important sense, that they could see nothing around but God made visible; in the shining sun and rolling ocean; in the blooming flowers and twinkling stars. Such, too, were the views of Dr. Emmons; though it must be confessed that there was this difference between Spinoza and the New England divines, that while he endeavored to pull God down to Nature, they attempted to draw Nature up to God. There was an air of piety and devotion in their reasoning, while his was only reckless speculation; but they were equally bold and equally distant from common sense. A little before this time Bishop Berkeley had visited New England; a man who had " "every virtue under heaven," and who also knew how to prove the impossible by the most invincible arguments. It is within the knowledge of the writer of this article that many of the disciples of the Hopkinsian school were converts to Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge; and all of them had read his book. Some of them said that no one could confute the ideal system. We always felt inclined to meet them with a quotation from Cicero, De Finibus, Lib. IV, sec. 19: "Sed ita falsa sunt ea, quæ consequntur ut illa, è quibus hæc nata sunt, vera esse non passunt." "The conclusion is so absurd that the premises can not be true."

In a word, Dr. Burton's design seems to have been to contend without antagonism, and conquer without signalizing his victory in a triumphal procession. He calls no names; he never assumes the attitude of a polemic gladiator. He silently supplies what is deficient, corrects what is erroneous, and seeks only to establish what he conceives to be true. He asks not who the company is; he simply opens the window shutter and lets in the light.

But, III, we may ask, What is the value of his system? The value of a system of course depends upon its truth. But we claim more for this system than its truth; it stopped some bad tendencies; it corrected some specious errors; and it is calculated to awaken reflection and stir up thought. These Essays are very suggestive; and when they verge to error, they lead us to reply and instruct us how to confute. We will not

claim for this very original author that he is infallible and is always right. He had one bad maxim, and that is, that truth is best found by solitary meditation. He rather discouraged reading, and frequently remarked that most students read too much and reflected too little. It is very true that great readers may be very superficial thinkers; but the human mind was made, like the pebbles on the shore, to be polished by perpetual friction. One, we think, can discern in President Edwards' works, sentences, nay, whole paragraphs, which a single question from a coëqual, whom he respected, would have induced him to modify or expunge. "The Apostles themselves met in council; Paul went up to Jerusalem after three years to see Peter-ioτopñσai IIétpov-to confer with Peter; and fourteen years afterwards he went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, 'lest by any means I should run or had run in vain Gal. ii, 2. In most of his Epistles, it is Paul and Sosthenes our brother: 1 Cor.; Paul and Timothy our brother 2 Cor.; Paul and Timotheus the servants of Jesus Christ Philippians; Paul and Timothens: Colossians; Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus 1 and 2 Thessalonians. It is very evident that the two of the Gospels were written conjointly, Mark and Luke.* Luther and Calvin were in concert with the teachers of their respective seminaries. The literati, in Queen Ann's day, and in Paris in the days of Louis XIV, were eminently social. In Mr. Addison's opinion, 'the greatest wits that ever were produced in one age, lived together in so good an understanding and celebrated each other with so much generosity, that each of them receives an additional lustre from his contemporaries, and is more famous for having lived with men of so extraordinary a genius than if he had been himself the sole wonder of the age.""-Spectator, No. 253.

This system is certainly better than the one it was intended to displace; it shows by contrast its excellence and our readers will recollect how often the Scriptures adopts this principle by placing the lustre of the gospel in comparison with the absurdity or deformity it was intended to remove.

* I do not forget inspiration. But the argument is a fortiori; if such care was necessary to inspired Apostles, how much more to us!

Thus the worship of our God as opposed to idolatry; the emblematical sacrifices in place of the unmeaning ones, whose end was ultimate; justification by faith as opposed to ritualism; regeneration, as opposed to polished selfishness; and the Redeemer's conquest of the world as different from that of Alexander or Cæsar. What is the chaff to the wheat? It is not pretended that any clashing systems of Christianity differ so much as revelation differs from heathenism. But all truth is seen more clearly when it outshines an error; just as a heap of wheat appears more precious when the winnowing wind has blown a heap of chaff by its side or beyond it.

Dr. Burton's plan is very simple; his language is perspicuous; his Scripture quotations are pertinent: and the whole impression is that of a powerful man in earnest. His terminology is generally well chosen, though on some minor points it might be mended; and his discriminations, though often acute, never lead to a subtilty, which involves the common reader in metaphysical darkness.

