Part ii

. of his 'History of the Reformation.' See pp. 26, 27, v. ii. Clarendon Press edition, 1865.--ED.

APHORISM IV.

_The characteristic Difference between the Discipline of the Ancient Philosophers and the Dispensation of the Gospel._

By undeceiving, enlarging, and informing the Intellect, Philosophy sought to purify, and to elevate the Moral Character. Of course, those alone could receive the latter and incomparably greater benefit, who by natural capacity and favourable contingencies of fortune were fit recipients of the former. How small the number, we scarcely need the evidence of history to assure us. Across the night of Paganism, Philosophy flitted on, like the lantern-fly of the Tropics, a light to itself, and an ornament, but alas! no more than an ornament of the 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 themselves, her first step was to cleanse the _heart_. But the benefit did not stop here. In preventing the rank vapours that steam up from the corrupt _heart_, Christianity restores the _intellect_ likewise to its natural clearness. By relieving the mind from the distractions and importunities of the unruly passions, she improves the _quality_ of the Understanding: while at the same time she presents for its contemplations, objects 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 Experience, the belief and the Faith, of a Christian, form of themselves a philosophy and a Sum of Knowledge, 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 Doctors of the Church forget that the _heart_, 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 majority 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 the Surfaces of things became[82] Substance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many, that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think--both alike _unreflecting_, the one from defect of the _act_, the other from the absence of an _object_.

[82] _Virium et proprietatum, quæ non nisi de substantibus predicari possunt, formis superstantibus attributio, est_ SUPERSTITIO.

APHORISM V.

There is small chance of Truth at the goal where there is not a 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 before-hand; where the great magnet of the planet is not overwhelmed or obscured 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 interests--those of goodness, of beauty, of utility. It would be a sorry proof of the humility I am extolling, were I to ask for angel's wings to overfly my own human nature. I exclude none of these. It is enough if the _lene clinamen_, the gentle bias, be given by no interest that concerns myself other than as I am a man, and included in the great family of mankind; but which does therefore especially concern me, because being a common interest of _all_ men it must needs concern the very _essentials_ of my being, and because these essentials, as existing in _me_, are especially intrusted to my particular charge.

Widely different from this social and truth-attracted bias, different both in its nature and its effects, is the interest connected with the desire of _distinguishing_ yourself from other men, in order to be distinguished by them. Hoc revera _est inter_ te et veritatem. This Interest does indeed stand between 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 judges 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 discrimination, 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 words 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 discipline 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, under such circumstances, if it be worth understanding, or if you understand your own soul. But while your prevailing motive is to be compared and appreciated, is it credible, is it possible, that you should in earnest 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 believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same thing in different periods of its growth. Belief is the seed, received into the will, of which the Understanding or Knowledge is the Flower, and the thing believed is the fruit. Unless ye believe ye cannot understand: and unless ye be humble as children, ye not only _will_ not, but ye _can_not believe. Of such therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven. 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 calamity would be wanted to cure us of our pride in having become so humble.

Lastly, there are among us, though fewer and less in fashion than among our ancestors, persons who, like Shaftesbury, do not belong to "the herd of Epicurus," yet prefer a philosophic 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_ sense 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, namely, Manhood or Manliness, used it exclusively to express the quality of Fortitude; Strength of Character in relation to the resistance opposed by Nature and the irrational Passions to the Dictates of Reason; 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 intellect. But we will rather value _it_ for ourselves: and bearing in mind the old adage, _Quis custodiet ipsum custodem?_--we will value it the more, yea, then only will we allow it true spiritual _worth_, when we possess it as a gift of _grace_, a boon of mercy undeserved, a fulfilment of a free _promise_ (1 Corinth. x. 13.). What more is meant in this last paragraph, let the venerable HOOKER say for me in the following.

APHORISM VI.

HOOKER.

What is virtue but a medicine, and vice but a wound?--Yea, we have so often deeply wounded ourselves with medicine, 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 power it was which upheld him standing. I am not afraid to affirm 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.[83]

[83] Hooker 'On the Nature of Pride,' Works, p. 521.--ED.

APHORISM VII.

The Being and Providence of One Living God, holy, gracious, merciful, the creator and preserver of all things, and a father of the righteous; the Moral Law in its[84] utmost height, breadth, and purity, a State of Retribution after Death; the[85] 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 proclaiming 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, by the truths and influences of the Gospel.

