Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to
all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing
,)—this is
not so clear. The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is
this narrower sense without its practical advantages.
Disc. IX. p. 453, 4.
The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point
of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes
me. It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional
infausta
tempora scribendi
, can account for. I question whether from any modern
work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter
or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and
awkward sentences could be extracted. The paragraph in page 453 and 454,
is not a specimen of the worst. In a volume which ought to be, and which
probably will be, in every young Clergyman's library, these
maculæ
are
subjects of just regret. The utility of the work, no less than its great
comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the
author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.
Disc. XII. p. 519.
Four such ruling kingdoms did arise. The first, the Babylonian, was in
being when the prophecy is represented to have been given. It was
followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the
Roman closed the series.
This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or
Medo-Persian is the second—if I recollect aright. But it always struck
me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own
snares. For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and
actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire
should not have been predicted;—for superhuman predictions, the last
two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a
political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Cassandra, and later than
Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman
should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last and
most important Empire is inexplicable.
Ib. p. 521.
Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel's prophecies were
read publicly among the Jews in their worship, as well as their other
received Scriptures.
It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the
book of Daniel in the third class only, among the
Hagiographic—passionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of
our Saviour were attached to it.
Ib. p. 522-3.
But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view
in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit
that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy,
this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so
plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.
Quære
. See Polybius.
Ib.
We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this
fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.
This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I
confess, strike me as being. On the contrary, the admission that by a
writer of the Maccabaic æra the Roman power could scarcely have been
overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally
suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires,
rather than the idea of a last. In the age of Augustus this might
possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus
was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late
enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source
of succession.
Discourses on Prophecy, in which are considered its
structure, use and inspiration, being the substance of twelve Sermons
preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn in the Lecture founded by the
Right Rev. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison,
B.D. 2nd edit. London, 1825.
Contents / Index
Notes on Irving's Ben-Ezra1
1827.
|
Christ the Word |
|
| The Scriptures |
The Spirit |
The Church |
|
The Preacher |
|
Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ. The written
Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable
conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued
re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal
Word, Christ from everlasting, is the
prothesis
or identity;—the
Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the
thesis
and
antithesis
; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise
the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the
synthesis
.
here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me
asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a
tetractys
, or
a triad equal to a
tetractys
: 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a
pentad—God's hand in the world
.
It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how
far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend,
Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.
-
How far? First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the
positive assurance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I—even in those points
in which my judgment most coincides with his,—profess only to regard
them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with
orthodoxy. They may be believed, and they may be doubted, salva
Catholica fide. Further, from these points I exclude all
prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places,
of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr.
Irving's and of Lacunza's scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the
Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza,
understands them. Again, I protest against all identification of the
coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under
Constantine.
-
In what sense? In this and no other, that the objects of the
Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;—that the kingdom
of God and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine
will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven, will come;—and that
the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of
Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final cause of
the world. Life begins in detachment from Nature, and ends in union with
God.
-
Under what conditions? That I retain my former convictions
respecting St. Michael, and the ex-saint Lucifer, and the Genie Prince
of Persia, and the re-institution of bestial sacrifices in the Temple at
Jerusalem, and the rest of this class. All these appear to me so many
pimples on the face of my friend's faith from inward heats, leaving it
indeed a fine handsome intelligent face, but certainly not adding to its
comeliness.
Such are the convictions of S. T. Coleridge, May, 1827.
P. S.
I fully agree with Mr. Irving as to the literal fulfilment of all
the prophecies which respect the restoration of the Jews. (
Deuteron
.
xxv. 1-8.)
It may be long before Edward Irving sees what I seem at least to see so
clearly,—and yet, I doubt not, the time will come when he too will see
with the same evidentness,—how much grander a front his system would
have presented to judicious beholders; on how much more defensible a
position he would have placed it,—and the remark applies equally to Ben
Ezra (that is, Emanuel Lacunza)—had he trusted the proof to Scriptures
of undisputed catholicity, to the spirit of the whole Bible, to the
consonance of the doctrine with the reason, its fitness to the needs and
capacities of mankind, and its harmony with the general plan of the
divine dealings with the world,—and had left the Apocalypse in the back
ground. But alas! instead of this he has given it such prominence, such
prosiliency of relief, that he has made the main strength of his hope
appear to rest on a vision, so obscure that his own author and
faith's-mate claims a meaning for its contents only on the supposition
that the meaning is yet to come!
Preliminary Discourse, p. lxxx.
