us, is, on the part of Calvinists themselves, nominal rather than real, and when real, harmless; being, somehow or other, found in combination with a knowledge of the Scriptures and a hatred of sin. This error, then, if it be an error, which manifests so invincible a tendency to combine with Scriptural truth, must, one would think, have some affinity to truth; must have at least an apparent relation to other truths. Calvinism only includes it among other doctrines in a system essentially true. But if so, the assailant of the tenet had need to look to it, that, in attempting to tear away what is thus interwoven with the whole tissue of Scripture doctrine, he does not injure the integrity of the fabric.

A third concession is extorted from the learned Provost, by Philalethes, who cites a passage from Dr. Hey's Lectures, directly in the teeth of Dr. Copleston's statement, that while Predestinarians openly deny Free-will, the advocates of Free'will never deny the Prescience of God.' He is forced to admit that the passage cited, does indeed give an instance of ' a nearer approach to this denial than' he had supposed was ever made by our English divines.' We suspect that his supposition was as hastily formed as it was uncandidly applied. Archbishop King might have taught him better. He speaks expressly of some who, to establish Contingency and Freewill, have denied God's Prescience.' 'Tis observable,' he says, that by the same way of reasoning, and by the same 'sort of arguments, by which some endeavour to destroy the Divine Prescience, and render his Decrees odious, Cotta long ago in Cicero attacked the other attributes, and undertook to prove that God can neither have reason nor understanding, ⚫ wisdom nor prudence, nor any other virtue."*

Having made these important concessions in the first two sections, Dr. C. devotes the remainder of the pamphlet to the vindication of his remarks upon Analogy from the objections of the Author of Vindicia Analogica. This is a war of words in which we are not disposed to mingle. Dr. Copleston is very calmly haughty, and very mildly contemptuous, while his assailant is very irritable, and not over-courteous. The sum and substance of the wordy strife between them is, that Mr. Grinfield supposed the Provost to allude to mathematical analogies,' by the elementary formula he proposed, expressing it by the general signs A, B, C, D. Dr. C. says, he made no allusion to mathematics. Mr. G. admits that, if so, he mistook the design of the illustration; but he shews, we think, pretty

* Sermon on Predestination. § xxxvii.

clearly, that the Provost has adopted Archbishop King's error, in confounding figurative language with analogy. Two instances of this occur in the Provost's Reply to the Vindicia Analogicæ. For example,' he says, the Law is said to be our ⚫ schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Here the comparison is strictly analogical.' Again: I presume it would serve to < give some idea of the Koran to a person ignorant of the word, to say that it is the Bible of the Mahometans. The Koran is to Mahometans what the Bible is to Christians.' Our readers will perceive that, according to this statement of the learned Provost's, things bearing not the least analogy to each other in their nature, become analogical by a mere figure of speech; that things of the most opposite kind, if they are susceptible of comparison in any of their relations, are analogous. Because the Koran is regarded in the same light by Mahometans, that the Bible is by Christians, therefore there is an analogy between them. We confess that we see no propriety in this use of words. We should have regarded the phrase, the Koran is the Bible of Mahometans,' as a simple metaphorical illustration, and as allowable in no other sense. If it was understood to imply an analogy between them, it would be objectionable as tending to mislead. With regard to the expression cited from Scripture, the Law is our 'schoolmaster,' 'Mr. Grinfield remarks:

"Here," you say, "the comparison is, strictly speaking, Analogical," p. 35. It may be so according to your meaning of the word, but, according to mine, it is strictly metaphorical. A metaphor may explain, as well as ornament a subject, because it generally compares what is invisible and abstract, with what is an object of sense and daily observation; but a metaphor can prove nothing, because the truth which it would illustrate must always previously be taken for granted. On the mind of an unconverted Jew, the Apostle's assertion would have no force, though to us who are believers, the allusion seems full of beauty and propriety. If the treatise of Bishop Butler had been made up of such analogies, what could it have proved to the satisfaction either of the Deist or the Atheist? pp. 21, 22.

Dr. Copleston's distinction between metaphor and simile is, in our view, far from correct. He affirms, indeed, that it is impossible to fix any accurate boundary between the two departments.'

If those points,' he says, in which the relations are alike be either fanciful or of very slight importance, the transfer of name is usually called a metaphor, and is practised more for the sake of enlivening and adorning the style, than of explaining the nature of the subject. Metaphor is addressed to the imagination, Analogy to the

understanding: the object of the one is pleasure or excitement, of the other instruction.' .p. 37.

Let us try the validity of this distinction. "God is light." Is this a metaphor, or is it analogy? As addressed to the understanding, not to the imagination, it ought, according to Dr. C.'s proposition, to be the latter; whereas no analogy is implied, light, which is put for holiness, being strictly the language of metaphor. "Even there shall thy hand lead me."-" In thy "book all my members were written." Surely these are metaphorical expressions, yet, addressed to the understanding, not to the imagination, designed to instruct, not to please, and implying no analogy. "Wisdom is a tree of life." Here again is a simple metaphor." Whom he did foreknow, he also did pre"destinate"-is this metaphorical language? Let us hear Archbishop King. To suppose that they (Foreknowledge and Predestination) are the same in God and in us, is just as ⚫ reasonable as to infer, because wisdom is compared in Scrip⚫ture to a tree of life, that therefore it grows in the earth, has its spring and fall, and is warmed by the sun and fed by the 'rain.' He means to affirm, that there is in both cases only an analogy, the things being alike different, for any thing we know, in kind. Dr. Copleston does not go this length; but his ideas of figurative language and analogy, as having scarcely any definable boundary, favour the Archbishop's representation. Mr. Grinfield has cited, in his Appendix, a passage from Bishop Brown, which, we think, very accurately lays down the distinction.