* * * * *

Peculiar to Christianity are:

I. The belief that a Means of Salvation has been effected 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 insurmountable.

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[86] in them that truly believe, and in the communion of the spirit, thus awakened, with the Holy Spirit.

V. 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, that is, in right acts with right affections, from right principles.

VI. Further, as Christians we are taught, that these WORKS are the appointed signs and evidences of our FAITH; and that, under limitation of the power, the means, and the opportunities afforded us individually, they are the rule and measure, by which we are bound and enabled to judge, of _what spirit we are_.

VII. All these, together with the doctrine of the Fathers re-proclaimed 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 acceptance of our sincere though imperfect strivings, a forgiveness 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.

COMMENT.

I earnestly entreat the reader to pause awhile, and to join with me in reflecting on the preceding Aphorism. It has been 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 Understanding 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 question 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 _it_, and to it alone? If so, well! It is at your own risk. I judge you not. Before Him, who cannot 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 carnal, sold under sin: for that which I do, I allow not; and what I would, that I do 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 promise 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 him. You are, in short, to embrace the _Christian_ Faith as your Religion--those Truths which St. Paul believed _after_ his conversion, and not those only which he believed no less undoubtingly while he was persecuting Christ, and an enemy of the Christian Religion. With what consistency 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 I could not lay before you without first enumerating certain other points of belief, which though truths, indispensable truths, and truths comprehended or rather presupposed 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:

1 _Be you holy: even as God is holy._--_What more does he require of thee, O man! than to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord thy God?_[87] 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, &c., John v. 28, 29.] a _citation_ by our Lord from the liturgy of the Jewish Church. But it will be sufficient to remind the reader, that the apparent difference between the prominent _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 or Aramaic.--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 commandment_, has no connection with the present subject.

2 There 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 number of the Sadducees. The former were distinguished not by holding, as matters of religious belief, articles different from the Jewish Church at large; but by their pretences to a more rigid orthodoxy, a more scrupulous performance. They were, in 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 Philosophy from Epictetus, Mark Antonine, and certain brilliant inconsistencies of Seneca), were a handful of rich men, _Romanized_ Jews, not more numerous than infidels among us, and holden by the People at large in at least equal abhorrence. Their great argument was: that the belief of a future state of rewards 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 vulgar multitude.

* * * * *

I will now suppose the reader to have thoughtfully re-perused the paragraph containing the tenets peculiar to Christianity, and if he have his religious principles yet to form, I should expect to overhear a troubled murmur: 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 eighteen hundred years in existence: and has one individual left a record, like the following? "I tried it; and it 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 these conditions. Both outwardly 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 fulfilled: 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 witness 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 understandings of men to bear false witness against its avowed enemy, the right though unreceived owner of the house, who had long _warned it out_, and waited only for its ejection to enter and take possession of the same.

I have elsewhere in the present work explained the difference between the Understanding and the Reason, by reason meaning exclusively the speculative or scientific power so called, the νους or _mens_ of the ancients. And wider still is the distinction between the Understanding and the Spiritual Mind. But no gift of God does or can contradict any other gift, except by misuse or misdirection. Most readily therefore do I admit, that there can be no contrariety between Revelation and the Understanding; unless 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 colours, which it impresses on the clouds, a contrariety between the skin and the eye; or infer that the cutaneous and the optic nerves _contradict_ each other.

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 effects. 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 incomprehensible, 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 inquiries to be decided; the first respecting the _purport_, the second respecting the _language_ of the Gospel.

First then of the _purport_, namely, what the Gospel does _not_, 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, ethical 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 of _Facts_.

Secondly of the _language_. This is a wide subject. But the point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of thoroughly understanding the distinction between _analogous_, and _metaphorical_ language. _Analogies_ are used in aid of _Conviction_: Metaphors, as means of _Illustration_. The language is analogous, wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same thing, power, or principle in a lower but more known form. Such, for instance, is the language of John iii. 6. _That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that which is born 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 Hobbes and Bolingbroke he applies the same rule to the moral attributes of the Deity? Whether he regards 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 words, _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 Symbols and symbolical expressions; the nature of which is always _tau_tegorical, that is, expressing the _same_ subject but with a _difference_, in contra-distinction from metaphors and similitudes, that are always _alle_gorical, that is, expressing a _different_ subject but with a resemblance.

