Ib.
c. 5. p. 9.
And began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance.
That is, I humbly apprehend, in other than the Hebrew and Syrochaldaic
languages, which (with rare and reluctant exceptions in favor of the
Greek) were appropriated to public prayer and exhortation, just as the
Latin in the Romish Church. The new converts preached and prayed, each
to his companions in his and their dialect; — they were all Jews, but had
assembled from all the different provinces of the Roman and Parthian
empires, as the Quakers among us to the yearly meeting in London; this
was a sign, not a miracle. The miracle consisted in the visible and
audible descent of the Holy Ghost, and in the fulfilment of the prophecy
of Joel, as explained by St. Peter himself.
Acts
ii. 15.
Ib.
p. 10.
Aliud est etymologia nominis et aliud significatio nominis.
Etymologia attenditur secundum id it quo imponitur nomen ad
significandum: nominis vero significatio secundum id ad quod
significandum imponitur.
This passage from Aquinas would be an apt motto for a critique on Horne
Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The best service of etymology is, when the
sense of a word is still unsettled, and especially when two words have
each two meanings; A=a-b, and B=a-b, instead of A=a and B=b. Thus reason
and understanding as at present popularly confounded. Here the
etyma, — ratio,
the relative proportion of thoughts and
things, — and understanding, as the power which substantiates
phænomena (substat eis)
— determine the proper sense. But most
often the
etyma
being equivalent, we must proceed
ex
arbitrio,
as 'law compels,' 'religion obliges;' or take up what had
been begun in some one derivative. Thus 'fanciful' and 'imaginative,'
are discriminated; — and this supplies the ground of choice for giving to
fancy and imagination, each its own sense. Cowley is a fanciful writer,
Milton an imaginative poet.
I proceed with the distinction, how ill
fancy assorts with imagination, as instanced in Milton's Limbo.
Ib.
I should rather express the difference between the faithful of the
Synagogue and those of the Church, thus: — That the former hoped
generally by an implicit faith; — "It shall in all things be well with
all that love the Lord; therefore it cannot but be good for us and well
with us to rest with our forefathers." But the Christian hath an assured
hope by an explicit and particular faith, a hope because its object is
future, not because it is uncertain. The one was on the road journeying
toward a friend of his father's, who had promised he would be kind to
him even to the third and fourth generation. He comforts himself on the
road, first, by means of the various places of refreshment, which that
friend had built for travellers and continued to supply; and secondly,
by anticipation of a kind reception at the friend's own mansion-house.
But the other has received an express invitation to a banquet, beholds
the preparations, and has only to wash and put on the proper robes, in
order to sit down.
Ib.
p. 11.
The reason why our translators, in the beginning, did choose rather to
use the word 'congregation' than 'Church,' was not, as the adversary
maliciously imagineth, for that they feared the very name of the
Church; but because as by the name of religion and religious men,
ordinarily in former times, men understood nothing but factitias
religiones, as Gerson out of Anselme calleth them, that is, the
professions of monks and friars, so, &c.
the same reason the word
religion
for
Greek: Thraeskia
in St.
James
ought now to be altered to ceremony or ritual. The whole
version has by change of language become a dangerous mistranslation, and
furnishes a favorite text to our moral preachers, Church Socinians and
other christened pagans now so rife amongst us. What was the substance
of the ceremonial law is but the ceremonial part of the Christian
religion; but it is its solemn ceremonial law, and though not the same,
yet one with it and inseparable, even as form and substance. Such is St.
James's doctrine, destroying at one blow Antinomianism and the Popish
popular doctrine of good works.
Ib.
c. 18. p. 27.
But if the Church of God remains in Corinth, where there were
divisions, sects, emulations, &c. ... who dare deny those societies
to be the Churches of God, wherein the tenth part of these horrible
evils and abuses is not to be found?
It is rare to meet with sophistry in this sound divine; but here he
seems to border on it. For first the Corinthian Church upon admonition
repented of its negligence; and secondly, the objection of the Puritans
was, that the constitution of the Church precluded discipline.
