CONCLUSION.
I am not so ignorant of the temper and tendency of the age in which I live, as either to be unprepared for the sort of remarks which the literal interpretation of the Evangelist will call forth, or to attempt an answer to them. Visionary ravings, obsolete whimsies, transcendental trash, and the like, I leave to pass at the price current among those who are willing to receive abusive phrases as substitutes for argument. Should any suborner of anonymous criticism have engaged some literary bravo or buffoon beforehand, to vilify this work, as in former instances, I would give a friendly hint to the operative critic that he may compile an excellent article for the occasion, and with very little trouble, out of Warburton's tract on Grace and the Spirit, and the Preface to the same. There is, however, one objection which will so often be heard from men, whose talents and reputed moderation must give a weight to their words, that I owe it both to my own character and to the interests of my readers, not to leave it unnoticed. The charge will 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 large 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 common to all minds: and secondly, the confusion of nature, that is, the active powers communicated to matter, with God the Creator. And if the same persons have done more than merely looked into the present volume, they must have seen, that to eradicate, and, if possible, to preclude both the one and the other stands prominent among its avowed objects.[156]
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[157] 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 affords no presumption that my conclusions are the same with his; still less, that they are drawn from the same premisses: and least of all, that they were adopted from his writings. Whether Law has used the phrase, assimilation by faith, I know not; but I know that I should expose myself to a just charge of an idle parade of my reading, if I recapitulated the tenth part of the authors, ancient, and modern, Romish and Reformed, from Law to Clemens Alexandrinus and Irenæus, 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 answer. I not only believe it to be the true sense of the texts; but I assert that it is the only true, rational, and even tolerable sense. And this position alone I conceive myself interested in defending. I have studied with an open and fearless spirit the attempts of sundry learned critics of the Continent, to invalidate the authenticity of this Gospel, before and since Eichhorn's Vindication. The result has been a clearer assurance and (as far as this was possible) a yet deeper conviction of the genuineness of all the writings, which the Church has attributed to this Apostle. That those, who have formed an opposite conclusion, should object to the use of expressions which they had ranked among the most obvious marks of spuriousness, follows as a matter of course. But that men, who with a clear and cloudless assent receive the sixth chapter of this Gospel as a faithful, nay, inspired record of an actual discourse, 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 chosen as the most appropriate; and which, after the most decisive proofs, that they were misinterpreted by the greater number of his hearers, and not understood by any, he nevertheless repeated with stronger emphasis and without comment as the only appropriate symbols of the great truth he was declaring, and to realize which εγενετο σαρξ;[158] —that in their own discourses 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 unequivocal 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, namely, Mysticism. And for this purpose I will quote a sentence or two from a Dialogue which, had my prescribed limits permitted, I should have attached to the present work; but which with an Essay on the Church, as instituted by Christ, and as an establishment of the State, and a series of letters on the right and the superstitious use and estimation of the Bible, will appear in a small volume by themselves, should the reception given to the present volume encourage or permit the publication.[159]
MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM.
Antinöus.—"What do you call Mysticism? And do you use the word in a good or a bad sense?"
Nöus.—"In the latter only; as far, at least, as we are now 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 accidents and anomalies of individual sensations or fancies, and the use of peculiar terms invented, or perverted from their ordinary significations, for the purpose of expressing these idiosyncrasies 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 temperament the character of reality, and in receiving them as permanent truths, having a subsistence in the Divine Mind, though revealed to himself alone; but entertains this persuasion without demanding or expecting the same faith in his neighbours—I should regard it as a 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 which seeks confirmation in outward sympathy, is led to impose his faith, as a duty, on mankind generally: and when with such views he asserts that the same experiences would be vouchsafed, the same truths revealed, to every man but for his secret wickedness and unholy will—such a Mystic is a Fanatic, and in certain states of the public mind a dangerous member of society. And most so in those ages and countries in which Fanatics of elder standing are allowed to persecute the fresh competitor. For under these predicaments, Mysticism, though originating in the singularities of an individual nature, and therefore essentially anomalous, is nevertheless 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, Schwärmerey, that is, swarm-making."
