HKB
sake of the Comment: the following Remarks having been the first marginal note I had pencilled on Leighton's pages, and thus (remotely, at least) the occasion of the present work.
Leighton, I observed, throughout his inestimable work, avoids all metaphysical views of Election, relatively to God, and confines himself to the doctrine in its relation to Man: and in that sense too, in which every Christian may judge of it who strives to be sincere with his own heart. The following may, I think, be taken as a safe and useful Rule in religious inquiries. Ideas, that derive their origin and substance from the Moral Being, and to the reception of which as true objectively (that is, as corresponding to a reality out of the human mind) we are determined by a practical interest exclusively, may not, like theoretical or speculative Positions, be pressed onward into all their possible logical consequences.[74] The Law of Conscience, and not the Canons of discursive Reasoning, must decide in such cases. At least, the latter have no validity, which the single veto of the former is not sufficient to nullify. The most pious conclusion is here the most legitimate.
It is too seldom considered though most worthy of consideration, how far even those Ideas or Theories of pure Speculation, that bear the same name with the Objects of Religious Faith, are indeed the same. Out of the principles necessarily presumed in all discursive thinking, and which being, in the first place universal, and secondly, antecedent to every particular exercise of the understanding, are therefore referred to the reason, the human mind (wherever its powers are sufficiently developed, and its attention strongly directed to speculative or theoretical inquiries,) forms certain essences, to which for its own purposes it gives a sort of notional subsistence. Hence they are called entia rationalia: the conversion of which into entia realia, or real objects, by aid of the imagination, has in all times been the fruitful stock of empty theories, and mischievous superstitions, of surreptitious premises and extravagant conclusions. For as these substantiated notions were in many instances expressed by the same terms, as the objects of religious Faith; as in most instances they were applied, though deceptively, to the explanation of real experiences; and lastly, from the gratifications, which the pride and ambition of man received from the supposed extension of his knowledge and insight; it was too easily forgotten or overlooked, that the stablest and most indispensable of these notional beings were but the necessary forms of thinking, taken abstractedly: and that like the breadthless lines, depthless surfaces, and perfect circles of geometry, they subsist wholly and solely in and for the mind, that contemplates them. Where the evidence of the senses fails us, and beyond the precincts of sensible experience, there is no reality attributable to any notion, but what is given to it by Revelation, or the Law of Conscience, or the necessary interests of Morality.
Take an instance:
It is the office, and, as it were, the instinct of Reason to bring a unity into all our conceptions and several knowledges. On this all system depends; and without this we could reflect connectedly neither on nature nor our own minds. Now this is possible only on the assumption or hypothesis of a ONE as the ground and cause of the Universe, and which in all succession and through changes is the subject neither of Time nor Change. The ONE must be contemplated as Eternal and Immutable.
Well! the Idea, which is the basis of Religion, commanded by the Conscience and required by Morality, contains the same truths, or at least truths that can be expressed in no other terms; but this idea presents itself to our mind with additional attributes, and these too not formed by mere Abstraction and Negation--with the attributes of Holiness, Providence, Love, Justice, and Mercy. It comprehends, moreover, the independent (extra-mundane) existence and personality of the supreme ONE, as our Creator, Lord, and Judge.