doubt sometimes, some of our dogmata and notions about justification may puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits of ourselves than God hath of us, and that we profanely make the unspotted righteousness of Christ to serve only as a covering wherein to wrap our foul deformities and filthy vices, and when we have done, think ourselves in as good credit and repute with God as we are with ourselves, and that we are become Heaven’s darlings as much as we are our own.[363]”

These extracts will show that the English Platonists breathe a larger air than the later Romish mystics, and teach a religion more definitely Christian than Erigena and Eckhart.  I shall now show how this happy result was connected with a more truly spiritual view of the external world than we have met with in the earlier part of our survey.  That the laws of nature are the laws of God, that “man, as man, is averse to what is evil and wicked,” that “evil is unnatural,” and a “contradiction of the law of our being,” which is only found in “wicked men and devils,” is one of Whichcote’s “gallant themes.”  And Smith sets forth the true principles of Nature-Mysticism in a splendid passage, with which I will conclude this Lecture:—­

“God made the universe and all the creatures contained therein as so many glasses wherein He might reflect His own glory.  He hath copied forth Himself in the creation; and in this outward world we may read the lovely characters of the Divine goodness, power, and wisdom....  But how to find God here, and feelingly to converse with Him, and being affected with the sense of the Divine glory shining out upon the creation, how to pass out of the sensible world into the intellectual, is not so effectually taught by that philosophy which professed it most, as by true religion.  That which knits and unites God and the soul together can best teach it how to ascend and descend upon those golden links that unite, as it were, the world to God.  That Divine Wisdom, that contrived and beautified this glorious structure, can best explain her own art, and carry up the soul back again in these reflected beams to Him who is the Fountain of them....  Good men may easily find every creature pointing out to that Being whose image and superscription it bears, and climb up from those darker resemblances of the Divine wisdom and goodness, shining out in different degrees upon several creatures, till they sweetly repose themselves in the bosom of the Divinity; and while they are thus conversing with this lower world ... they find God many times secretly flowing into their souls, and leading them silently out of the court of the temple into the Holy Place....  Thus religion, where it is in truth and power, renews the very spirit of our minds, and doth in a manner spiritualise this outward creation to us....  It is nothing but a thick mist of pride and self-love that hinders men’s eyes from beholding that sun which enlightens them and all things else....  A good man is no more solicitous whether this or that