and to conceive Him as filling the infinite extent of
both with his presence and with his power. Hence
we associate with the idea of God those awful im-
pressions which are naturally produced by the idea
of infinite space, and perhaps still more by the idea
of endless duration. Nor is this all. It is from the
immensity of space that the notion of infinity is
originally derived; and it is hence that we transfer
the expression, by a sort of metaphor, to other sub-
jects. When we speak, therefore, of infinite power,
wisdom, and goodness, our notions, if not wholly
borrowed from space, are at least greatly aided by
this analogy; so that the conceptions of immensity
and eternity, if they do not of themselves demon-
strate the existence of God, yet necessarily enter
into the ideas we form of his nature and attributes."*
How beautifully has Pope clothed this magnificent
conception in verse!—

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.' †

The followers of Spinoza built their pernicious
theory upon the same argument of endless space; but
Pope has spiritualised the idea by placing God as
the soul of all, and Clarke's express object was to
show that the subtleties they had advanced against
religion, might be better employed in its favour.
Such a mode of argument, however, is beyond the
faculties of man; and Whiston only repeated a com-
mon and obvious truth, when he told Clarke that in
the commonest weed in his garden were contained
better arguments for the being and attributes of the
Deity than in all his metaphysics.

that one of his parents asked him, when he was very young, Whether God could do every thing? He answered, Yes! He was asked again, Whether God could tell a lie? He answered, No! And he understood the question to suppose that this was the only thing that God could not do; nor durst he say, so young was he then, that he thought there was anything else which God could not do; while yet he well remembered, that he had even then a clear conviction in his own mind, that there was one thing which God could not do that he could not annihilate that space which was in the room where they were.' This opinion concerning the necessary existence of space became a leading feature in the mind of the future philosopher. At Caius' college, Cambridge, Clarke cultivated natural philosophy with such success, that in his twenty-second year he published an excellent translation of Rohault's Physics, with notes, in which he advocated the Newtonian system, although that of Descartes was taught by Rohault, whose work was at that time the text-book in the university. 'And this certainly,' says Bishop Hoadly, was a more prudent method of introducing truth unknown before, than to attempt to throw aside this treatise entirely, and write a new one instead of it. The success answered exceedingly well to his hopes; and he may justly be styled a great benefactor to the university in this attempt. For by this means the true philosophy has, without any noise, prevailed; and to this day the translation of Rohault is, generally speaking, the standard text for lectures, and his notes the first direction to those who are willing to receive the reality and truth of things in the place of invention and romance.' Four editions of Clarke's translation of Rohault were required before it ceased to be used in the university; but at length it was superseded by treatises in which the Newtonian philosophy was avowedly adopted. Having entered the church, Clarke found a patron and friend in Dr The next subject that engaged the studies of Moore, bishop of Norwich, and was appointed his Clarke was a Defence of the Immateriality and Immorchaplain. Between the years 1699 and 1702, he tality of the Soul, in reply to Mr Henry Dodwell and published several theological essays on baptism. Collins. He also translated Newton's Optics into repentanco, &o, and caecuted paraphrases of the Latin, and was rewarded by his guide, philosopher, four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. and friend, with a present of L.500. In 1709 he obThese tracts were afterwards published in two tained the rectory of St James's, Westminster, took volumes. The bishop next gave him a living at his degree of D.D., and was made chaplain in ordiNorwich; and his reputation stood so high, that in nary to the queen. In 1712 he edited a splendid 1704 he was appointed to preach the Boyle lecture. edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, with corrections His boyish musings on eternity and space were now and emendations, and also gave to the world an elarevived. He selected as the subject of his first borate treatise on the Scripture Doctrine of the Tricourse of lectures, the Being and Attributes of God; nity. The latter involved him in considerable trouble and the second year he chose the Evidences of with the church authorities; for Clarke espoused the Natural and Revealed Religion. The lectures were Arian doctrine, which he also advocated in a series published in two volumes, and attracted notice and of sermons. He next appeared as a controversialist controversy from their containing Clarke's cele- with Leibnitz, the German philosopher, who had brated argument a priori for the existence of God, represented to the Princess of Wales, afterwards the the germ of which is comprised in a Scholium an- queen consort of George II., that the Newtonian nexed to Newton's Principia. According to Sir Isaac philosophy was not only physically false, but injuand his scholar, as immensity and eternity are not rious to religion. Sir Isaac Newton, at the request substances, but attributes, the immense and eternal of the princess, entered the lists on the mathematiBeing, whose attributes they are, must exist of cal part of the controversy, and left the philosophinecessity also. The existence of God, therefore, is a cal part of it to Dr Clarke. The result was triumtruth that follows with demonstrative evidence from phant for the English system; and Clarke, in 1717, those conceptions of space and time which are inse-collected and published the papers which had passed parable from the human mind. Professor Dugald Stewart, though considering that Clarke, in pursuing this lofty argument, soared into regions where he was lost in the clouds, admits the grandness of the conception, and its connexion with the principles of natural religion. For when once we have established, from the evidences of design everywhere manifested around us, the existence of an intelligent and powerful cause, we are unavoidably led to apply to this cause our conceptions of immensity and eternity,

