The devils believe.
Ib.p. 166.
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 calleda 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.p. 170.
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. Jobxiv. 1, 2. Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.
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: tò
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: tà màe ónta, all' aèi ginómena
—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
. xv. 35—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 thisabiding for everis 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 Lógos 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:rháemata
or Scriptures.
Ib.p. 194.
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.p. 200.
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.p. 211.
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 trulyprecious, 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.p. 216.
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.p. 229.
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. p. 242.
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. xii. 2,) theshameof 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.p. 293.
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. p. 20. 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 ôn eis tòn kólpon tou patrós
see previous image
—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.p. 63. 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 aremade manifest by the light, says the Apostle,Eph. v. 13, 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.p. 68.
The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him (Christ)Greek: apaúgasma,the brightness of his Father's glory, and the character of his person, (i. 3.) 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 verificæ
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 traditionalæ wisdom,—degraded in after times, but which in its purest parts existed long before the Christian æra,—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.p. 73.
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.p. 77. 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.p. 104. 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.p. 107. 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 p. 107, 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. p. 12.
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 followAthe sway of their nature and condition.
A
: 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: phrónaema. 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: phrónaema
. signifies an act: and so far I agree with Leighton. But
Greek: phrónaema sarkòs
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. p. 196.
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: Eléaeson Kyrie!
Ib.Serm. XVI. p. 204.
Know you not that the redeemed of Christ and He are one? They live one life, Christ lives in them, and ifany 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. p. 96.
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
phœnomena
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.p. 105.
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. p. 113.
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. p. 152.
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
2
.
Ib.Lect. XIX. p. 201.
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. p. 225.
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. p. 245.