessity provided 
 for? God himself — my hand trembles as I write ! Rather, then, 
 let me employ the word, which the religious Feeling in its 
 perplexity, suggested as the substitute — the Deity itself was 
 declared to be the real Agent, the actual Gravitating Power! 
 The Law and the Law-giver were indentified. God (says 
 Dr. Priestly ) not only does, but is every thing. Jupiter est 
 quodcunque vides. And thus a system, which commenced by 
 excluding all life and immanent activity from the visible Uni- 
 verse and evacuating the natural World of all Nature, ended 
 by substituting the Deity, and reducing the Creator to a mere 
 
244 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Anima Mundi : a scheme that has no advantage over Spino- 
 sism but its inconsistency, which does indeed make it suit a 
 certain Order of Intellects, who, like the Pleuronectse (or Flat 
 Fish) in Ichthyology that have both eyes on the same side, 
 never see but half of a subject at one time, and forgetting the 
 one before they get to the other are sure not to detect any 
 inconsistency between them. 
 
 And what has been the consequence ? An increasing un- 
 willingness to contemplate the Supreme Being in his personal 
 Attributes : and thence a Distaste to all the peculiar Doctrines 
 of the Christian Faith, the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son 
 of God, and Redemption. The young and ardent, ever too 
 apt to mistake the inward triumph in the detection of error 
 for a positive love of truth, are among the first and most fre- 
 quent victims to this epidemic fastidium. Alas ! even the 
 sincerest seekers after light are not safe from the contagion. 
 Some have I known, constitutionally religious — I speak feel- 
 ingly'; for I speak of that which for a brief period was my 
 own state — who under this unhealthful influence have been so 
 estranged from the Heavenly Father^ the Lwing God, as even 
 to shrink from the personal pronouns as applied to the Deity. 
 But many do I know, and yearly meet with, in whom a false 
 and sickly Taste co-operates with the prevailing fashion : ma- 
 ny, who find the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, far too 
 real^ too substantial ; w^ho feel it more in harmony with their 
 indefinite sensations 
 
 " To woi-sliip Nature in the hill and valley, 
 Not knowing what they love : — " 
 
 and (to use the language, but not the sense or purpose, of the 
 great Poet of our Age ) would fain substitute for the Jehovah 
 of their Bible 
 
 " A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfiised, 
 Whose dwelling is the Light of setting suns, 
 And the round Ocean and the living Air ; 
 A Motion and a Spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all ohjecta of all thought. 
 
 And rolls through all things ! " 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
CONCLUSION. 245 
 
 And this from having been educated to understand the Divine 
 Omnipresence in any sense rather than the alone sale and le- 
 gitimate one, the presence of all things to God ! 
 
 Be it, however, that the number of such men is compara- 
 tively small! And be it (as in fact it often is) but a brief 
 stage, a transitional state, in the process of intellectual Growth ! 
 Yet among a numerous and increasing class of the higher and 
 middle Ranks, there is an inward withdrawing from the Life 
 and Personal Being of God, a turning of the Thoughts exclu- 
 sively to the so called physical Attributes, to the Omnipres- 
 ence in the counterfeit form of Ubiquity, to the Immensity the 
 Infinity, the Immutability ! — the attributes of Space with a no- 
 tion of Power as their Substratum ! — a Fate, in short, not a 
 Moral Creator and Governor ! Let intelligence be imagined, 
 and wherein does the conception of God difl'er essentially from 
 that of Gravitation (conceived as the Cause of Gravity) in the 
 understanding of those, who represent the Deity not only as a 
 necessary but as a necessitated Being ? those, for whom Justice 
 is but a scheme of General Laws ; and Holiness, and the 
 divine Hatred of Sin, yea and Sin itself, are words without 
 meaning or accommodations to a rude and barbarous race ! 
 HenCe, I more than fear, the prevailing taste for Books of 
 Natural Theology. Physico-theology, Demonstrations of God 
 from Nature, Evidences of Christianity, &;c. &c. Evidences of 
 Christianity ! I am weary of the Word. Make a man feel the 
 want of it ; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of 
 his need of it ; and you may safely trust it to its own Evi- 
 dence, — remembering only the express declaration of Christ 
 himself: No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth 
 him! Whatever more is desirable — I speak now with refer- 
 ence to Christians generally, and not to profest Students of 
 Theology — may, in my judgment, be far more safely and profit- 
 ably taught, without controversy or the supposition of infidel 
 antagonists, in the form of Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 The last fruit of the Mechanico-corpuscular Philosophy, say 
 rather of the mode and direction of feeling and thinking pro- 
 duced by it on the educated class of society ; or that result. 
 
246 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 which as more immediately connected with my present theme 
 I have reserved for the last — is the Iiabit of attaching all our 
 conceptions and feelings, and of applying all the words and 
 phrases expressing reality, to the objects of the Senses ; more 
 accurately speaking, to the images and sensations by which 
 their presence is made known to us. Now I do not hesitate 
 to assert, that it was one of the great purposes of Christianity, 
 and included in the process of our Redemption, to rouse and 
 emancipate the Soul from this debasing Slavery to the out- 
 ward Senses, to awaken the mind to the true Criteria of Re- 
 ality, viz. Permanence, Power, Will manifested in Act, and 
 Truth operating as Life. " My words," said Christ, " are 
 Spirit ; and they {i. e. the spiritual powers expressed by them) 
 are Truth ;" — i, e. very Being. For this end our Lord, who 
 came from Heaven to " take Captivity captive," chose the 
 words and names that designate the familiar yet most impor- 
 tant Objects of Sense, the nearest and most concerning Things 
 and Incidents of corporeal nature : — Water, Flesh, Blood, 
 Birth, Bread I But he used them in senses, that could not 
 without absurdity be supposed to respect the mere phcpnomena, 
 Water, Flesh, &c., in senses that by no possibility could apply 
 to the color, figure, specific mode of Touch or Taste produced 
 on ourselves, and by which we are made aware of the pres- 
 ence of Things, and understand them — Res, quas sub appari- 
 tionibus istis staiuenda sunt. And this awful Recalling of the 
 drowsed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensuali- 
 ty to actual Reality, — how has it been evaded ! These words, 
 that were Spirit ! these Mysteries, which even the Apostles 
 must wait for the Paraclete, {i. e. the Helper, the Strength- 
 ener) in order to comprehend! these spiritual things which 
 can only be spiritually discerned, — were mere Metaphors, 
 Figures of Speech, Oriental Hyperboles. '' All this means 
 only Morality !" Ah ! how far nearer to the truth would 
 tliese men have been, had they said that Morality means all 
 this! 
 
 The effect, however, has been most injurious to the best 
 interests of our Universities, to our incomparably constituted 
 
CONCLUSION. 247 
 
 Church, and even to our National Character. The few who 
 have read my two Lay- Sermons are no strangers to my opin- 
 ions on this head; and in my Treatise on the Church and 
 Churches, I shall, if Providence vouchsafe, submit them to 
 the Public, with their grounds and historic evidences in a 
 more systematic form. 
 
 I have, I am aware, in this present work furnished occasion 
 for a charge of having expressed myself with slight and irrev- 
 erence of celebrated Names, especially of the late Dr. Paley. 
 O, if I were fond and ambitious of literary Honor, of public 
 Applause, how well content should I be to excite but one 
 third of the admiration which, in my inmost Being, I feel for 
 the head and heart of Paley ! And how gladly would I sur- 
 render all hope of contemporary praise, could I even approach 
 to the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility 
 of his writings ! But on this very account I believed myself 
 bound in conscience to throw the whole force of my intellect 
 in the way of this triumphal Car, on which the tutelary Gen- 
 ius of modern Idolatry is borne, even at the risk of being 
 crushed under the wheels ! I have at this moment before my 
 eyes the 343d — 344th pages of his Posthumous Discourses : 
 the amount of which is briefly this, — that all the words and 
 passages in the New Testament which express and contain 
 the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, the paramount objects 
 of the Christian Revelation, " all those which speak so strong- 
 ly of the value, benefit and efficacy, of the Death of Christ," 
 assuredly mean something; but ivhat they mean, nobody, 
 it seems, can tell! But doubtless we shall discover it, and 
 be convinced that there is a substantial sense belonging to 
 these words — in a future state ! Is there an enigma, or an 
 absurdity, in the Koran or the Vedas which might not be de- 
 fended on the same pretence ? A similar impression, I confess, 
 w^as left on my mind by Dr. Magee's statement or exposition 
 (adnormam Grotianam) of the doctrine of Redemption: and 
 deeply did it disappoint the high expectations, sadly did it 
 chill the fervid sympathy, which his introductory chapter, his 
 manly and masterly disquisition on the Sv^erificial rites of Pa- 
 ganism, had raised in my mind. 
 
248 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 And yet I cannot read the pages of Paley, here referred to, 
 aloud, without the liveliest sense : how plausible and popu- 
 lar they will sound to the great majority of Readers ! Thou- 
 sands of sober, and in their way pious. Christians, will echo the 
 words, together with Magee's kindred interpretation of the 
 Death of Christ, and adopt the doctrine for their Make-faith ! 
 And why ? It is feeble. And whatever is feeble is always 
 plausible; for it favours mental indolence. It is feeble: and 
 feebleness in the disguise of confessing and condescending 
 Strength is always popular. It flatters the Reader, by re- 
 moving the apprehended distance between him and the supe- 
 rior Author ; and it flatters him still more by enabling him to 
 transfer to himself, and to appropriate, this superiority : and 
 thus to make his very weakness the mark and evidence of his 
 strength. Ay, quoth the r^ational Christian — or with a sighing, 
 self-soothing sound between an Ay and an Ah ! — / am content 
 to think, with the Great Dr. Paley, and the learned Arch- 
 bishop of Dubhn 
 
 Man of Sense ! Dr. Paley ivas a great Man, and Dr. Magee 
 is a learned and exemplary Prelate ; but You do not think at 
 all! 
 
 With regard to the convictions avowed and enforced in my 
 own work, 1 will continue my address to the Man of Sense in 
 the words of an old Philosopher ; — " Tu vero crasssis auribus 
 et obstinato corde respuis quae forsitan vere perhibeantur. 
 Minus hercule calles, pravissimis opinionibus ea putari men- 
 dacia^ qucB vel auditu nova^ vel visu rudia^ vet eerie supra cap- 
 turn cogitationis extemporanece tuce ardua videantur : quae, si 
 paulo accuratius exploraris, non modo compertu evidentia, sed 
 etiaiii factu facilia, senties," Apul : 1. 1. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
249 
 
 In compliance with the suggestion of a judicious friend, the 
 celebrated conclusion of the fourth Book of Paley's Moral and 
 Political Philosophy, cited in p. 207 of this Volume, is here 
 transprinted for the convenience of the Reader : 
 
 " Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the 
 following — 'The hour is coming, in the which all that are in 
 the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth : they that 
 have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that 
 have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation ;' — he had 
 pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well 
 worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles 
 with which his mission was introduced, and attested : a mes- 
 sage in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an 
 answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is idle 
 to say, that a future state had been discovered already : — 
 it had been discovered as the Copernican System was; — it 
 was one guess among many. He alone discovers, who proves; 
 and no man can prove this point, but the teacher who testifies 
 by miracles that his doctrine comes from God." 
 
 Paedianus says of Virgil, — " Usque adeo expers invidiae, ut 
 siquid erudite dictum inspiceret alterius, non minus gauderet 
 ac si suum esset." My own heart assures me, that this is less 
 than the truth : that Virgil would have read a beautiful pas- 
 sage in the work of another with a higher and purer delight 
 than in a work of his own, because free from the apprehension 
 of his judgment being warped by self-love, and without that 
 repressive modesty akin to shame, which in a delicate mind 
 holds in check a man's own secret thoughts and feelings, when 
 they respect himself. The cordial admiration with which I 
 peruse the preceding passage as a master-piece of Composition 
 would, could I convey it, serve as a measure of the vital im- 
 portance I attach to the convictions which impelled me to ani- 
 madvert on the same passage as doctrine. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 32 
 
NOTES 
 
 X)W 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION 
 
 [l]p.3. 
 
 So Leighton eays : my own experience would rather liave auggested tho 
 contrary remark. 
 
 [For remarks on the peculiar advantages for reflection and inducements 
 to the exercise of it, in the character and circumstances of tlie young, the 
 reader is referred to the Introduction to the third Volume of the Friend. 
 If I mistake not, tliere is many a young man among those, who are about 
 entering upon the theatre of the world, and anxiously contemplating the 
 coming struggle between the generous impulses of his own spirit and the 
 law, which this world imposes upon its votaries, who will understand and 
 re-peruse witli both pleasure and profit the language there used. The 
 Friend, it may be necessary to remark, is a work of Coleridge but httle 
 known in this countiy. Should the present volume gain the attention of 
 the public, we may hope soon to see that and other works of its author re- 
 published among us. Am. Ed.] 
 
 [2] p. 3. 
 
 Distinction between Thought and Attention.. — By thought is here meant 
 the voluntary reproduction in our own minds of those states of conscious- 
 ness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader) of tlios© in- 
 ward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, 
 the teacher of moral or religious truth refers us. In ATTENTiorf, we 
 keep the mind passive : in thought, we rouse it into activity. In the for- 
 mer, we submit to an impression — we keep the mind steady in order to 
 receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate the artist, while we oiu*- 
 sclves make a copy or duplicate of his work. We may learn arithmetic, 
 or the elements of geometry, by continued attention alone ; but self-knowl- 
 edge, or an insight into the laws and constitution of the human mind and 
 
252 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 t -le grounds of religion and true morality, in addition to the effort of atten- 
 tion requires the energy of thought. 
 
 [3] p. 3. 
 
 [To those, who are unaccustomed to the language of the author, it may 
 be of service to remark once for all, that he often aims to attam a greater 
 degree of precision, and to secure the advantage, enjoyed so eminently in 
 the Greek and German languages, of presenting a thought in a form, that 
 is picturable to the imagination, by recalling compound and derivative 
 words to their original and etymological import. He has himself remarked 
 upon the benefit resulting from it in the next note, and illustrated it par- 
 ticularly in several words in different parts of the work ; but the careful 
 reader will often discover this peculiarity in his use of words, where no 
 notice of it is given. The peculiarity indeed is not so much in his giving 
 them a new sense, as in limiting and defining with more precision the 
 meaning, w^hich they have, and using in a precise and exclusive sense 
 terms, which custom had rendered vague and unfit for tlie pui-poses of an 
 accurate and discriminating mind. 
 
 These remarks refer here particularly to the words enlivening an d infonn- 
 ing, especially tlie latter, in the sentence, to which this note is attached. 
 It will give the reader at least some clue to the author's meaning and to his 
 sentiments on tliese subjects, if by the enlivening Breath he understands 
 the life-giving Breath or Spirit, and by the informing word the inward 
 power or principle, which in all organized bodies modifies the living agen- 
 cy, appoints the measure of its working, and determines the specific /on/i 
 of its developement in each several kind. This specific principle of or- 
 ganization, which, as an antecedent law preexisting in the seed of eveiy 
 l)lant and so in the germs of all organized bodies, awaits the actuating pow- 
 er of life, predetermining the several shapes or forms, in which it is to bo 
 imfolded, and by which alone it is manifestable to the senses, I understand 
 the author to mean by the WORD ; and both the actuating, quickening 
 spirit, and the informing word belong to all organized bodies in common. 
 It may perhaps render the charge of novelty and absurdity m regard to the 
 author's language here and elsewhere less confident to remark m passing 
 that the living and specific agencies here spoken of are the inherent yb?7ns 
 of the Peripatetics, tlie ideas of Plato and Ld. Bacon, (divinae mentis ideas. 
 Nov. Or. 23 and 51), and that it is consonant with the language of the Old 
 Testament to represent not only the thoughts, the ideas, but the Breath 
 and the Word of the Divine Being as hving, formative, creative. Thus 
 too, in reference to tlie higher powers of vSj)iritual life in Christians, our 
 Saviour says the ivords that I si)eak unto you, they are sjrint, and they are 
 Ufe, i. e. have iji them a livmg and life-giving energy. — Coincident with 
 this view of life, as being not the mere resulting product of independent 
 mechanical, chemical, or electrical ageucJcR, acting in harmony, but a dia- 
 
NOTES. 253 
 
 tinct, specific power, possessing itg own inherent principle of unity in eacli 
 organized body, and essentially independent of the organizations, which it 
 bodies forth, and from the phsenoniena, i. e. the sensible appearances from 
 which its existence is inferred, Coleridge interprets the vis plastica, or vis 
 vitae fomiatiTX of the elder physiologists, the Bildungstrieb, or nisus fbr- 
 mativus of Blumenbach, and the life, or living principle of John Hunter. 
 " For in what other sense," he remarks in a note to the Friend, vol. 3. 
 p. 214, " can tve understand either his assertion, that this principle or agent 
 is 'independent of organization,' which yet it animates, sustains and re- 
 pairs, or the purport of that magnificent commentary on his system, the 
 Hunterian Musaeum in Lincohi's Inn Fields. The Hunterian idea of a 
 life or vital principle 'independent of the organization,' yet in each organ 
 working instinctively towards its preservation, as the ants or termites in re- 
 pairing the nests of then' own fabrication, demonstrates, tliat John Hunter 
 did not, as Stahl and othei-s had done, individualize, or make an hyposta- 
 sis of the principles of fife, as a somewhat manifestable per se and conse- 
 quently itself a phaenomenon ; the latency of which was to be attributed to 
 accidental, or at least contingent causes, ex. gr. the hmits or unperfection 
 of our senses, or the inaptness of the media ; but that herein he philoso- 
 phized in the spirit of the purest Newtonians, who in like manner refused 
 to hypostatise the law of gravitation into an ether, which even if its exis- 
 tence were conceded, would need another gi'avitation for itself. " The 
 Hunterian position is a genuine philosophic IDEA." 
 
 It would i)erhaps have been out of place here to occupy even so much 
 space hi explaining the author's views of the philosophy of life, but that 
 the same mode of philosophizing is applied by him to those higher pow- 
 ers and principles of our intellectual, moral and spiritual being, by which we 
 are made to differ in kind from the inferior forms of vegetable and animal 
 organization. If the reader clearly apprehends the laiv of life, as a living 
 power or agency, antecedent to and independent of the visiljle and tan- 
 gible forms, which it constructs, he will have little difficulty in understand- 
 ing what is said of the transfusion of a higher gift and specially inljreath- 
 ed, of a soul, having its hfe in itself, and mdependeut for its subsistence 
 of the mferior powers, with which it co-exists. He will be prepared to 
 apprehend at least the meaning of the doctrine, that distinct specific forms 
 or laws of being are superadded to that life, which is common to all, each 
 havuig its own developement, and by their living agency constituting our 
 intellectual, moral and spiritual hfe. But the work itself will develope the 
 author's views on this subject more fully ; and for some parts of it more 
 particularly important in this connexioji the reader is referred to the 29th 
 note and the references there made. The 50th note, and the 6th and 7th 
 Essays of the Friend, vol. 3, will also aid in the more full understandmg 
 of the whole subject of this note-.— Am. Ejj.] 
 
254 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 [4] p. 4. 
 
 Quod stcU ^iibtus, that which stands beneath, and (as it were) supports, the 
 appearance. In a language like ours, where so many words are derived 
 from other languages, there are few modes of instruction more useful or 
 more amusing than that of accustoming young people to seek for the ety- 
 mology, or primary meaning, of the words they use. There are cases, 
 in which more knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history 
 of a word, than by the history of a campaign. 
 
 [5] p. 5. 
 
 I am not ashamed to confess that I dislike the frequent use of the word 
 virtue instead of righteousness, in the pulpit : and that in prayer or preach- 
 ing before a Christian community, it sounds too much like Pagan Phi- 
 losophy. The passage in St. Peter's epistle, is the only scripture authority 
 that can be pretended for its use, and I think it right, therefore, to notice, 
 tliat it rests either on an oversight of the translators, or on a change in the 
 meaning of the word shice their time. 
 
 [6] p. 5. 
 
 The effects of a zealous ministry on the intellects and acquirements of 
 the labop.ring classes are not only attested by Baxter, and the Presbyterian 
 divines, but admitted by Bishop Burnet, who, during his mission in the 
 West of Scotland, was "amazed to find a poor connnonalty so able to ar- 
 gue," &c. But wc need not go to a sister Church for proof or example. 
 The diffusion of light and knowledge through this kingdom, by the exer- 
 tions of the bishops and clergy, by Episcopalians and Puritans, from Ed- 
 ward VI. to the restoration, was as wonderful as it is praiseworthy, and 
 may be justly placed among the most remarkable facts of history. 
 
 [The following extract from the Authors second Lay Sermon, p. 88 — 91, 
 may suggest some useful reflections respecting the difference between the 
 rehgious character of the age here refeiTed to, and that of our own. — Am. 
 Ed.] 
 
 "As my first presumptive proof of a difference (I might almost have 
 said, of a contrast) between the religious character of the period since the 
 Revolution, and that of the period from the accession of Edward tlie Sixth 
 to the abdication of the second James, I refer to the Sermons and to the 
 tlieological Works generall)^, of the latter period. It is my full conviction, 
 that in any half dozen Sermons of Dr. Donne, or Jeremy Taylor, there 
 are more thoughts, more facts and images, more excitements to inquiry 
 and intellectual effort, than are presented to the congirgations of the pre- 
 sent day in as many churches or meetings during twice as many months. 
 Yet both these were the most popular preachers of their times, were heard 
 with enthusiasm by crowded and promiscuous Audiences, and the effect 
 
NOTES. 255 
 
 produced by their eloquence was held in reverential and affectionate re- 
 membrance by many attendants on their mmistry, who, like the pious Isaac 
 Walton, were not themselves men of learning or education. In addition 
 to this fact, thmk hkewise on the large and numerous editions of massy, 
 closely printed folios : the impressions so large and the editions so numer- 
 ous, that all the industry of destruction for the la.st hundred years has but 
 of late sufficed to make them rare. From the long hst select those works 
 alone, which we know to have been the most current and favorite works 
 of their day : and of these again no more than may well be supposed to 
 have had a place in the scantiest libraries, or perhaps with the Bible and 
 Common Prayer Book to have formed the library of their owner. Yet on 
 the single shelf so filled we should find almost every possible question, 
 that could interest or instruct a reader whose whole heart was in his reli- 
 gion, discussed with a command of intellect tliat seems to exhaust all the 
 learning and logic, all the historical and moral relations, of each several 
 subject. The very length of the discourses, with which these "rich souls 
 of wit and knowledge" fixed the eyes, ears, and hearts of tlieir crowded 
 congregations, are a source of wonder now-a-days, and (we may add) of 
 self-congratulation, to many a sober Christian, who forgets with what de- 
 light he himself has listened to a two hour's harangue on a Loan or Tax, 
 or at the tiial of some remarkable cause or culprit. The transfer of the 
 interest makes and explains the whole difference. For though much may 
 be fairly charged on the revolution in the mode of preacliing as well glh 
 in the matter, since the fi*esh morning and fervent noon of the Reforma- 
 tion, when there was no need to visit tiio conventicles of fanaticism in or- 
 der to 
 
 See God's ambassador in the pulpit stand, 
 
 Where they could take notes fi*om liis Look and Hand ; 
 
 And from his speaking action bear away 
 
 More sermon than our preachers used to say ; 
 
 yet this too must be refeiTcd to the same change in the habits of men's 
 minds, a change that involves both the shepherd and the flock : tliough 
 like many other Effects, it tends to reproduce and strengthen its own 
 cause." 
 
 [7] p. 7. 
 
 The following sonnet was extracted by me from Herbert's Temple, in a 
 work long since out of print, for the purity of the language and the fulness 
 of the sense. But I shall be excused, I trust, in repeating it here for higlier 
 merits and with higher purposes, as a forcible comment on the words in 
 the text. 
 
256 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Graces voucJisa/ed in a Christian Land. 
 
 Lord ! with what care liast thou begirt us round ! 
 
 Parents fii'st season us. Then schoohnastera 
 
 Dehver us to laws. They send us bound 
 
 To rules of reason. Holy messengers ; 
 
 Pulpits and Sundays ; sorrow dogging sin ; 
 
 Afflictions sorted ; anguish of all sizes ; 
 
 Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in ! 
 
 Bibles laid open ; millions of sin-prises ; 
 
 Blessings beforehand ; ties of gi-atefuhiess ; 
 
 The sound of glory ringing in our ears : 
 
 Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ; ^ 
 
 Angels and grace ; eternal hopes and fears ! 
 
 Yet all these fences, and their whole array, 
 
 One cunning bosom sin blows quite away. 
 
 [8] p. 9. 
 
 See the epistle of St. James, c. i. v. 26, 27. where, in the authorized 
 version, the Greek word ■9i>t;gy.(ia is falsely rendered religion: whetlier 
 by mistake of the translator, or from the intended sense having become 
 obsolete, I cannot decide. At all events, for the English reader of our 
 times it has the effect of an eiToneous translation. It not only obscures 
 the connexion of the passage, and weakens the pecuHar force and sublimi- 
 ty of the thought, rendering it comparatively flat and trivial, almost indeed 
 tautological, but has occasioned this particular verse to be pei-verted into 
 a support of a veiy dangerous error ; and the whole epistle to be consid- 
 ered as a set-off against the epistles and declarations of St. Paul, instead 
 of (what in fact it is ), a masterly comment and confirmation of the same. 
 I need not infonn the religious reader, that James, c. i. v. 27. is the favour- 
 ite text and most boasted authority of those divines who represent the Re- 
 deemer of the world as little more than a moral reformer, and the Chris- 
 tian faith as a code of ethics, differing from the moral sj'stem of Moses and 
 the prophets by an additional motive ; or rather, by the additional strength 
 and clearness which the historical fact of tiie resurrection has given to the 
 same motive. 
 
 [9] p. 10. 
 
 The Greek word fyinTo, unites in itself the two senses of hegan to exist 
 and tvas made to exist. It exemplifies the force of the middle voice, in dis- 
 tinction from the verb reflex. In answer to a note on John i. 2. in the uni- 
 tarian vei-sion of the New Testament, I think it worth noticing, that the 
 same word is used in the ^'ory same sense by Aristophanes in that famous 
 parody on the cosmojjonies of the Mythic poets, or the creation of the 
 
NOTES. 257 
 
 finite, as delivered, or supposed to be delivered, in the Cabiric or Sanio- 
 thracian mysteries, in the Comedy of the Birds. 
 
 »y«»«T' OvQcivos Sixsatog re 
 
 KaiF}]. 
 
 [10] p. 10. 
 
 James C. i. v. i Ss naoaxvipag ngvouovri?.itov rov rt;; tXtv^iQictc. The Greek 
 word, parakupsas, signifies the incurvation or bending of the body in the 
 act of looking doum into ; as, for instance, in the endeavor to see the re- 
 flected image of a star in the water at the bottom of a well. A 
 more happy or forcible word could not have been chosen to express the 
 nature and ultimate object of reflection, and to enforce the necessity of it, 
 in order to discover the living fountain and spring-head of the evidence of 
 the Christian faith in the believer himself, and at the same time to pomt 
 out the seat and region, where alone it is to be found. Quantum sutmiSj 
 scimus. That which we find within ourselves, which is more than oiu*- 
 selves, and yet the ground of whatever is good and permanent therein, is 
 the substance and life of all other knowledge. 
 
 N. B. The Familists of the sixteenth centuiy, and similar enthusiasts 
 of later date, overlooked the essential point, that it was a law^ and a law 
 that mvolved its own end (rs^.oc), a perfect law {Tt?.atog) or law that pei-fects 
 or completes itself; and therefore, its obhgations are called, in reference to 
 human statutes, imperfect duties, i. e. incoercible from without. They 
 Overlooked that it was a law that portions oid [Nouog from riuw to allot, or 
 make division of) to each man the sphere and Umits, within which it is to 
 be exercised — which as St. Peter notices of certain profound passsages in 
 
 the VratingS of St Paul, (2 Pet. C. iii. v. 16.) bt auaditg xai agr.nty.roi. gQt^XdOiv, 
 ug '/.at Tag ?.oi:iag yoatpag, riQog rtjv idiav uvtvdv a7Co)?.nur. 
 
 [11] p. 11. 
 
 In accordance with a preceding remark, on the use of etymology in dis- 
 ciphningthe youthfiil mind to thoughtful habits, and as consistent with the 
 title of this work, 'Aids to Reflection,' I shall offer no apology for the fol- 
 lowing and similar notes : 
 
 Aphorism, determinate position, from the Greek apo, from ; and horizeui, 
 to bound, or Mmit ; whence our horizon. — In order to get the full sense of 
 a word, we should first present to our minds the visual image that forms 
 its primary meaning. Draw lines of different colours round the different 
 counties of England, and then cut out each separately, as in the common 
 play-maps that children take to pieces mid put together — so that each dis- 
 trict can be contemplated apart from the rest, as a whole in itself. This 
 twofold act of circumscribing, and detaching, when it is exerted by the 
 
 33 
 
258 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 niind on eubjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorize, and the reeult an 
 aphorisvu 
 
 [12] p. 11. 
 
 To iTojjToy StpQtjxaoir et( noXXuiv ©fc.-r Idiorr,rag. — Damasc. de Myst. Egypt, t. 
 
 e. They divided the intelligible into many and several individualities. 
 
 [13] p. 11. 
 
 From ^Liqeatc^ a wilful raising into public notice, an uplifting (for display) 
 of any particular opinion differing from the established beUef of the church 
 at large, and making it a gTound of schism, i. e. division, from schizein, to 
 cut off— whence our " scissars" is supposed to have been derived. 
 
 [14] p. 11. 
 
 I mean these words in their large and philosophic sense in relation to 
 ' the spirit, or originating temper and tendency, and not to any one mode un- 
 der which, or to any one class, in or by which, it may be displayed. A sedi- 
 tious spirit may, (it is possible, though not probable) exist in the council- 
 chamber of a palace as strongly as in a mob in Palace- Yard ; and a sec- 
 tarian spirit in a cathedral, no less than in a conventicle. 
 
 [15] p. 11. 
 
 Whereas Christ's other disciples had a breeding under him, St. Paul was 
 born an apostle ; not carved out, as the rest, by degi-ees and m course of 
 time, but a fiisile apostle, an apostle poured out and cast in a mould. As 
 Adam was a perfect man in an instant, so was St. Paul a perfect Christian. 
 The same spirit was the hghtning that melted, and the mould that received 
 and shaped liim.: — Bonne's Sermons — quoted from memory. 
 
 [16] p. 12. 
 
 From the Latin, converlere — z. e. by an act of the will to turn towards 
 the true pole, at the same time (for this is the force of the prepositive con) 
 that the underetanding is convinced and made aware of its existence and 
 direction*. 
 
 [17] p. 12. 
 
 The following extract from Leighton's Theological Lectures, sect. II. 
 cannot be introduced more to the purpose than as a comment on this sen- 
 tence : 
 
 'The human mind„ however stunned and weakened by the faU, still re- 
 tains some feint idea of the good it has lost ; a kind of languid sense of its 
 misery and indigence, with affections suitable to these obscure notions* 
 
NOTES 259 
 
 Ttiis at least is beyond all doubt and indisputable, that all men wish well 
 to themselves ; nor can the mind divest itself of this propensity, without 
 divesting itself of its being. This is what tlie schoolmen mean when in 
 their manner of expression they say, that 'the will [mem. voluntas, not ar- 
 bitrium) is caiiied towai'ds happuiess not simply as wUlj but as natureJ* ' 
 
 I venture to remark that this positioji, if not more certainly would be 
 more evidently true, if instead of beatitudo, the word indolentia,{ t, e. free- 
 dom from pain, negative happiness) had been used. But this depends on 
 the exact meaning attached to the term self, of which more in another 
 place. One conclusion, however, follows inevitably from the preceding 
 position, viz. tliat this propensity can never be legitimately made the prin- 
 ciple of morahty, even because it is no part or appurtenance of the moral 
 will ; and because the proper object of the moral principle is to limit and 
 control this propensity, and to determme in what it may be, and in what 
 it ought to be, gratified ; while it is the business of philosophy to instruct 
 the understanding, and the office of religion to convince the whole man, 
 that otherwise than as a regidated, and of course therefore a svbordinale^ 
 end, this propensity, innate and inalienable though it be, can never be ro- 
 aUzed or fllhllled. T»;» ^^o.-iouav .-loi^yvTu aaaa^nui. f/ Otoctnuirig, 
 
 [18] p. 14. 
 
 Logos in Greek signifies an intelligible icord as distinguished from p»;.««ff, 
 a flowing or articulate sound; and it likewise signifies the understanding, in 
 distinction from n«? (the pure reason ) in one direction, and from aia^t-aii 
 (the sense) in the other. 
 
 [19] p. 15. 
 
 It is worthy of observation, and may ftimish a fruitful subject for future 
 reflection, how nearly tliis scriptural division coincides with the Platonic, 
 which, commencing with the pnidentiai, or the habit of act and purpose 
 proceeding from enlightened self-interest, [qui animi imperio, coi-poris 
 eervitio, rerum auxilio, in proprimn sui commodum et sibi providus utitur, 
 hunc esse prudentem statuimiis], ascends to the moral, i. e. to the purifying 
 and remedied virtues ; and seeks its summit in the imitation of the Divine 
 nature. In this last division, answering to that which we have called the 
 Spiritual, Plato includes all those inward acts and aspirations, waitings, and 
 watchings, which have a growth in godlikeness for their immediate pur- 
 pose, and the union of the human soul with the Supreme Good as their 
 ultimate object. Nor was it altogether without gi'ounds that several of 
 the Fathers ventured to believe that Plato had some dim conception of 
 the necessity of a Divine JVIediator, whether through some indistinct echo 
 of the patriarchal faith, or some rajTs of light refracted from the He- 
 brew prophets through a Phoenician medium (to which he may possi- 
 
260 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 bly have referred in his phrase, ^sorraQaSorog aoipia, the wisdom delivered 
 from God,) or by his own sense of the mysterious contradiction in hmnan 
 nature between the will and the reason, the natural appetences and the no 
 less innate law of conscience {Romans 11. 14. 15.) we shall m vain attempt 
 to determine. It is not impossible that all three may have co-operated in 
 I)aitially unveiling these awful truths to tliis plank from the wreck of par- 
 adise thrown on the shores of idolatrous Greece, to this Divine Philoso- 
 pher, 
 
 Che ui quella schiera ando piu presso al segno 
 Al qual aggiunge, a chi dal cielo e dato. 
 
 Petrarch, Del Triunfo ddla Fama, Cap. III. I. 5, 6. 
 
 {20] p. 18. 
 
 Apud Ciceronem et Platonem, ahosque ejusmodi scriptores, multa sunt 
 acute dicta, et leniter calentia, sed in iis omnibus hoc non invenio, Venite 
 ad me, &c. [Matt. vii. 28.] 
 
 [21] p. 19. 
 
 <J>£i^ Tt T«Twv xaQfici fttitov av Xa^oic, 
 
 [22] p. 21. 
 
 (The reference to this note was accidentally omitted at the end of Aph- 
 orism 6th.) 
 
 [A few remarks have been made in the Introduction and in the 3d note 
 respecting the peculiai'ities of Coleridge's language ; but so much has been 
 said by many, with whom I have had occasion to converse, respecting his 
 faults in this particular, that I would gladly induce the readers of tliis work 
 to give a more special attention to his own views of propriety in tlie use of 
 language, as exliibited in the Aphorisms, with which this note is connected, 
 and in other passages referred to below.— My own opuiion is, that no wii- 
 ter in the language, with whose works I have been acquainted, uses words 
 with more ; precision, or adheres more strictly to the fixed and pemianent 
 laws of language. No one writes with a more habitual and present appre- 
 Iiension of the precise import of eveiy term, which he employs, or more 
 seldom gives his own intellect or that of his reader the indulgence of 
 vague and general expressions. The faults of his language, if faults they 
 be, are such as might be expected fi'om one, — who has been accustomed to 
 think with unsparing effort, to mark with keen and philosophical discrimi- 
 nation the differences of things, — who is at the same time familiar with the 
 powers of other and better languages, and with the distinctions of thought, 
 which they express, and who, knowing the full powers of his own, is de- 
 termhied to exhaust them in recording the results of his analysis, and giv- 
 
NOTES. 261 
 
 ing expression to the subtlest fonns of thought. — In most cases, where 
 liis use of language may at first seem wholly unauthorized, it will be 
 found, that he has derived it from those profound thinkers and unrival- 
 led masters of language, the great English Philosophers and Divines of 
 the 17th Century. Now, I ask, is he not right in recurring to them and 
 recalling their language, if what he believes be true, that aside from the 
 nomenclature of the sciences, the interests of the language at large fall 
 under the special guardianship of logic and rational psychology, and that 
 from the revolution downward these have been faUing into neglect or dis- 
 repute ; that the so called common language of the day, including even that 
 of our popular metaphysics, is but the language of the market, too vague 
 and ambiguous to satisfy a mind, that would think and reason in precise 
 and steadfast terms. If this be true, and if, as he also beheves, the great 
 and leading principles of philosophy adopted in that age, and as it were 
 incorporated in the language of its distinguished ^mters, were far more 
 rational and spiritual than those, which now prevail, I see not how he 
 could adopt a less offensive or a simpler method for recallmg their philoso- 
 phy, than to recall and explain their language. The only way to under- 
 stand their philosophy or his, is by understanding the tenns, m which it ia 
 taught, and till we do both, we are not competent to judge between his 
 views and those, which are now so popular among us. If his philosoph- 
 ical or theological views be fomid false or absurd, let them be rejected, or 
 if the metaphysical distinctions, on which he insists, can be sho^vn to be 
 idle and fiiiitless, let them be treated as they deserve ; but no one can pro- 
 nomice judgment upon them without at least a serious effort to understand 
 them. His ^vritings, moreover, are now acquiring too much authority and 
 influence among men of sound and sober thinldng to be treated with neg- 
 lect, and wherever his philosophical views are adopted, his use of language 
 will be foimd rational and skilfully adapted to the circumstances of the 
 case. But I have introduced these remarks not with a view to discuss the 
 subject myself so much as to engage the special and candid attention of 
 the reader to the author's own remarks, which will be found in different 
 parts of the work, but especially in the second letter of a selection fi-om 
 his Literary CoiTcspondence republished at the end of the Volume. — Am. 
 Ed.] 
 
 [23] p. 25. 
 
 [The relation of prudence to morahty, and the essential difference in 
 kind between the laws of duty, existing a priori in the reason and con- 
 science, and the maxhns of interest, formed by the understanding from the 
 results of experience, are exliibited more at large in the Aphorisms, wliich 
 immediately follow, and the Reflections concerning morality in the next 
 section of the work. It may not be improper, however, here to forewarn 
 the reader, that m order to a clear apprehension of the author's views of 
 
 4^ 
 
 ■jlV 
 
 ^ 
 
262 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 this subject iii all tlieir important bearmgs, and also of the relation of mo- 
 rality to religious principle and faith, he must first have some knowledge of 
 his metaphysical system and of the meanings, with which he has connect- 
 ed the words reason, understanding, free-will, conscience, and other leading 
 terms. It will be found, that he employs these in a precise, exclusive, and 
 steadfast sense, not only m this, but in all his works, and I may add, that 
 when these are understood, and their meaning kept distinctly before the 
 mind in reading his writings, the chief causes of obscurity will be remo- 
 ved. But it would be anticipating too much, and indeed would not be 
 possible in the compass of a note, to explain terms, which may be said to 
 include his whole system. I have spoken of them here with a view to di- 
 rect the careful attention of the reader to the manner in which they are 
 used throughout the work, and to the explanation given by the author both 
 in the text and in the extracts from his other works, which will be added 
 for the same purpose of illustration. When these are understood, the rea- 
 der will see their application to the whole subject of the phOosophy of 
 morals, — the relation of moral rectitude to the understanding, the reason, 
 the conscience, and the free-will, — and the nature of the difference between 
 the principles of moral obligation taught here, and those generally recei- 
 ved among us, whether from Paley or Brown. In the mean time the fol- 
 lowing remarks upon the system of Dr. Paley, and the discussion of 
 his doctrine of general consequences will less require an acquaintance with 
 the author's general system, to render them intelhgible, and from the great 
 importance of the subject, and the value of the extracts, I hope will not 
 be thought out of place in this work. The first extract is from Coleridge's 
 second Lay Sermon, p, 69 — 7], note. 
 
 "In the magnitude and awfuhiess of its objects alone, the late Dr. Paley, 
 by a use of terms altogether arbitrary, places, the distinction between Pru- 
 dence and ^iitue, the former being self-love in its application to the sum of 
 pain and pleasure that is hJcely to result to us, as the consequence of our 
 actions, in the present hfe only ; while the latter is the same self-love, that 
 together with the present consequences of our actions, takes in likewise 
 the more important enjoyments or sufferings which, according as we obey 
 or disobey His known commands, God has promised to bestow, or tlu'eat- 
 ened to inflict, on us in the hfe to come. According to this writer, it be- 
 comes the duty of a rational free agent (it would be more pertinent to say, 
 of a sentient animal capable of Forecast) to reduce his Will to an habitual 
 coincidence with his Reason, on no other ground, but because he believes 
 that God is able and determmed either to gratify or to torment him. Thus, 
 the great principle of the Gospel, that we are bound to love our neighboi-s 
 as oui-selves and God above all, must, if translated into a consistency with 
 this theory of enlightened Self-love, run thus : On the ground of our fear 
 of torment and our expectation of pleasure from an iufinitely poweiful 
 Being, we are under a prudential obligation of acting towards our neigh- 
 
 Ik 
 
NOTES. 2G3 
 
 boura aa if we loved them equally ^ith ourselves ; but ultimately and in 
 very truth to love oui*selves only. And this is the Work, this the System 
 of moral and political Philosophy cited as highest authority in our Senate 
 and Courts of Judicature ! And (still worse !) this is the Text-Book for the 
 moral Lectures at one of our Universities, justly the most celebrated for 
 scientific ardor and manly thmking. 'Tis not without a pang of fihalsoiTOw 
 that the Writer makes this acknowledgement, which nothing could have 
 extorted from kim but the strongest conviction of the mischievous and de- 
 basing tendencies of that wide-spread system, in which the Works of Dr. 
 Paley (his Sermons excepted) act not the less pernicious part, because the 
 most decorous and plausible. The fallacious sophistry of the grounding 
 principle in this whole system has been detected by Des Cartes, and Bish- 
 op Butler : and of late years, with great abihty and originahty, by Mr. W. 
 Hazlitt." 
 
 [The following comprises nearly all of the llth Essay in the second Vol- 
 ume of the Friend :] 
 
 "The doctrine of General Consequences, as the chief and best crite- 
 rion of the right or \a rong of particular actions, I conceive to be neither 
 tenable in reason nor safe in practice : and the following are the groimda 
 of my opmion. 
 
 Fu-st ; this criterion is purely ideal, and so far possesses no advantages over 
 the former systems of morality : while it labours under defects, with which 
 those are not justly chargeable. It is ideal : for it depends on, and must 
 vary with, the notions of the individual, who in order to determme the na- 
 ture of an action is to make the calculation of its general consequences. 
 Here, as in all other calculation, the result depends on that faculty of the 
 soul in the degrees of which men most vaiy from each other, and which 
 is itself most affected by accidental advantages or disadvantages of educa- 
 tion, natural talent, and acquired knowledge — the faculty, I mean, of fore- 
 sight and systematic comprehension. But surely morality, which is of 
 equal importance to all men, ought to be gi'ounded, if possible, in that part 
 of our nature which in all men may and ought to be the same : in the 
 conscience and the common sense. Secondly : this criterion confounds 
 morality with law ; and when the author adds, that m all probability the 
 divine Justice will be regulated in the final judgment by a similar rule, he 
 draws away the attention fi-om the wUl, that is, from the inward motives 
 and impulses wiiich constitute the essence of morality, to the outward act : 
 and thus changes the viitue commanded by the gospel into the mere le- 
 gahty, which was to beenlivenedby it. One of the most pei-suasive, if not 
 one of the strongest, arguments for a future state, rests on the belief, that 
 although by the necessity of things our outward and temporal welfare must 
 be regulated by our outward actions, which alone can be the objects and 
 guides of human law, there must yet needs come a juster and more ap- 
 propriate sentence hereafter; in which our interdions will be considered, 
 
264 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 and our happiness and miseiy made to accord with the grounds of our 
 actions. Our fellow-creatuves can only judge what we are by what we 
 do ; but in the eye of our Maker what we do is of no worth, except as it 
 flows from what we are. Though the fig-tree should produce no visible 
 fruit, yet if the living sap is in it; and if it has struggled to put forth buda 
 and blossoms, which have been prevented from maturing by ine^^Ltable 
 contingencies of tempests or untimely fi'osts, the virtuous sap will be ac- 
 counted as fruit : and the curse of barrenness will light on many a tree, 
 from the boughs of which hundreds have been satisfied, because the om- 
 niscient judge knows that the fruits were threaded to the boughs artificial- 
 ly by the outward working of base fear and selfish hopes, and were nei- 
 ther nourished by the love of God or of man, nor grew out of the graces 
 engrafl;ed on the stock by religion. This is not, indeed, all that is meant 
 in the apostle's use of the word, faith, as the sole principle of justifica- 
 tion, but it is included in his meaning and forms an essential part of it — 
 and I can conceive nothing more gi'oundless, than the alarm, that this doc- 
 trine may be prejudicial to outward utility and active well-doing. To sup- 
 pose that a man should cease to be henejlcent by becoming benevolent, seems 
 to me scarcely less absurd, than to fear that a fire may prevent heat, or 
 that a perennial fountain may prove the occasion of drought. Just and 
 generous actions may proceed from bad motives, and both may, and often 
 do, originate in parts and as it were fragments of our nature. A lascivious 
 man may sacrifice half his estate to rescue his friend from prison, for he 
 is constitutionally sympathetic, and the better part of his nature happened 
 to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards exert the same disre- 
 gard of money in an attempt to seduce that friend's wife or daughter. But 
 faith is a total act of the soul : it is the icTiole state of the mind, or it is not 
 at all ! and in this consists its power, as well as its exclusive worth. 
 
 This subject is of such immense importance to the Avelfare of all men, 
 and the understanding of it to the present tranquiUity of many thousands 
 at this time and in this country, that should there be one only of all my 
 Readers, who should receive conviction or an additional light fi'om what is 
 here written, I dare hope that a gi'eat majority of the rest would in consid- 
 eration of that solitary effect think these paragraphs neither wholly uninter- 
 esting or altogether without value. For this cause I will endeavour so to 
 explain this principle, that it may be intelligible to the simplest capacity. 
 The apostle tells those who would substitute obedience for faith (addres- 
 sing the man as ol)edience personified) ^^Knoiv that thou bearest not the Root 
 hut the ROOT thee^^ — a sentence which, methinks, should have rendered 
 sdl disputes concerning faith and good works mipossible among those who 
 profess to take the Scriptures for their guide. It would appear incredible, 
 if the fact were not notorious, that two sects should ground and justify 
 their opposition to each other, the one on the words of the apostle, that 
 we are justified by faith, i. e. the inward and absolute ground of our ac- 
 
NOTES. 265 
 
 tions ; and the other on the declaration of Christ, that he will judge us ac- 
 cording to our actions. As if an action could be either good or bad dis- 
 joined from its principle ! as if it could be, in the christian and only prop- 
 er sense of the word, an action at all, and not rather a mechanic series of 
 lucky or unlucky motions ! Yet it may well be worth the while to shew 
 the beauty and hai'mony of these t%vin truths, or rather of this one gi*eat 
 truth considered in its two principal bearings. God will judge each man 
 before all men : consequently he will judge us relatively to man. But 
 man knows not the heart of man ; scarcely does any one know his own. 
 There must therefore be outward and visible signs, by which men may 
 be able to judge of the inward state : and thereby justify the ways of 
 God to their own spirits, in the reward or punishment of themselves and 
 tlieir fellow-men. Now good works are these signs, and as such become 
 necessaiy. In short there are two pailies, God and the human race : and 
 both are to be satisfied ! fii*st, God, who seeth the root and knoweth the 
 heart: therefore there must be taith, or the entire and absolute principle. 
 Then man^ who can judge only by the fi'uits : therefore that faith must 
 bear fruits of rigliteousness, that principle must manifest itself by actions. 
 Bnt that which God sees, that alone justifies ! What man sees, does in 
 this life shew that the justifyuig principle may be the root of the thing 
 seen ; but in the final judgment the acceptance of these actions will shew, 
 that this principle actually ivas the root. In this world a good life is a 
 presump^on of a good man : his ^drtuous actions are the only possible, though 
 still ambiguous, manifestations of his virtue : but the absence of a good 
 life is not only a })resumption, but a proof of the contraiy, as long as it con- 
 tinues. Good works may exist without saving prmciplcs, and therefore 
 cannot contain in themselves the principle of salvation ; but saving prin- 
 ciples never did, never can, exist without good works. On a subject of 
 such infinite importance, I have feared prolixity less than obscurity. Men 
 often talk against faith, and make strange monsters in their imagination of 
 those who profess to abide by the words of the Apostle' interpreted liter- 
 ally : and yet in their ordinary' feelings they themselves judge and act by a 
 similar piinciple. For what is love without kind offices, wherever they 
 are possible ? (and they are always possible, if not by actions commonly so 
 called,- yet by kind words, by khid looks ; and, where even these are out 
 of our power, by kind thoughts and fei-vent prayers !) yet what noble mind 
 would not be ofl'ended, if he were supposed to value the serviceable ofl^ices 
 equally with the love that produced them : or if he were thought to value 
 the love for the sake of the services, and not tlie ser\'ices for the sake of 
 the love ? 
 
