afterwards pursued, with so much pleasure to himself, and benefit to the world. This declaration, however clear it may be to me, is more than some of my readers will be willing to admit, or able to bear. I perceive, by what has been written, that, if it can be effected, Bishop Horne must be taken away from the Hutchinsonians: or, if that cannot be done, his character must not be set too high; we must beware of exaggeration; he must be represented as good and pious, rather than wise or great. This comes not from the truth but from the times and it is what we must expect to hear, till the times shall alter, and a few stumbling-blocks shall be removed out of the way. After what I had related, with so little disguise, concerning the early studies of Doctor Horne, I could foresee that his character, excellent as it is, had a fiery trial to pass: I therefore prepared myself to see -what I have seen. : But, while I heard some things that were unpleasant, I heard others which gave me encouragement. For, though it was commonly reported that I had bestowed too many words upon a cause which neither required nor deserved them, one of the wisest men of this age, who is an host of himself, wished I had said more: it being a cause of which the world heard much, but knew little, and wanted to know more. I shall take this opportunity of satisfying their curiosity as faithfully as I can. But I find myself called upon, by the way, to justify the bishop against an unexpected accusation of a late author, who charges him with fancifulness and presumption; for what reason, and with how much justice, learning, and judgment, we shall see presently and I am glad that this second edition was deferred, because the delay has given me an opportunity of seeing some things of which I ought not to be ignorant. In a New Biographical Dictionary, a life of Dr. Horne is inserted; the author of which speaks of him with as much caution as a man would handle hot coals. For what he is pleased to say of me, as a writer of Doctor Horne's life, I am much obliged to him; and I think it more than I deserve or desire; but I should be false to the bishop's memory, were I to allow his account of him to be either just or true. He gives him the praise of being a blameless man! (cold enough!) when they that have eyes to see, and judgment to discern, must discover him to be, both for matter and manner, one of the first orators and teachers this Church can boast; and that he often displays a rich vein of wit, rarely indeed to be found in a man of so much sweetness and good temper. What a poor figure does Priestley make in the hands of the undergraduate! and the great philoso pher Hume, in the letter to doctor Adam Smith! Where the bishop is reflected upon, for being a Hutchinsonian, it is allowed, nevertheless, that he might be partly right in his natural philosophy; though I do not understand the biographer's method of making it out: and I question whether he understood it himself. But then it is added, that "if he proceeded to a supposed analogy between material and immaterial things, and compared the agency of the Son and Holy Ghost to that of light and air in the natural world; it will surely be thought that he went upon very uncertain and fanciful, not to say presumptuous grounds." I thank him for speaking out. But is this true divinity? Is there then no analogy between things natural and divine? And have I been beating the air, and writing a volume to prove and explain it, and demonstrate the great use and value of it; and has this author discovered at last, that there is no such thing? How mortifying is it to me to hear, that so much of the labour of my life has been thrown away! This analogy, which he will not suffer Bishop Horne to suppose, without being fanciful and presumptuous, has been admitted and insisted upon, as plain and certain, by the best divines of the Christian church; who used it and admired it, because they found it in the word of God: and it holds particularly in the two great objects of nature, air and light, where this modern divine (for such I suppose him) cannot see it himself, and will not permit us to see it without him. Was not the presence of the divine Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, announced to the senses of men by the "sound of a rushing, mighty wind?" Did not our Saviour, in his discourse with Nicodemus, illustrate the agency of the divine Spirit by that of the natural? "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Why did he communicate the Holy Ghost under the outward sign of breathing upon them, if no comparison is to be made between the sign and the thing signified? The word inspiration, which is the act of the Holy Ghost, denotes a blowing or breathing as of the air; and the name Spirit is common to the natural air and to the Holy Ghost. What is the meaning of all this? Does the word of God make comparisons, and put one thing for another; and shall we say, there is no analogy or likeness; that is, no sense nor propriety in the substitution? That would indeed be presumptuous, if not blasphemous: and the author would not have entangled himself in this manner, if he had not been frightened out of his wits at Hutchinsonianism. But, after all, to those who search for it, the analogy must instantly discover itself; and it hath express been pointed out to us without reserve by a divine of the old school, Bishop Andrews; who was in no fear of being called to an account for it by the learned of that age. In his first discourse on the descent of the Holy Ghost, he has these words: "The wind, which is here the type of the Holy Ghost, doth of all creatures best it: for, of all bodily things, it is the least bodily, and even invisible, as a spirit is. It is mighty or violent; seemingly of little force, and yet of the greatest: but never so vehement as the Spirit is in its proceedings. As the wind serveth for breath, so doth the Spirit give life, and is called the Spirit of life. As it serveth for speech, so doth the Spirit give utterance: and, as the one serveth for sound, so by the other the sound of the Apostles went out into all lands." This, and more to the same purpose, saith Bishop Andrews; and I call this true divinity: he was in no fear about types and analogies; he finds the analogy as strict as if the air had been created for this use. And what Christian, who reads his Bible, will find fault with Bishop Horne, if he thought, and preached, as Bishop Andrews did before him? The one was the delight of his times; and the other may continue to be the delight of our times; notwithstanding the censures which have been thrown out