B. II. c. 2. p. 31.
'Miscreant' is twice used in this page in its original sense of
misbeliever.
Ib
. c. 4. p. 35.
'
' is here used for the discursive acts of the understanding,
even as 'discursive, is opposed to 'intuitive' by Milton
and
others. Thus understand Shakspeare's "discourse of reason" for those
discursions of mind which are peculiar to rational beings.
B. III. c. 1.p. 53.
The first publishers of the Gospel of Christ delivered a rule of faith
to the Christian Churches which they founded, comprehending all those
articles that are found in that epitome of Christian religion, which
we call the Apostles' Creed.
This needs proof. I rather believe that the so called Apostles' Creed
was really the Creed of the Roman or Western church, (and possibly in
its present form, the catechismal rather than the baptismal creed), — and
that other churches in the East had Creeds equally ancient, and, from
their being earlier troubled with Anti Trinitarian heresies, more
express on the divinity of Christ than the Roman.
Ib.
p. 58.
Fourthly, that it is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that
our satisfaction is required as a condition, without which Christ's
satisfaction is not appliable unto us, than to say, Peter hath paid
the debt of John, and he to whom it was due accepteth of the same
payment, conditionally if he pay it himself also.
This
propriation of a
, namely, forgiveness of sin and
abolition of guilt through the redemptive power of Christ's love and of
his perfect obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity,
expressed, on account of the sameness of the consequences in both cases,
by the payment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not
himself incurred, — the propriation of this, I say, by transferring the
sameness from the consequents to the antecedents is the one point of
orthodoxy (so called, I mean) in which I still remain at issue. It seems
to me so evidently a
Greek: metábasis eis allo génos.
A metaphor is an
illustration of something less known by a more or less partial
identification of it with something better understood. Thus St. Paul
illustrates the consequences of the act of redemption by four different
metaphors drawn from things most familiar to those, for whom it was to
be illustrated, namely, sin-offerings or sacrificial expiation;
reconciliation; ransom from slavery; satisfaction of a just creditor by
vicarious payment of the debt. These all refer to the consequences of
redemption.
Now, St. John without any metaphor declares the mode by and
in which it is effected; for he identifies it with a fact, not with a
consequence, and a fact too not better understood in the one case than
in the other, namely, by generation and birth. There remains, therefore,
only the redemptive act itself, and this is transcendant, ineffable, and
a fortiori
, therefore, inexplicable. Like the act of primal apostasy,
it is in its own nature a mystery, known only through faith in the
spirit.
James owes John £100, which (to prevent James's being sent to
prison) Henry pays for him; and John has no longer any claim. But James
is cruel and ungrateful to Mary, his tender mother. Henry, though no
relation, acts the part of a loving and dutiful son to Mary. But will
this satisfy the mother's claims on James, or entitle him to her esteem,
approbation, and blessing? If, indeed, by force of Henry's example or
persuasion, or any more mysterious influence, James repents and becomes
himself a good and dutiful child, then, indeed, Mary is wholly
satisfied; but then the case is no longer a question of debt in that
sense in which it can be paid by another, though the effect, of which
alone St. Paul was speaking, is the same in both cases to James as the
debtor, and to James as the undutiful son. He is in both cases liberated
from the burthen, and in both cases he has to attribute his exoneration
to the act of another; as cause simply in the payment of the debt, or as
likewise
causa causæ
in James's reformation. Such is my present
opinion: God grant me increase of light either to renounce or confirm it.
Perhaps the different terms of the above position may be more clearly
stated thus:
- agens causator
- actus causativus:
- effectus causatus:
- consequentia ab effecto.
- The co-eternal Son of the living God, incarnate, tempted, crucified,
resurgent, communicant of his spirit, ascendant, and obtaining for his
church the descent of the Holy Ghost.
- A spiritual and transcendant mystery.