between him and Leibnitz. In 1724, he put to press a series of sermons, seventeen in number. Many of them are excellent, but others are tinctured with his metaphysical predilections. He aimed at rendering scriptural principle a precept conformable to what he calls eternal reason and the fitness of things, and hence his sermons have failed in becoming popu

*Stewart's Dissertation, Encyclopædia Britannica.
Essay on Man.-Ep. L.

tosh, that Dr Clarke was a man eminent at once as
a divine, a mathematician, a metaphysical philo-
sopher, and a philologer; and, as the interpreter
of Homer and Cæsar, the scholar of Newton, and
the antagonist of Leibnitz, approved himself not
unworthy of correspondence with the highest order
of human spirits.'

[Natural and Essential Difference of Right and Wrong.]

The principal thing that can, with any colour of reason, seem to countenance the opinion of those who deny the natural and eternal difference of good and evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes be to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the variety of opinions that have obtained even among understanding and learned men, concerning certain questions of just and unjust, especially in political matters; and the many contrary laws that have been made in divers ages and in different countries concerning these matters. But as, in painting, two very different colours, by diluting each other very slowly and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and so run one into the other, that it shall not be possible even for a skilful eye to determine exactly where the one ends and the other begins; and yet the colours may really differ as much as can be, not in degree only, but entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black: so, though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from occurring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, just and unjust (and there may be

lar or useful. He who aspires,' says Robert Hall,
to a reputation that shall survive the vicissitudes
of opinion and of time, must aim at some other cha-
racter than that of a metaphysician.' In his prac-
tical sermons, however, there is much sound and
admirable precept. In 1727, Dr Clarke was offered,
but declined, the appointment of Master of the Mint,
vacant by the death of his illustrious friend, Newton.
The situation was worth £1500 a-year, and the dis-
interestedness and integrity of Clarke were strik-
ingly evinced by his declining to accept an office of
such honour and emoluments, because he could not
reconcile himself to a secular employment. His
conduct and character must have excited the admi-
ration of the queen, for we learn from a satirical
allusion in Pope's Moral Epistle on the Use of
Riches (first published in 1731), that her majesty
had placed a bust of Dr Clarke in her hermitage in
the royal grounds. The doctor duly frequented
the court,' says Pope in a note; but he should
have added,' rejoins Warburton, with the inno-
cence and disinterestedness of a hermit.' In 1729,
Clarke published the first twelve books of the Iliad,
with a Latin version and copious annotations; and
Homer has never had a more judicious or acute
commentator. The last literary efforts of this inde-
fatigable scholar were devoted to drawing up an
Exposition of the Church Catechism, and preparing
several volumes of sermons for the press. These
were not published till after his death, which took
place on the 17th of May 1729. The various talents
and learning of Dr Clarke, and his easy cheerful
disposition, earned for him the highest admiration
and esteem of his contemporaries. As a metaphy-some latitude in the judgment of different men, and the
sician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensive- laws of divers nations), yet right and wrong are never-
ness and originality, but possessed more skill and theless in themselves totally and essentially different;
logical foresight (the natural result of his habits darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted
even altogether as much as white and black, light and
of mathematical study); and he has been justly their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear
celebrated for the boldness and ability with which
he placed himself in the breach against the Neces- much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no;
sitarians and Fatalists of his times. His moral
every man, having an absolute right in his
doctrine (which supposes virtue to consist in the
own goods, it may seem that the members of any
regulation of our conduct according to certain ni- society may agree to transfer or alter their own pro-
perties upon what conditions they shall think fit. But
nesses which we perceive in things, or a peculiar if it could be supposed that a law had been made at
congruity of certain relations to each other) being Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part
inconsequential unless we have previously distin- of the world, whereby it had been commanded or
guished the ends which are morally good from those allowed that every man might rob by violence, and
that are evil, and limited the conformity to one of murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith
these classes, has been condemned by Dr Thomas should be kept with any man, nor any equitable com-
Brown and Sir James Mackintosh.* His specula-pacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of
tions were over-refined, and seem to have been co-
loured by his fondness for mathematical studies, in
forgetfulness that mental philosophy cannot, like
physical, be demonstrated by axioms and definitions
in the manner of the exact sciences. On the whole,
we may say, in the emphatic language of Mackin-power to make falsehood be truth, though they may

