just man
;—denies original sin in the Christian sense,
and explains the vice and virtue of mankind by the actions of the souls
of men in a state of pre-existence. No signs or miracles are referred to
in the account of
the just man
; and that it was intended as a
generalization is evident from the change of the singular into the
plural number in the third chapter.
The result is, in my judgment, that this Book was composed by an unknown
Jew of Alexandria, either sometime before, or at the same time with,
Christ. I do not think St. Paul's parallel passages amount to any proof
of quotation or allusion;—they contain the common doctrine of the
spiritualized Judaism in the Cabala;—and yet the work could scarcely
have been written long before Christ, or it would certainly have been
quoted or mentioned by Philo, and most probably by Josephus. And this,
too, is an answer to the splendid and well-supported hypothesis of its
being a translation from a Chaldaic original, composed by Jerubbabel.
The variations of the Syriac translation,— which are so easily
explained by translating the passage into the Chaldaic, when the cause
of the mistake in the Greek or of the variation in the Syriac, is seen
at once,—are certainly startling; but they are too free; and how could
the Fathers, Jerome for example, remain ignorant of the existence of
this Chaldaic original? My own opinion is, as I said before, that the
Book was written in Greek by an Alexandrian Jew, who had formed his
style on that of the LXX., and was led still further to an imitation of
the Old Testament manner by the nature of his fiction, and as a dramatic
propriety, and yet deviated from it partly on account of the very
remoteness of his Platonic conceptions from the simplicity and poverty
of the Hebrew; and partly because of the wordy rhetoric epidemic in
Alexandria: and that it was written before the death, if not the birth,
of Christ, I am induced to believe, because I do not think it probable
that a book composed by a Jew, who had confessed Christ after the
resurrection, would so soon have been received by the Christians, and so
early placed in the very next rank to works of full inspiration.
Taken, therefore, as a work
ante
, or at least
extra, Christum
, it is
most valuable as ascertaining the opinions of the learned Jews on many
subjects, and the general belief concerning immortality, and a day of
judgment. On this ground Whitaker might have erected a most formidable
battery, that would have played on the very camp and battle-array of the
Socinians, that is, of those who consider Christ only as a teacher of
important truths.
In referring to the Cabala, I am not ignorant of the date of the oldest
Rabbinical writings which contain or refer to this philosophy, but I
coincide with Eichorn, and very many before Eichorn, that the
foundations of the Cabala were laid and well known long before Christ,
though not all the fanciful superstructure. I am persuaded that new
light might be thrown on the Apocalypse by a careful study of the Book
Sohar, and of whatever else there may be of that kind. The introduction
(i. 4,) is clearly Cabala:—the
Greek: ho ôn, kaì ho aen, kaì ho erchómenos
= 3, and the
seven spirits
= 10
Sephiroth
, constituting
together the
Adam Kadmon
, the second Adam of St. Paul, the incarnate
one in the Messiah.
Were it not for the silence of Philo and Josephus, which I am unable to
explain if the Wisdom of Solomon was written so long before Christ, I
might perhaps incline to believe it composed shortly after, if not
during, the persecution of the Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator.
This hypothesis would give a particular point to the bitter exposure of
idolatry, to the comparison between the sufferings of the Jews, and
those of idolatrous nations, to the long rehearsal and rhetorical
declaration of the plagues of Egypt, and to the reward of 'the just man'
after a death of martyrdom; and would besides help to explain the
putting together of the first ten chapters, and the fragment contained
in the remaining chapters. They were works written at the same time, and
by the same author: nay, I do not think it absurd to suppose, that the
chapters after the tenth were annexed by the writer himself, as a long
explanatory appendix; or, possibly, if they were once a separate work,
these nine concluding chapters were parts of a book composed during the
persecution in Egypt, the introduction and termination of which, being
personal and of local application, were afterwards omitted or expunged
in order not to give offence to the other Egyptians,—perhaps, to spare
the shame of such Jews as had apostatized through fear, and in general
not to revive heart-burnings. In modern language I should call these
chapters in their present state a Note on c. x. 15-19.