- The being born anew, as before in the flesh to the world, so now in
the spirit to Christ: where the differences are, the spirit opposed to
the flesh, and Christ to the world; the punctum indifferens, or
combining term, remaining the same in both, namely, a birth.
- Sanctification from sin and liberation from the consequences of sin,
with all the means and process of sanctification, being the same for the
sinner relatively to God and his own soul, as the satisfaction of a
creditor for a debt, or as the offering of an atoning sacrifice for a
transgressor of the law; as a reconciliation for a rebellious son or a
subject to his alienated parent or offended sovereign; and as a ransom
is for a slave in a heavy captivity.
Now my complaint is that our systematic divines transfer the paragraph 4
to the paragraphs 2 and 3, interpreting
proprio sensu et ad totum
what is affirmed
sensu metaphorico et ad partem
, that is,
ad consequentia a regeneratione effecta per actum causativum primi
agentis, uempe Greek: Logou redemptoris
, and by this
interpretation substituting an identification absolute for an equation
proportional.
4th May, 1819.
Ib.
p. 62.
Personality is nothing but the existence of nature itself.
God alone had his nature in himself; that is, God alone contains in
himself the ground of his own existence. But were this definition of
Field's right, we might predicate personality of a worm, or wherever we
find life. Better say, — personality is individuality existing in itself,
but with a nature as its ground.
Ib.
p.66.
Accursing Eutyches as a heretic.
It puzzles me to understand what sense Field gave to the word, heresy.
Surely every slight error, even though persevered in, is not to be held
a heresy, or its asserters accursed. The error ought at least to respect
some point of faith essential to the great ends of the Gospel. Thus the
phrase 'cursing Eutyches,' is to me shockingly unchristian. I could not
dare call even the opinion cursed, till I saw how it injured the faith
in Christ, weakened our confidence in him, or lessened our love and
gratitude.
Ib.
p.71.
If ye be circumcised ye are fallen from grace, and Christ
can profit you nothing.
It seems impossible but that these words had a relation to the
particular state of feeling and belief, out of which the anxiety to be
circumcised did in those particular persons proceed, and not absolutely,
and at all times to the act itself, seeing that St. Paul himself
circumcised Timothy from motives of charity and prudence.
Ib.
c.3. p.76.
The things that pertain to the Christian faith and religion are of two
sorts; for there are some things explicite, some things
implicite credenda; that is, there are some things that must be
particularly and expressly known and believed, as that the Father is
God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three
Gods but one God; and some other, which though all men, at all times,
be not bound upon the peril of damnation to know and believe
expressly, yet whosoever will be saved must believe them at least
implicite, and in generality, as that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus
fled into Egypt.
Merciful Heaven! Eternal misery and the immitigable wrath of God, and
the inextinguishable fire of hell amid devils, parricides, and haters of
God and all goodness — this is the verdict which a Protestant divine
passes against the man, who though sincerely believing the whole Nicene
creed and every doctrine and precept taught in the New Testament, and
living accordingly, should yet have convinced himself that the first
chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke were not parts of the original
Gospels!
Ib.
p.77.
So in the beginning, Nestorius did not err, touching the unity of
Christ's person in the diversity of the natures of God and man; but
only disliked that Mary should be called the mother of God: which form
of speaking when some demonstrated to be very fitting and unavoidable,
if Christ were God and man in the unity of the same person, he chose
rather to deny the unity of Christ's person than to acknowledge his
temerity and rashness in reproving that form of speech, which the use
of the church had anciently received and allowed.
A false charge grounded on a misconception of the Syriac terms.
Nestorius was perfectly justifiable in his rejection of the epithet
Greek: theotókos
as applied to the mother of Jesus. The Church was
even then only too ripe for the idolatrous
hyper-dulia
of the
Virgin. Not less weak is Field's defence of the propriety of the term.