Of _metaphorical_ language, on the other hand, let the following be taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, we will suppose, of an act, which in its own nature, and as a producing and efficient _cause_, is transcendent; but which produces sundry _effects_, each of which is the same in kind with an effect produced by a cause well known and of ordinary occurrence. Now when I characterize or designate this transcendent act, in exclusive reference to these its _effects_, by a succession 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 _metaphorically_. And in this case to confound _the similarity_, in respect of the effects relatively to the recipients, with _an identity_ in respect of the causes or modes of causation relatively to the transcendent act or the Divine Agent, is a confusion of metaphor with analogy, and of figurative with literal; and has been and continues to be a fruitful source of superstition or enthusiasm in believers, and of objections and prejudices to infidels and sceptics. But each of these points is worthy of a separate consideration: and apt occasions will be found of reverting to them severally in the following Aphorisms, or the comments thereto attached.

[84 and 85] These reference marks are the author's own, for which, however, he supplied no notes here; but further on, in the Comment, at pp. 132-3, he gives them _in the text_.--ED.

[86] See Comment on Moral and Religious Aphorism VI., p. 45.--ED.

[87] Lev. xix. 2, and Micah vi. 8.--ED.

APHORISM VIII.

LEIGHTON.

FAITH elevates the soul not only above sense and sensible things, but above reason itself. As reason corrects the errors which sense might occasion, so supernatural faith corrects the errors of natural reason judging according to sense.

COMMENT.

My remarks on this Aphorism from 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 definition 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."[88]

Sir Thomas Browne, 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 interpretations of certain texts and declarations of Holy Writ, as place them in irreconcilable contradiction to the demonstrations of science and the experience of mankind, because (says he) "I love to lose myself in a mystery, and 'tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity and Incarnation;"--and because he delights (as thinking it no vulgar part of faith) to believe a thing not only 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 resolution he had learnt of Tertullian: _Certum est quia impossibile est_. It is certainly true because it is quite impossible!" Now this I call ULTRAFIDIANISM.[89]

Again, there is a scheme constructed on the principle of retaining the social sympathies, that attend on the name of Believer, at the least possible expenditure of Belief; a scheme of picking and choosing Scripture texts for the support of doctrines, 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 recognized by this permanent character, that its object is to draw religion down to the believer's intellect, instead of raising his intellect up to religion. And this extreme I call MINIMIFIDIANISM.

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 Understanding. And this is the more expedient, because though there is no want of authorities ancient and modern for the distinction 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 unfitness 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 frequently, Understanding for Reason.[93] In consequence of thus confounding 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 was thus under the necessity of adopting fantastical and mystical phrases, for example, the dry light (_lumen siccum_), the lucific vision, and the like, meaning thereby nothing more than Reason in contra-distinction from the Understanding. Thus too in the preceding Aphorism, by Reason Leighton means the human Understanding, the explanation annexed to it being (by a noticeable coincidence), word for word, the very definition which the founder of the Critical Philosophy gives of the Understanding--namely, "the faculty judging according to sense."

[88] See 'The Friend,' vol. i., p. 263; or p. 95 in Bohn's one vol. edition; and 'The Statesman's Manual,' Appendix (Note C.).--ED.

[89] 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 by which to express its peculiar tenets, or that by which the same party is designated by its opponents. If we take the latter, it most often happens that either the persons 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, convinced as I am, that current appellations are never wholly indifferent or inert; and that, when employed to express the characteristic belief or object of a _religious_ confederacy, they exert on the many a great and constant, though insensible, influence; I cannot but fear that in adopting the former I may be sacrificing the interests of Truth beyond what the duties of courtesy can demand or justify. I have elsewhere stated my objections to the 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 their designation. For _Unity_ or Unition, and indistinguishable _Unicity_ or Sameness, are incompatible terms. 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 elementary principles of the old logicians; and Leibnitz, in his critique on Wissowatius, 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 uncharitable 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 been otherwise, yet Unity is assuredly no logical Opposite to Tri-unity, which expressly includes it. The triple alliance is _a fortiori_ alliance. The true designation of their characteristic Tenet, and which would simply and inoffensively express a fact admitted on all sides, is Psilanthropism, or the assertion of the _mere_ humanity of Christ.[90]

