Ib. p. 138.

As in religion, so in the course and practice of men’s lives, the stream of sin runs from one age to another, and every age makes it greater, adding somewhat to what it receives, as rivers grow in their course by the accession of brooks that fall into them; and every man when he is born, falls like a drop into this main current of corruption, and so is carried down it, and this by reason of its strength, and his own nature, which willingly dissolves into it, and runs along with it.

In this single period we have religion, the spirit,—­philosophy, the soul,—­and poetry, the body and drapery united;—­Plato glorified by St. Paul; and yet coming as unostentatiously as any speech from an innocent girl of fifteen.

Ib. p. 158.

  The chief point of obedience is believing; the proper obedience to
  truth is to give credit to it.

This is not quite so perspicuous and single-sensed as Archbishop Leighton’s sentences in general are.  This effect is occasioned by the omission of the word “this,” or “divine,” or the truth “in Christ.”  For truth in the ordinary and scientific sense is received by a spontaneous, rather than chosen by a voluntary, act; and the apprehension of the same (belief) supposes a position of congruity rather than an act of obedience.  Far otherwise is it with the truth that is the object of Christian faith:  and it is this truth of which Leighton is speaking.  Belief indeed is a living part of this faith; but only as long as it is a living part.  In other words, belief is implied in faith; but faith is not necessarily implied in belief.  ‘The devils believe.’

Ib. p. 166.

Hence learn that true conversion is not so slight a work as we commonly account it.  It is not the outward change of some bad customs, which gains the name of a reformed man in the ordinary dialect; it is new birth and being, and elsewhere called ’a new creation.  Though it be but a change in qualities’, yet it is such a one, and the qualities so far distant from what they before were, &c.

I dare not affirm that this is erroneously said; but it is one of the comparatively few passages that are of service as reminding me that it is not the Scripture that I am reading.  Not the qualities merely, but the root of the qualities is trans-created.  How else could it be a birth,—­a creation?

Ib. p. 170.

This natural life is compared, even by natural men, to the vainest things, and scarce find they things light enough to express it vain; and as it is here called grass, so they compare the generations of men to the leaves of trees. * * * ’Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.  He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down.  Job’ xiv. 1, 2.  Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.

It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless subtleties, or mere phantoms—­’entia logica, vel etiam verbalia solum’.  And