Set aside all reference to this holy mystery, and let me ask, I trust
without offence, whether by the same logic a mule's dam might not be
called
Greek: hippotókos
because the horse and ass were united in one
and the same subject. The difference in the perfect God and perfect man
does not remove the objection: for an epithet, which conceals half of a
truth, the power and special concerningness of which, relatively to our
redemption by Christ, depends on our knowledge of the whole, is a
deceptive and a dangerously deceptive epithet.
Ib.
c.20. p.110.
Thus, then, the Fathers did sometimes, when they had particular
occasions to remember the Saints, and to speak of them, by way of
apostrophe, turn themselves unto them, and use words of
doubtful compellation, praying them, if they have any sense of these
inferior things, to be remembrancers to God for them.
The distinct gradations of the process, by which commemoration and
rhetorical apostrophes passed finally into idolatry, supply an analogy
of mighty force against the heretical
hypothesis
of the modern
Unitarians. Were it true, they would have been able to have traced the
progress of the Christolatry from the lowest sort of
Christodulia
with the same historical distinctness against the universal Church, that
the Protestants have that of hierolatry against the Romanists. The
gentle and soft censures which our divines during the reign of the
Stuarts pass on the Roman Saint worship, or hieroduly, as an
inconvenient superstition, must needs have alarmed the faithful
adherents to the Protestantism of Edward VI and the surviving exiles of
bloody Queen Mary's times, and their disciples.
Ib.
p.111.
The miracles that God wrought in times past by them made many to
attribute more to them than was fit, as if they had a generality of
presence, knowledge, and working; but the wisest and best advised
never durst attribute any such thing unto them.
To a truly pious mind awfully impressed with the surpassing excellency
of God's ineffable love to fallen man, in the revelation of himself to
the inner man through the reason and conscience by the spiritual light
and substantiality — (for the conscience is to the spirit or reason what
the understanding is to the sense, a substantiative power); this
consequence of miracles is so fearful, that it cannot but redouble his
zeal against that fashion of modern theologists which would convert
miracles from a motive to attention and solicitous examination, and at
best from a negative condition of revelation, into the positive
foundation of Christian faith.
Ib.
c.22. p.116.
But if this be as vile a slander as ever Satanist devised, the Lord
reward them that have been the authors and advisers of it according
to their works.
O no! no! this the good man did not utter from his heart, but from his
passion. A vile and wicked slander it was and is. O may God have turned
the hearts of those who uttered it, or may it be among their unknown
sins done in ignorance, for which the infinite merits of Christ may
satisfy! I am most assured that if Dr. Field were now alive, or if any
one had but said this to him, he would have replied — "I thank thee,
brother, for thy Christian admonition. Add thy prayer, and pray God to
forgive me my inconsiderate zeal!"
Ib.
c. 23. p. 119.
For what rectitude is due to the specifical act of hating God? or what
rectitude is it capable of?
Is this a possible act to any man understanding by the word God what we
mean by God?
Ib.
p. 129.
It is this complicated dispute, as to the origin and permission of evil,
which supplies to atheism its most plausible, because its only moral,
arguments; but more especially to that species of atheism which existed
in Greece in the form of polytheism, admitting moral and intelligent
shapers and governors of the world, but denying an intelligent ground,
or self-conscious Creator of the universe; their gods being themselves
the offspring of chaos and necessity, that is, of matter and its
essential laws or properties. The Leibnitzian distinction of the Eternal
Reason, or nature of God,
Greek: tò theion
(the
Greek: nous kaì anágkae
of Timæus Locrus) from the will or personal attributes of God
—
Greek: thélaema kaì boúlaesis — agathou patròs agathòn boúlaema
see previous image
— planted the germ of the only possible solution, or rather perhaps, in
words less exceptionable and more likely to be endured in the schools of
modern theology, brought forward the truth involved in Behmen's too bold
distinction of God and the ground of God; — who yet in this is to be
excused, not only for his good aim and his ignorance of scholastic
terms, but likewise because some of the Fathers expressed themselves no
less crudely in the other extreme; though it is not improbable that the
meaning was the same in both. At least Behmen constantly makes
self-existence a positive act, so as that by an eternal
Greek: perich_óraesis
or mysterious intercirculation God wills himself out of
the
ground
(Greek: tò theion — tò hèn kaì pan
), —
indifferentia
absoluta realitatis infinitæ et infinitæ potentialitatis
) — and
again by his will, as God existing, gives being to the ground,
Greek: autogenàes — autophylàes — uhios heautou
see previous image
.
