principles of action, and conclude that God will act in the same manner as man would if placed in similar circumstances, for, says the Lord, my thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.* Man can judge partly of things that pass on earth, although we must confess that many things even here exceed our powers of comprehension. But how can he ascend to the inaccessible heavens and declare what is passing there? If I have told you,' says our Saviour, earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?' In short we are explicitly informed, that no man knoweth the things of God, but the spirit of God.' When we read these and similar declarations respecting the incomprehensibility by the natural man of many doctrines contained in Revelation, can we be justified in attempting to wrest the Scriptures, in order to bring them down to the level of man's comprehension? If the Scriptures inform us that it gives occasional glances at unsearchable mysteries, should we sit down to the study of them with a predetermined resolution to prove that there are none contained in them? Is this the proper exercise of reason in judging of subjects of revelation? Is this the reception of Gospel truths with the simplicity of young children? How difficult a task it is to put off the natural man, ὡς χαλεπον εστι τον ανθρωπον εκδύναι! as an ancient philosopher exclaimed. Man carries his pride to the sanctuary of the Deity, and madly presumes that he can tear asunder the veil which intervenes between him and the deep things of God ;' that his finite powers are adequate to the conception of the infinite Being and his attributes; that he can see Him with the eyes of flesh; and, with a mind drowned in blood and buried in matter,' comprehend the mysterious ways of Him whose goings forth have been from everlasting.' In reasoning with deists, who object that the incomprehensibility of certain doctrines contained in the Christian revelation is the cause of their unbelief-we can easily show that unbelievers themselves cannot avoid, on their own principles, believing things incomprehensible. Do they admit the immateriality of the soul? In that case can they comprehend the mode in which it is united to the body, and how it operates on the senses? But perhaps Isaiah, lv. 8. tii. John, 12. And yet our Saviour had then declared to Nicodemus the doctrine of regeneration, a doctrine which the Jewish Rabbi could not comprehend, and which has often been the cause of violent disputes in the church. But our Saviour intimates by the words quoted that his gospel contained doctrines far more mysterious and incomprehensible than the doctrine of regeneration. ↑ 1 Cor. ii. 11, they they may wish to solve this difficulty by denying its immateriality, and hold that man is only a mass of matter peculiarly organized. This however requires a greater exertion of faith than the former article, for it is absolutely impossible to comprehend how inert matter, merely by a particular arrangement of its parts, should become a sentient and rational animal. Do they allow the infinite power and infinite goodness of God? If they do, how can they reconcile these attributes with the origin of evil and the prevalence of misery in the creation? Do they with Plutarch* detract from his power that they may exalt his goodness? If so, how can they imagine an eternal self-existing cause, deprived of a perfection so necessary to the very being of a God? Can they reconcile the free agency of man with the fore-knowledge of the Deity? Or will they solve the difficulty by denying his prescience with regard to contingent events, as Carneadest and Socinus did, and thus make him, to whom all things are present, a blind guesser into futurity? Perhaps they may judge it preferable to deny the free agency of man, and make him the slave of necessity. But this supposition contains some things still more incomprehensible. For consciousness‡ and experience alike testify that man is a free agent, and if he believe the doctrine of necessity, he must do it in opposition to the testimony of his feelings and experience. Do they believe that God is a just being? Do they also believe it to be inconsistent with justice, to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, and to visit men with the consequence of a sin committed before they were born? If they believe this, how do they account for hereditary diseases, and that the lives of many of their fellow creatures have been embittered and shortened by pollutions contracted by their parents, and infused into their constitutions before their birth? If, in answer to these questions, they should adopt the opinions of Epicurus,§ and withdraw Divine * Μυρία γαρ ην επιεικέστερον ασθενεια και αδυναμία του Διος εκβιαζόμενα τα μέρη πολλα δραν άτοπα, παρά την εκείνου φυσιν και βούλησιν, η μηλε ακρασίαν είναι μήτε κακουργίαν είναι, ἧς ουκ εστιν Ζευς αιτίες. Plutarch adversus Stoicos, p. 1076. + Dicebat Carneades, ne Apollinem quidem futura posse dicere, nisi ea, quorum causas natura ita contineret, ut ea fieri necesse esset. Quid enim spectans deus ipse diceret Marcellum, qui ter consul fuit, in mare esse periturum? Erat quidem hoc verum ex æternitate, sed causas id efficientes non habebat.-Cicero de Fato, cap. 14. In arguing against the doctrine of necessity the ancient philosophers always took it for granted, that some things are in our power, because we have from experience and consciousness as strong evidence of this as we can have of the truth of any proposition. It is thus that Carneades argues :-Cicero de Fato, cap. 14. Si omnia antecedentibus causis fiunt, omnia naturali colligatione conserta contextaque fiunt. Quod si ita est, omnia necessitas efficit. Id si verum est, nihil est in nostrâ potestate. Est autem aliquid in nostrâ potestate. At si fato omnia fiunt, omnia causis antecedentibus fiunt, non igitur fato fiunt, quæcunque fiunt. Epicurus reasoned thus; Deus aut vult tollere mala et non potest, aut potest et non Divine Providence from the government of the world, they must admit things still more incomprehensible, namely, either that the world owes its origin to the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or that God having created it, and planted rational beings on the face of it, left them afterwards to be the sport of chance, or the slaves of necessity. Instances of this kind might be multiplied to an indefinite extent for which ever way we turn, we see many things connected with the material and spiritual world, which far exceed our powers of comprehension, and for which our reason can in nowise account. Should the deists acknowledge the truth of this, and allow the incomprehensibility of many art cles of natural religion, but urge that the Christian revelation contains doctrines absolutely contradictory to the positive inferences of human reason, we can easily defy them to the proot. What can reason infer against the possibility, or even probability, of an union between the divine and the human nature? What premises can it establish subversive of the possibility of such an event? Will it ground them upon the