On a reperusal of this Book, I rather believe that these latter chapters
never formed part of any other work, but were composed as a sort of long
explanatory Postscript, with particular bearing on certain existing
circumstances, to which this part of the Jewish history was especially
applicable. Nay, I begin to find the silence of Philo and Josephus less
inexplicable, and to imagine that I discover the solution of this
problem in the very title of the Book. No one expects to find any but
works of authenticity enumerated in these writers; but to this a work,
calling itself the Wisdom of Solomon, both being a fiction and never
meant to pass for anything else, could make no pretensions. To have
approximated it to the Holy Books of the nation would have injured the
dignity of the Jewish Canon, and brought suspicion on the genuine works
of Solomon, while it would have exposed to a charge of forgery a
composition which was in itself only an innocent dramatic monologue.
N.
B.
This hypothesis possesses all the advantages, and involves none of
the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the
infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one commentator, I find, has
suspected that the Wisdom of Solomon and the second book of Maccabees
were by the same author. I think this nothing.
Ib. p. 36.
Philo throws out a number of declarations, that shew his own and the
Jewish belief in a secondary sort of God, a God subordinate in origin
to the Father of all, yet most intimately united with him, and sharing
his most unquestionable honours.
The belief of the Alexandrian Jews who had acquired Greek philosophy, no
doubt;—but of the Palestine Jews?
Ib. 2. p. 48.
St. John also is witnessed by a heathen (Amelius,) and by one who put
him down for a barbarian, to have represented the Logos as "the Maker
of all things," as "with 'God'," and as "God." And St. John is
attested to have declared this, "not even as shaded over, but on the
contrary as placed in full view."
Stranger still. Whitaker could scarcely have read the Greek. Amelius
says, that these truths, if stripped of their allegorical dress,
Greek: (metapephrasména ek taes tou Barbárou theologías)
would be
plain;—that is, that John in an allegory, as of one particular man, had
shadowed out the creation of all things by the Logos, and the after
union of the Logos with human nature,—that is, with all men. That this
is his meaning, consult Plotinus.
Ib. 9. p. 107.
"Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being
into power, and dividing the Logos into two.
Who that had even rested but in the porch of the Alexandrian philosophy,
would not rather say,
of substantiating powers and attributes into
being?
What is the whole system from Philo to Plotinus, and thence to
Proclus inclusively, but one fanciful process of hypostasizing logical
conceptions and generic terms? In Proclus it is Logolatry run mad.
Chap. III. 1. p. 131-2.
Such would be the evidence for that divinity, to accompany the Book of
Wisdom, if we considered it to be as old as Solomon, or only as the
Son of Sirach. But I consider it to be much later than either, and
actually a work of Philo's. * * The language is very similar to
Philo's; flowing, lively and happy.
How is it possible to have read the short Hebraistic sentences of the
Book of Wisdom, and the long involved periods that characterize the
style of all Philo's known writings, and yet attribute both to one
writer? But indeed I know no instance of assertions made so audaciously,
or of passages misrepresented and even mistranslated so grossly, as in
this work of Whitaker. His system is absolute naked Tritheism.
Ib.
The righteous man is shadowed out by the author with a plain reference
to our Saviour himself. "'Let us lie in wait for the righteous'," &c.
How then could Philo have remained a Jew?
Ib. 2. p. 195.
In all effects that are voluntary, the cause must be prior to the
effect, as the father is to the son in human generation. But in all
that are necessary, the effect must be coeval with the cause; as the
stream is with the fountain, and light with the sun. Had the sun been
eternal in its duration, light would have been co-eternal with it.
A just remark; but it cuts two ways. For these necessary effects are not
really but only logically different or distinct from the cause:—the
rays of the sun are only the sun diffused, and the whole rests on the
sensitive form of material space. Take away the notion of material
space, and the whole distinction perishes.
Chap. IV. 1. p. 266.
Justin accordingly sets himself to shew, that in the beginning, before
all creatures, God generated a certain rational power out of himself.
