Surely if ever work not in the sacred Canon might suggest a belief of inspiration, ­of something more than human, ­this it is.  When Mr. Elwyn made this assertion, I took it as the hyperbole of affection:  but now I subscribe to it seriously, and bless the hour that introduced me to the knowledge of the evangelical, apostolical Archbishop Leighton.

April 1814.

Next to the inspired Scriptures ­yea, and as the vibration of that once struck hour remaining on the air, stands Leighton’s Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St. Peter.

Comment Vol.  I. .

  ­their redemption and salvation by Christ Jesus; that inheritance of
  immortality bought by his blood for them, and the evidence and
  stability of their right and title to it.

By the blood of Christ I mean this.  I contemplate the Christ,

1; ­As ‘Christus agens’, the Jéhovah Christ, the Word: 

2; ­As ‘Christus patiens’, The God Incarnate.

In the former he is ’relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, sol intelligibilis:  relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, calor fovens’.  In the latter he is ’vita vivificans, principium spiritualis, id est, verae reproductionis in vitam veram’.  Now this principle, or ’vis vitae vitam vivificans’, considered in ’forma passiva, assimilationem patiens’, at the same time that it excites the soul to the vital act of assimilating ­this is the Blood of Christ, really present through faith to, and actually partaken by, the faithful.  Of this the body is the continual product, that is, a good life-the merits of Christ acting on the soul, redemptive.

Ib. pp. 13-15.

  Of their sanctification:  ‘elect unto obedience’, &c.

That the doctrines asserted in this and the two or three following pages cannot be denied or explained away, without removing (as the modern Unitarians), or (as the Arminians) unsettling and undermining, the foundations of the Faith, I am fully convinced; and equally so, that nothing is gained by the change, the very same logical consequences being deducible from the tenets of the Church Arminians; ­scarcely more so, indeed, from those which they still hold in common with Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer and the other Fathers of the Reformation in England, and which are therefore most unfairly entitled Calvinism ­than from those which they have attempted to substitute in their place.  Nay, the shock given to the moral sense by these consequences is, to my feelings, aggravated in the Arminian doctrine by the thin yet dishonest disguise.  Meantime the consequences appear to me, in point of logic, legitimately concluded from the terms of the prémisses.  What shall we say then?  Where lies the fault?  In the original doctrines expressed in the prémisses?  God forbid.  In the particular deductions, logically considered?  But these we have found legitimate.  Where then?  I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and according to such rules.  The rules are alien and inapplicable; the process presumptuous, yea, preposterous.  The error, [Greek:  to proton pseudos], lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all, in this instance.

First: ­because the terms from which the conclusion must be drawn-(’termini in majore praemissi, a quibus scientialiter et scientifice demonstrandum erat’) are accommodations and not scientific ­that is, proper and adequate, not ‘per idem’, but ’per quam maxime simile’, or rather ‘quam maxime dissimile’: 

Secondly; ­because the truths in question are transcendant, and have their evidence, if any, in the ideas themselves, and for the reason; and do not and cannot derive it from the conceptions of the understanding, which cannot comprehend the truths, but is to be comprehended in and by them, (’John’ .): 

Lastly, and chiefly; ­because these truths, as they do not originate in the intellective faculty of man, so neither are they addressed primarily to our intellect; but are substantiated for us by their correspondence to the wants, cravings, and interests of the moral being, for which they were given, and without which they would be devoid of all meaning, ­’vox et praeterea nihil’.  The only conclusions, therefore, that can be drawn from them, must be such as are implied in the origin and purpose of their revelation; and the legitimacy of all conclusions must be tried by their consistency with those moral interests, those spiritual necessities, which are the proper final cause of the truths and of our faith therein.  For some of the faithful these truths have, I doubt not, an evidence of reason; but for the whole household of faith their certainty is in their working.  Now it is this, by which, in all cases, we know and determine existence in the first instance.  That which works in us or on us exists for us.  The shapes and forms that follow the working as its results or products, whether the shapes cognizable by sense or the forms distinguished by the intellect, are after all but the particularizations of this working; its proper names, as it were, as John, James, Peter, in respect of human nature.  They are all derived from the relations in which finite beings stand to each other; and are therefore heterogeneous and, except by accommodation, devoid of meaning and purpose when applied to the working in and by which God makes his existence known to us, and (we may presume to say) especially exists for the soul in whom he thus works.  On these grounds, therefore, I hold the doctrines of original sin, the redemption therefrom by the Cross of Christ, and change of heart as the consequent; without adopting the additions to the doctrines inferred by one set of divines, the modern Calvinists, or acknowledging the consequences burdened on the doctrines by their antagonists.  Nor is this my faith fairly liable to any inconvenience, if only it be remembered that it is a spiritual working, of which I speak, and a spiritual knowledge, ­not through the ‘medium’ of image, the seeking after which is superstition; nor yet by any sensation, the watching for which is enthusiasm, and the conceit of its presence fanatical distemperature.  “Do the will of the Father, and ye shall ‘know’ it.”

