Footnote 1:
The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. By Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, a converted Jew. Translated from the Spanish, with a preliminary Discourse. By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. London, 1827.
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Footnote 2:
See
supra
, vol. iii. p. 93.—
Ed.
return
Footnote 3:
P. 157, 4th edit.—
Ed.
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Contents/Index
1827.
How natural it is to mistake the weakness of an adversary's arguments for the strength of our own cause! This is especially applicable to Mr. Noble's Appeal. Assuredly as far as Mr. Beaumont's Notes are concerned, his victory is complete.
Sect. IV. p. 210.
The intellectual spirit is moving upon the chaos of minds, which ignorance and necessity have thrown into collision and confusion; and the result will be a new creation. "Nature" (to use the nervous language of an-old writer,) "will be melted down and recoined; and all will be bright and beautiful."
Alas! if this be possible now, or at any time henceforward, whence came the dross? If nature be bullion that can be melted and thus purified by the conjoint action of heat and elective attraction, I pray Mr. Noble to tell me to what name or
genus
he refers the dross? Will he tell me, to the Devil? Whence came the Devil? And how was the pure bullion so thoughtlessly made as to have an elective affinity for this Devil?
Sect. V. p. 286.
The next anecdote that I shall adduce is similar in its nature to the last * * *. The relater is Dr. Stilling, Counsellor at the Court of the Duke of Baden, in a work entitledDie Theorie der Geister-Kunde, printed in 1808.
Mr. Noble is a man of too much English good sense to have relied on Sung's (
alias
Dr. Stilling's) testimony, had he ever read the work in which this passage is found. I happen to possess the work; and a more anile, credulous, solemn fop never existed since the days of old Audley. It is strange that Mr. Noble should not have heard, that these three anecdotes were first related by Immanuel Kant, and still exist in his miscellaneous writings.
Ib.p. 315.
"Can he be a sane man who records the subsequent reverie as matter of fact? The Baron informs us, that on a certain night a man appeared to him in the midst of a strong shining light, and said,I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer; I have chosen thee to explain to men the interior and spiritual sense of the Sacred Writings: I will dictate to thee what thou oughtest to write?From this period, the Baron relates he was so illumined, as to behold, in the clearest manner, what passed in the spiritual world, and that he could converse with angels and spirits as with men," &c.
I remember no such passage as this in Swedenborg's works. Indeed it is virtually contradicted by their whole tenor. Swedenborg asserts himself to relate
visa et audita
,—his own experience, as a traveller and visitor of the spiritual world,—not the words of another as a mere
amanuensis
. But altogether this Gulielmus must be a silly Billy.
Ib.p. 321.
The Apostolic canon in such cases is, 'Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God'. (1 John iv. 1.) And the touchstone to which they are to be brought is pointed out by the Prophet:To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them.(Is. viii. 20.) But instead of this canon you offer another * * *. It is simply this: Whoever professes to be the bearer of divine communications, is insane. To bring Swedenborg within the operation of this rule, you quote, as if from his own works, a passage which is nowhere to be found in them, but which you seem to have taken from some biographical dictionary or cyclopædia; few or none of which give anything like a fair account of the matter.
Aye! my memory did not fail me, I find. As to insanity in the sense intended by Gulielmus, namely, as
mania
,—I should as little think of charging Swedenborg with it, as of calling a friend mad who laboured under an
acyanoblepsia
.
Ib.p. 323.
Did you never read of one who says, in words very like your version of the Baron's reverie:It came to pass, that, as I took my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me: and I fell on the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
In the short space of four years the newspapers contained three several cases, two of which I cut out, and still have among my ocean of papers, and which, as stated, were as nearly parallel, in external accompaniments, to St. Paul's as cases can well be:—struck with lightning,—heard the thunder as an articulate voice,—blind for a few days, and suddenly recovered their sight. But then there was no Ananias, no confirming revelation to another. This it was that justified St. Paul as a wise man in regarding the incident as supernatural, or as more than a providential omen.
N.B.
Not every revelation requires a sensible miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of
credenda
. The prophets appealed to records of acknowledged authority, and to their obvious sense literally interpreted. The Baptist needed no miracle to attest his right of calling sinners to repentance. See
Exodus
iv. 10.
Ib.pp. 346, 7.
This sentiment, that miracles are not the proper evidences of doctrinal truth, is, assuredly, the decision of the Truth itself; as is obvious from many passages in Scripture. We have seen that the design of the miracles of Moses, as external performances, was not to instruct the Israelites in spiritual subjects, but to make them obedient subjects of a peculiar species of political state. And though the miracles of Jesus Christ collaterally served as testimonies to his character, he repeatedly intimates that this was not their main design. * * * At another time more plainly still, he says, that it isa wicked and adulterous generation(that)seeketh after a sign; on which occasion, according to Mark,he sighed deeply in his spirit. How characteristic is that touch of the Apostle,The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom!(where by wisdom he means the elegance and refinement of Grecian literature.)