 I return to the question of general consequences, cojisidered as the cri- 
 terion of moral actions. The admirer of Paley's System is requu-ed to 
 susi^end for a short time the objection, which, I doubt not, he has already 
 made, that general consequences arc stated by Paley as the criterion of 
 
 34 
 
266 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the action, not of tlie agent I will endeavor to satisfy him on this point, 
 when I have completed iny present chaui of argument It has been 
 shewn, that this criterion is no less ideal than that of any fomier system : 
 that is, it is no less incapable of receiving any external experimental proof, 
 co.mpulsoiy on the understandings of all men, such as the criteria exhibit- 
 ed in chemistry. Yet, unlike the elder Systems of Morality, it remains in 
 the world of the senses, without deriving any evidence therefrom. The 
 agent's mind is compelled to go out of itself in order to bring back conjee- 
 tureSy the probability of which will vary with the shrewdness of the mdi- 
 vidual. But this criterion is not only ideal : it is likewise imaginary. If 
 we believe in a scheme of Providence, all actions alike work for good. 
 There is not the least ground for supposhig that the crimes of Nero were 
 less instrumental in biinging about our present advantages, than the vir- 
 tues of the Antonines. Lastly ; the criterion is eidier nugatory or false. 
 It is demonsti'ated, that the only real consequences cannot be meant. 
 The individual is to imagine, what the general consequences wovld be, all 
 other things remainmg the same, if all men were to act as he is about to 
 act I scarcely need remind the reader, what a source of self delusion 
 and sophistry is here opened to a mind in a state of temptation. Will it 
 not say to itself, I know that all men will not act so : and tlie immediate 
 good consequences, which I shall obtain, are real while the bad conse- 
 quences are imaginary and improbable ? When the foundations of mo- 
 raUty have once been laid in outward consequences, it will be in vain to 
 recall to the mind, what the consequences would be, were all men to rea- 
 son m the same way : for the very excuse of this mind to itself is, that 
 neither its action nor its reasoning is likely to have any consequences at 
 all, its immediate object excepted. But suppose the mind in its sanest 
 state. How cai:i it possibly fonn a notion of the nature of an action con- 
 sidered as indefinitely multiplied, unless it has previously a distinct notion 
 of the nature of the single action itself, which is the multiplicand ? If I 
 conceive a crovra multiplied a hundred fold, the single croAvn enables me 
 to understand what a hundred crowns are ; but how can the notion hun- 
 dred teach me w^hat a cro\vn is ? For the crown substitute X. Y. or abra- 
 cadabra, and my imagination may multiply it to infinity, yet remain as 
 much at a loss as before. But if there be any means of ascertaining the 
 action m and for itself, what further do we want ? Would we give light 
 to the sun, or look at our own fingers through a telescope ? The nature 
 of eveiy action is determined by all its circumstances ; alter the circum- 
 stances and a similar set of motions may be repeated, but they are no 
 longer the same or similar action. What would a surgeon say, if he were 
 advdsed not to cut off a limb, because if all men were to do the same, 
 the consequences would be dreadful? Would not his answer be — 
 " Whoever does the same under the same circimistances, and with the 
 same motives, wdll do right ; but if the circumstances and motives are 
 
NOTES. 267 
 
 different, what have I to do with it ?" I confess myself unable to divine 
 any passible use, or even meaning, in this doctrine of general consequen- 
 ces, unless it be, that in all our actions we ai-o bound to consider the ef- 
 fect of our example, and to guard, as much as possible, against the ha- 
 zard of their l)eing niisundei-stood. I will not slaughter a lamb, or drown 
 a litter of kittens in the presence of my child of four years old, becauae 
 the child cannot tmderstand my action, but will undei-stand tliat his Fa- 
 ther has inflicted pain, and taken aAvay life from beings that had never of- 
 fended him. All tills is true, and no man m liis senses ever thought oth- 
 erwise. But methhiks it is strange to state that as a criterion of morahty, 
 which is no more than an accessaiy aggi-avation of an action bad in its own 
 nature, or a ground of caution as to the mode and time in which we are 
 to do or suspend what is in itself good or iimocent. 
 
 The duty of setting a good example is no doubt a most imjwrtaiit duty ; 
 but the example is good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, according as the 
 action may be, which has a chance of being imitated. I once knew a 
 email, but (in outward circumstances at least) respectable congregation, 
 four-fiflhs of whom professed that tliey went to church entirely for tlie 
 example's sake ; m other words to cheat each other and act a common 
 lie ! These rational Christians had not considered, that example may en- 
 crease the good or evil of an action, but can never constitute either. If it 
 was a foolish thing to kneel when they were not inwardly praying, or to sit 
 and listen to a discourse of which they believed little and cared notliing, 
 tliey were setting a foohsh example. Persons in their respectable circum- 
 stances do not think it necessary to clean shoes, tliat by their example they 
 may encourage the shoe-black in continuing his occupation : and Christi- 
 anity does not tliinic so meanly of herself as to fear that the poor and af- 
 flicted will be a whit the less pious, though they should «ee reason to be- 
 lieve that those, who possessed the good thhigs of the present life, were 
 determined to leave all the blessings of the future for their more humble 
 inferiors. If I have spoken with bitterness, let it be recollected that my 
 subject is hypocrisy. 
 
 It is Ukewise fit, that in all our actions we should have considered how 
 far they are likely to be misunderstood, and from superficial resemblances 
 to be confounded with, and so ajipear to authorize, actions of a very differ- 
 ent character. But if this caution be intended for a moral rule, the misun- 
 derstanding must be such as might be made by persons who are neither 
 very weak nor veiy wicked. The ajiparent resemblances between the 
 good action we were about to do and tlie bad one which might possibly 
 be done in mistaken imitation of it, must be obvious : or that which makes 
 them essentially different, must be subtle or recondite. For wliat_, is there 
 which a wicked man blinded by his passions may not, and which a mad- 
 man will not, misunderstand ? It is ridiculous to frame rules of morality with 
 a view to those who are fit objects only for the physician or the magis- 
 trate. 
 
268 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 The question may be thus iUustratcd. At Florence there is an unfinished 
 bust of Brutus, by Michael Angelo, under which a Cardinal wrote the fol- 
 lowing distich : 
 
 Dum Bruti effigiem sculptor de marmore finxit, 
 In mentem sceleris venit, et abstinuit. 
 Jls the Sculptor was forming the effigy of Brutus, in inarble, he recollected his 
 
 act of guilt and refrained. 
 
 An English Nobleman, indignant at this distich, wrote immediately mider 
 it the following : 
 
 Brutum efRnxisset sculptor, sed mente recursat 
 Multa viri virtus : sistit et obstupuit. 
 The Sculptor would have framed a Brutus, hut the vast and manifold vitiue of 
 the man flashed upon his thought : he stopped and remmned in asto- 
 nished admiration. 
 
 Now which is the nobler and more moral sentiment, the Italian Cardi- 
 nal's, or the English nobleman's ? The Cardinal would appeal to the doc- 
 trine of general consequences, and pronounce the death of Csesar a mur- 
 der, and Brutus an assassin. For (he woidd say) if one man may be al- 
 lowed to kill another because he thinks him a tyrant, religious or political 
 phrenzy may stamp the name of tyrant on the best of kings : regicide will 
 be justified under the pretence of tyrannicide, and Brutus be quoted as au- 
 thority for the Clements and Ravaillacs. From kings it may pass to gene- 
 rals and statesmen, and from these to any man whom an enemy or enthu- 
 siast may pronounce unfit to live. Thus we may have a cobler of Messi- 
 na in eveiy city, and bravos in our streets as common as in those of Naples, 
 with the name Brutus on their stilettos. 
 
 The Englishman would commence his answer by commenting on the 
 words "because he thinks him a tyrant." No ! he would reply, not because 
 the patriot thinks him a tyrant ; but because he knows him to be so, and 
 knows likevdse, that the vilest of his slaves cannot deny the fact, that he 
 has by violence raised himself above the laws of his country — because he 
 knows that all good and wise men equally with Iiimself abhor the fact ! 
 If there be no such state as that of being broad awake, or no means of 
 distinguishing it when it exists ; if because men sometimes dream that 
 they are awake, it must follow that no man, when awake, can be sure that 
 he is not dreaming ; if because an hypochondriac is positive that his legs 
 are cylinders of glass, all other men are to learn modesty, and cease to be 
 so positive that then' legs are legs ; what possible advantage can your crite- 
 rion of GENERAL CONSEQUENCES poscss ovcr any other rule of direction? 
 If no man can be sure that what he thinks a rol>ber with a \nsio\ at his 
 Ijreast demanding his purse, may not be a good friend enquiring after his 
 
NOTES. ^ 2G0 
 
 health ; or that a tyrant (the son of a cobler perhaps, wlio at tlie head of 
 a regiment of perjured traitors, has driven the representatives of his coun- 
 try out of the senate at the point of the bayonet, subverted tlie constitu- 
 tion which had trusted, enriched, and honoured him, trampled on the laws 
 which before God and Man he had sworn to obey, and finally raised him- 
 self above all law) may not, in spite of his own and his neighbours' know- 
 ledge of the contraiy, be a lawful kmg, who has received his power, how- 
 ever despotic it may be, from the kings his ancestors, wiio exercises no 
 other power than what had been submitted to for centuries, and been ac- 
 knowiedged as the law of the countiy ; on what gi'ound can you possibly 
 expect less fallibility, or a result more to be relied upon in the same man's 
 calculation of your general consequences ? Would /le, at least, find any 
 difliculty m converting your criterion into an authority for his act ? What 
 should prevent a man, whose perceptions and judgements are so strangely 
 distorted, from arguing, that nothmg is more devoutly to be wished for, as 
 a general consequence, than that eveiy man, who by violence places him- 
 self above the laws of his country, should in all ages and nations be con- 
 sidered by mankind as placed by his own act out of the protection of law, 
 and be treated by them as any other noxious wild beast would be ? Do 
 you think it necessaiy to try adders by a juiy ? Do you hesitate to shoot a 
 mad dog, because it is not in your power to have him fii-st tried and con- 
 demned at the Old Bailey ? On the other hand, what consequence can be 
 conceived more detestable, than one which would set a bomity on the most 
 enormous crime m human nature, and establish it as a law of rehgion and 
 morality that the accomplishment of the most atrocious guilt invests the per- 
 petrator with impunity, and renders his person forever sacred and inviola- 
 ble ? For madmen and enthusiasts what avail your moral criterions ? But 
 as to your Neapolitan Bravos, if the act of Brutus, who, " In pity to the general 
 wrong of Rome, Sleio his best lover for the good of Rome,^^ authorized by the 
 laws of his country, in manifest opposition to all selfish interests, in the 
 face of tlie Senate, and instantly presenting himself and his cause fii'st to 
 that Senate, and then to the assembled Commons, b}'^ them to stand acquit- 
 ted or condenuied — if such an act as this, with all its vast out-jutting cir- 
 cumstances of distinction, can be confounded by any mind, not frantic, 
 with the crune of a cowardly skulkmg assassin who hires out his dagger 
 for a few cro^vns to gratify a hatred not his own, or even with the deed of 
 that man who makes a compromise between his revenge and his coward- 
 ice, and stabs in the dark the enemy whom he dared not meet hi the open 
 field or summon before the laws of his countiy — what actions can be so 
 different that they may not be equally confounded ? The aml)ushed sol- 
 dier must not fire his musquet, lest Ms example shoidd be quoted by the 
 villain who, to make sure of his booty, discharges his piece at the luisuspi- 
 cious passenger from behind a hedge. The physician must not adminis- 
 ter a solution of arsenic to the leprous, lest his example should be quoted 
 
270 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 by professional poisoners. If no distinction, full and satisfactory to the 
 conscience and common sense of mankind be afforded by the detestation 
 and horror excited in all men, (even in the meanest and most vicious, if 
 they are not wholly monsters) by the act of the assassin, contrasted witli 
 the fervent adiiiiration felt by the good and wise in all ages when they 
 mention the name of Bnitns ; contrasted with the fact that the honour or 
 disrespect with whicli that name was spoken of, became an historic crite- 
 rion of a noble or a base age ; and if it is in vain that our own hearts an- 
 swer to the question of the Poet : 
 
 "Is there among the adamantine spheres 
 Wheeling imshaken through the boundless void, 
 Aught that with lialf such majesty can fill 
 The human bosom, as when Brutus rose 
 Refulgent from the stroke of Ctesai-'s fote 
 Amid the crowd of Patriots ; and his arm 
 Aloft extending, like eternal Jove, 
 When guilt biings down tlie thunder, call'd aloud 
 On TuUy's name, and shook his crimson sword, 
 And bade the Father of his Country', Hail ! 
 For lo the Tyrant prostinite on the dust, 
 And Rome again is free !" 
 
 If, I say, all this be fallacious and insufficient, can we have any firmer 
 reliance on a cold ideal calculation of imaginary general consequen- 
 ces, wliich, if they were general, could not be consequences at all : for 
 they would be effects of the frenzy or frenzied wickedness, which alone 
 could confound actions so utterly dissimilar ? No ! (would the ennobled 
 descendant of our Russels or Sidneys conclude) No ! Calumnious bigot ! 
 never yet did a human being become an assassin from his own or the gen- 
 eml admiration of the hero Brutus ; but I dare not wanant, that villains 
 might not be encouraged in their trade of secret murder, by finding their 
 own guilt attributed to the Roman patriot, and might not conclude, that if 
 Brutus be no better than an assassin, an assassin can be no worse than 
 Brutus. 
 
 I request, that the preceding be not interpreted as my own judgment on 
 tyrannicide. I think with Machiavel and with Spinosa, for many and 
 weighty reasons assigned by those philosophers, that it is diflScult to con- 
 ceive a case, in which a good man would attempt tyrannicide, because it 
 is difficult to conceive one, in which a wise man woidd recommend it. In 
 a small state, included within the walls of a single city, and where the ty- 
 ranny is maintained by foreign guards, it may be othcr^vise ; but in a na- 
 tion or empire it is perhaj)s inconceivable, that the circumstances which 
 made a tyranny possible, should not likewise render the removal of the 
 
NOTES. 271 
 
 tyrant useless. The patriot's sword may cut off the Hydra's head ; but he 
 possesses no brand to stanch the active coiTuption of the body, which is 
 sure to re-produce a successor. 
 
 I must now in a few words ans^ve^ the objection to the former part of 
 my argument (for to that part only the objection apphes,) namely, that the 
 doctrine of general consequences was stated as the criterion of the action, 
 not of the agent. I might answer, that the author himself had m some 
 measure justified me in not noticing this distinction hy holding forth the 
 probability, that the Supreme Judge will proceed by the same rule. The 
 agent may then safely be mcluded in the action, if both here and hereafter 
 the action only and its general consequences will be attended to. But my 
 main ground of justification is, that tlie distuiction itself is merely logical, 
 not real and vital. The character of the agent is determined by his view 
 of the action : and that system of morahty is alone true and suited to hu- 
 man nature, which unites the intention and the motive, the warmth and 
 the light, in one and the same act of mmd. This alone is worthy to be 
 called a moral principle. Such a principle may be extracted, though not 
 without difliculty and danger, from the ore of the stoic philosophy ; but 
 it is to be found unalloyed and entire in the Christian system, and is there 
 called Faith." 
 
 The system of Paley, I am aware, is not now so generally received in 
 this countiy, as to call for the very special attention of the friends of truth ; 
 yet many are still disposed to defend it, at least, with such slight modifica- 
 tions, as to show, that its radical defects are not perceived. Those, who 
 reject it entirely, do so on different grounds from those above presented, 
 and for the most part adopt as a substitute the system of Brown, which, if 
 there be any truth in the doctrines exhibited in this volume, is ahke radi- 
 cally erroneous. Both systems in fact have their origin in nearly the same 
 general views of the human mind — ^views, which preclude the existence 
 of the reason and free-will, as these powers are defined by Coleridge, and 
 leave us only those powers of the understanding and of choice or selec- 
 tion, which belong to us in common with the brutes. Whether it be pos- 
 sible upon such a system of what is called the Philosophy of the human 
 mind, the adherents of which, not only among professed Metaphysicians, 
 but among Naturalists, and even Theologians,, maintain in so many words, 
 that we have no powers differing in kind fi-om those, which belong to dogs 
 and horses, whether, I say, it be possible upon such grounds of general 
 philosophy to construct a rational system of morals, to account satisfactori- 
 ly for the difference between regret and remorse, to explain tlue difference 
 between things and persons, to show why we should not acknowledge die 
 rights of brutes, and try them by a juiy, and in general to justify the ways 
 of God to man, remains yet a fair field for experiment. In the mean time 
 the careful reader will find, if I mistake not, in the metaphysical views 
 contained in this work materials for a moral !:<ystem no much move ration- 
 
272 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 al and satisfying, so much more consistent with our moral feehngs and our 
 idea of the Divine Being, as will go far to sustain tlie truth of tliese views 
 themselves. I will barely remark farther, that the bearing of this work 
 upon the ethical system of Browii will be sufficiently obvious in the sub- 
 sequent parts of the volume, especially in the contradistinction taught to 
 exist between nature and the will, and the relation, which, on this system, 
 moral rectitude holds to the will and to tlie reason. — Am. Editor.] 
 
 [24] p. 28. 
 Victiu'os agimiis semper, nee vivimus unquam. 
 
 [25] p. 29. 
 
 Spes spem excipit, ambitionem ambitio, et miseriarum non quaeritur 
 finis, sed schema tantum mutatur. 
 
 [2G]p. 31. 
 
 This paragraph is abridged fiom the Watchman, No. IV. March 25, 
 ] 79G ; respecting which the mquisitive Reader may consult my " Literary 
 Life." S. T. C. 
 
 [27] p. 32. 
 
 There sometimes occurs an ap})arent Play on words, which not only to 
 the Moralizer, but even to tlie philosophical Etymologist, appears more than 
 a mere Play. Thus in the double sense of the word, become. I have 
 known persons so anxious to have their Dress become them, so totus in illo, 
 as to convert it at length into their proper self, and thus actually to become 
 the Dress. Such a one, (safcliest spoken of by the neider Pronoun), I con- 
 sider as but a suit of live Finery. It is indifferent whether we say — It be- 
 comes He, or. He becomes it. 
 
 [28] p. 34. 
 
 It might be a mean of preventing many unhappy Marriages, if the 
 youth of both sexes had it early impressed on their minds, that Maniage 
 contracted between Christians is a true and peifect Symbol or Mystery ; 
 that is, the actualizing Faith being supposed to exist in the Receivers, it 
 is an outward Sign co-essential with that which it signifies, or a living Part 
 of that, the whole of which it represents. Marriage therefore, in the 
 Christian sense (Ephesians v. 22 — 33), as symboUcal of the union of the 
 Soul with Christ the Mediator, and with God through Christ, is perfectly 
 a sacramental ordinance, and not retained by the Relbrmed Churches as 
 one of THE Sacraments, for two reasons; first, that the Sign is not distinc- 
 tive of the Church of Christ, and the Ordinance not peculiar nor owing 
 its origin to the Gospel Disi)ensation ; secondly, it is not of universal obU- 
 
NOTES. 273 
 
 gation, not a means of Grace enjoined on all Christians. In other and 
 plainer words, Marriage does not contain in itself an open Profession of 
 Christ, and it is not a Sacrament of the Church,hut only of certain Indi- 
 vidual members of the Church. It is evident, however, tliat neitlier of 
 these Reasons affect or dhnhiish tlie religious nature and dedicative force 
 of the marriage Vow, or detract from tlie solemnity of tlie Apostohc Dec- 
 laration: This is a great Mystery. 
 
 The interest, which the State has in the appropriation of one Woman to 
 one IMan, and the civil obligations therefrom resultmg, fonn an altogether 
 distinct consideration. When I meditate on the words of the Apos- 
 tle, confirmed and illustrated as they are, by so many harmonies in 
 the Spiritual Structure of our proper Humanity, (in the image of God, 
 male and female created he tlie Man), and then reflect how little claim so 
 large a number of legal cohabitations have to the name of Christian 
 Mamages — ^I feel inclined to doubt, whetlier the plan of celebrating 
 Marriages univei-sally by the civil magisti*ate, in the fii-st instance, and 
 leaving tlie religious Covenant, and sacramental Pledge to the'election of 
 the Parties themselves, adopted during the Republic in England, and in 
 our own times by the French Legislature, was not in fact, whatever it 
 might be in intention, reverential to Christianity. At all events, it was 
 their own act and choice, if tlie Parties made bad worse by the profanation 
 of a Gospel Mystery. 
 
 [29] p. 44. 
 
 Whatever is comprized in the Chain and Mechanism of Cause and 
 Effect, of course necessitated, and having its necessity in some other thing, 
 antecedent or concurrent — ^this is said to be JVatural ; and the Aggregate 
 and System of all such things is Nature. It is, therefore, a contradiction 
 in terms to include in this the Free-will, of which the verbal definition is 
 — that which originates an act or state of Being. In this sense therefore, 
 which is the sense of St. Paul, and mdeed of the New Testament tlirough- 
 out, Spiritual and vSuj^ernatural are synonymous. 
 
 [The Comment, to which this note is attached, exhibits in part the au- 
 thors views on certain subjects, which ai*e felt and acloiowledged to be of 
 the utmost importance, and at the same time exceedingly difficult of expla- 
 nation. Whether there be an essential difTercnce between morality and 
 spiritual religion — the mode of transition from the one to the other — the 
 contradistinguishing diameter of the will as spiritual and above nature — and 
 the possibility of such a communion and co-agency of the Divine spirit 
 with our spirits, as shall transform them into the Divine image, consistently 
 with the idea of a free will as formed by the reason, are undoubtedly sub- 
 jects deserving and requiring the most serious and profound reflection. 
 The maimer, in which they are treated in this work, if I do not mistake, 
 
 35 
 
274 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 will at least have the interest of novelty for most of its readers, and can 
 hardly fail to give them more satisfaction, in regard to some points, than 
 the authors generally resorted to among us on suhjects of this sort. It will 
 at once be obvious, that all these subjects are here ])resentcd to us in a far 
 different point of view from that, in which they are and must be contem- 
 plated by the disciples of Locke, and those who, with Brown, deny to man 
 any powers of will, which are not subjected to the law of nature, and in- 
 cluded in the mechanism of cause and effect. The difference in the views 
 exhibited, it will be seen again, results from the same fundamental prin- 
 ciples of philosophy, which I have referred to in fonner notes, and which 
 it will be especially incumbent on the reader to understand in order to a 
 full apprehension of the author's meaning here. To anticipate the most 
 important difficulties, likely to be felt by a reader unacquainted with the 
 system, I will merely observe, what would not perhaps be learned distinct- 
 ly from the previous parts of the work, that according to the author's views 
 and use of language a fact may be above our understandings, which is not 
 inconsistent with reason, and which reason requires us to believe ; it may 
 be inconceivable under those conditions, which limit the powers of con- 
 ception in the understanding, and yet its truth be discovered intuitively by 
 the reason ; it may be irrepresentable under the forms of time and space, 
 i. e. something, of which neither extension, nor place, nor the attributes of 
 time, as before and after, can be predicated, and yet its reality force itself up- 
 on our conviction. The distinction between these powers, and the appropri- 
 ate offices of each, are exhibited by the author in a subsequent part of the 
 volume ; but if, for the j>resent, what has now been said be adinitted, and 
 the definition of nature given in his note recognized, the meaning of the 
 Comment will be sufficiently obvious, and its doctrines seen to be at least 
 free from absurdity. 
 
 But as the reader is now entering upon those views of the will as super- 
 natural, and of the spiritual powers of man which constitute the groimd 
 work of the system, I cannot perhaps aid him more effectually than by re- 
 ferring him, either for his present or future convenience, to those parts of 
 the volume where they are most clearly stated. By coniparing different 
 passages together, one unacquainted with the system and the meaning of 
 terms will gain more instruction than from any illustrations which I could 
 furnish. The following passages have occurred to me as having a more or 
 less important connexion with the leading principles mentioned. It may 
 not be expedient to anticipate the author's progress by reading them all in 
 connexion with this Connnent, but they may be compared at the reader's 
 option. In the text the passages will be found at j)]). 87 — ^92, 102 — 105, 
 132_134, 136—145, 151—156, ICO— 163, 183—184, 193—194, 205—206, 
 211 — 213, 238 — ^246. Among the notes, the most important in this connex- 
 ion, are the 50th, 55th, (34th, 66di, 67tli, 69th, and 78tli. Some parts of the 
 appendix, also, will be found to illustratetheaiithor's views of these subject?. 
 
NOTES. 375 
 
 The following is inserted here from tlie Friend, vol. 3d, p. 166 — 168* 
 "The word Nature has been used in two senses, viz. actively and pas- 
 sively; energetic (zzrfornia fonnans), and material (=fomia formata). In 
 the first sense it signifies the inward principle of whatever is requisite for 
 the reality of a tiling, as existent: while the esseiice, or essential pro- 
 perty, signifies the imier principle of all that appertains to tlie possibility of 
 a thing. Hence, in accurate language, we say the essence of a mathemati- 
 cal circle or other geometrical figure, not the nature ; because in the con- 
 ception of forms purely geometrical there is no expression or implication 
 of their real existence. In the second, or material sense, of the word NA- 
 TURE, we mean by it the sum total of all things, as far as they are objects 
 of our senses, and consequently of possible experience — ^tlie aggregate of 
 phsenomena, wiiether existing for our oiitw ard senses, or for our mner sense. 
 The doctiine concerning material nature would tlierefore, (tlie word Phys- 
 iology being botli ambiguous in itself, and already otherwise appropriated) 
 be more properly entitled Phoenomenology, distinguished into its two grand 
 divisions. Somatology and Psychology. The doctrine concerning energetic 
 nature is comprised in the science of DYNAMICS ; the union of which 
 with Phaenomenology, and die alliance of both with the sciences of the 
 Possible, or of the Conceivable, viz. Logic and Mathematics, constitute 
 NATURAL PHILOSOPHY."— Am. Ed.] 
 
 [30] p. 44. 
 
 Some distant and faint similitude of this, that merely as a similitude 
 may be innocently used to quiet the Fancy, provided it be not imposed 
 on the understanding as an analogous fact or as identical in kind, is 
 presented to us in the power of the Magnet to awaken and strengthen the 
 magnetic power in a bar of Iron, and (in tlie instance of the compomid 
 magnet) acting in and with the latter. 
 
 [31] p. 45. 
 "The River windeth at his own sweet Will." 
 
 Wordsworth's exquisite Sonnet on Westminster-bridge at Sun-rise. 
 
 Bnt who does not see that here the poetic charm arises from the known 
 and felt impropriety of the exjiression, in the technical sense of the word 
 impropriety^ among Grammarians ? 
 
 [32] p. 53. 
 
 One of the numerous proofs against those who with a strange incon- 
 sistency liold the Old Testament to have been inspired throughout, and 
 yet deny that the doctrine of a fiiture state is taught therein. 
 
376 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 [33] p. 57. 
 [The following is tlie passage refeiTed to in the Omniana. — Am. Ed.] 
 I am firmly persuaded, that no doctrine was ever widely diffused among 
 various nations through successive ages, and under different religions 
 (such as is the doctrine of original sin, and redemption,'those fundamen- 
 tal articles of eveiy known reUgion professing to be revealed) which is 
 not founded either in the nature of tilings or in the necessities of our na- 
 ture. In the language of the schools, it carries with it presumptive evi- 
 dence, that it is either objectively or subjectively true. And the more strange 
 and contradictoiy such a doctrine may appear to the miderstanding, or 
 discursive faculty, the stronger is the presumption in its favour : for whatever 
 satirists may say, and sciolists imagine, the human mind has no predi- 
 lection for absurdity. I do not however mean, that such a doctrine 
 shall be always the best possible representation of the truth, on which 
 it is founded, for the same body casts strangely different shadows in 
 different places and different degrees of light ; but that it always does 
 shadow out some such truth and derives its influence over our faith from 
 our obscure perception of that truth. Yea, even where the person him- 
 self attributes his beUef of it to tlie miracles, with which it was aimounced 
 by the founder of his religion. 
 
 It is a strong presumptive proof against materialism, tliat tliere does 
 not exist a language on earth, from the rudest to the most refined, in 
 which a materialist can talk for five minutes together, without involvuig 
 some contradiction in terms to his own system. Objection. Will not this 
 apply equally to the astronomer? Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's 
 rising and setting, just like other men. What should we think of the 
 coxcomb,who should have objected to him, that he contradicted his own 
 system ? Answer. — No ! it does not apply equally ; Say rather, it is utter- 
 ly mapplicable to tlie astronomer and natural philosopher. For his phi- 
 losophic, and his ordinary language speak of two quite different things, 
 both of which are equally true. In his ordinary language he refers to a 
 fact of appearance, to a phfenomenon common and necessary to all per- 
 sons in a given situation : in his scientific language he determines that one 
 position, figure, &c. which being supposed, the appearance in question 
 would be the necessary result, and all appearances in all situations may 
 be demonstrably foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air, and strong- 
 ly illuminated. What figure is here ? A triangle. But what here ? A 
 trapezium,....and so on. The same question put to twenty men, in twenty 
 different positions and distances, would receive twenty different answers : 
 and each would be a true answer. But what is that one figure, which 
 being so placed, all these facts of appearance must result, according to the 
 law of perspective ?....Aye ! this is a different (juestion,....this is a new sub- 
 ject. The words, which answer this, would be absurd, if used in reply to 
 the former. 
 
NOTES. 277 
 
 Thus, the language of the scriptures on natural objects is as strictly phi- 
 losophical as that of the Newtonian sj^stem. Perhaps, more so. For it is 
 not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and unchange- 
 able. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would 
 have been consistent with the divine wisdom ? The insph-ed writers must 
 have bon'owed their terminology, eitlier from the crude and mistaken phi- 
 losophy of their o>vn times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated false- 
 hood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten thousand ; or they must 
 have anticipated the terminology of the true system, without any revela- 
 tion of the system itself, and so have become unintelligible to all men ; or 
 lastly, they must have revealed the system itself, and thus have left nothing 
 for the exercise, develo})ement, or reward of the human understandhig, in- 
 stead of teaching that moral knowledge, and enforcing those social and ci- 
 vic virtues, out of which tlie arts and sciences will spring up in due time, and 
 of their own accord. But nothing of this apj)lies to the materialist ; he re- 
 fers to the very same facts, which the common language of mankind speaks 
 of: and these too are facts, that have tlieir sole and entire being in our own 
 consciousness ; facts, as to which esse and conscire are identical. Now, 
 whatever is common to all languages, in all climates, at all times, and in all 
 stages of civilization, must be the Exponent and Consequent of the common 
 consciousness of man, as man. Whatever contradicts this universal lan- 
 guage, therefore, contradicts the imivcrsal consciousness ; and the facts in 
 question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever contradicts the 
 consciousness, conti-adicta the fact. 
 
 [34] p. 58. 
 
 Technical phrases of an obsolete System will yet i-etain their places, nay 
 acquire universal currency, and becojiie sterling in the language, when 
 they at once represent the feelings, and give an apparent solution of them 
 by visual images easily managed by the Fancy. Such are many terms 
 and phrases from the Humoral Physiology long exploded, yet are far more 
 popular than any description would be from the Theoiy that has taken its 
 place. 
 
 [35] p. 62. 
 
 In check of fanatical pretensions, it is expedient to confine the term mi- 
 racidous, to cases where the Senses are a])pealed to, in })roof of something 
 tliat transcends, or caimot l>e a part of, the Experience derived from the 
 Senses. 
 
 [30] p. 62. 
 For let it not be forgotten, that Morality, as distinguished from Prudence 
 
278 AIDS TO HEFLECTION. 
 
 iini)lylng (it matters not under what name, whether of Honour, or Duty, 
 or Conscience, still, I say, implying), and being grounded in, an awe of the 
 Invisible and a Confidence therein beyond (nay occasionally in apparent 
 contradiction to) the inductions of outward Experience, is essentially reli- 
 gious. 
 [See note 23.— Am. Ed.] 
 
 [37] p. 72. 
 See Huber on Bees, and on ants. 
 
 [The meaning of some part of this Comment will be rendered more 
 clear by referring to the passage of the work in p. 151 — 154. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [38] p. 75. 
 
 About the end of the same year (says Kalm), another of these Animals 
 (Mephitis Americana) crept into our cellar; but did not exhale the smallest 
 scent, because it was iwt disturbed. A foolish old JVoman, hoivever, tvho per- 
 ceived it at nighty by the shining, and thought, I suppose, that it ivoidd set the 
 tvorld on Jire, killed it : and at that moment its stench began to spread. 
 
 We recommend this anecdote to the consideration of sundry old Wo- 
 men, on this side of the Atlantic, who, though they do not wear the ap- 
 pro[)riate garment, are worthy to sit in their committee-room, like Bicker- 
 staff in the Tatler, under the canopy of their Grandam's Hoop-petticoat. 
 
 [39] p. 76. 
 
 To the same purpose are the two following sentences from Hilary : 
 Etiam ({uve pro Religione dicimus, cum grandi metu ct disciplina dicere 
 debemus. — Hilarius de Trinit. Lib. 7. 
 
 ^ Non Relictus est hominum eloquiis de Dei rebus alius quam Dei sermo. 
 Idem. 
 
 The latter, however, must be taken with certain Qimlijications and Ex- 
 ceptions : as when any two or more Texts are in apparent contradiction, 
 and it is required to state a truth that comi>rehends and reconciles both, 
 and which, of course, cannot be expressed in the words of either. Ex. gr. 
 the filial subordination {My Fattier is greater than I), in the equal Deity [My 
 Father and I are one). 
 
 [40] p. 82. 
 
 Mcrnvoia, the New Testament word, which we render by Repentance, 
 compounded of /itr^, trans, and ty?, mens, the Spirit, or {iractical Reason. 
 
 [11] p. 83. 
 May 1 without offence be permitted to record the very appropriate title. 
 
NOTES. 279 
 
 with which a stem Hiunorist lettered a collection of Unitarian Tracts ? — 
 " Salvation made easy ; or, Every Man his own Redeemer." 
 
 [42] p. 88. 
 
 On this principle alone is it possible to justify capital, or ignomimous 
 Punishments (or indeed any punishment not having the refonnation of 
 the Criminal, as one of its objects). Such Punishments, like those in- 
 flicted on Suicides, must be regarded as posthumous : the willful extinc- 
 tion of the moral and personal Life being, for the purposes of punitive 
 Justice, equivalent to a wilful destruction of the natural Life. If the speech 
 of Judge Burnet to the Horse-stealer (You are not hanged for stealing a 
 Horse ; but, that Horses may not be stolen) can be vindicated at all, it 
 must be on this principle ; and not on the all-imsettling scheme of Expe- 
 dience, which is the anarchy of Morals. 
 
 [Fully and strongly as I am convinced of the importance and the truth 
 of the distinctions made, and the doctrines taught, in this Preliminaiy to 
 Aphorisms on Sj)iritual Religion, I shall not attempt to add any thing to 
 the distinctness or conclusiveness, \vith which they are stated by the au- 
 thor. I will ventiu'e however in his behalf to solicit the readers of the 
 work and especially those, who have received their notions of the will 
 from Edwards or from Brown, to give this and the other passages referred 
 to in note 29th, a candid and studious attention. The relation of the will 
 to the reason and conscience will be found exhibited more fully in other 
 parts of the work. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [43] p. 98. 
 
 [The distinguishing character, and the appropriate functions of Reason, 
 in the sense in which it is used by the author, will be foimd pp. 136-139- 
 141-145, and in the 59th note. Its authority in relation to matters of faith 
 is more fidly stated in subsequent parts of the work. The following may 
 be referred to among others, pp. 108-120, 132-134, 192-194, 204-206, and 
 the appendix to the first Lay SeiTnon republished at the end of this Vol- 
 ume. This is a subject much talked of among speculative theologians and 
 religious writers of eveiy class, yet how seldom ^vith any definite and sat- 
 isfactory result. A critical analysis of our cognitive faculties, and of the 
 subjective grounds of faith in the hmnan mindy is obviously the only 
 method of arrivhig at fixed and rational conclusions respecting it; and I 
 speak with confidence in saying, that a careful study of the passages in 
 this work referred to above, and a clear apprehension of the distinction 
 pointed out between the understanding and the reason^ and of the distinct 
 offices of the latter, as speculative, and as p-acticcd i-eason, will do more to 
 solve the difiiculties of the student on matters of this sort, than any or all 
 other discussions of the subject, which he will be likely to meet with in 
 
280 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 the English Language. In regard to the use of tenns here it is dcBerving 
 of remark, tliat Heniy More, one of the most learned and profound phi- 
 losopliers of the most philosophical age, has employed the word reason 
 nearly in the same sense as that, hi which it is used by Coleridge. This 
 appears fi-om the exti-acts before and after the Aphorisni; with which this 
 note is connected, and still more clearly from "tlie Preface general" to his 
 Philosophical Works. "Take away REASON," he remai-ks, "and all re- 
 ligions are alike tnie ; as the light being removed all things are of one col- 
 our." For other extracts see note 59th. I might refer to the works of this 
 author for examjiles of a use very similar to that adopted by Coleridge in 
 regard to the meaning assigned to many other important words besides 
 the one mentioned, as sense, understanding, notion, perception, conception, 
 idea, subject, object, &c. To those, who are not convinced that all true 
 philosophy is to be found in the wiiters of the last centmy, and are fond 
 of seeking it in the forgotten fohos of a more ancient date, tlie works of 
 this author will afford both instruction and amusement The axioms laid 
 down in the connnencement of his treatise on the Iinmoitality of the Soul, 
 and the first Book of his "Antidote against Atheism," are evidence of pro- 
 found philosophical insight into the laws of the human mind and the 
 grounds of our knowledge. The following remarks respecting the man- 
 ner, in which his works should be read, I could wish the reader to apply 
 to the present work. "If any," he says, " expect or desire any general in- 
 struction or preparation for the more profitably perusing of these my wri- 
 tings, I must profess, that I can give none that is peculiar to them, but 
 what will fit all writmgs that are writ with FREEDOM and REASON. 
 And this one royal rule I would recommend for all, not to judge of the 
 truth of any proposition till we have a settled and determinate apprehension of 
 iJie terms thereof. Which law, though it be so necessaiy and indispensable, 
 yet there is none so frequently broken as it is : the effect whereof is those 
 many heaps of voluminous writings, and inept oppositions and controver- 
 sies that fill the world. Which were impossible to be, if men had not got 
 a habit of fluttering mere words against one another, Avithout taking no- 
 tice of any determinate sense, and so did fight as it were with so many 
 Hercules' clubs made of })asteboard, which cause a great sound, but do no 
 execution towards the ending of disputes. See note 58. The following 
 on the subject of the Aphorism is from the Friend, vol. 3. pp. 10{^106. — 
 Am. Eb.] 
 
 "We have the highest ])ossible authority, that of Scripture itself, to jus- 
 tify us in putting the question : Whether miracles can, of themselves, 
 work a true conviction in the mind ? There are spiritual truths which must 
 derive their evidence from within, which whoever rejects, "neither will he 
 believe though a man were to rise from the dead" to confirm them. And 
 under the Mosaic law a miracle in attestation of a iidse doctrine subjected 
 the miracle-worker to death ; Avhcther really or only seemingly supernat- 
 
NOTES. 28 i 
 
 ural, makes no difference in the present argument, its power of convin- 
 cing, wliatever tliat power may be, whether gi-eat or small, depending on 
 the fulness of the belief in its miraculous nature. Est quibus esse vide- 
 tur. Or rather, that I may express the same position in a form less hkely 
 to offend, is not a true efficient con\dction of a moral truth, is not " the 
 creating of a new heart," which collects the energies of a man's whole 
 being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same 
 and of the same evidence to the ignorant and the learned, which no supe- 
 rior skill can counterfeit, human or dsemoniacal ? Is it not emphatically 
 that leading of the Father, without which no man can come to Christ ? 
 Is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in the 
 doctrine, wliich is the bridge of communication between the senses and 
 the soul ? That predisposing warmth that renders the understanding sus- 
 ceptible of the specific impression from the historic, and from all other 
 outward, seals of testimony ? Is not this the one infalhble criterion of 
 miracles, by which a man can knoio whether they be of God ? The ab- 
 hoiTcnce in which the most savage or barbarous tribes hold witchcraft, in 
 which however their belief is so intense* as even to control the springs of 
 life, — is not this abhorrence of witchcraft under so full a conviction of its 
 reality a proof, how little of divine, how little fitting to our nature, a mir- 
 acle is, when insulated from spiritual truths, and disconnected from reh- 
 gion as its end ? What then can we think of a theological theory, which 
 adopting a scheme of prudential legahty, common to it with "the sty of 
 Epicurus" as far at least as the springs of moral action are concerned, 
 makes its whole religion consist in the belief of miracles ! As well might 
 the poor African prepare for himself a fetisch by plucking out the eyes 
 fi-om the eagle or the lynx, and enshrining the saine, worship hi them the 
 power of vision. As the tenet of professed Christians (I speak of the prin- 
 ciple, not of the men, whose hearts will always more or less coiTect the er- 
 rors of their understandings) it is even more absurd, and the pretext for 
 such a reUgion more inconsistent than the religion itself. For they profess 
 to derive from it their whole faith in that futurity, which if they had not 
 previously believed on the evidence of their own consciences, of Moses 
 dnd the Prophets, they are assured by the gi'eat Founder and Object of 
 Christianity, that neither will they believe it, in any spiritual and profitable 
 sense, though a man should rise from the dead." 
 
 [44] p. 100. 
 
 The very Tnarked, positive as well as comparative, magnitude and promi- 
 nence of the Bump, entitled Benevolence (see Spwiheim^s Map of the 
 
 *I refer the reader to Hearne's Travels among the Copper Indians, and 
 to Biyan Edwards' account of the Oby in the West Indies, grounded on 
 judicial documents and personal observation, 
 
 36 
 
282 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Human Skull, on the head of the late Mr. Jolm Thurtel, has wofiilly un- 
 settled the faith of many ardent Plirenologistp, and strengthened the pre- 
 vious donl)ts of a still greater nnmher into utter disbelief. On my mind 
 this fact (for a fact it is) produced the direct contrary eifect ; and inclined 
 me to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some ti'uth in the 
 Spurzheimian Scheme. Whether future Craniologists may not see cause 
 to new-name this and one or two other of tliese convex gnomons, is quite 
 a different question. At present, and according to the present use of 
 words, any such change would be premature : and we must be content to 
 say, that Mr. Thurtel's Benevolence was insufficiently modified by tlie un- 
 protrusive and unindicated Convolutes of the Brain, that secrete honesty 
 and common-sense. The organ of Destructiveness was indirectly poUn- 
 ziated by the absence or imperfect developement of the Glands of Reason 
 and Conscience, in this " unfortunate, Gentleman .'" 
 
 [45] p. 106. 
 
 [Those who are disposed to defend the doctrines of Edwards on the 
 subject of tlie Will, are requested, before they take oflfence at the language 
 of this passage, to reperuse the Prehminary remarks, p. 87 — 92, and can- 
 didly to examine, in connexion with it, the author's views of original sin, 
 beginning at p. 158, being careful to obtam " a settled and detenninate ap- 
 })rehension" ot the several imi)ortant terms made use of. The Will, ac- 
 cording to Edwards, "is as the greatest apparent good is." The strongest 
 motive in the view of the understanding determines the Will. — But the 
 motive again, or the gTeatest apparent good, is as the man is. The man 
 makes the motive. One man finds a motive to sin, where another would 
 find the strongest incitement to virtue. The determining power or cause, 
 then, is in the man, and, keeping in view the distinction between nature 
 and will, the important question is, whether this power or determining cause 
 be in his nature or in his with If it be in his nature, and the law of cause 
 and effect, which constitutes his nature, be the law of his will, in other 
 words, if his will be absorbed in that law, and a part of his nature, (see 
 page 183) then whatever evil there may be in the acts of his will must be 
 eharged U})on his nature ; and if this nature or law of cause and effect, by 
 which his will is detemiined, do not result in any sense from a previous 
 act of the will, if it be implanted, inherited, or inflicted, in any way, for 
 which the individual could not be personally responsible, then the evil na- 
 ture of a man differs notliing in its relation to moral rectitude and moral 
 responsibility from the evil nature of a hnde. He may feel regret for it, but 
 he should not feel remorse. If on the other hand the determining cause, 
 the moving power or influence be not in his nature, if the act of the will 
 be not predetermined by a cause out of the will, of which it is the effect, 
 so as to be a link in the chain of. antecedents and consequents, which we 
 call nature ; then the determining cause must be in the will itself, and the 
 
NOTES. 283 
 
 will is self-dotenitined. If it be an evil will, it must Iiave become so by its 
 own act, or it is not sinful. If the man's nature have the ascendency and 
 the dominion, so tliatthe will is subjected to the law of the flesh, the law hi 
 the members, it must have been seif-subjected, and the person is resj^onsi- 
 ble for his evil nature. " For a nature in the will is an evil nature." But 
 there is little gained by multiplying words, and the objections to this view 
 of the subject, that may naturally be expected from those, who are accus- 
 tomed to the New England writers, at least all, that are most important, 
 and to which the objector has aright to demand an answer, will find a ra- 
 tional one in the passag(.^s referred to, and in those, which relate to the of- 
 fice of Reason. — See references in the 43d note, — on the general subject 
 of the note, see also note 29. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [46] p. 107. 
 
 At a period, in which Doctor Marsh and Wordsworth have, by tlie 
 Zealots on one side, been charged with popish principles on account of 
 their Anti-hihliolatry, and the stiu-dy adherents of the doctrines common to 
 Luther and Calvin, and the literal inter})reters of the Articles and Homilies, 
 are (I wish I could say, altogether without any fault of their own) regard- 
 ed by the Clergy generally as virtual Schismatics, Dividers of^ though not 
 from, the Church, it is serving the cause of charity to assist in circulating 
 the following mstructive passage from the Life of Bishop Ilackett respect- 
 ing the disputes between the Augustinians, or Luthero-calvinistic Divines 
 and the Grotiaus of his age : in which controversy (says his Biographer) 
 he, Hacket, " was ever very moderate." 
 
 " But having been bred mider Bishop Davenant and Dr. Ward in Cam- 
 bridge, he was addicted to their sentiments. Archbishop Usher would 
 say, that Davenant understood those controversies better than ever any 
 man did since Augustin. But he (Bishop Hackett) used to say, that he 
 was sure he had three excellent men of his mind in this controversy. 1. 
 Padre Paolo (Father Paul) v/hose Letter is extant to Hemsius, anno 1604. 
 2. Thomas Aquinas. 3. St. Augustin. But besides and alDove them all, he 
 believed in his Conscience that St. Paul was of the same mind likewise. 
 Yet at the same time he would profess, that he disliked no Arminians, but 
 such as revile and defame every one w ho is not so : and he would often 
 commend Arminius himself for his excellent Wit and Parts, but only tax 
 his want of reading and knowledge in Antiquity. And he ever held, it 
 was the foohshest thing in the world to say the Armmians were popishly 
 inclined, when so many Dominicans and Jansenists were rigid followers of 
 Augustin in these points : and no less foohsh to say that the Anti-arminians 
 were Puritans or Presljyterians when Ward and Davenant, and Prideaux, 
 and Brownri^, those stout Champions for Episcopacy, were decided Anti- 
 Arminians : while Arminius himself was ever a Presbyterian. Therefore * 
 he greatly conmiended the moderation of our Chiu'ch, which extended 
 equal Communion to both." 
 
284 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 [47] p. 108. 
 The gigantic Indian Spider. See Baker's Microscopic Experiments. 
 
 [48] p. 114. 
 
 Exempli gi-cUia : at the date of St. Paul's Epistles, the (Roman) World 
 may be resembled to a Mass in the Furnace in the jfirst moment of fusion, 
 Iiere a speck and there a spot of the melted Metal shining pure and bril- 
 liant amid the scum and dross. To have received the name of Christian 
 was a privilege, a high and distinguishing favour. No vt^onder therefore, 
 tliat in St. Paul's writings the words Elect and Election, often, nay, most 
 often, mean the same as eccalumeni, ecclesia, i. e. those who have been call- 
 ed out of the World : and it is a dangerous perversion of the Apostle's 
 word to interpret it in the sense, in which it was used by our Lord, viz. in 
 opposition to Hie called. (Many are called but few chosen). In St. Paul's 
 sense and at that time the BeUevers collectively formed a small and select 
 number ; and every Christian, real or nominal, was one of the elect. Add 
 too, that this ambiguity is increased by the accidental circumstance, that 
 the kyriak, yEdes Dominicos, Lord's House, Kv'k ; and Ecclesia, the sum 
 total of the Eccaliuneni, evocati, CaUed-ovt ; are both rendered by the same 
 word Church. 
 
 [49] p. 116. 
 
 Or (I might have added) any Idea which does not either identify the 
 Creator with the Creation ; or else represent the Supreme Being as a mere 
 impersonal Law or Ordo ordinans, differing from the Law of Gravitation 
 only by its universality. 
 
 [50] p. 117. 
 
 I have elsewhere remarked on the assistance wliicli those that labour 
 after distinct conceptions would receive from the re-introduction of the 
 terms ohjective and subjective, ohjective and subjective reality, &c. as substi- 
 tutes for real and notional, nm\ to the exclusion of the false antithesis be- 
 tween real and ideal. For the Student hi that noblest of the Sciences, 
 the Scire teipsum, the advantage would be especially great*. The few 
 
 *See the " Selection from Mr. Coleridge's Literary Correspondence^'' in 
 Blackwood's Ed. Magazine, for October 1821, Letter ii. p. 244— 258, which 
 however, should any of my Readers take the the trouble of consulting, lie 
 must be content with such parts as he finds intelligible at the first perusal. 
 For from defects in the MS., and without any fault on the part of the Edi- 
 tor, too large a portion is so printed that the man must be equally bold and 
 fortunate in his conjectural readings who can malvc out any meaning at all. 
 
 [Most of the above-mentioned " Selection" will be found in the Appen- 
 dix to this Volume. It is reprinted without any attempt at correction. 
 
 Am. Ed.] 
 
NOTES. 285 
 
 sentences that follow, in illustration of tiie terms here advocated, will not, 
 I trust, be a waste of the Reader's Time. 
 
 The celebrated Euler ha^dng demonstrated certain properties of Arches, 
 adds : " All experience is in contradiction to tliis ; but this is no reason for 
 doubting its truth." The words sound paradoxical ; but mean no more 
 than this — ^that tlie mathematical properties of Figure and Space are not 
 less certainly the properties of Figure and Space because they can never 
 be perfectly realized hi wood, stone, or iron. Now this assertion of Eu- 
 ler's might be expressed at once, briefly and simj^ly, by saying, that the 
 properties in question were subjectively true, though not objectively — or 
 that the Mathematical Arch possessed a subjective reality, though incapable 
 . of being realized objectively. 
 
 In hke manner if I had to express my conviction, that Space was not 
 itself a Thing, but a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward ground 
 and condition m the Percipient, in consequence of which Things are seen 
 as outward and co-existing, I convey this at once by the words, Space is 
 subjective, or Space is real in and for the Subject alone. 
 