We must distinguish the life and the soul; though there is a certain sense in which the life may be called the soul; that is, the life is the soul of the body.  But the soul is the life of the man, and Christ is the life of the soul.  Now the spirit of man, the spirit subsistent, is deeper than both, not only deeper than the body and its life, but deeper than the soul; and the Spirit descendent and supersistent is higher than both.  In the regenerated man the height and the depth become one ­the Spirit communeth with the spirit ­and the soul is the ‘inter-ens’, or ‘ens inter-medium’ between the life and the spirit; ­the ‘participium’, not as a compound, however, but as a ’medium indifferens’ ­in the same sense in which heat may be designated as the indifference between light and gravity.  And what is the Reason? ­The spirit in its presence to the understanding abstractedly from its presence in the will, ­nay, in many, during the negation of the latter.  The spirit present to man, but not appropriated by him, is the reason of man: ­the reason in the process of its identification with the will is the spirit.

Ib. pp. 63-4.

Can we deny that it is unbelief of those things that causeth this neglect and forgetting of them?  The discourse, the tongue of men and angels cannot beget divine belief of the happiness to come; only He that gives it, gives faith likewise to apprehend it, and lay hold upon it, and upon our believing to be filled with joy in the hopes of it.

Most true, most true!

Ib. .

In spiritual trials that are the sharpest and most fiery of all, when the furnace is within a man, when God doth not only shut up his loving-kindness from its feeling, but seems to shut it up in hot displeasure, when he writes bitter things against it; yet then to depend upon him, and wait for his salvation, this is not only a true, but a strong and very refined faith indeed, and the more he smites, the more to cleave to him. Though I saw, as it were, his hand lifted up to destroy me, yet from that same hand would I expect salvation.

Bless God, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter!  It is the honey in the lion.

Ib. .

This natural men may discourse of, and that very knowingly, and give a kind of natural credit to it as to a history that may be true; but firmly to believe that there is divine truth in all these things, and to have a persuasion of it stronger than of the very things we see with our eyes; such an assent as this is the peculiar work of the Spirit of God, and is certainly saving faith.

‘Lord I believe:  help thou my unbelief!’ My reason acquiesces, and I believe enough to fear.  O, grant me the belief that brings sweet hope!

Ib. .

Faith causes the soul to find all that is spoken of him in the word, and his beauty there represented, to be abundantly true, makes it really taste of his sweetness, and by that possesses the heart more strongly with his love, persuading it of the truth of those things, not by reasons and arguments, but by an inexpressible kind of evidence, that they only know that have it.

Either this is true, or religion is not religion; that is, it adds nothing to our human reason; ‘non religat’.  Grant it, grant it me, O Lord!

Ib. pp. 104-5.

This sweet stream of their doctrine did, as the rivers, make its own banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to after ages, and by the confluence of more such prophecies grew greater as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the Gospel in the New Testament, both acted and preached by the great Prophet himself, whom they foretold to come, and recorded by his Apostles and Evangelists, and thus united into one river, clear as crystal.  This doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath still refreshed the city of God, his Church under the Gospel, and still shall do so, till it empty itself into the ocean of eternity.