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 conceive, 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 _crime_. The merit or demerit of the opinions themselves depends on their originating and determining 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 consequent hardship. Judging by all that _we_ can pretend to know or are entitled to infer, 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 construct three parallel tables, the first containing the Articles of Belief, moral and theological, maintained by the venerable Hooker, as the representative of the Established Church, each article being distinctly lined and numbered; the second the Tenets and Persuasions of Lord Herbert, as the representative of the platonizing Deists; and the third, those of Dr. Priestley. Let the points, in which the second and third agree 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 judgment, without any reference to the truth of the opinions, which of the two differed from the first the 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-disposition to transfer their reprobation and intolerance from the doctrines to the doctors, from the belief 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 incompetent judges--these are flagrant overt-acts, condemned by the law written in the heart of every honest man, Jew, Turk, 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 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 injurious tendency: and arraign 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 the man a heretic; but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

Actuated by these principles, I have objected to a false and deceptive designation in the case of one System. Persuaded that the doctrines, enumerated in pp. 130-132, are not only _essential_ to the Christian Religion, but those which contra-distinguish the religion as _Christian_, I merely _repeat_ this persuasion in another form, when I assert, that (in _my_ sense of the 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 judgment at once so presumptuous and so uncharitable.[91] 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-Christian. This latter and most endearing name I scarcely know how to withhold even from 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 VINDICIÆ HEBRAICÆ! It has trembled on the verge, as it were, of my lips, every time I have conversed with that pious, learned, strong-minded, and single-hearted Jew, an Israelite indeed, and without guile,--

_Cujus cura, sequi naturam, legibus uti, Et mentem vitiis, ora negare dolis; Virtutes opibus, verum præponere falso Nil vacuum sensu dicere, nil facere._

Post obitum vivam[92] secum, secum requiescam, Nec fiat melior sors mea sorte suâ!

_From a poem of Hildebert on his Master, the persecuted Berengarius._

Under the same feelings I conclude this _Aid to Reflection_ by applying the principle to another misnomer not less inappropriate and far more influential. Of those whom I have found most reason to respect and value, many have been members of the Church of Rome: and certainly I did not honour those the least, who scrupled even in common parlance to call our Church a reformed Church. A similar scruple would not, methinks, disgrace a Protestant as to the use of the words, Catholic or Roman Catholic; and if (tacitly at least, and in thought) he remembered that the Romish Anti-catholic Church would more truly express the fact.--_Romish_, to mark that the corruptions in discipline, doctrine, and practice do, for the larger part, owe both their origin and perpetuation to the Romish _Court_, and the local Tribunals of the _City_ of Rome; and neither are or ever have been _Catholic_, that is, universal, throughout the Roman _Empire_, or even in the whole Latin or Western Church--and _Anti_-catholic, because no other Church acts on so narrow and excommunicative a principle, or is characterized by such a jealous spirit of monopoly. Instead of a Catholic (universal) spirit, it may be truly described as a spirit of Particularism counterfeiting Catholicity by a _negative_ totality and heretical self-circumscription--in the first instances cutting off, and since then cutting herself off from, all the other members of Christ's body. For the rest, I think as that man of true catholic spirit and apostolic zeal, Richard Baxter, thought; and my readers will thank me for conveying my reflections in his own words, in the following golden passage from his Life, "faithfully published from his own original MSS. by Matthew Silvester, 1696."

"My censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at first. I then thought that their errors in the _doctrines of faith_ were their most dangerous mistakes. But now I am assured that their misexpressions and misunderstanding us, with our mistakings of them and inconvenient expressing of our own opinions, have made the difference in most points appear much greater than it is; and that in some it is next to none at all. But the great and unreconcileable differences lie in their Church Tyranny; in the usurpations of their Hierarchy, and Priesthood, under the name of spiritual authority exercising a temporal Lordship; in their corruptions and abasement of God's Worship; but above all their systematic befriending of Ignorance and Vice.

"At first I thought that Mr. Perkins well proved, that a Papist cannot go beyond a reprobate; but now I doubt not that God hath many sanctified ones among them, who have received the true doctrine of Christianity so practically, that their contradictory errors prevail not against them, to hinder their love of God and their salvation: but that their errors are like a conquerable dose of poison, which a healthful nature doth overcome. _And I can never believe that a man may not be saved by that religion, which doth but bring him to the true Love of God and to a heavenly mind and life; nor that God will ever cast a Soul into hell, that truly loveth him._ Also at first it would disgrace any doctrine with me, if I did but 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 suspicion and discredit."--Baxter's Life,