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can be of no transcendant import to the mere searcher after truth, as they generally do the one or the other precisely as they are taught, and the multiplication of ciphers amounting of course to nothing; the only enigma, if so it can be called, being the part which mind and philosophy too often enact in the affair; a part which, on the whole that of mutes, it were impossible to explain but from the tyranny of circumstance, or the operation of contempt. Every form of Christianity that has hitherto prevailed, will no doubt have to undergo a thorough exploration; and with many things that uncritical or partial views, or less creditable motives, have contrived to interweave with the pure, spiritual, benign economy of its Founder, to cast off some now clung to as fundamental-that word of elastic force which expands or contracts in meaning with each varying creed,-the fundamentals of one sect or age being often the heresies or nonsense of another. Whatever may be said by the bigots of orthodoxy, real or pretended, Truth will have no fair play, much less the sway of Love be known, till Christian societies shall be modelled on a principle of comprehension, not of exclusiveness based on speculative or ceremonial differences, when the multiplied appellations,-the stigmas and brands, —which serve but as so many watchwords of division, shall be merged in a catholic fraternity, united, not in the profession of dogmatic subtleties, nor, strictly, dogma of any kind, but by the cohesion of a spiritual life, expressing itself, in its more conscious or defined operation, in the pursuit of truth and goodness;-an aim that shall not be forestalled or paralysed in one direction by an order of perception that chanced to prevail some centuries or millenniums before, nor bounded in the other by one-sided or factitious rules of appreciation. Genius would not then be so commonly scared from theological walks, where the suppression of the intellect, if not inculcated as a duty, is too frequently demanded in effect; and the spirit to be encountered by those who decline to think by dictation, is a

fierce and rancorous hostility, or a self-complacent, uninquiring assumption, as remote from the love of truth as from the love of goodness.

Without in any way resting on the ground of authority what may very well claim the support of reason, nothing, I presume, is here expressed on the subject of a formal or dogmatic creed as a bond of religious fellowship, more than may be found in a remark of Dr. Arnold's; which I take the liberty of quoting not only for its substantial coincidence with my own views, but as presenting what appears to me the only sound or possible basis of Christian union. The principle it propounds he calls "the great philosophical and Christian truth, which," says he, seems to me the very truth of truths,—that Christian unity and the perfection of Christ's church are independent of theological articles of opinion; consisting in a certain moral state and moral and religious affections."*

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Even Southey, much larger hearted than many who abuse him for his narrowness, could say, "I believe that men will be judged by their actions and intentions, not their creed. I am a Christian; and so will Turk, Jew, and Gentile be in Heaven, if they have lived well according to the light which was vouchsafed them." A caviller might possibly be disposed to ask, whether such persons ever do live up to the light they possess: but what reason to doubt that in a large proportion of instances there is no greater disparity between their knowledge and their practice than is displayed by the majority of Christians in reference to theirs, taking into account the far superior light of the latter, and the principles which they nominally admit?

Add to all, that were a summary of metaphysicotheological dogmata, called a creed, ever so desirable an * Life and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 404. † Southey's Life, etc. vol. v. p. 12.

embodiment of religious conceptions, it would be but reasonable to offer something more suited to the exigences of awakened minds than the antique formulæ of belief, which, however from the intermixture of transcendental elements allowing scope to the subtlety of interested championship, comprise things unable to bear a moment's scrutiny of unsophisticated thought.

At present indeed the phenomenon is all but hopeless of a church, in Leigh Hunt's phrase, "professing nothing that she does not believe, and believing nothing that can offend the wisest."

THE BALANCE OF ILL.

A

SCALE of ethical adjudication comprehensively applied, and constructed on principles different from those which identify the conventional or traditionary with the absolute and immutable, or which look rather to the world without than the world within, would present, methinks, no slight traces of deviation from the customary estimates. Next to the vice which displays itself in utter profligacy or inhumanity, nothing is so odious as contraction and obliquity of mind: while of all kinds of mental contraction or perversity, that which is sometimes associated with religion, and which then assumes the character of mental immorality by obscuring the perceptions of right, and yielding to prejudice the authority of truth, is the least excusable and most hateful. It was this which checked, and occasioned to be kept in manuscript, the preparations of Cudworth for the completion of his noble work, the Intellectual System of the Universe; a work stigmatised by the bigots of the day as the offspring of atheism, though one of the most acute and learned attacks. on atheistic hypotheses that theological literature can boast. Were it not that Cudworth is an example of greater fairness in stating the arguments of an opponent, than many in appreciating those of a friend, it might be somewhat difficult to interpret the blindness which could mistake the very drift of a performance, in its general strain sufficiently

clear, and not unaccompanied with unequivocal explications of its object. "We hope," says he "in our present undertaking to make it evident that atheists are no such conjurors as (though they hold no spirits) they would be thought to be; no such gigantic men of reason, nor profound philosophers, but that, notwithstanding all their pretensions to wit, their atheism is really nothing else but apabía páλa xaλený, a most grievous ignorance, sottishness, and stupidity of mind.”* Here, one would think, were terms perspicuous, not to say emphatic enough, to have satisfied natures the most captious or perverse. Is it surprising that when such a treatise was defamed as the production of an atheist, the enthusiasm of the writer should have cooled, and his magnificent design have been left unfinished ?+

The charge however, it must be owned, was nearly as candid as that which made Bishop Butler a papist; and not inferior in sagacity to the imputations once cast on Sir John Leslie, for his views on Causation.

In those views, which but opposed the doctrine of necessary connexion, he agreed substantially with the great lights of philosophy, from Malebranche and Berkeley down to the time of its late expounder and historian, Dugald Stewart, yet was assailed with the bitterest hostility by professed champions of Christianity, as an abettor of atheism; an allegation that might be brought with more logical pertinence against the supporters of the opposite theory; for if the

* Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the Universe, vol. i. p. 381, ed. London, 1820.

It has been supposed, from the scheme of the work as laid down in the introductory portion, that the piece of the same author on Eternal and Immutable Morality, published by Bishop Chandler in 1731, and another on Liberty and Necessity, till lately in manuscript, as other writings of Cudworth still are, in the British Museum, were intended to form the second and third parts of the Intellectual System. In an age certainly not distinguished for penury of publications, it seems a reproach, if not a subject of wonder, that any performances of Cudworth, imbued as they must be with learning, and with views more or less profound, should be suffered to remain unprinted.

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