In the whole course of my studies I do not remember to have read so beautiful an allegory as this; so various and detailed, and yet so just and natural.

Ib. .

There is a truth in it, that all sin arises from some kind of ignorance .  For were the true visage of sin seen at a full light, undressed and unpainted, it were impossible, while it so appeared, that any one soul could be in love with it, but would rather flee from it as hideous and abominable.

This is the only (defect, shall I say?  No, but the only) omission I have felt in this divine Writer ­for him we understand by feeling, experimentally ­that he doth not notice the horrible tyranny of habit.  What the Archbishop says, is most true of beginners in sin; but this is the foretaste of hell, to see and loathe the deformity of the wedded vice, and yet still to embrace and nourish it.

Ib. .

He calls those times wherein Christ was unknown to them, ’the times of their ignorance’.  Though the stars shine never so bright, and the moon with them in its full, yet they do not, altogether, make it day:  still it is night till the sun appear.

How beautiful, and yet how simple, and as it were unconscious of its own beauty!

Ib. .

You were running to destruction in the way of sin, and there was a voice, together with the Gospel preaching to your ear, that spake into your heart, and called you back from that path of death to the way of holiness, which is the only way of life.  He hath severed you from the mass of the profane world, and picked you out to be jewels for himself.

O, how divine!  Surely, nothing less than the Spirit of Christ could have inspired such thoughts in such language.  Other divines, ­Donne and Jeremy Taylor for instance, ­have converted their worldly gifts, and applied them to holy ends; but here the gifts themselves seem unearthly.

Ib. .

As in religion, so in the course and practice of men’s lives, the stream of sin runs from one age to another, and every age makes it greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their course by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man when he is born, falls like a drop into this main current of corruption, and so is carried down it, and this by reason of its strength, and his own nature, which willingly dissolves into it, and runs along with it.

In this single period we have religion, the spirit, ­philosophy, the soul, ­and poetry, the body and drapery united; ­Plato glorified by St. Paul; and yet coming as unostentatiously as any speech from an innocent girl of fifteen.

Ib. .

  The chief point of obedience is believing; the proper obedience to
  truth is to give credit to it.

This is not quite so perspicuous and single-sensed as Archbishop Leighton’s sentences in general are.  This effect is occasioned by the omission of the word “this,” or “divine,” or the truth “in Christ.”  For truth in the ordinary and scientific sense is received by a spontaneous, rather than chosen by a voluntary, act; and the apprehension of the same (belief) supposes a position of congruity rather than an act of obedience.  Far otherwise is it with the truth that is the object of Christian faith:  and it is this truth of which Leighton is speaking.  Belief indeed is a living part of this faith; but only as long as it is a living part.  In other words, belief is implied in faith; but faith is not necessarily implied in belief.  ‘The devils believe.’

Ib. .

Hence learn that true conversion is not so slight a work as we commonly account it.  It is not the outward change of some bad customs, which gains the name of a reformed man in the ordinary dialect; it is new birth and being, and elsewhere called ’a new creation.  Though it be but a change in qualities’, yet it is such a one, and the qualities so far distant from what they before were, &c.

I dare not affirm that this is erroneously said; but it is one of the comparatively few passages that are of service as reminding me that it is not the Scripture that I am reading.  Not the qualities merely, but the root of the qualities is trans-created.  How else could it be a birth, ­a creation?

Ib. .

This natural life is compared, even by natural men, to the vainest things, and scarce find they things light enough to express it vain; and as it is here called grass, so they compare the generations of men to the leaves of trees. ’Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.  He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down.  Job’ xi, 2.  Psalm x; xxxi.