Is it not monstrous that the Jews having, according to Whitaker, fully
believed a Trinity, one and all, but half a century or less before
Trypho, Justin should never refer to this general faith, never reproach
Trypho with the present opposition to it as a heresy from their own
forefathers, even those who rejected Christ, or rather Jesus as
Christ?—But no!— not a single objection ever strikes Mr. Whitaker, or
appears worthy of an answer. The stupidest become authentic—the most
fantastic abstractions of the Alexandrine dreamers substantial
realities! I confess this book has satisfied me how little erudition
will gain a man now-a-days the reputation of vast learning, if it be
only accompanied with dash and insolence. It seems to me impossible,
that Whitaker can have written well on the subject of Mary, Queen of
Scots, his powers of judgment being apparently so abject. For instance,
he says that the grossest moral improbability is swept away by positive
evidence:—as if positive evidence (that is, the belief I am to yield to
A. or B.) were not itself grounded on moral probabilities. Upon my word
Whitaker would have been a choice judge for Charles II. and Titus Oates.
Ib. p. 267.
Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of
Christ,) asserting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance
to the Jews, &c.
A precious beginning of a precious demonstration! It is well for me that
my faith in the Trinity is already well grounded by the Scriptures, by
Bishop Bull, and the best parts of Plotinus, or this man would certainly
have made me either a Socinian or a Deist.
Ib. 2. p. 270.
The general mode of commencing and concluding the Epistles of St.
Paul, is a prayer of supplication for the parties, to whom they were
addressed; in which he says, Grace to you and peace from God our
Father, and—from whom besides?—the Lord Jesus Christ; in which
our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as the Grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all; and is even invoked the first at times as,
the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all; shews us plainly, &c.
Invoked! Surely a pious wish is not an invocation. "May good angels
attend you!" is no invocation or worship of angels. The essence of
religions adoration consists in the attributing, by an act of prayer or
praise, a necessary presence to an object—which not being
distinguishable, if the object be sensuously present, we may safely
define adoration as an acknowledgement of the actual and necessary
presence of an intelligent being not present to our senses. "May lucky
stars shoot influence on you!" would be a very foolish
superstition,—but to say in earnest! "O ye stars, I pray to you, shoot
influences on me," would be idolatry. Christ was visually present to
Stephen; his invocation therefore was not perforce an act of religious
adoration, an acknowledgment of Christ's deity.
The Origin of Arianism Disclosed. By John Whitaker, B.D.
London, 1791.
Contents / Index
Notes on Oxlee on The Trinity and Incarnation1
1827.
Strange—yet from the date of the book of the Celestial Hierarchies of
the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite to that of its translation by
Joannes Scotus Erigena, the contemporary of Alfred, and from Scotus to
the Rev. John Oxlee in 1815, not unfrequent—delusion of mistaking
Pantheism, disguised in a fancy dress of pious phrases, for a more
spiritual and philosophic form of Christian Faith! Nay, stranger
still:—to imagine with Scotus and Mr. Oxlee that in a scheme which more
directly than even the grosser species of Atheism, precludes all moral
responsibility and subverts all essential difference of right and wrong,
they have found the means of proving and explaining, "the Christian
doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation," that is, the great and only
sufficient antidotes of the right faith against this insidious poison.
For Pantheism—trick it up as you will—is but a painted Atheism. A mask
of perverted Scriptures may hide its ugly face, but cannot change a
single feature.
Introduction, p. 4.
In the infancy of the Christian Church, and immediately after the
general dispersion which necessarily followed the sacking of Jerusalem
and Bither, the Greek and Latin Fathers had the fairest opportunity of
disputing with the Jews, and of evincing the truth of the Gospel
dispensation; but unfortunately for the success of so noble a design,
they were totally ignorant of the Hebrew Scriptures, and so wanted in
every argument that stamp of authority, which was equally necessary to
sanction the principles of Christianity, and to command the respect of
their Jewish antagonists. For the confirmation of this remark I may
appeal to the Fathers themselves, but especially to Barnabas, Justin,
and Irenæus, who in their several attempts at Hebrew learning betray
such portentous signs of ignorance and stupidity, that we are covered
with shame at the sight of their criticisms.
