quantum
of power separated from, not included in, omnipotence, or all-power. But, alas! we too generally use the terms that are meant to express the absolute, as mere comparatives taken superlatively. In one thing only are we permitted and bound to assert a diversity, namely, in God and
Hades
, the good and the evil will. This awful mystery, this truth, at once certain and incomprehensible, is at the bottom of all religion; and to exhibit this truth free from the dark phantom of the Manicheans, or the two co-eternal and co-ordinate principles of good and evil, is the glory of the Christian religion.
But this mysterious dividuity of the good and the evil will, the will of the spirit and the will of the flesh, must not be carried beyond the terms 'good' and 'evil.' There can be but one good will — the spirit in all; — and even so, all evil wills are one evil will, the devil or evil spirit. But then the One exists for us as finite intelligences, necessarily in a two-fold relation, universal and particular. The same Spirit within us pleads to the Spirit as without us; and in like manner is every evil mind in communion with the evil spirit. But, O comfort! the good alone is the actual, the evil essentially potential. Hence the devil is most appropriately named the 'tempter,' and the evil hath its essence in the will: it cannot pass out of it. Deeds are called evil in reference to the individual will expressed in them; but in the great scheme of Providence they are, only as far as they are good, coerced under the conditions of all true being; and the devil is the drudge of the All-good.
Serm. IV Luke ii. 29, 30. p. 29.
Ib.
p. 30. B.
We shall consider that that preparation, and disposition, and acquiescence, which Simeon had in his epiphany, in his visible seeing of Christ then, is offered to us in this epiphany, in this manifestation and application of Christ in the sacrament; and that therefore every penitent, and devout, and reverent, and worthy receiver hath had in that holy action his now; there are all things accomplished to him; and his for, for his eyes have seen his salvation; and so may be content, nay glad, to depart in peace.
O! would that Donne, or rather that Luther before him, had carried out this just conception to its legitimate consequences; — that as the sacrament of the Eucharist is the epiphany for as many as receive it in faith, so the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ himself in the flesh, were the epiphanies, the sacramental acts and