It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless subtleties, or mere phantoms ­’entia logica, vel etiam verbalia solum’.  And yet in order to secure a safe and Christian interpretation to these and numerous other passages of like phrase and import in the Old Testament, it is of highest concernment that we should distinguish the personeity or spirit, as the source and principle of personality, from the person itself as the particular product at any one period, and as that which cannot be evolved or sustained but by the co-agency of the system and circumstances in which the individuals are placed.  In this latter sense it is that ‘man’ is used in the Psalms, in Job, and elsewhere ­and the term made synonymous with flesh.  That which constitutes the spirit in man, both for others and itself, is the real man; and to this the elements and elementary powers contribute its bulk ([Greek:  to] ‘videri et tangi’) wholly, and its phenomenal form in part, both as co-efficients, and as conditions.  Now as these are under a law of vanity and incessant change, ­[Greek:  ta mae onta, all’ aei ginomena], ­so must all be, to the production and continuance of which they are indispensable.  On this hangs the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as an essential part of the doctrine of immortality; ­on this the Scriptural (and only true and philosophical) sense of the soul, ‘psyche’ or life, as resulting from the continual assurgency of the spirit through the body; ­and on this the begetting of a new life, a regenerate soul, by the descent of the divine Spirit on the spirit of man.  When the spirit by sanctification is fitted for an incorruptible body, then shall it be raised into a world of incorruption, and a celestial body shall burgeon forth thereto, the germ of which had been implanted by the redeeming and creative Word in this world.  Truly hath it been said of the elect: ­They fall asleep in earth, but awake in heaven.  So St. Paul expressly teaches:  and as the passage (1.  ‘Cor’. x ­54,) was written for the express purpose of rectifying the notions of the converts concerning the Resurrection, all other passages in the New Testament must be interpreted in harmony with it.  But John, likewise, ­describing the same great event, as subsequent to, and contra-distinguished from, the partial or millennary Resurrection ­which (whether we are to understand the Apostle symbolically or literally) is to take place in the present world, ­beholds ‘a new earth’ and ’a new heaven’ as antecedent to, or coincident with, the appearance of the New Jerusalem, ­that is, the state of glory, and the resurrection to life everlasting.  The old earth and its heaven had passed away from the face of Him on the throne, at the moment that it gave up the dead.  ‘Rev’. xx.-xxi.

Ib. pp. 174-5.

  ‘But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.’

  And with respect to those learned men that apply the text to God, I
  remember not that this ‘abiding for ever’ is used to express God’s
  eternity in himself.

No; nor is it here used for that purpose; but yet I cannot doubt but that either the Word, [Greek:  Ho Logos en archae], or the Divine promises in and through the incarnate Word, with the gracious influences proceeding from him, are here meant ­and not the written [Greek:  rhaemata] or Scriptures.

Ib. .

If any one’s head or tongue should grow apace, and all the rest stand at a stay, it would certainly make him a monster; and they are no other that are knowing and discovering Christians, and grow daily in that, but not at all in holiness of heart and life, which is the proper growth of the children of God.

Father in heaven, have mercy on me!  Christ, Lamb of God, have mercy on me!  Save me, Lord, or I perish!  Alas!  I am perishing.

Ib. .

A well-furnished table may please a man, while he hath health and appetite; but offer it to him in the height of a fever, how unpleasant it would be then!  Though never so richly decked, it is then not only useless, but hateful to him.  But the kindness and love of God is then as seasonable and refreshing to him, as in health, and possibly more.

To the regenerate; ­but to the conscious sinner a source of terrors insupportable.

Ib. .

These things hold likewise in the other stones of this building, chosen before time:  all that should be of this building are fore-ordained in God’s purpose, all written in that book beforehand, and then in due time they are chosen, by actual calling, according to that purpose, hewed out and severed by God’s own hand from the quarry of corrupt nature; ­dead stones in themselves, as the rest, but made living by his bringing them to Christ, and so made truly precious’, and accounted precious by him that hath made them so.

Though this is not only true, but a most important truth, it would yet have been well to have obviated the apparent carnal consequences.

Ib. .

All sacrifice is not taken away; but it is changed from the offering of those things formerly in use, to spiritual sacrifices.  Now these are every way preferable; they are easier and cheaper to us, and yet more precious and acceptable to God.

Still understand, ­to the regenerate.  To others, they are not only not easy and cheap, but unpurchaseable and impossible too.  O God have mercy upon me!

Ib. .

Though I be beset on all hands, be accused by the Law, and mine own conscience, and by Satan, and have nothing to answer for myself; yet here I will stay, for I am sure in him there is salvation, and no where else.