But his great excellence is that he places human nature in such perfect correspondence with the gospel. Man meets the gospel; the gospel meets man. Man is governed by his affections; and all the doctrines of the gospel are addressed to that very source. Man's ruling affections are his desires and aversions, and revelation is ever calling them forth. Sin; its deformity; its pleasure always turning into pain; its roseleaves dropping and leaving the naked thorns behind; a transient life; a wasting body and a certain death; an eternal hell with its dreadful society and its bitter reflections! On the other hand, an immortal soul with all its capacities; a Heaven of purity and rest; a dying Saviour making atonement for our sins and redeeming us from everlasting ruin; the fall of man and his glorious exaltation; what objects do these and a thousand other similar truths present to teach and purify the heart! Our strongest desires and strongest aversions coöperate together to lead us in the path of duty and seal our salvation. Take repentance as an exemplification. What a wise thing it was in God to appoint this mortifying act to a world of sinners as the first duty! Indeed it was the only

duty they could perform, and it paved the way for all others. It restores the soul to that sensibility which gives all the truths of the gospel their inward effect. It combines our hopes and fears, our desires and aversions, our joys and our sorrows, in one coöperation. We hate sin; we love God. It gives the right taste (to use this author's favorite word) for relishing the whole gospel. O, how overwhelming does the cross appear when surveyed through penitent tears! So lost and so recovered; such despair leading to such hope! Eternal corruption (as it seemed to be) exchanged for eternal purity! These tender affections give full meaning to the gospel. It is all-glorious. Such a discovery reminds one of the sun rising on one of those valleys in the Arabian tales, strewed over by diamonds, which receive its light to reflect back its glory.

Some of the reasoning of this school was irresistible; at least too strong for any logic of ours to answer. Though Dr. Burton is rather favorable to solitary thinking and individual exertion, he was not altogether without associates; and it was always understood that Judge Niles, of Fairlee, an adjunct parish to Dr. Burton's, was an adviser and partner with him in concocting his system; and neither of them had much sympathy with the modern sentiment, that duty is measured by ability. I can, therefore I ought, was a maxim which had a very limited authority with them. Judge Niles, in a "Letter to a Friend, published at Windsor, Vt., 1809, says:

"The friends of God are under no obligation to grant to impenitent sinners, that in order to be worthy of blame for their opposition to God, they must be acknowledged to have the same power to renew themselves, which they have to perform the common actions of life.

"The reason why we are not condemned for having omitted a commanded external action, seems to be this. All such actions and omissions are, prima facie, evidence of a disobedient spirit, because they are supposed to flow spontaneously from the heart; so that, unless some evidence to the contrary appear, they are to be regarded as interpreters of the heart. But if it appear that they do not flow spontaneously from the heart, they can not be regarded as correct interpreters. The heart, then, only shows itself through external actions and omissions, when they are directed by the will. Therefore, no bodily action is imputable to me if it did not take place in obedience to my will. The same is

*Rev. Nathaniel Niles, a preacher, judge, and member of Congress. Judge Niles left a work on Psychology in Ms., which is now deposited in the library of Princeton College.

true of all those operations of the mind which take place in consequence of having been ordered by the will. The heart can not immediately, without an express, imperative act of willing, produce any of these. So that in all such cases, if the will do not direct, the consequences are not to be imputed. There are, however, many exercises of the heart, such as love, hatred, hope and fear, which spring immediately from the heart, without any interposition of the will Even those who call love a volition, will not say that it is produced, like motion in my hand, by a preceding imperative volition. These affections flowing as they do, spontaneously and immediately from the heart, are, when known, fair expositions of it. Whatever else be supposed, the language of these, respecting the heart, is conclusive. Hence, there is no such occasion for our having this power over our affections of heart, as there is that we should have it over our hands.

"The morality of our actions is derived from the heart, but that of the heart itself is underived; it consists in the heart alone. Now if the morality of the heart consists in the very nature of the heart itself, apart from all consideration of any antecedent, then it will be still the same, whether it were, or were not, preceded by a power to manage our hearts by our volitions, as we manage our bodies in the performance of bodily actions: and if the morality of the heart consists in the very nature of the heart itself, it can not vary with the variations of any previous power."

Now how can this be answered? The rule, that power measures obligation, is an exceedingly superficial one, and applies only to the outward actions when they indicate the disposition. A malignant temper, however it originate and wherever exerted, is per se sinful; and such is the conclusion of logic and common sense the world over. It is the sad effect of sin that it creates an inability.

But, IV, What are the imperfections of this system, and has it any?

We allow that these Essays provoke some questions which it would not be easy to answer; and some of the subordinate parts of the system are incautious in their language. Among the imperfections of the writer we should number, first, his confidence in the completeness of his own system. He has too much faith in his own analysis. This perhaps is a common fault of all metaphysicians. They draw lines which seem to them more definite than such lines ever were, or can be. Mapping out the faculties of the mind, seems to us like those outline pictures of the ox, which we sometimes see in a stall or a window, with dotted lines showing the parts, as the brisket, the sirloin, the etch-bone, the rib-roast, etc. In all