APHORISM L.

ON THE HOPES AND SELF-SATISFACTION OF A RELIGIOUS MORALIST, INDEPENDENT OF A SPIRITUAL FAITH-ON WHAT ARE THEY GROUNDED?

LEIGHTON.

There have been great disputes one way or another, about the merit of good works; but I truly think they who have laboriously engaged in them have been very idly, though very eagerly, employed about nothing, since the more sober of the schoolmen themselves acknowledge there can be no such thing as meriting from the blessed God, in the human, or, to speak more accurately, in any created nature whatsoever : nay, so far from any possibility of merit, there can be no room for reward any otherwise than of the sovereign pleasure and gracious kindness of God; and the more ancient writers, when they use the word merit, mean nothing by it but a certain correlate to that reward which God both promises and bestows of mere grace and benignity. Otherwise, in order to constitute what is properly called merit, many things must concur, which no man in his senses will presume to attribute to human works, though ever so excellent; particularly, that the thing done must not previously be matter of debt, and that it be entire, or our own act, unassisted by foreign aid; it must also be perfectly good, and it must bear an adequate proportion to the reward claimed in consequence of it. If all these things do not concur, the act cannot possibly amount to merit. Whereas I think no one will venture to assert, that any one of these can take place in any human action whatever. But why should I enlarge here, when one single circumstance overthrows all those titles: the most righteous of mankind would not be able to stand, if his works were weighed in the balance of strict justice; how much

less then could they deserve that immense glory which is now in question! Nor is this to be denied only concerning the unbeliever and the sinner, but concerning the righteous and pious believer, who is not only free from all the guilt of his former impenitence and rebellion, but endowed with the gift of the Spirit. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? 1 Peter iv. 17, 18. The Apostle's interrogation expresses the most vehement negation, and signifies that no mortal, in whatever degree he is placed, if he be called to the strict examination of divine justice, without daily and repeated forgiveness, could be able to keep his standing, and much less could he arise to that glorious height. That merit,' says Bernard, ' on which my hope relies, consists in these three things; the love of adoption, the truth of the promise, and the power of its performance.'. This is the threefold cord which cannot be broken.

COMMENT.

Often have I heard it said by advocates for the Socinian scheme-True! we are all sinners; but even in the Old Testament God has promised forgiveness on repentance. One of the Fathers (I forget which) supplies the retort-True! God has promised pardon on penitence: but has he promised penitence on sin?-He that repenteth shall be forgiven: but where is it said, He that sinneth shall repent? But repentance, perhaps, the repentance required in Scripture, the passing into a new and contrary principle of action, this METANOIA,* is in the sinner's own

METávola, the New Testament word, which we render by repentance, compounded of μɛrà, trans, and võç, mens, the spirit, or practical reason.

power? at his own liking? He has but to open his eyes to the sin, and the tears are close at hand to wash it away! Verily, the exploded tenet of transubstantiation is scarcely at greater variance with the common sense and experience of mankind, or borders more closely on a contradiction in terms, than this volunteer transmentation, this self-change, as the easy* means of self-salvation! But the reflections of our evangelical author on this subject will appropriately commence the aphorisms relating to spiritual religion.

* May I without offence be permitted to record the very appropriate title, with which a stern humorist lettered a collection of Unitarian tracts? "Salvation made easy; or, Every man his own Redeemer."

ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY,

PRELIMINARY TO THE APHORISMS ON

SPIRITUAL RELIGION.

us.

:

Philip saith unto him: Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth Jesus saith unto him, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me? And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth: whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. And in that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you. John xiv. 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 20.

PRELIMINARY.

Ir there be aught spiritual in man, the will must be such.

If there be a will, there must be a spirituality in

man.

I suppose both positions granted. The reader admits the reality of the power, agency, or mode of being expressed in the term, spirit; and the actual existence of a will. He sees clearly, that the idea of the former is necessary to the conceivability of the latter; and that, vice versa, in asserting the fact of the latter he presumes and instances the truth of the former-just as in our common and received systems of natural philosophy, the being of imponderable matter is assumed to render the lode-stone intelligible, and the fact of the lode-stone adduced to prove the reality of imponderable matter.

In short, I suppose the reader, whom I now invite to the third and last division of the work, already disposed to reject for himself and his human brethren the insidious title of "Nature's noblest animal," or to retort it as the unconscious irony of the Epicurean poet on the animalizing tendency of his own philosophy. I suppose him convinced, that there is more in man than can be rationally referred to the life of nature and the mechanism of organization; that he has a will not included in this mechanism; and that the will is in an especial and pre-eminent sense the spiritual part of our humanity.

Unless, then, we have some distinct notion of the will, and some acquaintance with the prevalent errors respecting the same, an insight into the nature of spiritual religion is scarcely possible; and our reflections on the particular truths and evidences of a spiritual state will remain obscure, perplexed, and unsafe. To place my reader on this requisite vantageground, is the purpose of the following exposition.

We have begun, as in geometry, with defining our terms; and we proceed, like the geometricians, with stating our postulates; the difference being, that the postulates of geometry no man can deny, those of moral science are such as no good man will deny. For it is not in our power to disclaim our nature as sentient beings; but it is in our power to disclaim our nature as moral beings. It is possible (barely possible, I admit) that a man may have remained ignorant or unconscious of the moral law within him : and a man need only persist in disobeying the law of conscience to make it possible for himself to deny its existence, or to reject and repel it as a phantom of superstition. Were it otherwise, the Creed would stand in the same relation to morality as the multiplication table.

This then is the distinction of moral philosophynot that I begin with one or more assumptions; for

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