Ib. p. 392.

He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the assumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.

I utterly deny contingency except in relation to the limited and imperfect knowledge of man.  But the misery is, that men write about freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea [Greek:  katt’ exochaen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they overlay their reason.

Disc.  VIII. p. 416.

It would not be easy to calculate the good which a man like Mr. Davison might effect, under God, by a work on the Messianic Prophecies, specially intended for and addressed to the present race of Jews,—­if only he would make himself acquainted with their objections and ways of understanding Scripture.  For instance, a learned Jew would perhaps contend that this prophecy of Isaiah (c. ii. 2-4,) cannot fairly be interpreted of a mere local origination of a religion historically; as the drama might be described as going forth from Athens, and philosophy from Academus and the Painted Porch, but must refer to an established and continuing seat of worship, ‘a house of the God of Jacob’.  The answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, ’in the top of the mountains’; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the whole prediction.

Ib. p. 431.

One point, however, is certain and equally important, namely, that the Christian Church, when it comes to recognize more truly the obligation imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, ’Go teach all nations’, &c.

That the duty here recommended is deducible from this text is quite clear to my mind; but whether it is the direct sense and primary intention of the words; whether the first meaning is not negative,—­(’Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing’,)—­this is not so clear.  The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is this narrower sense without its practical advantages.

Disc.  IX. p. 453, 4.

The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes me.  It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional ’infausta tempora scribendi’, can account for.  I question whether from any modern work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and awkward sentences could be extracted.  The paragraph in page 453 and 454, is not a specimen of the worst.  In a volume which ought to be, and which probably will be, in every young Clergyman’s library, these ‘maculae’ are subjects of just regret.  The utility of the work, no less than its great comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.