nature and essence of the divinity? But of these, as has been proved above, it is utterly ignorant; or will it ground them upon the knowledge that it has derived from the visible creation respecting the divine attributes? But there is nothing in the power, wisdom, or goodness of God, which, in so far as these may be inferred from the works of the creation, can in any way militate against the possibility of a divine incarnation; so far from it, that it an unbeliever grant the possibility of the crea tor appearing to creatures, the probability must also be granted that the divinity would so veil its glories as to render it possible for mankind to sustain the majesty of its presence without being blinded by its splendid emanations. But what fitter veil could be found than a body fashioned like those beings, to whom God had originally given the dominion of the earth, and whose instruction and salvation would form the only object of his appearance? Nor again, in the mystery of the Trinity in Unity is there any proposition contradictory to the inferences of human reason. If unity were predicated of three material individuals, reason, grounding its conclusions on the evidence of sense and observation, might safely deny the possibility of the truth of such a proposition. But as it is predicated of a spiritual being, of the mode of whose existence, and of the nature of whose essence, man is non vult, aut neque vult neque potest, aut et vult et potest. Si vult et non potest, imbecillus est, quod in Deum non cadit. Si potest et non vult invidus est, æque alienum a Deo. Si neque vult neque potest et invidus et imbecillus est, ideoque neque Deus. Si vult et potest, quod solum Deo convenit, unde ergo sunt mala? Aut cur illa non tollit? Lactantius de Irâ Dei, cap. 13. utterly utterly ignorant, the proposition is placed beyond the reach of human reason, which consequently can neither affirm its falsehood nor deny its truth. No more can it be maintained that the doctrine of Atonement contains any thing contradictory to our reason or experience. Men themselves often pardon the living for the sake of the dead, the wicked for the sake of the good. In truth had it contained any thing contradictory to the inevitable conclu. sions of reason, how can we account for the universal prevalence of this doctrine, and the practice resulting from it, among all the nations of the earth? These three articles of our faith, and those which necessarily flow from them, are the peculiar doctrines of Christianity which the natural man is most unwilling to receive, and a belief in which he esteems an intolerable burden. But we have shown that they do not contain any proposition to which a mind well tutored in the philosophy of facts can rationally object, if the evidence in favour of their having been communicated from God be well grounded. If men neglect the true God, and set up in his stead the dreams and phantoms of their own distempered imaginations, and arbitrarily impute to these attributes of righteousness, wisdom, goodness, and power, founded upon their own unsupported suppositions, errors and delusions will necessarily follow, and human inventions occupy the place of divine revelation. To correct this mischievous principle, which is ever active in the minds of men, we must perpetually have recourse to the authority of the Scriptures. On them and on them alone must we found our faith, on them must we ground our principles, and from them deduce our motives to action. Convinced that they all have been given by inspiration of God,' we must submit our reason to the obedience of faith, and restrain at its commencement that inquisitive spirit which fain would presumptuously pry into those mysteries which the Angels contemplate with awe. This is not reducing our reason to slavery; all the questions which it can hope to treat with success will still be open to its researches. Let it turn its attention to these, and not spend its strength on subjects which cannot profit. Let it not, with the barbarians mentioned by Herodotus, discharge its feeble arrows into the clouds and darkness from whence the lightning flashes, and the thunderbolt descends. The force of such missiles will soon be spent, and in their descent to their native earth they may chance to fall on the heads of those who have discharged them. ART. ART. V.-Vie et Révélations de la Saur Nativité, Religieuse converse au Couvent des Urbanistes de Fougères; écrites sous sa Dictée; suivies de sa Vie intérieure, écrits aussi d'après ellemême par le Rédacteur de ses Révélations, et pour y servir de suite. Paris. 1817. 3 tom. 12mo. WE are informed by the editor, or rather author, the Abbé Genet, that this work has been examined in manuscript by more than an hundred profound theologians, and more particularly in London: to wit, by seven or eight (Roman Catholic) bishops and archbishops, twenty or thirty vicars-general of different dioceses, doctors and professors of theology in different universities, abbés, authors of various highly esteemed works, and more than fourscore curés, rectors, and other priests, English as well as French, equally distinguished for their piety and their learning.' All had desired to see it published; many declared that they had perused it with the greatest pleasure and the greatest edification, and had been more affected by it than by any other book or production whatsoever; many had transcribed it to serve for their habitual meditations; but the extraordinary nature of the work did not permit them to give, with the official sanction of their names, the high eulogium which they had passed upon it in private, both by writing and by word of mouth. M. Genet highly approves this caution. Nevertheless, he has favoured us with some of their approbations. Dr. Douglas, he tells us, then titular bishop of London, not understanding the French language sufficiently to form a judgment for himself, deputed the task to certain of his clergy, and among others to the reverend Mr. (now Dr.) Milner, who signified his opinion in these words :—. 'The production on the whole appears to me very wonderful for its sublimity, energy, copiousness, learning, orthodoxy and piety. Hence I have no doubt of its producing great spiritual profit to many souls, whenever you shall think proper to give it to the public.' And again I cannot speak too highly of the sublimity and affecting piety of these Revelations in general.' And again-When you see our good friend M. G.(enet) present my respectful compliments to him, and tell him how desirous I was of seeing him when I was the other day at Somerstown. It is impossible that you or any other person should have a greater veneration for the Revelations of his spiritual daughter than I have; or be more anxious to see them in print, for the edification of the good, and the conversion of the wicked.' So far Dr. Milner, alias John Merlin. Mr. Rayment, another English priest, très distingué par ses connaissances théologiques, in the province of York, translated the manuscript into English, and said he would not exchange the translation for a library. Mr. |