Ib.
Ad. xviii. p. 191.
But let us hear the answer. First, it is said, that Baptism and the
Spirit signify the same thing; for by water is meant the effect of the
Spirit.
By the 'effect,' the Anabaptist clearly means the
causa causans
,
the 'act of the Spirit.' As well might Taylor say that a thought is not
thinking, because it is the effect of thinking. Had Taylor been right,
the water to be an apt sign ought to have been dirty water; for that
would be the
res effecta
. But it is pure water, therefore
res
agens
.
Ib.
p. 192.
For it is certain and evident, that regeneration or new birth is here
enjoined to all as of absolute and indispensable necessity.
Yet Taylor himself has denied it over and over again in his tracts on
Original Sin; and how is it in harmony with the words of Christ —
Of
such are the kingdom of heaven
? Are we not regenerated back to a
state of spiritual infancy? Yet for such Anti-pædobaptists as hold the
dogma of original guilt it is doubtless a fair argument; but Taylor
ought not to have used it as certain and evident in itself, and not
merely
ad hominem et per accidens
. As making a bow is in England
the understood conventional mark or visible language of reverence, so in
the East was Baptism the understood outward and visible mark of
conversion and initiation. So much for the visible act: then for the
particular meaning affixed to it by Christ. This was
Greek: metánoia
an adoption of a new principle of action and consequent reform of
conduct; a cleansing, but especially a cleansing away of the carnal film
from the mind's eye. Hence the primitive Church called baptism
Greek: ph_os
light, and the Eucharist
Greek: z_oàe,
life. Baptism,
therefore, was properly the sign, the
precursor
, or rather the
first act, the
initium
, of that regeneration of which the whole
spiritual life of a Christian is the complete process; the Eucharist
indicating the means, namely, the continued assimilation of and to the
Divine Humanity. Hence the Eucharist was called the continuation of the
Incarnation.
Ib.
And yet it does not follow that they should all be baptized with the
Holy Ghost and with fire. But it is meant only that that glorious
effect should be to them a sign of Christ's eminency above him; they
should see from him a Baptism greater than that of John.
This is exactly of a piece with that gloss of the Socinians in evasion
of St. Paul's words concerning Christ's emptying himself of the form of
God, and becoming a servant, which all the world of Christians had
interpreted of the Incarnation. But no! it only referred to the miracle
of his transfiguration!
— — credat Judæus Apella!
Non ego.
St. John could not mean this, unless he denied the distinct personality
of the Holy Ghost. For it was the Holy Ghost that then descended
as
the substitute of Christ
; nor does St. Luke even hint that it was
understood to be a Baptism, even if we suppose the
tongues of
fire
to be anything visual, and not as we say, Victory sate on his
helmet like an eagle. The spirit of eloquence descended into them like a
tongue of fire, and that they spoke different languages is, I conceive,
no where said; but only that being rustic Galileans they yet spake a
dialect intelligible to all the Jews from the most different provinces.
For it is clear they were all Jews, and, as Jews, had doubtless a
lingua communis
which all understood when spoken, though persons
of education only could speak it. Even so a German boor understands, but
yet cannot talk in, High German, that is, the language of his Bible and
Hymn-book. So it is with the Scotch of Aberdeen with regard to pure
English. In short Taylor's arguments press on the Anabaptists, only as
far as the Anabaptists baptize at all; they are in fact attacks on
Baptism; and it would only follow from them that the Baptist is more
rational than the Pædobaptist, but that the Quaker is more consistent
than either. To pull off your hat is in Europe a mark of respect. What,
if a parent in his last will should command his children and posterity
to pull off their hats to their superiors, — and in course of time these
children or descendants emigrated to China, or some place, where the
same ceremony either meant nothing, or an insult. Should we not laugh at
them if they did not interpret the words into, Pay reverence to your
superiors. Even so Baptism was the Jewish custom, and natural to those
countries; but with us it would be a more significant rite if applied as
penance for excess of zeal and acts of bigotry, especially as
sprinkling.
Ib.
p. 196.
But farther yet I demand, can infants receive Christ in the Eucharist?
Surely the wafer and the tea-spoonful of wine might be swallowed by an
infant, as well as water be sprinkled upon him. But if the former is not
the Eucharist because without faith and repentance, so cannot the
latter, it would seem, be Baptism. For they are declared equal adjuncts
of both Sacraments. The argument therefore is a mere
petitio
principii sub lite
.
Ib.
Ad. ix. p. 197.
