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NOTES ON IRVING’S BEN-EZRA. [1] 1827.

Christ the WORD.
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The Scriptures—­The Spirit—­The Church.
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The Preacher.

Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ.  The written Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant.  The Eternal Word, Christ from everlasting, is the ‘prothesis’ or identity;—­the Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the ‘synthesis’.  And here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a ‘tetractys’, or a triad equal to a ‘tetractys’:  4=1 or 3=4=1.  But the entire scheme is a pentad—­God’s hand in the world. [2]

It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend, Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.

I. How far?  First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the positive assurance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I—­even in those points in which my judgment most coincides with his,—­profess only to regard them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with orthodoxy.  They may be believed, and they may be doubted, ’salva Catholica fide’.  Further, from these points I exclude all prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places, of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr. Irving’s and of Lacunza’s scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza, understands them.  Again, I protest against all identification of the coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under Constantine.

II.  In what sense?  In this and no other, that the objects of the Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;—­that the kingdom of God and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine will shall ‘be done on earth as it is in heaven’, will ’come’;—­and that the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final cause of the world.  Life begins in detachment from Nature, and ends in union with God.

III.  Under what conditions?  That I retain my former convictions respecting St. Michael, and the ex-saint Lucifer, and the Genie Prince of Persia, and the re-institution of bestial sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem, and the rest of this class.  All these appear to me so many pimples on the face of my friend’s faith from inward heats, leaving it indeed a fine handsome intelligent face, but certainly not adding to its comeliness.