Ib. p. 107.  Serm.  VIII.

In all love three things are necessary; some goodness in the object, either true and real, or apparent and seeming to be so; for the soul, be it ever so evil, can affect nothing but which it takes in some way to be good.

This assertion in these words has been so often made, from Plato’s times to ours, that even wise men repeat it without perhaps much examination whether it be not equivocal—­or rather (I suspect) true only in that sense in which it would amount to nothing—­nothing to the purpose at least.  This is to be regretted—­for it is a mischievous equivoque, to make ‘good’ a synonyme of ‘pleasant,’ or even the ‘genus’ of which pleasure is a ‘species’.  It is a grievous mistake to say, that bad men seek pleasure because it is good.  No! like children they call it good because it is pleasant.  Even the useful must derive its meaning from the good, not ‘vice versa’.

Postscript.

The lines in p. 107, noted by me, are one of a myriad instances to prove how rash it is to quote single sentences or assertions from the correctest writers, without collating them with the known system or express convictions of the author.  It would be easy to cite fifty passages from Archbishop Leighton’s works in direct contradiction to the sentence in question—­which he had learnt in the schools when a lad, and afterwards had heard and met with so often that he was not aware that he had never sifted its real purport.  This eighth Sermon is another most admirable discourse.

Ib.  Serm.  IX. p. 12.

The reasonable creature, it is true, hath more liberty in its actions, freely choosing one thing and rejecting another; yet it cannot be denied, that in acting of that liberty, their choice and refusal [A] follow the sway of their nature and condition.

[A] I would fain substitute for ‘follow,’ the words, ’are most often determined, and always affected, by.’  I do not deny that the will follows the nature; but then the nature itself is a will.

Ib.

As the angels and glorified souls, (their nature being perfectly holy and unalterably such,) they cannot sin; they can delight in nothing but obeying and praising that God, in the enjoyment of whom their happiness consisteth.

If angels be other than spirits made perfect, or, as Leighton writes, “glorified souls,”—­the “unalterable by nature” seems to me rashly asserted.

Ib.

The mind, [Greek:  phronaema].  Some render it the prudence or wisdom of the flesh.  Here you have it, the carnal mind; but the word signifies, indeed, an act of the mind, rather than either the faculty itself, or the habit of prudence in it, so as it discovers what is the frame of both those.

I doubt. [Greek:  Phronaema] signifies an act:  and so far I agree with Leighton.  But [Greek:  phronaema sarkos] is ‘the flesh’ (that is, the natural man,) in the act or habitude of minding—­but those acts, taken collectively, are the faculty—­the understanding.