 If I am asked, why not say in and for the mind, which every one would 
 understand ? I re])ly : we know indeed, that all minds are Subjects ; but 
 are by no means certain, that all Subjects are Minds. For a Mind is a 
 Subject that knows itself, or a Subject that is its own Object. The inward 
 piinciple of Gro^vth and uidividual Form in every Seed and Plant is a 
 Subject, and without any exertion of poetic privilege Poets may speak of 
 the Sold of the Flower. But the man would be a Dreamer, who other- 
 wise than poetically should speak of Roses and Lilies as self-cojiscious 
 Subjects. Lastly, by the assistance of the terms. Object and Subject, thus 
 used as correspondent Opposites, or as Negative and Positive in Physics 
 (ex. gr. Neg. and Pos. Electricity) we may arrive at the distinct import 
 and proper use of the strangely misused word. Idea. And as the Forms of 
 Logic ai*e all borrowed from Geometry {Ratiocmat'io discursiva fonnas suas 
 sive canonas recipit ab intuitu,) I may be permitted so to elucidate my jire- 
 eent meaning. Every Line may be, and by the ancient Geometricians ivcts^ 
 considered as a -point jiroduced, the two extremes being its poles, while the 
 Point itself remams in, or is at least represented by, the mid-point, the In- 
 difference of the two poles or con-elative opposites. Logically a])phed, 
 the two extremes or poles are named Thesis and Antithesis : thus in the 
 line 
 
 I 
 
 T A 
 
 we have T= Thesis, A = Antithesis, and I := Punctum Indifferens sive 
 Aniphotericum, which latter is to be conceived as both in as far as it may be 
 either of the two former. Observe : not both at the same time in the same 
 relation : for this would be the Identity of T and A, not the Indifference. 
 But so, that relatively to A, 1 is equal to T, and relatively to T it becomes 
 
286 AIDS TO REFLECTIOIf. 
 
 = A. Thus in chcmistiy Sulphuretted Hydrogen is an Acid relatively to 
 the more powerful AU^alis, and an Alkali relatively to a jjowerful Acid. 
 Yet one other remark, and I pass to the question. In order to render the 
 constructions of pure Mathematics applicable to Philosophy, the Pythago- 
 reans, I imagine, represented the Line as generated^ or, as it were, radiated 
 by a Point not contained in the Line but independent, and (in the lan- 
 guage of that School) transcendent to all production, which it caused but 
 did not partake in. Facit, non patitiir. This was the Punctuni invisibile, 
 et presuppositum : and in this way the Pythagoreans guarded against the 
 error of Pantheism, into which the later schools fell. The assumption of 
 this Point I call the logical prothesis. We have now therefore four Re- 
 lations of Thought expressed . viz. 1. Prothesis, or the Identity of T and 
 A, which is neither, because in it, as the transcendent of both, both are 
 contained and exist as one. Taken absolutely, this finds its application in 
 the Supreme Being alone, the Pythagorean tetractts ; the ineffable 
 NAME, to which no Image dare be attached ; the Point, which has no (real) 
 Opposite or Counter-jioint, &c. But relatively taken and inadequately, the 
 germinal power of every seed (see p. 42) might be generalized under the 
 relation of Identity. 2. Thesis or Position. 3. Antithesis, or Opposition. 
 4. Indifference. (To which when we add the Synthesis or Composition, 
 in its several forms of Equilibrium, as in quiescent Electricity ; of Neu- 
 tralization, as of Oxygen and Hydrogen in Water ; and of Predominance, 
 as of Hydrogen and Carbon with Hydrogen predominant, in pure Alcohol, 
 or of Carbon and Hydrogen, with the comparative predominance of the 
 Carbon, in Oil ; we complete the five most general Forms or Preconcep- 
 tions of Constructive Logic). 
 
 And now for the answer to the Question, What is an idea, if it mean 
 neither an impression on the Senses, nor a definite Conception, nor an ab- 
 stract Notion ? (And if it does mean either of these, the word is super- 
 fluous : and while it remains undetermined which of these is meant by 
 the word, or whether it is not which you please, it is worse than superfluous. 
 See the Statesman's Manual, Appendix ad fnem). But supposing the 
 word to have a meaning of its own, what does it mean? What is an idea ? 
 In answer to this I commence with the ahsohdely Real, as the prothesis ; 
 the siihjectivcly Real as the thesis ; the ohjedively Real as the antithesis : 
 and I afiirm, that Idea is the indifference of the two — so namely, that if 
 it be conceived as in the Subject, the Idea is an Object, and possesses Ob- 
 jective truth ; but if in an Object, it is then a Subject, and is necessarily 
 thought of as exercising the powers of a Subject. Tlius an idea conceiv- 
 ed as subsisting in an Object becomes a law ; and a Law contemi)lated 
 suhjectimly (in a mind) is an Idea. 
 
 In the third and last Section of my "Elements of Discourse ;" in which 
 {afl;er having in the two former sections treated of the Common or Syllo- 
 sristic Logic — the science of legitimate conclusions ; and the Critical Logic, 
 
NOTES. 287 
 
 or the Criteria of Truth and Falsehood in all Premises], I Iiave given at 
 full my scheme of Constructive Reasoning, or " Logic as the Organ of 
 Philosophy," in the same sense as the Mathematics are the Organ of Sci- 
 ence ; the Reader will find proofs of the Utility of this Scheme, including 
 the five-fold Division above-stated, and numerous examples of its applica- 
 tion. Nor is it only in Theology that its importance will be felt, but equally, 
 nay in a greater degree, as an mstrument of Discovery and universal Me- 
 thod in Physics, Physiolog}'^, and Statistics. As this third Section does 
 not pretend to the forensic and comparatively popular character and utility 
 of the parts preceding, one of the Objects of the present Note is to obtain 
 the opinions of judicious friends respecting the expedience of publishing 
 it, in the same fonn, indeed, and as an Aimexment to the " Elements of 
 Discourse," yet so as that each may be purchased separately. 
 
 [As the above note, so far at least as it relates to the definition of an 
 idea, will appear veiy abstruse and unintelligible to many readers, I shall 
 bring togetlier a few extracts from other parts of the author's works, for 
 the pui-pose of illustration, though some of them will perhaps not be 
 thought to throw much light upon the subject. 
 
 "There is, strictly speaking, no proper opposition but between the 
 
 TWO POLAR forces OF ONE AND THE SAME POWER. EvERY POWER IN NA- 
 TURE AND IN SPIRIT must cvolvc an opposite, as the sole means and condition 
 of its manifestation : and all opposition is a tendency to reunion. 
 This is the universal law of polarity or essential Duahsm, first promulga- 
 ted by Heraclitus, 2000 years afl:erwards re-published, and made the found- 
 ation both of Logic, of Physics, and of Metaphysics by Giordano Bruno. 
 The principle may be thus expressed. The Identity of Thesis and 
 Antithesis is the substance of all Being ; their Opposition the condition of 
 all Existence, or Being manifested ; and every Thing or Phaenomenon is 
 the Exponent of a Synthesis as long as the opposite energies are retained 
 in that Synthesis. Thus Water is neither Oxygen nor Hydrogen, nor yet 
 is it a commixture of both ; but the Sj'^nthesis or Lidifference of the two : 
 and as long as the copula endures, by which it becomes Water, or rather 
 which alojie is Water, it is not less a simple Body than either of the ima- 
 ginaiy Elements, improperly called its Ingredients or Components. It is 
 the object of the mechanical atomistic Psilosophy to confound Synthesis 
 with sjjnartesis, or rather with mere juxta-position of Corpuscles separated 
 by invisible Interspaces. I find it difiicult to determine, whether this the- 
 oiy contradicts tlie Reason or the Senses most : for it is alike inconceiva- 
 ble and unimaginable." — TVie Friend, vol. 1: pp. 155 — 156, 
 
 The following is the continuation of a passage partly inserted in note 
 29th. 
 
 " Having thus explained the term Nature, we now more especially en- 
 treat the reader's attention to the sense, in which here, and every where 
 
288 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 til rough this Essaj'', we use the word Idea. We assert, that the very im- 
 pulse to universalise any pha^nomenon involves the prior assumption of 
 some efficient law in nature, which m a thousand different forms is ever- 
 more one and the same ; entire in each, yet comprehending all ; and in- 
 capable of being abstracted or generalized from any number of phsenom- 
 ena, because it is itself pre-supposed in each and all as their common 
 ground and condition : and because every definition of a genus is the ad- 
 equate definition of the lowest species alone, while the efficient law must 
 contain the giound of all in all. It is attributed, never derived. The ut- 
 most we ever venture to say is, that the falling of an apple suggested the 
 law of gravitation to Sir I. Newton. Now a law and an idea are corre- 
 lative terms, and diffisr only as object and subject, as being and truth. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon, agreeing 
 (as we shall more largely show in the text) in all essential points with the 
 true doctrine of Plato, the apparent diffiirences being for the gi'eater part 
 occasioned by the Grecian sage having applied his principles chiefly to the 
 investigation of the mind, and the method of evolving its powers, and the 
 English philosopher to the developement of nature. That our great 
 countryman speaks too often detractingly of the divine philosopher must 
 be explained, partly by the tone given to thinking minds by the Reform- 
 ation, the founders and fathers of which saw in the Aristotehans, or school- 
 men, the antagonists of Protestantism, and in the Italian Platonists the 
 despisers and secret enemies of Christianity itself; and partly, by his hav- 
 ing formed his notions of Plato's doctrines from the absurdities and phan- 
 tasms of his misinterpreters, rather than fi*om an unprejudiced study of 
 the origmal works." — The Fiiend, vol. 3. pp. 1G8 — 169. 
 
 In the next extract the relation of the subjective idea to the coiTelative 
 law existing objectively in nature, is illustrated by an exami)le, which will 
 probably render the whole subject more intelligible, as well as give some 
 notion of the author's views on subjects of physical science. 
 
 "But in experimental philosophy, it may be said how much do we not 
 owe to accident ? Doubtless : but let it not be forgotten, that if the dis- 
 coveries so made stop there ; if they do not excite some master idea ; if 
 they do not lead to some law (in whatever dress of theory or hypotheses 
 the fashions and prejudices of the time may disguise or disfigure it) : the 
 discoveries may remain for ages limited in their uses, insecure and unpro- 
 tluctive. How many centuries, Vv^e might have said millennia, have pass- 
 ed, since the first accidental discovery of the attraction and repulsion of 
 light bodies by rubbed amber, &c. Compare tlie interval with the pro- 
 gress made within less than a centuiy, after the discovery of the phaenom- 
 ena that led innncdiately to a theory of electricity. That here as in ma- 
 ny other instances, the theory was su])poi'tcd by insecure hypotheses ; that 
 by one theorist two heterogeneous fluids arc assumed, the vitreous and the 
 resinous ; by another, a plus and minus of the same fluid ; tliat a third 
 
NOTES. 289 
 
 considers it a mere modification of light ; while a fourth composes the 
 electrical aura of oxygen, hydrogen, and caloric ; this does but place the 
 truth we have been evolving in a stronger and clearer light. For abstract 
 from all these suppositions, or rather imaginations, that which is common 
 to, and involved in them all ; and we shall have neither notional fluid or 
 fluids, nor chemical compounds, nor elementary matter^ — but the idea of 
 tii,o — opposite— forces, tending to rest by equilibrium. These are the sole 
 factors of the calculus, alike in all the theories. These give the law, and 
 m it the method, both of arranging the phsenomena and of substantiating 
 appearances into facts of science ; with a success proportionate to the 
 clearness or confusedness of the insight into the law. For this reason, we 
 anticipate the gi*eatest improvements in the method, the nearest approaches 
 to a system of electricity from those philosophers, who have presented the 
 law most purely, and the correlative idea as an idea : those, namely, who, 
 suice the year 1798, in the ti'ue spirit of experimental dynamics, rejecting 
 the imagination of any material substrate, simple or compoimd, contem- 
 })late in the phsenomena of electricity the operation of a laAV which reigns 
 through all nature, the law of polarity, or the manifestation of one pow- 
 er by opposite forces: who trace in these appearances, as the most obvi- 
 ous and striking of its innumerable forms, the agency of the positive and 
 negative poles of a power essential to all material construction ; tlie sec- 
 ond, namely, of the three primary principles, for which the beautiful and 
 most appropriate symbols are given by the mind in the tln"ee ideal dimen- 
 sions of space." — The Friend, \o\. 2.]}. l^Q — ]88. ,,,-> :••. 
 
 " The difference, or rather distinction between Plato and tord Bacon is 
 simply this : that philosophy being necessarily bi-polar, Plato treats piin- 
 cipally of the truth, as it manifests itself at the ideal pole, as the science 
 of intellect (i. e. de mundo intelligibili) ; while Bacon confines himself, for 
 the most part, to the same truth, as it is manifested at the other, or mate- 
 rial pole, as the science of nature (i. e. de mundo sensibili). It is as ne- 
 cessary, therefore, that Plato should direct his inquiries cliiefly to those 
 objective truths that exist in and for the intellect alone, the images and 
 representatives of which we consti'uct for ourselves by figure, nmiiber, and 
 word ; as that Lord Bacon should attach his main concern to the truths 
 which have their signatures in nature, and which, (as he himself plainly 
 and often asserts) may indeed be revealed to us through and with, but never 
 hy the senses, or the faculty of sense. Otherwise, indeed, uistead of be- 
 ing more objective than the former (which they are not in any sense, both 
 ])eing in this respect the same), they would be less so, and in fact, incapa- 
 ble of bemg insulated fi'om the " Idola tribus quae in ipsa natura humana 
 fundata sunt, atque in ipsa tribu sen gente hominum : cum onmes percep- 
 tiones tarn sensus quarn mentis, sunt ex analogia hommis non ex analo- 
 gia universi." (N. O. xli.) Hence, too, it will not sui-prise us, tliat Plato 
 so ofl;en calls ideas living laws, in which the mind has its whole true be- 
 
 37 
 
290 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ing aiid permanence ; or that Bacon vice versa, names the laws of nature, 
 ideas ; and represents wliat w^e have, in a former part of this disquisition, 
 called facts of science and centred phceiiomena, as signatures, impressions, 
 and symbols of ideas. A distinguishable power seF-aiiirmed, and seen in 
 its unity with the Eternal Essence, is, according to Plato, an Idea : and 
 the discipline, by which the human mind is purified from its idols (f«^w;.a), 
 and raised to the contemplation of Ideas, and thence to the secure and 
 ever-progressive, though never-ending, investigation of truth and reality 
 by scientific method, comprehends what the same philosopher so highly 
 extols under the title of Dialectic. According to Lord Bacon, as descri- 
 bing the same truth seen from the opposite point, and applied to natural 
 philosophy, an idea would be defined as — Intuitio sive inventio, quse in 
 perceptione sensus non est (ut quae purse et sicci luminis Intellectioni est 
 propria) idearum divinse mentis, prout in creaturis per signaturas suas sese 
 patefaciant. That (saith the judicious Hooker) which doth assign to each 
 thing the kind, that which determines the force and power, that which 
 doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a Law. 
 
 The Friend, vol. 3. p. 210—213. 
 
 To do justice to the subject of the last extract the whole Essay should 
 have been inserted, but much of it would be alien to the main purpose of 
 the note. I trust however, what is here said of the coincidence of the 
 philosophy of Bacon with that of Plato, will awaken the curiosity of some 
 who have been taught to consider them as directly opposed, and lead them 
 to read all that is said upon this subject in the Friend, vol. 3. Essays 7 
 and 8. If he do so, or take the pains to examine the subject at his leisure 
 by comparmg the works of those great men, he will be convinced, that at 
 least many of the prevailing notions, respecting the philosophy of Plato, 
 could have originated only m ignorance or misrepresentation. Though 
 his works are often spoken of, and his doctrines alluded to, by Stewart, I 
 remember but few instances, in which he refers to particular passages, 
 and in these he does it on the authority of others. Now to say nothing 
 of what might be considered in any man the presumption, at least the in- 
 expediency, of writing and publishing a work of general metaphysics, 
 without first becoming acquainted with works on the subject so long and 
 widely celebrated, as those of Plato, it was certainly incumbent on him to 
 speak of what he had not read with extreme caution. That he has not 
 been sufficiently guarded in the representations which he maizes of Pla- 
 to's doctrines, is apparent even to those who have but a slight acquaint- 
 ance with the original ; and there can be no doubt, that both he and Dr. 
 Reid entirely misapprehended the general character of his philosophy. 
 One of the few references to paiticular passages is made, in the beginning 
 of his chapter on perception, to the 7th Book of Plato's Republic, "in 
 which," he says, " he compares the process of the mind in perception to 
 that of a person in a cave, who sees not external objects themselves, but 
 
NOTES. 291 
 
 only their shadows." Now let any scholar, who has studied Bacon's No- 
 vum Organuni, and can construe a sentence of Greek, read tlie passage 
 refen-ed to, and compare it with the latter part of the (ith Book, and he 
 will find, instead of a fanciful account of the process of perception, some- 
 thing mdced about a person in a cave, mto which the shadows of objects 
 are thrown, but designed to illystrate a subject entirely different. By 
 comparing it with the Novum Organum, he will be convinced, that Plato 
 is here exhibiting the difficulties and obstructions, which the reason, rsc, 
 (lux intellectus, lumen siccum) finds, in its search after truth and in the 
 contemplation of ideas, from the unreal phantasms, and deceptive idols, 
 tiSw?.a^ (idola tribus, speciis, fbri, theatri of Ld. Bacon) of the senses and 
 the understanding. I refer to tliis as an instance merely, by which every 
 one may verify for himself the above charges of ignorance and misappre- 
 hension. 
 
 I have been willing to dwell the longer on this subject, because it is obvi- 
 ously one of great practical importance to the cause of education among us. 
 If it be a fact, that the system of Plato, and tha of Lord Bacon, are essen- 
 tially one and the same, and that both have been grossly misapprehended, 
 while a system of supei-ficial and idea-less materialism has been unwar- 
 rantably associated with the name and authority of the latter, it is surely 
 time for the students in our Colleges and Universities to seek a knowledge 
 of Plato's ideas, and of Bacon's laws, from Plato and Ld. Bacon themselves, 
 rather than from the popular philosophers of the day. 
 
 A considerable portion of the Appendix to this Volume will be found to 
 have a bearing upon the subject of tliis note. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [51] p. 119. 
 
 In a letter to a Friend on the mathematical Atheists of the French Re- 
 volution, La Lande and others, or rather on a young man of cUstinguished 
 abilities, but an avowed and proselyting Partizan of their Tenets, I conclu- 
 ded with these words : " The man who will believe nothmg but by force 
 of demonstrative evidence (even though it is strictly demonstrable tl^it the 
 demonstrability required would countervene all the puqjoses of the Truth 
 in question, all that render the belief of the same desirable or obligatory) 
 is not in a state of mind to be reasoned with on any subject. But if he 
 further denies the fact of the Law of Conscience, and the essential differ- 
 ence between Right and Wrong, I confess, he puzzles me. I cannot with- 
 out gross inconsistency appeal to his Conscience and Moral Sense, or I 
 should admonish him that, as an honest man, he ought to advertise himself 
 with a Cavete omnes ! Scelus sum. And as an honest man myself, I 
 dare not advise him on prudential grounds to keep his opinions secret, lest 
 I should make myself his accomplice, and be helping him on with a Wrap- 
 rascal. 
 
292 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 [Many persons, who have never carefully reflected upon the grounds of 
 then- belief in the Being and Attributes of God, or learned to distinguisli 
 between those which are subjective, in the reason and conscience, and to 
 be learned by reflection, (see note 10) and those wliich are objective, in tlie 
 order and apparent purj^ose discovered in the world without, may at first 
 be suq^rised at the declarations of the author in the passage, to which tiiis 
 note belongs. A careful examination however, of all his language rcvspect- 
 ing this subject and topics nearly comiected with it, in this passage, in 
 notes 43 and 59, and in the Appendix, will satisfy them, I thmk, not only 
 that his views are not designed, but that they have no tendency to weak- 
 en and misettle our faith. According to his view of tlie subject, tlie true 
 and abiding gi'ound of all efficient and living faith in the Being and Attri- 
 butes of the one holy, all-perfect and personal God, is to be found not in 
 data, facts given (see p, 177) from witliout, but by reflectmg on and deve- 
 loping the inward and inalienable law of our own rational and personal 
 being. The idea of God being thus formed, and a coiTes])onding object- 
 ive reality believed in, on otlier grounds, such a work as Paley's Natural 
 Theology may do much to illustrate his ])ower and skill, as manifested in 
 the works of his hands, but could never prove to the satisfaction of a mind 
 really sceptical the existence of a fii*st cause coiTesponding to the rational 
 idea of God. Is it not indeed a fact, notwithstanding the abundant com- 
 mendation bestowed upon the work of Dr. Paley, the dependence placed 
 upon it in our systems of instruction, and the assertion, that a mind un- 
 satisfied with this argimient is not to be satisfied at all — ^is it not a fact, I 
 say, that many young men of ingenuous minds, but at the same time lo- 
 gical and critical in their enquiries, are lefi; unsatisfied with tlie results of 
 the work. I fear there are many who, having been taught that this is the 
 great and triumphant argument, the sure ground, on which a behef in the 
 existence of God depends, find their faith rather weakened by it than con- 
 firmed, or at best lose more in regard to their views of his character, than 
 they gaui in their belief of his existence. It enters, we must remember, 
 into the very nature of the argument, which Paley has developed, and 
 perhaps no one could have done it more justice, the argument from effects 
 to their causes, I mean, that we can only infer the existence of a cause 
 adequate to the production of the effect. Now what is the effect, for 
 which Dr. Paley seeks a cause, and from which he infers the existence of 
 God ? Simply the manifesta'ion of design, of an intelligent, perhaps also 
 a benevolent purpose, m the works of nature. The cause therefore, accor- 
 ding to Dr. Paley, is an intelligent, probably a benevolent cause ; a being 
 or a power capable of forethought, of forming a purpose and of adapting 
 means to the accomplishment of its purpose. So far too as we can judge, 
 and so far as the practical pur]ioses of the argument are concerned, this 
 causative agency is unhmited in the choice of its ends, and carries them 
 into effect with infinite ])owcr and skill. This seems to me to be a fair 
 
NOTES. 293 
 
 statement of the inference even in Dr. PaJjy's view of tlie sii])ject. But 
 does the cause thus infeiTed answer to our idea of an all-perfect and per- 
 sonal God ? 
 
 To one acquainted with the distinctions unfolded by Coleridge in subse- 
 quent parts of this work, it would convey my view of the subject, to say 
 that the cause here infeiTed corresponds in kind to the powers of the un- 
 derstandmg and the faculty of selection, but does not necessarily involve 
 accordmg to the terms of the argument the distinguishing attributes of 
 pei-sonaUty, viz. reason, self-conciousness, and free-will. But as the read- 
 er is not supposed to have adojjted those disthictions, I beg him to con- 
 sider whether we have not experience, that a power, the same in kind 
 with that to which Dr. Paley's argument, if taken stiictly, leads us, may 
 exist independently and fi-ee from any supposed conjunction with the at- 
 tributes, whatever they are, which constitute ])ersonality. For proof, that 
 we have, I refer hun to the passage of this work in pp. 137 — 154, and if in 
 connexion with this he will carefully and candidly reflect on the notion 
 which he attaches to the words person and personality, and why it is, that 
 his reason revolts at the thought of addressing a brute, as a personal and 
 responsible being, however remarkable his powers may be as a brute, he 
 cannot but be convinced, that there is something in personality and the at- 
 tributes constituting it, which lays the ground of a most sacred and im io- 
 lable distinction. He will be convinced that no possible addition to the 
 degree of those powers, which belong in common to rational and irrational 
 beings, could ever invest a brute agent with the attributes of personaMty ; 
 that there must therefore be a difference in kind, and not in degree only, 
 between those beings to which the notion of personality attaches, and 
 those to which we cannot apply it without a conscious feeling of its ab- 
 surdity ; and that there must be a very great defect and uiadequacy in an 
 argument for the existence of God, which proves at best only the exis- 
 tence of a power, which inay or may not co-exist with personality. 
 
 In his chapter on the personality of the Divine Being, Dr. Paley says : 
 " CONTRIVANCE, if established, a})pears to me to prove every thing, which 
 we wish to prove. Amongst other things it proves the personalitij of the 
 Deity. That, which can contrive, which can design, must be a person." 
 Now let me ask any reader to examine the proofs refeiTed to above, or to 
 recall the facts of his own experience, and say, whether irrational, brute 
 beings do not contiive, ^^'hether they do not design, whether they do not 
 perceive, an €7id, provide means, and direct them to tlieir end ; and whether, 
 if they can and do manifest these powers, it will follow that they ai*e per- 
 sons. If it be a difference of degi*ees merely, there is surely fai* less dif- 
 ference between brutes and men, than between man and his creator ; and 
 there could not be the absurdity, which we should nevertheless be con- 
 scious of committing, in extending the term to them. If it be not a dif- 
 ference of degrees, if i)crsonality involves a difibrcnce in kind, and a dif- 
 ference, which is the ground of a vast and most sacred (.Ustinction, then 
 
291 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Dr. Paley's argument seems to me to fall far short of proving the exist- 
 ence of a l)eing corresponding to the rational idea of God. 
 
 The truth is the argument from effect to cause in this case, as presented 
 by Dr. Paley, includes two distinct things. It infers Jlrst the existence of 
 a cause adequate to the effect. This we do by virtue of a proposition, 
 which, though synthetic, results from the inherent fonns or laws of the 
 human understanding, and is the necessary ground of experience. (See 
 note 67). But secondly it infers the existence of a cause corresponding in 
 its subjective character, or as it is in itself, to the character of the effect, or at 
 least of a cause analogous to loiown causes, which produce similar effects. 
 Now the question arises, whether in either case the inference is authorized 
 or required by the same laws of thought in the imderstanding, as the first in- 
 ference. We see certain effects, means adapted to ends &c., where the cau- 
 sative agency is put forth by men, by rational, personal agents. We disco- 
 ver similar effects in the works of nature, which must be traced to an invisi- 
 ble, unknown cause. How far are we directed by the authority of reason, 
 or required by the laws of the understanding, to infer the nature of the 
 cause here from the nature of the effect, or from the similarity of the effects 
 in the two cases to infer a similarity of the unknown cause to that which 
 is known? Dr. Paley's inference is, that the unknown cause is an intelligent, 
 personal agent, corresponding in kind to the highest known agency, which 
 produces similar effects. But we have seen, I think, that similar effects 
 may be produced by a power inferior in kind, neither rational, nor person- 
 al. How then do we know, or how can Ave learn by this process of ar- 
 guing, that the unknown cause of those effects, which Dr. Paley has ex- 
 hibited, that the mysterious and dread ground of being in all, that exists 
 and that Ave call nature, is not a necessitated as well as a necessary Being 
 or that it is even self-conscious and intelligent. 
 
 If now, as I trust will be the case, the reader shrinks with a conscious 
 feeling of dread and abhorrence from such a conclusion, as impious, I 
 would earnestly beg of him not to charge it u])on me, and at the same time 
 warn him not to ascribe the feeling, which such a conclusion Avould awa- 
 ken, to any convictions of the being and attributes of a personal God, 
 which the supposed strength and influence of Paley's argument may have 
 been thought to produce. That faith m the Being of God, and tliat rever- 
 ence for his holy and perfect character, in virtue of which we shrink from 
 atheism, as a violation of our moral being, as absurd and impious, lie far 
 deeper, than those convictions of the mere understanding, " the faculty 
 judging according to sense," which may have been derived from the argu- 
 ment in question. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [52] p. 124. 
 
 Viriuni ct i)roprietatum, qua^ non nisi dt; jSuftstantibus predicari possunt, 
 formis si</?erstantibus Attributio, est SurEKSTiTio. 
 
NOTES. 295 
 
 [53J p. 128. 
 
 See pp. 42—44. 
 
 [The reader is requested to connect with the subject of this Aphorism 
 and Comment, also note 29, and the passage in the text at i)p. 206 — 218. 
 To tliose, who wish to examine closely the creed of the author, it will be 
 of use also to refer here to the whole article on Redemption, Ijeginning at 
 p. 184.— Am. Ed.] 
 
 [54] p. 134. 
 
 [The following is the passage refeired to in the text extracted from his 
 fii-st Lay Sermon or the Statesman's Manual. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 " In nothing is Scriptural histoiy more strongly contrasted w ith the his- 
 tories of highest note in the present age, than in its freedom from the hol- 
 lowTiess of abstractions. While the latter present a shadow-fight of Things 
 and Quantities, the former gives us the histoiy of Men, and balances the 
 important influence of indi\idual Minds with the previous state of the 
 national morals and manners, in which, as constituting a specific suscep- 
 tibilit}'^, it presents to us the true cause both of the Inuflence itself, and of 
 the Weal or Woe that were its Consequents. How should it be other- 
 wise ? The histories and political economy of the present and preceding 
 century partake in the general contagion of its mechanic philosophy, and 
 are the product of an unenhvened generalizmg Understanding. In the 
 Scriptures they are the living ediids of the Imagination ; of that reconci- 
 ling and mediatory power, which incoi-porating the Reason in Images of 
 the Sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the Senses by the per- 
 manence and self-circling energies of the Reason, gives birth to a system 
 of symbols, hannonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths, 
 of which they are the conductors. These are the Wheels wliich Ezekiel 
 beheld, when the hand of the Lord was upon him, and he saw visions of 
 God as he sate among the captives by the riv^er of Chebar. Whithersoever 
 the Spirit ivas to go, the wheels went, and thither was their spint to go : for 
 the spirit of the living creature ivas in the wheels also. The truths and the 
 symbols that represent them move in conjunction and form the living cha- 
 riot that bears up (for us) the throne of the Divine Humanity. Hence, by 
 a derivative, indeed, but not a divided, influence, and though in a second- 
 ary yet in more than a metaphorical sense, the Sacred Rook is Avorihily 
 intitled the word of god. Hence too, its contents present to us the stream 
 of time continuous as Life and a symbol of Eternity, inasmuch as the 
 Past and the Future are virtually contained in the Present. According 
 therefore to our relative position on its banks the Sacred History becomes 
 prophetic, the Sacred Prophecies historical, while the power and substance 
 of both inhere in its Laws, its Promises, and its Comminations. In the 
 Scriptures therefore both Facts and Persons must of necessity have a two- 
 
20G AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 fold significance, a past and a future, a temporaiy and a pei-petual, a par- 
 ticular and a luiiversal application. They must be at once Portraits and 
 Ideals. 
 
 Elieu! paupertina philosophia in paupertinam religionem ducit: — ^A 
 }iunger-bitte]i and idea-less philosophy naturally produces a starveling and 
 comfortless religion. It is among the miseries of the present age that it 
 recognizes no medium between Literal and Metaphorical. Faith is ei- 
 ther to be buried in the dead letter, or its name and honors usurped by 
 a counterfeit product of the mechanical understanding, which in the 
 Ijlindncss of self-complacency confounds symbols Avith allegories. Now 
 an Allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-language 
 which is itself nothing but an absti-action from objects of the senses ; the 
 princi})al being more Avorthless even than its phantom proxy, both alike 
 unsubstantial, and the former shapeless to boot. On the other hand a Sym- 
 bol (o hir afi ravT),yopiyor) is characterized by a translucence of the Special 
 in the Individual, or of the General in the Especial, or of the Universal in 
 the General. Above all by the translucence of the Eternal through and 
 in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders in- 
 telligible ; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part 
 in that Unity, of which it is the representative. The other are but emj)ty 
 echoes which the fancy arbitrarily associates with apparitions of matter, 
 less beautiful but not less sliadowy than the sloping orchard or hill-side 
 pasture-field seen in the transparent lake below. Alas ! for the flocks that 
 are to be led forth to such pastures ! ^^ It shall even he as ivhen the hungry 
 dreameih, and behold ! he eateth ; hat he ivakeih and his so^d is empty : or as 
 ivhen the thirsty dreameth, and behold he dnnketh : but he aivaketh and is faint /" 
 (Isaiah xxix. 8.) O ! that we would seek for the bread which was given 
 from heaven, that we should eat thereof and be strengthened! O that we 
 would draw at the well, at which the flocks of our forefathers had living 
 water drawn for them, even that water Avhich, instead of mocking the 
 thirst of him to whom it was given, becomes a well withm himself spring- 
 ing up to life everlasting ! 
 
 When we reflect how large a part of our present knowledge and civil- 
 ization is owing, directly or indirectly, to the Bible ; when we are com- 
 pelled to admit, as a fact of histoiy, that tlie Bible has been the main Lev- 
 er L*y which the moral and intellectual character of Europe has been rais- 
 ed to its present comparative height ; we should be struck, methinks, by 
 the marked and prominent difl^erencc of this Book from the works which it 
 is now the fasliion to quote as guides and authorities in morals, politics 
 and history. I will point out a few of the excellencies by which the one 
 is disthignished, and shall leave it to your own judgment and recollection 
 to perceive and a[)p]y the contrast to the productions of highest name in 
 these latter days. In the Bible every agent appears and acts as a self-sub- 
 sisting individual : each has a life of its own, and yet all ai*c one life. The 
 
NOTES. 
 
 297 
 
 elements of necessity and free-will are reconciled in the Iiigher power of 
 an onniipresent Providence, that predestmates the whole in the moral 
 freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible never suffers us to lose 
 sight. The root is never detached from the gi'ound. It is God every 
 where : and all creatures confonn to liis decrees, the righteous by perfor- 
 mance of tlie law, the disobedient by the suffeTance of the penalty." 
 [See also notes 33 and 66. — A^r. Ed.] 
 
 [55] p. 135. 
 
 [The Essay in the Friend referred to in the text, will be found entire 
 in note 59, and the Appendix to the Statesnjan's Manual, in the Appendix 
 to this volimie. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [56] p. 136. 
 
 There is this advantage in the occasional use of a newly minted 
 term or title expressing the doctrinal schemes of particular sects or parties, 
 that it avoids the inconvenience that presses on either side, whether we 
 adopt the name which the Party itself has taken up to express it's pecuhar 
 tenets by, or that by which the same Party is designated by its opponents. 
 If we take the latter, it most often happens that either the pei*sons are 
 invidiously aimed at in the designation of the principles, or that the name 
 implies some consequence or occasional accompaniment of the principles 
 denied by the parties themselves, as applicable to them collectively. On 
 the other hand, con\inced as I am, that cun-ent appellations are never 
 wholly indifferent or inert ; and that, when employed to express the cha- 
 racteristic Belief or Object of a religious confederacy, they exert on the 
 Many a great and constant, though insensible, influence ; I cannot but fear 
 that m adopting the former I may be sacrificmg the interests of Truth be- 
 yond what the duties of courtesy can demand or justify. In a tract pubhshed 
 in the year 1816, I have stated my objections to tlie word Unitarians: as a 
 name which in its proper sense can belong only to the Maintainers of the 
 Truth impugned by the persons, who have chosen it as then' designation. 
 "For Unity or Unition, and indistinguishable Unicity or sameness, are 
 incompatible tenns. We never speak of the Unity of Attraction, or the 
 Unity of Repulsion ; but of the Unity of Attraction and Repulsion in each 
 corpuscle. Indeed, the essential diversity of the conceptions. Unity and 
 Sameness, was among the elementaiy principles of the old Logicians; and 
 Leibnitz in his critique on Wissowaiius has ably exposed the sophisms 
 grounded on the confusion of the two terms. But in the exclusive sense, 
 in which the name. Unitarian, is appropriated by the Sect, and in which 
 they mean it to be understood, it is a presumptuous Boast and an unchari- 
 table calumny. No one of the Churches to which they on this article of 
 the Christian Faith stand opposed, Greek or Latin, ever adopted the term, 
 Trini — or Tri-uni-tarians as their ordinary and proper name : and had it 
 
 38 
 
298 AIDS TO REFLFX'TION. 
 
 been otherwise, yet Unity is assuredly no logical Opposite to Tri-iniity, 
 which expressly includes it. The triple Alliance is a fortiori Alliance. 
 The true designation of their characteristic Tenet, and which would sim- 
 ply and inoffensively express a fact admitted on all sides, is Psilanthropism 
 or the assertion of the mere humanity of Christ." 
 
 I dare not hesitate to avow my regret, that any scheme of doctrines or 
 tenets should be the subject of penal law: though I can easily con- 
 ceive, that any scheme, however excellent in itself, may be propagated, 
 and however false or injurious, may be assailed, in a manner and by 
 means that would make the Advocate or Assailant justly punishable. But 
 then it is the manner, the means, that constitute the ciime. The merit or 
 demerit of ihe Opinions themselves depends on their originating and de- 
 termining causes, which may differ in every different Believer, and are 
 certainly known to Him alone, who commanded us — Judge not, lest ye be 
 judged. At all events, in the present state of the Law, I do not see where 
 we can begin, or where we can stop, without inconsistency and conse- 
 quent hardship. Judgmg by all that we can j)retend to know or are en- 
 titled to mfer, who among us will take on himself to deny that the late 
 Dr. Priestley was a good and benevolent man, as sincere in his love, as he 
 was intrepid and indefatigable in his pursuit, of Truth? Now let us con- 
 struct three parallel tables, the first containing the Articles of Belief, moral 
 and theological, maintained by the venerable Hooker, as the representative 
 of the Estabhshed Church, each article being distinctly lined and number- 
 ed ; the second the Tenets and Persuasions of Lord Herbert, as the repre- 
 sentative of the platonizing Deists; and the third, those of Dr. Priestley. 
 Let the points, in which the second and third agi-ee with or differ from 
 the first, be considered as to the comparative number modified by the 
 comparative weight and importance of the several points — and let any 
 competent and upright Man be appointed the Arbiter, to decide according 
 to his best judgement, without any reference to the truth of the opinions, 
 which of the two differed from the first more widely ! I say this, well 
 aware that it would be abundantly more prudent to leave it unsaid. But 
 I say it in the conviction, that the liberality in the adoption of admitted 
 misnomers in the naming of doctrinal systems, if only they have been 
 negatively legalized, is but an equivocal proof of liberality towards the 
 persons who dissent from us. On the contrary, I more than suspect that 
 the former liberality does in too many men arise from a latent pre-dispo- 
 sition to transfer their reprobation and intolerance from the Doctrines to 
 the Doctors, from the BeUef to the Believers. Indecency, Abuse, Scoffing 
 on subjects dear and awful to a'multitude of our fellow-citizens — Appeals 
 to the vanity, appetites, and malignant passions of ignorant and incompe- 
 tent judges — ^these are flagrant overt-acts, condemned by the Law written 
 in the heart of every honest man, Jew, Tin-k, and Christian. These are 
 points respecting which the humblest honest man feels it his duty to hold 
 himself infallible, and dares not hesitate in giving utterance to the verdict 
 
NOTES. 299 
 
 of his conscience, in the Jury-box as fearlessly as by his fireside. It is far 
 otherwise with respect to matters of faith and inward conviction : and 
 with respect to these I say — Tolerate no Belief, that you judge false and of 
 injiu'ious tendency : and arrai^ai no Believer. The Man is more and other 
 than his Belief: and God only knows, how small or how large a part of 
 him the Belief in question may be, for good or for evil. Resist every 
 false doctrine: and call no man heretic. The false doctrine does not 
 necessarily make tlie man a heretic ; but an evil heart can make any doc- 
 trine heretical. 
 
 Actuated by these principles, I have objected to a false and deceptive 
 designation in the case of one System. Pei"suaded, that the doctrmes, 
 enumerated in p. 127 — 128, are not only essential to the Christian Religion, 
 but those which contra-(hstinguish the religion as Christian^ I merely 
 repeat this persuasion in an otlier form, when I assert, that (in my sense of 
 tlie word. Christian) unitarianism is not Christianity. But do I say, that 
 those, who call themselves Unitarians, are not Christians? God forbid! 
 I would not think, much less promulgate, a judgement at once so pre- 
 sumptuous and so laicharitajjle. Let a friendly antagonist retort on my 
 scheme of faith, in the like manner : I shall respect him all the more for 
 his consistency as a reasoner, and not confide the less in his kindness 
 towards me as his Neighbour and Fellow-christimi. This latter and most 
 endearing name I scarcely know how to withhold even fi*om my friend, 
 Hyman Hurwitz, as often as I read what every Reverer of Holy Writ and 
 of the English Bible ought to read, his admirable ViNDiciiE Hebraic^! 
 It has trembled on the verge, as it were, of my Ups, every time I have 
 conversed with that pious, learned, strong-minded, and single-hearted Jew, 
 an Israehte indeed and without guile — 
 
 Cujus cura sequi naturam, legibus uti, 
 Et rnentem vitiis, ora negare dolis ; 
 Virtutes opibus, verum prseponere falso, 
 
 Nil vacuum sensu dicere, nil facere. 
 Post obitum vivani sccum, secum requiescam. 
 Nee fiat melior sors mea sorte sua ! 
 
 From, a poem of Hildehert on his Master^ 
 the persecuted Berengarius. 
 
 Under the same feelings I conclude this Aid to Rejlection by applying 
 the principle to another misnomer not less mappropriate and far more in - 
 fluential. Of those, whom I have fourd most reason to respect and value, 
 many have been members of the Church of Rome : aud certainly I did not 
 honour those the least, who scruplejl even in common parlance to call 
 our Church a Reformed Church. A similar scruple woidd not, methinks, 
 disgrace a protestant as to the use of the words. Catholic or Ronian 
 Catholic ; and if (tacitly at least, and in thought) he remembered that the 
 
300 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Romish Anti-catholic Church would more truly express the fact. — Romish, 
 to mark that the corruptions in discipline, doctrine, and practice do, for the 
 far larger part, owe both their origin and perpetuation to the Romish 
 Cowi, and the local Tribunals of the City of Rome; and neither arc or ev- 
 er have been Catholic, i. cuniversa], throughout the Homairi Empire, or 
 even in the whole Latin or Western Church — and Anti-catholic, because 
 no other Chm-ch acts on. so narrow and excomniunicative a principle, or 
 is characterized by such a jealous spirit of monopoly. Instead of a Cath- 
 olic (universal) spirit it may be ti'uly described as a spirit of particularism 
 counterfeitmg CathoUcity by a negative totality and heretical self-circiun- 
 scription — in the fu-st instances cutting off, and since then cutting herself 
 off from, all the other members of Christ's Body. For tlie rest, I think 
 as that mail of true catholic spirit and apostolic zeal, Richard Baxter, 
 tliought; and my readers will thank me for conveying my reflections in his 
 own words, in the following golden passages from liis Life, "faithfully pub- 
 hshed from his own original MSS. by Mathew Sylvester, 1696." 
 
 " My censures of the Baptists do much differ from what they W;'»re 
 at first I then thought, that their eiTors in tlie doctrines of faith were 
 their most dangerous mistakes. But now I am assured that their misex- 
 pressions and misunderstanding us, with our mistakes of them and incon- 
 venient expressions of our own opinions, have made the difference in 
 most points appear much gi'eater than it is ; and that in some it is next to 
 none at all. But the great and unreconcilable differences lie in their 
 Church Tyranny ; in the usuipations of their Hierarchy, and Priesthood, 
 under tlie name of spiritual, authority exercismg a temporal Lordshij) ; 
 in their corniptions and abasement of God's Worship, but above ail in their 
 systematic befriending of Ignorance and Vice. 
 
 " At first I thought that Mr. Perkins well proved, that a Baptist cannot 
 go beyond a reprobate ; but now I doubt not that God hath many sancti- 
 fied ones among them who have received the true doctrine of Christianity 
 so practically that their contradictory errors are like a conquerable dose of 
 I)oison vs'hich a healthful nature doth overcome. And I can neve?- believe 
 that a man may not he saved hy that religion, which doth bid bnng him to the 
 true love of God and to a heavenly mind and life : nor that God ivill ever cast 
 a Sold into hell, that tndy loveth him. Also at first it would disgrace any 
 doctrme witli me if I did ])ut hear it called Popery and anti-christian ; 
 but I have long learned to be more impartial, and to know that Satan can 
 use even the names of Popery and Antichrist, to bring a truth into sus- 
 picion and discredit." — Baxter's Life, part I. p. 13L 
 
 [57] }>. 143. 
 
 According as we attend more or less to the differences, the Sort becomes, 
 of course, more or less compreher.sive. Hence there arises for the system- 
 atic Naturahst the necessity of s ibdividing the Sorts into Orders, Classes, 
 
NOTES. 301 
 
 Families, &c. : all which, however, resolve themselves for the mere Logi- 
 cian into the conception of Genus and Species, i. e. the comprehending; 
 and the comprehended. 
 
 [58] p. 144. 
 
 Were it not so, how could the first comparison have been possible ? It 
 would involve the absurdity of measuruig a tiling by itself. But if we fix on 
 , some one thing, the length of our own foot, or of our hand and arm from 
 the elbow joint, it is evident that in order to do this we must have the con- 
 ception of Measure. Now these antecedent and most general Conceptions 
 are what is meant by tlie constituent /o/vjw of the Understanding : we call 
 them constituent because they are not acquired l)y the Understanding, but 
 are im})lied m its constitution. As rationally might a Circle be said to ac- 
 quire a centre and circumference, as the Understanding to acquke these 
 its inherent forms, or ways of conceiving. This is v/hat Leibnitz meant, 
 when to the old adage of the Peripatetics, Nihil m intellectu quod non 
 prius m Sensu ( There is nothing in the Understanding not derived from 
 the Senses, or — There is nothing co?iceived that was not previously ^per- 
 ceived); he repUed — praetor intellectum ipsum (except the understanding 
 itself). 
 
 And here let me remark for once and all : whoever would reflect to any 
 purpose — whoever is in earnest in his pursuit of Self-knowledge, and of 
 one of the principal means to this, an insight into the meaning of the 
 words he uses and the different meanings properly or improperly conveyed 
 by one and the same word, according as it is used in the Schools or the 
 Market, according as the kind or a high degree is intended (ex. gr. Heat, 
 Weight, &c. as employed scientifically, compared with the same word 
 used popularly — whoever, I say, seriously proposes this as his Object, 
 must so far overcome his dishke of pedantiy, and his dread of being sneered 
 at as a Pedant, as not to quaiTel with an uncouth word or phrase, till lie is 
 quite sure that some other and more familiar would not only have expressed 
 the precise meaning with equal clearness, but have been as likely to draw 
 his attention to this meaning exclusively. The ordinaiy language of a 
 Philosopher in conversation or popular WTitings, compared with the lan- 
 guage he uses in strict reasoning, is as his Watch compared with the 
 Chronometer in his 01)sei'vatoiy. He sets the former by the Town-clock, 
 or even, perhaps, by the Dutch clock in his kitchen, not because he be- 
 lieves it right, but because his neighbours and his Cook go by it. To af- 
 ford the reader an opportunity for exercising the forbearance here recom- 
 mended, I turn back to the phrase, "most general Conceptions," and ob- 
 serve, that in strict and severe propriety of language I should have said 
 gencralijic or genei-ific ratlier than general, and Concipiences or Conceptive 
 Acts rather than conceptions. 
 It is an old Complamt, that a JMan of Genius no sooner appears, 
 
303 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 but the Host of Dunces are up in arms to repel the hivading Alien. This 
 ohservation would have made more couA^eits to its truth, I suspect, had it 
 been worded more dispassionately, and with a less contemptuous antithe- 
 sis. For "Dunces" let us substitute " the Many,'" or the '' bno; y.onuog-' 
 {this ivoiid) of the Apostle, and we shall perhaps find no great difficulty m 
 accounting for the fact. To arrive at the root, indeed, and last Ground of 
 the problem, it would be necessary to investigate the nature and effects 
 of the sense of Difference on the human mind where it is not held in 
 check by Reason and Reflection. We need not go to the savage tiibes of 
 North America, or the yet ruder Natives of the Indian Isles, to learn how 
 slight a degi'ee of Difference Avill, in uncultured minds, call up a sense of 
 Diversity, an inward pei-plexity and contradiction, as if the Strangers 
 were and yet were not of tlie same kind with themselves. Who has not 
 had occasion to obsei-ve the effect which the gesticulations and nasal tones 
 of a Frenchman produce on our own Vulgar? Here we may see the 
 origin and primary imi)ort of our " Unkindness.''^ It is a sense of Unkind, 
 and not the mere negation but the positive Opposite of the sense of kind. 
 Alienation, aggravated now by fear, now b}'^ contempt, and not seldom by 
 a mixture of both, aversion, hatred, enmity, are so many successive shapes 
 of its growth and metamorphosis. In application to the present case, it is 
 sufficient to say, that Pindai''s remark on sweet Music holds equally true 
 of Genius : as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, 
 irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected Form of his 
 own Being, that moves before him with a Gloiy round its head, or recoils 
 from it as from a Spectre. But this si^eculation would lead us too far ; we 
 must be content with having referred to it as the ultimate ground of the 
 fact, and pass to the more obvious and proximate causes. And as the first 
 I would rank the person's not understanding what yet he expects to un- 
 derstand, and as if he had a right to do so. An original Mathematical 
 Work, or any other that requires peculiar and (so to say) technical marks 
 and symbols, will excite no uneasy feelings — not ui the mind of a compc 
 tent Reader, for he understands it; and not with others, because they nei 
 ther expect nor are expected to understand it. The second place we may 
 assign to the Jliwunderstanding, which is almost sure to follow in cases 
 where the incompetent person, finding no outward marks (Diagrams, ar- 
 bitrary signs, and the hke) to inform him at first sight, that the subject is 
 one which he does not pretend to understand, and to be ignorant of which 
 does not deti'act from his estimation as a man of a1)ilities generally, ivilL 
 attach some meaning to what he hears or reads ; and as he is out of hu- 
 mour with the Author, it will most often be such a meaning as he can 
 quarrel vvith and exliibit in a ridiculous or offensive point of view. 
 
 But above all, the wliole World almost of IMinds, as far as regards intel- 
 lectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the Busy-mdolent and 
 Lazy-indolent. To both alike all Thinking is painful ; and all attempts to 
 rouse them to think, whether in the re-examination of their existing Con- 
 
NOTES. oUo 
 
 victions, or for the reception of new light, are iiritating. "It?nm/all be 
 very deep and clever ; but really one ought to be quite sure of it before 
 one vn-enches one's brain to find out what it is. I take up a Book as a 
 Companion, with whom I can have an easy cheerful chit-chat on what we 
 both know beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure hours we 
 liave a right to relaxation and amusement." 
 
 Well ! but in tlieir studious hours, when their Bow is to be bent, when 
 they are apud Musas, or amidst the Muses ? Alas ! it is just the same ! 
 The same craving for amusement i. e. to be away from the Muses ! for re- 
 laxation, i. e. the unbending of a Bow which in foct had never been strung ! 
 There are two ways of obtaining their applause. The fii'st is : Enable 
 them to reconcile in one and the same occupation the love of Sloth and the 
 hatred of vacancy ! Gratify mdolence, and yet save them from Ennui — 
 in plam English, from themselves ! For, spite of their antipathy to dinj rea- 
 ding, the keeping company with themselves is, after all, the insufferable 
 annoyance : and the true secret of their dislike to a work of Thought and 
 Inquiiy lies in its tendency to make them acquainted with their own per- 
 manent Being. The other road to their favour is to introduce to them 
 their o^vn thoughts and predilections, tricked out in the Jine language, in 
 w^hich it would gratify their vanity to express them in their own convcr- 
 versation, and with which they can imagine themselves shoiving off: and 
 this (as has been elsewhere remarked) is the characteristic difference be- 
 tween the second-rate Writers of the last two or three generations, and 
 the same class under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In the latter we find the 
 most far-fetched and singular thoughts m the simplest and most native 
 language ; in the former the most obvious and common-place thoughts in 
 the most far-fetched and motley language. But lastly, and as the sine qua 
 non of theii- patronage, a sufficient arc must be left for the Reader's mind 
 to oscillate in — freedom of choice, 
 
 To make the shifting cloud be what you please, 
 save only where the attraction of Curiosity determines the line of Motion 
 The Attention must not be fastened down : and this every work of Gen- 
 ius, not shnply narrative, must do before it can be justly appreciated. 
 