Mr. Oxlee would be delighted in reading Jacob Rhenferd's Disquisition on
the Ebionites and other supposed heretics among the Jewish Christians.
And I cannot help thinking that Rhenferd, who has so ably anticipated
Mr. Oxlee on this point, and in Jortin's best manner displayed the gross
ignorance of the Gentile Fathers in all matters relating to Hebrew
learning, and the ludicrous yet mischievous results thereof, has formed
a juster though very much lower opinion of these Fathers, with a few
exceptions, than Mr. Oxlee. I confess that till the light of the
twofoldness of the Christian Church dawned on my mind, the study of the
history and literature of the Church during the first three or four
centuries infected me with a spirit of doubt and disgust which required
a frequent recurrence to the writings of John and Paul to preserve me
whole in the Faith.
Prop. I. ch. i. p. 16.
The truth of the doctrine is vehemently insisted on, in a variety of
places, by the great R. Moses ben Maimon; who founds upon it the unity
of the Godhead, and ranks it among the fundamental articles of the
Jewish religion. Thus in his celebrated Letter to the Jews of
Marseilles he observes, &c.
But what is obtained by quotations from Maimonides more than from
Alexander Hales, or any other Schoolman of the same age? The metaphysics
of the learned Jew are derived from the same source, namely, Aristotle;
and his object was the same, as that of the Christian Schoolmen, namely,
to systematize the religion he professed on the form and in the
principles of the Aristotelian philosophy.
By the by, it is a serious defect in Mr. Oxlee's work, that he does not
give the age of the writers whom he cites. He cannot have expected all
his readers to be as learned as himself.
Ib. ch. iii. p. 26.
Mr. Oxlee seems too much inclined to identify the Rabbinical
interpretations of Scripture texts with their true sense; when in
reality the Rabbis themselves not seldom used those interpretations as a
convenient and popular mode of conveying their own philosophic opinions.
Neither have I been able to admire the logic so general among the
divines of both Churches, according to which if one, two, or perhaps
three sentences in any one of the Canonical books appear to declare a
given doctrine, all assertions of a different character must have been
meant to be taken metaphorically.
Ib. p. 26-7.
The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the
Godhead in the following declaration: But Egypt is man, and not God:
and their horses flesh, and not spirit. (c. xxxi. 3.) * * *. In the
former member the Prophet declares that Egypt was man, and not God;
and then in terms of strict opposition enforces the sentiment by
adding, that their cavalry was flesh, and not spirit; which is just as
if he had said: But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man,
that is, flesh, and not God, who is spirit.
Assuredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is
even doubtful whether
Hebrew: unable to transliterate. html Ed.
(
ruach
) in this place means
spirit
in contradistinction to
matter
at all, and not rather air or wind. At all events, the poetic decorum,
the proportion, and the antithetic parallelism, demand a somewhat as
much below God, as the horse is below man. The opposition of
flesh
and
spirit
in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he
wrote in Greek, favours our common version,—
flesh and not spirit
:
but the place in which this passage stands, namely, in one of the first
forty chapters of Isaiah, and therefore written long before the
Captivity, together with the majestic simplicity characteristic of
Isaiah's name gives perhaps a greater probability to the other:
Egypt
is man, and not God; and her horses flesh, and not wind
. If Mr. Oxlee
renders the fourth verse of Psalm civ.—
He maketh spirits his
messengers
, (for our version—
He maketh his angels spirits
—is
without a violent inversion senseless), this is a case in point for the
use of the word,
spirits
, in the sense of incorporeal beings. (Mr.
Oxlee will hardly, I apprehend, attribute the opinion of some later
Rabbis, that God alone and exclusively is a Spirit, to the Sacred
Writers, easy as it would be to quote a score of texts in proof of the
contrary.) I, however, cannot doubt that the true rendering of the
above-mentioned verse in the Psalms is;—
He maketh the winds his angels
or messengers, and the lightnings his ministrant servants
.
