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 Nazianzen, 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 (God 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
passages. 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 passage, and a revisal of my marginal
animadversion--yet how dare I apply such a word to a passage 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 assertion 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 assent of the pure
reason to the truths, and more than assent to, the affirmation of the
ideas.
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