“Here I will stay.”  But alas! the poor sinner has forfeited the powers of willing; miserable wishing is all he can command.  O, the dreadful injury of an irreligious education!  To be taught our prayers, and the awful truths of religion, in the same tone in which we are taught the Latin Grammar, ­and too often inspiring the same sensations of weariness and disgust!

Vol.  II. .

And thus are reproaches mentioned amongst the sufferings of Christ in the Gospel, and not as the least; the railings and mockings that were darted at him, and fixed to the Cross, are mentioned more than the very nails that fixed him.  And (’Heb’. xi,) the ‘shame’ of the Cross, though he was above it, and despised it, yet that shame added much to the burden of it.

I understand Leighton thus:  that though our Lord felt it not as ‘shame’, nor was wounded by the revilings of the people in the way of any correspondent resentment or sting, which yet we may be without blame, yet he suffered from the same as sin, and as an addition to the guilt of his persecutors, which could not but aggravate the burden which he had taken on himself, as being sin in its most devilish form.

Ib. .

This therefore is mainly to be studied, that the seat of humility be the heart.  Although it will be seen in the carriage yet as little as it can .  And this I would recommend as a safe way:  ever let thy thoughts concerning thyself be below what thou utterest; and what thou seest needful or fitting to say to thy own abasement, be not only content (which most are not) to be taken at thy word, and believed to be such by them that hear thee, but be desirous of it; and let that be the end of thy speech, to persuade them, and gain it of them, that they really take thee for as worthless a man as thou dost express thyself.

Alas! this is a most delicate and difficult subject:  and the safest way, and the only safe general rule is the silence that accompanies the inward act of looking at the contrast in all that is of our own doing and impulse!  So may praises be made their own antidote.

Vol.  III. .  Serm.  I.

  ‘They shall see God’.  What this is we cannot tell you, nor can you
  conceive it:  but walk heavenwards in purity, and long to be there,
  where you shall know what it means:  ‘for you shall know him as he is’.

We say; “Now I see the full meaning, force and beauty of a passage, ­we see them through the words.”  Is not Christ the Word ­the substantial, consubstantial Word, [Greek:  ho on eis ton kolpon tou patros], ­not as our words, arbitrary; nor even as the words of Nature phenomenal merely?  If even through the words a powerful and perspicuous author ­(as in the next to inspired Commentary of Archbishop Leighton, ­for whom God be praised!) ­I identify myself with the excellent writer, and his thoughts become my thoughts:  what must not the blessing be to be thus identified first with the Filial Word, and then with the Father in and through Him?

Ib. .  Serm.  V.

In this elementary world, light being (as we hear,) the first visible, all things are seen by it, and it by itself.  Thus is Christ, among spiritual things, in the elect world of his Church; all things are ‘made manifest by the light’, says the Apostle, ‘Eph’. , speaking of Christ as the following verse doth evidently testify.  It is in his word that he shines, and makes it a directing and convincing light, to discover all things that concern his Church and himself, to be known by its own brightness.  How impertinent then is that question so much tossed by the Romish Church, “How know you the Scriptures (say they) to be the word of God, without the testimony of the Church?” I would ask one of them again, How they can know that it is daylight, except some light a candle to let them see it?  They are little versed in Scripture that know not that it is frequently called light; and they are senseless that know not that light is seen and known by itself.  ‘If our Gospel be hid’, says the Apostle, ’it is hid to them that perish’:  the god of this world having blinded their minds against the light of the glorious Gospel, no wonder if such stand in need of a testimony.  A blind man knows not that it is light at noon-day, but by report:  but to those that have eyes, light is seen by itself.

On the true test of the Scriptures.  Oh! were it not for my manifold infirmities, whereby I am so all unlike the white-robed Leighton, I could almost conceit that my soul had been an emanation from his!  So many and so remarkable are the coincidences, and these in parts of his works that I could not have seen ­and so uniform the congruity of the whole.  As I read, I seem to myself to be only thinking my own thoughts over again, now in the same and now in a different order.

Ib. .