As to Mr. Oxlee's
abstract intelligences,
I cannot but think
abstract
for
pure
, and even pure intelligences for incorporeal, a
lax use of terms. With regard to the point in question, the truth seems
to be this. The ancient Hebrews certainly distinguished the principle or
ground of life, understanding, and will from ponderable, visible,
matter. The former they considered and called
spirit
, and believed it
to be an emission from the Almighty Father of Spirits: the latter they
called
body
; and in this sense they doubtless believed in the
existence of incorporeal beings. But that they had any notion of
immaterial beings in the sense of Des Cartes, is contrary to all we know
of them, and of every other people in the same degree of cultivation.
Air, fire, light, express the degrees of ascending refinement. In the
infancy of thought the life, soul, mind, are supposed to be air—
anima,
animus
, that is,
Greek: ánemos
spiritus,
Greek: pneuma
In the
childhood, they are fire,
mens ignea, ignicula
, and God himself
Greek: pur noeròn, pur aeízôon
Lastly, in the youth of thought, they
are refined into light; and that light is capable of subsisting in a
latent state, the experience of the stricken flint, of lightning from
the clouds, and the like, served to prove, or at least, it supplied a
popular answer to the objection;—"If the soul be light, why is it not
visible?" That the purest light is invisible to our gross sense, and
that visible light is a compound of light and shadow, were answers of a
later and more refined period. Observe, however, that the Hebrew
Legislator precluded all unfit applications of the materializing fancy
by forbidding the people to
imagine
at all concerning God. For the ear
alone, to the exclusion of all other bodily sense, was he to be
designated, that is, by the Name. All else was for the mind—by power,
truth, wisdom, holiness, mercy.
Prop. II. ch. ii. p. 36.
I fear I must surrender my hope that Mr. Oxlee was an exception to the
rule, that the study of Rabbinical literature either finds a man
whimmy
, or makes him so. If neither the demands of poetic taste, nor
the peculiar character of oracles, were of avail, yet morality and piety
might seem enough to convince any one that this vision of Micaiah, (2
Chron
. c. xviii. 18, &c.) was the poetic form, the veil, of the
Prophet's meaning. And a most sublime meaning it was. Mr. Oxlee should
recollect that the forms and personages of visions are all and always
symbolical.
Ib. pp. 39-40.
It will not avail us much, however, to have established their
incorporeity or spirituality, if what R. Moses affirms be true * * *.
This impious paradox * *. Swayed, however, by the authority of so
great a man, even R. David Kimchi has dilapsed into the same error,
&c.
To what purpose then are the crude metaphysics of these later Rabbis
brought forward, differing as they do in no other respect from the
theological
dicta
of the Schoolmen, but that they are written in a
sort of Hebrew. I am far from denying that an interpreter of the
Scriptures may derive important aids from the Jewish commentators: Aben
Ezra, (about 1150) especially, was a truly great man. But of this I am
certain, that he only will be benefited who can look down upon their
works, whilst studying them;—that is, he must thoroughly understand
their weaknesses, superstitions, and rabid appetite for the marvellous
and the monstrous; and then read them as an enlightened chemist of the
present day would read the writings of the old alchemists, or as a
Linnæus might peruse the works of Pliny and Aldrovandus. If he can do
this, well;— if not, he will line his skull with cobwebs.
Ib. pp. 40, 41.
But how, I would ask, is this position to be defended? Surely not by
contradicting almost every part of the inspired volumes, in which such
frequent mention occurs of different and distinct angels appearing to
the Patriarchs and Prophets, sometimes in groups, and sometimes in
limited numbers * *. It is, indeed, so wholly repugnant to the general
tenor of the Sacred Writings, and so abhorrent from the piety of both
Jew and Christian, that the learned author himself, either forgetting
what he had before advanced, or else postponing his philosophy to his
religion, has absolutely maintained the contrary in his explication of
the Cherubim, &c.
