HKB
that is, expressing the same subject but with a difference, in contra-distinction from metaphors and similitudes, that are always allegorical, that is, expressing a different subject but with a resemblance.
Of metaphorical language, on the other hand, let the following be taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, we will suppose, of an act, which in its own nature, and as a producing and efficient cause, is transcendent; but which produces sundry effects, each of which is the same in kind with an effect produced by a cause well known and of ordinary occurrence. Now when I characterize or designate this transcendent act, in exclusive reference to these its effects, by a succession of names borrowed from their ordinary causes; not for the purpose of rendering the act itself, or the manner of the agency, conceivable, but in order to show the nature and magnitude of the benefits received from it, and thus to excite the due admiration, gratitude, and love in the receivers; in this case I should be rightly described as speaking metaphorically. And in this case to confound the similarity, in respect of the effects relatively to the recipients, with an identity in respect of the causes or modes of causation relatively to the transcendent act or the Divine Agent, is a confusion of metaphor with analogy, and of figurative with literal; and has been and continues to be a fruitful source of superstition or enthusiasm in believers, and of objections and prejudices to infidels and sceptics. But each of these points is worthy of a separate consideration: and apt occasions will be found of reverting to them severally in the following Aphorisms, or the comments thereto attached.
[84 and 85] These reference marks are the author's own, for which, however, he supplied no notes here; but further on, in the Comment, at pp. 132-3, he gives them in the text.--ED.
[86] See Comment on Moral and Religious Aphorism VI., p. 45.--ED.
[87] Lev. xix. 2, and Micah vi. 8.--ED.
APHORISM VIII.
LEIGHTON.
FAITH elevates the soul not only above sense and sensible things, but above reason itself. As reason corrects the errors which sense might occasion, so supernatural faith corrects the errors of natural reason judging according to sense.
COMMENT.
My remarks on this Aphorism from Leighton cannot be better introduced, or their purport more distinctly announced, than by the following sentence from Harrington, with no other change than was necessary to make the words express, without aid of the context, what from the context it is evident was the writer's meaning. "The definition and proper character of Man--that, namely, which should contra-distinguish him from the Animals--is to be taken from his reason rather than from his understanding: in regard that in other creatures there may be something of understanding, but there is nothing of reason."[88]
Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, complains, that there are not impossibilities enough in Religion for his active faith; and adopts by choice and in free preference, such interpretations of certain texts and declarations of Holy Writ, as place them in irreconcilable contradiction to the demonstrations of science and the experience of mankind, because (says he) "I love to lose myself in a mystery, and 'tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity and Incarnation;"--and because he delights (as thinking it no vulgar part of faith) to believe a thing not only above but contrary to reason, and against the evidence of our proper senses. For the worthy knight could answer all the objections of the devil and reason "with the odd resolution he had learnt of Tertullian: Certum est quia impossibile est. It is certainly true because it is quite impossible!" Now this I call ULTRAFIDIANISM.[89]