The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him (Christ) [Greek:  apaugasma], ’the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the character of his person’, .) And under these expressions lies that remarkable mystery of the Son’s eternal relation to the Father, which is rather humbly to be adored, than boldly to be explained, either by God’s perfect understanding of his own essence, or by any other notion.

Certainly not by a transfer of a notion, and this too a notion of a faculty itself but notional and limitary, to the Supreme Reality.  But there are ideas which are of higher origin than the notions of the understanding, and by the irradiation of which the understanding itself becomes a human understanding.  Of such ‘veritates verificae’ Leighton himself in other words speaks often.  Surely, there must have been an intelligible propriety in the terms, ‘Logos’, Word, ’Begotten before all creation’, ­an adequate idea or ‘icon’, or the Evangelists and Apostolic penmen would not have adopted them.  They did not invent the terms; but took them and used them as they were taken and applied by Philo and both the Greek and Oriental sages.  Nay, the precise and orthodox, yet frequent, use of these terms by Philo, and by the Jewish authors of that traditionalae wisdom, ­degraded in after times, but which in its purest parts existed long before the Christian aera, ­is the strongest extrinsic argument against the Arians, Socinians, and Unitarians, in proof that St. John must have meant to deceive his readers, if he did not use them in the known and received sense.  To a Materialist indeed, or to those who deny all knowledges not resolvable into notices from the five senses, these terms as applied to spiritual beings must appear inexplicable or senseless.  But so must spirit.  To me, (why do I say to me?) to Bull, to Waterland, to Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Athanasius, Augustine, the terms, Word and generation, have appeared admirably, yea, most awfully pregnant and appropriate; ­but still as the language of those who know that they are placed with their backs to substances ­and which therefore they can name only from the correspondent shadows ­yet not (God forbid!) as if the substances were the same as the shadows; ­which yet Leighton supposed in this his censure, ­for if he did not, he then censures himself and a number of his most beautiful passages.  These, and two or three other sentences, ­slips of human infirmity, ­are useful in reminding me that Leighton’s works are not inspired Scripture.

‘Postscript’.

On a second consideration of this passage, and a revisal of my marginal animadversion ­yet how dare I apply such a word to a passage written by a minister of Christ so clearly under the especial light of the divine grace as was Archbishop Leighton? ­I am inclined to think that Leighton confined his censure to the attempts to “explain” the Trinity, ­and this by “notions,” ­and not to the assertion of the adorable acts implied in the terms both of the Evangelists and Apostles, and of the Church before as well as after Christ’s ascension; nor to the assent of the pure reason to the truths, and more than assent to, the affirmation of the ideas.

Ib. .

This fifth Sermon, excellent in parts, is yet on the whole the least excellent of Leighton’s works, ­and breathes less of either his own character as a man, or the character of his religious philosophy.  The style too is in many places below Leighton’s ordinary style ­in some places even turbid, operose, and catechrestic; ­for example, ­“to trample on smilings with one foot and on frownings with the other.”

Ib. .  Serm.  VI.

Leighton, I presume, was acquainted with the Hebrew Language, but he does not appear to have studied it much.  His observation on the ‘heart’, as used in the Old Testament, shews that he did not know that the ancient Hebrews supposed the heart to be the seat of intellect, and therefore used it exactly as we use the head.

Ib. .  Serm.  VII.

This seventh Sermon is admirable throughout, Leighton throughout.  O what a contrast might be presented by publishing some discourse of some Court divine, (South for instance,) preached under the same state of affairs, and printing the two in columns!

Ib. .  Serm.  VIII.

In all love three things are necessary; some goodness in the object, either true and real, or apparent and seeming to be so; for the soul, be it ever so evil, can affect nothing but which it takes in some way to be good.

This assertion in these words has been so often made, from Plato’s times to ours, that even wise men repeat it without perhaps much examination whether it be not equivocal ­or rather (I suspect) true only in that sense in which it would amount to nothing ­nothing to the purpose at least.  This is to be regretted ­for it is a mischievous equivoque, to make ‘good’ a synonyme of ‘pleasant,’ or even the ‘genus’ of which pleasure is a ‘species’.  It is a grievous mistake to say, that bad men seek pleasure because it is good.  No! like children they call it good because it is pleasant.  Even the useful must derive its meaning from the good, not ‘vice versa’.