Agreeing, as in the main I do, with the sentiments here expressed by this eloquent writer, I must notice that he has, however, mistaken the sense of the
Greek: saemeion
which the Jews would have tempted our Saviour to shew,—namely, the signal for revolt by openly declaring himself their king, and leading them against the Romans. The foreknowledge that this superstition would shortly hurry them into utter ruin caused the deep sigh,—as on another occasion, the bitter tears. Again, by the
Greek: sophía
of the Greeks their disputatious
Greek: sophistikàe
is meant. The sophists pretended to teach wisdom as an art: and
sophistæ
may be literally rendered, wisdom-mongers, as we say, iron-mongers.
Ib.p. 350.
Some probably will say, "What argument can induce us to believe a man in a concern of this nature who gives no visible credentials to his authority?" * * * But let us ask in return, "Is it worthy of a being wearing the figure of a man to require such proofs as these to determine his judgment?" * * * "The beasts act from the impulse of their bodily senses, but are utterly incapable of seeing from reason why they should so act: and it might easily be shewn, that while a man thinks and acts under the influence of a miracle, he is as much incapable of perceiving from any rational ground why he should thus think and act, as a beast is." "What!" our opponents will perhaps reply, * * * "Was it not by miracles that the prophets (some of them) testified their authority? Do you not believe these facts?" Yes, my friends, I do most entirely believe them, &c.
There is so much of truth in all this reasoning on miracles, that I feel pain in the thought that the result is false,—because it was not the whole truth. But this is the grounding, and at the same time pervading, error of the Swedenborgians;—that they overlook the distinction between congruity with reason, truth of consistency, or internal possibility of this or that being objectively real, and the objective reality as fact. Miracles, 'quoad' miracles, can never supply the place of subjective evidence, that is, of insight. But neither can subjective insight supply the place of objective sight. The certainty of the truth of a mathematical arch can never prove the fact of its existence. I anticipate the answers; but know that they likewise proceed from the want of distinguishing between ideas, such as God, Eternity, the responsible Will, the Good, and the like,—the actuality of which is absolutely subjective, and includes both the relatively subjective and the relatively objective as higher or transcendant realities, which alone are the proper objects of faith, the great postulates of reason in order to its own admission of its own being,—the not distinguishing, I say, between these, and those positions which must be either matters of fact or fictions. For such latter positions it is that miracles are required in lieu of experience. A.'s testimony of experience supplies the want of the same experience for B. C. D., &c. For example, how many thousands believe the existence of red snow on the testimony of Captain Parry! But who can expect more than hints in a marginal note?
Sect. VI. pp. 378, 9; 380, 1.
In the general views, then, which are presented in the writings of Swedenborg on the subject of Heaven and Hell, as the abodes, respectively, of happiness and of misery, while there certainly is not anything which is not in the highest degree agreeable both to reason and Scripture, there also seems nothing which could be deemed inconsistent with the usual conceptions of the Christian world.
What tends to render thinking readers a little sceptical, is the want of a distinct boundary between the deductions from reason, and the articles, the truth of which is to rest on the Baron's personal testimony, his
visa et audita
. Nor is the Baron himself (as it appears to me) quite consistent on this point.
Ib.p. 434.
Witness, again, the poet Milton, who introduces active sports among the recreations which he deemed worthy of angels, and (strange indeed for a Puritan!) included even dancing among the number.
How could a man of Noble's sense and sensibility bring himself thus to profane the awful name of Milton, by associating it with the epithet "Puritan?"
I have often thought of writing a work to be entitled
Vindiciæ Heterodoxæ, sive celebrium virorumGreek: paradogmatizóntôndefensio
; that is, Vindication of Great Men unjustly branded; and at such times the names prominent to my mind's eye have been Giordano Bruno, Jacob Behmen, Benedict Spinoza, and Emanuel Swedenborg. Grant, that the origin of the Swedenborgian theology is a problem; yet on which ever of the three possible hypotheses—(possible I mean for gentlemen, scholars and Christians)—it may be solved—-namely:
P. S.
Notwithstanding all that Mr. Noble says in justification of his arrangement, it is greatly to be regretted that the contents of this work are so confusedly tossed together. It is, however, a work of great merit.
Footnote 1:
An Appeal in behalf of the views of the eternal world and state, and the doctrines of faith and life, held by the body of Christians who believe that a New Church is signified (in the Revelation, c. xxi.) by the New Jerusalem, including Answers to objections, particularly those of the Rev. G. Beaumont, in his work entitled "The Anti-Swedenborg." Addressed to the reflecting of all denominations. By Samuel Noble, Minister of Hanover Street Chapel, London. London, 1826.
Ed.
