"Non dei più ammirar, se bene stimo,
Lo tuo salir, se non come d'un rivo
Se d'alto monte scende giuso ad imo.
Maraviglia sarebbe in te, se privo
D'impedimento giu ti fossi assiso,
Com' a terra quieto fuoco vivo.
Quinci rivolce inver lo cielo il viso." ]
[Footnote 355: It may be interesting to compare the following passage from George Fox, which dramatises the irruption of natural science, with its faith in fixed laws, into the sphere of the religious consciousness:—"One morning, while I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, a temptation beset me; and I sat still. It was said, All things come by Nature; and the elements and stars came over me, so that I was in a manner quite clouded by it. And as I sat still under it and let it alone, a living hope and a true voice arose in me, which said, There is a living God who made all things. Immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all; my heart was glad, and I praised the living God.">[
[Footnote 356: So we may fairly say, if we remember that we are speaking of what transcends time. Neither Böhme nor Law looks forward to a golden age on this earth.]
[Footnote 357: Henry More's judgment is as follows: "Jacob Behmen, I conceive, is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above the rational; and though he was a good and holy man, his natural complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed, but retained its property still; and, therefore, his imagination being very busy about Divine things, he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving Divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his fancy; which, being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him, as well as the anxiety of reason does others of like integrity with himself.">[
[Footnote 358: Canon G.G. Perry, in his Students' English Church History, disposes of this noble group of men in one contemptuous paragraph, as a "class of divines who were neither Puritans nor High Churchmen," and makes the astounding statement that "to the school thus commenced, the deadness, carelessness, and indifference prevalent in the eighteenth century are in large measure to be attributed." It is of these very same men that Bishop Burnet writes, that if they had not appeared to combat the "laziness and negligence," the "ease and sloth" of the Restoration clergy, "the Church had quite lost her esteem over the nation." Alexander Knox (Works, vol. iii. p. 199) speaks of the rise of this school as a great instance of the design of Providence to supply to the Church what had never before been produced, writers who do "full honour at once to the elevation and the rationality of Christian piety…. In their writings we are invited to ascend, by having a prospect opened before us as luminous as it is sublime…. They are such writers as had never before existed…. No Church but the English Church could have produced them." Of John Smith he says, "My value for him is beyond what words can do justice to." The works of Whichcote, Smith, Cudworth, and Culverwel are happily accessible enough, and I beg my readers to study them at first hand. I do not believe that any Christian could rise from the perusal of the two first-named without having gained a lasting benefit in the deepening of his spiritual life and heightening of his faith.]
[Footnote 359: A writer who signs himself S.P. (probably Simon Patrick, bishop of Ely), in a pamphlet called A Brief Account of the new Sect of Latitude Men (1662), vindicates their attachment to the "virtuous mediocrity" of the Church of England, as distinguished from the "meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome, and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.">[
[Footnote 360: Compare with these extracts the words of Leibnitz: "To despise reason in matters of religion is to my eyes certain proof either of an obstinacy that borders on fanaticism, or, what is worse, of hypocrisy.">[
[Footnote 361: See Appendix C.]
[Footnote 362: The classical reader will be reminded of Lucretius, iii. 979-1036. Smith, however, would not have relished this comparison. He devotes part of one sermon to a refutation of the Epicurean poet, in whom he sees a precursor of his bête noire, Hobbes!]
[Footnote 363: Compare with this the following passage of Jean de Labadie (1610-1674), the founder of a mystical school on the Continent: "Plusieurs sont bien aises d'ouyr dire qu'ils sont justifiés par Jesus-Christ, lavés de leurs péchés en son sang par la foí, par la repentance et par le baptême chrestien, et volontiers ils I'embrasent comme Justificateur, comme crucifié et mort pour eux; mais peu prennent part à sa croix, à sa mort, pour se faire spirituellement mourir avec Luy, crucifier leur chair avec la sienne, et porter en eux-mêmes les vives marques de sa croix et de sa mort. Peu le goutent comme Justificateur au dedans par l'Esprit consacrant et immolant le vieil homme à Dieu et par une pratique vraiment sainte, laquelle dompte le péché.">[