Postscript.

The lines in , noted by me, are one of a myriad instances to prove how rash it is to quote single sentences or assertions from the correctest writers, without collating them with the known system or express convictions of the author.  It would be easy to cite fifty passages from Archbishop Leighton’s works in direct contradiction to the sentence in question ­which he had learnt in the schools when a lad, and afterwards had heard and met with so often that he was not aware that he had never sifted its real purport.  This eighth Sermon is another most admirable discourse.

Ib.  Serm.  IX. .

The reasonable creature, it is true, hath more liberty in its actions, freely choosing one thing and rejecting another; yet it cannot be denied, that in acting of that liberty, their choice and refusal follow the sway of their nature and condition.

I would fain substitute for ‘follow,’ the words, ’are most often determined, and always affected, by.’  I do not deny that the will follows the nature; but then the nature itself is a will.

Ib.

As the angels and glorified souls, (their nature being perfectly holy and unalterably such,) they cannot sin; they can delight in nothing but obeying and praising that God, in the enjoyment of whom their happiness consisteth.

If angels be other than spirits made perfect, or, as Leighton writes, “glorified souls,” ­the “unalterable by nature” seems to me rashly asserted.

Ib.

The mind, [Greek:  phronaema].  Some render it the prudence or wisdom of the flesh.  Here you have it, the carnal mind; but the word signifies, indeed, an act of the mind, rather than either the faculty itself, or the habit of prudence in it, so as it discovers what is the frame of both those.

I doubt. [Greek:  Phronaema] signifies an act:  and so far I agree with Leighton.  But [Greek:  phronaema sarkos] is ‘the flesh’ (that is, the natural man,) in the act or habitude of minding ­but those acts, taken collectively, are the faculty ­the understanding.

How often have I found reason to regret, that Leighton had not clearly made out to himself the diversity of reason and the understanding!

Ib.  Serm.  XV. .

A narrow enthralled heart, fettered with the love of lower things, and cleaving to some particular sins, or but some one, and that secret, may keep foot a while in the way of God’s commandments, in some steps of them; but it must give up quickly, is not able to run on to the end of the goal.

One of the blessed privileges of the spiritual man (and such Leighton was,) is a piercing insight into the diseases of which he himself is clear. [Greek:  Eleaeson Kyrie!]

Ib.  Serm.  XVI. .

Know you not that the redeemed of Christ and He are one?  They live one life, Christ lives in them, and if ’any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his’, as the Apostle declares in this chapter.  So then this we are plainly to tell you, and consider it; you that will not let go your sins to lay hold on Christ, have as yet no share in him.

But on the other side:  the truth is, that when souls are once set upon this search, they commonly wind the notion too high, and subtilize too much in the dispute, and so entangle and perplex themselves, and drive themselves further off from that comfort that they are seeking after; such measures and marks they set to themselves for their rule and standard; and unless they find those without all controversy in themselves, they will not believe that they have an interest in Christ, and this blessed and safe estate in him.

  To such I would only say, Are you in a willing league with any known
  sin? &c.

An admirable antidote for such as, too sober and sincere to pass off feverous sensations for spiritualities, have been perplexed by Wesley’s assertions ­that a certainty of having been elected is an indispensable mark of election.  Whitfield’s ultra-Calvinism is Gospel gentleness and Pauline sobriety compared with Wesley’s Arminianism in the outset of his career.  But the main and most noticeable difference between Leighton and the modern Methodists is to be found in the uniform selfishness of the latter.  Not “Do you wish to love God?” “Do you love your neighbour?” “Do you think, ‘O how dear and lovely must Christ be!’” ­but ­“Are you certain that Christ has saved ‘you’; that he died for ’you ­you ­you ­yourself’?” on to the end of the chapter.  This is Wesley’s doctrine.

Lecture IX. vol.  IV. .

For that this was his fixed purpose, Lucretius not only vows, but also boasts of it, and loads him (Epicurus) with ill-advised praises, for endeavouring through the whole course of his philosophy to free the minds of men from all the bonds and ties of religion.

