The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-23 00:00:00

Again :

" He will not come back till the spring's green and
And 1 would that 1 with the leaves were dead,
Quiet somewhere with them in the moss and the
When he and the summer come this way," she .
Or such bits of landscape as the following
The stagnant levels, one and all, are burning
distant marsh—
Hark! 'twas the bittern's parting call. The frogs
with murmurs harsh
The low reeds vibrate. See !]the sun catches '
pools one by one.
We should not have bestowed all this
upon Mr. Meredith's faults, if we
believe that he has also merits which
him to a patient audience. But whether
will hereafter acquire any solid distinct
a poet cannot be determined by the ev'
before us. It will entirely depend ul
exercise of a purer taste and a sound
ment than he displays in the present
That he is capable of thinking for
although he does not always think very
foundly, or even correctly, and that he -
times look into the heart of things as
on their outsides, is intimated in
passages ; but unfortunately the ge,
whatever is good and hopeful in hil
buried so deeply under irrational
that it is doubtful whether they will ever
up to maturity. There is not a single •
the collection quite free from some
other of the objections we have pointed
and unless Mr. Meredith can onco
ever make up his mind to abandon the ,
habit of word-painting and exaggeration,
instead of presenting objects through
and distorting medium, endeavour to
them as they are, Parnassus is not the _
in which he is likely to obtain distinction.
Mixed up with much that is obscure -
foolish, he gives some excellent advice
artist which he would do well to follow
self. He tells him not to attempt too
to go to nature, to write his own
assert himself, and not to be misled by
This is very sensible advice ; like eve
else, however, in the volume (and hen
the grand obstruction to Mr. Meredith''
gress, that whenever he says anything
saying he is sure to spoil it in ,
terance) it is overlaid by paradoxes
glitter of fine words without any intelligible
meaning. He advises his artist, for
to be strong—which is plain common
and to trust instincts more than
which may, or may not, be good advice,
as we know ; and then goes on
The world of Thought is psck'd so tight,
If thou stand up another tumbles:
Heed it not, tho' thou have to fight
With giants: whoso follows stumbles.
The operation of standing up and
under such circumstances of tight
not clear. But the purpose of the
altogether too dark to speculate
History, rules, laws, catalogues, and
guides to knowledge, and systems of
urgently recommends the artist to
Here we have a terrible confusion
and a specimen of reasoning after the
of a maze, so artfully coutnved that,
once got in, it will be no easy matter
to find your way out again :
Next, as to laws. What's beautiful
We recognise in form and face :
And judge it thus, and thus, by rule,
As perfect law brings perfect grace.
If thro' the effect we drag the cense,
T►issect, divide, anatomise,
Resnits are lost in loathsome laws,
And all the ancient beauty dies:

Till we, instead of bloom and light,
See only sinews, nerves, and veins:
Nor will the effect and cause unite,
For one is lost if one remains:
But from some higher point behold
This dense, perplexing combination ;
And laws involved in laws unfold,
And orb into thy contemplation.
If this be not what Butler calls " learned
nonsense," it is much the same, and
has a deeper sound
Than easy sense, and goes for more profoand.
Mr. Meredith is wrong in throwing all rules
overboard. There is one, at least, he ought to
try to follow—that is, to think clearly.

597
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mould,
said.
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the living
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ather he
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evidence
ipon the
ler judg-
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himself,
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n many
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conceits
ever grow
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le one or
nted out;
and for
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gh a false
• exhibit
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cure and
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Row him-
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books, to
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very thing
fern in lies
ith's pro.
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example,
n sense—
creeds—
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a.
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-

598

A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of
Predestination. By J. B. Mozley, 8.D.,

Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
London : Murray.
Ix strong contrast to the wordy, nerveless
Burnett Treatise noticed in our columns last
week is this masterly argument by Mr.
Mozley, on St. Augustine's doctrine of Pre-
destination. The design is to fully set forth
that doctrine, as it is to be collected from a
diligent study of Augustine's writings, to
exhibit the leading views which have been
held upon it from his day to the present time,
and hence to discuss and elucidate those per-
plexing problems which have most severely
exercised the minds of divines and meta-
physicians, and which Milton describes the
fallen angels as unable to solve, finding " No
" end in wandering mazes lost."
Mr. Mozley states the whole case of what
he calls " contradictory truths " with masterly
force and clearness. He shirks no difficulty.
He has no positive system of his own to set
up, and he is, therefore, enabled to say that
all systems for the reconcilement of ideas
essentially conflicting are imperfect, and never
can be established by human reasoning. On
the contradiction between our ideas of the
Divine Power and of human free will it is
said :

