Nay, the precise and orthodox, yet frequent, use of these terms by Philo, and by the Jewish authors of that traditionalae wisdom,—­degraded in after times, but which in its purest parts existed long before the Christian aera,—­is the strongest extrinsic argument against the Arians, Socinians, and Unitarians, in proof that St. John must have meant to deceive his readers, if he did not use them in the known and received sense.  To a Materialist indeed, or to those who deny all knowledges not resolvable into notices from the five senses, these terms as applied to spiritual beings must appear inexplicable or senseless.  But so must spirit.  To me, (why do I say to me?) to Bull, to Waterland, to Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Athanasius, Augustine, the terms, Word and generation, have appeared admirably, yea, most awfully pregnant and appropriate;—­but still as the language of those who know that they are placed with their backs to substances—­and which therefore they can name only from the correspondent shadows—­yet not (God forbid!) as if the substances were the same as the shadows;—­which yet Leighton supposed in this his censure,—­for if he did not, he then censures himself and a number of his most beautiful passages.  These, and two or three other sentences,—­slips of human infirmity,—­are useful in reminding me that Leighton’s works are not inspired Scripture.

‘Postscript’.

On a second consideration of this passage, and a revisal of my marginal animadversion—­yet how dare I apply such a word to a passage written by a minister of Christ so clearly under the especial light of the divine grace as was Archbishop Leighton?—­I am inclined to think that Leighton confined his censure to the attempts to “explain” the Trinity,—­and this by “notions,”—­and not to the assertion of the adorable acts implied in the terms both of the Evangelists and Apostles, and of the Church before as well as after Christ’s ascension; nor to the assent of the pure reason to the truths, and more than assent to, the affirmation of the ideas.

Ib. p. 73.

This fifth Sermon, excellent in parts, is yet on the whole the least excellent of Leighton’s works,—­and breathes less of either his own character as a man, or the character of his religious philosophy.  The style too is in many places below Leighton’s ordinary style—­in some places even turbid, operose, and catechrestic;—­for example,—­“to trample on smilings with one foot and on frownings with the other.”

Ib. p. 77.  Serm.  VI.

Leighton, I presume, was acquainted with the Hebrew Language, but he does not appear to have studied it much.  His observation on the ‘heart’, as used in the Old Testament, shews that he did not know that the ancient Hebrews supposed the heart to be the seat of intellect, and therefore used it exactly as we use the head.

Ib. p. 104.  Serm.  VII.

This seventh Sermon is admirable throughout, Leighton throughout.  O what a contrast might be presented by publishing some discourse of some Court divine, (South for instance,) preached under the same state of affairs, and printing the two in columns!