We will return to the harmless species—the enthusiastic Mystics;—a species that may again be subdivided into two ranks. And it will not be other than germane to the subject, if I endeavour to describe them in a sort of allegory, or parable. Let us imagine a poor pilgrim benighted in a wilderness or desert, and pursuing his way in the starless dark with a lantern in his hand. Chance or his happy genius leads him to an Oasis or natural Garden, such as in the creations of my youthful fancy I supposed Enos[160] the Child of Cain to have found. And here, hungry and thirsty, the way-wearied man rests at a fountain; and the taper of his lantern throws its light on an over-shadowing tree, a boss of snow-white blossoms, through which the green and growing fruits peeped, and the ripe golden fruitage glowed. Deep, vivid, and faithful 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 drunk 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 dawn of day discloses to him a caravan, a troop of his fellow-men, his memory, which is itself half fancy, is interpolated afresh by every attempt to recall, connect, and piece out his recollections. His narration is received as a madman's tale. He shrinks from the rude laugh and contemptuous sneer, and retires into himself. Yet the craving for sympathy, strong in proportion to the intensity of his convictions, impels him to unbosom himself to abstract auditors; and the poor 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 theosopher and shoemaker, honest Jacob Behmen, born near Gorlitz, in Upper Lusatia, in the 17th of our Elizabeth's reign, and who died in the 22nd of her successor's.
To delineate a Mystic of the second and higher order, we need only endow our pilgrim with equal gifts of nature, but these developed and displayed by all the aids and arts of education and favourable fortune. He is on his way to the Mecca of his ancestral and national 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 desert: and he strays forth alone, out of sight but to no unsafe distance; and chance leads him too, to the same oasis or Islet of Verdure on the Sea of Sand. He wanders at leisure in its maze of beauty and sweetness, and thrids his way through the odorous and flowering thickets into open spots of greenery, and 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 magnifies heights, and modifies relations: and fills up vacuities with its own whiteness, counterfeiting substance; and where the dense shadows lie, makes solidity imitate hollowness; and gives to all objects a tender visionary hue and softening. Interpret the moonlight and the shadows as the peculiar genius and sensibility of the individual's own spirit: and here you have the other sort: a Mystic, an Enthusiast of a nobler breed—a Fenelon. But the residentiary, or the frequent visitor of the favoured spot, who has scanned its beauties by steady day-light, and mastered its true proportions and lineaments, 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 bewildered 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 Materialism, is in ill repute: and a confessed Materialist therefore a rare character. But if the faith be ascertained by the fruits: if the predominant, though most often unsuspected, persuasion is to be learnt from the influences, under which the thoughts and affections of the man move and take their direction; I must reverse the position. Only not all are Materialists. Except a few individuals, and those for the most part of a single sect: every one, who calls himself a Christian, holds himself to have a soul as well as a body. He distinguishes mind from matter, the subject of his consciousness from the objects of the same. The former is his mind: and he says, it is immaterial. But though subject and substance are words of kindred roots, nay, little less than equivalent terms, yet nevertheless it is exclusively to sensible objects, to bodies, to modifications of matter, that he habitually attaches the attributes of reality, of substance. Real and tangible, substantial and material, are synonyms 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, for example, as a somewhat opposed to solidity, to visibility, and the like, as if you could abstract the capacity of a vessel, and conceive of it as a somewhat by itself, and then give to the emptiness the properties of containing, holding, being entered, and so forth. In short, though the proposition would perhaps be angrily denied in words, yet in fact he thinks of his mind, as a property, or 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 Corpuscular School, though it still exerts an influence on men's notions and phrases, has received a mortal blow from the increasingly dynamic spirit of the physical sciences now highest in public estimation. And it may safely be predicted that the results will extend beyond the intention of those, who are gradually effecting this revolution. It is not chemistry alone that will be 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 tangibility of all objects of sense, bear the same relation and similar proportion to the intelligible object—that is, to the object which we actually mean when we say, "It is such or such a thing," or "I have seen this or that,"—as the paper, ink, and differently combined straight and curved lines of an edition of Homer bear to what we understand by the words Iliad and Odyssey. Nay, nothing would be more easy than so to construct the paper, ink, painted capitals, and the like, of a printed disquisition on the eye, or the muscles and cellular texture (the flesh) of the human body, as to bring together every one of the sensible and ponderable stuffs or elements, that are sensuously perceived in the eye itself, or in the flesh itself. Carbon and nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and one or two metals and metallic bases, constitute the whole. It cannot be these, therefore, that we mean by an eye, by our body. But perhaps it may be a particular combination of these? But here comes a question: In this term do you or do you not include the principle, the operating cause, of the combination? If not, then detach this eye from the body. Look steadily at it—as it might lie on the marble slab of a dissecting room. Say it were the eye of a murderer, a Bellingham: or the eye of a murdered patriot, a Sidney!—Behold it, handle it, with its various accompaniments or constituent parts, of tendon, ligament, membrane, blood-vessel, gland, humours; 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 traveller, "That is Babylon, or Persepolis."—Is this cold jelly the light of the body? Is this the Micranthropos in the marvellous microcosm? Is this what you mean when you well define the eye as the telescope and the mirror of the soul, the seat and agent of an almost magical power?