The promise of the Holy Ghost is made to all, to us and to our
children: and if the Holy Ghost belongs to them, then Baptism belongs
to them also.
If this be not rank enthusiasm I know not what is. The Spirit is
promised to them, first, as protection and providence, and as internal
operation when those faculties are developed, in and by which the Spirit
co-operates. Can Taylor shew an instance in Scripture in which the Holy
Spirit is said to operate simply, and without the co-operation of the
subject?
Ib.
Ad. xix. p. 199.
And when the boys in the street sang Hosanna to the Son of David, our
blessed Lord said that if they had held their peace, the stones of the
street would have cried out Hosanna.
By the same argument I could defend the sprinkling of mules and asses
with holy water, as is done yearly at Rome on St. Antony's day, I
believe. For they are capable of health and sickness, of restiveness and
of good temper, and these are all emanations from their Creator. Besides
in the great form of Baptism the words are not
Greek: en onómati,
but
Greek: eis tò onoma,
and many learned men have shewn that they may
mean 'into the power or influence' of the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit. But spiritual influences suppose capability in act of receiving
them; and we must either pretend to believe that the soul of the babe,
that is, his consciousness, is acted on without his consciousness, or
that the instrumental cause is antecedent by years to its effect, which
would be a conjunction disjunctive with a vengeance. Again, Baptism is
nothing except as followed by the Spirit; but it is irrational to say,
that the Spirit acts on the mere potentialities of an infant. For
wherein is the Spirit, as used in Scripture in appropriation to
Christians, different from God's universal providence and goodness, but
that the latter like the sun may shine on the wicked and on the good, on
the passive and on those who by exercise increase its effect; whereas
the former always implies a co-operant subject, that is, a developed
reason. When God gave his Spirit miraculously to the young child,
Daniel, he at the same time miraculously hastened the development of his
understanding.
Ib.
Ad. xxviii. p. 205.
But we see also that although Christ required faith of them who came
to be healed, yet when any were brought, or came in behalf of others,
he only required faith of them who came, and their faith did benefit
to others....
But this instance is so certain a reproof of this objection of theirs,
which is their principal, which is their all, that it is a wonder to
me they should not all be convinced at the reading and observing of
it.
So far from certainty, I find no strength at all in this reproof.
Doubtless Christ at a believer's request might heal his child's or his
servant's bodily sickness; for this was an act of power, requiring only
an object. But is it any where said, that at a believer's request he
gave the Spirit and the graces of faith to an unbeliever without any
mental act, or moral co-operation of the latter? This would have been a
proof indeed; but Taylor's instance is a mere
ad aliud
.
Ib.
Ad. xxxi. p. 207.
And although there are some effects of the Holy Spirit which require
natural capacities to be their foundation; yet those are the Greek: energáemata or powers of working: but the Greek: charísmata and the
inheritance and the title to the promises require nothing on our part,
but that we can receive them.
The Bishop flutters about and about, but never fairly answers the
question, What does Baptism do? The Baptist says it attests forgiveness
of sins, as the reward of faith and repentance. This is intelligible;
but as to the
Greek: charísmata
— the children of believers, if so
taught and educated, are surely entitled to the promises; and what
analogy is there in this to any one act of power and gift of powers
mentioned as
Greek: charísmata
when the word is really used in
contradistinction from
Greek: energáemata
Baptism is spoken of many
times by St. Paul properly as well as metaphorically, and in the former
sense it is never described as a
Greek: chárisma
on a passive
recipient, while in the latter sense it always respects an
Greek: enérgaema
of the Spirit of God, and a
Greek: synérgaema
in the spirit
of the recipient. All that Taylor can make out is, that Baptism effects
a potentiality in a potentiality, or a chalking of chalk to make white
white.
Ib.
p. 210.
And if it be questioned by wise men whether the want of it do not
occasion their eternal loss, and it is not questioned whether Baptism
does them any hurt or no, then certainly to baptize them is the surer
way without all peradventure.
Now this is the strongest argument of all against Infant Baptism, and
that which alone weighed at one time with me, namely, that it supposes
and most certainly encourages a belief concerning God, the most
blasphemous and intolerable; and no human wit can express this more
forcibly and affectingly than Taylor himself has done in his Letter to a
Lady on Original Sin. It is too plain to be denied that the belief of
the strict necessity of Infant Baptism, and the absolute universality of
the practice did not commence till the dogma of original guilt had begun
to despotize in the Church: while that remained uncertain and sporadic,
Infant Baptism was so too; some did it, many did not.
as soon as
Original Sin in the sense of actual guilt became the popular creed, then
all did it
.