To sum up the difference then between divine metaphor and divine analogy in full. Metaphor expresses only an imaginary resemblance or correspondency: analogy conveys the conception of a correspondent reality or resemblance. Metaphor is rather an allusion than a real substitution of ideas: analogy is a proper substitution of notions and conceptions. Metaphor at best is but the using a very remote and foreign idea to express something already supposed to be more exactly known: analogy conveys something correspondent and answerable, which could be now no otherwise usefully and really known without it. Metaphor is mostly in words, and is a figure of speech; analogy, a similis ratio, or proportion of things, and an excellent and necessary method or means of reason and knowledge. Metaphor uses ideas of sensation to express immaterial and heavenly objects, to which they can bear no real resemblance or proportion: analogy substitutes the operations of our soul, and notions mostly formed out of them, to represent divine things, to which they bear a real though unknown correspondency and proportion. In short, metaphor has no real foundation in the nature of the things compared; analogy is founded in the very nature of the things on both sides of the comparison; and the correspondency or resemblance is certainly real,

though we don't know the exact nature, or manner, or degree of it; at least we may safely presume this from the truth and veracity of God, who has thus made His revelations to mankind under the analogical conceptions and language of this world.'

Appendix. pp. 13, 14.

In a few words, the resemblance implied in metaphor, is known to be imaginary: the relation which is the foundation of analogy, is real.

But what has this philological discussion (for it is nothing more) to do with the subject of Calvinistic Predestination? Our readers will consider it as, metaphorically speaking, or analogically speaking, an episode. We now return to the main argument. Dr. Copleston re-asserts in the present pamphlet, that he had first pointed out the natural connexion' between Calvinism and a carelessness with regard to morals, which his unlucky appeal to facts was designed to confirm. In the Enquiry, he used stronger language, and talked of such a tendency being demonstrable by fair reasoning.' Deprived of the argument from historic testimony, he still considers himself as securely entrenched in his philosophical reasonings. We shall therefore briefly recapitulate the objections to those reasonings which he has not met, and leave the public to determine whether, or not, they are of sufficient force to deserve the notice of the learned and candid Inquirer.

1. We objected, in the first place,* to Dr. Copleston's account of the manner in which we arrive at the idea of the Divine Prescience, as unphilosophical and incorrect. We remarked, that he had confounded two things essentially distinct, expectation and knowledge; representing the Divine Prescience as no otherwise conceivable by us than as infinitely wise expectation: whereas rational expectation is mainly built on a belief in the Divine appointment, and therefore presupposes it. We observed, that the principle which leads us instantly to refer prediction to a supernatural agency, and to believe that contingent events come within the sphere of the Divine knowledge, is a universal principle, deeply rooted in our nature. Between the mode of the Divine knowledge and of human knowledge, it is felt that no analogy subsists. Had Archbishop King confined himself to this position, instead of maintaining, as he does, that we can arrive at the knowledge of the Divine perfections only by analogy, and that the moral perfections of the Deity, as well as his physical attributes, belong to Him only in an analogical sense; differing from the correspondent qua

Eclectic Review for May 1822. Vol. xvii. N.S. p. 398, et seq.

lities in the creature, not merely in mode or degree of perfection, but in kind;-had he, we say, contented himself with pointing out the difference of mode between the Divine knowledge and ours, his reasoning would have been less novel, but more correct. The truth is, that we arrive at the idea of God, and at that of his essential natural perfections, exactly in the same way; not by analogical comparison, but by testimony, concurring with the almost innate suggestions of reason and consciousness.

2. A second objection related to the inference which Dr. Copleston wished to establish on this false analogy. Because there is no connexion between human expectation and foresight, and the course of events, he would argue, that there is none between what comes to pass, and the Divine foreknowledge. This is a manifest absurdity. Man has absolutely no knowledge of the future, except what is derived from revelation. A calculation of probabilities is not knowledge. He is in uncertainty as to the possible event of the next moment. But the Almighty has a perfect, certain, universal knowledge of future events: and it is, therefore, a conclusion which the Author will never be able to invalidate, that between future events and Divine foreknowledge, there must be some connexion; events which are contingent to us, being certain to Him.

3. We objected, thirdly, to what appeared to us nothing better than a play upon words, where the Author is pleased to deny, that what is certainly future, and declared to be so, must necessarily come to pass. We observe, however, that he still adheres to this strange position. It is, he says, the only re'source' against the Predestinarian hypothesis, not to admit the position as a necessary truth, "that what is foreseen, is 'fixed, and cannot be otherwise :" and it is one principal object of my argument, to prove that we are not bound to admit it, because there is no contradiction involved in the denial of it.' Surely, the cause must be desperate when this bold expedient is the only resource left to its advocate. That what is foreseen may be in its own nature contingent; that is to say, that the thing's not happening, or happening differently, would imply no natural contradiction; is admitted. It was foreseen, that Judas would betray his Master; but his not doing so would have involved no contradiction, had it not been foretold; and the contradiction, had events happened otherwise, would have related to the prophecy, not to the nature of the event, which was contingent, and admitted of the alternative. But contingent as an event may be in its own nature, its contrary implying no natural contradiction, and the cause why it so happens rather than otherwise being wholly unknown to