Pursue the same inquisition with every other part of the body, whether integral or simply ingredient; and let a Berzelius or a Hatchett be your interpreter, and 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 flesh, the blood of life? Or not far rather—I speak of what, as a man of common sense, you really do, not what, as a philosopher, you ought to believe—is it not, I say, far rather the distinct and individualized agency that by the given combinations utters and bespeaks its presence? Justly and with strictest propriety of language may I say, speaks. It is to the coarseness of our senses, or rather to the defect and limitation of our percipient faculty, that the visible object appears the same even for a moment. The characters, which I am now shaping on this paper, abide. Not only the forms remain the same, but the particles of the colouring stuff are fixed, and, for an indefinite period at least, remain the same. But the particles that constitute the size, the visibility of an organic structure[162] are in perpetual flux. They are to the combining and constitutive power as the pulses of air to the voice of a discourser; or of one who sings a roundelay. The same words may be repeated; but in each second of time the articulated air hath passed away, and each act of articulation appropriates and gives momentary form to a new and other portion. As the column of blue smoke from a cottage chimney in the breathless summer noon, or the 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 power by inherent reciprocal attractions, repulsions, and elective 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 querist, that ever herein consists the essential difference, the contra-distinction, of an organ from a machine; that not only the characteristic shape is evolved from the invisible central power, but the material mass itself is acquired by assimilation. The germinal power of the plant 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 indifferently the bone and its marrow, the pulpy brain, or the solid ivory. That what you see is blood, is flesh, is itself the work, or shall I say, the translucence, of the invisible Energy, which soon surrenders or abandons them to inferior powers (for there is no pause nor chasm in the activities of Nature), which repeat a similar metamorphosis according to their kind;—these are not fancies, conjectures, or even hypotheses, but facts; to deny which is impossible, not to reflect on which is ignominious. And we need only reflect on them with a calm and silent spirit to learn the utter emptiness and unmeaningness of the vaunted Mechanico-corpuscular Philosophy, with both its twins, Materialism on the one hand, and Idealism, rightlier named Subjective Idolism, on the other: the one obtruding on us a World of Spectres and Apparitions; the other a mazy Dream!
Let the Mechanic or Corpuscular Scheme, which in its absoluteness 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 phenomena of moving bodies to geometrical construction, we are under the necessity of abstracting from corporeal substance all its positive properties, and obliged to consider bodies as differing from equal portions of space[163] only by figure and mobility. And as a fiction of science, it would be difficult to overvalue this invention. It possesses the same merits in relation to Geometry that the atomic theory has in relation to algebraic calculus. But in contempt of common sense, 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 productive 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 Reality! the Absoluteness of Creative Will!
Holy! Holy! Holy! let me be deemed mad by all men, if such be thy ordinance: but, O! from such madness save and preserve me, my God!
When, however, after a short interval, the genius of Kepler, expanded and organized in the soul of Newton, and there (if I may hazard so bold an expression) refining itself into an almost celestial clearness, had expelled the Cartesian vortices;[164] 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 abstraction; so a Law without an Agent to realize it, a Constitution without an abiding Executive, is, in fact, not a Law but an Idea. In the profound emblem of the great tragic poet, it is the powerless Prometheus fixed on a barren Rock. And what was the result? How was this necessity provided for? God himself—my hand trembles as I write! 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 identified. God (says Dr. Priestley) not only does, but is every thing. Jupiter est quodcunque vides. And thus a system, which commenced by excluding all life and immanent activity from the visible universe and evacuating the natural world of all nature, ended by substituting the Deity, and reducing the Creator to a mere anima mundi: a scheme that has no advantage over Spinosism but its inconsistency, which does indeed make it suit a certain Order of intellects, who, like the pleuronectæ (or flat fish) in ichthyology which have both eyes on the same side, never see but half of a subject at one time, and forgetting the one before they get to the other are sure not to detect any inconsistency between them.
And what has been the consequence? An increasing unwillingness to contemplate the Supreme Being in his personal attributes: and thence a distaste to all the 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 frequent 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 feelingly; for I speak of that which for a brief period was my own state—who under this unhealthful influence have been so estranged from the heavenly Father, the Living God, as even to shrink from the personal pronouns as applied to the Deity. But many do I know, and yearly meet with, in whom a false and sickly taste co-operates with the prevailing fashion: many, who find the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, far too real, too substantial; who feel it more in harmony with their indefinite sensations
To worship Nature in the hill and valley, Not knowing what they love:—
and (to use the language, but not the sense or purpose of the great poet of our age) would fain substitute for the Jehovah of their Bible
A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things!