The two ideas of the Divine Power and free will are, in
short, two great tendencies of thought inherent in our
minds, which contradict each other, and can never be
united or brought to a common goal ; and which, there-
fore, inasmuch as the essential condition of absolute truth
is consistency with other truth, can never, in the present
state of our faculties, become absolute truths, but must
remain for ever contradictory tendencies of thought, going
on side by side till they are lost sight of and disappear in
the haze of our conceptions, like two parallel straight lines
which go on to infinity without meeting.

With equal explicitness is stated the diffi-
culty of reconciling the fact of sin in the world
with our conceptions of the Divine Power and
Divine Goodness :

God wills the salvation of men on the condition that
they are good, which will, if they are bad, is not opposed
to the evil of their punishment. The evil of punish-
ment, then, is here accounted for, and made to agree with
the Divine Power, because made to agree with the Divine
Will; but what account is given of the evil of that sin
which is the reason of punishment? This evil is passed
over altogether. Yet it is a plain evil which takes place in
the universe, and we must either say that the will of God
is opposed to it or not ; the former alternative being appa-
rently inconsistent with the Divine Power, the latter with
the Divine Goodness. The difficulty put off at one stage
thus meets us at another; and an evil remains which we
eannot without impiety assert not to be opposed to the
Divine Will, and the existence of which therefore is incon-
sistent apparently with the Divine Power.

The argument that evil is only apparent in
the world, which has found so much favour
with some philosophers and some philosophic
divines in our day, is rejected by Mr. Nlozley
as inconsistent, not only with Scripture, but
with human consciousness and the facts of
existence :

Understanding sin, then, in the sense of depravity and
wickedness, the general fact of human sinfulness in this
sense certainly requires some law of sin in our nature as
its explanation; such a law as is asserted in the doctrine
of original sin. But while such a fact must be allowed as
a proof of the doctrine of original sin, it must at the same
time be remembered, that the assertion of general de.
pravity and wickedness is a very grave assertion to make
respecting the human race. It is an assertion, however,
w'iich rests on a ground of actual observation and expe-
rience, confirmed by the authority of Scripture, and is true
in two different ways.
First, every man is depraved in the sense of having vile,
selfish, and proud desires, which have a certain power over
him, and occupy and fill his mind with sufficient strength
and frequency to constitute a depraved condition of mind.
A certain tendency to evil is indeed no more than what is
necessary to constitute a state of trial, and does not show
depravity or corruption in the moral being. But it is
evident that evil desire, in the degree in which it exists in
human nature, is more than such a tendency as this, and
is in itself a disease ; inasmuch as men feel it as some-
thing sinful in itself, independent of its gratification.
Teat even the best of men, with this strength of evil desire
residing in him, by a perfectstandard, and it must be seen
that he is a corrupt being, whom we can only think of at
all as good by a kind of anticipation, regarding this as a
transient condition of mind, of which he is one day to
be relieved. In the sense, then, of having concupiscence,
which hath of itself the nature of sin, all mankind are

depraved.
Secondly, the generality of mankind are depraved in the
sense of actual bad life and conduct; as the former was a
fact of inward experience, this latter being a fact of obser-
vation. The wickedness of the generality of mankind was
acknowledged even by the heathen, and has been gene-
rally admitted. It is proved, therefore, in the only way in
which a general fact admits of being proved, viz., by large,

THE PRESS.

general, and consentient observation ; observation, more
over, which, when once made, keeps its ground, and meets
with comparatively little contradiction. It is, moreover,
strongly asserted in Scripture, which refers to it, however,
as a known and ascertained fact, rather than professes to
reveal it in the first instance. Such being the case, it is
evident., even supposing particular persons should say that
their own observation had been otherwise, that their indi-
vidual testimony is no counterbalance to the general ob-
servation of mankind.