 In former times a popidar work meant one that adapted the residts of 
 studious Meditation or scientific Research to the capacity of the People, 
 presenting in the Concrete, by instances and examples, what had been as- 
 certained in the Abstract and by discoveiy of tiie Law. J\''ow on the other 
 hand, that is a popular Work which gives back to the People their o^vn 
 errors and prejudices, and flatters the Many by creating them, under the 
 title of THE PUBLIC, into a supreme and mappellable Tribunal of intellectu- 
 al Excellence. P. S. in a continuous work, the frequent msertion and 
 length of Notes would need an Apology : in a book of Aphorisms and de- 
 tached Comments none is necessary, it being understood beforehand, that 
 the Sauce and the Garnish are to occupy the greater part of the Dish. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
304 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 [59] p. 145. 
 
 Take a familiar illustration. My Sight and Touch convey to me a 
 certain impression, to which my Under^an ding applies it's pre-conceptions 
 {conceptus antecedenies et generalissimi) of Quantity and Relation, and thus 
 refers it to the Class and Name of tliree-cornered Bodies — we will sup- 
 pose it the Iron of a Turf-spade . It compares the sides, and finds that 
 any two measured as one are greater than the third ; and according to a 
 law of the imagination, there arises a presumption that in all other Bodies 
 of the same figure(i. c. three-cornered and equilateral) the same proportion 
 exists. After this, the senses have heen directed successively to a number 
 of three-cornered bodies of unequal sides — and in these too the same pro- 
 portion has been found without exception till at length it becomes a 
 fact of experience, that in all Triangles, hitherto seen, the two sides are 
 greater than the third : and there will exist no ground or analogy for an- 
 ticipating an exception to a Rule, generalized from so vast a number of 
 particular instances. So far and no farther could the Understanding cany 
 us : and as far as this "the facidty, judging according to sense," conducts 
 many of the infeiior animals, if not in the same, yet instances analogous 
 and fully equivalent. 
 
 The Reason supersedes the whole process : and on the first conception 
 presented by the Understanding in consequence of the first sight of a tri- 
 angular Figure, of whatever sort it might chance to be, it affirms with an 
 assurance incapable of future increase, Avith a perfect certainty, that in all 
 possible Triangles any two of the inclosing liines will and must be greater 
 than the third. In short, Understanding in its highest form of Experience 
 remains commensurate with the experimental notices of the senses, from 
 which it is generalized. Reason, on the other hand, either predetermines 
 Experience, or avails itself of a past Experience to supersede its necessity 
 in all future time ; and affirms truths which no Sense could perceive, nor 
 Experiment verify, nor Experience confirm. 
 
 Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that in its own 
 proper form it is inconceivable. For to conceive is a function of the Under- 
 standing, which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. 
 And yet to the forms of the Understanding all truth must be reduced, that 
 is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered expressible. 
 And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can 
 come forth out of the moulds of the Understanding only in the disguise of 
 two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the 
 conjunction of both conceiDtions becomes the representative or expression 
 (r=the exponent) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. Exam- 
 ples. Before Abraham was, I am. — God is a Circle whose centre is eveiy 
 where and circumference no where. — The Soul is all in every part. 
 
 If this appear extravagant, it is an extravagance which no man can in- 
 deed leurn from another, but which (were this possible) I might have 
 
NOTES. 
 
 305 
 
 learnt from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon; from Luther, Hooker, Pascal, 
 Leibnitz, and Fenelon. But in this last paragraph I have, I see, un- 
 wittingly overstepped my purpose, according to which we were to take 
 Reason as a simply intellectual power. Yet even as such, and with all 
 the disadvantage of a technical and arbitrary Abstraction, it has been 
 made evident — 1. tliat there is an intuition or immediate Beholding, ac- 
 companied by a conviction of the necessity and universality of the truth 
 so beheld not derived from the Senses, which Intuition, when it is con- 
 strued by pure Sense, gives birth to the Science of Mathematics, and when 
 applied to Objects supersensuous or spiritual, is the Organ of Theology 
 and Philosophy ; — and 2. that there is hkewise a reflective and discursive 
 Faculty, or mediate Apprehension, which, taken by itself and uninfluenced 
 by the former, depends on the Senses for the Materials on which it is 
 exercised, and is contained within the Sphere of the Senses. And this 
 Faculty it is, which, in generalizing the Notices of the Senses, constitutes 
 Sensible Experience, and gives rise to Maxims or Rules, which may 
 become more and more genercd, but can never be raised to universal 
 Verities, or beget a consciousness of absolute Certainty ; though they may 
 be sufficient to extinguish all doubt. (Putting Revelation out of view, 
 take our first Progenitor in the 50th or 100th year of his existence. His 
 Experience would probably have freed him from all doubt, as the Sun 
 sunk in the Horizon, that it would re-appear the next morning. But com- 
 pare this state of Assurance with that which the same man would have 
 had of the 37th Proposition of Euclid, supposing him like Pythagoras to 
 have discovered the Demonstration). Now is it expedient, I ask, or con- 
 formable to the laws and purposes of Language, to call two so altogether 
 disparate Subjects by one and the same name ? Or, having two names 
 in our language, should we call each of the two diverse subjects by both 
 — i. 6. by either name, as caprice might dictate ? If not, then as we have 
 the two words. Reason and Understanding (as indeed what Language of 
 cultivated Man has not?) what should prevent us from appropriating the 
 former to the Power distinctive of Humanity ? We need only place the 
 derivatives from the two terms in opposition {ex. gr. "A and B are both 
 rational Beings ; but there is no comparison between them in point of 
 intelligence^'' or " She always concludes rationally^ though not a Woman of 
 much Understanding^^) to see, that we cannot reverse the order — i. e, call the 
 higher Gift Understanding, and the lower. Reason. What should prevent 
 us — I asked. Alas! that which has prevented us — ^the cause of this confu- 
 sion in the terms — ^is only too obvious : viz. inattentio'n to the momentous 
 distinction in the things, and (generally) to the duty and haliit recommend- 
 ed in the Vth Introductory Aphorism of this Volume, {see ]). 2.) But the 
 cause of this, and of all its lamentable Effects and Subcauscs, "false doc- 
 trine, blindness of Heart and contempt of the Word,'Msbest declared by- the 
 philosophic Aposde : " they did not like to retain God in their knowledge," 
 
 39 
 
306 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 (Rom. i. 28,) and though they could not extinguish "the Light that hghteth 
 every man,''^ and which " slione in the Daikness ;" yet because the Dark 
 ness could not comprehend the Light, they refused to bear witness of the 
 Light, and worshipped, instead, the shaping Mist, wliich the Light had 
 drawn upward from the Ground (i. e. from the mere Animal nature and 
 instinct), and which that Light alone had made visible (i. e. by super-indu- 
 cing on the animal instinct the piinciple of Self-consciousness). 
 
 [The subject of the Comment to which this note is attached, and of tlie 
 note itself, I consider, and it is indeed represented by the author, as veiy 
 essential to the right apprehension of the whole system. The distinction 
 between reason and tlie understanding, and that between nature and the 
 free-will, are indeed the ground of all that is most peculiar and important 
 in the author's views ; and I have wished particularly to aid the reader, as 
 far as may be, in obtaining a distinct notion of their import. The passages, 
 which best illustrate the latter distinction, were referred to in note 29 ; and 
 I propose to bring together, here, the means of illustrating the former, so 
 far as I can well find them in the works of the author. The following Es- 
 say is the one referred to, p. 135 and note 55, and is fi-om the Friend, vol. 
 1, p. 263 — ^277. In connexion with it the reader is requested to peruse 
 note [C] in the appendix to the Statesman's Manual, near the end of this 
 volume. See also note 43, and the references there made, and note ^, 
 
 " In the Appendix to his first Lay Sermon, the Author has indeed treat- 
 ed the question at considerable length, but chiefly in relation to the heights 
 of Theology and Metaphysics. In the next number he attempts to ex- 
 plain himself more popularly, and trusts that with no great expenditure of 
 attention the reader will satisfy his mind, that our remote ancestors spoke 
 as men acquainted with the constituent parts of then* own moral and in- 
 tellectual being, when they described one man as being out of his senses^ 
 another as out of his tvits, or deranged in his understanding, and a third as 
 having lost his reason. Observe, the imderstanding may be deranged, iveak- 
 ened, or perverted; but the reeison is either lost or not lost, that is, wholly 
 present or wholly absent*" 
 
 ESSAY. 
 
 Man may rather be defined a religious than a rational character, in re- 
 gard that in other creatures there may be something of Reason, but there 
 is nothing of Religion. Harrington. 
 
 If the Reader will substitute the word " Understanding" for " Reason," 
 and the word " Reason" for " Religion," Harrington has Iiere completely 
 expressed the Truth for which the Friend is contending. But that this 
 was Harrington's meaning is evident. Otherwise instead of comparing 
 two faculties with each other, he woidd contrast a facidty with one of its 
 own objects, which would involve the same absurdity as if he had said. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 307 
 
 that man might rather be defined an astronomical than a seeing animal, 
 because other animals possessed the sense of Sight, but were incapable 
 of beholding the satellites of Saturn, or the nebula? of fixed stars. If 
 further confirmation be necessary, it may be supplied by the following re- 
 flection, the leading thought of which I remembe^r to have read in the 
 works of a continental Philosoi)her. It should seem easy to give tlic de- 
 finite distinction of the Reason from the Underetanding, because we con- 
 stantly imply it when we speak of the difference between ourselves and 
 the brute creation. No one, except as a figure of speech, ever speaks of 
 an animal reason ;* but that many animals possess a share of Understand- 
 ing, perfectly distinguishable from mere Instinct, we all allow. Few persons 
 have a favorite dog wiUiout making mstances of its intelhgence ;an occa- 
 sional topic of conversation. They call for our admiration of the mdivid- 
 ual animal, and not with exclusive reference to the Wisdom in Nature, as 
 in the case of the slorg^ or maternal instinct of beasts ; or of the hexan- 
 gular cells of the bees, and the wondei-ful coincidence of tliis form with 
 the geometrical demonstration of the largest jiossible number of rooms hi 
 a given space. Likewise, we distinguish various degrees of Understanding 
 there, and even discover, from inductions supplied by the Zoologists, that 
 the Understanding appears (as a general rule) in an inveree proportion to 
 the Instinct. We hear little or nothing of the instincts of "the half-rea- 
 soning elephant," and as little of the Understanding of Caterpillars and 
 Buttei-flies. (N. B. Though reasoning does not in our language, in the 
 lax use of words natural in conversation or populai' writings, imply scien- 
 tific conclusion, yet the phrase "half-reasoning" is evidently used by Pope 
 as a poetic hyperbole.) But reason is wholly denied, equally to the high- 
 est as to the lowest of the brutes ; otherwise it must be wholly attriljuted 
 to them, and witli it therefore Self-consciousness, and personality^ or Moral 
 Being." 
 I should have no objection to defmc Reason with Jacobi, and with his 
 
 *I have this moment looked over a Translation of Blumenbach's Physi- 
 ology by Dr. Elliotson, which forms a gkmug excepiwn, p. 45. I do not 
 know Dr. Elliotson, but I do know Professor Blumenbach, and was an as- 
 siduous attendant on the Lectures, of which this classical work was the 
 text-book : and I know that that good and great man would start back 
 with surprise and indignation at the gross materialism morticed on to his 
 work : the more so because during the whole period, in which the identi- 
 fication of Man with the Brute in kind was the fashion of Naturalists, Blu- 
 menbach remained ardent and instant in controverting the opinion, aad 
 exposing its fallacy and falsehood, both as a man of sense and as a Natu- 
 ralist. I may truly say, that it was uppermost in his heart and foremost in 
 his speech. Therefore^ and from no hostile feeling to Dr. Elliotson (whom 
 I hear spoken of with great regard and respect, and to whom I myself 
 give credit for his manly openness in the avowal of his opinions) I have felt 
 the present animadversion a duty of justice as well as gratitude. 
 
 S. T. t:.— 8 AprU, 1817. 
 
308 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 friend Hemsterhuis, as an organ bearing the same relation to spiritual ob- 
 jects, the Universal, the Eternal, and the Necessary, as the eye beai*s to 
 material and contingent pha^nomena. Kut then it must be added, that it 
 is an organ identical with its appropriate objects. Thus, God, the Soul, 
 eternal Truth, &c. are the objects of Reason ; but they are themselves 
 reason. Wc name God the Supreme Reason ; and Milton says, " Whence 
 the Soul Reason receives, and Reason is her Beuig." Whatever is 
 conscious S'eZ/'-knowledge is Reason ; and in this sense it may be safely 
 defined the organ of the Supersensuous ; even as the Understanding 
 Avherever it does not possess or use the Reason, as another and inward 
 eye, may bo defined the conception of the Sensuous, or the faculty by 
 which we generalize and arrange the phsenomena of perception : that fac- 
 ulty, the functions of which contain the rules and constitute the possibihty 
 of outward Experience. In short, the Understanding supposes something 
 that is understood. This may be merely its own acts or forms, that is, for- 
 mal Logic ; but real objects, the materials of substantial knowledge, must 
 be furnished, we might safely say revealed, to it by Organs of Sense. The 
 understanding of the higher Brutes has only organs of outward sense, and 
 consequently material objects only ; biU man's understanding has likewise 
 an organ of inward sense, and therefore the power of acquaintuig itself 
 with invisible reahties or sjiiritual objects. This organ is his Reason. 
 Again, the Understanding and Experience may exist* without Reason. 
 But Reason cannot exist without Understanding ; nor does it or can it ma- 
 nifest itself but in and through the understanding, which in our elder wri- 
 ters is often called discourse, or the discursive faculty, as by Hooker, Lord 
 Bacon, and llobbes : and an understanding enlightened by reason Shaks- 
 pear gives as the contra-distinguishing character of man, under the name 
 discourse of reason. In short, the human understanding possesses two dis- 
 tinct organs, the outward sense, and "the mind's eye" which is reason: 
 wherever we use that phrase (the mind's eye) in its proper sense, and not 
 as a mere synonyme of the memoiy or the fancy. In this way we recon- 
 cile the promise of Revelation, that the blessed will see God, with the de- 
 claration of St. John, God hath no one seen at any time. 
 
 We will add one other illustration to prevent any misconception, as if 
 we were dividing the human soul into different essences, or ideal persons. 
 In this piece of steel I acknowledge the properties of hardness, brittleness, 
 
 *Of this no one would feel inclined to doubt, who had seen the poodle 
 dog, whom the celebrated Blumenbach, a name so dear to science, as a 
 physiologist and Comparative Anatomist, and not less dear as a man, to 
 all Englishmen who have ever resided at Gottingen in the course of their 
 education, trained uj), not only to hatch the eggs of the hen with all the 
 mother's care and i)atie]ice, but to attend the chickens afterwards, and find 
 the food for them. I have myself knoAvn a Ne^vfoundland dog who 
 watched and guarded a family of young children with all the intelhgencc 
 of a nurse, during their walks. 
 
NOTES. 309 
 
 high polish, and the capabiUty of fonning a mirror. I find all these like- 
 wise in the plate glass of a friend's carriage ; but in addition to all these, I 
 find the quaUty of transparency, or the power of transmitting as well as of 
 reflecting the rays of Ught. The application is obvious. 
 
 If the ^reader therefore will take the trouble of bearing in mind these 
 and the following explanations, he will have removed beforehand every 
 possible difficulty from the Friend's political section. For there is anotlier 
 use of the word, Reason, arising out of the former indeed, but less de- 
 finite, and more exposed to misconception. In this latter use it means the 
 understanding considered as using the Reason, so far as by the organ of 
 Reason only we possess the ideas of the Necessary and the Universal ; 
 and this is the more common use of the word, when it is applied with any 
 attempt at clear and distmct conceptions. In this narrower and derivative 
 sense the best definition of Reason, which I can give, will be found in the 
 third member of the following sentence, in which the miderstanding is 
 described m its three-fold operation, and from each receives an appropri- 
 ate name. The Sense, (\is sensitiva vel intuitiva) joerceives : Vis regula- 
 trLx (the undei*standing, in its own peculiar operation) conceives: Vis ra- 
 tionalis (the Reason or rationalized understanding) comprehends. The first 
 is impressed through the organs of sense ; the second combines these mul- 
 tifarious impressions into individual JVbtions, and by reducing these notions 
 to Rules, according to the analogy of all its former notices, constitutes Ex- 
 perience ; tlie third subordinates both these notions and the rules of Ex- 
 perience to ABSOLUTE PRINCIPLES or neccssary Laws : and thus, concern- 
 ing objects, which our experience has proved to have real existence, it de- 
 monstrates, moreover, in what way they are possible, and in doing this con- 
 stitutes Sciejice. Reason, therefore, in this secondaiy sense, and used, not 
 as a spiritual Organ but as a Faculty (namely, the Understanding or Soul 
 evVghtened by that organ) — ^Reason, I say, or the scientijic Faculty, is the 
 Intellection of the possibility or essential properties of things by means of 
 the Laws that constitute them. Thus tlie rationed idea of a Circle is tliat 
 of a figure constituted by the cu'cumvolution of a straight line with its one 
 end fixed. 
 
 Every man must feel, that though he may not be exerting different fac- 
 ulties, he is exerting his faculties in a different way, when in one instance 
 he begins with some one self-evident truth, (that the radii of a circle, for 
 instance, are all equal,) and in consequence of this being true sees at once 
 without any actual experience, that some other thing must be true hkewise 
 and that, this being true, some third thing must be equally true, and so on 
 till he comes, we Avill say, to the properties of the lever, considered as tJie 
 spoke of a circle ; which is capable of having all its marvellous powers 
 demonstrated even to a savage who had never seen a lever, and without 
 supposing any other previous knowledge in his mind, but this one, that 
 there is a conceivable figure, all possible lines from the middle to the cir- 
 cumference of which are of the same length : or when, m the second in- 
 
310 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 stance, he brings together the facts of experience, each of which has its 
 own separate value, neither encreased nor diminished by the truth of any 
 other fact which may liave preceded it : and making these several facts 
 bear upon some particular project, and finding some in favour of it, and 
 some against it, determines for or against the project, according as one or 
 the other class of facts preponderate : as, for instance, whether it would 
 be better to plant a particular spot of ground with larch, or with Scotch 
 fir, or with 03k in preference to either. Surely every man will acknowl- 
 edge, that his mind was very differently employed in the first case from 
 what it was in the second ; and all men have agreed to call the results of 
 the first class tlie truths of science, such as not only are true, but which it 
 is impossible to conceive otherwise : while the results of the second class 
 are called facts, or things of experience ; and as to these latter we must 
 often content ourselves wiih tlie greater probahUity, that they are so, or so, 
 rather than otherwise — nay, even when we have no doubt that they are so 
 in the paiticular case, we never presume to assert that they must continue 
 so always, and under all circumstances. On the contrary, our conclusions 
 depend altogether on contingent circumstances. Now when the mind is 
 employed as in the case fii-st-mentioned, I call it Reasoning, or the use of 
 the pure Reason ; but, in the second case, the Understanding or Prudence. 
 This Reason applied to tlie motives of our conduct, and combined with 
 the sense of our moral responsibility, is the conditional cause of Conscience, 
 which is a spiritual sense or testifying state of the coincidence or discord- 
 ance of the FREE WILL witli the Reason. But as the reasoning consists 
 wholly in a man's power of seeing, whether any two ideas, which happen 
 to be in his mind, are, or are not, in contradiction with each other, it fol- 
 lows of necessity, not only that all men have reason, but that every man 
 has it in the same degree. For Reasoning (or Reason, in this its secondai-y 
 sense) does not consist in the Ideas, or in their clearness, but simply, when 
 they are in the mind, in seeing whether they contradict each other or no. 
 
 And again, as in the determinations of Conscience the only knowledge 
 required is that of my own intention — whether in doing such a thing, in- 
 stead of lea\ing it undone, I did what I should think right if any other 
 person had done it ; it follows that in the mere question of guilt or inno- 
 cence, all men have not only Reason equally, but likewise all the materi- 
 als on which the reason, considered as Conscience, is to work. But when 
 we pass out of ourselves, and speak, not exclusively of the agent as mean- 
 ing well or ill, but of the action in its consequences, then of course expe- 
 rience is required, judgment in making use of it, and all those other qual- 
 ities of the mind which are so differently dispensed to different persons, 
 both by nature and education. And though the reason itself is the same in 
 all men, yet the means of exercising it, and the materials (i. e. the facts 
 and Ideas) on which it is exercised, being })()ssessed in very different de- 
 grees by different persons, the practiced Remdt is, of course, equally differ- 
 
NOTES. 311 
 
 ent— and the whole ground work of Rousseau's Pfiilosophy ends in a 
 mere Nothingism.— Even in that branch of knowledge, on which the ideas, 
 on the congniity of which with each other the Reason is to decide, are 
 all possessed aUke by all men, namely, in Geometry, (for all men in their 
 senses possess all the component images, viz. simple curves and straight 
 lines) yet the power of attention required for the perception of linked Truths, 
 even of 5itc/i Truths, is so very different in A and in B, that Sir Isaac New- 
 ton professed that it was in this power only that he was superior to ordi- 
 nary men. In short, the sophism is as gross as if I should say— The Soiils 
 of all men have the faculty of sight in an equal degree — forgetting to add, 
 that this faculty cannot be exercised without eyes, and that some men 
 are bhnd and others short-sighted, &c. — and should then take advantage 
 of this my omission to conclude against the use or necessity of spectacles, 
 microscopes, &c. — or of choosing the sharpest sighted men for our guides. 
 Having exposed this gi-oss sophism, I must warn against an opposite er- 
 ror — namely, that if Reason, as distinguished from Prudence, consists 
 merely in knowing that Black cannot be White — or when a man has a 
 clear conception of an inclosed figure, and another equally clear concep- 
 tion of a straight line, his Reason teaches him that these two conceptions 
 are incompatible in the same object, i. e. that two straight lines cannot in- 
 clude a space the said Reason must be a veiy insignificant faculty. 
 
 But a moment's steady self-reflection will shew us, that in the simple de- 
 termination " Black is not White" — or, " that two straight lines cannot in 
 elude a space" — all the powers are implied, that distinguish Man fi-om An- 
 imals — first, the power of re/lection — ^2d. of comparison — 3d. and therefore 
 of suspension of the mind — 4th. therefore of a controlling will, and the 
 power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appetites ; 
 from motives, and not from mere dark instincts. Was it an insignificant 
 thing to weigh the Planets, to determine all their courses, and prophecy 
 every possible relation of the Heavens a thousand years hence ? Yet all 
 this mighty chain of science is nothing but a linking together of truths of 
 the same kind, as, the whole is gi'cater than its part : — or, if A and B =C, 
 then A =: B — or 3-[-4 = 7, therefore 7-f-5 =: 12, and so forth. X is to 
 be found either in A or B, or C or D : It is not found in A, B, or C, there- 
 fore it is to be found in D. — What can be simpler ? Apply this to an an- 
 imal — a Dog misses his master where four roads meet — he has come up 
 one, smells to two of the others, and then with his head aloft darts for- 
 ward to the third road without any examination. If this was done by a 
 conclusion, the Dog would have Reason — how comes it then, that he never 
 shews it in his ordinary habits ? Why does this story excite either won- 
 der or mcredulity ? — If the story be a fact, and not a fiction, I should say — 
 the Breeze brought his Master's scent down the fourth Road to the Dog's 
 nose, and that therefore he did not put it down to the Road, as in the two 
 former instances. So awful and almost miraculous does the simple act of 
 
313 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 concluding, that take 3 from ,4, there remains one, appear to us when attri- 
 buted to the most sagacious of all animals." 
 
 The next extract is from the Friend, vol. L pp. 187 — 188, and gives in 
 few words the author's view of the subject ti'eated of in note 51. 
 
 " God created man in his own image. To be the image of his own 
 eternity created he man ! Of eternity and self-existence what other like- 
 ness is possible in a finite being, but immortality and moral self-determin- 
 ation ! In addition to sensation, perception, and practical judgment (in- 
 stinctive or acquirable) concerning the notices furnished by the organs of 
 perception, all which in kind at least, the dog possesses in common with 
 his master ; in addition to these, God gave us reason, and with reason he 
 gave us reflective SELr-coNSCiousNESs ; gave us principles, distinguish- 
 ed from the maxims and generahzations of outward experience by their 
 absolute and essential universality and necessity ; and above all, by super- 
 adding to reason the mysterious faculty of fi-ee-will and consequent per- 
 sonal amenability, he gave us conscience — ^tliat law of conscience, which 
 in the power, and as the indwelling word, of an holy and omnipotent le- 
 gislator, commands us — from among the numerous ideas mathematical and 
 j)hilosoj)hical, which the reason by the necessity of its own excellence 
 creates for itself — unconditionally comwianrfs us to attribute reality, and actual 
 existence, to those ideas and to those only, without which the conscience 
 itself would be baseless and contradictoiy — to the ideas of Soul, of Free- 
 will, of Immortality, and of God ! 
 
 To God, as the reality of the conscience and the source of all obliga- 
 tion ; to Free-will, as the power of the human being to maintain the obe- 
 dience, which God through the conscience has commanded, against all 
 the might of nature ; and to the Immortality of the Soul, as a state in 
 which the weal and woe of man shall be projiortioned to his moral worth. 
 
 With this faith all nature, 
 
 -all the mighty world 
 
 Of eye and ear- 
 
 presents itself to us, now as the aggi-egated material of duty, and now as a 
 vision of the Most High revealing to us the mode, and time, and j^articu- 
 lar instance of applying and realizing that universal nde, pre-established in 
 the heart of our reason !" 
 
 The following passages are fi-om the first Lay Sermon, pp. 21 — ^24, 28 — 30 
 and 62— G4 : 
 
 "The Hebrew legislator, and the other inspired poets, prophets, histori- 
 ans and moralists of the Jewish cliurrh have two immense advantages m 
 their favor. First, their particular iiiles and prescripts flow directly and 
 visibly from universal [)rinciples, as from a fountain : they flow from prin- 
 ciples and ideas that are not so ])rop(>ily said to be confirmed by rcjison as 
 to be reason itself! Principles, in act and procession, disjoined from which. 
 
NOTES. 313 
 
 and fi-om the emotions that inevitably accompany the actual intuition of 
 their truth, tlie widest maxhns of prudence are hke arms without hearts, 
 muscles without nerves. Secondly, from the very nature of these princi- 
 ples, as taught in the Bible, they are understood in exact proportion as tliey 
 are beheved and felt. The regidator is never separated from the main 
 spring. For the words of the apostle are literally and philosophically true : 
 We (that is, the human race) live by faith. Whatever we do or know, 
 that in kind is different from the brute creation, has its origin in a deter- 
 mination of the reason to have faith and trust in itself. This, its fii-st act 
 of faith, is scarcely less than identical with its own being. Implicit^, it is 
 the Copula — it contams tlie possibility — of every position, to which there 
 exists any con-espondence in reality. It is itself, tlierefore, the realizhig 
 prmciple, the spiiitual substratum of the whole complex body of truths. 
 This primal act of faith is enunciated in the word, God ; a faith not de- 
 rived from experience, but its ground and source, and without which the 
 fleeting chaos of facts would no more form experience, than the dust of 
 the grave can of itself make a Uving man. The imperative and oracular 
 fonn of the inspired Scripture, is the form of reason itself in all things 
 purely rational and moral. 
 
 If it be the word of Divine Wisdom^ we might anticipate that it would 
 in all things be distinguished from other books, as the supreme Reason, 
 whose knowledge is creative, and antecedent to the things known, is dis- 
 tinguished from the understanding, or creaturely mind of the individual, 
 the acts of wliich are posterior to the things, it records and aiTanges. Man 
 alone was created m the image of God : a position gi'oundless and inexpli- 
 cable, if the reason in man do not differ from the understanding. For this 
 tlie inferior animals, (many at least) possess in degree : and assuredly the 
 divme image or idea is not a tiling of degrees. 
 
 Hence it follows that what is expressed in the inspired writings, is implied 
 in all absolute science. The latter whispers what the fomier utter as with 
 the voice of a trumpet. As sure as God liveth, is the pledge and as- 
 surance of every positive truth, that is asserted by the reason. The hu 
 man understanding musing on many things, snatches at truth, but is frus- 
 trated and disheartened by the fluctuating nature of its objects ; its con- 
 clusions therefore are timid and uncertain, and it hath no way of giving 
 permanence to things but by reducing tliem to abstractions : hai'dly (saith 
 the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, of whose words the preceding 
 sentence is a paraphrase) hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon 
 earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us ; but all 
 certain knowledge is in the power of God, and a presence from above. 
 So only have the ways of men been reformed ; and every doctrine that con- 
 tains a saving truth, and all acts pleasing to God (in other words, all actions 
 consonant with human nature, in its original intention) are through wis- 
 dom : that is, the rationed spirit of man. 
 
 40 
 
314 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 This tlien is the prerogative of the Bible ; this is the privilege of its be- 
 lieving students. With them the principle of know^ledge is likewise a 
 spring and principle of action. And as it is the only certain knov^^ledge, so 
 are the actions that flow with it the only ones on which a secure reliance 
 can be placed. The understanding may suggest motives, may avail itself 
 of motives, and make judicious conjectures respecting the probable con- 
 sequences of actions. But the knowledge taught in the Scriptures produ- 
 ces the motives, involves the consequences ; and its highest formula is still : 
 As SURE AS God liveth, so will it be unto thee ! 
 
 In the genuine enthusiasm of morals, religion, and patriotism, the en- 
 largement and elevation of the soul above its mere self attest the presence, 
 and accompany the intuition, of ultimate principles alone. These alone 
 can interest the undegraded human spirit deeply and enduringly, because 
 these alone belong to its essence, and will remain with it permanently. 
 
 Notions, the depthless abstractions of fleeting phaenomena, the shadows 
 of saihng vapors, the colorless repetitions of rain-bows, have effected their 
 utmost when they have added to the distinctness of our knowledge. For 
 this veiy cause they are of themselves adverse to lofty emotion, and it re- 
 quires the influence of a light and warmth, not their own, to make them 
 chrystallize into a semblance of growth. But every principle is actuaMzed 
 by an idea ; and every idea is living, productive, partaketh of infinity, and 
 (as Bacon has sublimely obseiTed) containeth an endless power of semina- 
 tion. Hence it is, that science, which consists wholly in ideas and princi- 
 ples, is power. Scientia et potentia (saith the same philosopher) in idem 
 coincident. Hence too it is, that notions, linked arguments, reference to 
 particular facts, and calculations of prudence, influence only the compara- 
 tively few, the men of leisurely minds who have been trained up to them : 
 and even these few they influence but faintly. But for the reverse, I appeal 
 to the general character of the doctrines which have collected the most nu- 
 merous sects, and acted upon the moral being of the converts with a force 
 that might well seem supernatural I The great principles of our religion, 
 the subbmO' ideas spoken out everywhere in the Old and New Testament, 
 resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the same size to the naked as to 
 the armed eye ; the magnitude of which the telescope may rather seem to 
 diminish than to increase. At the annunciation of principles, of ideas, the 
 soul of man awakes, and starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the 
 unexpected sounds of his native language, when afl;er long years of ab- 
 sence, and almost of oblivion, he is suddenly addressed in his own mo- 
 ther-tongue. He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his brother. 
 How else can we explain the fact so honorable to Great Britain, that the 
 poorest*^ amongst us will contend with as much enthusiasm as the richest 
 
 * The reader will remember the anecdote told with so much humour in 
 Goldsmith's Essay. But this is not the first instance where the mind in its 
 hour of meditation finds matter of admiration and elevating thought, in 
 circumstances that in a different mood had excited its mirth. 
 
NOTES. 315 
 
 for the rights of property ? These rights are tlie spheres and necessary 
 conditions of free agency. But fiee agewcy contams the idea of the freo 
 will ; and in tliis he intuitively knows the sublimity, and the injfinite hopes, 
 fears, and capabilities of his own nature. On what other ground but tlio 
 cognateness of ideas and principles to man as man, does the nameless sol- 
 dier rush to the combat in defence of the hberties or the honor of his 
 coimlry ? — Even men wofully neglectful of the precepts of rehgjon will 
 shed their blood for its truth. 
 
 All other sciences are confined to abstractions, unless when the term Sci- 
 ence is used in an improper and flattering sense — Thus we may speak 
 without boast of Natural History ; but we have not yet attauied to a 
 Science of Nature. The Bible alone contains a Science of Reality : and 
 therefore each of it's Elements is at the same time a living Germ, in which 
 the Present involves the Future, and in the Finite the Infinite exists po- 
 tentially. That hidden mystery in every, the minutest, form of existence, 
 which contemplated under the relations of time presents itself to the un- 
 derstanding retiospectively, as an infinite ascent of Causes, and prospect- 
 ively as an interminable progression of Effects — that which contemplated 
 in Space is beheld intuitively as a law of action and re-action, continuous 
 and extending beyond all bound — this same mystery fi-eed from tlie phe- 
 nomena of Time and Space, and seen in the depth of real Being, reveals 
 itself to the pure Reason as the actual immanence of All in Each. Are 
 we struck with admiration at beholding the Cope of Heaven imaged 
 in a Dew-drop? The least of the animalcula to which that drop would 
 be an Ocean contains in itself an infinite problem of which God Omni- 
 present is the only solution. The slave of custom is roused by the Rare 
 and Accidental alone ; but the axioms of the unthinking are to the plulo- 
 sopher the deepest problems, as being the nearest to the mysterious Root, 
 and partaking at once of its darkness and it's pregnancy. 
 
 O what a mine of undiscovered treasures, what a new world of Power 
 and truth would the Bible promise to om* future meditation, if in some gra- 
 cious moment one solitary text of all its inspired contents should but dawn 
 upon us in the pure untroubled brightness of an Idea, that most glorious 
 birth of the God-like within us, which even as the Light, its material sym- 
 bol, reflects itself from a thousand surfaces, and flies homeward to its Pa- 
 rent mind enriched with a thousand fonns, itself above form and still r^ 
 maining in its own simpUcity and identity ! O for a flash of that same 
 Light, in which the first position of geometric science that ever loosed it- 
 self from the generahzations of a groping and insecure experience, did for 
 the first time reveal itself to a human intellect in all its evidence and all 
 its fiidtfiilness, Transparence without Vacuum, and Plenitude without Opa- 
 city ! O that a single gleam of our own mward exi)erience \\'ould make 
 comprehensible to us the rapturous Eureka, and the gratefid Hecatomb, 
 of the philosopher of Sainos ! or that Vision which fi*onr the contempla- 
 
3i6 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tion of an arithmetical harmony rose to the eye of Kepler, presenting tlie 
 l)lanetary world, and all their orbits in the divine order of their ranks and 
 distances : or which, in the falling of an Apple, revealed to the ethereal in- 
 tuition of our own Newton the constructive principle of the material Uni- 
 verse." 
 
 The definitions, which follow, exhibit the distinctions aimed at by the 
 author in few words. 
 
 " Under the term Sense, I comprise whatever is passive in our bemg, 
 without any reference to the questions of MateriaUsm or Immaterialism ; 
 all that man is in common with animals, in kind at least — his sensations, 
 and impressions, whether of his outward senses, or the inner sense of ima- 
 gination. This, in the language of the Schools, was called the vis recep- 
 tiva, or recipient property of the soul, from the original constitution of which 
 we perceive and imagine all things under the forms of space and time. 
 By the understanding, I mean the faculty of tliinking and fonmng jiidg- 
 ments on the notices furnished by the sense, according to certain rules ex- 
 isting in itself, which rules constitute its distinct nature. By the pure Rea- 
 son, I mean the power by which we become possessed of principle, (the 
 eternal verities of Plato and Descartes) and of ideas, (N. B. not images) as 
 the ideas of a point, a line, a circle, in Mathematics ; and of Justice, Ho- 
 liness, Free-AVill, &c. in morals. Hence in works of pure science the de- 
 finitions of necessity precede the reasoning, in other works they more apt- 
 ly form the conclusion." — The Friend vol. 1, pp. 305 — 306, Note. 
 
 As the Philosophical works of Heniy More, from whose Theological 
 works extracts are inserted in the text, pp. 97, 99, and who was referred to 
 in note 43, are seldom to be found in this countiy, I have selected a few 
 passages from them having more particular reference to the subject of this 
 note. The references are to a London folio edition of 1712. 
 
 " To take away Reason under what fanatic pretence soever is to disrobe 
 the Priest and desj)oil him of his breast-plate and which is worst of all to 
 rob Christianity of that special prerogative it has above all other religions 
 in the world, namely, that it dares appeal unto reason^ — Preface, p. 6. 
 
 " I should commend to them, that would successfully philosophise, the 
 belief and endeavour after a certain principle more noble and inward than 
 reason itself, and Avithout which reason will faulter, or at least reacli but 
 to mean and frivolous things. I have a sense of something in me, while 
 I thus speak, which I must confess is of so retruse a nature, that I want a 
 name for it imless I should adventure to term it Divine Sagacity, which is 
 the first rise of a successfiil reason." And this, he afterwards observes, is 
 the sentiment of Aristotle, that there is something before and better than Rea- 
 son, whence Reason itself has its lise. The success of the mind therefore 
 in its speculation after truth " is from the presence of God, who docs in- 
 deed move all things, in some sort or odier, but residing hi the most unde- 
 
NOTES. 317 
 
 filed sjiirit, moves it in the most excellent manner, and endues it with that 
 Divine Sagacity I spoke of, which is a more inward, compendious and 
 comprehensive presentation of truth, ever antecedaneous to that reason, 
 which m theories of greatest importance approves itself afterwards upon 
 the exactest examination to he most solid and perfect every w^ay, and ti*u- 
 ly that wisdom, which ispecuharly styled the gift of God, and hardly com- 
 petible to any but to persons of a pure and unspotted mind. Of so great 
 concernment is it sincerely to endeavour to be holy and good." — p. 7 &. 9. 
 
 I have been strongly tempted to insert, here, another Essay from the 
 Friend, the 9th of vol. 3, as exhibiting more distinctly the autlior's riews 
 of the relation of reason, as the power of spiritual intuition in man, to the 
 Supreme Reason, and showing their resemblance to those of H. More. It 
 would however swell the size of this volume too much, and those who 
 would be desirous of reading it, will be deshousalso of readmg the whole 
 of that most valuable work. The reader I believe Avill find a key to the 
 subject, which I wished to explain, by referring to this volume, p. 3, to the 
 extracts from the. 1st Lay Sermon above and note [C] in the Appendix. 
 See also note 65. 
 
 The following fi-om More illustrates the distinction between reason and 
 the miderstanding, and the limitations of the latter in regai-d to tlie truths 
 of reason. 
 
 " If the difficulty of framing a conception of a thing must take away the 
 existence of the thing itself, there will be no such thing as a body left in 
 the world, and then will all be spirit or nothing. For who can frame so 
 safe a notion of a hodyy as to free himself from the entanglements, that the 
 extension thereof will bring along \Aith it? For this extended matter consists 
 of either indiyisible i)oints, or of particles divisible in infinitum. Take 
 which of tb^se you will (and you can find no third) you Avill be wound 
 into the most notorious absurdities that may be. For if you say it consists 
 of points, from this position I can necessarily demonstrate, that every 
 spear or spire-steeple, or what long body you will, is as thick as it is long, 
 that the tallest cedar is not so high as the lowest mushroon, and that the 
 moon and the earth are so near each other, that the thickness of your liand 
 will not go betwLxt, that rounds and squares are all one figure, that even 
 and odd nmiibers are equal with one another, and that the clearest day is 
 as dark as the blackest night. And if you make choice of the other mem- 
 ber of the disjunction, your fancy will be but little better at ease ; for no- 
 thing can be divisible into parts it has not. Therefore if a body be divisi- 
 ble uito infinite parts, it has infinite extended parts. And if it has an in- 
 finite number of extended parts, it cannot but be a hard mysteiy to the 
 imagination of man, that infinite extended parts should not amount to one 
 whole infinite cxteiisioii. And thus a grain of mustard seed would be as 
 well infinitely extended as the whole matter of the universe, and a thou- 
 sandth part of that gi-ain as the grain itself Which things are more un- 
 
318 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 conceivable, than any thing in the notion of a spirit. Therefore we are 
 not scornfully and contemptuously to reject any notion for seeming at first 
 to be clouded and obscured with some difficulties and intricacies of con- 
 ception." — Antidote against Atheism, p. 14. 
 
 What follows, making some allowance for particular expressions, will be 
 seen to coincide with the views of Coleridge, and wUl be thought by many, 
 at least, to be a sufficient explanation and defence of the doctrine of mnate 
 ideas. 
 
 " It will not be amiss here briefly to touch upon that notable point in 
 philosophy, whether the soui of man he ahrasa tabula, a table-hook icherein no- 
 thing is ivjit, or whether she have some innate notions and ideas in herself. 
 For so it is, that she having taken first occasion of thinking from external 
 objects, it hath so imposed upon some men's judgments, that they have 
 conceited that the soul has no knowledge nor notion, but what is in a passive 
 way impressed or delineated upon her from the objects of sense ; they not 
 warily enough distinguishing betwixt extrinsical occasions and adequate or 
 principal causes of things. 
 
 But the mind of man more free and better exercised in tlie close obser- 
 vation of its own operations and nature, cannot but discover that there is 
 an active and actual knowledge in a man, of which these outward objects 
 are rather the reminders, tlian the first begetters or implanters. And when 
 I say actual hmidedge, I do not mean there is a certain number of ideas 
 flaring and shining to the animadversive facidty, like so many torches or stars > 
 in the firmament to outward sight, that tliere are any figures, that take their 
 distinct places, and are legibly writ there like the red letters or astronomical 
 characters in an almanack : But I understood thereby an activ« sagacity in 
 the soul, or quick recollection, as it were, w^hereby some small business 
 being hinted upon her, she runs out presently into a more clear or larger 
 concejition. 
 
 And I cannot better describe her condition than thus : Suppose a skil- 
 ful musician fallen asleep in the field upon the grass, during which time 
 he shall not so much as dream any thing concerning his musical faculty, 
 so that in one sense there is no actual skill or notion nor representation of 
 any thing musical in him ; but his friend sitting by him that cannot sing at 
 all himself, jogs him and awakes him and desires him %o sing this or tlie 
 other song, telHng him two or three words of the beginning of the song, 
 whereupon he presently takes it out of his mouth, and sings the whole 
 song upon so slight and slender intimation. So the mind of man being 
 jogged and awakened by the impulses of outward objects, is stirred up 
 into a more full and clear conception of what was but imperfectly hinted 
 to her from external occasions ; and this faculty I venture to call actual 
 knowledge, in such a sense as the sleeping musician's skill might be called 
 actual skill when he thought nothing of it. 
 And that this is the condition of the soul is discoverable by suncby ob- 
 
NOTES. 310 
 
 servations. As for example, exhibit to the soul through the outward sen- 
 ses the figure of a circle ; she acknowledgeth presently this to be one kind 
 offgure^ and can add forthwith, that if it be perfect, all the lines, from 
 some one point of it drawn to the perimeter, must be exactly equal. In 
 like manner shew her a triangle ; she will straightway pronounce, that if 
 that be the right figure it makes toward, tlie angles must be closed in indi- 
 visible points. But this accuracy either in the circle or the triangle cannot 
 be set out m any material subject: therefore it remains that she hatha 
 more full and exquisite knowledge of things in herself than tlie matter 
 can lay open before her. 
 
 Let U8 cast in a third instance : let somebody now demonstrate this 
 tnangle described in the matter to have its three angles equal to two right 
 ones ; why yes, saith the soul, this is true, and not only in tliis particular 
 triangle, but in all plain tiiangles that can possibly be described in the mat- 
 ter. And thus, you see, the soul sings out the whole song upon the first 
 hint, as knowing it very well before. 
 
 Besides this, there are a number of relative notions or ideas in the mind 
 of man, as well Mathematicnl as Logical, which if we prove cannot be the 
 impresses of any material object from without, it will necessarily follow 
 that tliey are from the soul herself within, and are the natural furniture of 
 humane understanding. Such are these, cause, effect, whole and paii, like 
 and unlike. So equality and inequality, ^oyog and aruXoyia^ proportion and 
 analogy, symmetry and asymmetry, and such like : all which relative ideas I 
 shall easily prove to be no material impresses fi-om without upon the soul, 
 but her own active conception proceeding from herself whilst she takes 
 notice of external objects. For that these ideas can make no impresses up- 
 on the outward senses is plain from hence, because they are no sensible 
 nor physical affections of the matter. And how can that that is no physical 
 affection of the matter, affect our corporeal organs of sense ? 
 
 But now that these relative ideas, whether Logical or Mathematical, be no 
 physical affections of the matter, is manifest fi-om these two arguments. 
 First, they may be produced when there has been no physiccd motion nor 
 ' alteration in the subject to which they belong, nay, indeed, when there 
 hath been nothing at all done to the subject to which they do accrue. As 
 for example, suppose one side of a room whitened, the other not touched 
 or meddled with, this other has thus become unlike, and hath the notion 
 of dissimUe necessarily belonging to it, although there has nothing at all 
 been done thereunto. So suppose two pounds of lead, which therefore 
 are two equal pieces of that Metal, cut away half from one of them, the 
 other pound nothing at all being done unto it has lost its Notion of equal, 
 and hath acquired a new one of double unto the other. Nor is it to any 
 pui-pose to answer, that though there Avas nothing done to this pound of 
 lead, yet there was to the other ; for that does not at all eneiTate the Rea- 
 son, but shews that the notion of sub-double, which accrued to that lead 
 which had half cut away, is but our mode of conceiving, as well as the 
 
320 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Other, and not any physical ajedion that strikes the corporeal organs of the 
 body, as hot and cold, Imrd and soft, ivkite and black, and the like do. Where- 
 fore the ideas of equal and umqual, double and sub-double, like and unlike, 
 Avith the rest are no external impresses upon the senses, but the soul's own 
 active manner of conceiving those things which ai'e discovered by the 
 outward senses. 
 
 The second argument is, that one and the same part of the matter is 
 capable, at one and the same time, wholly and entirely, of two contrary 
 ideas of this kind. As for example, any piece of matter that is a middle 
 proportional betwixt two other pieces is double, suppose, and svh-douhle, or 
 triple and sub-triple, at once. Which is a manifest sign that these ideas 
 are no affections of the matter, and therefore do not affect our senses ; else 
 they would aft'ect the senses of beasts, and they might also grow good Ge- 
 ometricians and Arithmeticians. And they not affecting our senses, it is 
 plain that we have some ideas that we are not beholding to our senses for, 
 ]>ut are the mere exertions of the mind, occasionally awakened by the 
 api)ulses of the outward objects ; which the outward senses do no more 
 teach us, than he that awakened the musician to sing, taught him his skill." 
 
 Antidote against Atheism, p. 17 — 19. 
 
 In the next chapters he proceeds to show, that the idea of God has its 
 origin in the soul of man in the same manner as the ideas mentioned in 
 the above extract. Like them it resides there inseparably and immutably, 
 and the fiict of its being obscurely or imperfectly developed in some minds, 
 or in whole nations, no more proves that it is not there, as a necessary 
 part or product of the universal reason of man, in the sense above ex- 
 plained, than a similar imperfect developement of geometrical truths au- 
 thorises a like inference in regard to them. In regard to the objective ex- 
 istence of God, he agrees with Des Cartes in considering necessaiy exis- 
 tence a part of the rational idea, an answer to which may be found in the 
 second letter of " Selections from the Con-espondence of Mr. Coleridge," at 
 the end of this volume. His other proofs of it, however, are solid and 
 rational, but not particularly to my purpose here. 
 
 The following is inserted fi'om his "Discourse of Enthusiasm" for its 
 coincidence in thought and language with the views of Coleridge. 
 
 "Assuredly that spirit of illumination, which resides in the souls of the 
 faitliful, is a principle of the purest reason that is communicable to the hu- 
 man natin-e. And what this spirit has, he has from Christ, (as Christ him- 
 self witnesseth) who is the eternal Xoyoc, the all-comprehending wisdom 
 and reason of God, wherein he sees through tlie natures and ideals of all 
 things, with all their respects of dependency and inde})endency, congruity 
 and incongruity, or wliatever habitude they have one to another, with one 
 continued glance at once." — p. 39. 
 
 These extracts from a writer of such cminonce, as TIenry More, will do 
 something, I trust, if cither acknowledged autliority or rational argument 
 
NOTES. 
 
 331 
 
 ran do any thing, to counteract some of the ju-ejudices against the author 
 of this work and the language wliich he employs. They will show, that 
 neither his language nor his philosophy are wholly unauthorised even 
 among English writers of great reputation, and indeed only time and space 
 would be wanting to nmltiply extracts having the same tendency from 
 many other great writers of acknowledged authority among the older En- 
 glish philosophers and divines. If such then be the fact, if tlie })hiloso- 
 phical views exhibited in this work are found essentially to coincide with 
 those of Plato and Lord Bacon, and of many others of the most distin- 
 guished philosophers of ancient and modern times, may we not venture, 
 at least without incurring the charge of aiTOgance and youthful presump- 
 tion, to indulge a suspicion, that "there are more things in heaven and 
 earth, than are dreamed of" in the sensuous and empirical philosophy of 
 the day. Though all the world may now be going in one direction, self- 
 confident and self-satisfied, it can do no liami, at most to any but them- 
 selves, if some few should pause, and hesitate, and look about them, or 
 even refuse to advance farther, till they have examined the records of their 
 progress, and ascertained their position and coui*se by tlie great landmarks 
 of immutable truth and reason. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [60] p. 148. 
 
 The Philosopher, whom the Inquisition would have burnt alive as an 
 Atheist, had not Leo X. and Cardinal Bembo decided that the Work 
 might be foniiidable to those semi-pagan Christians who regarded Rev- 
 elation as a mere Make-weight to their boasted Religion of Nature ; but 
 contained nothmg dangerous to the Catholic Church or offensive to a tme 
 Believer. 
 
 [61] p. 150. 
 