But surely in this passage ‘religio’ must be rendered superstition, the most effectual means for the removal of which Epicurus supposed himself to have found in the exclusion of the ‘gods many and lords many’, from their imagined agency in all the ‘phaenomena’ of nature and the events of history, substituting for these the belief in fixed laws, having in themselves their evidence and necessity.  On this account, in this passage at least, Lucretius praises his master.

Ib. .

They always seemed to me to act a very ridiculous part, who contend, that the effect of the divine decree is absolutely irreconcilable with human liberty; because the natural and necessary liberty of a rational creature is to act or choose from a rational motive, or spontaneously, and of purpose:  but who sees not, that, on the supposition of the most absolute decree, this liberty is not taken away, but rather established and confirmed?  For the decree is, ’that such an one shall make choice of, or do some particular thing freely.  And whoever pretends to deny, that whatever is done or chosen, whether good or indifferent, is so done or chosen, or, at least, may be so, espouses an absurdity.’

I fear, I fear, that this is a sophism not worthy of Archbishop Leighton.  It seems to me tantamount to saying ­“I force that man to do so or so without my forcing him.”  But however that may be, the following sentences are more precious than diamonds.  They are divine.

Ib.  Lect.  XI. .

For that this world, compounded of so many and such heterogeneous parts, should proceed, by way of natural and necessary emanation, from that one first, present, and most simple nature, nobody, I imagine, could believe, or in the least suspect .  But if he produced all these things freely, how much more consistent is it to believe, that this was done in time, than to imagine it was from eternity!

It is inconceivable how any thing can be created in time; and production is incompatible with interspace.

Ib.  Lect.  XV. .

The Platonists divide the world into two, the sensible and intellectual world .  According to this hypothesis, those parables and metaphors, which are often taken from natural things to illustrate such as are divine, will not be similitudes taken entirely at pleasure; but are often, in a great measure, founded in nature, and the things themselves.

I have asserted the same thing, and more fully shown wherein the difference consists of symbolic and metaphorical, in my first Lay Sermon; and the substantial correspondence of the genuine Platonic doctrine and logic with those of Lord Bacon, in my Essays on Method, in the Friend.

Ib.  Lect.  XIX. .

Even the philosophers give their testimony to this truth, and their sentiments on the subject are not altogether to be rejected; for they almost unanimously are agreed, that felicity, so far as it can be enjoyed in this life, consists solely, or at least principally, in virtue:  but as to their assertion, that this virtue is perfect in a perfect life, it is rather expressing what were to be wished, than describing things as they are.

And why are the philosophers to be judged according to a different rule?  On what ground can it be asserted that the Stoics believed in the actual existence of their God-like perfection in any individual? or that they meant more than this ­“To no man can the name of the Wise be given in its absolute sense, who is not perfect even as his Father in heaven is perfect!”

Ib.  Lect.  XXI. .

In like manner, if we suppose God to be the first of all beings, we must, unavoidably, therefrom conclude his unity.  As to the ineffable Trinity subsisting in this Unity, a mystery discovered only by the Sacred Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, where it is more clearly revealed than in the Old, let others boldly pry into it, if they please, while we receive it with our humble faith, and think it sufficient for us to admire and adore.

But surely it having been revealed to us, we may venture to say, ­that a positive unity, so far from excluding, implies plurality, and that the Godhead is a fulness, [Greek:  plaeroma].

Ib.  Lect.  XXIV. .

  Ask yourselves, therefore, ‘what you would be at’, and with what
  dispositions you come to this most sacred table?

In an age of colloquial idioms, when to write in a loose slang had become a mark of loyalty, this is the only L’Estrange vulgarism I have met with in Leighton.

Ib.  Exhortation to the Students, .

Study to acquire such a philosophy as is not barren and babbling, but solid and true; not such a one as floats upon the surface of endless verbal controversies, but one that enters into the nature of things; for he spoke good sense that said, “The philosophy of the Greeks was a mere jargon, and noise of words.”

If so, then so is all philosophy:  for what system is there, the elements and outlines of which are not to be found in the Greek schools?  Here Leighton followed too incautiously the Fathers.