Human suffering is regarded in the same
way as a great fact beyond all dispute :
The common spectacle of human misery, however, has,
in fact, impressed the religious portion of the world in all
ages, Christian or l'agan, in the latter way ; and the general
feeling of mankind has connected it with some deep though
undefined root of sin in the human race.

The great mysteries of God's foreknow-
ledge and man's free will ; of the existence of
sin and of Divine Omnipotence ; of human
misery and of the Divine Goodness ; being
admitted, Mr. Mozley's conclusion is, that no
reasoning can reconcile thorn, and that they
must be received as " contradictory truths ":

Upon this abstract idea, then, of the Divine Power, as an
unlimited power, rose up the Augustinian doctrine of Pre-
destination and grace ; while upon the abstract idea of
free will, as an unlimited faculty, rose up the Pelagian
theory. Had men perceived, indeed, more clearly and
really than they have done, their ignorance as human crea-
tures, and the relation in which the human reason stands
to the great truths involved in this question, they might
have saved themselves the trouble of this whole contro-
versy. They would have seen that this question cannot
be determined absolutely, one way or another; that it
lies between two great contradictory truths, neither of
which can be set aside, or made to give way to the other;
two opposing tendencies of thought, inherent in the human
mind, which go on side by side, and are able to be held
and maintained together, although thus opposite to each
other, because they are only incipient, and not final and
complete truths ;—the great truths, I mean, of the Divine
Power on the one aide, and man's free will, or his originality
as an agent, on the other. And this is, in fact, the mode in
which this question is settled by the practical common
sense of mankind. For what do the common phrases em-
ployed in ordinary conversation and writing upon this
question—the popular and received modes of deciding it
whenever it incidentally turns up—amount to but this
solution ? Such phrases, I mean, as that we must hold
man's free will together with God's foreknowledge and
predestination, although we do not see how they agree ;
and other like formulae? Such forms of language for de-
ciding the question evidently proceed upon the acknow-
ledgement of two contradictory truths on this subject,
which can not be reconciled, but must be held together in
inconsistency. They imply that the doctrine of predesti-
nation and the doctrine of free will are both true, and that
one who would hold the truth mils: hold both. The plain
natural reason of mankind is thus always large and com-
prehensive—not afraid of inconsistency, but admitting all
truth which presents itself to its notice. It is only when
minds begin to philosophise that they grow narrow—that
there begins to be felt the appeal to consistency, and with
it the temptation to exclude truths. Then begins the pride
of argument, the ingenuity of construction, the " carrying
out " of ideas and principles into successive consequences,
which, as they become more and more remote, and leave
the original truth at a distance, also carry the mind of the
reasoner himself away from the first and natural aspect of
that truth, as imperfect and partial, to an artificial aspect
of it as whole and exclusive.
This is a passage worthy of any of our great
masters of thought, and carries the mind back
to the massive ideas and nervous expression
of Barrow (much less read at the present day
titan he deserves to be) and Butler. But at
the same time we cannot think the phrase
" contradictory truths " a happy one. It is a
solecism in language. Irreconcileable truths
the mind may form some conception of, but the
very notion of contradictory truths it instinc
Lively rejects.
In one of the passages quoted above, these
" contradictory truths " are better described
as " parallel straight lines which go on to in-
" finity without meeting " In such lines there
is nothing contradictory or opposing. But a
more correct image may be drawn from
mathematics. There are the lines of the
hyperbola and its assymptotes. Nakedly
stated, it seems incredible that lines could
approach each other to infinity without meet
ing, yet this is demonstrably true. Were it
not, however, in the class of mathematical
truths, which can be stated and established
point by point, it would he thought as irre
concileable with reason as any of the great
mysteries rather inconsiderately termed by
Mr. Mozley " contradictory truths."

In other parts of his Essay Mr. Mozley
draws a distinction between what he terms ab
solute and imperfect truths. Of such truths we
have only a half conception—such, for ex-
ample, as eternity in regard to time, and in-
finity in regard to space. Of this class of
truths in philosophy, upon which the doctrine

SATURDAY,

of fatalism is raised, there are two mainly
conspicuous :

First, the maxim that every event must have a cause, and,
secondly, the idea of the Divine Power; the first being a
physical, the second a religious assumption, but both alike
forming premises from which a scheme of absolute neces-
sity in human actions is logically inferred.