Now of these three, the office of Christ, as our prophet, is the means
used by the Holy Spirit for working the redemption of the
understanding of men; that faculty by which we acquire the knowledge
on which proceed both our inward principles of conduct and our outward
acts of power.
I
forbear expressing my regret that Mr. Irving has not adhered to
the clear and distinct exposition of the understanding,
genere et
gradu
, given in the
Aids to Reflection
.
What can be plainer than to say: the understanding is the medial faculty
or faculty of means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas
or ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end: by the
understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means
for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to
circumstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that
is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire
correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there
can be neither a first nor a last:—all that we can see, smell, taste,
touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of
our language, entitled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of
motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like
manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which
we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their
several kinds, or
genera
; that is, we generalize, and thus think and
judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective
power, is the source and faculty of words;—and on this account the
understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by
Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense.
However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same
understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its
true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point,
because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding
and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness,
materiam objectivam
,) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the
comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural
mind, which is named the mind of the flesh,
Greek: phrónaema sarkòs
,
as likewise
Greek: psychikàe synesis
, the intellectual power of the
living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the
spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of
the will and the reason;—and this spirit both the Christian and elder
Jewish Church named,
sophia
, or wisdom.
Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.
Eusebius and St. Epiphanius name Cerinthusas the inventor of many
corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the
palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his
disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most
important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a Sultan,
&c.
I find very great difficulty in crediting these black charges on
Cerinthus, and know not how to reconcile them with the fact that the
Apocalypse itself was by many attributed to Cerinthus. But Mr. Hunt is
not more famous for blacking than some of the Fathers.
Ib. pp. 73, 4.
Against whom a very eloquent man, Dionysius Alexandrinus, a Father of
the Church, wrote an elegant work, to ridicule the Millennarian fable,
the golden and gemmed Jerusalem on the earth, the renewal of the
Temple, the blood of victims. If the book of St. Dionysius had
contained nothing but the derision and confutation of all we have just
read, it is certain that he doth in no way concern himself with the
harmless Millennarians, but with the Jews and Judaizers. It is to be
clearly seen that Dionysius had nothing in his eye, but the ridiculous
excesses of Nepos, and his peculiar tenets upon circumcision, &c.
Lacunza, I suspect, was ignorant of Greek: and seems not to have known
that the object of Dionysius was to demonstrate that the Apocalypse was
neither authentic nor a canonical book.
Ib. p. 85.
The ruin of Antichrist, with all that is comprehended under that name,
being entirely consummated, and the King of kings remaining master of
the field, St. John immediately continues in the 20th chapter, which
thus commenceth: And I saw an angel come down from heaven, &c. And I
saw thrones, &c. And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be
loosed out of his prison.
It is only necessary to know that the whole book from the first verse to
the last is written in symbols, to be satisfied that the true meaning of
this passage is simply, that only the great Confessors and Martyrs will
be had in remembrance and honour in the Church after the establishment
of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. And observe, it is the
souls that the Seer beholds:—there is not a word of the resurrection of
the body;—for this would indeed have been the appropriate symbol of a
resurrection in a real and personal sense.
Ib. c. vi. p. 108.
Now this very thing St. John likewise declareth * * to wit, that they
who have been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of
God, and they who have not worshipped the beast, these shall live,
or be raised at the coming of the Lord, which is the first
resurrection.
Aye! but by what authority is this synonimizing "or" asserted? The Seer
not only does not speak of any resurrection, but by the word
Greek: psychás
souls, expressly asserts the contrary. In no sense of the word
can souls, which descended in Christ's train (
chorus sacer animarum et
Christi comitatus
) from Heaven, be said
resurgere
. Resurrection is
always and exclusively resurrection in the body;—not indeed a rising of
the
corpus
Greek: phantastikón
that is, the few ounces of carbon,
nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphate of lime, the
copula
of which
that gave the form no longer exists,—and of which Paul exclaims;—
Thou
fool! not this
, &c.—but the
corpus
Greek: hypostatikòn, àe noúmenon
But there is yet another and worse wresting of the text. Who that reads
Lacunza, p. 108, last line but twelve, would not understand that the
Apocalypt had asserted this enthronement of the souls of the Gentile and
Judæo-Christian Martyrs which he beheld in the train or suite of the
descending Messiah; and that he had first seen them in the descent, and
afterward saw thrones assigned to them? Whereas the sentence precedes,
and has positively no connection with these souls. The literal
interpretation of the symbols c. xx. v. 4, is, "I then beheld the
Christian religion the established religion of the state throughout the
Roman empire;—emperors, kings, magistrates, and the like, all
Christians, and administering laws in the name of Christ, that is,
receiving the Scriptures as the supreme and paramount law. Then in all
the temples the name of Jesus was invoked as the King of glory, and
together with him the old afflicted and tormented fellow-laborers with
Christ were revived in high and reverential commemoration," &c. But that
the whole Vision from first to last, in every sentence, yea, every word,
is symbolical, and in the boldest, largest style of symbolic language;
and secondly, that it is a work of disputed canonicity, and at no known
period of the Church could truly lay claim to catholicity;—but for
this, I think this verse would be worth a cartload of the texts which
the Romanist divines and catechists ordinarily cite as sanctioning the
invocation of Saints.