Solus Deus est; — itaque
principium, qui ex seipso dedit sibi ipse principium. Deus ipse sui
origo est, suæque causa substantiæ, id quod est, ex se et in se
continens. Ex seipso procreatus ipse se fecit
, &c., of Synesius,
Jerome, Hilary, and Lactantius and others involve the same conception.
Ib.
c.27. p.140.
The seventh is the heresy of Sabellius, which he saith was revived by
Servetus. So it was indeed, that Servetus revived in our time the
damnable heresy of Sabellius, long since condemned in the first ages
of the Church. But what is that to us? How little approbation he found
amongst us, the just and honourable proceeding against him at Geneva
will witness to all posterity.
as this act must and ought to be to all Christians at present;
yet this passage and a hundred still stronger from divines and Church
letters contemporary with Calvin, prove Servetus' death not to be
Calvin's guilt especially, but the common
opprobrium
of all
European Christendom, — of the Romanists whose laws the Senate of Geneva
followed, and from fear of whose reproaches (as if Protestants favoured
heresy) they executed them, — and of the Protestant churches who
applauded the act and returned thanks to Calvin and the Senate for
it.
Ib.
c. 30. p. 143.
The twelfth heresy imputed to us is the heresy of Jovinian, concerning
whom we must observe, that Augustine ascribeth unto him two opinions
which Hierome mentioneth not; who yet was not likely to spare him, if
he might truly have been charged with them. The first, that Mary
ceased to be a virgin when she had borne Christ; the second, that all
sins are equal.
Neither this nor that is worthy the name of opinion; it is mere
unscriptural, nay, anti-scriptural gossiping. Are we to blame, or not
rather to praise, the anxiety manifested by the great divines of the
church of England under the Stuarts not to remove further than necessary
from the Romish doctrines? Yet one wishes a bolder method; for example,
as to Mary's private history after the conception and birth of Christ,
we neither know nor care about it.
Ib.
c. 31. p. 146.
For the opinions wherewith Hierome chargeth him, this we briefly
answer. First, if he absolutely denied that the Saints departed do
pray for us, as it seemeth he did by Hierome's reprehension, we think
he erred.
Yet not heretically; and if he meant only that we being wholly ignorant,
whether they do or no, ought to act as if we knew they did not, he is
perfectly right; for whatever ye do, do it in faith. As to the ubiquity
of saints, it is Jerome who is the heretic, nay, idolater, if he reduced
his opinion to practice. It perplexes me, that Field speaks so
doubtingly on a matter so plain as the incommunicability of
omnipresence.
Ib.
c. 32. p. 147.
Touching the second objection, that Bucer and Calvin deny original
sin, though not generally, as did Zuinglius, yet at least in the
children of the faithful. If he had said that these men affirm the
earth doth move, and the heavens stand still, he might have as soon
justified it against them, as this he now saith.
Very noticeable.
similar passage occurs even so late as in Sir Thomas
Brown, just at the dawn of the Newtonian system, and after Kepler. What
a lesson of diffidence!
Ib.
p. 148.
For we do not deny the distinction of venial and mortal sins; but do
think, that some sins are rightly said to be mortal and some venial;
not for that some are worthy of eternal punishment and therefore named
mortal, others of temporal only, and therefore judged venial as the
Papists imagine: but for that some exclude grace out of that man in
which they are found and so leave him in a state wherein he hath
nothing in himself that can or will procure him pardon: and other,
which though in themselves considered, and never remitted, they be
worthy of eternal punishment, yet do not so far prevail as to banish
grace, the fountain of remission of all misdoings.
