And had not, first, the Spirit, and next the Word, of God infused life into the earth, of which man as an animal and all other animals were made,-and then, in addition to this, breathed into man a living soul, which he did not breathe into the other animals?

Ibid. pp. 75-78—81, ad finem.

I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of which heaven itself would be uneasy to me.

And therefore do depend, that I shall not be taken hence in the midst of my days, before I have done all my heart's desire.

But when that is done, I know no business I have with the dead, and therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by returning to the dust, which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a discharge: but that I shall make my exit by way of translation, which I claim as a dignity belonging to that degree in the science of eternal life, of which I profess myself a graduate, according to the true intent and meaning of the covenant of eternal life revealed in the Scriptures.

A man só κar' ¿§oxv clear-headed, so remarkable for the perspicuity of his sentences, and the luminous orderliness of his arrangement,-in short, so consummate an artist in the statement of his case, and in the inferences from his data, as John Asgill must be allowed by all competent judges to have been,-was he in earnest or in jest from p. 75 to the end of this treatise ?-My belief is, that he himself did not know. He was a thorough humorist: and so much of will, with a spice of the wilful, goes to the making up of a humorist's creed, that it is no easy matter to determine, how far such a man might not have a pleasure in humming his own mind, and

believing, in order to enjoy a dry laugh at himself for the belief.

But let us look at it in another way. That Asgill's belief, professed and maintained in this tract, is unwise and odd, I can more readily grant, than that it is altogether irrational and absurd. I am even strongly inclined to conjecture, that so early as St. Paul's apostolate there were persons (whether sufficiently numerous to form a sect or party, I cannot say), who held the same tenet as Asgill's, and in a more intolerant and exclusive sense; and that it is to such persons that St. Paul refers in the justlyadmired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support from the other writers of the New Testament, and so discordant with the whole spirit and gist of St. Paul's views and reasoning everywhere else, that it is à priori probable, that the apparent exception in this chapter is only apparent. And this the hypothesis I have here advanced would enable one to show, and to exhibit the true bearing of the texts. Asgill contents himself with maintaining that translation without death is one, and the best, mode of passing to the heavenly state. Hinc itur ad astra. But his earliest predecessors contended that it was the only mode, and to this St. Paul justly replies:-If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men the most miserable. 1827.

INTRODUCTION TO ASGILL'S DEFENCE UPON HIS EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. EDIT. 1712.

Ibid. p. 28.

For as every faith, or credit, that a man hath attained to, is the result of some knowledge or other; so that whoever hath attained that knowledge, hath that faith (for whatever a man knows, he cannot but believe):

So this all faith being the result of all knowledge, 'tis easy to conceive that whoever had once attained to all that knowledge, nothing could be difficult to him.

THIS whole discussion on faith is one of the very few instances in which Asgill has got out of his depth. According to all usage of words, science and faith are incompatible in relation to the same object; while, according to Asgill, faith is merely the power which science confers on the will. Asgill says,- What we know, we must believe. I retort,-What we only believe, we do not know. The minor here is excluded by, and not included in, the major. Minors by difference of quantity are included in their majors; but minors by difference of quality are excluded by them, or superseded. Apply this to belief and science, or certain knowledge. On the confusion of the second, that is, minors by difference of quality, with the first, or minors by difference of quantity, rests Asgill's erroneous exposition of faith.*

* An argument proving, that according to the covenant of eternal life, revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated, till he had passed through death. (Title of Asgill's

110

66

NOTE ON THE TREATISE DE CULTU ET AMORE DEI" OF EMMANUEL SWEDENBORG.

THIS would of itself serve to mark Swedenborg as a man of philosophic genius, indicative and involvent. Much of what is most valuable in the philosophic works of Schelling, Schubert, and Eschermayer is to be found anticipated in this supposed Dementato, or madman. Oh! thrice happy should we be if the learned and the teachers of the present age were gifted with a similar madness. A madness indeed celestial, and flowing from a divine mind!-Sept. 22, 1821.

pamphlet.) Asgill died in the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for debt thirty years.-Ed.

Mr. Coleridge speaks thus of Asgill in the Table Talk:

July 30, 1831.

"Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as was pretended;-I really suspect because he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift-an intense half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. Each of its paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a diamond in itself." Vol. i. p. 245, 1st edit. : p. 127, 2nd edit.

April 30, 1832.

"I know no genuine Saxon English superior to Asgill's. I think his and Defoe's irony often finer than Swift's." Vol. ii. p. 48, 1st edit. p. 164, 2nd edit.-S. C.

NOTES ON A DISCOURSE OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE BY THOMAS WHITFIELD,

MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL.

Page 16.

To the first argument, that it belongs to God alone to make laws to bind conscience, &c., the answer is,

That the magistrate doth make no laws to bind conscience, but only enjoins men to do that which the law of God requires, and restrains them from doing that which the law and word of God forbids; and this is his duty to do, namely, to punish sin, all sin and breaches of God's laws, whether it be in matters of doctrine or practice.

To the second, &c.

Answers unanswerable under the condition of an infallible magistrate; but, as magistrates are fallible, and because this is the one case in which the being actually mistaken is the most likely to happen, and the mistake is of most pernicious consequences; therefore the unanswerable arguments are not worth answering.

Ibid. pp. 16, 17.

This may be further cleared by an instance or two; suppose the magistrate should enjoin a superstitious Papist to take the image which usually he prays before, and break it in pieces or cast it into the fire, this would go against the conscience of the Papist, but it would be no sin in the magistrate; because it is the command of God, that images being instruments of idolatry should be destroyed, &c.

Even this is a sophism. The magistrate might