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Contents/Index
Faith may be defined, as fidelity to our own being—so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication, to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses: and again to whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me;—in other words, a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;—that the maxim (
regula maxima
or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings;—this, I say, is a fact of which I am no less conscious (though in a different way), nor less assured, than I am of any appearance presented by my outward senses. Nor is this all; but in the very act of being conscious of this in my own nature, I know that it is a fact of which all men either are or ought to be conscious;—a fact, the ignorance of which constitutes either the non-personality of the ignorant, or the guilt, in which latter case the ignorance is equivalent to knowledge wilfully darkened. I know that I possess this consciousness as a man, and not as Samuel Taylor Coleridge; hence knowing that consciousness of this fact is the root of all other consciousness, and the only practical contradistinction of man from the brutes, we name it the conscience; by the natural absence or presumed presence of which, the law, both divine and human, determines whether X Y Z be a thing or a person:—the conscience being that which never to have had places the objects in the same order of things as the brutes, for example, idiots; and to have lost which implies either insanity or apostasy. Well—this we have affirmed is a fact of which every honest man is as fully assured as of his seeing, hearing or smelling. But though the former assurance does not differ from the latter in the degree, it is altogether diverse in the kind; the senses being morally passive, while the conscience is essentially connected with the will, though not always, nor indeed in any case, except after frequent attempts and aversions of will, dependent on the choice. Thence we call the presentations of the senses impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned, we are passive;—but in the fact of the conscience we are not only agents, but it is by this alone, that we know ourselves to be such; nay, that our very passiveness in this latter is an act of passiveness, and that we are patient (
patientes
)—not, as in the other case, 'simply' passive. The result is, the consciousness of responsibility; and the proof is afforded by the inward experience of the diversity between regret and remorse.
If I have sound ears, and my companion speaks to me with a due proportion of voice, I may persuade him that I did not hear, but cannot deceive myself. But when my conscience speaks to me, I can, by repeated efforts, render myself finally insensible; to which add this other difference in the case of conscience, namely, that to make myself deaf is one and the same thing with making my conscience dumb, till at length I become unconscious of my conscience. Frequent are the instances in which it is suspended, and as it were drowned, in the inundation of the appetites, passions and imaginations, to which I have resigned myself, making use of my will in order to abandon my free-will; and there are not, I fear, examples wanting of the conscience being utterly destroyed, or of the passage of wickedness into madness;—that species of madness, namely, in which the reason is lost. For so long as the reason continues, so long must the conscience exist either as a good conscience, or as a bad conscience.
It appears then, that even the very first step, that the initiation of the process, the becoming conscious of a conscience, partakes of the nature of an act. It is an act, in and by which we take upon ourselves an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty; and this fealty or fidelity implying the power of being unfaithful, it is the first and fundamental sense of Faith. It is likewise the commencement of experience, and the result of all other experience. In other words, conscience, in this its simplest form, must be supposed in order to consciousness, that is, to human consciousness. Brutes may be, and are scions, but those beings only, who have an I,
scire possunt hoc vel illud una cum seipsis
; that is,
conscire vel scire aliquid mecum
, or to know a thing in relation to myself, and in the act of knowing myself as acted upon by that something.
Now the third person could never have been distinguished from the first but by means of the second. There can be no He without a previous Thou. Much less could an I exist for us, except as it exists during the suspension of the will, as in dreams; and the nature of brutes may be best understood, by conceiving them as somnambulists. This is a deep meditation, though the position is capable of the strictest proof,—namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and that a Thou is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as equal to Thou, and yet not the same. And this again is only possible by putting them in opposition as correspondent opposites, or correlatives. In order to this, a something must be affirmed in the one, which is rejected in the other, and this something is the will. I do not will to consider myself as equal to myself, for in the very act of constituting myself
I
, I take it as the same, and therefore as incapable of comparison, that is, of any application of the will.