Ib.
s. xvi. p. 224.
And although they have done violence to all philosophy and the reason
of man, and undone and cancelled the principles of two or three
sciences, to bring in this article; yet they have a divine revelation,
whose literal and grammatical sense, if that sense were intended,
would warrant them to do violence to all the sciences in the circle.
And indeed that Transubstantiation is openly and violently against
natural reason is no argument to make them disbelieve it, who believe
the mystery of the Trinity in all those niceties of explication which
are in the School (and which now-a-days pass for the doctrine of the
Church), with as much violence to the principles of natural and
supernatural philosophy as can be imagined to be in the point of
Transubstantiation.
This is one of the many passages in Taylor's works which lead me to
think that his private opinions were favorable to Socinianism. Observe,
to the views of Socinus, not to modern Unitarianism, as taught by
Priestley and Belsham. And doubtless Socinianism would much more easily
bear a doubt, whether the difference between it and the orthodox faith
was not more in words than in the things meant, than the Arian
hypothesis. A mere conceptualist, at least, might plausibly ask whether
either party, the Athanasian or the Socinian, had a sufficiently
distinct conception of what the one meant by the hypostatical union of
the Divine Logos with the man Jesus; or the other of his plenary, total,
perpetual, and continuous inspiration, to have any well-grounded
assurance, that they do not mean the same thing.
Moreover, no one knew better than Jeremy Taylor that this apparent soar
of the hooded falcon, faith, to the very empyrean of bibliolatry
amounted in fact to a truism of which the following syllogism is a fair
illustration. All stones are men: all men think:
ergo
, all stones
think. The
major
is taken for granted, the minor no one denies; and
then the conclusion is good logic, though a very foolish untruth. Or, if
an oval were demonstrated by Euclid to be a circle, it would be a
circle; and if it were a demonstrable circle, it would be a circle,
though the strait lines drawable from the centre to the circumference
are unequal. If we were quite certain that an omniscient Being,
incapable of deceiving, or being deceived, had assured us that 5 X 5 = 6
X 3, and that the two sides of a certain triangle were together less
than the third, then we should be warranted in setting at nought the
science of arithmetic and geometry. On another occasion, as when it was
the good Bishop's object to expose the impudent assertions of the Romish
Church since the eleventh century, he would have been the first to have
replied by a counter syllogism.
If we are quite certain that any writing pretending to divine origin
contains gross contradictions to demonstrable truths
in eodem
genere
, or commands that outrage the clearest principles of right
and wrong; then we may be equally certain that the pretence is a
blasphemous falsehood, inasmuch as the compatibility of a document with
the conclusions of self-evident reason, and with the laws of conscience,
is a condition
a priori
of any evidence adequate to the proof of
its having been revealed by God.
This principle is clearly laid down both by Moses and by St. Paul. If a
man pretended to be a prophet, he was to predict some definite event
that should take place at some definite time, at no unreasonable
distance: and if it were not fulfilled, he was to be punished as an
impostor.
if he accompanied his prophecy with any doctrine
subversive of the exclusive Deity and adorability of the one God of
heaven and earth, or any seduction to a breach of God's commandments, he
was to be put to death at once, all other proof of his guilt and
imposture being superfluous.
So St. Paul. If any man preach another
Gospel, though he should work all miracles, though he had the appearance
and evinced the superhuman powers of an angel from heaven — he was at
once, in contempt of all imaginable sensuous miracles, to be holden
accursed.
Ib.
s. xviii. p. 225.
And now for any danger to men's persons for suffering such a doctrine,
this I shall say, that if they who do it are not formally guilty of
idolatry, there is no danger that they whom they persuade to it,
should be guilty ... When they believe it to be no idolatry, then
their so believing it is sufficient security from that crime, which
hath so great a tincture and residency in the will, that from thence
only it hath its being criminal.