 The word. Instinct, brings together a number of facts into one class by 
 the assertion of a conmion ground, the nature of wliich gi'ound it de- 
 termmes negatively only — i. e. the word docs not explain ivhat this com- 
 mon ground is ; but eimi)ly indicates, that there is such a ground, and 
 that it is different in kind fi'om that in which the responsible and con- 
 sciously voluntaiy Actions of Men originate. Thus, in its true and pri- 
 mary import, Instinct stands in antithesis to Reason ; and the peiplexi- 
 ty and contradictory statements into which so many meritorious Natural- 
 ists, and popular Writers on Natural Histoiy (Priscilla Wakefield, Kirby, 
 Sl)ence, Huber, and even Reimarus) have fallen on this subject, arise 
 wholly from their taking the word in opposition to Understanding. I 
 notice this, because I would not lose any opportunity of impressing on 
 the minds of my youthfiil readers the important truth, that Language (as 
 the embodied and articulated Spirit of the Race, as the gro\Mh and ema- 
 nation of a People, and not the work of any individual Wit or Will) is of- 
 
 41 
 
322 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ten inadequate, sometimes deficient, but never false or delusive. We 
 have only to master the true origin and original import of any native and 
 abiding word, to find in it, if not the solution of the facts expressed by it, 
 yet a finger-mark pointing to the road on w^hich this solution is to be sought 
 for, 
 
 [62] p. 150. 
 Neque quicquam adubito, quin ea candidis omnibus faciat satis. Quid 
 autem facias istis qui vel ob ingenii pertinaciam sibi satisfieri nolint, vel 
 stupidiores sint quam ut satisfactionem intelligant ? Nam quemadmo- 
 dum Simonides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores quam ut possint a se de- 
 cipi, ita quosdam videas stupidiores quam ut placari queant. Adhuc non 
 mirum est invenire quod calumnietur qui nihil aliud quaerit nisi quod 
 calumnietur. {Erasmi EpisL ad Dorpium.) At all events, the follow- 
 ing Exposition has been recieved at second hand, and passing through 
 the medium of my own prei)ossessions, if any fault be found with it, the 
 fault probably, and the blame certainly, belongs to the Reporter. 
 
 [63] p. 150. 
 And which (I might have added) in a more enlightened age, and in a 
 Protestant Country, impelled more than one German University to an- 
 athematize Fr. Hoffman's discovery of Carbonic Acid Gas, and of its 
 effects on animal hfe, as hostile to religion, and tending to Atheism ! 
 Three or four Students at the university of Jena, in the attempt to raise a 
 Spirit for the discovery of a supposed hidden treasure, were strangled or 
 poisoned by the fumes of the Charcoal they had been burning in a close 
 Garden-house of a vineyard near Jena while employed in their magic fu- 
 migations and channs. One only was restored to Life : and from his ac- 
 count of the Noises and Spectres {in his ears and eyes) as he was losing his 
 senses, it was taken for granted that the bad Spirit had destroyed them. 
 Frederic Hoffman admitted that it was a very had spirit that had tempted 
 tliem, the Spirit of Avarice and folly; and that a very noxious Spirit (Gas, 
 or Geist, is the German for Spirit) was the immediate cause of their death. 
 But he contended that this latter Spirit was tlie Spirit of Charcoal, which 
 would have produced the same effect, had the young men been chanting 
 psalms instead of incantations ; and acquitted the Devil of all direct con- 
 cern in the business. The Theological Faculty took the alarm: even 
 Physicians pretended to be horror-struck at Hoffman's audacity. The 
 Controversy and its appendages embittered several years of this great and 
 good man's life. 
 
 [64] p. 155. 
 It has in its consequences proved no trifling evil to the Christian World, 
 that Aristotle's Definitions of Nature are all grounded on the petty and 
 rather rhetorical than philosophical Antithesis of Nature to Art— a con- 
 
NOTES. OrCo 
 
 ception inadequate to the demands even of his Philosophy. Hence in the 
 progress of his reasoning, he confounds the Natura JVatwata{iha.t is, the 
 sum total of the Facts and Phaenomena of the senses) with an hypotheti- 
 cal Natura A'aturans a Goddess Nature, that has no hetter claim to a 
 place in any sober system of Natural Philosophy than the Goddess Multi- 
 iudo ; yet to which Aristotle not rarel}^ gives the name and attributes of 
 the Supreme Being. The result was, that the Idea of God thus identifi- 
 ed with his hypothetical JVature becomes itself but an Hypothesis, or at 
 best but a precarious inference from incommensurate premises and on 
 disputable Principles: while in other passages, God is confounded with 
 (and every where, in Aristotle's genuine works, included in) the Uiiiverse : 
 which most grievous error it is the great and characteristic 3Ierit of Plato 
 to have avoided and denounced. 
 
 [65J p. 156. 
 
 Take one passage among many from the posthumous Tracts (1660) of 
 John Smith, not the least Star in that l)right Constellation of Cambridge 
 Men, the cotemporaries of Jeremy Taylor. " While we reflect on our 
 own idea of Reason, we know that our own Souls are not it, but only par- 
 take of it; and that we have it xutu inih^iv and not xut^ ov<in]v. Neither can 
 it be called a Faculty, but far rather a Light, which we enjo}^, but the 
 Source of which is not in ourselves, nor rightly, by any individual, to be 
 denominated mme." Tliis^^itre intelhgence he then proceeds to contrast 
 with the Discursive Faculty, i. e. the Understanding. 
 
 [See extracts from Henry More's works, in note 59 — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [66] p. 159. 
 
 We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley, that the Church of England 
 does not demand the literal Understanding of the Document contained in 
 the second (from verse 8) and third Chapters of Genesis as a point of faith, 
 or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy, of the in- 
 terpreter : Divines of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the most 
 averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in general, having from the 
 earliest ages of the Christian Church adopted or permitted it in this in- 
 stance. And indeed no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt, that if 
 in any other work of Eastern Origin he met with Trees of Life and of 
 Knowledge ; talking and conversable Snakes ; 
 
 Inque rei signum Serpentem serpere jussmn ; 
 
 he would want no other proofs that it was an Allegoiy he was reading, 
 and intended to be understood as such. Nor, supposing him conversant 
 with Oriental works of any thing like the same antiquity, could it surprise 
 him to find events of true history in connexion with, or historical person- 
 ages among the Actors and Interlocutors of, the Parable. In the temple- 
 
321 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Jaiigujigo of Egypt tlic Ser])ent was tlie Symbol of the Understanding in 
 its twofold function, namely, as the faculty o^ means to proximate or medial 
 ends, analogous to the instinct of the more intelligent Animals, Ant, Bee, 
 Beaver, <fcc., and opposed to the practical Reason, as the Determinant of the 
 ultimate End ; and again it typifies the understanding as the discursive and 
 logical Faculty possessed individually by each Individual — the Logos h ly-a- 
 c(n, in distinction from the Nous i. e. Intuitive Reason, the Source of Ideas 
 and ABSOLUTE Truths, and the Principle of the Necessaiy and the Universal 
 in our Aftirmations and Conclusions. Without, or in contra- vention to, the 
 Jieason [i. e. " the spiritual mind" of St. Paul, and the LAglit that lighteth 
 cvcrij man"of St. John) this Vnderstandmg {(pporrji a aapy.og, or carnal mind) 
 becomes the sophistic Principle, the wily Tempter to Evil by counterfeit 
 Good; the Pander and Advocate of the Passions and Appetites ; ever in 
 league with, and always first ap})lying to, the Desire, as the mferior nature 
 in Man, the Woman in our Humanity; and through the Desire prevaihng 
 on the Will (the Manhood, Virtue) against the command of the Universal 
 Reason, and against the Light of Reason in the Will itself. N. B. This 
 essential inherence of an intelligential Principle ((fw? rofpoj) in the Will 
 ((fp^f; (i(hiriy.ii\ or rather the Will itself thus considered, the Greeks ex- 
 I)ressed by an appi-opriate word [^uv'/.i,'). This, but little differing from Ori- 
 gin's interpretation or hyi)othesis, is supported and confirmed by the veiy 
 old Tradition of the Homo androgjjnus, i. e. that the oj'iginal Man, the Indi- 
 vidual first created, was bi-sexual: a chima3ra,of which and of many other 
 mythological traditions the most probal)le explanation is, that they were 
 originally symbolical Glyphs or Sculptures, and afterwards translated into 
 ivords, yet litcrallij, i. e. into the common names of the several Figures and 
 Images composing the Symbol, while the symbolic meaning was left to be 
 decy})hered as before, and sacred to the uiitiate. As to the alistruseness 
 and subtlety of the Conceptions, this is so far from being an objection to 
 this oldest Gloss on this veneral)le Relic of Shemitic, not impossibly ante- 
 diluvian, Philosophy, that to those who have carried their researclies far- 
 thest back into Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian Antiquity, it will 
 seem a strong confirmation. Or if I chose to address the sceptic in the 
 language of the day, I might remind him, that as Alchemy went before 
 Chemistry, and Astrology before Astronomy, so in all countries of civili- 
 zed Man have Metaphysics outrun Common Sense. Fortunately for us 
 that they have so! For from all we know of the immetaphysical tribes 
 of New Holland and elsewhere, a Common Sense not preceded by IMeta- 
 ])hysics is no very enviable concern. O be not cheated, my youthful Rea- 
 der, by this shallow prate ! The creed of true Common Sense is compo- 
 sed of the JtesvUs of scientific Meditation, Observation, and Experiment, 
 as far as they are generally intelligible. It differs therefore in diflerent 
 countries and in every different age of the same Country. The Common 
 Sense of a People is the moveable index of its average judgment and in- 
 
NOTES. 325 
 
 formation. Without Metaphysics Science cou Id have had no language, 
 and Common Sense no materials. 
 
 But to return to my subject. It cannot he imi)ugned, that the Mosaic 
 Narmtive thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the hirth 
 and parentage and successive moments of phcenomeiml Sin (Peccatum 
 phfBnomenon : Crimen primarium et commune), that is, of Sin as it reveals 
 itself in time, and is an immediate Ohject of Consciousness. And in this 
 sense most truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam we all fell. The 
 first human Sinner is the adequate Representative of all his Successors. 
 And with no less truth may it he said, that it is the same Adam that falls 
 in eveiy man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and 
 undivorceable Eve : and the same Eve tempted by the same serpentine 
 and perverted Understanding which, framed originally to be the Inter- 
 preter of the Reason and the ministering Angel of the Spirit, is henceforth 
 sentenced and liound over to the service of the Animal Nature, its needs 
 and its cravings, dependent on the Senses for all its materials, with the 
 World of Sense for its appointed Sphere; "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, 
 and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." I have shown elsewhere, 
 tliat as the Instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degree not in kind, 
 and circ umstantially, not essentially, from the Vis Vita3, or Vital Power in 
 the assi)iiilative and digestive functions of the Stomach and other organs 
 of Nutrition, that even so the Understanding, in itself and distinct from 
 the Reason and Conscience, differs in degree only from the Instinct in the 
 Animal. It is still but "a beast of the field," though "more subtle than 
 any beast of the field," and therefore in its corruption and perversion "cur- 
 sed above any" — a pregnant Word ! of which^ if the Reader wants an 
 exposition or paraphrase, he may find one more than two thousand years 
 old among the fragments of the Poet Menander. (See Cumberland's Ob- 
 server No. CL. vol, iii. p. 289, 290.) This is the Understanding which in 
 its "eye?T/ ThougJd''^ is to be brought ^^ tinder obedience to Faith ;" which it 
 can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected to the Reason, of which 
 spiritual Faith is even the Blossoming and the fructifying jjrocess. For it 
 is indifferent whether I say that Faith is the interpenetration of the Rea- 
 son and the Will, or that it is at once the Assurance and the Commence- 
 ment of the approaching Union between the Reason and the Intelligible 
 Realities, the Living and Sid)stantial Truths, that are even in this life its 
 most proper Objects. 
 
 I have thus put the reader in possession of my own opinions respecting 
 the Nan*ative in Gen. ii. and iii. '"itr/r ow (!»;, w« luotyf Soy.ei, Uno; iiv6o^, 
 a.'.ii^taTarov y.ai ao/aioTuTov iit}.oao(f}iiu, nm^tai inv of^uoua, avvfTOtg ts (fvjvni' 
 i? Ss TO nav {piajvto^g ;raTitsi. Or I might ask with Augustine, Why not 
 both ? Why not at once Symbol and History ? or rather how should it be 
 otherwise? Must not of necessity the first man be aSv.-iiBOL of iMankind, 
 in the fullest force of the word, Symbol, rightly defined— viz. A symbol is a 
 sign included in the Idea which it represents : ex. gr. an aclWdXpart chosen to 
 
326 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 represent the tvhole, as a lip with a chin prominent is a Symbol of Man ; 
 or a lower form or si)ecies used as the representative of a higher in the 
 same kind : by which definition the Symbolical is distinguished toto genere 
 from the Allegoric and Metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, 
 and allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scrip- 
 ture ! The writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet 
 I readily acknowledge, that allegorical applications are one thing, and alle- 
 gorical interpretation another: and that where there is no ground for sup- 
 posing such a sense to have entered into the intent and pui-jjose of the 
 sacred Penman, tliey are not to be commended. So far, indeed, am I from 
 entertaining any predilection for them, or any favourable opinion of the 
 Rabbinical Commentators and Traditionists, from whom the fashion was 
 derived, that in cariying it as far as our own church has carried it, I follow 
 her judgment and not my own. But in the first place, I know but one 
 other part of the Scriptures not universally held to be parabolical, which, 
 not without the sanction of great authorities, I am disposed to regard as an 
 Apologue or Parable, namely, the Book of Jonas ; the reasons for believ- 
 ing the Jewish Nation collectively to be therein impersonated, seeming to 
 me unanswerable. (See the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, Note 
 B.) Secondly, as to chapters now in question — that such interpretation is 
 at least tolerated by our church, I have the word of one of her most Zeal- 
 ous Champions. And lastly, it is my deliberate and conscientious convic- 
 tion, that the proofs of such having been the intention of the inspired 
 Writer or Compiler of the book of Genesis, lie on the face of the Narra- 
 tive itself. 
 
 [The curious reader may find a similar view of this subject in Henry 
 More's "Philosophical Cabbala" in his Philosophical Works. See also 
 notes 33 and 54.— Am. Ed.] ; 
 
 [67] p. 161. 
 
 This sense of the word is implied even in its metaphorical or figurative 
 use. Thus we may say of a River that it onginates in such or such 2l foun- 
 tain ; but the water of a Canal is deiived from such or such a River. The 
 Power which we call nature, may be thus defined : a Power subject to the 
 Law of Continuity {Lex Cordinui. — In JVaturd non daiur Soltus^) which law 
 the human Understanding, by a necessity arising out of its own constitu- 
 tion, can conceive only under'the form of Cause and Effect. That this 
 form (or law) of Cause and Effect is (relatively to the World withoid, or to 
 Things as they subsist independently of our perceptions) only a form 
 or mode of thinking ; that it is a law inherent in the Understandmg itself 
 (just as the symmetry of the miscellaneous objects seen by the kaleido- 
 scope inheres in (i. e. results from) the mechanism of the kaleidoscope 
 itselt) — this becomes evident as soon as we attempt to apply the pre-con- 
 ception direcdy to any operation of Nature. For in this case we are for- 
 
NOTES. 327 
 
 ced to represent the cause as being at tlie same instant the effect, and vice 
 versa the effect as being the cause — a relation which we seek to express 
 by the temis Action and Re-action ; but for which the term Reciprocal 
 Action or the Law of Reciprocity [gemimiick. Wechselwirkung) would be 
 both more accurate and more expressive. 
 
 These are truths which can scaicely be too fi-equently impressed on the 
 Mind that is in earnest in the wish to reflect aright. Nature is a Line in 
 constant and continuous evolution. Its beginning is lost in the Super-natu- 
 ral : and for our understanding, therefore, it must appear as a continuous 
 line witliout begmning or end. But where there is no discontinuity there 
 can be no origination, and every appearance of origination in JVature is but 
 a shadow of our own casting. It is a reflection from our own WHl or Spirit. 
 Herein, mdeed, the Will consists. Tliis is the essential character by which 
 WILL is opposed to Nature, as Spirit, and raised above Nature as self-deter- 
 mining Spirit — this, namely, that it is a power of originating an act or 
 state. 
 
 A young friend or, as he was pleased to describe himself, a pupil of 
 mine, who is beginning to learn to think, asked me to explain by an instance 
 what is meant by ^^originating an act or state." My answer was — This 
 morning I awoke with a dulx pain, which I knew from experience the 
 getting up would remove ; and yet by adding to the drowsiness and by 
 weakening or depressing the volition {voluntas sensorialis seu mechanica) 
 the very pain seemed to hold me back, to fix me (as it were) to the bed. 
 After a peevish ineffectual quarrel with this painful disinclination, I said 
 to myself: Let me count twenty, and the moment I come to nineteen I 
 will leap out of bed. So said and so done. Now should you ever find 
 yourself in the same or in a similar state, and should attend to the Goings- 
 on within you, you will learn what I mean by originating an act. At the 
 same time you will see that it belongs exclusively to the Will [arbitrium] ; 
 that there is nothing analogous to it in outward experiences ; and that I 
 had, therefore, no way of exjilaining it but by referring you to an Act of 
 your own, and to the peculiar self-consciousness preceding and accompa- 
 nying it. As we know what Life is by Being, so we know what Will is 
 by Acting. That in willing (replied my young friend) we appear to our- 
 selves to constitute an actual Beginning, and that this seems unique, and 
 without any example in our sensible experience, or in the phaenomena of 
 Nature, is an mideniable fact. But may it not be an illusion arising from 
 our ignorance of the antecedent causes ? You w«?/ suppose this (I rejoined) 
 that the soul of every man should impose a Lie on itself; and that tliis Lie, 
 and the acting on the faith of its being the most important of all truths and 
 the most real of all realities, should form the main contra-distinctive cha- 
 racter of Humanity, and the only basis of that distinction between Things 
 and Persons on which our whole moral and criminal Law is grounded — 
 You can suppose this ! I cannot, as I could in the case of an arithmetical 
 
328 AIDS TO REFLECTIO^:^. 
 
 or geometrical proposition, render it impossible for you to suppose it. Whe- 
 ther you can reconcile such a supposition with the belief of an All-wise 
 Creator, is another question. But taken singly, it is doubtless in your pow- 
 er to suppose this. Were it not, the belief of the contrary would be no 
 subject of a Command, no part of a moral or religious Duty. You would 
 not, however, suppose it without a reason. But all the pretexts that ever 
 have been or ever can be afforded for this supposition, are built on certain 
 jYotions of the Understandmg that have been generahzed from Conceptions ; 
 which conceptions, again, are themselves generalized or abstracted from 
 ol)jects of Sense. Neither the one or the other, therefore, have any force 
 except in application to objects of Sense and within the sphere of sensi- 
 ble Experience. What but absurdity can follow, if you decide on Spirit 
 by the laws of Matter ? If you judge that which, if it be at all, must be 
 super-sensuai, by that faculty of your mind, the very definition of which 
 is "the Facidty judging according to Sense?" These then are unworthy 
 the name of reasons : they are only pretexts. But ivitJiout reason to con- 
 tradict your own Consciousness in defiance of your own Conscience, is 
 contrail) to Reason. Such and such Writers, you say, have made a great 
 sensation. If so, I am sony for it ; but the fact I take to be this. From 
 a variety of causes the more austere Sciences have fallen into discredit, 
 and Impostors have taken advantage of the general ignorance to give a 
 sort of mysterious and terrific importance to a parcel of trashy Sophistry, 
 tlie authors of which would not have employed themselves more irration- 
 ally in submitting the works of Rafael or Titian to Canons of Criticism 
 deduced from the Sense of Smell. Nay, less so. For here the Objects 
 and the Organs are only disparate : while in the other case they are abso- 
 lutely diverse. I conclude this note by remindijlg the reader, that my first 
 object is to make myself miderstood. When h0 is in full possession of my 
 meaning, then let him consider whether it deserves to be received as the 
 truth. 
 
 Had it been my immediate purpose to make him helieve me as well as 
 understand me, I should have thought it necessary to warn him that a 
 Jinite Will does indeed originate an act, and may originate n state of being; 
 but yet only in and for the Agent himself. A finite Will constitutes a true 
 Beginning; but with regard to the series of motions and changes by 
 which the free act is manifested and made effectual, the Jinite Will gives a 
 beginning only by co-incidence with that ahsolute Will, wliich is at the 
 same time Infinite Poaver! Such is the language of Religion, and of 
 Philosophy too in the last instance. But I ex}M'ess the same truth in or- 
 dinary language wlien I say, that a finite W^ill, or the Will of a finite Free- 
 agent, acts outwardly l)y confluence with the Laws of Nature. 
 
 [Sec notes 29, 43, and 59.— A bt. Ed.] 
 
NOTES. 
 
 329 
 
 [68] p. 1G4. 
 
 It may conduce to iJie readier comprehension of this point if I say, tliat 
 tlie Equivoque consists in confounding the almost technical Sense of the 
 JVoim Suhstantive, Riglit (a sense most often determined by the genitive 
 case following, as the Eight of Propeity, the Right of Husbands to cha.s- 
 tise their Wives, and so forth^ with the popular sense of the Adjective, right : 
 though this likewise has, if not a double sense, yet a double application 
 — the fii-st, when it is used to express the fitness of a mean to a relative 
 End, ex. gr. " the right way to obtain the right distance at which a Picture 
 should be examined," &c. ; and the other, when it expresses a perfect con- 
 formity and commensurateness with the immutable Idea of Equity, or 
 perfect Rectitude. Hence the close connexion between the words, right- 
 eousness and g-orfhness, i. e. godlikeness. 
 
 I should be tempted to subjoin a few words on a predominating doc- 
 trine closely connected witli the present argument — the Paleian Principle 
 of General Conseque>xes ; but the inadequacy of this Principle, as a 
 criterion of Right and Wrong, and above all its utter unfitness as a Moral 
 Guide, have been elsewhere so fully stated (Friend, vol. ii. p. 236 — 240), 
 that even in again referring to the subject, I must shelter myself under 
 Seneca's rule, that what we cannot too frequently think of, we cannot too oft- 
 en be made to recollect. It is, however, of immediate importance to the 
 point in discussion, that the Reader should be made to see how altogether 
 incompatible the principle of judging by general consequences is with the 
 Idea of an Eternal, Omnipresent and Omniscient Being ! that he should 
 be made aware of the absurdity of attributing aiiy form of Generalization 
 to the all-perfeet Mind. To gmerdize is a faculty and function of the Hu- 
 man Understanding, and from its imperfection and limitation are the iiso 
 and the necessity of generalizing derived. Generalization is a Substitute 
 for Intuition, for the Power of intuitive (that is, immediate) knowledge. 
 As a Substitute, it is a gift of inestimable Value to a finite Intelligence, 
 such as Man hi his present state is endowed with and capable of exerci- 
 sing ; but yet a Substitute only, and an imperfect one to boot. To attri- 
 bute it to God is the gi-ossest Anthropomorphism : aud grosser instances 
 of Anthropomorphism than are to be foimd in the controversial writings 
 on Original Sin and Vicai'ious Satisfaction, the Records of Superstition do 
 not supply. 
 
 [See note 2.3.— Am. Ed.] 
 
 [69] p. 167. 
 
 Availing himself of the equivocal sense, and (I most readily admit) the 
 injudicious use, of the word "free" in the — even on this ncconnt—fmdtt/ 
 phrase, "/ree only to sin," Jeremy Taylor treats the notion of a power in 
 the Will of determining itself to evil without an equal power of determin- 
 
 42 
 
330 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ing itself to Good, as a '■^foolery.'''' I would this had been the only in- 
 stance in his " Deus Justiiicatus" of that inconsiderate contempt so fre- 
 quent in the polemic treatises of minor Divines, who will have Ideas of 
 Reason, Spiritual Truths that can only be spiritually discerned, translated 
 for them into adequate conceptions of the Understanding. The great arti- 
 cles of Corruption and Redemption are propounded to us as Spiritual Mys- 
 teries ; and every interpretation, that pretends to explain them into com- 
 prehensible notions, does by its veiy success furnish presumptive proof of 
 its failure. The acuteness and logical dexterity, with which Taylor has 
 brought out the falsehood or semblance of falsehood in the Calvinistic 
 scheme, are truly admirable. Had he next concentered his thoughts in 
 tranquil meditation, and asked himself: What then is the truth ? If a 
 Will he at all, what must a will be ! — he might, I think, have seen that a 
 JVature in a Will implies already a Cori-uption of that Will ; that a JVature 
 is as inconsistent with freedom^ as free choice with an incapacity of choo- 
 sing aught but evil. And lastly, a free power in a JS/ature to fulfil a Law 
 above Natin-e ! — I, who love and honour this good and great man with all 
 the reverence that can dwell "on this side idolatry," dare not retort on this 
 assertion the charge of Foolery ; but I find it a paradox as startling to my 
 Reason as any of the hard sayings of the Dorp Divines were to his Under- 
 standing. S. T. C. 
 
 [See notes 29 and 45. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [70] p. 177. 
 
 For a specimen of these Rabbinical Dotages I refer, not to the wri- 
 tings of Mystics and enthusiasts, but to the shrewd and witty Dr. South, 
 one of whose most elaborate Sermons stands prominent among the many 
 splendid extravaganzas on this subject. 
 
 [71] p. 180. 
 
 A Learned Order must be supposed to consist of three Classes. First, 
 those who are employed in adding to the existing Sum of Power and 
 Knowledge. Second, and most numerous Class, those whose office it is 
 to diffuse through the community at large the practical Results of Science 
 and that kind and degree of knowledge and cultivation, which for all is 
 requisite or clearly useful. Third, the Formers and Instructors of the 
 Second — in Schools, Halls and Universities, or through the medium of the 
 Press. The second Class includes not only the Parochial Clergy, and all 
 others duly ordained to the Ministerial Office ; but likewise all the Mem- 
 bers of the Legal and Medical Professions, who have received a learned 
 education under accredited and responsible Teachers. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 331 
 
 [72] p. 181. 
 
 The Author of tlie Statesman's Manual, must be the most inconsist- 
 ent of men, if he can be justly suspected of a leaning to the Romish 
 Church : or if it be necessaiy for him to repeat his fervent Amen to the 
 Wish and Prayer of our late good old King, that every adult in the Brit- 
 ish Empire should he able to read his Bible, and have a Bible to read ! 
 Nevertheless, it may not be supei-fluous to declare, that in thus })rotestiiig 
 against the licence of private interpretation, the Editor does not mean to 
 condemn the exercise or deny the right of individual judgment. He con- 
 demns only the pretended right of eveiy Individual, competent and in- 
 competent, to inteipret Scripture in a sense of his own, in oj)position to 
 the judgment of the Church, without knowledge of the Originals or of 
 the Languages, the History, Customs, Oj>inions and Controversies of the 
 Age and Country in which they were written ; and where the Interpreter 
 judges in ignorance or in contempt of uninterrupted Tradition, the unan- 
 imous Consent of Fathers and Councils, and the universal Faith of the 
 Church in all ages. It is not the attempt to form a judgment, which is 
 here called m question ; but the grounds, or rather the no-grounds, on 
 which the judgment is formed and relied on — ^the self-willed and separa- 
 tive [schismatic) Setting-up [hceresis). See note 13. 
 
 My fixed Principle is : that a Christianity without a Church exer- 
 cising Spiritual authority is Vanity and Dissolution. And my belief 
 is, that when Popery is rushing in onus like an inundation, the Nation will 
 find it to be so. I say Popery ; for this too I hold for a delusion, that Ro- 
 manism or Roman Cathohcism is separable from Popery. Almost as rea- 
 dily could I suppose a Circle without a Centre. 
 
 [If the author means in the last paragraph, a church establishment and 
 its attendant authority, the experience of this country will be thought, by 
 most Christians here, to furnish a sufficient answer. — Aai. Ed.] 
 
 [73] p. 187. 
 
 To escape the consequences of this scheme, some Arminian Divines 
 have asserted that the penalty inflicted on Adam and continued in his pos- 
 terity was simply the loss of immortality. Death as the utter extinction of 
 personal Being : immoitality being regarded by them (and not, I think, 
 without good reason) as a super-natural attribute, and its loss therefore in- 
 volved in tlie forfeiture of super-natural graces. This theory has its gold- 
 en side : and as a private opinion, is said to have the countenance of more 
 than one Dignitary of our Chiu'ch, whose general orthodoxy is beyond 
 impeachinent. For here the Penalty resolves itself into the Consequence, 
 and this \he natural and [naturally) inevitable Consequence of Adam's 
 Crime. For x\dam, indeed, it was a positive punishment : a punishment 
 of his guilt, the justice of which who could have dared arraign ? While 
 
333 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 for the Oifripriiig qf Adam it was simply a not superadding to their nature 
 the i)nvilege by which the Original Man was contra-distinguished fromtho 
 brute creation — a mere negation, of which they had no more right to 
 complain than any other species of Animals. God in this view appears 
 only in his Attiibute of Mercy, as averting by supernatural interposition a 
 consequence naturally inevitable. This is the golden side of the Theory. 
 But if we approach to it from tJie opposite direction, it first excites a just 
 scruple from the countenance it seems to give to the doctrine of Material- 
 ism. The supporters of this Scheme do not, I presume, contend, that Ad- 
 am's Offspring would not have been born Men, but have formed a new 
 species of Beasts ? And if not, the notion of a rational and self-conscious 
 Soul, perishing utterly with the dissolution of the organized Body, seems 
 to require, nay, almost involves, the opinion that the Soul is a quahty or 
 Accident of the Body — a mere harmony resulting fi'om Organization. 
 
 But let this pass unquestioned ! Whatever else the Descendants of Ad- 
 am might have been without the intercession of Christ, yet (this interces- 
 sion having been effectually made) they are now endowed with Souls that 
 are not extinguished together with the material body. Now unless these 
 Divines teach likewise the Romish figment of Purgatory, and to an extent 
 in which tlie Church of Rome herself would denounce the doctrine as an 
 impious heresy : unless they hold, that a punishment temporary and re- 
 medial is the worst evil that the Impenitent have to apprehend in a Future 
 State ; and that tJie s})iritual Death declared and foretold by Christ, "the 
 Death Eternal where tlie Worm never dies," is neither Death nor eternal, 
 but a certain quantum of Suffering in a state of faith, hope, and progres- 
 sive amendment — unless they go these lengths (and the Divines here in- 
 tended are orthodox Churchmen, men who would not knowingly advance 
 even a step on the road towards them) — then I fear, that any advantage, 
 their theory might possess over the Calvinistic Scheme in the article of 
 Original Sin, would be dearly purchased by increased difficulties and an 
 ultra-Calvinistic narrowness in the article of Redemption. I at least find 
 it impossible, with my present human feelings, not to imagine otherwise, 
 than that even in heaven it would be a fearful thing to know, that in or- 
 der to my elevation to a lot infinitely more desirable than by nature it 
 would have been, the lot of so vast a multitude had been rendered infi- 
 nitely more calamitous ; and that my fehcity had been purchased by the 
 everlasting misery of the majority of my fellow-men, who, if no redemp- 
 tion had been provided, afler inheriting the pains and pleasin-es of earthly 
 existence during the numbered hours, and the few and evil — evil yet few — 
 days of the years of their mortal life, Avould have fallen asleep to wake no 
 more, would have sunk into the drcamle;5s Sleep of the Grave, and have 
 been as the murmur, and the [)laint, and the exulting swell, and the sharp 
 scream, which the unequal Gust of Yesterday snatched from the strings of 
 a Wind-llarp ! 
 
NOTES. i555 
 
 In another place I have ventured to question the BpWt and tendency of 
 J. Taylor's Work on Repentance. But I ought to have added, that to dis- 
 cover and keep the tiue medium in expounding and applying the Eflicacy 
 of Christ's Cross and Passion, is heyond compare the most, difficult and 
 dehcate point of Practical Divinity — and that which especially needs " a 
 guidance from above,'''' 
 
 [74] p. 190. 
 
 St. Paul blends both forms of expression, and asserts the same doctrine 
 when speaking of the "celestial body" provided for "the New Man" uithe 
 spiritual Flesh and Blood, (i. e. the informing power and vivific hfe of the 
 incarnate Word : for the Blood is the Life, and the Flesh the Power) — 
 when speaking, I say, of this " celestial body," as an " house not made witli 
 hands, eternal t?i the heavens,^^ yet brought down to us, made appropriable 
 by faith, and ours — he adds : " For in this earthly house (i. e. this moital 
 life, as the inward principle or energy of our Tabernacle, or outward and 
 sensible Body) we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our 
 house which is from heaven : not that we would be unclothed, but clothed 
 upon, that MortaUty might be swallowed up of life." 2 Cor. v. 1 — 4. 
 
 The four last words of the first verse [eternal in the heavens) compared 
 with the conclusion of v. 2 [which is from heaven), present a coincidence 
 with John iii. v. 13, " And no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that 
 came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven." [Qy. 
 Whetlier the coincidence would not be more apparent, if the words of 
 John had been rendered word for word, even to a disregard of the En- 
 glish Idiom, and with what would be servile and superstitious fidelity in 
 the translation of a common classic ? I can see no reason why the ov(5£i?, 
 so firequent in St. John, should not be rendered literall}^, no one ; and there 
 may be a reason why it should. I have some doubt likewise respecting 
 the omission of the definite articles, ror, rov, tm — and a greater, as to the 
 o (ov, both in this place and in John i. v. 18, being adequately rendered by 
 our " ivhich is" P. S. What sense some of the Greek Fathers attached to, 
 or infeiTed from, St. Paul's " m the Heavens" the Theological Student (and 
 to Theologians is this note principally addressed) may find in Water- 
 land's Letters to a Country Clergyman — a Divine, whose Judgment and 
 strong soimd sense are as unquestionable as his Learning and Orthodoxy. 
 A Clergyman in full Orders, who has never read the works of Bull and 
 Waterland, has — a duty yet to perform.] 
 
 Let it not be objected, that forgetful of my own professed aversion to 
 allegorical inteipretations (see p. 13) I have in this note fallen into " the 
 fond humour of the Mystic Divines and Allegorizers of Holy Writ." There 
 is, believe me ! a wide difference between symbolical and allegoncal. If I 
 say, that the Flesh and Blood (Corpus noumcnon) of the Incarnate Word 
 is Power and Life, I say likewise that this mysterious Power and Life are 
 
334 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 verilij and actually the Flesh and Blood of Christ. They are the Allegori- 
 zcrs, who turn the 6th c. of the Gospel according to St. John — the hard 
 saying — who can hear it ? AJ}.er which tinie many of (Christ's) Disciples, 
 who had been eye-witnesses of his mighty Miracles, who had heard the 
 sublime Morality of his Sermon on the Mount, had glorified God for the 
 Wisdom which they had heard, and had been prepared to acknowledge, 
 " this is indeed the Christ" — went back and walked no more with him ! — 
 the hard saying, which even the Twelve were not yet competent to un- 
 derstand farther than that they were to be spiritually understood ; and 
 which the Chief of the Apostles was content to receive with an implicit 
 and anticipative faith ! — they, I repeat, are the Allegorizers who moralize 
 these hard sayings, these high words of Mystery, into an hyperbolical Me- 
 taphor per Catachresin, that only means a belief of the Doctrines which 
 Paul believed, an obedience to the Law respecting which Paul " was 
 blameless," before the Voice called him on the road to Damascus ! What 
 every Parent, every humane Preceptor, would do when a Child had mis- 
 understood a Metaphor or Apologue in a literal sense, we all laiow. But 
 the meek and merciful Jesus suffered many of his Disciples to fall off 
 from eternal life, when to retain them he had only to say — O ye simple 
 ones ! why are ye offended ? My words indeed sound strange : but I mean 
 no more than what you have often and often heard from me before with 
 delight and entire acquiescence ! — Credat Judaeus ! Non ego. It is sufficient 
 for me to know that I have used the language of Paul and John as it was 
 understood and interpreted by Justin Martyr, TertulUan, Irenaius, and (if 
 he does not lie) by the whole Christian Church then existing. 
 
 [75] p. 192. 
 
 [In his Literary Life, vol. 1. c. 12, the Author has distinguished trans- 
 cendental and transcendent, accorthng to the scholastic use of them. In 
 philosophical enquiries, that is transcendental, which lies beneath, or, as it 
 were behind our ordinaiy consciousness, but of which we become conscious 
 by a voluntary effort of self-inspection. That is transcendent, which is out 
 of the reach of all thought and self-consciousness, and cannot, therefore, 
 become an object of knowledge — and a transcendent cause is a cause, the 
 knowledge of which as it is in itself, lies beyond the reach of all our cog- 
 nitive faculties. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 [7G] p. 193. 
 
 This word occurs but once in the New Testament, viz. Romans v. 11, 
 the marginal rendering being, reconciliation. The personal Noun, i<aiid- 
 XaxTYit, is still in use with the modern Greeks for a money-changer, or one 
 who takes the debased Currency, so general in countries under despotic 
 or other dishonest governments, in exchange (or sttu-ling Coin or Bullion ; 
 the purchaser paying the catallage, i. e. the dif!eR*nce. In the elder 
 
NOTES. 335 
 
 Greek writers the verb means to exchange for an opposite, as z«r»,;.;.«fToero 
 Tfjr ey»qavfoi4 oraoiuratg. — He exchanged within Iiimself enmity for friend- 
 ship (that is, he reconciled himself) with his Paitj'' — or as we say, made it 
 up with them, an idiom which (Avith whatever loss of dignity) gives the ex- 
 act force of the word. He made up the difference. The Hebrew word of 
 very frequent occm-rence in the Pentateuch, which we render by the sub- 
 stantive, atonement, has its radical or visual image, in copher, pitch. Gen. 
 vi. 14. thou shall pitch it within and wiilioid with pitch. Hence, to unite, to 
 fill up a breach, or leak, the word expressing both the act viz. the bringing 
 together what had been previously se})arated, and the means, or material, 
 by which the re-union is eftected, as in ovn* English verbs, to caulk, to solder f 
 to poy or pay (from poix, pitch), and the French suiver. Thence meta- 
 phorically, expiation, the piacida having the same root, and being grounded 
 on another property or use of Gums and Rosins, the supposed cleansing 
 powers of their fumigation. Numbers viii. 21 : "made atonement for the 
 Levites to cleanse them." — Lastly, (or if we are to believe the Hebrew 
 \j&Ti\coT\B, properly Qind moQ\. frequently) Ransom, but if by jaroper the In- 
 terpreters mean primauj and radical, the assertion does not need a con- 
 fiitation: all radicals belonging to one or other of three classes. 1. Inter- 
 jections, or sounds expressing sensations or passions. 2. Imitations of sounds 
 as splash, roar, whiz, &c. 3. and principally, visual images, objects of 
 sight. But as to frequency, in all the numerous (fifty, I believe) instan- 
 ces of the word in the Old Testament, I have not found one in which it 
 can, or at least need, be rendered by Ransom: though beyond all doubt 
 Ransom is used in the Epistle to Timothy, as an equivalent term. 
 
 [77] p. 199. 
 
 On a subject, concerning which we have so deep an interest in fonning 
 just and distinct conceptions, no serious Inquirer after religious truth ; 
 much less any man dedicated to his pursuit, and who ought to be able to 
 declare with tlie Psalmist, it is "more desirable to me than thousands of 
 gold and silver : therefore do I hate every false w ay ;" will blame my soli- 
 citude to place a notion, which I regard not only as a misbelief, but as a 
 main source of unbelief— at all events, among the most frequent and plau- 
 sible pretexts of Infidelity — in all the various points of view, from which 
 this or that Reader may more readily see, and see into, its falsity. I make 
 therefore no apology for adding one other illustration of the whimsical 
 Logic by which it is supported, in an Incident of recent occurrence, which 
 will at the same time furnish an instance in proof of the contrariety of 
 the Notion itself to the first and most obvious principles of morahty, and 
 how spontaneously Common Sense starts forward, as it Avere, to repel it. 
 
 Let it be imagined, that the late Mr. Fauntleroyhad, in compliance with 
 the numerous petitions in his behalf, received a pardon — that soon after 
 !«ome other Individual had been tried and convicted of forging a note for 
 
336 AIDS TO RBFLF.OTION. 
 
 a Hundred Pound — that on application made for the extension of mercy 
 to the culprit it should be declared that in a commercial country hke this 
 it was contrary' to all Justice to grant a pardon to a man convicted of For- 
 gery — and that in invalidation of this dictum, the apphcants having quoted, 
 as they naturally would quote, the case of Mr. Fauntleroy, the Home 
 Secretary should reply, yes ! but Mr. Fauntleroy forged to the amount of 
 Two Hundred Thousand Pound ! — Now it is plain, that the Logic of this 
 reply would remain the same, if instead of comparative Criminahty I had 
 supposed a case of comparative Purity from Crime : and when the Reader 
 has settled with himself, what he would think of such Logic, and by what 
 name he would describe it, let him peruse the following extract : 
 
 [Fi'om Baldiviii's London Weekly Journal, Saturday Dec. 4, 1824.] 
 MANSION HOUSE. 
 
 Monsieur Edmund Angehni, Professor of the Languages, and la morale^ 
 whose fracas with the Austrian Ambassador was reported on Wednesday, 
 came before the Lord Mayor, and presented his Lordship with a Petition, 
 of which the following is a translation : — 
 
 "My Lord — He who has violated the law ought to perish by the sword 
 of justice. Monsieur Fauntleroy ought to perish by the sword of justice. 
 If another takes his place, I think that justice ought to be satisfied. I 
 devote myself for him. I take upon myself his crime, and I wish to 
 die to save him. 
 
 (Signed) Edmund Angelini, 
 
 18 Ossulston-street, Somers-town. of A^'enice." 
 
 The Lord Mayor expressed hia surprise at the application ; and Mr. 
 Angelini was uiformed that it was conti'ary to all justice that the life of an 
 innocent person should be taken to save that of one who was guilty, even 
 if an innocent man chose to devote himself. 
 
 Angelini exclaimed that our Saviour died as an atonement for the sins 
 of the guilty, and that he did not see why he should not be allowed to do 
 so. 
 
 But in answer to this, doubt«! wore expressed whether Monsieur Angeli- 
 ni was sufficiently pure to satisfy justice. 
 
 •H- •X- -X- % -Jfr * 
 
 The Reader is now, I trust, convinced, that though the Case put by me, 
 introductory to this extract, was imaginary", the Logic was not of my in- 
 vention. It is contnm/ to all Justice, that an innocent y?er50?i shoidd be sac- 
 rificed, ^'c. ^r. ; hut a person AiiTOGETHER innocent — Aye ! that is a differ- 
 ent question ! , 
 
 [78] p. 205. 
 Which it could not be, in rpspcct of spiritual truths and objectR super- 
 
NOTE«. 387 
 
 sensuous, if it were the same with, and merely another name for, " the Fa- 
 culty judging according to Sense" — i. e. the Understanding, or (as Taylor 
 most often calls it in distinction from Reason) Discourse {Discursus seu Fa- 
 cultas discursiva vel discursona). N. B. The Reason, so instructed and so 
 actuated as Taylor requires in the sentences immediately following, is what 
 T have called the Spirit Vide p. 137—138. 
 
 [79] p. 212. 
 
 I trust, that my ^ge will exempt me fi'om the charge of presumption, 
 when I avow, that the forty lines here following are retained as a speci- 
 men of accumvlatwe reason, and as an Exercise, on which my supposed 
 Pupil may try and practice the power of sustaining the attention up the 
 whole ascent of a "piled Argimient." The most magnificent Example of 
 a Sorites in our — ^perhaps in any — Language, the Reader may find in tlie 
 Friend, vol, ii. p. 157, transcribed from J. Taylor's Dissuasive from Po- 
 pery. 
 
 [80] p. 214. 
 
 I say, all : for the accounts of one or two travelhng French PhilosopheSj 
 professed Atheists and Partizans of Infidelity, respecting one or two Afi*!- 
 can Hordes, Caffi-es and poor outlawed Boschmen hunted out of their hu- 
 manity, ought not to be regarded as exceptions. And as to Heame's As- 
 sertion respecting the non-existence and rejection of the Belief among the 
 Copper-Indians, it is not only hazarded on veiy weak and insufiicient 
 grounds, but he himself, in another part of his work, unconsciously sup- 
 plies data, from whence the contraiy may safely be concluded. Hearne 
 perhaps, put down his friend Motannabbi's i^orf-philosophy for the opinion 
 of his tribe ; and from his high appreciation of the moral character of this 
 murderous Gymnosophist it might, I fear, be inferred, that Hearne himself 
 was not the very person one would, of all others, have chosen for the pur- 
 pose of instituting the inquiry. 
 
 [81] p. 216. 
 
 The case here supposed actually occurred in my own experience in the 
 person of a Spanish Refugee, of English Parents, but from his tenth year 
 resident in Spain, and bred in a family of wealthy but ignorant and bigot- 
 ted Catholics. In mature manhood he returned to England, disgusted 
 with the conduct of the Priests and Monks, which had indeed for some 
 years produced on his mind its so conmion effect among the better infor- 
 med Natives of the South of Europe — a tendency to Deism. The results, 
 however, of the infidel system in France, with his opportunities of ob- 
 serving the eflTccts of in-eligion on the French ofiicers in Spain, on the one 
 hand ; and the undeniable moral and intellectual superiority of Protestan 
 
 43 
 
338 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 Britain on the other ; had not been lost on him : and here he began to 
 think for himself and resolved to study the subject. He had gone through 
 Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation, and Paley's Evidences ; but had ne- 
 ver read the New Testament consecutively, and the epistles not at all. 
 
 [82] p. 218. 
 
 By certain biblical Philologists of the Teutonic School (Men distinguish- 
 ed by Learning, but still more characteristically by hardihood in conjecture, 
 and who suppose the Gospels to have undergone several successive re- 
 visions and erdargements by, or under the authority of, the sacred Histori- 
 ans) these words are contended to have been, in the first delivery, the com- 
 mon commencement of all the Gospels ■'fccra aaf/.a (i. e. according to the 
 Flesh) in distinction fi'om St. John's, or the Gospel yMTa nvetuu{i. e. accord- 
 ing to the Spirit). — Editor. 
 
 [83] p. 222. 
 
 That every the least permissible form and ordinance, which at different 
 times it might be expedient for the Church to enact, are pre-enacted intlie 
 New Testament ; and that whatever is not to be found there, ought to be 
 allowed no ivhere — tliis has been asseiied. But that it has been proved ; or 
 even rendered plan sible ; or that the Tenet is not to be placed among the 
 revidsionary Results of the scripture-slighting Will- worship of the Romish 
 Church ; it will be more sincere to say, I disbeheve, than that I doubt. It 
 was chiefly if not exclusively in reference to the extravagances built on 
 this tenet, that the great Selden ventured to declare, that the words Scru- 
 tamini Scripturas, had set the world in an uproar. 
 
 N. B. Extremes appear to generate each other ; but if we look steadily, 
 there will most often be found some common eiTor, that produces both as 
 its Positive and Negative Poles, Thus Superstitions go by Pairs, like the 
 two Hungarian Sisters, always quarrelhng and inveteraiely averse, but yet 
 joined at the Trunk. 
 
 [84] p. 222. 
 More than this we do not consider as necessary for our argument. 
 And as to Robinson's assertions, in his History of Baptism, that infant 
 Baptism did not commence till the time of Cyprian, who, condemning 
 it as a general practice, allowed it in particular cases by a dispensation 
 of Charity ; and that it did not actually become the ordinary rule of 
 the Church, till Augustin, in the fever of his anti-pelagian Dispute, had 
 introduced the Calvinistic interpretation of Original Sin, and the dire state 
 of infants' dying unbaptized — I am so far from acceding to them, that I 
 reject the whole statement as rash, and not only unwarranted by the Au- 
 thorities he cites, but unanswerably confuted by Baxter, Wall, and many 
 other learned Pccdo-baptists before and since the publication of his Work. 
 
NOTES. 339 
 
 I confine myself to tiie assertion — not that infant Ba})tism was not ; but — 
 that there exist no sufficient proofs that it was, the practice of the Apos- 
 toUc Age. 
 
 [85J p. 224. 
 
 Let me be permitted to repeat and apply JVbte 52. Superstition may be 
 defined as 5'Mjoerstantium (cujusmodi sunt Cserimonise et Signa externa, 
 quffi, nisi in significando, nihih sunt et psene nihil) ASuftstantiatio. 
 
 [86] p. 230. 
 
 Conference between two men that had doubts of infant Baptism. By 
 W. Wall, Author of the Hist, of Inf. Bapt. and Vicar of Shoreham in Kent, 
 A very sensible little tract, and written in an excellent spirit : though it 
 failed, I confess, in satisfying my mind as to the existence of any decisive 
 proofs or documents of Infant Baptism having been an Ai)ostohc Usage, 
 or specially intended in any part of the New Testament : though deduci- 
 ble generally from many passages, and in perfect accordance witli the spvit 
 of the whole. 
 
 P. S. A mighty Wrestler in the cause of Spiritual Religion and Gospel 
 Morality, in whom more than in any other Contemporary I seem to see 
 the Spirit of Luther revived, expressed to me his doubts whether we 
 have a right to deny that an infant is capable of spiritual influence. To 
 such a man I could not feel justified in returning aji answer extempore, or 
 >vithout having first submitted my convictions to a fresh revisal. I owe 
 him, however, a deliberate answer ; and take this opportunity of discharg- 
 ing the debt. 
 
 The Objection supposes and assumes the very point which is denied, or 
 at least disputed — A'iz. that Infant-baptism is specially injoined in the Scrip- 
 tures. If an express passage to this pin-port had existed in the New Tes- 
 tament, the other passages, which evidently imply a spkitual operation un- 
 der the condition of a preceding spiritual act on the part of the person 
 baptized, remaining as now — then indeed, as the only way of removing the 
 apparent contradiction, it might be allowable to call on the Anti-paedo- bap- 
 tist to prove the negative — namely, that an mfant a week old is not a sub- 
 ject capable or susceptible of spiritual agency. — xA.nd vice versa, should it 
 be made known to us, that infants are not without reflection and self-con- 
 sciousness — then, doubtless, we should be entitled to infer that they were 
 capable of a spiritual operation, and consequently of that which is signi- 
 fied in the baptismal rite administered to Adults. But what does this prove 
 for those, who (as DD. Mant and D'Oyley) not only cannot show, but who 
 do not themselves profess to believe, the sell-consciousness of a New-bom 
 Babe ; but who rest the defence of Infant-baptism on the assertion, that 
 God was pleased to aflix the performance of this rite to his oflTer of Salva- 
 ion, as the indispensable, though arbitrary, condition of the infant's salva- 
 
340 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 bility ? — As Kings in former ages, wlien they conferred Lands in perpetu- 
 ity, would sometimes, as the condition of the Tenure, exact from the Be- 
 neficiary a hawk, or some trifling ceremony, as the putting on or off' of 
 their Sandals, or whatever else royal caprice or the whim of the moment 
 ji light suggest. But t/ow, honored Irving, are as little disposed, as myselli 
 to favor such doctrine ! 
 
 Friend pure of heart and fervent ' we have learnt 
 A different lore! We may not thus profane 
 The Idea and name of Him whose absolute Will 
 Is Reason — Truth Supreme ! — Essential Order ! 
 
 -^ [87] p. 235. 
 
 Of which our he was made Jiesh, is perhaps the best, that our language 
 admits, but is still an inadequate translation. See note 9. The Church of 
 England in this as in other doctrinal points, has preserved the golden mean 
 between the superstitious reverence of the Romanists, and the avowed 
 contempt of the Sectarians, for the Writings of the Fathers, and the au- 
 thority and unimpeached traditions of the Church during the first three or 
 four Centuries. And how, consistently with this honorable characteristic 
 of our Church, a Minister of the same could, on the sacramentary scheme 
 now in fashion, return even a plausible answer to Arnauld's great Work 
 on Transubstantiation, (not without reason the Boast of Catholicism) ex- 
 ceeds my powers of conjecture ! 
 