If
then, I
minus
the will be the
thesis
2
; Thou
plus
will must be the
antithesis
, but the equation of Thou with I, by means of a free act, negativing the sameness in order to establish the equality, is the true definition of conscience. But as without a Thou there can be no You, so without a You no They, These or Those; and as all these conjointly form the materials and subjects of consciousness, and the conditions of experience, it is evident that the con-science is the root of all consciousness,—
a fortiori
, the precondition of all experience,—and that the conscience cannot have been in its first revelation deduced from experience. Soon, however, experience comes into play. We learn that there are other impulses beside the dictates of conscience; that there are powers within us and without us ready to usurp the throne of conscience, and busy in tempting us to transfer our allegiance. We learn that there are many things contrary to conscience, and therefore to be rejected, and utterly excluded, and many that can coexist with its supremacy only by being subjugated, as beasts of burthen; and others again, as, for instance, the social tendernesses and affections, and the faculties and excitations of the intellect, which must be at least subordinated. The preservation of our loyalty and fealty under these trials and against these rivals constitutes the second sense of Faith; and we shall need but one more point of view to complete its full import. This is the consideration of what is presupposed in the human conscience. The answer is ready. As in the equation of the correlative I and Thou, one of the twin constituents is to be taken as
plus
will, the other as
minus
will, so is it here: and it is obvious that the reason or
super
-individual of each man, whereby he is man, is the factor we are to take as
minus
will; and that the individual will or personalizing principle of free agency (arbitrement is Milton's word) is the factor marked
plus
will;—and again, that as the identity or coinherence of the absolute will and the reason, is the peculiar character of God; so is the
synthesis
of the individual will and the common reason, by the subordination of the former to the latter, the only possible likeness or image of the
prothesis
, or identity, and therefore the required proper character of man. Conscience, then, is a witness respecting the identity of the will and the reason effected by the self-subordination of the will, or self, to the reason, as equal to, or representing, the will of God. But the personal will is a factor in other moral
syntheses
; for example, appetite
plus
personal will=sensuality; lust of power,
plus
personal will,=ambition, and so on, equally as in the
synthesis
, on which the conscience is grounded. Not this therefore, but the other
synthesis
, must supply the specific character of the conscience; and we must enter into an analysis of reason. Such as the nature and objects of the reason are, such must be the functions and objects of the conscience. And the former we shall best learn by recapitulating those constituents of the total man which are either contrary to, or disparate from, the reason.
Reason is not the faculty of the finite. But here I must premise the following. The faculty of the finite is that which reduces the confused impressions of sense to their essential forms,—quantity, quality, relation, and in these action and reaction, cause and effect, and the like; thus raises the materials furnished by the senses and sensations into objects of reflection, and so makes experience possible. Without it, man's representative powers would be a delirium, a chaos, a scudding cloudage of shapes; and it is therefore most appropriately called the understanding, or substantiative faculty. Our elder metaphysicians, down to Hobbes inclusively, called this likewise discourse,
discursus, discursio,
from its mode of action as not staying at any one object, but running as it were to and fro to abstract, generalize, and classify. Now when this faculty is employed in the service of the pure reason, it brings out the necessary and universal truths contained in the infinite into distinct contemplation by the pure act of the sensuous imagination, that is, in the production of the forms of space and time abstracted from all corporeity, and likewise of the inherent forms of the understanding itself abstractedly from the consideration of particulars, as in the case of geometry, numeral mathematics, universal logic, and pure metaphysics. The discursive faculty then becomes what our Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason."
We will now take up our reasoning again from the words "motion in itself."
It is evident then, that the reason, as the irradiative power, and the representative of the infinite, judges the understanding as the faculty of the finite, and cannot without error be judged by it. When this is attempted, or when the understanding in its
synthesis
with the personal will, usurps the supremacy of the reason, or affects to supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the flesh (
Greek: phrónaema sarkòs
) or the wisdom of this world. The result is, that the reason is super-finite; and in this relation, its antagonist is the insubordinate understanding, or mind of the flesh.
Corollary
. Unlike a million of tigers, a million of men is very different from a million times one man. Each man in a numerous society is not only coexistent with, but virtually organized into, the multitude of which he is an integral part. His
idem
is modified by the
alter
. And there arise impulses and objects from this
synthesis
of the
alter et idem
, myself and my neighbour. This, again, is strictly analogous to what takes place in the vital organization of the individual man. The cerebral system of nerves has its correspondent
antithesis
in the abdominal system: but hence arises a
synthesis
of the two in the pectoral system as the intermediate, and, like a drawbridge, at once conductor and boundary. In the latter as objectized by the former arise the emotions, affections, and in one word, the passions, as distinguished from the cognitions and appetites. Now the reason has been shown to be super-individual, generally, and therefore not less so when the form of an individualization subsists in the
alter
, than when it is confined to the
idem
; not less when the emotions have their conscious or believed object in another, than when their subject is the individual personal self. For though these emotions, affections, attachments, and the like, are the prepared ladder by which the lower nature is taken up into, and made to partake of, the highest room,—as we are taught to give a feeling of reality to the higher
per medium commune
with the lower, and thus gradually to see the reality of the higher (namely, the objects of reason) and finally to know that the latter are indeed and pre-eminently real, as if you love your earthly parents whom you see, by these means you will learn to love your Heavenly Father who is invisible;—yet this holds good only so far as the reason is the president, and its objects the ultimate aim; and cases may arise in which the Christ as the Logos or Redemptive Reason declares,
He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me
; nay, he that can permit his emotions to rise to an equality with the universal reason, is in enmity with that reason. Here then reason appears as the love of God; and its antagonist is the attachment to individuals wherever it exists in diminution of, or in competition with, the love which is reason.