Will not this argument justify all idolaters? For surely they believe
themselves worshippers either of the Supreme Being under a permitted
form, or of some son of God (as Apollo) to whom he has delegated such
and such powers. If this be the case, there is no such crime as
idolatry: yet the second commandment expressly makes the worshipping of
God in or before a visual image of him not only idolatry, but the most
hateful species of it. Now do they not worship God in the visible form
of bread, and prostrate themselves before pictures of the Trinity? Are
we so mad as to suppose that the pious heathens thought the statue of
Jupiter, Jove himself? No; and yet these heathens were idolaters. But
there was no such being as Jupiter. No! Was there no King of Kings and
Lord of Lords; and does the name Jove instead of Jehovah (perhaps the
same word too) make the difference? Were Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus
idolaters?
index p. 2
- The first great divines among the Reformers, Luther, Calvin, and
their compeers and successors, had thrown the darkness of storms on an
awful fact of human nature, which in itself had only the darkness of
negations. What was certain, but incomprehensible, they rendered
contradictory and absurd by a vain attempt at explication. It was a
fundamental fact, and of course could not be comprehended; for to
comprehend, and thence to explain, is the same as to perceive, and
thence to point out, a something before the given fact, and Standing to
it in the relation of cause to effect. Thus they perverted original sin
into hereditary guilt, and made God act in the spirit of the cruellest
laws of jealous governments towards their enemies, upon the principle of
treason in the blood. This was brought in to explain their own
explanation of God's ways, and then too often God's alleged way in this
case was adduced to justify the cruel state law of treason in the blood.
- In process of time, good men and of active minds were shocked at
this; but, instead of passing back to the incomprehensible fact, with a
vault over the unhappy idol forged for its comprehension, they
identified the two in name; and while in truth their arguments applied
only to a false theory, they rejected the fact for the sake of the
mis-solution, and fell into far worse errors. For the mistaken theorist
had built upon a foundation, though but a superstructure of chaff and
straw; but the opponents built on nothing. Aghast at the superstructure,
these latter ran away from that which is the sole foundation of all
human religion.
- Then came the persecutions of the Arminians in Holland; then the
struggle in England against the Arminian Laud and all his
party — terrible persecutors in their turn of the Calvinists and
systematic divines; then the Civil War and the persecutions of the
Church by the Puritans in their turn; and just in this state of heated
feelings did Taylor write these Works, which contain dogmas subversive
of true Christian faith, namely, his Unum Necessarium, or
Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, which reduces the cross of Christ
to nothing, especially in the seventh chapter of the same, and the after
defences of it in his Letters on Original Sin to a Lady, and to the
Bishop of Rochester; and the Liberty of Prophesying, which, putting
toleration on a false ground, has left no ground at all for right or
wrong in matters of Christian faith.
In the marginal notes, which I have written in these several treatises
on Repentance, I appear to myself to have demonstrated that Taylor's
system has no one advantage over the Lutheran in respect of God's
attributes; that it is
bona fide
Pelagianism (though he denies
it; for let him define that grace which Pelagius would not accept,
because incompatible with free will and merit, and profess his belief in
it thus defined, and every one of his arguments against absolute decrees
tell against himself); and lastly, that its inevitable logical
consequences are Socinianism and
quæ sequuntur
. In Tillotson the
face of Arminianism looked out fuller, and Christianity is represented
as a mere arbitrary contrivance of God, yet one without reason. Let not
the surpassing eloquence of Taylor dazzle you, nor his scholastic
retiary versatility of logic illaqueate your good sense. Above all do
not dwell too much on the apparent absurdity or horror of the dogma he
opposes, but examine what he puts in its place, and receive candidly the
few hints which I have admarginated for your assistance, being in the
love of truth and of Christ,
Your Brother.
I have omitted one remark, probably from over fullness of intention to
have inserted it.
- The good man and eloquent expresses his conjectural belief that, if
Adam had not fallen, Christ would still have been necessary, though not
perhaps by Incarnation. Now, in the first place, this is only a play
thought of himself, and Scotus, and perhaps two or three others in the
Schools; no article of faith or of general presumption; consequently it
has little serious effect even on the guessers themselves. In the next
place, if it were granted, yet it would be a necessity wholly ex
parte Dei, not at all ex parte Hominis: — for what does it
amount to but this — that God having destined a creature for two states,
the earthly rational, and the heavenly spiritual, and having chosen to
give him, in the first instance, faculties sufficient only for the first
state, must afterwards superinduce those sufficient for the second
state, or else God would at once and the same time destine and not
destine. This therefore is a mere fancy, a theory, but not a binding
religion; no covenant.
- But the Incarnation, even after the fall of Adam, he clearly makes to
be specifically of no necessity. It was only not to take away peevishly
the estate of grace from the poor innocent children, because of the
father, — according to the good Bishop, a poor ignorant, who before he
ate the apple of knowledge did not know what right and wrong was; and
Christ's Incarnation would have been no more necessary then than it was
before, according to Taylor's belief. Here again the Incarnation is
wholly a contrivance ex parte Dei, and no way resulting from any
default of man.