* See Brown's Philosophy and the Dissertations of Stewart and Mackintosh. Warburton, in his notes on Pope, thus sums up the moral doctrine: Dr Clarke and Wollaston considered moral obligation as arising from the essential differences and relations of things; Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, as arising from the moral sense; and the generality of divines, as arising solely from the will of God. On these three principles practical morality has been built by these different writers. Thus

has God been pleased,' adds Warburton, to give three differ

ent excitements to the practice of virtue; that men of all ranks, or other of them; something that would hit their palate,

constitutions, and educations, might find their account in one

satisfy their reason, or subdue their will. But this admirable provision for the support of virtue hath been in some measure defeated by its pretended advocates, who have sacrilegiously untwisted this threefold cord, and each running away with the part he esteemed the strongest, hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden chain that is to unite and draw all to it.'-Divine Legation, book i

because

his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be
among them in other matters, would have thought
that such a law could have authorised or excused,
much less have justified such actions, and have made
them become good: because 'tis plainly not in men's

alter the property of their goods as they please. Now
if, in flagrant cases, the natural and essential differ-
ence between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot
but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident,
the difference between them must be also essential and
unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest and
most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be
discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from
the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right
concluded that just and unjust were not essentially
and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be
and custom, it would follow equally, that they were
different by nature, but only by positive constitution
not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even
in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed;
which is an assertion so very absurd, that Mr Hobbes
himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and
discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his
secret self-condemnation. There are therefore certain

necessary and eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or different relations one to another, not depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the differences of the things themselves.

DR WILLIAM LOWTH.

took up Hoadly's works with warmth, and passed a
censure upon them, as calculated to subvert the
government and discipline of the church, and to
impugn and impeach the regal supremacy in mat-
ters ecclesiastical. The controversy was conducted
with unbecoming violence, and several bishops and
other grave divines (the excellent Sherlock among
the number) forgot the dignity of their station and
the spirit of Christian charity in the heat of party
warfare. Pope alludes sarcastically to Hoadly's
sermon in the Dunciad'-

Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer,
Yet silent bowed to Christ's no kingdom here.

DR WILLIAM LOWTH (1661-1732) was distinguished for his classical and theological attainments, and the liberality with which he communicated his stores to others. He published a Vindication of the Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Old and New The truth, however, is, that there was nothing Testaments (1692), Directions for the Profitable Read-whatever in Hoadly's sermon injurious to the esta ing of the Holy Scriptures, Commentaries on the Pro-blished endowments and privileges, nor to the disphets, &c. He furnished notes on Clemens Alex- cipline and government of the English church, even andrinus for Potter's edition of that ancient author, in theory. If this had been the case, he might have remarks on Josephus for Hudson's edition, and annotations on the ecclesiastical historians for Read been reproached with some inconsistency in becom ing's Cambridge edition of those authors. He also ing so large a partaker of her honours and emoluments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures assisted Dr Chandler in his Defence of Christianity for open immoralities, though denying all church from the Prophecies. His learning is said to have authority to oblige any one to external communion, been equally extensive and profound, and he accomor to pass any sentence which should determine the panied all his reading with critical and philological condition of men with respect to the favour or disremarks. Born in London, Dr Lowth took his depleasure of God. Another great question in this grees at Oxford, and experiencing the countenance and support of the bishop of Winchester, became controversy was that of religious liberty as a civil right, which the convocation explicitly denied. And the chaplain of that prelate, a prebend of the another related to the much debated exercise of cathedral of Winchester, and rector of Buriton. private judgment in religion, which, as one party meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps unreasonably exaggerated."* The style of Hoadly's controversial treatises is strong and logical, but without any of the graces of composition, and hence they have fallen into comparative oblivion. He was author of several other works, as Terms of Acceptance, Reasonableness of Conformity, Treatise on the Sacrament, &c. A complete edition of his works was published by his son in three folio volumes; his sermons are now considered the most valuable portion of his writings. There can be no doubt that the independent and liberal mind of Hoadly, aided by his station in the church, tended materially

DR BENJAMIN HOADLY.

