hortus siccus
of past revelations, — but an ever enlarging inclosed
area
of the opportunity of individual conversion to, and reception of, the spirit of truth! Then, instead of using this one truth to inspire a despair of all truth, a reckless scepticism within, and a boundless compliance without, he would have directed the believer to seek for light where there was a certainty of finding it, as far as it was profitable for him, that is, as far as it actually was light for him. The visible Church would be a walled Academy, a pleasure garden, in which the intrants having presented their
symbolum portae
, or admission-contract, walk at large, each seeking private audience of the invisible teacher, — alone now, now in groups, — meditating or conversing, — gladly listening to some elder disciple, through whom (as ascertained by his intelligibility to me) I feel that the common Master is speaking to me, — or lovingly communing with a class-fellow, who, I have discovered, has received the same lesson from the inward teaching with myself, — while the only public concerns in which all, as a common weal, exercised control and vigilance over each, are order, peace, mutual courtesy and reverence, kindness, charity, love, and the fealty and devotion of all and each to the common Master and Benefactor!
Ib.
s. viii. p. 124.
It is characteristic of the man and the age, Taylor's high-strained reverential epithets to the names of the Fathers, and as rare and naked mention of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin — the least of whom was not inferior to St. Augustin, and worth a brigade of the Cyprians, Firmilians, and the like. And observe, always
Saint