 [88] p 157. 
 
 Will the Reader forgive me if I attempt at once to illustrate and relieve 
 the subject by annexing the first stanza of the Poem, composed in the same 
 year in which I wrote the Ancient Mariner and the first Book of Chris- 
 tabel .? 
 
 "Encinctur'd with a twine of Leaves, ^ 
 That leafy twine his only Dress ! 
 A lovely Boy was plucking fruits 
 In a moonlight wilderness. 
 The Moon was bright, the air was free, 
 And Fruits and Flowers together grew 
 On many a Shrub and many a Tree : 
 And all put on a gentle hue, 
 Hanging m tliQ shadowy air 
 Like a Picture rich and rare. 
 It was a climate where, they say, 
 The Night is more beloved than Day. 
 But who that beauteous Boy beguil'd, 
 That beauteous Boy ! to linger here r 
 
NOTES. 341 
 
 Aione, by night, a little child, 
 
 111 place so silent and so wild — 
 
 Has he do friend, no loving mother near ?" 
 
 Wanderings of Cain, a MS. Poem. 
 
 [89] p. 243. 
 
 Such is the conception of Body in Des Cartes' own system. Body is 
 every where confounded with Matter, and might in the Cartesian sense 
 be defined, Space or Extension with the attribute of VisibiUty. As 
 Des Cartes at the same time zealously asserted the existence of intelli- 
 gential Beings, the reality and independent Self-subsistence of the Soul, 
 Berkleianism or Spinosism was the immediate and necessaiy Conse- 
 quence. Assume a plurality of self-subsistuig Souls, and we have Berk- 
 leianism ; assume one only, (unam et unicam Substantiam), and you have 
 Spmosism, i. e. the assertion of one infinite Self-subsistent, with the two At- 
 tributes of Thinking and Appearing. "Cogitatio infinita sine centro, et om- 
 niformis Apparitio." How far the Newtonian Vis inertise (interi)reted any 
 othenvise than as an arbitraiy termz=x y z, to represent the unknown but 
 necessary supplement or integi'ation of the Cartesian Notion of Body) has 
 patched up the Flaw, I leave for more competent Judges to decide. But 
 should any one of my Readers feel an interest in the speculative principles 
 of Natural Philosophy, and should be master of the German Language, I 
 warmly recommend for his perusal the eai'liest known publication of the 
 Great Founder of the Critical Philosophy (written in the twenty-second 
 Year of his Age !) on the then eager controversy between the Leibnitziaii 
 and the French and English Mathematicians, respecting the Living For- 
 ces — "Gedanken von der wahren Schatzung der lebendigen Krafle : 1747" 
 — in which Kant demonstrates the right reasoning to be with the latter; 
 but the Truth of Fact, the evidence of experience, with the former ; and 
 gives the explanation, namely : Body, or Coiporeal Nature, is something 
 else and more than geometrical extension, even with the addition of a Vis 
 inertiae. And Leibnitz, with the BernouilHs, erred in the attempt to de- 
 monstrate geometrically a problem not susceptible of geometrical con- 
 strtiction. — This Tract, with the succeeding Himmels-system, may with 
 propriety be placed, after the Principia of Newton, among the striking in- 
 stances of early Genius ; and as the first product of the Dynamic Philos- 
 ophy in the Physical Sciences, from the time, at least, of Giordano Bruno, 
 whom the Idolaters burnt for an Atheist, at Rome, in the year ICOO. — See 
 the Friend, Vol. 1. p. 193—197. 
 
 [90] p. 243. 
 
 For Newton's own doubtfully suggested Ether or inost subtle Fluid, as 
 the ground and immediate Agent in the phaenomena of universal Grav- 
 itation, was either not adopted or soon abandoned by his Disciples: not 
 
342 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 only as introducing, against his own Canons of Right Reasoning, an 
 Ens imagiuarium into physical Science, a Suf/iction in the place of a le- 
 gitimate Suiiposition; but because the Substance (assuming it to exist) 
 must itself form part of the Problem, it was meant to solve. Meantime 
 Leibnitz's Pre-established Harmony, Avhich originated in Spinosa, found 
 no acceptance ; and, lastly, the Notion of a corpuscular Substance, with 
 Properties put mto it, like a Pincushion hidden by the Pins, could pass 
 witli the unthinking only for any thing more than a Confession of igno- 
 rance, or technical terms expressing an hiatus of scientific insight. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 CONTAINING A 
 
 "SELECTION FROM MR. COLERIDGE'S LITERARY 
 CORRESPONDENCE," 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 BLACKWOOD^SMAGAZIIS^E, 
 
 FOR OCTOBER 1821 ; 
 
 AND THE 
 
 « APPENDIX TO THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL." 
 
The expediency of inserting in tliis volume the articles which follow 
 may not perhai)s be very obvious. My motive for doing it, aside from the 
 inl)erent value of the articles themselves, is to place before the readers of 
 the Aids to Reflection, as far as I could do so, the means of clearly under- 
 standing the language and sentiments of the Author in that Work» In 
 regard to several important points, I think they will find their views made 
 more clear by reference to these, though in themselves they may be found 
 more difficult to understand, than the work to which they are appended. 
 They are, moreover, several times refeiTcd to in the Aids to Reflection, 
 and probably few of the Readers of that Work would have access to them 
 elsewhere. The third letter of the " Selection" is omitted, as not particu- 
 larly suited to the pui'j)ose of this work. The Appendix to the Statesman's 
 Manual is reprinted entire. A few sentences have reference to the text of 
 that work, but could not well be omitted. For the most part they may be 
 considered as independent essays havmg reference, as the author elsewhere 
 tells us, to the heights of Metaj)hysics and Theolog}^, and deeply interest- 
 ing to those, who will reflect enough to understand them. 
 
SELECTION 
 
 TROW 
 
 MR. COLERIDGE'S LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE, 
 
 WITH 
 
 FRIENDS AND MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 FROM A PROFESSIONAL FRIEND. 
 
 My Dear and Honoured Sir, — I was much struck with your Excerpta 
 from Porta, Eckartshausen, and others, as to the effect of tlie ceremonial 
 drinks and unguents, on the (female) practitioners of tlic hlack ails, whoso 
 witchcraft you beheve to have consisted in the unhappy craft of bewitch- 
 ing themselves. I, at least, know of no reason, why to these toxications, 
 (especially when taken through the skin, and to the cataleptic state indu- 
 ced by them,) we should not attribute the poor wretches' own belief of 
 their guilt. I can conceive, indeed, of no other mode of accounting — I 
 do not say for their suspicious last dying avowals at the stake ; but — for 
 their private and voluntary confessions on their death-beds, which made 
 a convert of your old favourite. Sir T. Brown. Perhaps my professional 
 pursuits, and medical studies, may have predisposed me to be interested ; 
 but my mind has been in an eddy ever since I left you. The connexions 
 of the subject, with classical and ^vith druidical superstitions, pointed out 
 by you — the Circeia pocula — the herbal spells of the Haxae, or Druidcsses — 
 the somniloquism of the prophetesses, under the coercion of the Scandi- 
 navian enchanters — the dependence of the Greek oracles on mineral wa- 
 ters, and stupifying vapours from the earth, as stated l)y Plutarch, and more 
 than once alluded to by Euiipides — the vast spread of the same, or similar, 
 usages, from Greenland even to the southernmost point of America ; — you 
 sent me home with enough to think of ! But more than all, I was struck 
 and interested with your concluding remark, that these, and niost other 
 superstitions, were, in your belief, but the cadaver et putrimenta of a 
 DEFUNCT NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. Why iiot ratlicr the imperfect rudiments? 
 I asked. You promised mc your reasons, and a fuller explanation. But 
 let me speak out my whole wish ; and call on you to redeem the pledges 
 you gave, so long back as October 1809, that you would devote a series of 
 
 44 
 
346 AIDS TO REFT.ECTION. 
 
 papers to the subject of Dreams, Visions, Presentations, Ghosts, Witchcraft, 
 Cures by sympatliy, in which you would select and explain the most in- 
 teresting and best attested facts that have come to your knowledge from 
 books or personal testimony. 
 
 You can scarcely conceive how deep an mterest I attach to this request ; 
 nor how many, beside myself, in the circle of my own acquaintance have 
 the same feeling. Indeed, my dear Sir ! when I reflect, that there is 
 scarcely a chapter of history in which superstition of some kmd or other 
 does not form or supply a portion of its contents, I look forward, with un- 
 quiet anticipation, to the power of explaining the more frequent and best 
 attested narrations, at least without the necessity of having recourse to the 
 supposition of downright tricks and lying, on one side, or to the devil and 
 his imps on the other. * * * * 
 
 Your obliged Pupil, 
 
 and affectionate Friend, 
 
 J- L . 
 
 P. S. — Dr. L. of the Museum, is quite of your opinion, that little or no- 
 thing of importance to the philosophic naturfdist can result from Compar- 
 ative Anatomy on Cuvier's plan ; and that its best trophies will be but life- 
 less skeletons, till it is studied in combination with a Comparative Physi- 
 ology. But you ought yourself to vindicate the priority of your claim. 
 But I fear, dear C, that Sic Vos, non VoUs, was made for your motto 
 throughout life. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 IN ANSWER TO THE ABOVE. 
 
 Well, my dear pupil and fellow student ! I am willing to make the at- 
 tempt. If the majority of my readers had but the same personal knowl- 
 edge of me as you have, I should sit down to the work with good cheer. 
 But this is out of the (piestion. Let me, however, suppose you for the 
 moment, as an average reader — address you as such, and attribute to you 
 
 feelings and language in character. — Do not mistake me, my dear L . 
 
 Not even for a moment, nor under the pretext of mons a non movendo, 
 would I contemplate in connexion with your name " id genus lectorum, 
 qui meliores obtrectare malint quam imitari : et quorum similitudinem des- 
 perent, eorundem afFectent simultatem — scilicet uti qui suo nomine obscuri 
 sunt, meo innotescant."* The readers I have in view, are of that class 
 who with a sincere, though not very strong desire, of acquiring knowl- 
 edge, have taken it for granted that all knowledge of any value respecting 
 
 *The passage, which cannot fail to remind you of H and his set, 
 
 is from Apuleius' Lib. Floridorum — the two books of which, by-tlie-bye, 
 seem to have been transcribed from his common-place book of Good 
 Things, happy phrases, &c. that he had not had an opportunity of bring- 
 ing in in his set wi'itings. 
 
APPENDIX. 347 
 
 the mind, is either to be found in three or four books, the eldest not a hun- 
 dred years old, or may be conveniently taught without any other terms or 
 previous explanations than tliese works have already rendered familiar 
 among men of education. 
 
 Well, friendly reader ! as the problem of things Uttle less (it seems to 
 you) than impossible, yet strongly and numerously attested by evidence 
 which it seems impossible to discredit, has interested you, I am billing to 
 attempt the solution. But then it must be under certain conditions. I 
 must be able to hope^ I must have sufficient grounds for hoping, that I shall 
 be understood, or rather that I shall be allowed to make myself under- 
 stood. And as I am gifted with no magnetic power of throwing my rea- 
 der into the state of clear-seeing (clairvoyance) or luminous vision ; as I 
 have not the secret of enabling him to read with the pit of his stomach, 
 or with his finger-ends, nor of calling into act " the cuticular faculty," dor- 
 mant at tlie tip of his nose ; but must rely on words — I cannot form the 
 hope rationally, unless the reader will have patience enough to master the 
 sense in which I use them. 
 
 Bid why employ words that need explanation ? And might I not ask in my 
 turn, would you, gentle reader, put the same question to Sir Edward Smith, 
 or any other member of the Linnsean Society to whom you had applied for 
 instruction in Botany ? And yet he would require of you that you should 
 attend to a score of technical terms, and make yourself master of the 
 sense of each, in order to your understanding the distinctive character of 
 a gi*ass, a mushroom, and a lichen ! Now the psychologist, or speculative 
 philosopher, will be content with you, if you will impose on yourself the 
 trouble of understanding and remembering one of the number in order to 
 understand your own nature. But I will meet your question direct. You 
 ask me why I use ivords that need explanation^ Because (I reply) on this 
 subject there are no others! Because the darkness and the main difficul- 
 ties that attend it, are owing to the vagueness and ambiguity of the words 
 in common use ; and which preclude all explanation for him who had re- 
 solved that none is required. Because there is already a falsity in the very 
 phrases, " words in common use ;" " the language of common sense." Words 
 of most frequent use they may be, common they are not ; but the language 
 of the market, and as such, exi)ressing degrees only, and therefore incom- 
 petent to the purpose wherever it becomes necessary to designate the kind 
 independent of all degree. The philosopher may, and often does, employ 
 the same words as in the market ; but does this supersede the necessity of 
 a previous explanation ? As I referred you before to the Botanist, so now 
 to the Chemist. Light, heat, charcoal, are every man's words. But Jixed 
 or invisible light ? The frozen heat ? Charcoal in its simplest form, as 
 diamond, or as black-lead ? Will a stranger to chemistry be worse oft', 
 would the Chemist's language be less likely to be understood by his usmg 
 difterent words for distinct meanings, as carbon, caloric, and the like ? 
 
348 AIDS TO REFLpCTION. 
 
 But the case is Btill stronger. The chemist is compelled to make words, 
 in order to prevent or remove some error connected with tJie common 
 word ; and this too an error, the continuance of which was incompatible 
 with the first principles and elementary truths of the science he is to teach. 
 You must submit to regard yourself ignorant even of the words, air and wa- 
 ter ; and will fmd, that they are not chemicaliy intelligible without the terms, 
 oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, or others equivalent. Now it is even so with the 
 knowledge, which you woidd have me to communicate. There are cer- 
 tain prejudices of the common, L e. of the average sense of men, the ex- 
 posure of which is the first step, the indispensable preliminary, of all ra- 
 tional ])sychology : and these cannot be exposed but by selecting and ad- 
 Iiering to some one word, in which we may bo able to trace the growth 
 and modifications of the oi)inion or belief conveyed in this, or similar 
 words, not by any revolution or positive change of the original sense, but 
 by the transfer of this sense and tlie diflferenco in the ap})lication. 
 
 Whero there is but one word for two or more diverse or disparate 
 meanings in a language, (or tliough ther*.' should be several, yet if perfect 
 synonyimes, they count but for one word,) the language is so far defective. 
 And this is q defect of frequent occurrence in all languages, prior to the 
 cultivation of science, logic and philology, especially of the two latter : 
 and among q free, lively, and ingenious people, such as the Greeks were, 
 sophistry and the influence of sophists are the inevitable result. To check 
 tliis evil by striking at its root in the ambiguity of words, Plato wrote tho 
 greater part of his published works, which do not so much contain his 
 own system of philosophy, as the negative conditions of reasonmg aright 
 on any system. And yet more obviously is it the case with the Metaphys- 
 ics, Analytics, «fec. of Aristotle, which have been well described by Lam- 
 bert as a dictionary of general terms, the process throughout being, first, 
 to discover and establish definite meanings, and then to ai)propriate to each 
 a several word. The sciences will take care, each of its own nomencla- 
 ture : but the interests of the language at large fall under the special guar- 
 dianshi}) of logic and rational psychology. Where these have fallen into 
 neglect or disrepute, from exclusive pursuit of wealth, excess of the com- 
 mercial spirit, or whatever other cause disposes men in general to attach 
 an exclusive value to immediate and palpable utiUty, the dictionary may 
 swell, but the language will decline. Few arc the books published within 
 the last fifty years, that would not supply their quota of proofs, that so it 
 is with our own mother English. The bricks and stones are in abmid- 
 ance, but the cement none or naught. That which is indeed the common 
 language exists eveiy where as the menstruum, and nowhere as the whole 
 
 See Biogi'aphia lAteraria — while the language complimented with this 
 
 name, is, as 1 have already said, in fact the language of the market. Eve- 
 rv science, every trade, has its technical nomenclature ; every folly has its 
 fancy words ; every vice its own slang— and is the science of humanity to 
 
APPENDIX. 349 
 
 be the one exception ? Is philosophy to work without tools ? to have no 
 straw wherewitli to make the bricks for her mansion-house but what she 
 may pick up on the high road, or steal, with all its impurities and sophis- 
 tications, from the htter of the cattle market ? 
 
 For the present, however, my demands on your patience are very limit- 
 ed. — If as the price of much entertainment to follow, and I trust of 
 something besides of less transitory interest, you will fairly attend to the 
 history of it<)o scholastic terms, object and subject, with their derivatives ; 
 you shall have my promise that I will not on any future occasion ask you 
 to be attentive, without trying not to bo myself dull. That it may cost 
 you no more trouble than necessary, I have brought it under the eye in 
 numbered paragraj)hs, with scholia or commentary to such as seemed to 
 require iL 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 On the Philosophic import of the Words Object and Subject. 
 
 § 1. 
 Existence Is a simple intuition, underived and indecomponible. It is no 
 idea^ no particular form, much less any determination or modification of 
 the i)Ossible : it is nothing that can be educed from the logical concei)tion 
 of a tiling, as its predicate : it is no propeiiy of a thing, but its reahty itself; 
 or as the Latin would more conveniently express it — NuUa rei proprietor 
 est, sed ipsa ejus realitas. 
 
 SCHOLIUM. 
 
 Herein lies the so})liism in Dcs Cartes' celebrated demonstration of the 
 existence of the Supreme Being from the idea. In the idea of God are 
 contained all attributes that belong to the perfection of a being : but exist- 
 ence is such : therefore God's existence is contained in the idea of God. 
 To this it is a sufficient answer, that existence is not an attribute. It might 
 be shown too, from the barrenness of the demonstration, by identifying the 
 deduction with the premise, i. e. for reducing the minor or term included 
 to a mere repetition of the major term including. For in fact the syllogism 
 ought to stand thus : the idea of God comprises the idea of all attributes 
 that belong to perfection ; but the idea of existence is such : therefore the 
 idea of his existence is included in the idea of God. Now, existence is 
 no idea, but a fact : or, though we had an idea of existence, still the proof 
 of its correspondence to a reality would be wanting, i. e. the very point 
 would be wanting which it was the i)urpose of the demonstration to sup- 
 ply. Still the idea of the fact is not the fact itself Besides, the term idea, 
 is here improperly substituted for the mere supposition of a logical subject, 
 necessarily presumed in ortler to the conceivableness [cogitahilitas) of any 
 qualities, properties, or uttribiitCij. But this is a mere ens logicum, (vel 
 
350 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ctiani grammaticiim), the result of the thinker's own unity of consciousness 
 and no less contained in the conception of a plant or of a chimera, than 
 in the idea of a Supreme Being. If Des Cartes could have proved, that 
 his idea of a Supreme Being is universal and necessaiy, and that the con- 
 viction of a reality perfectly coincident with the idea is equally universal 
 and inevitable ; and that these were in truth but one and the same act or 
 intuition, unique, and without analogy, though, from the inadequateness of 
 our minds, from the mechanism of thought, and the structure of language 
 we are compelled to express it dividually, as consisting of two coiTclative 
 terms, — this would have been something. But then it must be entitled a 
 statement, not a demonstration — the necessity of which it would supersede. 
 And something like this may perhaps be found true, where the reasoning 
 powers are developed and duly exerted ; but would, I fear, do little to- 
 wards settling the dispute between the religious Theist and the speculative 
 Atheist or Pantheist, whether this be all, or whether it is even ivfiai we 
 mean, and are bound to mean, by the word God. The old controversy 
 would be started, what are the possible perfections of an Infinite Being — 
 in other words, what the legitimate sense is of the term, infinite, as appli- 
 ed to Deity, and what is or is not compatible with that sense. 
 
 §2. 
 I think, and while thinking, I am conscious of certain workings or move- 
 ments, as acts or activities of my being, and feel myself as the power in 
 which they. originate. I feel myself working ; and the sense or feeling of 
 this activity constitutes the sense and feehng of existence, i e. of my ac- 
 tual being. 
 
 SCHOLIUM. 
 
 Movements, motions, taken metaphorically, without relation to space or 
 
 place. KtriiOsii fit] xara ronor] ui aa.rip xatiOng, of Aristotle. 
 
 §3. 
 In these workings, however, I distinguish a difference. In some I feel 
 myself as the cause and proper agent, and the movements themselves as 
 the work of my own power. In others, I feel these movements as my 
 own activity ; but not as my own acts. The first we call the active or 
 positive state of our existence ; the second, the passive or negative state. 
 The active power, nevertheless, is felt in both equally. But in the first I 
 feel it as the cause acting, in the second, as the condition, without which I 
 could not be acted on. 
 
 SCHOLIUM. 
 
 It is a truth of highest im})orttmce, tliat agcre et pati are not diflferent 
 kinds, but the same kind in dilferent relations. Antl this not only hi con- 
 sequence of an inmicdiate reaction, but the act of receiving is no less truly 
 
APPENDIX. 351 
 
 °n act, than the act of influencing. Thus, the hmgs act in being stimula- 
 ted by the air, as truly as in the act of breathing, to which they were stim- 
 ulated. The Greek verbal termination, «>, happily illustrates this. y7ou-», 
 TrpaTTtt), nanxo}, in philosophical giammar, are all three verbs active ; but 
 the first is the active-iran^t^we, in which the agency passes forth out of the 
 agent into another. Tt rrouic ; what are you dohig? The second is the 
 active intrans^itive. Ti npamig ; how do you do? or how are you? The 
 third is the active-passive, or more appropriately the active-patient, the verb 
 recipient or receptive, n naa;(ttg • what ails you ? Or, to take another idiom 
 of our language, that most livelily expresses the co-presence of an agent, 
 an agency distinct and alien from our own. What is the matter icith you ? 
 It would carry us too far to explain the nature of verbs passive, as so called 
 in technical grammar. Suffice, that this class originated in the same cau- 
 ses, as led men to make the division of substances into living and dead — 
 a division psychologically necessary, but of doubtful philosophical validity. 
 
 §4. 
 With the workings and movements, which I refer to myself and my own 
 agency, there alternate — say, rather, I find myself alternately conscious of 
 forms (z=Impressions, images, or better or less figurative and hypothetical, 
 presences, presentations,) and of states or modes, which not feeling as the 
 work or effect of my own power, I refer to a power other than me, i. e. 
 (in the language derived from my sense of sight) without me. And this is 
 the feeling I have of the existence of outward things. 
 
 SCHOLIUM. 
 In this superinduction of the sense of outness on the feeling of the actual 
 arises our notion of the real and reality. But as I cannot but reflect, that 
 as tlie other is to me, so I must be to the other, the terms real antl actual, 
 soon become confounded and interchangeable, or only discriminated in 
 the gold scales of metaphysics. 
 
 §5. 
 Since both, then, the feeling of my own existence and the feeling of the 
 existence of things without, are but this sense of an acting and working — 
 it is clear that to exist is the same as to act or work ; (Quantum operor, 
 tantum sum,) that whatever exists, works, (=is in action ; actually is ; is 
 indeed,) that not to work, as agent or patient, is not to exist ; and lastly, 
 that patience (=:vis patiendi,) and the reaction that is its co-instantaneous 
 consequent, is the same activity in opposite and alternating relations. 
 
 §6. 
 
 That which is iiiferred in those acts and workings, the feeling of which 
 
 is one with the feeling of our own existence, or inferred from those which 
 
 we refer to an agency distinct from our own, but in both instances is itifer- 
 
 red, is the subject, i, e. that which does not appear, but lies under (quod 
 
 jacet subter) the appearance. 
 
352 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 §7. 
 
 But in the first instance, that, namely, which is inferred in its effects, 
 and of course therefore 5cZ/'-inferred, tlio subject is a mind, *. e, that which 
 knoivs itself, and may be inferred by others ; but which cannot appear. 
 
 § 8. 
 
 That, in or from which the subject is inferred, is the object, id quod 
 jacet oh oculos, that which lies before us, that which lies strait opposite. 
 
 SCHOLIUM. 
 
 The terms used in psychology, logic, &c. even those of most frequent 
 occurrence in common life, are, for the most part, of Latin derivation ; 
 and not only so, but the original words, such as quantity, quality, subject, 
 object, &c. &c. formed in the schools of philosophy for scholastic use, and 
 in correspondence to Greek technical terms of the same meaning. Ety- 
 molog}-^, therefore, is little else tlian indispensable to an insight into the 
 true force, and as it were, freshness of the words in question, especially of 
 those that have passed from the schools into the market-place, fi-om the 
 medals and tokens [ovufiolu) of the philosophers' guilder company into the 
 current coin of the land. But the difference between a man who under- 
 stands them according to their first use, and seeks to restore the original 
 impress and superscription, and the man who gives and takes them in 
 small charige, unweighed, and tried only by the sound, may be illustrated 
 by imagining the different points of view in which the same cowi-y would 
 appear to a scientific conchologist, and to a chaffering negro. This use of 
 etymology may be exemplified in the present case. The immediate ob- 
 ject of the mind is always and exclusively the workings or makings above 
 stated and distinguished into two kinds, § 2, 3, and 4. Where the object 
 consists of the first kind, in which the subject infers its own existence, and 
 which it refers to its own agency, and identifies with itself, (feels and 
 contemplates as one with itself, and as itself), and yet without confounding 
 the inherent distinction between subject and object, the subject witnesses 
 to itself that it is a mind^ t. e. a subject-object, or subject that becomes 
 an object to itself. 
 
 But wliere the workings or makings of the second sort are the ol^ject, 
 from objects of this sort we always infer the existence of a subject, as in 
 the former case. But wc infer it from them, rather than in them ; or, to 
 express the point yet more clearly, we infer two subjects. In the object, 
 we infer our own existence and sxihjedi'vity ; from them the existence of a 
 subject, not our own, and to this we refer theoliject, as to its proper cause 
 and agent. Again, we always infer a correspondent mihject ;■ but not al- 
 ways a mind. Whether we consider lliis other subject as another mind, is 
 determined by the more or less a^inlogy of the objects or makings of ihc 
 second class to those of tlie first, and not seldom depends on the valuing 
 <fegrecs of our attention and previous knowledge. 
 
APPENDIX. 353 
 
 Add to these differences the modifying influence of the senses, the sense 
 of sight more paiticulaily, inconsequence of which this suhiect other than 
 we, is presented as a subject out of us. With tlie sensuous vividness con- 
 nected witl], and which in part constitutes, this outness or outwardness, 
 contrast the exceeding obscurity and dimness in the conception of a sub- 
 ject not a mind ; and reflect too, that, to objects of the Jirst kind, we can- 
 not attribute actual or separative outwardness ; while, in cases of the sec- 
 ond kind, we are, after a shorter or longer time, compelled by the law of 
 association to transfer this outness fi-om the hifcn'ed subject to the present 
 object. Lastly, reflect that, in the former instance, the object is identified 
 with the subject, both positively by the act of the subject, and negatively 
 \y^ unsusceptibihty of outness in the object: and that in the latter the very 
 contraiy takes place : namely, instead of the object being identified with 
 the subject, the subject is taken up and confounded in the object. In the 
 ordinary and unreflecting states, therefore, of men's minds, it could not be 
 othei'wdse, but that, in the one instance, the object must be lost, and indis- 
 tinguishable in the subject ; and that in the other, the subject is lost and 
 forgotten in the object, to which a necessary illusion had already transferred 
 that outness, which, in its origin, and in right of reason, belongs exclusive- 
 ly to the subject, i. e.the agent ah extra inferred from the object. For out- 
 ness is but the feeling of otherness, (alterity) rendered intuitive, or alterity 
 visually represented. Hence, and also because we find this outness and 
 the objects, to which, though they are, in fact, workings in our own being, 
 we transfer it, independent of our will, and apparently common to other 
 minds, we learn to connect therewdth the feeling and sense of reality ; and 
 the objective becomes synonymous first with external, then with real, and 
 at length it was employed to express universal and permanent vaUdity, free 
 from the accidents and particular constitution of individual intellects ; nay, 
 when taken in its highest and absolute sense, as fi*ee from the inherent 
 limits, partial perspective, and refracting media of the human mind in 
 specie, {idola tribus of Lord Bacon,) as distinguished from mind in toto 
 gen^re. In direct antithesis to these several senses of the term, objective, 
 the subjective has been used as synonymous with, first, inward ; second, 
 unreal ; and third, that, the cause and seat of which are to be referred to 
 the special or incUvidual peculiarity of the percipient's, mmd ,organs, or re- 
 lative position. Of course, the meaning of the word in any one sentence 
 cannot be definitely ascertained but by aid of tlie context, and will vary 
 with the immediate purposes, and previous views and persuasions of the 
 writer. Thus, the egoist, or ultra-idealist, affirms all objects to be subjective ; 
 the disciple of Malbranche, or of Berkeley, that the objective subsists 
 wholly and solely in the universal subject — God. A lady, otherwise of 
 sound mind, was so affected by the reported death of her absent husband, 
 that every night at the same hour she saw a figure at the foot of her bed, 
 which she identified with him, and minutely described to the bystanders, 
 during the continuance of the vision. The husliand returned, and previ- 
 
 45 
 
354 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 ous to the meeting, was advised to appear for the first time at the foot of 
 the bed, at the precise instant that the spirit used to appe ar, and in the 
 dress described, in the hope that the original might scare away the coun- 
 terfeit ; or, to speak more seriously, in the expectation that the impression 
 on her senses from without would meet half way, as it were, and repel, or 
 take the place of, the image from the brain. He followed the advice ; 
 but the moment he took his position, the lady shrieked out, "My God there 
 are hvo ! and" — ^The story is an old one, and you may end it, happily or 
 tragically, Tate's King Lear or Shakspeare's, according to your taste. I 
 have brought it as a good instance of the force of the two words. You 
 and I would hold the one for a subjective, phenomenon, the other only for 
 objective, and perhaps illustrate the fact, as I have already done elsewliere, 
 by the case of two appearances seen in juxta-position, the one by trans- 
 mitted, and the other by reflected, light. A believer, according to the old 
 style, whose almanack of faith has the one tiifling fault of being for the 
 year of our Lord one thousand fou7\ instead of one thousand eight hun- 
 dred and twenty, would stickle for the objectivity of both.* 
 
 Andrew Baxter, again, would take a different road from either. He 
 would agree with us in calling the apparition subjective, and the figure of 
 the husband objective, so far as the ubi of the latter, and its position extra 
 cerebrum, or in outward spaces, was in question. But he would differ 
 from us in not identifying the agent or proper cause of the fonner — ^i. e. 
 
 *Nay, and relate the circumstance for the very purpose of proving the 
 reality or objective truth of ghosts. For the lady saw both ! But if this 
 were any proof at all, it would at best be a supei-fluous proof, and super- 
 seded by the bed-posts, &c. For if she saw the real posts at the same 
 time with the ghost, that stood betwixt them^ or rather if she continued to 
 see the ghost, spite of the sight of these, how should she not see the real 
 husband ? What was to make the difference between the two solids, or 
 intercept the rays from the husband's dressing-gown, while it allowed free 
 passage to those from the bed-cuitain ? And yet I first heard this story, 
 from one, who, though professedly an unbeliever in this branch of an- 
 cient Pneumatics, (which stood, however, a niche higher, I suspect, in his 
 o-ood opinion, than Monboddo's ancient Metaphysics,) adduced it as a some- 
 thing on the other side! — A puzzhng fact ! and challenged me to answer it. 
 And this, too, was a man no less respectable for talents, education, and 
 active sound sense, than for birth, fortune, and official rank. So strangely 
 are the liealthiest judgments suspended by any out of the way combina- 
 tions, connected with obscure feelings and inferences, when they happen 
 to have occurred within the narrator's own knowledge ! — The pith of this 
 argument in support of ghost-ohjects, stands thus : B=D : Cz=D : ergOy 
 B=C. The D, in this instance, being the equal visibility of the figure, and 
 of its real du})licate, a logic that would entitle the logician to dine off a 
 neck of mutton in a looking-glass, and to set his little ones in downright 
 earnest to hunt the rabbits on the wall by candle-light. Things, that fall 
 under the same definition, belong to the same class ; and visible, yet not 
 tangible, is the generic character of reflections, shadows, and ghosts ; and 
 apparitions, their common, and most certainly their proper, CAn'sfran name. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 355 
 
 the apparition — with the subject beholding. Tlie shape beheld he would 
 grant to be a makhig in the beholder's own brain ; but the facient, he 
 would contend, was a several and other subject, an intrusive supernumerary 
 or squatter in tlie same tenement and work-shop, and working with the 
 same tools [ipyara,) as the subject, their rightful owner and original occu- 
 pant. And verily I could say something in favour of this theory, if only I 
 might put my own interpretation on it — having been hugely pleased with 
 the notion of that father of oddities, and oddest of the fathei-s, old Ter- 
 TULLiAN, who considers these soggetti eaUivi^ (that takes possession of oth- 
 er folk's kitchens, pantries, sculleries, and water-closets, causing a sad 
 to-do at /ie«w/-quartei-s,) as creatures of the same order with the Taeniae, 
 Lumbrici, and Ascarides — i. e. the Round, Tafle, and Thread-worms. 
 Daemones hsec sua corpora dilatant et contrahunt ut volunt, sicut I/imibrici 
 et alia qucsdam insecta. Be this as it may, the difference between this last 
 class of speculators and the conmion run of ghost-fanciei-s, will scarcely 
 enable us to exhibit any essential change in tlie meaning of tlie terms. 
 Both must be described as asserting the objective nature of tJie appearance, 
 and in both the term contains the sense of real as opposed to imaginary, 
 and of outness no less than of otherness, the difference in the former be- 
 ing only, that, in the vulgar belief, the object is outward in relation to the 
 whole circle, in Baxter's, to the centre only. The one places the ghost 
 without, the other within, the line of circumference. 
 
 I have only to add, that these different shades of meaning form no valid 
 objection to the revival and readoption of these conelative tenns in phys- 
 iologj'* and mental analytics, as expressing the two poles of all conscious- 
 ness, in then' most general form and highest al^straction. For, by the law 
 of association, the same metaphorical changes, or shiflings and ingraflings 
 of the primary sense, must inevitably take place in all terms of greatest 
 comprehensiveness and simplicity. Instead of subject and object, put 
 thought and thing. You will find these liable to the same inconveniences, 
 with the additional one of having no adjectives or adverbs, as substitutes 
 for objective, subjective, objectively, subjectively. It is sufiicient that no 
 heterogeneous senses are confounded under the same term, as was the 
 case prior to Bishop Bramhall's controversy with Ilobbes, who had availed 
 himself of the (at that time, and in the common usage) equivalent words, 
 compel and oblige, to confound the thought of moral obligation with that 
 of compulsion and physical necessity. For the rest, the remedy must be 
 provided by a dictionary, constructed on the one only philosopliical prin- 
 ciple, which, regarding words as living growths, offsets, and organs of the 
 
 *" Physiology," according to present usage, treats of the laws, organs, 
 functions, &c. of life ; " Physics" not so. Now, qucre : The etymological 
 imi)ort of the two words being the same, is the diiference in their apj)lioa- 
 tion accidental and arbitrary, or a hidden irony at the assumption on which 
 the division is grounded? ^^voi; unv ^cwj^i, mtv /.uyy, or Joyog mpi ^^voiuxi yy- 
 
356 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 liunian soul, seeks to trace each historically, through all the periods of its 
 natural growth, and accidental modifications — a work worthy of a lloyal 
 and Imperial confederacy, and which would indeed hcdloiv the Alliance ! 
 A work which, executed for any one language, would yet be a benefaction 
 to the world, and to the nation itself a source of immediate honour and of 
 ultimate weal, beyond the power of victories to bestow, or the mines of 
 Mexico to purchase. The realization of this scheme lies in the far dis- 
 tance ; but, in the meantime, it cannot but, beseem eveiy individual com- 
 petent to its furtherance, to contribute a small portion of the materials for 
 the future temple — from a pohshed column to a hewn stone, or a plank for 
 the scaffolding ; and as they come in, to erect wdth them sheds for the 
 workmen, and temporaiy structures for present use. The preceding anal- 
 ysis I would have you regard as my Jirst contribution ; and the first, be- 
 cause I have been long convinced that the want of it is a serious impedi- 
 ment — I will not say, to that se\f-knoivledge which it concerns all men to 
 attain, but — to that self-understanding or insight, which it is all men's in- 
 terest that some men should acquire ; that "the heaven-descended, rvuGi 
 2'savTov," (Juv. Sat.) should exist not only as a ivisdom, but as a science. 
 But every science will have its rules of art, and with these its technical 
 terms; and in this best of sciences, its elder nomenclature has fallen into 
 disuse, and no other been put in its place. To bring these back into light 
 as so many delving tools dug up fi-om the rubbish of long deserted mines 
 and at the same time to exemplify their use and handling, I have drawn 
 your attention to the three questions : — What is the primaiy and proper 
 sense of the woixls Subject and Object, in the technical language of phi- 
 losophy^ ? In what does Objectivity actually exist ? — From w hat is all ap- 
 parent or assumed Objectivity derived or transfeiTed ? 
 
 It is not the age, you have told me, to bring hard words into fashion. 
 Are we to account for this tender nwidhedness, on the ground assigned by 
 your favourite, Persius : (Sat. iii. 113.) 
 
 " Tentemus fauces : tenero latet ulcus in ore 
 Putre, quod baud deceat crustosis radere verbis ?" 
 
 But is the age so averse to hard words ? Eidouranion ; Phantasmagoria ; 
 Kaleidoscope ; Marmaro-kainomenon {for cleaning mantle-pieces) ; Protoxi- 
 des ; Deutoxides ; Tritoxyds ; andDr. Thomson's Latin-greek-cnglish Per- 
 oxides ; not to mention the splashing shoals, that 
 
 " confound the language of the nation 
 
 With long-tailed words in osity and ation" 
 
 (as our great living master of sweet and perfect English, Hookham Frcre, 
 has it), would seem to argue the very contrary. In the train of these, me- 
 thinks, object and subject, with their derivatives, look tame, and clahn a 
 place in the last, or at most, in the humbler scats of the second y})ecies, 
 in tliG far-7ioiscd clustiilication — the long-tailed pigs and pigs without a tail. 
 
APPENDIX. 357 
 
 Aife^ hut not on such dry topics! — I submit. You have touched the vuhierable 
 heel — "lis, quibus siccmn huuen abest," they juust needs be dry. We 
 liave Lord Bacon's word for it. A topic that requires steadfast intuitions, 
 clear conceptions and ideas, as the source and substance of both, and that 
 will admit of no substitute for these, in images, fictions, or factitious facts, 
 must be dry as the broad-awake of sight and day-light, and desperately 
 barren of all that interest which a busy yet sensual age requires and finds 
 in the " uda somnia," and moist moonshine of an epicurean philosophy. 
 For you, however, and for those who, like you, are not so satisfied witli 
 the present doctrines, but that you would fahi tiy " another and an elder 
 lore," (and such there are, I know, and that the number is on the increase,) 
 I hazard this assurance, — That let what will come of the terms, yet with- 
 out the trutJis conveyed in these terms, there can be no self-knowledge ; 
 and without this, no knowledge of any kind. For the fragmentaiy re- 
 collections and recognitions of empiricism* usurping the name of experi- 
 ence, can amount to opinion only, and that alone is knowledge which is at 
 once real and systematic — or, in one word, organic. Let monk and pietist 
 pervert the precept into sickly, brooding, and morbid introversions of con- 
 sciousness — you have learnt, that, even under the wisest regulations, think- 
 ing can go but half way toward this knowledge. To know the whole truth, 
 we must lilvcwise act : and he alone acts, who makes — and this can no 
 man do, estranged from Nature. Learn to know thyself in Nature, that 
 thou mayest understand Nature in thyself. 
 
 But I forget myself. My pledge and purpose was to help you over the 
 threshold into the outer court ; and here I stand, spelling the dun charac- 
 ters inwoven in the veil of Isis, in the recesses of the temple. 
 
 I must conclude, tlierefore, if only to begin again without too abrupt a 
 
 drop., lest I should remind you of IMr. in his Sui-vey of Middlesex, 
 
 who liavmg digressed, for some half a score of pages, into the heights of 
 cosmogony, the old planet between Jupiter and Mars, that went off, and 
 split into the fom* new ones, besides the smaller rubbish for stone showers, 
 the formation of the galaxy, and the other world-worlds, on the same 
 principles, and by similar accidents, superseding the hypothesis of a Crea- 
 tor, and demonstrating the supei-fluity of church tithes and country par- 
 sons, takes up the stitch again with — But to return to the subject of dung. 
 God bless you and your 
 
 Aftectionate Friend, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 *Let y express tlie conditions under which E, (that is, a series of fonns, 
 facts, circumstances, &c. ])resented to the senses of an individual,) will 
 become Experience — and we niiglit, not inia})tly, defuie the two words 
 thus : E-f-^:i:::Experience ; E — 2/::::iEmpiiicisni. 
 
358 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 TO A JUNIOR SOPH, AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Oft£N, my dear young friend ! often and bitterly, do I regret the stupid 
 |)rejudice that made me neglect my mathematical studies, at Jesus. There 
 is something to me enigmatically attractive and imaginative in the gene- 
 ration of <;urves, and in the whole geometry of motion. I seldom look at 
 a fine jwospect or mountain landscape, or even at a grand picture, without 
 abstracting the hues with a teeling similar to that with which I should 
 «onte<mplate the gi'aven or painted walls of some temple or palace in Mid 
 Africa — doubtful whether it were mere Arabesque, or undeciphered cha- 
 racters of an unknown tongue, framed when the language of men was 
 nearer to that of nature — a language of symbols and coiTespondences. I 
 am, therefore, far more disposed to envy, than join in the laugh against 
 your fellow-collegiate, for amusing himself in the geometrical construction 
 of leaves and flowers. 
 
 Since the receipt of your last, I never take a turn round the garden 
 without thinking of his billow-lines and shell-lines, under the well-sound- 
 ing names of Cumaids and Conchoids ; they have as much life and poe- 
 try for me, as their elder sisters, the Naids, Nereids, and Hama-dryads. I 
 pray you, present my best respects to him, and tell him that he brought to 
 my recollection the glorious passage in Plotinus, " Should any one inter- 
 rogate Nature hoio she works if graciously she vouchsafe to answer, she 
 will say, it behooves thee to understand me {or better and more literally, to 
 go along with me) in silence, even as I am silent, and work without words ;" 
 but you have a Plotinus, and may construe it for youi-self. — (Ennead 3. 1. 
 8. c. 3.) attending particularly to the comparison of the process pursued 
 by Nature, with that of the geometrician. And now for your questions 
 respecting the moral influence of W.'s minor poems. Of course, this will 
 be greatly modified by the character of the recipient But that in the 
 majority of instances it has been most salutary, I cannot for a moment 
 doubt. But it is another question, whether verse is the best way of disci- 
 plining the mind to tliat spiritual alchemy, which communicates a sterling 
 value to real or apparent trifles, by using them as moral diagrams, as your 
 friend uses the oak and fig-leaves as geometrical ones. To have fbnned 
 the habit of looking at every thing, not for what it is relative to the pur- 
 poses and associations of men in general, but for the truths which it is suit- 
 ed to represent — to contemplate objects as words and pregnant symbols — 
 the advantages of this my dear D., are so many, and so important, so em- 
 inently calculated to excite and evolve the power of sound and connected 
 reasoning, of distinct and clear conception, and of genial feehog, that there 
 are few of W.'s finest passages — and who, of living i)octs, can lay claim 
 to half the number; — that 1 repeat so often, as that homely quatrain, 
 
APPENDIX. 359 
 
 O reader ! had you in your mind 
 
 Sucli stores as silent thought can bring ; 
 O gentle reader ! you would find 
 
 A tale in every thing. 
 
 You did not know my revered fi'iend and patron ; or rather^ yoti do 
 know the man, and mourn his loss, fi-om the character I have* lately given 
 of him. The following supj)osed dialogue actually took place, in a con- 
 versation with him -y and as in part, an illustration of what I have already 
 said, and in part as text and introduction to much I would wish to say, I 
 entreat you to read it with patience, spite of tlie triviality of the subject, 
 and mock-heroic of the title. 
 
 SUBSTANCE OF A DIALOGUE, WITH A COMMENTARY ON THE SAME. 
 
 A I never found yet, an inkstand that I was satisfied with. 
 
 B. What would you have an inkstand to be ? What qualities and pro- 
 perties would you wish to have combined in an inkstand ? Reflect ! Con- 
 sult your past experience ; taking care, however, not to desire things de- 
 monstrably, or self-evidently incompatible with each other ; and the union 
 of these desiderata will be your ideal of an inkstand. A friend, perliaps, 
 suggests some additional excellence that might rationally be desired, till at 
 length the catalogue may be considered as complete, when neither your- 
 self, nor others can think of any desideratum not anticipated or precluded 
 by some one or more of the points already enumerated ; and the concep- 
 tion of all these, as realized in one and the same artefact, may be fairly en- 
 titled, the 
 
 Ideal of an Inkstand, 
 
 That the pen should be allowed, without requiring any efl^ort or inter- 
 ruptive act of attention from the writer, to dip sufficiently low, and yet be 
 ]irevented, without injuring its nib, from dipping too low, or taking up too 
 nmch ink : That the inkstand should be of such materials as not to decom- 
 pose the ink, or occasion a deposition or discoloration of its specific ingredi- 
 ents, as, from what cause I know not, is the faultof the black Wedge wood- 
 ware inkstands ; that it should be so constructed, that on being overturned 
 the hik cannot escape ; and so protected, or made of such stuff*, that in 
 case of a blow or fall from any common height, the inkstand itself will 
 not be broken ; — that from both these qualities, and from its shape, it may 
 l)e safely and commodiously travelled with, and packed up with books, 
 linen, or whatever else is likely to form the contents of the portmanteau, 
 or travelling trunk ; — ^that it should stand steadily and commodiously, and 
 be of as pleasing a shape and appearance as is compatible with its more 
 
 *In the 8th Number of the Friend, as first circulated by the post. I 
 dare assert, that it is worthy of preservation, and will send a transcript in 
 my next. 
 
360 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 important u^es ; — and lastly, though of minor regard, and non-essential, 
 that it be capable of including other implements or requisites, always, or 
 occasionally, connected with the art of writing, as pen-knife, wafers, &c. 
 without any addition to the size and weight otherwise desirable, and with- 
 out detriment to its more important and proper advantages. 
 
 Now, (continued B.) that we have an adequate notion of what is to be 
 wished, let us try what is to be done ! And my friend actually succeeded 
 in constructing an inkstand, in which, during the twelve years that have 
 elapsed since this conversation, alas ! I might almost say, since his death, 
 I have never been able, though I have put my wits on the stretch, to de- 
 tect any thing wanting that an inlvstand could be rationally desired to pos- 
 sess ; or even to imagine any addition, detraction, or change, for use or 
 appearance, that I could desire, without involving a contradiction. 
 
 Here ! (methinks I hear the reader exclaim) Here's a meditation on a 
 broomstick with a vengeance ! Now, in the first place, I am, and I do not 
 care who knows it, no enemy to meditations on broomsticks ; and though 
 Boyle had been the real author of the aiticle so waggishly passed off for 
 liis on poor Lady Berkley ; and though that good man had written it in 
 grave good earnest, I am not certain that he would not have been emi)loy- 
 ing his time as creditably to himself, and as profitably for a large class of 
 readers, as the witty dean was while composing the Drapier's Letters, 
 though the muses forbid that I should say the same of Mary Cooke's Pe- 
 tition, Hamilton's Bawn, or even the rhyming coiTesiwndencc with Dr. 
 Sheridan. In hazarding this confession, how^ever, I beg leave to put in a 
 provided always, that the said Meditation on Broomstick, or aliud quidibet 
 ejusdem fannce, shall be as truly a meditation as the broomstick is verily a 
 broomstick — and that the name be not a misnomer of vanity, or fi-audu- 
 lently labelled on a mere compound of brain-dribble and printer's ink. 
 For meditation, I presume, is that act of the mind, by which it seeks within 
 either the law of the phenomena, which it had contemplated without, 
 [mediiaiio scientifica,) or semblances, symbols, and analogies, coiTesponsive 
 to the same, [meditatio ethica.) At all events, therefore, it implies thinkings 
 and tends to make the reader tliink; and whatever does this, does what in 
 the present over-excited state of society is most wanted, though perhaps 
 least desired. Between the thinking of a Harvey or Quai'lcs, and the 
 thinking of a Bacon or a Fcnelon, many are the degrees of difl^erence, 
 and many the differences in degree of depth and originality ; but not such 
 as to fill up the chasm in genere between thinking and no-thinking, or to 
 render the discrimination difficult for a man of ordinary understanding, 
 not under the same^ contagion of vanity as the writer. Besides, there 
 
 *" Verily, to ask, what meancth this ? is no Herculean labour. And the 
 reader languishes under the same vain glory as his author, and hath laid 
 his head on the other knee of Oniphale, if he can mistake the thin voc.i- 
 blcs of incogitance for the consubstantial words which thought begetteth 
 and goeth forth my—Sir T. Broivn, MSS. 
 
APPENDIX. 361 
 
 are sliallows for the full grown, that are the maximum of safe depth for 
 the yoiuighngs. There are truths, quite common-place to you and mo, that 
 for the uninstructed many would be new and full of wonder, as the com- 
 mon day light to the Lapland child at the re-ascension of its second sum- 
 mer. Thanks and honour in the highest to those stars of the first magni- 
 tude that shoot their beams downward, and while in their proper form 
 they stir and invirtuate the sphere next below them, and natures pre-as- 
 similated to their influence, yet call forth likewise, each after its own norm 
 or model, whatever is best in whatever is susceptible to each, even in the 
 lowest. But, excepting these, I confess that I seldom look at Harvey's 
 Meditations or Quarles' Eniblems,* without feeling tliat I would rather 
 be the author of those books — of the innocent pleasure, the purifying emo- 
 tions, and genial awakenings of the humanity through the whole man, 
 which those books have given to thousands and tens of tliousands — than 
 shine the brightest in the constellation of fame among the heroes and Dii 
 minores of literature. But I have a better excuse, and if not a belter, yet 
 a less general motive, for this solemn trifling, as it will seem, and one tliat 
 will, I trust, rescue my ideal of an inkstand from being doomed to the 
 same slut's corner with the de trihus Capellis, or de umbra, asini, by virtue 
 of the process which it exemplifies ; though I should not quarrel with the 
 allotment, if its risible merits allowed it to keep company with the ideal 
 immortalized by Rabelais in his disquisition inquisitoiy De Rebu^ optime 
 abstergeniibu^. 
 