- Consequently Taylor neither saw nor admitted any a priori
necessity of the Incarnation from the nature of man, and which, being
felt by man in his own nature, is itself the greatest of proofs for the
admission of it, and the strongest pre-disposing cause of the admission
of all proof positive. Not having this, he was to seek ab extra
for proofs in facts, in historical evidence in the world of sense. The
same causes produce the same effects. Hence Grotius, Taylor, and Baxter
(then, as appears in his Life, in a state of uneasy doubt), were the
first three writers of evidences of the Christian religion, such as have
been since followed up by hundreds, — nine-tenths of them Socinians or
Semi-Socinians, and which, taking head and tail, I call the
Grotio-Paleyan way.
- Hence the good man was ever craving for some morsel out of the
almsbasket of all external events, in order to prove to himself his own
immortality; and, with grief and shame I tell it, became evidence and
authority in Irish stories of ghosts, and apparitions, and witches. Let
those who are astonished refer to Glanville on Witches, and they will be
more astonished still. The fact now stated at once explains and
justifies my anxiety in detecting the errors of this great and excellent
genius at their fountain head, — the question of Original Sin: for how
important must that error be which ended in bringing Bishop Jeremy
Taylor forward as an examiner, judge, and witness in an Irish apparition
case!
Ib.
s. xxxviii. p. 278.
Although God exacts not an impossible law under eternal and
insufferable pains, yet he imposes great holiness in unlimited and
indefinite measures, with a design to give excellent proportions of
reward answerable to the greatness of our endeavour. Hell is not the
end of them that fail in the greatest measures of perfection; but
great degrees of heaven shall be their portion who do all that they
can always, and offend in the fewest instances.
It is not to be denied that one if not more of the parables appears to
sanction this, but the same parables would by consequence seem to favour
a state of Purgatory. From John, Paul, and the philosophy of the
doctrine, I should gather a different faith, and find a sanction for
this too in one of the parables, namely, that of the labourer at the
eleventh hour. Heaven, bliss, union with God through Christ, do not seem
to me comparative terms, or conceptions susceptible of degree. But it is
a difficult question. The first Fathers of the Reformation, and the
early Fathers of the primitive Church, present different systems, and in
a very different spirit.
Ib.
p. 324-328.
Descriptions of repentance taken from the Holy Scriptures.
This is a beautiful collection of texts. Still the pious but unconverted
Jew (a Moses Mendelsohn, for instance), has a right to ask, What then
did Christ teach or do, such and of such additional moment as to be
rightfully entitled the founder of a new law, instead of being, like
Isaiah and others, an enforcer and explainer of the old? If
Christianity, or the
opus operans
of Redemption, was synchronous with
the Fall of man, then the same answer must be returned to the passages
here given from the Old Testament as to those from the New; namely, that
Sanctification is the result of Redemption, not its efficient cause or
previous condition. Assuredly
Greek: metanóaesis
and Sanctification
differ only as the plant and the growth or growing of the plant. But the
words of the Apostle (it will be said) are exhortative and dehortative.
Doubtless! and so would be the words of a wise physician addressed to a
convalescent. Would this prove that the patient's revalescence had been
independent of the medicines given him? The texts are addressed to the
free will, and therefore concerning possible objects of free will. No
doubt! Should that process, the end and virtue of which is to free the
will, destroy the free will? But I cannot make it out to my
understanding, how the two are compatible. — Answer; the spirit knows the
things of the spirit. Here lies the sole true ground of
Latitudinarianism, Arminian, or Socinian; and this is the sole and
sufficient confutation;
spiritualia spiritus cognoscit
. Would you
understand with your ears instead of hearing with your understanding?
Now, as the ears to the understanding, so is the understanding to the
spirit. This Plato knew; and art thou a master in Israel, and knowest it
not?
Ib.
p. 330.
Who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the
blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing,
and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace.
By this passage we must interpret the words "sin wilfully," in reference
to an unpardonable sin, in the preceding sentence.
Of the moral capacity of sinful habits.
Ib.
s. ii. p. 432.
Probably from the holiness of his own life, Taylor has but just
fluttered about a bad habit, not fully described it. He has omitted, or
rather described contradictorily, the case of those with whom the
objections to sin are all strengthened, the dismal consequences more
glaring and always present to them as an avenging fury, the sin loathed,
detested, hated; and yet, spite of all this, nay, the more for all this,
perpetrated. Both lust and intemperance would furnish too many instances
of these most miserable victims.
