Ib. p. 370.

  ’Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and
  dreadful day of the Lord.’

Almost every page of this volume makes me feel my own ignorance respecting the interpretation of the language of the Hebrew Prophets, and the want of the one idea which would supply the key.  Suppose an Infidel to ask me, how the Jews were to ascertain that John the Baptist was Elijah the Prophet;—­am I to assert the pre-existence of John’s personal identity as Elijah?  If not, why Elijah rather than any other Prophet?  One answer is obvious enough, that the contemporaries of John held Elijah as the common representative of the Prophets; but did Malachi do so?

Ib. p. 373.

I cannot conceive a more beautiful synopsis of a work on the Prophecies of the Old Testament, than is given in this Recapitulation.  Would that its truth had been equally well substantiated!  That it can be, that it will be, I have the liveliest faith;—­and that Mr. Davison has contributed as much as we ought to expect, and more than any contemporary divine, I acknowledge, and honor him accordingly.  But much, very much, remains to be done, before these three pages merit the name of a Recapitulation.

Disc.  VII. p. 375.

If I needed proof of the immense importance of the doctrine of Ideas, and how little it is understood, the following discourse would supply it.

The whole discussion on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses.  I neither do nor ever could see any other difficulty on the subject, than what is contained and anticipated in the idea of eternity.

By Ideas I mean intuitions not sensuous, which can be expressed only by contradictory conceptions, or, to speak more accurately, are in themselves necessarily both inexpressible and inconceivable, but are suggested by two contradictory positions.  This is the essential character of all ideas, consequently of eternity, in which the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are included.  Now prescience and freewill are in fact nothing more than the two contradictory positions by which the human understanding struggles to express successively the idea of eternity.  Not eternity in the negative sense as the mere absence of succession, much less eternity in the senseless sense of an infinite time; but eternity,—­the Eternal; as Deity, as God.  Our theologians forget that the objection applies equally to the possibility of the divine will; but if they reply that prescience applied to an eternal, ‘Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio’, is but an anthropomorphism, or term of accommodation, the same answer serves in respect of the human will; for the epithet human does not enter into the syllogism.  As to contingency, whence did Mr. Davison learn that it is a necessary accompaniment of freedom, or of free action?  My philosophy teaches me the very contrary.