 Dared I mention the name of my Idealizer^ a name dear to science, and 
 consecrated by discoveries of far extending utility, it would at least give a 
 biographical interest to this trifling anecdote, and perhaps entitle me to 
 claim for it a yet higher, as a trait in mimimisy characteristic of a class of 
 powerful and most beneficent intellects. For to the same process of thought 
 we owe whatever instruments of power have been bestowed on mankind 
 by science and genius ; and only such deserve the name of inventions or 
 discoveries. But even in those, which chance may seem to claim, "gwce 
 Jwmini obvenisse videantur potius quam homo venire in ea" — which come 
 to us rather than we to them — this jjrocess will most often be found as the 
 indispensable antecedent of the discovery — as the condition, without which 
 the suggesting accident would have whispered to deaf ears, unnoticed ; 
 
 *A full collection, a Bibliotheca Speciahs, of the books of emblems and 
 symbols, of all sects and parties, moral, theological, or political, including 
 those in the Centennaries and Jubilee volumes, published by the Jesuit 
 and other religious orders, is a desideratum in our library literature that 
 would well employ the talents of our ingenious masters in wood engra- 
 ving, etching, and lithogi*aphy, under the superintendence of a Dibdin, and 
 not miworthy of royal and noble patronage, or the attention of a Long- 
 man and his compeers. Singly or jointly undertaken, it would do honour 
 to these princely merchants in the service of the muses. What stores 
 might not a Southey contribute as notes or interspersed prefaces ? I could 
 dream away an hour on the subject. 
 
 46 
 
362 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 or, like the faces in the fire, or the landscapes made by damp on a white- 
 washed wall, noticed for their oddity alone. To the birth of the tree a 
 prepared soil is as necessary as the falhng seed. A Daniel was present ; 
 or the fatal characters in the banquet-hall of Belshazzar might have struck 
 more terror, but would have been of no more import than the trail of a 
 luminous worm. In the far greater number, indeed, of these asserted 
 boons of chance, it is the accident that should be called the condition — and 
 often not so much, but merely the occasion — ^while the proper cause of 
 the invention is to be sought for in the co-existing state and previous habit 
 of the observer's mind. I cannot bring myself to account for respiration 
 from the stimulus of the mV, without ascribing to the specific stimulability 
 of the lungs, a yet more important part in the joint product. To how ma- 
 ny myriads of individuals had not the rise and fall of the lid in a boiling 
 kettle been familiar, an appearance daily and hourly in sight ? But it 
 was resei-ved for a mind that understood what was to be wished, and 
 knew what was wanted in order to its fulfilment — for an armed eye. 
 which meditation had made contemplative, an eye armed from with- 
 in, with an instrument of higher powers than glasses can give, with the 
 logic of method, the only true Organum Fleviisticum which possesses 
 the fonner and better half of knowledge in itself as the science of wise 
 questioning,* and the other half in reversion — ^it was resei-ved for the 
 Marquis of Worcester to see and have given into his hands, from 
 the alternation of expansion and vacuity, a power mightier than that 
 of Vulcan and all his Cyclops : a power that found its practical limit only 
 where nature could supply no limit strong enough to confine it. For the 
 genial spirit, that saw what it had been seeking, and saw because it sought, 
 was it resei-ved in the dancing fid of a kettle or coftee-urn, to behold the 
 future steam-engine, the Talus, with whom the BritomEut of science is now 
 gone forth to subdue and humanize the planet ! When the bodily organ, 
 steadying itself on some chance thing, imitates, as it were, the fixture of 
 " the inward eye" on its ideal shapings, then it is that Nature not seldom 
 reveals her close affinity with mind, "with that more than man which is 
 one and the same in all men, and from which 
 
 " the soul receives 
 
 Reason : and reason is her being .'" 
 
 Par. Lost. 
 
 Then it is, that Nature, like an individual spirit or fellow soul, seems to 
 
 think and hold commune with" us. If, in the present contempt of all 
 
 mental analysis not contained in Locke, Hartley, or Condillac, it were safe 
 
 to borrow fi*om " scholastic lore" a technical term or two, for which I have 
 
 not yet found any substitute equally convenient and serviceable, I should 
 
 *" Prudens quoestio dimidium scientise," says our Verulam, the second 
 founder of the science, and the first who o?i principle applied it to the ideas 
 in nature, as his great compeer Plato had before done to the laws in the 
 mind. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 363 
 
 say, that at such moments Nature, as another subject veiled behind the vis- 
 ible object without us, solicits the intelligible object hid, and yet struggluig 
 beneath the subject within us, and like a helping Lucina, brings it forth 
 for us into distinct consciousness and common light. Who has not tried 
 to get hold of some half-remembered name, mislaid as it were in the me- 
 moiy, and yet felt to be there ? And who has not experienced, how at 
 length it seems given to us, as if some other unperceived had been ejn- 
 ployed in the same search ? And what are the objects last spoken of, 
 which are in the subject, [i. e. the individual mind) yet not subjective, but 
 of universal vaUdity, no accidents of a particular mind resulting from its 
 individual structure, no, nor even of the human mind, as a particular class 
 or rank of intelligencies, but of imperishable subsistence ; and though not 
 things, {i. e. shapes in outward space,) yet equally independent of the be- 
 holder, and more than equally real — what, I say, are those but the names 
 of nature ? the nomina quasi vhuitcc, opposed by the wisest of the Greek 
 schools to phaenomena, as the intelligible correspondents or coiTelatives in 
 the mind to the invisible su})porters of the appearances in tlie world of 
 the senses, the upholding powers that cannot be seen, but the presence and 
 actual being of which must be supposed — nay, tvill he supposed, in defi- 
 ance of every attempt to the contrary by a crude materialism, so alien 
 from humanity, that there does not exist a language on earth, in which it 
 could be conveyed without a contradiction between the sense and the 
 words employed to express it ! 
 
 Is this a mere random flight in etymology, hunting a bubble, and bring- 
 ing back the film ? I cannot think so contemptuously of the attempt to 
 fix and restore the ti*ue import of any word ; but, in this instance, I should 
 regard it as neither unprofitable, nor devoid of rational interest, were it 
 only that the knowledge and reception of the import here given, as the 
 etymon, or genuine sense of the word, would save Christianity from the 
 reproach of containing a doctrine so repugnant to the best feelings of hu- 
 manity, as is inculcated in the following passage, among a hundred others 
 to the same pui-pose, in earlier and in more recent works, sent forth by 
 professed Christians. "Most of the men, who are now alive, or that have 
 been living for many ages, are Jews, Heathens, or Mahometans, strangers, 
 and enemies to Christ, in whose name alone we can be saved. This con- 
 sideration is extremely sad, when we remember how gi-eat an evil it is, 
 that so many millions of sons and daughters are born to enter into the posses- 
 sion of devils to eternal ages.'''' — Taylor's Holy Dying, p. 28. Even Sir T. 
 Brown, while his heart, wrestling with the dogma grounded on the trivial 
 interpretation of the word, nevertheless receives it in this sense, and ex- 
 presses most gloomy apprehensions " of the ends of those honest worthies 
 and philosophers," who died before the birth of our Saviour, "It is hard," 
 says he, "to place those souls in hell, whose worthy lives did teach us vir- 
 tue on earth. How strange to them will soimd the hi^5tory of Adam, when 
 they shall suffer for him they never heard of I" Yet he concludes by con- 
 
364 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 denining the insolence of reason in daring to doubt or controvert the ver- 
 ity of* the doctrine, or, " to question the justice of the proceeding," which 
 verity, he fears, the woful lot of ^Hhese great examples of virtue must con- 
 firrn.^^ But here I must break off. 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 LiFTTER V. 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 My bear D. — The philosopluc poet, whom I quoted in my last, may 
 here and there have stretched his prerogative in a war of offence on the ge- 
 neral associations of his contemporaries. Here and there, though less than 
 the least of what the Buffoons of parody and the Zanies of anonymous 
 criticism would have us believe, lie may be thought to betray a preference 
 of mean or trivial instances for grand morals, a capricious predilection for 
 incidents that contrast with the depth and novelty of the truths they are to 
 exemplify. But still to the principle, to the habit of tracing the presence 
 of the high in the humble, the mysterious Dii Cabiri, in the form of the 
 dwarf Miner, with hammer and spade, and week-day apron, we must at- 
 tribute Wordsworth's peculiar power, his leavening influence on the opin- 
 ions, feelings, and pursuits of his admirers — most on the young of most 
 promise and highest acquirements ; and that, while others are read with 
 tlelight, his works are a religion, A case still more in point occurs to me, 
 and for the ti-utli of which I dare pledge myself. TJie art of printing 
 alone seems to have been privileged wdth a Minerval birth — to have risen 
 in its zenith ; but next to this, perhaps, the rapid and almost instantaneous 
 advancement of pottery from the state in which Mr. Wedgewood found 
 the art, to its demonstrably highest practicable perfection, is the most stri- 
 king fact in the Listoiy of modern improvements achieved by individual 
 genius. In his early manhood, an obstinate and harassing complaint con- 
 fined him to his room for more than two years ; and to this apparent ca- 
 lamity Mr. Wedgewood was wont to attribute his after unprecedented suc- 
 cess. For awhile, as was natural, the sense of thus losing the prime and 
 vigour of his life and faculties, preyed on his mind incessantly — aggravated, 
 no doubt, by the thought of what he should have been doing this hour and , 
 this, had he not been thus severely visited. Then, what he should like to 
 take in hand ; and lastly, what it was desirable to do, and how far it might 
 be done, till generalizing more and more, the mind began to feed on the 
 thoughts, which, at their first evolution, (in their larva state, may I say ?) 
 had preyed on tiie mind. We imagine the presence of what we desire in 
 the very act of regretting its absence, nay, in order to regret it the more 
 lively ; but while, with a strang(i wilfulness, we are thus engendering grief 
 on grief, nature makes use of the product to cheat us into comfort and ex- 
 ertion. The positive shai)ing.s, though but of the fancy, will sooner or la- 
 
APPENDIX. 365 
 
 ter displace the mere knowledge of tlie negative. All activity is in itself 
 pleasure ; and according to the nature, powers, and previous habits of the 
 sufFerer, tlie acti\ity of the fancy will call the other faculties of the soul 
 into action. The self-contemplative power becomes meditative, and the 
 mind begins to play the geometrician with its own thoughts — abstracting 
 from tliem the accidental and individual, till a new and unfailing source of 
 employment, the best and surest nepenthe of sohtary pain, is opened out 
 in the habit of seeking the principle and ultimate aim m the most imper- 
 fect productions of ait, in the least attractive products of nature ; of be- 
 holding the possible in the real ; of detecting the essential fonn in the in- 
 tentional ; above all, in the collation and constructive imagining of the out- 
 ward sha|>es and material forces that shaU best express the essential form, 
 in its coincidence with the idea, or reahze most adequately that power, 
 which is one with its correspondent knowledge, as the revealing body with 
 its indwelling soul. 
 
 Another motive will present itself, and one that comes nearer home, and 
 is of more general application, if we reflect on the habit here recommen- 
 ded, as a source of support and consolation in circumstances under which 
 we might otherv\ise sink back on ourselves, and for want of colloquy with 
 our thoughts — ^with the objects and presentations of the iniier sense — lie 
 listening to the fretful ticking of our sensations. A resource of costless 
 value has that man who has brought himself to a habit of measuring the 
 objects around him by their intended or possible ends, and the proportion 
 in which this end is reaUzed in each. It is the neglect of thus educating 
 the senses, of tlius disciphiiing, and in the proper and primitive sense of 
 the word, informing, the fancy, that distinguishes at fii-st sight the ruder 
 states of society. Every mechanic tool, the commonest and most indis- 
 pensable implements of agriculture, might remind one of the school-boy's 
 second stage in metrical composition, in which his exercise is to contain 
 sense, but he is allowed to eke out the scanning by the interposition, here 
 and there, of an equal quantity of nonsense. And even in the existing 
 height of national civilization, how many individuals may there not be 
 found, for whose senses the non-essential so preponderates, that though 
 they may have lived the greater part of their hves in the country, yet with 
 some exceptions for the products of their own flower and kitchen gartlen, 
 all the names in the index to Withe ring's Botany, are supei-seded for 
 them by the one name, a weed ! •' It is only a iveed /" And if this indif- 
 ference stopt here, and this particular ignorance were regarded as the 
 disease, it would be sickly to complain of it. But it is as a system that it 
 excites regret — it is that, except only the pot-herbs of lucre, and the bar- 
 ren double flowers of vanity, tlieir o^vn noblest faculties, both of thought 
 and action, are but weeds — in which, should sickness or misfortune wreck 
 them on the desert island of their own mind, they would either not think 
 of seeking, or be ignorant how to find, nourishment or medicine. As it 
 
366 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 is good to be provided with work for rainj'^ days, Winter industiy is the 
 best cheerer of winter gloom ; and fire-side contrivances for sunmier use, 
 bring summer sunshine and a genial inner warmth, which the friendly 
 hearth blaze may conspire with, but cannot bestow or compensate. 
 
 A splenetic friend of mine, who was fond of outraging a truth by some 
 whimsical hyperbole,.in his way of expressing it, gravely gave it out as his 
 opinion, that beauty and genius were but diseases of the consumptive and 
 scrofulous order. He would not carry it further ; but yet, he must say, 
 that he had observed that veiy good people, persons of unusual virtue and 
 benevolence, were in general afflicted with weak or restless nerves ! Af- 
 ter yielding him the expected laugh for tlie oddity of the remark, I re- 
 minded him that if his position meant any thing, the converse must be 
 true, and we ought ^ to have Helens, Mediceean Venuses, Shakspeares, Ra- 
 phaels, Howards, Clarksons, and Wilberforces by thousands ; and the as- 
 semblies and pump-rooms at Bath, Harrowgate, and Cheltenham, rival the 
 conversazioni in the Elysian Fields. Since then, however, I have often re- 
 curred to the portion of truth that lay at the bottom of my friend's con- 
 ceit. It cannot be denied, that ill health, in a degree below direct pain, 
 yet distressingly affecting the sensations, and depressing the animal spirits, 
 and thus leavmg the nervous system too sensitive to pass into the ordinary 
 state of feeling, and forcing us to live in alternating positives^ is* a hot-bed 
 for whatever germs and tendencies, whether in head or heart, have been 
 planted there independently. 
 
 Surely, there is nothing fanciful in considering this as a providential 
 provision, and as one of the countless proofs that we are most benignly, as 
 well as wonderfully, constructed ! The cutting and initating grain of sand 
 which by accident or incaution has got within the shell, incites the living 
 innate to secrete from its own resources the means of coating the intru- 
 sive substance. And is it not, or may it not be, even so, with the irregu- 
 larities and unevenness of health and fortune in our own case ? We, too, 
 may turn diseases into pearls. The means and materials are within our- 
 selves ; and the process is easily understood. By a law common to all 
 
 ^Perhaps it confirms while it Hmits this theory, that it is chiefly verified 
 in men whose genius and pursuits are eminently subjective, where the mind 
 is intensely watchful of its own acts and shapings, thinks, while it feels, in 
 order to understand, and then to generalize that feeling ; above all, where 
 all the powers of the mind are called into action, simultaneously, and yet 
 severally, while in men of equal, and perhaps deservedly equal celebrity, 
 whose piu'suits are objective and universal, demanding the energies of at- 
 tention and abstraction, as in mechanics, mathematics, and all departments 
 of physics and pliysiology, the very contrary would seem to be exempli- 
 fied. Shakspeare died "at 53, and probably of a decline ; and in one of 
 his sonnets lie speaks of himself as gray and prematurely old; and Mil- 
 ton, who suffered from infancy those intense head-aches which ended in 
 blindness, iusinuates that he was never free from pain, or the anticipation 
 of pain. On the other hand, the Nevvtons and Leibnitzes have, in general, 
 been not only long-lived, but men of robust health. 
 
APPENDIX. oG7 
 
 animal life, we are incapable of attending for any continuance to an ob- 
 ject, the parts of which are indistinguishable from each other, or to a se- 
 ries, where the successive links are only numerically different. Nay, the 
 more broken and irritating, (as, for instance, the fractious noise of tlie 
 dashing of a lake on its border, compared with the swell of the sea on a 
 calm evening,) the more quickly does it exhaust our power of noticing it. 
 The tooth-ache, where the suffering is not extreme, often finds its speedi- 
 est cure in the silent pillow ; and gi'adually destroys our attention to itself 
 by preventing us from attending to any thing else. From the same cause, 
 many a lonely patient listens to his moans, till he forgets the pain that oc- 
 casioned them. The attention attenuates, as its sphere contracts. But diis 
 it does even to a point, where the person's own state of feeling, or any 
 particular set of bodily sensations, are the direct object. The slender thread 
 winding in narrower and narrower circles round its source and centre, 
 ends at length in a chrysalis, a dormitoiy within which the spinner un- 
 dresses himself in his sleep, soon to come forth quite a new creature. 
 
 So it is in the slighter cases of suffering, where suspension is extmction, 
 or followed by long mteiTals of ease. But where the unsubdued causes 
 are ever on the watch to renew the pain, that thus forces our attention in 
 upon ourselves, the same barrenness and monotony of the object that in 
 minor grievances lulled the mind into oblivion, now goads it into action by 
 the restlessness and natural impatience of vacancy. We cannot perhaps 
 divert the attention ; our feelings will still form the main subject of our 
 thoughts. But something is already gained, if, mstead of attending to our 
 sensations, we begm to think of them. But in order to this, we must re- 
 flect on these thoughts — or the same sameness will soon smk them down 
 into mere feeling. And in order to sustain the act of reflection on our 
 thoughts, we are obhged more and more to compare and generalize them, 
 a process that to a certain extent impUes, and in a still greater degree ex- 
 cites and introduces, the act and power of abstracting the thoughts and 
 images fi'om their original cause, and of reflecting on them with less and 
 less reference to the individual suffering that had been their first subject. 
 The vis medicatrix of Nature is at work for us in all our faculties and ha- 
 bits, the associate, reproductiv^e, comparative, and combinatory. 
 
 That tliis source of consolation and support may be equally in your 
 
 power as in mine, but that you may never have occasion to feel equally 
 
 grateful for it, as I have, and do in body and estate, is the fervent wish of 
 
 your affectionate 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 TO THE 
 
 STATESMAN'S MANUAL, 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 COMMENTS AND ESSAYS. 
 
 In this use of tlie word " sufficiency,*' I pre-siippose on the part of the 
 reader or hearer, a humble and docile state of mind, and above all the 
 practice of prayer, as the necessary condition of such a state, and the best 
 if not the only means of becoming sincere to our own hearts. Christianity 
 is especially differenced from all other religions by being grounded on 
 facts which all men alike have the means of ascertainmg — the same means, 
 with equal facility, and which no man can ascertain for another. Each 
 person must be herein querist and respondent to himself; Am I sick, and 
 therefore need a physician ? — ^Am I in spiritual slavery, and therefore need 
 a ransomer ? — Have I given a pledge, which must be redeemed, and which 
 I cannot redeem by my own resources ? — Am I at one with God, and is my 
 will concentric with that holy power, which is at once the constitutive will 
 and the supreme reason of the universe ? — If not, must I not be mad if I 
 do not seek, and miserable if I do not discover and embrace, the means 
 of at-one-ment ? To collect, to weigh, and to appreciate historical proofs 
 and presumptions is not equally within the means and opportunities of eve- 
 ry man alike. The testimony of books of history is one of the strong and 
 stately pillars of the church of Christ ; but it is not the foundation ; nor 
 can it without loss of essential faith be mistaken or substituted for the 
 foundation. There is a sect, which, in its scornful pride of antipathy to 
 mysteries, (that is, to all those doctrines of the pure and intuitive reason^ 
 which transcend the understanding, and can never be contemplated by it, 
 but through a false and falsifying perspective,) affects to condemn all in- 
 ward and preliminary experience, as enthusiastic delusion or fanatic con- 
 
 47 
 
370 
 
 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tagion. Historic evidence, on the other hand, these men treat, as the Jews 
 of old treated the brazen serpent, which was the rehc and evidence of the 
 miracles worked by Moses in the wilderness. They turned it into an idol : 
 and therefore Hezekiah (who clave to the Lord, and did right in the sight 
 of the Lord, so that after him was none like him, among all the kings of 
 Judah, nor any that were before him) not only ' removed the high places, 
 and brake the images, and cut down the groves ;' but likewise brake in 
 pieces the Brazen Serpent that Moses had made : for the children of Is- 
 rael did burn incense to it. 
 
 To preclude an error so pernicious, I request that to the wilful neglect 
 of those outward ministrations of the word which all Englishmen have 
 the privilege of attending, the reader will add the setting at nought like- 
 wise of those inward means of gi-ace, without which the language of the 
 Scriptures, in the most faithful translation and in the purest and plainest 
 Enghsh, must nevertheless continue to be a dead language : a sun-dial by 
 moonlight. 
 
 [B.] 
 
 Not without great hesitation should I express a suspicion concerning 
 the genuineness of any, the least important passage in the New Testa- 
 ment, unless I could adduce the most conclusive evidence from the earli- 
 est manuscripts and commentators, in support of its interpolation : well 
 knowing that such permission has already opened a door to the most fear- 
 ful license. It is indeed, in its consequences, no less than an assumed 
 right of picking and chusing our religion out of the Scriptures. Most as- 
 suredly I would never hazard a suggestion of this kind in any instance in 
 which the retention or the omission of the words could make the slightest 
 difference with regard to fact, miracle, or precept. Still less would I start 
 the question, where the hypothesis of their interpolation could be wrested 
 to the discountenancing of any article of doctrine concerning which dis- 
 sension existed : no, not though the doubt or disbelief of the doctrine had 
 l)een confined to those, whose faith few but themselves would honour with 
 the name of Christianity; however reluctant we might be, both fi-om the 
 courtesies of social life and the nobler charities of humility, to withhold 
 from the persons themselves the title of Christians. 
 
 But as there is nothing in v. 40 of Matthew, c. xii. which would fall ^vith- 
 in this general rule, I dare permit myself to propose the query, whether 
 there does not exist internal evidence of its being a gloss of some unlearn- 
 ed, though pious, christian of the first century, which had slipt into the 
 text ? The following are my reasons. 1. It is at all events a comment on 
 the Avords of our Saviour, and no part of his speech. 2. It interrupts the 
 course and breaks down the jut and aj)plication of our Lord's argument, 
 as addressed to men, who, from their imwillingness to sacrifice their vain 
 traditions, gainful hypocrisy, and pride both of heart and of deameanor, 
 
APPENDIX. 371 
 
 demanded a miracle for the confirmation of moral tnitlis that must have 
 borne witness to tlieir own divinity in the consciences of all who had 
 not rendered themselves conscience-proof. 3. The text strictly taken is ir- 
 reconcileable with the fact as it is afterwards related, and as it is miiver- 
 sally accepted. I at least remember no calculation of time, accordhig to 
 which the interspace from Friday evening to the earliest dawn of Sunday 
 momingj could be represented as three days and three nights. As three 
 days our Saviour, himself speaks of it (John ii. 19,) and so it would be de- 
 scribed in common language as well as according to the use of the Jews ; 
 but I can find no other part of Scripture which authorizes the phrase of 
 three nights. This gloss is not fomid either in the repetition of the cir- 
 cumstances by Matthew himself (xvi. 4,) nor in Mark, (viii. 12,) nor in 
 Luke, (xii. 54 :) — Mark's narration doth indeed most strikingly confirm my 
 second reason, drawn from the purpose of our Saviour's argument : for 
 the allusion to the prophet Jonas is omitted altogether, and the refusal 
 therefore rests on the dej)ravity of the applicants, as proved by the wan- 
 tonness of the application itself All signs must have been useless to such 
 men as long as the great sign of the times, the call to repentance, remain- 
 ed without effect. 4. The gloss corresponds with the known fondness of 
 the earlier Jewish converts, and indeed of the christians in general of the 
 second centuiy, to bring out in detail and into exact square eveiy accommo- 
 dation of the Old Testament, which they either found in the gospels, or 
 made for themselves. It is too notorious into what strange fancies, (not 
 always at safe distance from dangerous errors) the oldest uninspired wri- 
 ters of the christian church were seduced by this passion of transmuting, 
 without scriptural authority, incidents, names, and even mere sounds of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures into evangelical types and correspondencies. 
 
 An additional reason may perhaps occur to those who alone would be 
 qualified to appreciate its force : viz. to biblical scholars familiar with the 
 opinions and arguments of sundry doctors, rabbinical as well aa christian, 
 respecting the first and second chapter of Jonali. 
 
 [C] 
 
 Reason and Religion differ only as a two-fold application of the same 
 power. But if we are obliged to disthiguish, we must ideally separate. In 
 this sense I aflirm, that Reason is the knowledge of the laws of the Whoxe 
 considered as OiNE : and as such it is contradistinguished from the Under- 
 standing, which concerns itself exclusively with the quantities, qualities, 
 and relations of particulars in time and space. The Understandijvg, 
 therefore, is the science of phaenomena, and then- subsumption under dis- 
 tinct kinds and sorts, {genus and species.) Its functions supply the rules 
 and constitute the possibility of Experience ; but remain mere logical 
 forms, except as far as matejials are given by the senses or sensations. The 
 Reaso.n, on the other hand, is the science of the universal, having the 
 
372 AIDS TO RErLECTION. 
 
 ideas of 0:ve?jess and Allness as its two elements or primary factors. 
 In the language of the old schools, 
 
 Unity -|- Omneity 
 Totality. 
 
 The Reason fii"st manifests itself in man by the tendency to the compre- 
 hension of all as one. We can neither rest in an infinite that is not at the 
 same time a whole, nor in a whole that is not infinite. Hence the natu- 
 ral Man is always in a state either of resistance or of captivity to the un- 
 derstanding and the fancy, which cannot represent totality without limit : 
 and he either loses the One in the striving after the Infinite, (i. e. Athe- 
 ism with or without polytheism) or the Infinite in the striving after tho 
 One, (i. e. anthropomorphic monotheism.) 
 
 The rational instinct, tlicrefore, taken abstractedly and unbalanced, did 
 in itself, ('ye shall be as gods ; Gen. iii. 5.) and its consequences, '^the lusts 
 of the flesh, the eye, and the understanding, as in verse the sixth,) form 
 the origmal temptation, through which man fell ; and in-ult ages has con- 
 tinued to originate the same, even from Adam, in whom we all fell, to the 
 atheists who deified the human reason in the person of a harlot durhigthe 
 earlier period of the French revolution. 
 
 To this tendency, therefore. Religion, as the consideration of the Par- 
 ticular and Individual (in which respect it takes up and identifies with 
 itself the excellence of the Understanding) but of the Individual, as it ex- 
 ists and has its being in the Universal (in which respect it is one with the 
 pure Reason,) to this tendency, I say, Religion assigns the due limits, and 
 is the echo of the * voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.' Hence 
 in all the ages and countries of civihzation. Religion has been the parent 
 and fosterer of the Fine Arts, as of Poetry, Music, Painting, &c. the com- 
 mon essence of which consists in a similar union of the Universal and the 
 Individual. In this union, moreover, is contained the true sense of the 
 Ideal. Under the old Law the altar, the curtains, the priestly vestments, 
 and whatever else was to represent the Beauty of Holiness, had an ideal 
 character : and the Temple itself was a master-piece of Ideal Beauty. 
 
 There exists in the human being, at least in man fully developed, no 
 mean symbol of Tri-unity, in Reason, Religion, and the Will. For each 
 of the three, though a distinct agency, implies and demands the other two, 
 and loses its own nature at the moment that fiom distinction it passes into 
 division or sei)aration. The perfect frame of a man is the perfect frame 
 «of a state ; and in the light of this idea we must read Plato's Republic. 
 
APPENDIX. 373 
 
 For, if I judge rightly, this celebrated work is to ',The Hisitoiy of the 
 Town of Man-soul,' what Plato was to John Bunyan. 
 
 The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of Reason, (the 
 Legislative of our nature,) taken singly and exclusively, becomes mere 
 visionariness in intellect, and indolence or hard-heartedness in morals. It 
 is the science of cosmopolitism without countiy, of philanthropy without 
 neighbourliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the impostures of that phi- 
 losophy of the French revolution, which would sacrifice Each to theshad- 
 o^vy idol of All. For Jacobinism is monstrum hybridum, made up in part 
 of despotism, and in part of abstract reason misa})plied to objects that be- 
 long entirely to experience and the understanding. Its instincts and mode 
 of action are in strict con-espondence with its origin. In all places Jaco- 
 binism betrays its mixt parentage and nature, by applying to the bmte pas- 
 sions and physical force of the multitude (that is, to man as a mere ani- 
 mal,) in order to build up government and the fi-ame of society on natural 
 rights instead of social privileges — on the universals of abstract reason in- 
 stead of positive institutions, the lights of specific experience, and the 
 modifications of existing circumstances. Right, in its most proper sense, 
 is the creature of law and statute, and only in the technical language of 
 the courts has it any substantial and independent sense. In morals. Right 
 is a word without meaning except as the correlative of Duty. 
 
 From all this it follows, that Reason as the science of All as the Whole, 
 must be interpenetrated by a Power, that represents the concentration of 
 All in Each — a Power that acts by a contraction of universal trutlis into 
 individual duties, as the only form in which those truths can attain life and 
 reality. Now tliis is Religion, which is the Executive of our nature, 
 and on tliis account the name of highest dignity, and tlie symbol of sove- 
 reignty. 
 
 Yet this again — yet even Religion itself, if ever in its too exclusive de- 
 votion to the specific and individual it neglects to interjjose the contempla- 
 tion of the universal, changes its being into Superstition ; and becoming 
 more and more earthly and sen ile, as more and more estranged from the 
 one in all, goes wandering at length with its pack of amulets, bead-rolls, 
 periapts, fetisches, and the like pedlary, on pilgrimages to Loretto, Mec- 
 ca, or the temple of Juggernaut, arm in arm with sensuality on one side 
 and self-torture on the other, followed by a motley group of friars, pardon- 
 ers, faquirs, gamesters, flagellants, mountebanks, and harlots. 
 
 But neither can reason or religion exist or co-exist as reason and reli- 
 gion, except as far as they are actuated by the Will, (the platonic 0i,uoc,) 
 which is the sustaining, coercive and ministerial power, the ftinctions of 
 which in the individual correspond to the oflicers of war and police in the 
 ideal Republic of Plato. In its state of immanence (or indwelling) in rea- 
 son and religion, the Will a])pear3 indiflerently, as wisdom or as love : 
 two names of the same power, the tbrmer more intelligential, the latter 
 
374 AIDS TO REFl.ECTION. 
 
 more yi)iritual ; the former more frequent in the Old. the'latter in tlie New 
 TePtunient. But in its utmost abstraction and consequent state of repro- 
 bation, the Will becomes satanic pride and reliellious self-idolatry in the 
 relations of the sj)irit to itself, and remorseless despotism relatively to oth- 
 ers ; the more ho])eless as the more obdurate by its sulvjugation of sensual 
 impulses — by its superiority to toil and pain and pleasure ; in short, by the 
 fearful resolve to find in itself alone the one absolute motive of action, 
 imder which all other motives from within and from without must be ei- 
 ther subordinated or crushed. 
 
 This is the character which Milton has so philosophically as well as sub- 
 limely embodied in the Satan of his Paradise Lost. Alas! too often has 
 it been embodied in I'eal life ! Too often has it given a dark and savage 
 grandeur to the historic page ! And wherever it has appeared, under 
 whatever circumstances of time and country, the same ingredients have 
 gone to its composition ; and it has been identified by the same attributes. 
 Hope in which there is no Cheerfulness ; Stedfastness within and immo- 
 vable Resolve, with outward Restlessness and whirling Activity ; Violence 
 with Guile ; Temerity with Cimning ; and as the result of all, Intermina- 
 bleness of Object with perfect indifference of Means ; these are the (jual- 
 ities that have constituted the Commanding Genius ! these are the Marks, 
 that have characterized the Masters of Mischief, the Liberticides, and migh- 
 ty Hunters of Mankind, from Nlmrod to Napoleon. And from inattention 
 to the possibility of such a character as well as from ignorance of its ele- 
 ments, even men of honest intentions too frequently become fascinated. 
 Nay, whole nations have been so far duped by this want of hisight and 
 reflection as to regard with palliative admiration, instead of wonder and 
 abhorrence, the Molochs of human nature, who are indebted, for the far 
 larger portion of their meteoric success, to their total want of principle, 
 and who surpass the generality of their fellow creatures in one act of cour- 
 age only, that of daring to say with their whole heart, ' Evil be thou my 
 good !' All system so far is power ; and a systematic ci-iminal, self-consist- 
 ent and entire in wickedness, who entrenches villainy within villainy, and 
 barricadoes crime by crime, has removed a world of obstacles by the mere 
 decision, that he will have no obstacles, but those of force and brute mat- 
 ter. 
 
 I have only to add a few sentences, in completion of this note, on the 
 Conscience and on the Understanding. The conscience is neither rea- 
 son, religion, or will, but an expeiience (sui generis) of the coincidence of 
 the human will with reason and rehgion. It might, perhaps, be called a 
 spiritual sensalion ; but that there lurks a contradiction in the terms, and 
 that it is often deceptive to give a common or generic name to that, which 
 being unique, can have no fair analogy. Strictly speaking, therefore, the 
 conscience is neither a sensation or a sense ; but a testifying state, best de- 
 scribed in the words of our liturgy, as the peace of God that passeth 
 
 ALL UNDERSTANDING. 
 
APPENDIX. oiiJ 
 
 Of this latter faculty, considered in and of itself, the peripatetic aphorism, 
 nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, is strictl}- true, as well as the 
 legal maxim, de rehus non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est 
 ratio. The eye is not more inappropriate to sound, than the mere under- 
 standing to the modes and laws of spiritual existence. In tliis sense I 
 have used the term ; and in this sense I assert that " the understanding or 
 experimental faculty, unirradiated by the reason and the spirit, has no ap- 
 propriate object but the material world in relation to our wordly interests. 
 The far-sighted prudence of man, and the more narrow but at the same 
 time far less fallible cunning of the fox, are both no other than a nobler 
 substitute for salt, in order that the hog may not putrefy before its destined 
 hour ! ! Friend, p. 80. 
 
 It must not, however, be overlooked, that this insulation of the under- 
 standing is our own act and deed. The man of healthful and undivided 
 intellect uses his understanding in this state of abstraction only as a tool 
 or organ : even as the arithmetician uses numbers, that is, as the means 
 not the end of knowledge. Our Shakespeare in agreement both with 
 truth and the philosophy of his age names it ^^ discourse of reason," as an 
 instrumental faculty belonging to reason : and IMilton opposes the discursive 
 to the intuitive, as the lower to the higher, 
 
 " Differing but in degree, in kind the same !" 
 
 Of the discw'sive understanding, which forms for itself general notions 
 and terms of classification for the purpose of comparing and arrang- 
 ing phaenomena, the Characteristic is Clearness without Depth. It con- 
 templates the unity of things in their limits only, and is consequent- 
 ly a knowledge of superficies without substance. So much so, mdeed, 
 that it entangles itself in contradictions in the veiy effort of comprehend- 
 ing the idea of substance. The completing power which unites clearness 
 with depth, the plenitude of the sense with the comprehensibility of the 
 understanding, is the imagination, impregnated with which the under- 
 standmg itself becomes intuitive, and a living power. The reason, (not 
 the abstract reason, not the reason as the mere organ of science, or as the 
 faculty of scientific principles and schemes a priori ; but reason) as the 
 integral spirit of the regenerated man, reason substantiated and vital, 'one 
 only, yet manifold, overseeing all, and going through all understanding ; 
 the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence fi-om the glory of 
 the Ahnighty ; which remaining in itself regenerateth all other powers, 
 and in all ages entering into holy souls maketh them friends of God and 
 prophets;' (Wisdom of Solomon, c. vii.) the Reason, without being either 
 the Sense, the Understanding or the Imagination, contains all three with- 
 in itself, even as the mind contains its thoughts, and is i)resent in and 
 through them all ; or as the expression pervades the different features of 
 an intelhgent countenance. Each individual must bear witness of it to 
 his own mind, even as he describes life and linht : and with the silence of 
 
376 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 light it describes itself, and dwells in us only as far as we dwell in U. It 
 cannot in strict language be called a faculty, much less a personal proper- 
 ty, of any human mind ! He, with whom it is present, can as little appro- 
 priate it, whether totally or by partition, as he can claim ownership in 
 tlie breathing air or make an inclosure in the cope of heaven. 
 
 The object of the preceding discourse was to recommend the Bible, ns 
 the end and center of our readin^g and meditation. I can truly affirm of 
 myself, tliat my studies have been profitable and availing to me only so far, 
 aa I have endeavored to use all my other knowledge as a glass enabling me 
 te receive more light in a wider field of vision from the word of God. If 
 you have accompanied me thus far, thoughtful reader ! let it not weary 
 you if I digress for a few moments to another book, likewise a revelation 
 of God — the great book of his servant Nature. That in its obvious sense 
 and literal interpretation it declares the being and attributes of the Ahnigh- 
 ty Father, none but the fool in lieart has ever dared gainsay. But it has 
 been the music of gentle and pious minds in all ages, it is the poetry of 
 all human nature, to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find there- 
 in correspondencies and symbols of the spiritual world. 
 
 I h ave at this moment before me, in the flowery meadow, on which 
 my eye is now reposing, one of its most soothing chapters, in which 
 there is no lamenting word, no one character of guilt or anguish. For 
 never can I look and meditate on the vegetable creation without a feeling 
 similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant that has fed itself 
 asleep at its mother's bosom, and smiles in its strange dream of obscure 
 yet happy sensations. The same tender and genial pleasure takes posses- 
 sion of me, and this pleasure is checked and dra^vn inward by the like 
 aching melancholy, by the same whispered remonstrance, and made rest- 
 less by a similar impulse of aspiration. It seems as if the soul said to 
 herself: from this state hast thou fallen ! Such shouldst thou still become, 
 thy Self all permeable to a holier power ! thy Self at once hidden and 
 glorified by its own transparency, as the accidental and dividuous in this 
 quiet and harmonious object is subjected to the life and light of nature 
 which shines in it, even as the transmitted power, love and wisdom, of 
 God over all fills, and shines through, nature ! But what the plant w, by 
 an act not its own and unconsciously — that must thou make thyself to he- 
 come ! must by prayer and by a watchful and unresisting spirit, join at 
 least with the preventive and assisting grace to make thyself, in that light 
 of conscience which inflameth not, and with that knowledge which puf- 
 feth not up. 
 
 But further, and with particular reference to that undivided Reason, 
 neither merely speculative or merely practical, but both in one, which I 
 have in this aimotation endeavoured to contra-distinguish from the Un- 
 derstanding, I seem to myself to behold in the quiet objects, on which I 
 am gazing, more than an arbitraiy illustration, more than a mere simile^ the 
 
APPENDIX. 377 
 
 work of my own Fancy ? I feel an awe, as if tlicrc were before my eyes 
 the eame Pow^er, as tJiat of the Reason — tlie same Power in a lower dig- 
 nity, and therefore a symbol established in the truth of things. I feel it 
 alike, whether I contemplate a single ti'ee or flower, or meditate on vege- 
 tation throughout the world, as one of the great organs of the life of na- 
 ture. Lo ! — with the rising sun it commences its outward life and enters 
 into open commimion with all the elements, at once assimilating them to 
 itself and to each other. At the same moment it strikes its roots and un- 
 folds its leaves, absorbs and respires, steams forth its coohng vapour and 
 finer fi-agrance, and breathes a repairing spirit, at once the food and tone 
 of tlie atmosphere, into the atmosphere that feeds it. Lo ! — at the touch 
 of light how it returns an air akin to light, and yet with the eame pulse 
 effectuates its own secret growth, still contracting to fix what expanding it 
 had refined. Lo ! — how upholding the ceaseless plastic motion of the 
 paits in the profoundest rest of the whole it becomes the visible organis- 
 mus of the whole sUent or elementary Ufa of nature, and, therefore, in in- 
 corporating the one extreme becomes the symbol of the other ; the natural 
 symbol of that higher life of reason, in which tlie whole series (knowii to 
 us in our present state of being) is perfected, in which, therefore, all the 
 subordinate gradations recur, and are re-ordained "in more abundant hon- 
 or." We had seen each in its own cast, and we now recognize them all 
 as co-existing in the unity of a higher fomi, the Crown and Completion 
 of the Earthly, and the Mediator of a new and heavenly series. Thus, 
 finally, the vegetable creation, in the simplicity and uniformity of its in- 
 ternal structure symbolizing the unity of nature, while it represents the 
 omnifoniiit)'^ of her delegated functions in its external variety and mani- 
 foldness, becomes the record and chronicle of her ministerial acts, and in- 
 chases the vast unfolded volume of the earth with the hieroglyphics of her 
 histoiy. 
 
 O ! — if as the plant to the orient beam, we would but open out our minds 
 to that hoHer hght, which ' being compared with hght is found before it, 
 more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars,' (Wisdom of 
 Solomon, vii. 29,)ungenial, ahen, and adverse to our very nature would ap- 
 pear the boastful wisdom which, beginning in France, gradually tampered 
 with the taste and hterature of all the most civilized natinos of Christendom, 
 seducing the understanding from its natural allegiance, and therewith from 
 all its own lawful claims, titles, and privileges. It was placed as a ward of 
 honour in the courts of faith and reason ; but it chose to dwell alone, and be- 
 came an harlot by the way-side. Tlie commercial spirit, and the ascen- 
 dancy of the experimental philosophy which took place at the close of the 
 fouiteenth century, though both good and beneficial in their own kinds, 
 combined to foster its corruption. Flattered and dazzled by the real or 
 supposed discoveries, which it had made, the more the understanding was 
 enriched, the more did it become debased ; till science itself put on a self- 
 
 48 
 
378 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 isli and sensual character ; and immediate utility, in exclusive reference to 
 the gratification of the wants and appetites of the animal, the vanities and 
 caprices of the social, and the ambition of the political, man, was imposed 
 as the test of all intellectual powers and pursuits. Worth was degraded 
 into a lazy synonyme of value ; and value was exclusively attached to the 
 interest of the senses. But though the growing alienation and self-suffi- 
 ciency of the understanding was perceptible at an earlier period, yet it 
 seems to have been about the middle of the last century, under the influ- 
 ence of Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, say generally of the so-called En- 
 cyclopsedists, and alas ! — of their crowned ])roselytes and disciples, Fred- 
 erick, Joseph, and Catharine, that the Human Understanding, and this too 
 in its narrowest form, was tempted to throw off all show of reverence to 
 the spiritual and even to the moral powers and impulses of the soul ; and 
 usurping the name of reason openly joined the banners of Anti-christ, at 
 once the pander and the prostitute of sensuality, and whether in the cabi- 
 net, laboratory, the dissecting-room, or the brothel, alike busy in the 
 schemes of vice and irreligion. Well and truly might it, thus personified 
 in our fancy, have been addressed in the words of the evangehcal prophet, 
 which I have once befoi*e quoted : " Thou hast said, none is my overseer ! 
 thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath peiTerted thee ! — and thou hast 
 said in thy heart, I am, and there is none besides me!" (Isaiah, xlvii. 
 10.) 
 
 Prurient, bustling, and revolutionaiy, this French wisdom has never 
 more than grazed the surfaces of knowledge. As political economy, in its 
 zeal for the increase of food, it habitually overlooked the qualities and 
 even the sensations of those that were to feed on it^ As ethical philoso- 
 phy, it recognized no duties which it could not reduce into debtor and 
 creditor accounts on the ledgers of self-love, where no coin was sterling 
 which could not be rendered into agreeable sensations. And even in its 
 height of self-complacency as chemical art, greatly ami deceived if it has 
 not from the very beginning mistaken the products of destruction, cada- 
 V€ra rerum, for the elements of composition : and most assuredly it has 
 dearly purchased a few brilliant inventions at the loss of all communion 
 with life and the spirit of nature As the process, such the result ! a heart- 
 less frivolity alternating with a sentimentality as heartless — an ignorant 
 contempt of antiquity — a neglect of moral self-disciphne— a deadening of 
 the religious sense, even in the less reflecting forms of natural piety — a 
 scornful reprobation of all consolations and secret refreshings fi-om above — 
 and as the caput mortuum of human nature evaporated, a French nature 
 of rapacity, levity, ferocity and presumption. 
 
 Man of understanding, canst thou command the stone to lie, canst thou 
 bid the flower bloom, where thou hast placed it in thy classification ? — 
 Canst thou persuade the living or the inaniniate to stand separate even as 
 thou hast separated them ?— And do not fai' rather all things spread out be- 
 
APPENDIX. 379 
 
 fore thee In glad confusion and heedless intermixture, even as a lightsome 
 chaos on which the spirit of God is moving ? — Do not all press and swell 
 under one attraction, and live together in promiscuous harmony, each joy- 
 ous in its own kind, and hi the innnediate neighhourhood of Myriad oth- 
 ers that hi the system of thy understanding ai-e distant as the Poles ? — If 
 to mint and to remember names delight thee, still anange and classify and 
 pore and pull to pieces, and peep into Death to look for Life, as monkies 
 jiut their hands behind a looking-glass! Yet consider, in the first sabbath 
 which thou imposest on the busy discursion of thought, that all this is at 
 bestlitlle more than a technical memory: that like can only be known by 
 like : that as truth is the correlative of Being, so is the act of Being the 
 gi'eat organ of Truth : that in natural no less than in moral science, quan- 
 tum sumus, scimus. 
 
 That, which we find in ourselves, is (gradu mutato) the substance and 
 the hfe of all our knowledge. Without this latent presence of the ' I am,' 
 all modes of existence hi the external world would flit before us as color- 
 ed shadows, with no greater depth, root, or fixture, than the image of a 
 rock hath in a gliding stream, or the rain-bow on a fast-sailhig rain-storm. 
 The human mind is the compass, in which the laws and actuations of all 
 outward essences are revealed as the dips and declinations. (The appli- 
 cation of Geometry to the forces and movements of the material world is 
 both proof and instance.) The fact therefore, that the mhid of man in its 
 ow^n primary and constituent forms represents the laws of nature, is a mys- 
 tery which of itself should sufiice to make us religious : for it is a problem 
 of which God is the only solution, God, the one before all, and of all, and 
 through all ! — ' True natural philosophy is comprized in the study of the 
 science and language of symbols.'' The power delegated to nature is all in 
 every part: and by a symbol I mean, not a metaphor or allegory or any 
 other figure of speech or form of fancy, l)ut an actual and essential part of 
 that, the whole of which it represents. Thus our Lord speaks symbolic- 
 ally when he says that ' the eye is the hght of the body.' The genuine 
 naturalist is a dramatic poet in his own line : and such as our myriad-mind- 
 ed Shakspeare is, compared with tlie Racines and Metastasios, such and 
 by a similar process of self-transformation would the man be, compared 
 with the Doctors of the mechanic school, who should construct his phys- 
 iology on the heaven-descended. Know Thyself 
 
 Even 'the visions of the night' speak to us of powers within us that are 
 not di'eamt of in their day-dream ot philosophy. The dreams, which we 
 most ofl;en remember, are produced by the nascent sensations and inward 
 motiunculsB (the fluxions) of the waking state. Hence, too, they are more 
 capable of being remembered, because i)assing more gradually into our 
 wakhig thoughts they are more likely to associate with our first percep- 
 tions after sleep. Accordingly, when the nervous system is ap})roaching 
 to the waking state, a sort of undei -consciousness blends with our di'eams, 
 
360 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 that, in all, we Imagine as Been or heard, our own self is the ventriloquist, 
 and moves the slides in tlie magic-lanthorn. We dream about things.' 
 
 But there are few persons of tender feelings and reflecting habits, who 
 have not, more or less often in the course of their lives, experienced 
 dreams of a very different kind, and during the profoundest sleep that is 
 compatihle with after-recollection — States, of which it would be scarcely 
 too bold to say that we dream the things themselves ; so exact, minute, and 
 vivid beyond all power of ordinary memory is the portraiture, so marvel- 
 lously perfect is our brief metempsychosis into the very being, as it were, 
 of the person who seems to address us. If I may be allowed to quote 
 from myself, (FaiEi^iD, No. 8.) 'the dullest wight is at times a Shakspeare 
 in his dreams.' Not only may we expect, that men of strong religious 
 feelings, but little religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to re- 
 gard such occurrences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought not to sur- 
 prise us, if such dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as 
 though they had actually possessed a chai'acter of divination. For who 
 shall decide^ how far a perfect rcmiuisconce of past experiences, (of ma- 
 ny perhaps that ha<l escaped our reflex consciousness at the time) — who 
 shall determine, to what extent this reproductive imagination, unsophisti- 
 cated by the will, and undistracted by intrusions ftom the senses, may or 
 may not be concentered and subhmed into foresight and presentiment ? 
 There would be nothing herein either to foster superstition on the one 
 hand, or to justify contemptuous disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but 
 Credulity seen fi-om behind, bowing and nodding assent to the Habil^ual 
 and the Fashionable. 
 
 To the touch (or feeling) belongs the proximate ; to the eye, the distant. 
 Now little as I might be disposed to believe, I should be still less incli- 
 ned to ridicule, the conjecture that in the recesses of our nature, and un- 
 developed, there might exist an inner sense, (and therefore appertaining 
 wholly to Time,) — a sense hitherto ' without a name,' which as an higher 
 Third combined and potentially included both the former. Thus gravita- 
 tion combines and includes the powers of attraction and repulsion, which 
 are the constituents of matter, as distinguished from body. And thus, not 
 as a compound, but as a higher Third, it reaUzes matter (of itself ens 
 fluxionale et pra^fluum) and constitutes it body. Now suppose, that this 
 nameless inner sense stood to the relations of Time as the power of gra- 
 vitation to those of Space ? A priori, a presence to the Future is not more 
 mysterious or transcendent, than a presence to the Distant : than a power 
 equally immediate to the most remote objects, as it is to the central mass 
 of its own body, toward which it seems, as it were, enchanting them : for 
 instance, the gravity in the sun and moon to the spring tides of our ocean. 
 The true reply to such an hyjiothesis would be, that as there is nothing to 
 be said against i\a possibilili/, there is, hkewise, nothing to be urged for its 
 realitij ,* and tliat the facts may be rationally explained without it. 
 
APPENDIX. 381 
 
 It has been asked, why knowmg myself to be the object of pei-sonal 
 slander, (slander as unprovoked as it is groundless, unless acts of kindness 
 are provocation) I furnish tliis material for it, by pleading in palliation of 
 BO chimerical a fancy. With that half-playful sadness, which at once sighs 
 and smiles, I answered : why not for that very reason ? — viz. in order that 
 my calumniator might have, if not a material, yet some basis for the poi- 
 son-gas of his invention to combine with ? — But no, — pure falsehood is 
 often for the time the most effective ; for how can a man confute what he 
 can only contradict ? — Our opinions and principles cannot prove an alibi. 
 Think only what your feelings would be if you heard a wretch dehberate- 
 ly peijure hunself in support of an infamous accusation, so remote from 
 all fact, so smooth and homogeneous in its untruth, such a round robin of 
 mere lies, that you knew not which to begin with ? — What could you do, 
 but look round with horror and astonishment, ])leading silently to human 
 nature itself, — and perhaps (as hath really been the case with me) forget 
 both the slanderer and his slander in the anguish mflicted by the passive- 
 ness of your many professed fiiends, whose characters you had ever been 
 as eager to clear from the least stain of reproach as if a coal of fii'e had 
 been on your own skin ? — But enough of this which would not have oc- 
 curred to me at all, at this time, had it not been thus suggested. 
 