Wordsworth.
And this from having been educated to understand the Divine Omnipresence in any sense rather than the alone safe and legitimate one, the presence of all things to God!
Be it, however, that the number of such men is comparatively 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 exclusively to the so-called physical attributes, to the Omnipresence in the counterfeit form of ubiquity, to the Immensity, the Infinity, the Immutability;—the attributes of space with a notion of Power as their substratum, a Fate, in short, not a Moral Creator and Governor! Let intelligence be imagined, and wherein does the conception of God differ essentially from that of Gravitation (conceived as the cause of 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, and the like. 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 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 reference to Christians generally, and not to professed students of theology—may, in my judgment, be far more safely and profitably 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 produced by it on the educated class of society; or that result, which as more immediately connected with my present theme I have reserved for the last—is the habit of attaching all our conceptions and feelings, and of applying all the words and phrases expressing reality, to the objects of the senses: more accurately speaking, to the images and sensations by which their presence is made known to us. Now I do not hesitate to assert, that it was one of the great purposes of Christianity, and included in the process of our Redemption, to rouse and emancipate the soul from this debasing slavery to the outward senses, to awaken the mind to the true criteria of reality, namely, Permanence, Power, Will manifested in Act, and Truth operating as Life. My words, said Christ, are spirit: and they (that is, the spiritual powers expressed by them) are truth; that is, very Being. For this end our Lord, who came from heaven to take captivity captive, chose the words and names, that designate the familiar yet most important objects of sense, the nearest and most concerning things and incidents of corporeal nature:—Water, Flesh, Blood, Birth, Bread! But he used them in senses, that could not without absurdity be supposed to respect the mere phænomena, water, flesh, and the like, in senses that by no possibility could apply to the colour, figure, specific mode of touch or taste produced on ourselves, and by which we are made aware of the presence of the things, and understand them—res, quæ sub apparitionibus istis statuendæ sunt. And this awful recalling of the drowsed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensuality to actual reality,—how has it been evaded! These words, that were Spirit! these Mysteries, which even the Apostles must wait for the Paraclete, in order to 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 these men have been, had they said that Morality means all this!
The effect, however, has been most injurious to the best interests of our Universities, to our incomparably constituted Church, and even to our national character. The few who have read my two Lay Sermons are no strangers to my opinions on this head; and in my 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 irreverence of celebrated Names, especially of the late Dr. Paley. O, if I were fond and ambitious of literary honour, of public applause, how well content should I be to excite but one third of the admiration which, in my inmost being, I feel for the head and heart of Paley! And how gladly would I surrender all hope of contemporary praise, could I even approach to the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility of his writings! But on this very account I believe myself bound in conscience to throw the whole force of my intellect in the way of this triumphal car, on which the tutelary genius of modern Idolatry is borne, even at the risk of being crushed under the wheels! I have at this moment before my eyes the eighteenth of his 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 strongly of the value, benefit, and efficacy, of the death of Christ, assuredly mean something; but what they mean, nobody, it seems can tell! But doubtless we shall discover it, and be convinced that there is a substantial sense belonging to these words—in a future state! Is there an enigma, or an absurdity, in the Koran or the Vedas which might not be defended on the same pretence? A similar impression, I confess, was left on my mind by Dr. Magee's statement or exposition (ad normam Grotianam) of the doctrine of Redemption; and deeply did it disappoint the high expectations, sadly did it chill the fervid sympathy, which his introductory chapter, his manly and masterly disquisition on the sacrificial rites of Paganism, had raised in my mind.
And yet I cannot read the pages of Paley, here referred to, aloud, without the liveliest sense, how plausible and popular they will sound to the great majority of readers. Thousands 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 removing the apprehended distance between him and the superior author; and it flatters him still more by enabling him to transfer to himself, and to appropriate, this superiority; and thus to make his very weakness the mark and evidence of his strength. Ay, quoth the rational Christian—or with a sighing, self-soothing sound between an Ay and an Ah!—I am content to think, with the great Dr. Paley, and the learned Archbishop of Dublin——
Man of Sense! Dr. Paley was a great man, and Dr. Magee is a learned and exemplary prelate; but You do not think at all!
With regard to the convictions avowed and enforced in my own Work, I will continue my address to the man of sense in the words of an old philosopher:—Tu vero crassis auribus et obstinato corde respuis quæ forsitan vere perhibeantur. Minus hercule calles, pravissimis opinionibus ea putari mendacia, quæ vel auditu nova, vel visu rudia, vel certe supra captum cogitationis (extemporaneæ tuæ) ardua videantur: quæ si paulo accuratius exploraris, non modo compertu evidentia, sed etiam factu facilia, senties.[165]
In compliance with the suggestion of a judicious friend, the celebrated conclusion of the fourth Book of Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, referred to in p. 230 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 message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries.—It is idle to say, that a future state had been discovered 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."