DR BENJAMIN HOADLY, successively bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, was a prelate of great controversial ability, who threw the weight of his talents and learning into the scale of Whig politics, at that time fiercely attacked by the Tory and Jacobite parties. Hoadly was born in 1676. In 1706, while rector of St Peter's-le-Poor, London, he attacked a sermon by Atterbury, and thus incurred the enmity and ridicule of Swift and Pope. He defended the revolution of 1688, and attacked the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience with Duch vigour and perseverance, that, in 1709, the House of Cammane rocommended him to the favour of the queen. Her majesty does not appear to have complied with this request; but her successor, George I., elevated him to the see of Bangor. Shortly after his elevation to the bench, Hoadly published a work against the nonjurors, and a sermon preached before the king at St James's, on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ. The latter excited a long and vehement dispute, known by the name of the Bangorian Controversy, in which forty or fifty tracts were published. The Lower House of Convocation

Hoadly printed, in 1702, A Letter to the Rev. Mr Fleetwood, occasioned by his Essay on Miracles. In the preface to a volume of tracts published in 1715, in which that letter was

to stem the torrent of slavish submission which then prevailed in the church of England.

ine Hist Cavit info Indl's sermon on The

Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ, preached before the king on 31st March, 1717, and which, as already mentioned, gave rise to the celebrated Bangorian controversy.

[The Kingdom of Christ not of this World.]

If, therefore, the church of Christ be the kingdom of Christ, it is essential to it that Christ himself be the sole lawgiver and sole judge of his subjects, in all points relating to the favour or displeasure of Almighty God; and that all his subjects, in what station soever they may be, are equally subjects to him; and that no one of them, any more than another, hath autho

to impose a sense upon the old ones, which is the same thing; or to judge, censure, or punish the servants of another master, in matters relating purely to conscience or salvation. If any person hath any other notion, either through a long use of words with inconsistent meanings, or through a negligence of thought, let him but ask himself whether the church of Christ this notion of it doth not absolutely exclude all other be the kingdom of Christ or not; and if it be, whether legislators and judges in matters relating to conscience or the favour of God, or whether it can be his king.

reprinted, the eminent author speaks of Fleetwood in the fol-rity either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or lowing terms:-This contains some points, relating to the subject of miracles, in which I differed long ago from an excellent person, now advanced, by his merits, to one of the highest stations in the church. When it first appeared in the world, he had too great a soul to make the common return of resentment or contempt, or to esteem a difference of opinion, expressed with civility, to be an unpardonable affront. So far from it, that he not only was pleased to express some good liking of the manner of it, but laid hold on an opportunity, which then immediately offered itself, of doing the writer a very considerable piece of service. I think myself obliged, upon this occasion, to acknowledge this in a public manner, wishing that such a procedure may at length cease to be uncommon and singular.'

* Hallam's Constitutional History of England.

dom if any mortal men have such a power of legislation and judgment in it. This inquiry will bring us back to the first, which is the only true account of the church of Christ, or the kingdom of Christ, in the mouth of a Christian; that it is the number of men, whether small or great, whether dispersed or united, who truly and sincerely are subjects to Jesus Christ alone as their lawgiver and judge in matters relating to the favour of God and their eternal salvation.

contrary to the interests of true religion, as it is plainly opposite to the maxims upon which Christ founded his kingdom; who chose the motives which are not of this world, to support a kingdom which is not of this world. And indeed it is too visible to be hid, that wherever the rewards and punishments are changed from future to present, from the world to come to the world now in possession, there the kingdom founded by our Saviour is, in the nature of it, so far changed, that it is become, in such a degree, what he professed his kingdom was not-that is, of this world; of the same sort with other common earthly kingdoms, in which the rewards are worldly honours, posts, offices, pomp, attendance, dominion; and the punishments are prisons, fines, banishments, galleys and racks, or something less of the same sort.

[Ironical View of Protestant Infallibility.] [From the Dedication to Pope Clement XI., prefixed to Sir ligion throughout the World."]

