St. Augustine well remarks that only three distinct genera of living beings are conceivable:
1. the infinite rational:
2. the finite rational:
3. the finite irrational:
that is, God, man, brute animal. Ergo, angels can only be with wings on their shoulders. Were our bodies transparent to our souls, we should be angels.
Ib. c. x. 4. p. 303.
It is no improbable opinion therefore which the arch-philosopher was of.
There are, and can be, only two schools of philosophy, differing in kind and in source. Differences in degree and in accident, there may be many; but these constitute schools kept by different teachers with different degrees of genius, talent, and learning; – auditories of philosophizers, not different philosophies. Schools of psilology (the love of empty noise) and misosophy are here out of the question. Schools of real philosophy there are but two, – best named by the arch-philosopher of each, namely, Plato and Aristotle. Every man capable of philosophy at all (and there are not many such) is a born Platonist or a born Aristotelian13. Hooker, as may be discerned from the epithet of arch-philosopher applied to the Stagyrite, sensu monarchico, was of the latter family, – a comprehensive, vigorous, discreet, and discretive conceptualist, – but not an ideist.
Ib. 8. p. 308.
Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally have no free and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no man's commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as any man's deed past is good as long as himself continueth; so the act of a public society of men done five hundred years sithence standeth as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because corporations are immortal; we were then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors do live still. Laws therefore human, of what kind soever, are available by consent.
No nobler or clearer example than this could be given of what an idea is as contra-distinguished from a conception of the understanding, correspondent to some fact or facts, quorum notæ communes concapiuntur, – the common characters of which are taken together under one distinct exponent, hence named a conception; and conceptions are internal subjective words. Reflect on an original social contract, as an event or historical fact; and its gross improbability, not to say impossibility, will stare you in the face. But an ever originating social contract as an idea, which exists and works continually and efficaciously in the moral being of every free citizen, though in the greater number unconsciously, or with a dim and confused consciousness, – what a power it is!14 As the vital power compared with the mechanic; as a father compared with a moulder in wax or clay, such is the power of ideas compared with the influence of conceptions and notions.
Ib. 15. p. 316.
I nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame themselves to those heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour with so great instancy gave us concerning peace and unity, if we did all concur in desire to have the use of ancient Councils again renewed, rather than these proceedings continued, which either make all contentions endless, or bring them to one only determination, and that of all other the worst, which is by sword.
This is indeed a subject that deserves a serious consideration: and it may be said in favour of Hooker's proposal, namely, that the use of ancient Councils be renewed, that a deep and universal sense of the abuse of Councils progressively from the Nicene to that of Trent, and our knowledge of the causes, occasions, and mode of such abuse, are so far presumptive for its non-recurrency as to render it less probable that honest men will pervert them from ignorance, and more difficult for unprincipled men to do so designedly. Something too must be allowed for an honourable ambition on the part of the persons so assembled, to disappoint the general expectation, and win for themselves the unique title of the honest Council. But still comes the argument, the blow of which I might more easily blunt than parry, that if Roman Catholic and Protestant, or even Protestant Episcopalian and Protestant Presbyterian divines were generally wise and charitable enough to form a Christian General Council, there would be no need of one.
N.B. The reasoning in this note, as far as it is in discouragement of a recurrence to general Councils, does not, me saltem judice, conclude against the suffering our Convocation to meet. The virtual abrogation of this branch of our constitution I have long regarded as one of three or four Whig patriotisms, that have succeeded in de-anglicizing the mind of England.
Ib. c. xi. 4. p. 323.
So that nature even in this life doth plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection than either of these two that have been mentioned.
Whenever I meet with an ambiguous or multivocal word, without its meaning being shown and fixed, I stand on my guard against a sophism. I dislike this term, 'nature,' in this place. If it mean the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, it is an inapt term; for reason is supernatural. Now that reason in man must have been first actuated by a direct revelation from God, I have myself proved, and do not therefore deny that faith as the means of salvation was first made known by revelation; but that reason is incapable of seeing into the fitness and superiority of these means, or that it is a mystery in any other sense than as all spiritual truths are mysterious, I do deny and deem it both a false and a dangerous doctrine.
15 Sept. 1826.
Ib. 6. p. 327.
Concerning that faith, hope and charity, without which there can be no salvation; was there ever any mention made saving only in that law which God himself hath from heaven revealed? There is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three, more than hath, been supernaturally received from the mouth of the eternal God.
That reason could have discovered these divine truths is one thing; that when discovered by revelation, it is capable of apprehending the beauty and excellence of the things revealed is another. I may believe the latter, while I utterly reject the former. That all these cognitions, together with the fealty or faithfulness in the will whereby the mind of the flesh is brought under captivity to the mind of the spirit (the sensous understanding to the reason) are supernatural, I not only freely grant, but fervently contend. But why the very perfection of reason, namely, those ideas or truth-powers, in which both the spiritual light and the spiritual life are co-inherent and one, should be called super-rational, I do not see. For reason is practical as well as theoretical; or even though I should exclude the practical reason, and confine the term reason to the highest intellective power, – still I should think it more correct to describe the mysteries of faith as plusquam rationalia than super-rational. But the assertions that provoke the remark arose for the greater part, and still arise, out of the confounding of the reason with the understanding. In Hooker, and the great divines of his age, it was merely an occasional carelessness in the use of the terms that reason is ever put where they meant the understanding; for, from other parts of their writings, it is evident that they knew and asserted the distinction, nay, the diversity of the things themselves; to wit, that there was in man another and higher light than that of the faculty judging according to sense, that is our understandings. But, alas! since the Revolution, it has ceased to be a mere error of language, and in too many it now amounts to a denial of reason!
B. ii. c. v. 3. p. 379.
To urge any thing as part of that supernatural and celestially revealed truth which God hath taught, and not to shew it in Scripture; this did the ancient Fathers evermore think unlawful, impious, execrable.
Even this must be received cum grano salis. To be sure, with the licences of interpretation, which the Fathers of the first three or four centuries allowed themselves, and with the arcana of evolution by word, letter, allegory, yea, punning, which they applied to detached sentences or single phrases of Holy Writ, it would not