 The feeling, that in point of fact chiefly influenced me in the preceding 
 half apology for the supposition of a divining power in the hiunan mind, 
 arose out of the conviction, that an age, or nation, may become free from 
 certain prejudices, beliefs, and superstitious practices in two ways. It may 
 have really risen above them ; or it may have fallen below them, and be- 
 come too bad for their continuance. " The rustic would have little reason 
 to thank the philosopher, who should give him true conceptions of ghosts, 
 omens, dreams, and presentiments at the price of abandoning his faith in 
 Providence and in the continued existence of his fellow-creatures after 
 their death. The teeth of the old serpent sowed by the Cadmuses of 
 French hterature under Lewis xv. produced a plenteous crop of such phi- 
 losophers and truth-trumpeters in the reign of his ill-fated successor. 
 They taught many facts, historical, political, physiological, and ecclesias- 
 tical, difflising then' notions so widely that the very ladies and hair-dres- 
 sers of Paris became fluent encyclopaedists ; and the sole price, which 
 their scholars paid for these treasures of new light, was to believe Christi- 
 anity an imposture, the Scriptures a forgery, the worship of God super- 
 stition, hell a fable, heaven a dream, our life without Providence, and our 
 death without hope. Wliat can be conceived more natural than the re- 
 sult : that self-acknowledged beasts should fii-st act, and next suffer them- 
 selves to be treated, as beasts ?" (Friend, p. 41.) 
 
 Thank heaven ! — notwithstanding the attempts of Mr. Thomas Payne 
 and his compeers, it is not so bad with us. Open infidelity has ceased to 
 be a means even of gratifying vanity ; for the leaders of the gang them- 
 
383 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 selves turned apostates to Satan, as soon els the number of their Proselytes 
 became so large, that Atheism ceased to give distinction. Nay, it became 
 a mark of original thinking to defend the Behef and the Ten Command- 
 ments : so the strong minds veered round, and religion came again into 
 feshion. But still I exceedingly doubt, whether the superannuation of sun- 
 dry superstitious fancies be the result of any real diffusion of sound think- 
 ing in the nation at large. For instance, there is now no call for a Picus 
 Mirandula to write seven books against Astrology. It might seem indeed, 
 that a single fact like that of the loss of Kempcnfelt and his crew, or the 
 explosion of the L'Orient, would prove to the common sense of the most 
 ignorant, that even if Astrology could be true, the Astrologers must be 
 false ; for if such a science were possible it could be a science only for 
 gods. Yet Erasmus, the prince of sound common sense, is known to have 
 disapproved of his friend's hardihood, and did not himself venture beyond 
 scepticism : and the inmiortal Newton, to whom, more than to any other 
 human being, Europe owes the purification of its general notions concern- 
 ing the heavenly bodies, studied Astrology with much earnestness and did 
 not reject it till he had demonstrated the falsehood of all its pretended 
 grounds and principles. The exit of two or three superstitions is no more 
 a proof of the entry of good sense, than the strangling of a Despot at Al- 
 giers or Constantinople is a symptom of freedom. If therefore not the 
 mere disbelief, but the grounds of such disbefief, must decide the question 
 of our superior illiunination, I confess that I could not from my own ob- 
 servations on the books and conversation of the age vote for the affirma- 
 tive without much hesitation. As many errors are despised by men from 
 ignorance as from knowledge. Whether that be not the case with regard 
 to divination^ is a query that rises in my mind (notwithstanding my fullest 
 conviction of the non-existence of such a power) as often as I read the 
 names of the gi'eat statesmen and philosophers, which Cicero enumerates 
 in the introductory paragraphs of his work de Divinatione. Socrates, 
 omnesque Socratici, plurimisque locis gravis Auctor Democritus, Cratip- 
 pusque, familiaiis noster, quem ego parem sunnnis Peripateticis judico, &c. 
 &c. prsesensionem rerum futurarum comprobarunt. Of all the theistic 
 philosophers, Xenophanes was the only one who wholly rejected it. *A 
 Stoicis degenerat Pansetius, nee tamen ausus est negare, vim esse divinan- 
 di, sed dubitare se dixit.' Nor was this a mere outward assent to the 
 opinions of the state. Many of them subjected the question to the most 
 exquisite arguments, and supported the affirmative not merely by experi- 
 ence, but (especially the Stoics, wiio of all sects most cultivated psychol- 
 ogy) by a minute analysis of human nature and its faculties : while on the 
 mind of Cicero himself (as on that of Plato with regard to a state of ret- 
 ribution after death) the universality of the faith in all thnes and countries 
 ai)pears to have made the deepest impression. ' Gentem quidem nullam 
 video, neque tam hiunanam alque doctam, ne(|ue tarn inimmiem tam- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 383 
 
 que barbaram, quee non significari futura, ei a quibusdam intelligi prte^lici- 
 que posse censeat.' 
 
 I fear, that the decrease in our feelings of reverence towards mankind 
 at large, and our increasing aversion to every opinion not grounded in 
 some appeal to the senses, have a larger share in this our emancipation 
 from the prejudices of Socrates and Cicero, than reflection, insight, or a 
 fair collation of the facts and arguments. For myself, I would far rather 
 see the Enghsh people at large believe somewhat too much than merely 
 just enough, if tlie latter is to be produced, or must be accompanied, by a 
 contempt or neglect of the faith and intellect of their forefathers. For 
 not to say what yet is most certain, that a people cannot believe jWenow^^, 
 and that there are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness, 
 while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great 
 truth as yet below the horizon ; it remains most worthy of our serious con- 
 sideration, whether a fancied superiority to their ancestors' intellects must 
 not be speedily followed in the popular mind by disrespect for their an- 
 cestors' institutions. Assuredly it is not easy to place any confidence in a 
 form .of church or state, of whose founders we have been taught to be- 
 lieve, that their philosophy was jargon, and their feelings and notions rank 
 superstition. Yet are we never to grow wiser ? — Are we to be credulous 
 by birth-right, and take ghosts, omens, visions, and witchcraft, as an heir- 
 loom ? — God forbid ! — A distinction must be made, and such a one as shall 
 be equally avaihng and profitable to men of all ranks. Is this practicable ? 
 Yes ! — it exists. It is found in the study of the Old and New Testament, if 
 only it be combined with a spu'itual partaking of the Redeemer's Blood, of 
 which, mysterious as the symbol may be, the sacramental Wine is no mere, 
 or arbitrary, memento. This is the only certain, and this is the universal, 
 preventive of all debasing superstitions ; this is the true H^mony, [cn^iocy 
 blood: oivog, wine) which our Milton has beautifully allegorized in a pas- 
 sage strangely overlooked by all his commentators. Bear in mind. Read- 
 er ! the character of a militant christian, and the results (in this life and in 
 the next) of tlie Redemption by the Blood of Christ : and so peruse the 
 
 passage ! 
 
 Amongst the rest a small unsightly root, 
 
 But of divine effect, he culled me out : 
 
 The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 
 
 But in another country, as he said, 
 
 Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil ! 
 
 Unknown and like esteem'd, and the dull swain 
 
 Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon ; 
 
 And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly 
 
 That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. 
 
 He called it H^mony and gave it me. 
 
 And bad me keep it as of sovr'an use 
 
384 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 'Gainst all inchantments, mildew, blast or damp, 
 
 Or ghastly furies' appai'ition. MiUon^s Comus, 
 
 These Hues might be employed as an amulet against delusions : for the 
 man, who is indeed a christian, will as little think of mforming himself 
 concerning the future by dreams or presentiments, as of looking for a dist- 
 ant object at broad noon-day with a lighted taper in his hand. 
 
 But whatever of good and intellectual Nature worketh in us, it is our 
 appointed task to render gradually our own work. For all tilings that sur- 
 round us, and all things that happen unto us, have (each doubtless its own 
 providential purpose, but) all one common final cause : namely, the in- 
 crease of Consciousness, in such wise, that whatever part of the ten'a in- 
 cognita of our nature the increased consciousness discovers, our will may 
 conquer and bring into subjection to itself under the sovereignty of rea- 
 son. 
 
 The leading differences between mechanic and vital philosophy may all 
 be drawn from one point : namely, that the former demanding for every 
 mode and act of existence real or possible visibility, knows only of dis- 
 tance and nearness, composition (or rather juxta position) and decomposi- 
 tion, in short the relations of unproductive particles to each other ; so that 
 in eveiy instance the result is the exact sum of the component quantities, 
 as in arithmetical addition. This is the philosophy of death, and only of 
 a dead nature can it hold good. In life, much more in spirit, and in a liv- 
 ing and spiritual philosophy, the two component counter-powers actually 
 interpenetrate each other, and generate a higher third, including both the 
 former, ita tamen ut sit alia et major. 
 
 To apply this to the subject of this present Essay. The elements (the 
 factors, as it were) of Religion are Reason and Understanding. If the 
 composition stopped in itself, an understanding thus rationalized would 
 lead to the admission of the general doctrines of natin-al religion, the be- 
 lief of a God, and of immortality ; and probably to an acquiescence in 
 the history and ethics of the Gospel. But still it would be a speculative 
 faith, and in the nature of a Theory; as if the main object of religion 
 were to solve difficulties for the satisfaction of the intellect. Now this state 
 of mind, which alas ! is the state of too many among our self-entitled ra- 
 tional religionists, is a mere balance or compromise of the two powers, not 
 that living and generative interpenetration of both which would give be- 
 ing to essential Religion — to the Religion, at the biith of which 'we re- 
 ceive the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father ; the Spirit 
 itself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.' 
 (Rom. viii. 15, 16.) In Religion there is no abstraction. To the unity 
 and infinity of the Divine Nature, of which it is the partaker, it adds the 
 fiillness, and to the fullness the grace and the creative overflowing. That 
 which intuitively it at once beholds and adores, praying always, and re- 
 joicing always — that dodi it tend to becom-e. In all things and in each 
 
APPENDIX. 385 
 
 thing — for the Almighty Goodness doth not create generalities or abide in 
 absti-actions — ^in each, the meanest, object it bears witness to a mystery 
 of infinite solution. Thus * beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
 it is changed into tlie same image from glory to gloiy.' (2 Cor. iii. 18.) 
 For as it is bom and not made, so must it gj'ow. As it is the image or 
 symbol of its great object, by the organ of this similitude, as by an eye, it 
 seeth that same image throughout the creation ; and from the same cause 
 sympatliizeth with all creation in its groans to be redeemed. 'For we 
 know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in earnest expecta- 
 tion', (Rom. viii. 20 — ^23,) of a renewal of its forfeited power, the power, 
 namely, of retiring into that image, which is its substantial form and tme 
 life, fi-om the vanity of Self, which then only is when for itself it hath 
 ceased to be. Even so doth Rehgion finitely express the unity of the in- 
 finite Spirit by being a total act of the soul. And even so doth it repre- 
 sent his fullness by its depth, by its substantiality, and by an all-pervading 
 vital warmth which — ^relaxing the rigid, consolidating the dissolute, and 
 giving cohesion to that which is about to sink down and fall abroad, as 
 into the dust and crumble of the Grave — is a life within life, evermore or- 
 ganizing the soul anew. 
 
 Nor doth it express the fullness only of the Spirit. It likewise repre- 
 sents his Over/loiving by its communicativeness, budding and blossoming 
 forth in all earnestness of persuasion, and in all words of sound doctrine : 
 while, like the Citron in a genial soil and climate, it bears a golden fi-uit- 
 age of good- works at the same time, the example waxing in contact with 
 the exhortation, as the ri})e orange beside the opening orange-flower. 
 Yea, even his Creativeness doth it shadow out by its own powers of im- 
 pregnation and production, ('being such a one as Paul the aged, and also a 
 prisoner for Jesus Christ, who begat to a lively hope his son Onesiraus in 
 his bonds') regeneratiiig in and through the Spirit the slaves of coiTuption, 
 and fugitives from a far greater master than Philemon. The love of God, 
 and therefore God himself who is Love, Religion strives to express bi/ 
 Love, and measures its gi^owth by the increase and activity of its Love. 
 For Christian Love is the last and divinest birth, the harmony, unity, and 
 god-like transfigm-ation of all the vital, intellectual, moral, and spiritual 
 powers. Now it manifests itself as the sparkling and ebulMent spring of 
 well-doing in gifts and in labors; and now as a silent foimtain of patience 
 and long-suffering, the fullness of which no hatred or persecution can ex- 
 haust or diminish ; a more than conqueror in the persuasion, ' that neither 
 death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things pre- 
 sent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
 shall be able to separate it from the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus 
 the Lord.' (Rom. viii. 38—39.) 
 
 From God's Love through the Son, cnicified for us from the beginning 
 of the world, Religion begins : and in Love towards God and the crea- 
 
 49 
 
386 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 tuies of God it hath its end and completion. O how heaven-like it is to 
 sit among brethren at the feet of a minister who speaks under the influ- 
 ence of Love, and is heard under the same influence ! For ah abiding and 
 spiritual knowledge, infused into a grateful and affectionate fellow-chris- 
 tian, is as the child of the mind that infuses it. The dehght which he 
 gives he receives ; and in tliat bright and liberal hour the gladdened preach- 
 er can scarce gather the ripe produce of to-day, without discovering and 
 looking forward to tlie green fruits and embryous, the heritage and rever- 
 sionary wealth of the days to come ; till he bursts forth in prayer and 
 thanksgiving — The haiTest truly is plenteous, but the labourers few. O 
 gracious Lord of the hai-vest, send forth labourers into thy harvest ! There 
 is no difference between the Jew a:ad the Greek. Thou, Lord over all, 
 art rich to all that call upon thee. But how shall they call on hirri in 
 whom they have not believed ? and how shall they believe in him of whom 
 they have not heard ? and How shall they hear without a preacher ? and 
 how shall they preach except they be sent ? And O ! how beautifld upon 
 the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publish- 
 eth peace, that bringeth glad tidings of good things, that publisheth salva- 
 tion ; that saith unto the captive soul. Thy God reigneth ! God manifest- 
 ed in the flesh hath redeemed thee ! O Lord of the harvest, send forth la- 
 bourers into thy harvest ! 
 
 Join with me, Reader ! in the fervent prayer, that we may seek within 
 us, what we can never find elsewhere, that we juay find within us, what 
 no words can put there, that one only true rehgion, which elevateth Know- 
 ing into Being, which is at once tlie Science of Bemg, the Being and the 
 Life of all genuine Science^ 
 
 [D.] 
 
 In all ages of the Christian Church, and in the later period of the Jew- 
 ish (that is, as soon as, from their acquaintance first with the Oriental and 
 afterwards with the Greek philosophy, the precursory and preparative in 
 fiuences of the Gospel began to work) there have existed individuals (La- 
 odiceans in spirit, Minims in faith, and nominalists in philosophy) who 
 mistake outlines for substance, and distinct images for clear conceptions ; 
 with whom therefore not to be a thins: is the same as not to he at all. The 
 contempt, in which such persons hold the works and doctrines of all the- 
 ologians before Grotius, and of all philosophers before Locke and Hartley 
 (at least before Bacon and Hobbes) is not accidental, nor yet altogether ow- 
 ing to that epidemic of a proud ignorance occasioned by a diffused scio- 
 lism, which gave a sickly and hectic shewiness to the latter half of the 
 last century. It is a real instinct of self-defence acting oflfensively by an- 
 ticipation. For the authority of all the greatest names of antiquity is fidi 
 and decisive against them : and 'man, by the very nature of his birth and 
 growth, is so much the creature of authority, that there was no way of 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 387 
 
 effectually resisting it, but by undermining the reverence for the past in 
 toto. Thus, the Jewish Prophets have, forsooth, a certain degi-ee of anti- 
 qumian value, aa being the only specimens extant of the oracles of a bar- 
 barous tribe; the Evangelists are to bs interpreted with a due allowance for 
 their superstitious prejudices concerning evil spirits, and St. Paul never 
 suffers them to forget that he had been brought up at the feet of a Jeimsh 
 Rabbi ! The Greeks indeed were a fine people in works of taste ; but as 
 to their philosophers ! the waitings of Plato are smoke and flash from the ' 
 witch's cauldron of a disturbed iniagination ! — Aristotle s works a quickset 
 hedge of fmitless and thorny distinctions ! and all the Philosophers before 
 Plato and Aristotle fablers and allegorizers ! 
 
 But these men have had their day : and there are signs of the times 
 clearly announcing that that day is verging to its close. Even now there are 
 not a few, on whose convictions it will not be luiinfluencive to know, that 
 the power, by which men are led to the truth of things, instead of the a.\>- 
 pearances, was deemed and entitled the living and substiintial Word of 
 God by the soundest of the Hebrew Doctors.; that the eldest and mosst 
 profound of the Greek philosophers demanded assent to their doctrine, 
 mainly as ao(fiat}ionu()u5oroc, i, e. a traditionary wisdom that had its orig-in 
 in inspiration ; that these men referred the same power to the 71 vo an^Luov 
 vn.0 Sioixovvroc JoFOY'^ and tliat they were scarcely less express than their 
 scholar Philo Judaeus, in their affirmations of the Logos, as no mere at- 
 tribute or quality, no mode of abstraction, no personification, but literally 
 and mysteriously deus alter et idem. 
 
 When education has fbsciplined the minds of our gentiy for austerer 
 study ; when educated men will be ashamed to look abroad for truths that 
 can be only found within ; within themselves they will discover, intuitively 
 "will they discover, the distinctions between "the light that lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the w orid" and the understanding, which forms the 
 pecidium of each man, as different in extent and value from another man's 
 understanding, as his estate may be from his neighl)our's estate. The 
 W'Ords of St. John, from the 7th to the 12th verse of his first chapter, are 
 in their whole extent inteipretable of the Understanding, which derives 
 its rank and mode of being in the human race (that is, as far as it may be 
 contrasted with the instinct of the dog or elephant, in all, which constitutes 
 it human understanding) from the universal Light. This Light therefore 
 comes as to its own. Being rejected, it leaves the understanding to a world 
 of dreams and darkness : for in it alone is life and the life js the light of 
 jMEN. What then but apparitions can remain to a Philosophy, which strikes 
 death through all things visible and invisible ; satisfies itself then only 
 when it can explain those abstractions of the outv.ard senses, Avhich l>y an 
 imconscious irony it names indifferently facts and ])h{enomena, mechanic- 
 idly — that is, by the laws of Death ; aud brands with the name of Mysti- 
 cism every solution grounded in Life, or the powers and intuitions of 
 Life ? 
 
388 AIDS TO REFL,ECTIOK. 
 
 Oil the other hand, if the light be received by faith, to such understand- 
 ings it delegates the privilege to become Sons of God {elovoiuv)^ expanding 
 Mobile it elevates, even as the beams of the sun incoii^orate with the mist, 
 and make its natural darkness and earthly nature the bearer and interpreter 
 
 of their OVVai glory. 'I^ar u»; m^ivayji, ov jiirj ovrijB. 
 
 The very same truth is found in a fragment of the Ephesian Heraclitus, 
 preserved by Stobeeus, and in soniew^hat different words by Diogenes La- 
 
 ertius. iS'vv vocn Xsyovrac: iaxvpi'^ed-Scii. /pi] Tw ^vrci navrtuv' rpicpovrai yuQ narrtg 
 hi av&pcaTntvoi root vtto hog ruu -Sfiou [Joyov) y.qain yun roaovrov oxooov idtXei, xui 
 liai)y.Bi Tuxai xai TiiptytvsruL- TRANSLATION : — To discourse rationally ):=af we 
 would render the discursive understanding *' discourse of reason'''') it be- 
 hoves us to derive strength from that which is common tt) all men : (=:the 
 Ught that lighteth every man.) For all human understandmgs are nour- 
 ished by the one Divine Word, whose power is commensurate with his 
 will, and is sufficient for all and ovei-floweth (=shineth in darkness, and is 
 not contained therein, or comprehended by darkness.) 
 
 This was Heraclitus, whose book is nearly six hundred years older than 
 the Gospel of St. John, and who was proverbially entitled the Dark [6 
 oxonivoi;-) But it was a darkness which Socrates would not condemn, and 
 wliich would probably appear to enlightened Christians the dai'kness of 
 prophecy, had the work, which he hid in the temple, been presei-ved to 
 us. But obscurity is a word of many meanings. It may be in tlie sub- 
 ject ; it may be in the author ; or it may be in the reader ; — and this again 
 may originate in the state of the reader's heart; or in that of his capaci- 
 ty : or in his temper ; or in his accidental associations. Two kinds are es- 
 pecially pointed out by the divine Plato in his Sophistes. The Beauty of 
 the Original is beyond my reach. On my anxiety to give the fulness of the 
 Thought, I must ground my excuse for construing rather than translating. 
 The fidelity of the version may well atone for its harshness in a passage 
 that deserves a meditation beyond tlie ministry of words, even the w^ords 
 of Plato himself, though in them, or nowhere, are to be heard the sweet 
 sounds, that issued from the Head of Memnon at the Touch of Light. 
 " One thing is the Hardness-to-he-understood of the Sophist, another that of 
 the Philosopher. The former retreating into the obscurity of that which 
 hath not true Being, [rov utj dfrog) and by long intercourse accustomed to 
 the same, is hard to be known on account of the duskiness of the place. 
 But the philosopher by contemplation of pure reason evermore approxi- 
 mating to the idea of true Being [rov ottos) is by no means easy to be 
 seen on account of the splendor of that region. For the intellectual eyes 
 of the Many flit, and are incapable of looking fixedly toward the God- 
 hke." 
 
 There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit, that not in articles 
 of Faith alone, but in the heights of Geometry, and even in the nccessai'y 
 first principles ol Natural Philosoi)hy, there exist truths of apodictic force 
 
APPENDIX. 389 
 
 ill Reason, which the mere Understanding strives in vain to comprehend. 
 Take, as an instance, the ascending series of Infinites in every Finite, a 
 position which involves a contradiction for the Understanding, yet follows 
 demonstrably from the very definition of Body, as that which fills a space. 
 For wherever there is a space filled, there must be an extension to be di- 
 vided. When therefore Maxims generalized from appearances (PhaBnom- 
 ena) are apphed to Substances ; when Rules, abstracted or deduced from 
 the Forms in Tmie and Space, are used as measures of Spiritual Being, 
 yea even of the Divine Nature which cannot be compared or classed -. 
 (" For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, 
 saith the Lord." Isaiah Iv. 8.) such Professors cannot but protest against 
 the whole Process, as grounded on a gross Metathesis iig dUo ysvog. Yet 
 still they are disposed to tolerate it as a sort of sanative counter-excite- 
 ment, that holds in check the more dangerous disease of Methodism. But 
 I more than doubt of both the positions. I do not think Methodism, Cal- 
 vinistic or Wesleyan, the more dangerous disease ; and even if it were, I 
 should deny that it is at all likely to be counteracted by the rational Chris- 
 tianity of our modern Alogi {Xoyog ni;;s(ug aP^oyog I) who, mistaking Unity for 
 Sameness, have been pleased by a misnomer, not less contradictory to their 
 own tenets than intolerant to those of Christians in general, to entitle them- 
 selves Unitariaivs. The two contagions attack each a wholly different 
 class of minds and tempers, and each tends to produce and justify the 
 other, according as the predisposition of the patient may chance to be. If 
 Fanatacism be as a fire in the flooring of the church, the Idolism of the 
 unspiritualized Understanding is the dry rot in its beams and timbers. 
 y^Splv xQ^loj^tvvvtiv ua?./.(jv tj Tivoy.aiiiv : says Heraclitus. It is not the sect of 
 Unitarian Dissenters, but the spij-it of Unitarianism in the members of the 
 Established Church that alarms me. To what open revilings, and to what 
 whispered slanders, I subject my name, by tliis public avowal, I well know : 
 
 ttTitgoi;? yuQ riyug sivat i,'H:;vipa)r HqaxXanog iprjOiv, axovoai hvx i.iigaiKvuvg ov8' 
 iijzsiv a?.?.a xai, xvrsg cog, ^uvLovOir bv uv utj yirwoxvjoi. 
 
 [E.] 
 
 The term, Idea, is an instance in point : and I hazard this assertion, to- 
 gether with the preceding sentences, in the full consciousness, that they 
 must be unintelligible to those who have yet to learn, that an Idea is equi- 
 distant in its signification from Sensation, Image, Fact, and Notion : that 
 it is the antithesis, not the synonyme, of n'lo/.ov. The magnificent son of 
 Cosmo was wont to discourse with Ficino, Politian, and the princely Mi- 
 randula on the Ideas of Will, God, and Immortality. The accomplished 
 author of the x\rcadia, the star of serenest l)rilliancc in the glorious con- 
 stellation of Elizabeth's court, om- England's Sir Phihp Sj'dney ! He, the 
 paramount gentleman of Europe, the poet, warrior, and statesman, held 
 high converse with Spensyr on the Idea of Supersensual beauty ; on all 
 
390 AIDS TO REFLECTIOJSf. 
 
 earthly, fair, and amiable," as the Symbol of that Idea ; and on Music ant! 
 Poesy as its living Educis ! With the same genial reverence did the young- 
 er Algernon commune with Harrington and Milton on the Idea of a perfect 
 state ; and in what sense it is true, that the men (i. e. the aggi-egate of the 
 inhabitants of a countr}" at any one time) are made for the state, not the 
 state for the men. But these lights shine no longer, or for a few. Exeunt : 
 and enter in their stead Holofernes and Costard ! masked as Metaphysics 
 and Common-sense. And these too have their Ideas ! The former has 
 an Idea, that Hume, Haitley, and Condillac have exploded all Idea^, but 
 those of sensation ; he has an Idea that he was particularly pleased with 
 the fine Idea of the last-named Philosopher, that there is no absurdity in 
 asking, Jfliat color Virtue is of) inasmuch as the proper philosophic an- 
 swer would be black, blue, or bottle-green, according as the coat, waist- 
 coat and small-clothes might chance to be of the person, the series of 
 whose motions had excited the sensations, which formed our Idea of vir- 
 tue. The latter has no Idea of a better-flavored haunch of venison than 
 he dined off at the Albion, he admits that the French have an excellent 
 Idea of cooking in general, but holds that their best cooks have no more 
 Idea of dressing a turtle than the gourmands themselves, at Paris, have of 
 the true ta^te and color of the fat ! 
 
 It is not impossible that a portion of the high value attached of late 
 years to the Dates and Margins of our old Folios and Quartos, may be 
 transferred to their Contents. Even now there exists a shrewd suspicion 
 in the minds of reading men, that not only Plato and Aristotle, but even 
 Scotus Erigena, and the schoolmen from Peter Lombard to Duns Scotus, 
 are not such mere blockheads, as they pass for with those who have never 
 perused a line of their writings. What the results may be^ should this ri- 
 pen into conviction, I can but guess. But all Histoiy seems to favor the 
 persuasion, I entertain, that in every age the speculative Philosophy in 
 general acceptance, the metaphysical opinions that happen to be predom- 
 inant, will influence the Theology of that age. Whatever is proposed for 
 the Belief, as true, must have been previously admitted by Reason as pos- 
 sible, as involving no contradiction to the universal forms (or laws) of 
 Thought, no uicompatibility in the terms of the proposition ; and the de- 
 termination on this head belongs exclusively to the science of Metaphys- 
 ics. In each article of Faith embraced on conviction, the mind deter- 
 mines, first intuitively on its logical possibility ; secondly, discursively, on its 
 analogy to doctrines already believed, as w^ell as on its correspondencies to 
 the wants and faculties of our nature, and thirdly, historically, on the di- 
 rect and indirect evidences. But the jirobability of an event is a part of 
 its historic evidence, and constitutes its presumptive proof, or the evidence 
 a prion. Now as the evidence a posteriori, requisite in order to a satis- 
 factory lu'oof of the actual occurrence of any Fact, stands in an inverse 
 ratio to the strength or weakness of the evidence a i)riori (that is, a fact 
 
APPENDIX. - bL»l 
 
 probable iii itself may be believed on slight testimony) it is manifest that 
 of the three Factors, by which the mind is determined to the admission 
 or rejection of the point in question, the last must be greatly mfluenced 
 by the second, and that both depend on the first, not mdeed as their 
 cause or preconstituent, but as their indispensable condition ; so that the 
 very inquiry concerning them is preposterous (n^ffoqijawa row r^sQov Iloorinoi) 
 as long as the first remains midetermiiied. Again : the history of human 
 opinions (ecclesiastical and philosopliical liistor}') confiiins by manifold in- 
 stances, what attentive consideration of the position itself might have au- 
 thorized us to presume, namely, that on all such subjects as are out of the 
 sphere of the senses, and therefore incapable of a direct proof fi-om out- 
 ward experience, the question whether any given position is logically im- 
 jK)ssible (incompatible ^\ath Reason) or only incomprehensible (i. e. not re- 
 ducible to the fonns of Sense, namely. Time and Si)ace, or those of the 
 Understanding, namely Quantity, Quahty, and Relation — ) in other words, 
 the question, whether an assertion be in itself inconceivable, or only by us 
 unimagmable, will be decided by each indi\idual according to the positions 
 assumed as first principles in the metaphysical system which he had pre- 
 viously adopted. Thus the existence of a Supreme Reason, the Creator 
 of the material Univei*se, involved a contradiction for a disciple of Epicu- 
 rus, who had convinced himself tliat causative thought was tantamount to 
 something out of nothing or substance out of shadow, and mcompatibie 
 with the axiom Nihil ex niliilo : While on the contrary, to a Platonist the 
 position is necessarily presupposed in every odier ti'uth, as that without 
 which every fact of exi^erience would involve a contradiction m Reason. 
 Now it is not denied that the Framers of our Church Liturgy, Homilies 
 and Articles, entertamed metaphysical opinions irreconcileable in tlieir first 
 principles with the system of speculative philosophy which has been 
 taught in this countr}', and only not universally received, since the asser- 
 ted and generally believed defeat of the Bishop of Worcester (the excel- 
 lent StilUngfleet) in his famous controversy ^^'ith Mr. Locke. Assuredly 
 therefore it is well worth the consideration of our Established Clergy 
 whether it is at all probable in itself, or congruous with experience, that 
 the disputed Articles of our Church </€ revelatis etcredcndis should be adopt- 
 ed with singleness of lieail, and m the hght of kno^^iedge, when the 
 grounds and Jirst philosophy, on which the Framei*s themselves rested the 
 antecedent credibility (may we not add even the revelabiiity ?) of the Arti- 
 cles in question, have been exchanged for principles the most dissimilar, 
 if not contraiy ? It may be said and truly, that the Scriptm-es, and not 
 metaphysical sj'stems, are oiu* best and ultimate authorit}'. And doubtless, 
 on Revelation must we rely for the truth of the Doctrines. Yet what is 
 held mcapable of being conceived as possible, will be deemed incapable 
 of having been revealed as real : and that philosophy has hitherto had a 
 negative voice, as to the interpretation of the Scriptm-es in high and doc- 
 
392 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 trinal points, is proved by the course of argument adopted in the contro- 
 versial vohimes of all the orthodox Divines from Origen to Bishop Bull 
 as well as by the very different sense attached to the same texts by the dis- 
 ciples of the modern Metaphysique, wherever they have been at hber- 
 ty to form their own creeds according to their own exposition. 
 
 I repeat the question then : is it hkely, that the faith of our ancestors 
 will be retained when their philosophy is rejected ? rejected a priori, as 
 baseless notions not worth inquiring into, as obsolete errors which it would 
 be " slaying the slain'^ to confute ? Should the answer be in the negative, 
 it would be no strained inference that the Clergy at least, as the Conserva- 
 tors of the national Faith, and the accredited Representatives of Learn- 
 ing in general amongst us, might, with great advantage to their own peace 
 of mind, qualify themselves to judge for themselves concerning the com- 
 parative worth and solidity of the two schemes. Let them make the ex- 
 periment, whether a patient re-hearing of their predecessors' cause, with 
 enough of predilection for the men to counterpoise the prejudices against 
 their system, might not induce them to move for a new trial — a result of 
 no mean importance in my opinion, were it on this account alone, that 
 it would recall certain ex-dignitaries in the Book-republic from their long 
 exile on the shelves of our public libraries to their old familiar station on 
 the reading desks of our theological students. However strong the pre- 
 sumption were in favor of principles authorized bynames that must needs 
 be so dear and venerable to a Minister of the Church of England, as those 
 of Hooker, Whitaker, Field, Donne, Selden, Stillingfleet, (mascu- 
 line intellects, fomied under the robust discipline of an age memorable 
 for keenness of research, and iron industiy !) yet no undue preponderance 
 from any previous weight in this scale will be apprehended by minds ca- 
 pable of estimating the counter- weights, which it must first bring to a bal- 
 ance in the scale opposite'! The obstinacy of opinions that have always 
 been taken for granted ! opinions unassailable even by the remembrance of 
 a doubt ! the silent accrescence of belief from the unwatched deposi- 
 tions of a general, never-contradicted, hearsay, the concurring suffrage of 
 modern books, all pre-supposing or re-asserting the same principles with 
 the same confidence, and with the same contempt for all prior systems !— 
 and among these, Works of highest authority, appealed to in our Legisla- 
 tures, and lectured on at our Universities ; the very books, perhaps, that 
 called forth our own first efibrts in thinking ! the solutions and confutations 
 in which must therefore have appeai'ed tenfold more satisfactory from 
 their having given us our first information of the difficulties to be solved, 
 of the oi>inions to be confuted ! — Verily, a Clergyman's partiality towards 
 the tenets of his forefathers must be intense beyond all precedent, if it 
 can more than sustain itself against antagonists so strong in themselves, 
 and with such mighty adjuncts ! 
 
 Nor in this enumeration dare I '^though fully aware of the obloquy to 
 
APPENDIX. o[jO 
 
 which I am exposing myself) omit the noticea])lo fart, that we have attacli- 
 6(1 a portion even of our national gloiy (not only to the system itself, tliat 
 system of disguised and decorous epicureanism, which has been the only 
 orthodox philosopliy of the last hundred years ; but also, and more emphat- 
 ically,) to the name of the assumed father of the system, who raised it to 
 its present "pride of place," and almost universal acceptance throughout 
 Europe. And how was this effected ? Extnnsically, by all the causes, 
 consequences, and accompaniments of the Revolution in 1688 : by all the 
 opinions, interests, and passions, which, counteracted by the sturdy prejudi- 
 ces of the mal-contents with the Revolution ; qualijied by the compromi- 
 sing character of its chief conductors ; not more propelled by the spirit of 
 enterprise and hazard in our commercial towns, than held in check by 
 the characteristic vis inertije of the peasantry and landholders; both par- 
 ties cooled and lessoned by the equal failin-e of the destruction, and of the 
 restoration, of monarchy ; it was effected extrinsically, I say, by the same 
 influences, which, [not in and of themselves, but with all these and sundry 
 other modifications) combined, under an especial controul of Providence, 
 to perfect and secure the majestic Temple of the British Constitution ! — 
 But the very same which in France, loitJwut this providential counterpoise, 
 overthrew the motley fabric of feudal oppression to build up in its stead 
 the madhouse of jacobinism ! Intrinsically, and as far as the philosophic 
 scheme itself is alone concerned, it was effected by the mixed policy and 
 bonhomie, wdth which the author contrived to retain in his celebrated 
 work whatever the system possesses of soothing for the indolence, and of 
 flattering for the vanity, of men's average understandings ; while he kept 
 out of sight all its darker features, that outraged the instinctive faith and 
 moral feelings of mankind, ingeniously threading-on the dried and shriv- 
 elled, yet still wholesome and nutritious, fruits, plucked from the rich grafls 
 of ancient wisdom, to the barren and worse than baiTcn fig tree of the 
 mechanic philosophy. Thus, the sensible Christians, " the angels of the 
 church of Laodicea," with the numerous and mighty sect of their admi- 
 rers, delighted with the discoveiy that they could purchase the decencies 
 and the creditableness of religion at so small an expenditure of faith, ex- 
 tolled the work for its pious conclusions : while the Infidels, wiser in their 
 generation than the children (at least than these nominal children) of light, 
 eulogized it with no less zeal for the sake of its principles and assump- 
 tions, and with the foresight of those obvious and only legitimate conclu- 
 sions, that might and would be deduced from them. Great at all times 
 and almost incalculable are the influences of party spirit in exaggerating 
 contemporary reputation ; but never perhaps " from the first syllable of 
 recorded time" were they exerted under such a concurrence and conjunc- 
 tion of fortunate accidents, of helping and furthering events and circum- 
 stances, as in the instance of Mr. Locke. 
 I am most fully persuaded, that the principles both of taste, morals, and 
 
 50 
 
394 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 religion taught in our most popular compendia of moral and political phi- 
 losophy, natural theolog)'^, CAidences of Christianity, &c. are false, injuri- 
 ous, and debasing. But I am likewise not less deeply convinced, that all 
 the well-meant attacks on the writings of modern infidels and heretics, in 
 support either of the miracles or of the mysteries of the Christian Reli- 
 gion, can be of no permanent utility, while the authors themselves join in 
 the vulgar appeal to common sense as the one infallible judge in matters, 
 which become subjects of philosophy only, because they involve a contra- 
 diction between this common sense and our morcd instincts, and require 
 therefore an arbiter, which containing both [eminenter) must be higher than 
 either. We but mow down the rank misgrowth instead of cleansing the 
 soil, as long as we ourselves protect and manure, as the pride of our gar- 
 den, a tree of false knowledge, which looks fair and shewy and variega- 
 ted with fi-uits not its own, that hang from the branches which have at 
 various times been ingrafted on its stem ; but from the roots of which un- 
 der ground the runners are sent off, that shoot up at a distance and bring 
 forth the true and natural crop. — I will speak plainly, though in so doing 
 I must bid defiance to all the flatterers of the folly and foolish self-opin- 
 ion of the half-instructed many. The articles of our Church, and the true 
 principles of government and social order, will never be effectually and con- 
 sistently maintained against their antagonists till the champions have them- 
 selves ceased to worship the same Baal with their enemies, till they have 
 cast out the common Idol from the recesses of their own convictions, and 
 with it the whole service and ceremonial of Idolism. While all parties 
 agree in their abjuration of Plato and Aristotle, and in their contemptuous 
 neglect of the schoolmen and the scholastic logic, without which the excel- 
 lent Selden (that genuine English Mind, whose erudition, broad, deep, and 
 manifold as it was, is yet less remarkable than his robust, healthful common 
 sense) affirms it (see his Table Talk) impossible for a Divine thoroughly to 
 comprehend or reputably to defend the whole undiminished and unadulter- 
 ated scheme of Catholick faith : while all alike pre-assume,with Mr. Locke, 
 that the Mind contains only the reliques of the Senses, and therefore pro- 
 ceed with him to explain the substance from the shadow, the voice from 
 the echo : they can but detect, each the others inconsistencies. The cham- 
 pion of orthodoxy will victoriously expose the bald and staring incongrui- 
 ty of the Socinian scheme with the language of Scripture, and with the 
 final causes of all revealed religion : the Socinian will retort on the ortho- 
 dox the incongruity of a behef in mysteries with his own admissions con- 
 cerning the origin, and nature of all tenable ideas, and as triumphantly ex- 
 pose the pretences of believing in a form of words, to which the behever 
 himself admits that he can attach no consistent meaning. Lastly, the god- 
 lesp materiahst, as the only consistent, because the only consequent, rea- 
 soner, will secretly laugh at both. If these sentiments should be just, the 
 consequences are so important, that every well-educated man, who has 
 given proofs that he has at least patiently studied the subject, deserves a 
 
APPENDIX. 395 
 
 patient hearing. Had I not the authority of the greatest and noblest intel- 
 lects for at least two thousand years on my side, yet from the vital interest 
 of the opinions themselves, and their natural, unconstrained, and (as it 
 v/ere) spontaneous coalescence with the faith of the Catholick church, 
 (they being, moreover, the opinions of its most eminent fathers,) I might 
 appeal to all orthodox Christians, whether tliey adhere to the faith only, or 
 both to the faith and forms, of the established Church, in the words of my 
 motto: Ad isthsec quEeso vos, quahacunque primo videantur aspectu, ad- 
 tendite, ut qui vobis forsan insanire videar, saltern quibus insaniam rationi- 
 bus cognoscatis. 
 
 There are still a few, however, young men of loftiest minds, and the 
 very stuff out of which tlie sword and shield of truth and honor are to be 
 made, who will not witlidi-aw all confidence from the writer, although 
 
 Tis true, that passionate for ancient Truths 
 And honoring with religious love the Great 
 Of elder times, he hated to excess. 
 With an unquiet and intolerant Scorn, 
 The hollow Puppets of an hollow Age 
 Ever idolatrous, and changing ever 
 Its worthless Idols ! 
 
 a few there are, who will still less be indisposed to follow him in his mild- 
 er mood, whenever their Friend, 
 
 Piercing the long-neglected holy Cave, 
 The haunt obscure of Old Philosophy, 
 Shall bid with lifted Torch its starr}-^ walls 
 Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame 
 Of od'rous lamps tended by saint and sage I 
 
 I have hinted, above, at the necessity of a Glossary, and I will conclude 
 these supplementary remarks with a nomenclature of the principal terms 
 that occur in the elements of speculative philosophy, in their old and right- 
 ful sense, according to my belief; at all events the sense in which I have 
 myself employed them. The most generdi term (genus summim) belong- 
 ing to the speculative hitellect, as distinguished from acts of the will, is 
 Representatioiv, or (still better) Presentation. 
 
 A conscious presentation, if it refers exclusively to the Subject, as a 
 modification of his own state of Being, is = Sensation. 
 
 The same if it refers to an Object, is r= Perception. 
 
 A Perception, immediate and individual, is zzr an Intuition. 
 
 The same, mediate, and by means of a character or mark common to 
 several tlnngs, is z= a Conception. 
 
 A Conception, extrinsic and sensuous, is = a Fact, or a Cognition. 
 
 The same, purely mental and abstracted from the forms of the Under- 
 standing itself is := a Notion. 
 
396 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 A Notion may be realized, and becomes Cognition ; but that which is 
 neither a Sensation or a Perception, that which is neither individual (i. e. 
 a sensible Intuition) nor general (i. e. a conception) which neither refei-s to 
 outward Facts nor yet is abstracted from the Forms of perception con- 
 tained in the Understanding ; but which is an educt of the Imagination 
 actuated by the pure Reason, to which there neither is or can be an ade- 
 quate correspondent in the world of Senses — ^this and this alone is z=: an 
 Idea. Whether Ideas are regulative only, according to Aristotle and 
 Kant ; or likewise Constitutive, and one with the power and Life of 
 Nature, according to Plato, and Plotinus, («»' Aoyw tw/yi^v, xai ^ Ltarj jjv to (pwg 
 Ttov av&Qoiuvn,) is the h'lghcst problem of Philosophy, and not part of its nom- 
 enclature. 
 
 [The following additional definitions, extracted from his other works, 
 may help to show that the author attaches distinct notions to the terms 
 which he employs, and be otherwise of service to the reader. — Am. Ed.] 
 
 "The word, i^f^t-, in its original sense, as used by Pindar, Aristophanes, 
 and in the gospel of Matthew, represented the visual abstraction of a dis- 
 tant object, when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts. Pla- 
 to adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to EiS(xi?m, or sensu- 
 ous images ; the transient and perishable emblems, or mental words, of 
 ideas. The ideas themselves he considered as mysterious powers, living, 
 seminal, formative, and exempt from time. In this sense the word be- 
 came the i)roperty of the Platonic school ; and it seldom occurs in Aristo- 
 tle, without some such phrase annexed to it, as " according to Plato," or " as 
 Plato says." Our English writers to the end of Charles 2nd's reign, or 
 somewhat later, employed it either in the original sense, or platonically, or 
 in a sense nearly cori'espondent to our present use of the substantive. Ideal, 
 always, however, opposing it, more or less, to image, whether of present 
 or absent objects." 
 
 "■' To express in one word all that appertains to perception, considered as 
 passive, and merely recipient, I have adopted from our elder classics the 
 word sensuous ; because sensvxd is not at present used except in a bad 
 sense, or at least as a moral distinction, while sensitive and sensible would 
 each convey a different meaning.' 
 
 " But for sundry notes on Shakespeare, &c. which have fallen in my 
 way, I should have deemed it unnecessary to observe, that discourse does 
 not mean what we 7ioiv call discoursing ; but tlio discursion of the mindy 
 the processes of generaliza^on and subsumption, of deduction and conclu- 
 
APPENDIX. 397 
 
 sion. Thus, philosophy has hitherto been discursive, while Geometry is 
 always, and essentially, intuitive. 
 
 " When tw^o distinct meanings are confounded under one or more words, 
 (and such must be the case, as sure as our knowledge is progressive, and 
 of course, imperfect) erroneous consequences will be drawn, and what is 
 true in one sense of the word, will be affirmed as true in toto. Men of 
 research, startled by the consequences, seek in the things themselves 
 (whether in or out of tlie mind) for a knowledge of the fact, and having 
 discovered the difference, remove the equivocation either by the substi- 
 tution of a new word, or by the appropriation of one of the two or more 
 words, that had before been used promiscuously. When this distinction 
 has been so naturalized and of such general currency that the language 
 itself does, as it were, think for us, (like the sliding rule, which is the me- 
 chanic's safe substitute for arithmetical knowledge,) we then say, that it is 
 evident to common sense. Common sense, therefore, differs in different 
 ages. What was bom and christened in the schools, passes by degrees 
 into the world at large, and becomes tlie property of the market and the 
 tea-table. At least, I can discover no other meaning of the term, common 
 sense, if it is to convey any si)ecific difference from sense and judgment in 
 genere, and where it is not used scholastically for the universal reason.''^ 
 
 ^^Metaphysics are the science which determines what can, and what can 
 not, be known of Being and the Laws of Being, a prion, (that is from 
 those necessities of the mind or forms of thinking, which, though first 
 revealed to us by experience, must yet have pre-existed in order to make 
 experience itself possible.") 
 
 "This phrase, a piiori, is in common most grossly misunderstood, and 
 an absurdity burthened on it, which it does not deserve ! By knowledge, a 
 priori, we do not mean, that we can know any thing previously to expe- 
 rience, which would be a contradiction in terms ; but, that having once 
 known it by occasion of experience, (i. e. something acting uj)on us from 
 without,) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the experience 
 itself would have been impossible. By experience only, I know that I 
 have eyes ; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes 
 in order to the experience." 
 
 "The same principle, which in its application to tlie whole of our being 
 becomes religion, considersd speculatively is the basis of metaphysical sci- 
 ence, that, namely, which requires an evidence beyond that of sensible 
 concretes, which latter the ancients generalized in the word, physica, and 
 therefore (prefixing the preposition, meta, i. e. beyond or transcending) na- 
 med the superior science, metaphysics. The Invisible was assumed as 
 the supporter of the apparent, tw) f/)«n on iron — as their s^ibstance, a term 
 which, in any other interpretation, exi)reases only the striving of the im- 
 aginative })Ower under conditions that involve the necessity of its frustra- 
 tion. If the Invisible be denied, or (which is equivalent) considered in- 
 
398 AIDS TO REFLECTION. 
 
 visible from the defect of the senses and not in its own nature, the scien- 
 ces even of observation and experiment lose their essential copula. The 
 component parts can never be reduced into an harmonious whole, but 
 must owe their systematic arrangement to accidents of an ever-shifting 
 perspective. Much more then must this apply to the moral world dis- 
 joined from religion. Instead of morality, we can at best have only a 
 scheme of prudence, and this too a prudence fallible and short-sighted : 
 for were it of such a kind as to be bona fide coincident with morals in 
 reference to the agent as well as to the outward action, its first act would 
 be that of abjuring its own usurped primacy. By celestial observations 
 alone 'can even terrestrial charts be constructed scientifically.^'^ 
 
 "I shall merely state [here] what my belief is, concerning the true evi- 
 dences of Christianity. 1. Its consistency with right Reason, I consider 
 as the outer Court of the Temple — the common area, within which it 
 stands. 2. The miracles, with and through which the Religion was first 
 revealed and attested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, and the portal 
 of the Temple. 3. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each Be- 
 liever of its exceeding desirableness — the experience that he needs some- 
 thing, joined with the strong foretokening-, that the Redemption and the 
 Graces propounded to us in Christ, are what he needs ; — this I hold to be 
 the true FouNDATiONjof the spiritual Edifice, With the strong a priori 
 probability that flows in from 1 and 3 on the coiTespondent historical evi- 
 dence of 2, no man can refuse or neglect to make the experiment without 
 guilt. But, 4, it is the experience derived from a practical conformity to 
 the conditions of the Gospel — it is the opening Eye ; the dawning Light ; 
 the terrors and the promises of spiritual Growth ; the blessedness of loving 
 God as God, the nascent sense of Sin hated as Sin, and of the incapabil- 
 ity of attaining to either without Christ ; it is the sorrow that still rises up 
 from beneath, and the consolation that meets it from above ; the bosom 
 treacheries of the Principal in the warfare, and the exceeding faithfulness 
 and long-suffering of the uninterested Ally ; — in a word, it is the actual 
 Trial of the Faith in Christ, with its accompaniments and results, that 
 must form the arched Roof, and the Faith itself is the completing Key- 
 stone. In order to an efficient belief in Christianity, a man must have 
 been a Christian, and this is the seeming argumentum in chculo, incident 
 to all spiritual Truths, to every subject not presentable under the forms of 
 Time and Space, as long as we attempt to master by the reflex acts of the 
 Understanding, what we can only know by the act of becoming. "Do the 
 will of my Father, and ye shall know whether I am of God." These 
 four evidences I believe to have been, and still to be, for the world, for 
 tlie whole church, all necessary, all ecpially necessaiy ; but that at present 
 and for the majority of Christians born in Christian countries, I believe 
 the third and the fourth evidences to be the most operative, not as super- 
 seding, but as involving a glad undoufoting faith in the two former. Cre- 
 
APPENDIX. 399 
 
 tlidi, ideoque intellexi, appeal's to me the dictate equally of Pliilosoj)hy 
 and Religion, even aa I believe Redemption to be the antecedent of Sane- 
 tification, and not its consequent. All spiritual predicates may be constru- 
 ed indifferently as modes of Action, or as states of Being. Thus Holiness 
 and Blessedness are the same idea, now seen in relation to act, and now to 
 existence." 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 P. 191, 1. ]8, for "135—136." read 13^-134. 
 P. 253, 1. 2], for "hypostatize," read hypostasize. 
 ^ ^^ Note ^'^^ reference for p. "157," read 237. 
 
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