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 G.o.d.
Still understand,--to the regenerate. To others, they are not only not easy and cheap, but unpurchaseable and impossible too. O G.o.d 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,) 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. 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 abas.e.m.e.nt, 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 G.o.d". 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 pa.s.sage,--we see them through the words." Is not Christ the Word--the substantial, consubstantial Word, [Greek: ho on eis tn 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 G.o.d 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 are "made 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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: apaugasma], "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 G.o.d"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 n.a.z.ianzen, 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 (G.o.d 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 pa.s.sages. 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 pa.s.sage, and a revisal of my marginal animadversion--yet how dare I apply such a word to a pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sent of the pure reason to the truths, and more than a.s.sent 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sertions from the correctest writers, without collating them with the known system or express convictions of the author. It would be easy to cite fifty pa.s.sages 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 [A] follow the sway of their nature and condition.
[A] I would fain subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.serted.