To my own mind it appears that the essence and the effects of knowledge must be held to be always the same; as I know of no ground either in Reason, or Scripture, for making a difference in it, in those respects.

One great difference there is, which we must admit to exist, between God's knowledge and man's; that is a difference in their origin. Our stock of knowledge is raised upon the information of sense, a few axiomatic truths, inference, and testimony. Of the origin of God's knowledge we know nothing, except that it cannot be in our way, nor by these media. Perhaps it may not be a correct way of speaking, to say, that it originates at all. This is a mystery inscrutable to us.

Now the certainty of human knowledge is commonly grounded upon the necessary nature of the subject known. But it is plainly an inconsequence, to think that the certainty of God's knowledge is restricted within the same limits of subject; viz. to things of a necessary nature. For since all our knowledge is in its origin wholly unlike to the intuition of God; since our media are not his; it is no more than reasonable to think that he has knowledge where we are ignorant; and that he has a certainty of vision where we see nothing. Our principles of knowledge are not his, nor therefore the scope of it, either as to things future, or any other of the objects of the intuition of his omniscient Mind.-Certainty of foreknowledge concerning free and contingent events never can belong to man by his own reason. When it is derived to him, as we have ground to believe it sometimes is, in prophecy, from God; then the certainty exists both in man and in God, and in neither disturbs or affects the freedom, or contingency, of the things foreknown. Knowledge, as knowledge, does not disturb or influence its subject.-If Dr. King had pressed the consideration of this difference in the principles,

or the faculty, if I may so speak, of the Divine Knowledge, instead of proposing a distinction "in its essence, or its properties and effects," I think his argument would have been more correct; and perhaps such a view of the question might have opened to us some mitigation of the difficulty belonging to it.

There is also a degree of latitude and vagueness in the opinions which Dr. King has laid down concerning the Moral Attributes of God, which that author was far from intending to be drawn to the favour of any scepticism, or unsettledness in religious faith, but which I think is too liable to be drawn that way. For my own part, I read his argument with an impression that such is the tendency of his doctrine, though most remote from his design; nor do I see how it can be effectually defended against the objections, which, on this ground, were made to it, when it was first published, by a most unfair writer, Collins; who this once, seems to have had the advantage. Thinking thus of it, I regret the approbation which it has received from a person, for whose learning, however, and acumen in the investigation of truth, my respect is not diminished by a difference of judgment in this instance,-Dr. Copleston.

Perhaps it is not impossible to suggest one cause, which, I think, contributes its share to some erroneous, but certainly inconsequent, opinions, concerning the Divine Attributes. It is this; since Infinites, taken in their whole nature, are clearly something above our comprehension, it comes to be thought that we may assume almost any, or at least very arbitrary, notions, respecting them. But Moral Infinites, as well Mathematical; Moral Modes in their highest degree, as well as Modes of Quantity in its unlimited extent; are subject to some rules of

discourse, when we discourse of them at all; and one rule. is, that in passing up the scale of the finite subject, in order to approach the properties of the Infinite, we must pursue the enlarged idea taken from the properties of the first, and not adopt the contradictory, or any alien idea, to make the approximation to the Infinite in question.

Thus they who have assigned to the Divine Justice or Mercy, qualities, or operations, contradictory to, or alien from, the highest and best notions of Human Justice or Mercy, have sometimes appealed to the infiniteness of the Divine Nature, and sought to defend their opinions by it. But that appeal is unduly made. The infiniteness of that supreme excellence, which is in God, renders the contradictory of the human virtues the less credible him. That infinity of perfection is, indeed, an intense argument against the opinions so defended. And this is the view which we are taught to take of the Divine Nature, by him who best knew its immeasurable perfections, and how to direct us in our thoughts concerning it. "If If ye then being evil know "how to give good gifts unto your children, how much "more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask him." Matthew vii. 9, 10, 11. Dr. King is clearly most opposite in his creed to those hard and perplexing tenets concerning the Divine Justice and Mercy, to which I have alluded. But his mode of argument seems to be that which lays a ground for those tenets, viz., the hypothesis, that the actual nature of the Divine Attributes is something different from our positive notions of the human virtues, and that our words and names are equivocal, or which comes to the same effect, remotely analogous, when employed in the two subjects. A position which, I conceive, is introduced without a principle in the reason of it; and to the serious injury of our faith. Of any adequate and just comprehension of the nature and

perfections of the Divine Being, we must believe not only the human, but every other finite mind, to be incapable. But this persuasion is exceedingly remote from the doctrine which I read in Dr. King's discourse. That doctrine threatens to take from us what I may call the Truth of our Faith in the contemplation of God: that Truth consisting in a real, though most imperfect, conformity of our ideas to their object. It is one of Austin's sayings which I should adopt," Rectissime dicitur homo factus ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei; non enim aliter incommutabilem veritatem posset mente conspicere".-De Vera Relig., cap. xliv *.

There is another Prelate of the Irish Church, a writer of a far more acute and vigorous intellect than Dr. King, Bramhall, who has expressed himself in the following sentence:"The goodness and justice, and mercy, and truth "of God, are transcendent above the goodness, and jus❝tice, and mercy, and truth of men, and of quite a dif❝ferent nature from them." As St. Austin said, "God "is good without quality, a creator without indigence, "everywhere without place, eternal without timet." This confession of the transcendent, exclusive, and even different character, of the Divine Attributes, is morally and substantially true. The absolute transcendency of the divine virtue makes it of a different species. But the same proposition may become erroneous when put into certain forms of abstract reasoning. And Dr. King appears to have put the moral truth, thus expressed by that great writer, to this improper use.

But yet with regard to many of these inquiries respecting the Divine Nature and Attributes, I cordially agree

* A saying quoted from Austin by Malebranche.

† Bramhall, in his Controversy with Hobbes, Works, p. 741.

in the sentiment of Dr. Copleston; and I have satisfaction in expressing that agreement, since in other points I am obliged to differ with him; the sentiment, that the confidence and arrogance of our reasoning ought to be repressed by a continual sense of the shortness of our faculties, and of the extreme imperfection and inadequateness of the ideas by which our knowledge is terminated. Incommensurate as our ideas are at best, when they are employed on this subject, and the communication of them embarrassed by the uncertainties of language, I think the silent meditation of private thought is here always more grateful than a protracted discussion; and I willingly retreat into that confession with which Hooker begins his admirable and exact discourse upon the Nature, Perfections, and Laws of God. "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain "of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; "whom although to know, be life, and joy to make men"tion of his name, yet our soundest knowledge is, that "we know him not as he is, neither can know him; and "our safest eloquence concerning him, is our silence, when "we confess without confession, that his glory is inexpli"cable, his greatness above our capacity and reach." Eccles. Polit. Book i. Sec. 2. Or, as the same thought is expressed, scarcely with less strength and beauty of words, by an older writer, a father of the Latin church, O Maxime, de quo nihil dici et exprimi mortalium potis est significatione verborum; qui, ut intelligaris, tacendum est, atque ut per umbram Te possit errans investigare suspicio, nihil est omnino mutiendum.-Arnobius adv. Gent. p. 17.