Ib.
s. xxxix. p. 456.
For every vicious habit being radicated in the will, and being a
strong love, inclination and adhesion to sin, unless the natural being
of this love be taken off, the enmity against God remains.
But the most important question is as to those vicious habits in which
there is no love to sin, but only a dread and recoiling from intolerable
pain, as in the case of the miserable drunkard! I trust that these
epileptic agonies are rather the punishments than the augumenters of his
guilt. The annihilation of the wicked is a fearful thought, yet it would
solve many difficulties both in natural religion and in Scripture. And
Taylor in his Arminian dread of Calvinism is always too shy of this
"grace of God:" he never denies, yet never admits, it any separate
operancy
per se
. And this, I fancy, is the true distinction of
Arminianisrn and Calvinism in their moral effects. Arminianism is cruel
to individuals, for fear of damaging the race by false hopes and
improper confidences; while Calvinism is horrible for the race, but full
of consolation to the suffering individual.
The next section is, taken together, one of the many instances that
confirm my opinion that Calvinism (Archbishop Leighton's for example),
compared with Taylor's Arminianism, is as the lamb in the wolf's skin to
the wolf in the lamb's skin: the one is cruel in the phrases, the other
in the doctrine.
Ib.
s. lvi. p. 469.
But if a single act of contrition cannot procure pardon of sins that
are habitual, then a wicked man that returns not till it be too late
to root out vicious habits, must despair of salvation. I answer, &c.
Would not Taylor's purposes have been sufficiently attained by pressing
the contrast between attrition and contrition with faith, and the utter
improbability that the latter (which alone can be efficient), shall be
vouchsafed to a sinner who has continued in his sins in the flattery of
a death-bed repentance; a blasphemy that seems too near that against the
Holy Ghost? My objection to Taylor is, that he seems to reduce the death
of Christ almost to a cypher; a contrivance rather to reconcile the
attributes of God, than an act of infinite love to save sinners. But the
truth is, that this is the peccant part of Arminianism, and Tillotson is
yet more open than Taylor. Forbid me, common goodness, that I should
think Tillotson conscious of Socinianism! but that his tenets involved
it, I more than suspect. See his Discourses on Transubstantiation, and
those near it in the same volume.
Ib.
lxiv. p. 478.
Now there is no peradventure, but new-converted persons, heathens
newly giving up their names to Christ and being baptized, if they die
in an hour, and were baptized half an hour after they believe in
Christ, are heirs of salvation.
This granted, I should little doubt of confuting all the foregoing, as
far as I object to it. I would rather be
durus pater infantum
,
like Austin, than
durus pater ægrotantium
. Taylor considers all
Christians who are so called.
Ib.
s. lxvi. p. 481.
All this paragraph is as just as it is fine and lively, but far from
confirming Taylor's doctrine. The case is as between one individual and
a general rule. I know God's mercy and Christ's merits; but whether your
heart has true faith in them, I cannot know.
Be it unto thee
according to thy faith
, said Christ: so should his ministers say.
All these passages, however, are utterly irreconcilable with the Roman
doctrine, that the priest's absolution is operant, and not simply
declarative. As to the decisions of Paulinus and Asterius, it is to be
feared that they had the mortmain bequests and compensations in view
more than the words of St. Paul, or the manifest purposes of redemption
by faith. Yea, Taylor himself has his
redime peccata eleemosynis
.
By the by, I know of few subjects that have been more handled and less
rationally treated than this of alms-giving. Every thing a rich man
purchases beyond absolute necessaries, ought to be purchased in the
spirit of alms, that is, as the most truly beneficial way of disparsing
that wealth, of which he is the steward, not owner.
Ib.
St. Paul taught us this secret, that sins are properly made habitual
upon the stock of impunity. Sin taking occasion by the law wrought in
me all concupiscence; Greek: aphormàen labousa 'apprehending
impunity,' Greek: dià taes entolaes 'by occasion of the
commandment,' that is, so expressed and established as it was; because
in the commandment forbidding to lust or covet, there was no penalty
annexed or threatened in the sanction or in the explication. Murder
was death, and so was adultery and rebellion. Theft was punished
severely too; and so other things in their proportion; but the desires
God left under a bare restraint, and affixed no penalty in the law.
Now sin, that is, men that had a mind to sin, taking occasion hence,
&c.