The next principal point is, that, if the church be the kingdom of Christ, and this kingdom be not of this world,' this must appear from the nature and end of the laws of Christ, and of those rewards and punishments which are the sanctions of his laws. Now, his laws are declarations relating to the favour of God in another state after this. They are declarations of those conditions to be performed in this world on our part, without which God will not make us happy in that to come. And they are almost all general appeals to the will of that God; to his nature, known R. Steele's Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Reby the common reason of mankind, and to the imitation of that nature, which must be our perfection. The keeping his commandments is declared the way to life, and the doing his will the entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The being subjects to Christ, is to this very end, that we may the better and more effectually perform the will of God. The laws of this kingdom, therefore, as Christ left them, have nothing of this world in their view; no tendency either to the exaltation of some in worldly pomp and dignity, or to their absolute dominion over the faith and religious conduct of others of his subjects, or to the erecting of any sort of temporal kingdom under the covert and name of a spiritual one.

wards and punish.

Your holiness is not perhaps aware how near the churches of us Protestants have at length come to those privileges and perfections which you boast of as peculiar to your own so near, that many of the most quick-sighted and sagacious persons have not been able to discover any other difference between us, as to the main principle of all doctrine, government, worship, and discipline, but this one, namely, that you cannot err in anything you determine, and we never do: that is, in other words, that you are infallible, and we always in the right. We cannot but esteem the advantage to be exceedingly on our side in this case; because we have all the benefits of infallibility without the absurdity of pretending to it, and without the uneasy task of maintaining a point so shocking to the understanding of mankind. And you must pardon us if we cannot help thinking it to be as great and as glorious a privilege in us to be always in the right, without the pretence to infallibility, as it can be in you to be always in the wrong, with it.

The sanctions of Christ's law are rewards and punishments. But of what sort? Not the rewards of this world; not the offices or glories of this state; not the pains of prisons, banishments, fines, or any lesser and more moderate penalties; nay, not the much lesser negative discouragements that belong to human society. He was far from thinking that these could be the instruments of such a persuasion as he thought acceptable to God. But, as the great end of his kingdom was to guide men to happiness after the short Thus, the synod of Dort (for whose unerring deciimages of it wore over here below, so he took his sions public thanks to Almighty God are every three motives from that place where his kingdom first be-years offered up with the greatest solemnity by the gau, and where it was at last to end; from those re- magistrates in that country), the councils of the reterature state, which had formed in France, the assembly of the kirk of Scotno relation to this world; and to show that his king- land, and (if I may presume to name it) the convocadom was not of this world,' all the sanctions which he tion of England, have been all found to have the very thought fit to give to his laws were not of this world same unquestionable authority which your church at all. claims, solely upon the infallibility which resides in it; and the people to be under the very same strict obligation of obedience to their determinations, which with you is the consequence only of an absolute infallibility. The reason, therefore, why we do not openly set up an infallibility is, because we can do without it. Authority results as well from power as from right, and a majority of votes is as strong a foundation for it as infallibility itself. Councils that may err, never do: and besides, being composed of men whose peculiar business it is to be in the right, it is very immodest for any private person to think them not so; because this is to set up a private corrupted understanding above a public uncorrupted judgment.

St Paul understood this so well, that he gives an account of his own conduct, and that of others in the same station, in these words: Knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men: whereas, in too many Christian countries since his days, if some who profess to succeed him were to give an account of their own conduct, it must be in a quite contrary strain: 'Knowing the terrors of this world, and having them in our power, we do not persuade men, but force their outward profession against their inward persuasion.'

Now, wherever this is practised, whether in a great degree or a small, in that place there is so far a change from a kingdom which is not of this world, to a kingdom which is of this world. As soon as ever you hear of any of the engines of this world, whether of the greater or the lesser sort, you must immediately think that then, and so far, the kingdom of this world takes place. For, if the very essence of God's worship be spirit and truth, if religion be virtue and charity, under the belief of a Supreme Governor and Judge, if true real faith cannot be the effect of force, and if there can be no reward where there is no willing choice then, in all or any of these cases, to apply force or flattery, worldly pleasure or pain, is to act

Thus it is in the north, as well as the south; abroad, as well as at home. All maintain the exercise of the same authority in themselves, which yet they know not how so much as to speak of without ridicule in others.

In England it stands thus: The synod of Dort is of no weight; it determined many doctrines wrong. The assembly of Scotland hath nothing of a true authority; and is very much out in its scheme of doctrines, worship, and government. But the church