Pædianus says of Virgil,—Usque adeo expers invidiæ, 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 passage 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 importance I attach to the convictions which impelled me to animadvert on the same passage as doctrine.
[156] See Preliminary to Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion, &c.—Ed.
[157] So in first edition, 1825.—Ed.
[158] Of which our he was made flesh, is an inadequate translation.—The Church of England in this as in other doctrinal points, has preserved the golden mean between the superstitious reverence of the Romanists, and the avowed contempt of the Sectarians, for the writings of the Fathers, and the authority and unimpeached traditions of the Church during the first three or four centuries. And how, consistently with this honourable characteristic of our Church, a minister of the same could, on the Sacramentary scheme now in fashion, return even a plausible answer to Arnauld's great work on Transubstantiation (not without reason the boast of the Romish Church), exceeds my powers of conjecture.
[159] These were the afterwards published 'On the Church and State, according to the Idea of Each,' 1830, and 'Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit,' 1840. The latter we republish in the present volume; see p. 285.—Ed.
[160] Will the reader forgive me if I attempt at once to illustrate and relieve the subject by annexing the first stanza of the poem composed in the same year in which I wrote the Ancient Mariner and the first book of Christabel?
"Encinctur'd with a twine of leaves, That leafy twine his only dress! A lovely boy was plucking fruits In a moonlight wilderness.[161] The moon was bright, the air was free, And fruits and flowers together grew On many a shrub and many a tree: And all put on a gentle hue, Hanging in the shadowy air Like a picture rich and rare. It was a climate where, they say, The night is more belov'd than day. But who that beauteous boy beguil'd, That beauteous boy to linger here? Alone, by night, a little child, In place so silent and so wild— Has he no friend, no loving mother near?" Wanderings of Cain.
[161] "By moonlight, in a wilderness."—'Poetical Works,' edit. 1863.—Ed.
[162] See p. 40.—Ed.
[163] Such is the conception of body in Des Cartes' own system, body is every where confounded with matter, and might in the Cartesian sense be defined, Space or Extension, with the attribute of Visibility. As Des Cartes at the same time zealously asserted the existence of intelligential beings, the reality and independent Self-subsidence of the soul, Berkeleyanism or Spinosism was the immediate and necessary consequence. Assume a plurality of self-subsisting souls, and we have Berkeleyanism; assume one only (unam et unicam substantiam), and you have Spinosism, that is, the assertion of one infinite self-subsistent, with the two attributes of thinking and appearing. Cogitatio infinita sine centro, et omniformis apparitio. How far the Newtonian vis inertiæ (interpreted any otherwise than as an arbitrary term = x y z, to represent the unknown but necessary supplement or integration of the Cartesian notion of body) has patched up the flaw, I leave for more competent judges to decide. But should any one of my Readers feel an interest in the speculative principles of Natural Philosophy, and should be master of the German language, I warmly recommend for his perusal the earliest known publication of the great founder of the Critical Philosophy (written in the twenty-second year of his age!), on the then eager controversy between the Leibnitzian and the French and English Mathematicians, respecting the living forces—Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte: 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 Corporeal Nature, is something else and more than geometrical extension, even with the addition of a vis inertiæ. And Leibnitz, with the Bernouillis, erred in the attempt to demonstrate geometrically a problem not susceptible of geometrical construction.—The tract, with the succeeding Himmels-system, may with propriety be placed, after the Principia of Newton, among the striking instances of early Genius; and as the first product of the Dynamic Philosophy in the Physical Sciences, from the time, at least, of Giordano Bruno, whom the idolaters burnt for an Atheist, at Rome, in the year 1600. See the 'Friend,' pp. 151-55. [Or pp. 69 70, Bohn's edition.—Ed.]
[164] For Newton's own doubtfully suggested ether, or most subtle fluid, as the ground and immediate Agent in the phenomena of universal gravitation, was either not adopted or soon abandoned by his disciples; not only as introducing, against his own canons of right reasoning, an ens imaginarium into physical science, a suffiction in the place of a legitimate supposition; 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, which originated in Spinosa, found no acceptance; and, lastly, the notion of a corpuscular substance, with properties put into it, like a pincushion hidden by the pins, could pass with the unthinking only for any thing more than a confession of ignorance, or technical terms expressing a hiatus of scientific insight.
[165] Apul. Metam. 1.—H. N. C.