without you, will be nothing else but a mere seeing and feeling this hell, serpent, beast, and fiery dragon.  But, said Theogenes, a third party who stood by, I would, if I could, more perfectly understand the precise nature of self, or what it is that makes it to be so full of evil and misery.  To whom Theophilus turned and replied:  Covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath are the four elements of self.  And hence it is that the whole life of self can be nothing else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, all of which is precisely sinful nature, self, or hell.  Whilst man lives, indeed, among the vanities of time, his covetousness, his envy, his pride, and his wrath, may be in a tolerable state, and may help him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have their gratifications as well as their torments.  But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural Word and Spirit of God must find itself unavoidably devoured by itself, shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath.  O Theogenes! that I had power from God to take those dreadful scales off men’s eyes that hinder them from seeing and feeling the infinite importance of this most certain truth!  God give a blessing, Theophilus, to your good prayer.  And then let me tell you that you have quite satisfied my question about the nature of self.  I shall never forget it, nor can I ever possibly after this have any doubt about the truth of it.’

1.  ‘All my theology,’ said an old friend of mine to me not long ago—­’all my theology is out of Thomas Goodwin to the Ephesians.’  Well, I find Thomas Goodwin saying in that great book that self is the very quintessence of original sin; and, again, he says, study self-love for a thousand years and it is the top and the bottom of original sin; self is the sin that dwelleth in us and that doth most easily beset us.  Now, that is just what Academicus and Theophilus and Theogenes have been saying to us in their own powerful way in their incomparable dialogue.  All sin and all misery; all covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath,—­trace it all back to its roots, travel it all up to its source, and, as sure as you do that, self and self-love are that source, that root, and that black bottom.  I do not forget that Butler has said in some stately pages of his that self-love is morally good; that self-love is coincident with the principle of virtue and part of the idea; and that it is a proper motive for man.  But the deep bishop, in saying all that, is away back at the creation-scheme and Eden-state of human nature.  He has not as yet come down to human nature in its present state of overthrow, dismemberment, and self-destruction.  But when he does condescend and comes close to the mind and the heart of man as they now are in all men, even Butler becomes as outspoken, and as eloquent, and as full of passion and pathos as if he were an evangelical