Ib. p. 110.
You will say nevertheless, that even the wicked will be raised
incorruptible to inherit incorruption, because being once raised,
their bodies will no more change or be dissolved, but must continue
entire, for ever united with their sad and miserable souls. Well, and
would you call this corruption or incorruptibility? Certainly this is
not the sense of the Apostle, when he formally assures us, yea, even
threatens us, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption. Neither
doth corruption inherit incorruption. What then may this singular
expression mean? This is what it manifestly means;—that no person,
whoever he may be, without any exception, who possesseth a corrupt
heart and corrupt actions, and therein persevereth unto death, shall
have reason to expect in the resurrection a pure, subtile, active and
impassible body.
This is actually dangerous tampering with the written letter.
Without touching on the question whether St. Paul in this celebrated
chapter (1
Cor
. xv.) speaks of a partial or of the general
resurrection, or even conceding to Lacunza that the former opinion is
the more probable; I must still vehemently object to this Jesuitical
interpretation of corruption, as used in a moral sense, and distinctive
of the wicked souls. St. Paul nowhere speaks dogmatically or
preceptively (not popularly and incidentally,) of a soul as the proper
I
. It is always 'we', or the man. How could a regenerate saint put off
corruption at the sound of the trump, if up to that hour it did not in
some sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It
flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied,
unrefracting,
medium
to the Apostolic assertion, that corruption in
this passage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism
common to saint and sinner,—standing in precisely the same relation to
the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the
crab and tortoise. These slightly combined and easily decomponible
stuffs are as incapable of subsisting under the altered conditions of
the earth as an hydatid in the blaze of a tropical sun. They would be no
longer
media
of communion between the man and his circumstances.
A heavy difficulty presses, as it appears to me, on Lacunza's system, as
soon as we come to consider the general resurrection. Our Lord (in books
of indubitable and never doubted catholicity) speaks of some who rise to
bliss and glory, others who at the same time rise to shame and
condemnation. Now if the former class live not during the whole interval
from their death to the general resurrection, including the Millennium,
or
Dies Messiæ
,—how should they, whose imperfect or insufficient
merits excluded them from the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, be all at
once fitted for the kingdom of heaven?
Ib. ch. vii. p. 118.
It appears to me that this sentence, being looked to attentively,
means in good language this only, that the word quick, which the
Apostles, full of the Holy Spirit, set down, is a word altogether
useless, which might without loss have been omitted, and that it were
enough to have set down the word dead: for by that word alone is the
whole expressed, and with much more clearness and brevity.
The narrow outline within which the Jesuits confined the theological
reading of their
alumni
is strongly marked in this (in so many
respects) excellent work: for example, the "most believing mind," with
which Lacunza takes for granted the exploded fable of the Catechumens'
(
vulgo
Apostles') Creed having been the quotient of an Apostolic
pic-nic
, to which each of the twelve contributed his several
symbolum
.
Ib. ch. ix. p. 127.
The Apostle, St. Peter, speaking of the day of the Lord, says, that
that day will come suddenly, &c. (2 Pet. iii. 10.)