Would not the necessary consequence of this be, that there are no
actions that can be pronounced mortal sins by mortals; and that what we
might fancy venial might in individual cases be mortal and
vice
versa
.
Ib.
First, because every offence against God may justly be punished by him
in the strictness of his righteous judgments with eternal death, yea,
with annihilation; which appeareth to be most true, for that there is
no punishment so evil, and so much to be avoided, as the least sin
that may be imagined. So that a man should rather choose eternal
death, yea, utter annihilation, than commit the least offence in the
world.
I admit this to be Scriptural; but what is wanted is, clearly to state
the difference between eternal death and annihilation. For who would not
prefer the latter, if the former mean everlasting misery?
Ib
. c. 41. p. 62.
But he will say, Cyprian calleth the Roman Church the principal Church
whence sacerdotal unity hath her spring; hereunto we answer, that the
Roman Church, not in power of overruling all, but in order is the
first and principal; and that therefore while she continueth to hold
the truth, and encroacheth not upon the right of other Churches, she
is to have the priority; but that in either of these cases she may be
forsaken without breach of that unity, which is essentially required
in the parts of the Church.
This is too large a concession. The real ground of the priority of the
Roman see was that Rome, for the first three or perhaps four centuries,
was the metropolis of the Christian world. Afterwards for the very same
reason the Patriarch of New Rome or Constantinople claimed it; and never
ceased to assert at least a co-equality. Had the Apostolic foundation
been the cause, Jerusalem and Antioch must have had priority; not to add
that the Roman Church was not founded by either Paul or Peter as is
evident from the epistle to the Romans.
Append. B. III. p. 205.
I do not think the attack on Transubstantiation the most successful
point of the orthodox Protestant controversialists. The question is,
what is meant in Scripture, as in
John
vi. by Christ's body or
flesh and blood. Surely not the visible, tangible, accidental body, that
is, a cycle of images and sensations in the imagination of the
beholders; but his supersensual body, the
noumenon
of his human
nature which was united to his divine nature. In this sense I understand
the Lutheran ubiquity. But may not the "oblations" referred to by Field
in the old canon of the Mass, have meant the alms, offerings always
given at the Eucharist? If by "substance" in the enunciation of the
article be meant
id quod vere est
, and if the divine nature be
the sole
ens vere ens
, then it is possible to give a
philosophically intelligible sense to Luther's doctrine of
consubstantiation; at least to a doctrine that might bear the same
name; — at all events the mystery is not greater than, if it be not
rather the same as, the assumption of the human by the divine nature.
Now for the possible conception of this we must accurately discriminate
the
incompossibile negativum
from the
incompatibile
privativum
. Of the latter are all positive imperfections, as error,
vice, and evil passions; of the former simple limitation. Thus if
(per impossible)
human nature could make itself sinless and
perfect, it would become or pass into God; and if God should abstract
from human nature all imperfection, it might without impropriety be
affirmed, even as Scripture doth affirm, that God assumed or took up
into himself the human nature. Thus, to use a dim similitude and merely
as a faint illustration, all materiality abstracted from a circle, it
would become space, and though not infinite, yet one with infinite
space. The mystery of omnipresence greatly aids this conception;
totus in omni parte
: and in truth this is the divine character of
all the Christian mysteries, that they aid each other, and many
incomprehensibles render each of them, in a certain qualified sense,
less incomprehensible.
Ib.
p. 208.
But first, it is impious to think of destroying Christ in any sort.
For though it be true, that in sacrificing of Christ on the altar of
the cross, the destroying and killing of him was implied, and this his
death was the life of the world, yet all that concurred to the killing
of him, as the Jews, the Roman soldiers, Pilate, and Judas sinned
damnably, and so had done, though they had shed his blood with an
intention and desire, that by it the world might be redeemed.