On our idea of Divine Omnipotence he
remarks :

But what is this truth of the Divine Power or Omnipo-
tence, as we apprehend it? Does it belong to the class of
full and distinct, or of incomplete truths? Certainly to
the latter, for there appears at once a coin ter truth to it,
in the existence of moral evil which must be referred to
some cause other than God, as well as in that sense of our
own originality to which I have just alluded. The Divine
Omnipotence, then, is a truth which we do not under-
stand—mysterious, imperfect truth, and, therefore, cannot
be used b 3 the predestinarian as the premises of an abso-
lute doctrine, but only as that of an indefinite or condi-
tional one.

Elsewhere he says of the idea of the Divine
Power entertained by St. Augustine and his
school :

They commenced with an assumption, which no modern
philosopher would allow, that the Divine Power must be
au absolutely unlimited thing. That the Divine Power
is not liable to any foreign control is a principle which
every one must admit who believes properly in a Deity ;
but that there is no intrinsic limit to it in the possibilities
of things would not be admitted, in the present state of
philosophy, in which this whole subject is properly under-
stood to be out of the range of human reason. The Divine
Omnipotence must be admitted practically and in every
sense which can be wanted for the purpose of religion ;
but we have not faculties for speculation upon its real
nature.

This is just, and here the subject must rest-
We must be content with admitting the con
ception of the Divine Power for all practical
purposes, without attempting to say (which
would be highly unphilosophical, and, we
think, unscriptural) that there are no necessi-
ties in things which may have a tendency to
thwart or limit that power.
When we speak of the Divine Omnipotence
indeed, consideration will show that we ex-
press what must be an imperfect idea; for we
can conceive of no power which is absolutely
free from any kind of control in its exercise.
It is not irreverence to say that God must be
bound by the laws of His own Being. If All-
Good he could not be unjust. Though free to
work all His will, that will must be in harmony
with His Being.
The language of Scripture on the subject of
Predestination is, Mr. Mozley thinks, very
naturally inconsistent, as no positive assertion
on the subject can be made :

Were the nature of all troth such as that it could be ex-
pressed—that is, put into statement or proposition, to the
effect that such is or is not the case, explicitness and con-
sistency would be always requisite for language ; because
real expression is necessarily explicit and consistent with
itself. All intelligible truths—matters of fact, for example
—are capable of expression, and, therefore, in the case of
such truths, explicit statement is necessary, and contradic-
tion is ruinous. But it is not the case that all truth can
be expressed. Some troths of revealed religion cannot be
stated without contradiction to other truths, of which reason
or the same revelation informs us, and, therefore, cannot
be stated positively and absolutely without becoming, in the
very act of statement, false.

The truth of absolute predestination cannot be stated
without contradiction to the Divine Justice and man's free
agency. It belongs, then, to that class of truths which
does not admit of statement. It is an imperfect truth—
that is, a truth imperfectly apprehended by us. There is a
tendency, as has been said, to a truth on this subject; hut
this tendency never becomes a conclusion ; and an idea
which is true, as far as it does advance, never does ad-
vance to any natural limit. The intellect stops short and
rests in suspense, not seeing its way, and the line of
thought, though it may admit of such a completion as will
make it a truth, is not a truth yet, and cannot be made a
proposition.

lint with respect to this kind of truth which is only in
tendency, and does not admit of statement, if anything is
to be said at all, such contradictory or double language
only can be employed as Scripture does employ on the
subject of predestination. Consistent language would do
more than indeed the very reverse of what was wanted, inas-
much as it 'mild state positively. Inconsistency could
certainly be avoided by saying nothing at all,hnt that mode
of avoiding inconsistency could not be adopted here, be-
cause there is a defective and incomplete truth to be ex-
pressed in some such way as is practicable.

In the concluding chapter the author has
some most impressive and beautiful passages
on the value of tolerance in all controversy.
But, lie says
Such is the imperfection even of the human mind, that
under Providence, a certain narrowness of judgment often
works for good, and seems to favour practical energy and
zeal.

This is true. The most philosophic minds are
usually wanting in energetic action. To spe.