There are serious difficulties besetting the authenticity of the
Catholic Epistles under the name of Peter; though there exist no grounds
for doubting that they are of the Apostolic age. A large portion too of
the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable
supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated
the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his
amanuensis
, who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which
connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and
biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this
hypothesis. But what is of much greater importance, especially for the
point in discussion, is the character of these and other similar
descriptions of the
Dies Messiæ
, the
Dies ultima
, and the like. Are
we bound to receive them as articles of faith? Is there sufficient
reason to assert them to have been direct revelations immediately
vouchsafed to the sacred writers? I cannot satisfy my judgment that
there is;—first, because I find no account of any such events having
been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and
because I do find these events asserted, and (for aught I have been able
to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired
Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles,
and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these anticipations had
become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they
were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several
other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their
ancient and national religious belief. Now I know of no revealed truth
that did not originate in Revelation, and find it hard to reconcile my
mind to the belief that any Christian truth, any essential article of
faith, should have been first made known by the father of lies, or the
guess-work of the human understanding blinded by Paganism, or at best
without the knowledge of the true God. Of course I would not apply this
to any assertion of any New Testament writer, which was the final aim
and primary intention of the whole passage; but only to sentences
in
ordine ad
some other doctrine or precept,
illustrandi causa
, or
ad
hominem
, or
more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice
.
Ib. Part II. p. 145.
Second characteristic. The kingdom shall be divided.—Third
characteristic. The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly
brittle.—Fourth characteristic. They shall mingle themselves with
the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another.
How exactly do these characters apply to the Greek Empire under the
successors of Alexander,—when the Greeks were dispersed over the
civilized world, as artists, rhetoricians,
grammatici
, secretaries,
private tutors, parasites, physicians, and the like!
Ib. p. 153.
For to them he thus speaketh in the Gospel: And then shall they see
the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when
these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your
heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
I cannot deny that there is great force and an imposing verisimilitude
in this and the preceding chapter, and much that demands silent thought
and respectful attention. But still the great question presses on
me:—
coming in a cloud
! What is the true import of this phrase? Has
not God himself expounded it? To the Son of Man, the great Apostle
assures us, all power is given in heaven and on earth. He became
Providence,—that is, a Divine Power behind the cloudy veil of human
agency and worldly events and incidents, controlling, disposing, and
directing acts and events to the gradual unfolding and final
consummation of the great scheme of Redemption; the casting forth of the
evil and alien nature from man, and thus effecting the union of the
creature with the Creator, of man with God, in and through the Son of
Man, even the Son of God made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the
attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son
of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the
Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian,
both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the
teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly
character, that his Apostles, who disclaim all certain knowledge of the
awful event, had understood his words otherwise, and in a sense more
commensurate with their previous notions and the prejudices of their
education? They communicated their conjectures, but as conjectures, and
these too guarded by the avowal, that they had no revelation, no
revealed commentary on their Master's words, upon this occasion, the
great apocalypse of Jesus Christ while yet in the flesh. For by this
title was this great prophecy known among the Christians of the
Apostolic age.
Ib. p. 253.
Never, Oh! our Lady! never, Oh! our Mother! shalt thou fall again into
the crime of idolatry.
Was ever blindness like unto this blindness? I can imagine but one way
of making it seem possible, namely, that this round square or
rectilineal curve—this honest Jesuit, I mean—had confined his
conception of idolatry to the worship of false gods;—whereas his saints
are genuine godlings, and his
Magna Mater
a goddess in her own
right;—and that thus he overlooked the meaning of the word.
Ib. p. 254.
The entire text of the Apostle is as follows:—Now we beseech you,
brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering
together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, &c. (2 Thess.
ii. 1-10.)
O Edward Irving! Edward Irving! by what fascination could your spirit be
drawn away from passages like this, to guess and dream over the
rhapsodies of the Apocalypse? For rhapsody, according to your
interpretation, the Poem undeniably is;—though, rightly expounded, it
is a well knit and highly poetical evolution of a part of this and our
Lord's more comprehensive prediction,
Luke
xvii.
Ib. p. 297.
On the ordinary ideas of the coming of Christ in glory and majesty, it
will doubtless appear an extravagance to name the Jews, or to take
them into consideration; for, according to those ideas, they should
hardly have the least particle of our attention.
In comparing this with the preceding chapter I could not help
exclaiming; What an excellent book would this Jesuit have written, if
Daniel and the Apocalypse had not existed, or had been unknown to, or
rejected by, him!
You may divide Lacunza's points of belief into two parallel
columns;—the first would be found to contain much that is demanded by,
much that is consonant to, and nothing that is not compatible with,
reason, the harmony of Holy Writ, and the idea of Christian faith. The
second would consist of puerilities and anilities, some impossible, most
incredible; and all so silly, so sensual, as to befit a dreaming
Talmudist, not a Scriptural Christian. And this latter column would be
found grounded on Daniel and the Apocalypse!