against him, with so little experience, that I am ashamed for the author of them. The other great object of nature, where the analogy is not permitted to us, is that of the light; but it holds in this case as strictly as the other for our Saviour calls himself the "true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world ;" and a prophet calls him "the Sun of Righteousness." All the men of this world who have light, have it from the same sun; and all that have the light of life, have it from the same Saviour. And the operations and attributes of the true light in the kingdom of grace are the same as those of the light in the natural world. We took the authority of Bishop Andrews in the former example: we may now take that of Archbishop Leighton*; who sees the analogy between the natural and divine light-first, in their purity; both are incapable of pollution: secondly, in their universality; both are imparted to all, without being diminished: thirdly, in their vivifying power; the one raises plants and vegetables from the earth, the other raises men from the dead: fourthly, in their dispelling darkness; all shadows fly before the sun; all the types and shadows of the law, all the mists of darkness and idolatry, at the appearance of the other, who is the light of the Gentiles and the glory of Israel; even that glory, which had See Sermon V. of Archbishop Leighton's eighteen. been so often foreshowed to them: for, as the glory was in their tabernacle and filled it, so the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Christ: εokηvwoɛv ev nμiv,-he dwelt in a tabernacle amongst us. Is not this a just and beautiful analogy? And can there be any man of taste who will not see and admire it? Is the Scripture fanciful in teaching it? And is this good bishop presumptuous in following it? It is a grief to me to be urging so many questions in so plain a case: but wise men lay us under a cruel necessity, when they are in such a hurry to run away from doctrines, which they call Hutchinsonian, without knowing that they have been common to the Christian world; and that every master in Israel (supposing this gentleman to be of that character) is expected to have acquired, from a proper study of the Scripture, that experience which makes all these things plain, and enables us to see the spiritual in the natural world; the glass in which (dia, by means of which *) God hath been pleased to show us that and Himself, till we shall see him face to face; and not, as we do now, by reflection from the objects of nature. All who do not know the use of this grand speculum, are under the poverty of ignorance; they lose a great help to their faith, together with a great instrument for the improving of their understanding; at least in spiritual things. What would divinity be, and what can a teacher of it be, without the use of analogies, and the power we acquire when we argue from them? They are so universal in the Scripture, that a man may as well read English without the alphabet, as read the Bible without understanding its analogies. They are, therefore, never to be given up, but to be insisted upon, and recommended to others, as the very life and soul of Christian wisdom t. I would willingly have avoided a party name, being conscious that I am not a party man, but disposed to exercise an independent judgment, and take what is good and useful from every quarter where I can find it, either for my own benefit or that of the public. If I can do good, I am willing to do it under any character which an honest man may wear. But my adversaries (who are not a few) have found such an advantage, for many years past, in giving me the name of a Hutchinsonian, that they will never part with it. So, as I am δι' εσόπτρου εν αινιγματιThough the preposition διαis here used, we do not suppose with our English version that the allusion is to dioptrics, but catoptrics: so σожтро is a speculum, wherein things are seen by reflection. + For the bishop's sentiments on this subject, see the Life. stamped with that name, I may speak freely, without losing any ground. Too many of the learned have shown an unusual propensity for many years, to censure and reject every principle reported to be Hutchinsonian, without first knowing what it is, and what is to be said for it. The biographer, against whom I have defended Bishop Horne, attacks him as a Hutchinsonian, without knowing that he was making his attack on that quarter where the Hutchinsonians are strongest; and this, not with weak arguments, but with no arguments at all; unless we can find one in the words-it will surely be thought -which is not an argument, but an appeal to the judgment of others who are under the same prejudice with himself. To prevent which for the time to come, and to satisfy those who, having heard some things to perplex them, would be glad of better information, I shall tell them, as well as I can, what the principles really are by which a Hutchinsonian is distinguished from other men. But when I consider, that this inquiry will lead us into some great, deep, and difficult subjects-of which no man can speak worthily—and of which so many have spoken rashly-I tremble at my undertaking; and entreat every wise and good man to make allowances for me, at a stage of life when forces fail and memory is weak, and to give me a fair and charitable hearing. 1. In the first place, the followers of Mr. Hutchinson give to God the pre-eminence in every thing. His authority with them is above all authority: His wisdom above all wisdom: His truth above all truth. They judge every thing to be good or bad, wise or foolish, as it promotes or hinders the belief of Christianity. On which account, their first enemies are to be found among sceptics, infidels, and atheists. Their next enemies are those who are afraid of believing too much; such as our Socinians and their confederates, who admit Christianity as a fact, but deny it as a doctrine. 2. They hold, that only one way of salvation has been revealed to man from the beginning of the world, viz. the way of faith in God, redemption by Jesus Christ, and a detachment from the world: and that this way is revealed in both Testaments. 3. That in both Testaments divine things are explained and confirmed to the understandings of men, by allusions to the natural creation. I say confirmed; because the Scripture is so constant and uniform in the use it makes of natural objects, that such an analogy appears between the sensible and spiritual world, as carries with it sensible evidence to the truth of revelation; and they think that where this evidence is once apprehended by the mind, no other |