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licentious, but certainly from the grave and didactic authorship both of Greece and Rome. And while beyond the limits of Christendom, all those peculiar revelations of the Gospel which relate either to past events or to existent objects are almost wholly unknown-we are persuaded that bosoms may be found which would do the homage of acknowledg ment at least, if not of obedience, to its truth and its purity and its kindness and its generous self-devotion all the world over

31. On this distinction between the objects and the ethics of Theology we should not have expatiated so long had we not been persuaded of the important uses to which it may be turned in estimating the legitimacy and the weight of various sorts of evidence for the truth of religion; and, more especially, in helping us to mark the respective provinces which belong to the light of nature and the light of revelation. We sometimes hear of the application of the Baconian Philosophy to the Christian argument; and it is our belief that this Philosophy so revered in modern times, and to which the experimental science of our day stands indebted for its present stability and gigantic elevation, does admit of most wholesome and beneficial application to the question between

*It is thus, that there is a pervading error in Leland's book on the Necessity of Revelation. There is not one trace, from be ginning to end of it, of that discrimination which we have now been urging-nor do we remark in it any difference at all between the ignorance which springs from moral perversity and that which springs from mere intellectual deficiency. It is a book, however, that is worthy of perusal, though more for the exceeding fulness of its learned information, than for its just or enlightened principles.

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infidels and believers.

But then we must so dis

criminate as to assign those places in the controversy where the Philosophy of Bacon is, and those where it is not applicable. It is of paramount authority on the question of facts or objects. On the question of ethics again, it is not more admissible than on the question of mathematics. And by thus confining it within its appropriate limits, we not only make a sounder application of it but an application of it that we shall find to be greatly more serviceable to the cause.

32. Our first inference from this argument is, that even though the objects of Theology lay under total obscuration from our species-though a screen utterly impervious were placed between the mental eye of us creatures here below, and those invisible beings by whom heaven is occupied -still we might have an ethics in reserve, which on the screen being in any way withdrawn, will justly and vividly respond to the objects that are on the other side of it. There might be a mathematics without Astronomy, but of which instant application can be made, on the existent objects of Astronomy being unveiled. And there may be a morals without Theology, that, on the simple presentation of its objects, would at once recognise the duteous regards and proprieties which belong to them. We often hear, in the general, of the darkness of nature. But a darkness in regard to the ethics might not be at all in the same proportion or degree as a darkness in regard to the objects of Theology. We can imagine the latter to be a ɔtal darkness, while the former is only a twilight

obscurity; or may even but need a revelation of the appropriate facts to be excited into full illumination. There may be moral light along with the ignorance of all supernal objects, in which case there can be no supernal application. But yet, in reference to the near and palpable and besetting objects of a sublunary scene, this same light might be of most useful avail in the business of human society. It is thus that we understand the Apostle when speaking of the work of the law being written in the hearts of the Gentiles, and of their being a law unto themselves. It at least furnished as much light to the conscience as that they could accuse or else excuse each other. In this passage he concedes to nature the knowledge, if not of the objects of Theology at least of the ethics. There might need perhaps to be a revelation ere any moral aspiration can be felt towards God-but without such a revelation, and without any regard being had to a God, there might be a reciprocal play of the moral feelings among men, a standard of equity and moral judgment, a common principle of reference alike indicated in their expressions of mutual esteem and mutual recrimination.

33. This, we think, should be quite obvious to those who are at all acquainted with the literature and history of ancient times. It is true that ere all the phenomena even of pagan conscience and sensibility can be explained, we must admit the knowledge, or at least the imagination of certain objects in Theology. But it is also true that apart from Theology altogether, with no other objects in the view of the mind than those which are supplied

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within the limits of our visible world and by the fellows of our species, there was a general sense of the right and the wrong-an occasional exemplification of high and heroic virtue with the plaudits of its accompanying admiration on the one hand--or, along with execrable villany, the prompt indignancy of human hearts, and execration of human tongues upon the other. We are not pleading for the practical strength of morality in those days,-though we might quote the self-devotion of Regulus, the continence of Scipio, and other noble sacrifices at the shrine of principle or patriotism. It is enough for our object which is to prove, not the power of morality, but merely the sense and recognition of it that the nobility of these instances was felt, that the homage of public acclamation was rendered to them, that historians eulogized and poets sung the honours of illustrious virtue. We are not contending for such a moral nature as could achieve the practice, but for such a moral nature as could discern the principles of righteousness. In short there was a natural ethics among men, a capacity both of feeling and of perceiving the moral distinction between good and evil. The works of Horace and Juvenal and above all of Cicero abundantly attest this nor are we aware of aught more splendid and even importantly true in the whole authorship of Moral Science than the following passage from the last of these writers. "Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturæ congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna; quæ vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat; quæ tamen neque probos frustra jubet aut vetat, nec improbos

jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi, nec abrogari fas est, neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet neque tota abrogari potest. Nec vero per senatum, aut per populum, solvi hac lege possumus, neque est quærendus explanator aut interpres ejus alius. Nec erit alia lex Romæ, alia Athenis-alia nunc, alia posthac; sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, una lex et sempiterna, et immortalis continebit; unusque erit communis quasi magister, et Imperator omnium Deus. Ille legis hujus inventor, discepator, lator; cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernabitur; atque hoc ipso, luet maximas pœnas, etiam si cætera supplicia quæ effugerit." Such is the testimony of a heathen to the law within the breast-and armed too with such power of enforcement, that, apart from the retributions of a reigning and a living judge, man cannot offer violation to its authority without at the same time suffering the greatest of all penalties in the violence which he thereby offers to his own nature.

34. But though we have thus separated between the Ontology and the Deontology of the question, between man's knowledge of existences and his knowledge of duties, between the light by which he views the being of a God and the light by which he views the services and affections that we owe to him-let it not be imagined that in conceding to nature the faculty of perceiving virtue, we concede to her such a possession of virtue, as at all to mitigate that charge of total and unexcepted depravity which the Scriptures have preferred against her. And neither let it be imagined that we even accredit

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