compendia of moral and political philosophy, natural theology, evidences of Christianity, and the like, are false, injurious, and debasing. But I am likewise not less deeply convinced that all the well-meant attacks on the writings of modern infidels and heretics, in support either of the miracles or of the mysteries of the Christian religion, can be of no permanent utility, while the authors themselves join in the vulgar appeal to common sense as the one infallible judge in matters, which become subjects of philosophy only, because they involve a contradiction between this common sense and our moral instincts, and require therefore an arbiter, which containing both eminenter must be higher than either. We but mow down the rank misgrowth instead of cleansing the soil, as long as we ourselves protect and manure, as the pride of our garden, a tree of false knowledge, which looks fair and shewy and variegated with fruits not its own, that hang from the branches which have at various times been ingrafted on its stem; but from the roots of which under ground the runners are sent off, that shoot up at a distance and bring forth the true and natural crop. I will speak plainly, though in so doing I must bid defiance to all the flatterers of the folly and foolish self-opinion of the halfinstructed many. The articles of our Church, and the true principles of government and social order, will never be effectually and consistently maintained against their antagonists till the champions have themselves ceased to worship the same Baal with their enemies, till they have cast out the common idol from the recesses of their own convictions, and with it the whole service and ceremonial of idolism. While all parties agree in their abjuration of Plato and Aristotle, and in their contemptuous neglect of the Schoolmen and the scholastic logic, without which the excellent Selden (that genuine English mind whose erudition, broad, deep, and manifold as it was, is yet less remarkable than his robust healthful common sense) af firms it impossible for a divine thoroughly to comprehend or reputably to defend the whole undiminished and unadulterated scheme of Catholic faith, while all alike preassume, with Mr. Locke, that the mind contains only the reliques of the senses, and therefore proceed with him to explain the substance from the shadow, the voice from the echo,-they can but detect each the other's inconsistencies. The champion of orthodoxy will victoriously expose the bald and staring incongruity of the Socinian scheme with the language of Scripture, and with the final causes of all revealed religion:-the Socinian will retort on the orthodox the incongruity of a belief in mysteries with his own admissions concerning the origin, and nature of all tenable ideas, and as triumphantly expose the pretences of believing in a form of words, to which the believer himself admits that he can attach no consistent meaning. Lastly, the godless materialist, as the only consistent because the only consequent reasoner, will secretly laugh at both. If these sentiments should be just, the consequences are so important that every well-educated man, who has given proofs that he has at least patiently studied the subject, deserves a patient hearing. Had I not the authority of the greatest and noblest intellects for at least two thousand years on my side, yet from the vital interest of the opinions themselves, and their natural, unconstrained, and (as it were) spontaneous coalescence with the faith of the Catholic Church, (they being, moreover, the opinions of its most eminent Fathers) I might appeal to all orthodox Christians, whether they adhere to the faith only or both to the faith and forms of the Church, in the words of my motto: Ad isthæc quæso vos, qualiacunque primo videantur aspectu attendite, ut qui vobis forsan insanire videar, saltem quibus insaniam rationibus cognoscatis. There are still a few, however, young men of loftiest minds, and the very stuff out of which the sword and shield of truth and honour are to be made, who will not withdraw all confidence from the writer, although 'Tis true, that passionate for ancient truths a few there are, who will still less be indisposed to follow him in his milder mood, whenever their Friend, Piercing the long-neglected holy cave, Of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage!t I have hinted, above, at the necessity of a glossary, and I will conclude these supplementary remarks with a nomenclature of the principal terms which occur in the elements of speculative philosophy, in their old and rightful sense, according to my belief; at all events the sense in which I have myself employed them. The most general term (genus summum) belonging to the speculative intellect, as distinguished from acts of the will, is Representation, or (still better) Presentation. A conscious Presentation, if it refers exclusively to the subject, as a modification of his own state of being, is= Sensation. Perception. =an In The same if it refers to an Object, is tuition. * Poet. Works, I. p. 200. Ed. + Ib. Ed. The same, mediate, and by means of a character or mark common to several things, is = a Conception. A Conception, extrinsic and sensuous, is = a Fact, or a Cognition. The same, purely mental and abstracted from the forms of the understanding itself a Notion. A notion may be realized, and becomes cognition; but that which is neither a sensation or a perception, that which is neither individual (that is, a sensible intuition) nor general (that is, a conception) which neither refers to outward facts, nor yet is abstracted from the forms of perception contained in the understanding; but which is an educt of the imagination actuated by the pure reason, to which there neither is nor can be an adequate correspondent in the world of the senses;-this and this alone is an Idea. Whether ideas are regulative only, according to Aristotle and Kant; or likewise constitutive, and one with the power and life of nature, according to Plato, and Plotinus (ἐν λόγῳ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων) is the highest problem of philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature.* |