I am so far from agreeing with Mr. Oxlee on these points, that I not
only doubt whether before the Captivity any fair proof of the existence
of Angels, in the present sense, can be produced from the inspired
Scriptures,—but think also that a strong argument for the divinity of
Christ, and for his presence to the Patriarchs and under the Law, rests
on the contrary, namely, that the Seraphim were images no less
symbolical than the Cherubim. Surely it is not presuming too much of a
Clergyman of the Church of England to expect that he would measure the
importance of a theological tenet by its bearings on our moral and
spiritual duties, by its practical tendencies. What is it to us whether
Angels are the spirits of just men made perfect, or a distinct class of
moral and rational creatures? Augustine has well and wisely observed
that reason recognizes only three essential kinds;—God, man, beast. Try
as long as you will, you can never make an Angel anything but a man with
wings on his shoulders.
Ib. ch. III. p. 58.
But this deficiency in the Mosaic account of the creation is amply
supplied by early tradition, which inculcates not only that the angels
were created, but that they were created, either on the second day,
according to R. Jochanan, or on the fifth, according to R. Chanania.
Inspired Scripture amply supplied by the Talmudic and Rabbinical
traditions!—This from a Clergyman of the Church of England!
I am, I confess, greatly disappointed. I had expected, I scarce know
why, to have had some light thrown on the existence of the Cabala in its
present form, from Ezekiel to Paul and John. But Mr. Oxlee takes it as
he finds it, and gravely ascribes this patch-work of corrupt Platonism
or Plotinism, with Chaldean, Persian, and Judaic fables and fancies, to
the Jewish Doctors, as an original, profound, and pious philosophy in
its fountain-head! The indispensable requisite not only to a profitable
but even to a safe study of the Cabala is a familiar knowledge of the
docimastic philosophy, that is, a philosophy, which has for its object
the trial and testing of the weights and measures themselves, the first
principles, definitions, postulates, axioms of logic and metaphysics.
But this is in no other way possible but by our enumeration of the
mental faculties, and an investigation of the constitution, function,
limits, and applicability
ad quas res
, of each. The application to
this subject of the rules and forms of the understanding, or discursive
logic, or even of the intuitions of the reason itself, if reason be
assumed as the first and highest, has Pantheism for its necessary
result. But this the Cabalists did: and consequently the Cabalistic
theosophy is Pantheistic, and Pantheism, in whatever drapery of pious
phrases disguised, is (where it forms the whole of a system) Atheism,
and precludes moral responsibility, and the essential difference of
right and wrong. One of the two contra-distinctions of the Hebrew
Revelation is the doctrine of positive creation. This, if not the only,
is the easiest and surest criterion between the idea of God and the
notion of a
mens agitans molem
. But this the Cabalists evaded by their
double meaning of the term, 'nothing', namely as nought = 0, and as no
thing
; and by their use of the term, as designating God. Thus in words
and to the ear they taught that the world was made out of nothing; but
in fact they meant and inculcated, that the world was God himself
expanded.
is not, therefore, half a dozen passages respecting the
first three
proprietates
in the Sephiroth, that will lead a wise
man to expect the true doctrine of the Trinity in the Cabalistic scheme:
for he knows that the scholastic value, the theological necessity, of
this doctrine consists in its exhibiting an idea of God, which rescues
our faith from both extremes, Cabalo-Pantheism, and Anthropomorphism. It
is, I say, to prevent the necessity of the Cabalistic inferences that
the full and distinct developement of the doctrine of the Trinity
becomes necessary in every scheme of dogmatic theology. If the first
three
proprietates
are God, so are the next seven, and so are all ten.
God according to the Cabalists is all in each and one in all. I do not
say that there is not a great deal of truth in this; but I say that it
is not, as the Cabalists represent it, the whole truth. Spinoza himself
describes his own philosophy as in substance the same with that of the
ancient Hebrew Doctors, the Cabalists—only unswathed from the Biblical
dress.
Ib. p. 61.
Similar to this is the declaration of R. Moses ben Maimon. "For that
influence, which flows from the Deity to the actual production of
abstract intelligences flows also from the intelligences to their
production from each other in succession," &c.
How much trouble would Mr. Oxlee have saved himself, had he in sober
earnest asked his own mind, what he meant by emanation; and whether he
could attach any intelligible meaning to the term at all as applied to
spirit.