rom their
natural place and independent growth, to clothe them in their
helplessness with a false spiritual adornment, neither scriptural nor
human, but ecclesiastical--the native product of that overwhelming
superstition which has subverted and enslaved their nature. The
Church of Rome takes care that while simple souls think they are
cultivating Christian graces they shall be forging their own chains;
that their attempts to honour God shall always dishonour, because
they disenfranchise themselves. To be humble, to be obedient, to be
charitable, under such direction, is to be contentedly ignorant,
pitiably abject, and notoriously swindled.

Mr. Vaughan cannot be too severe upon the Romish priesthood. But it
is one thing to dismiss with summary contempt men, who, as they do,
keep the keys of knowledge, and neither enter in themselves nor
suffer others to enter, and quite another thing to apply the same
summary jurisdiction to men who, under whatsoever confusions, are
feeling earnestly and honestly after truth. And therefore we regret
exceedingly the mock trial which he has introduced into his
Introduction. We regret it for his own sake; for it will drive away
from the book--indeed it has driven--thoughtful and reverent people
who, having a strong though vague inclination toward the Mystics,
might be very profitably taught by the after pages to separate the
evil from the good in the Bernards and Guyons whom they admire, they
scarce know why; and will shock, too, scholars, to whom Hindoo and
Persian thoughts on these subjects are matters not of ridicule but of
solemn and earnest investigation.

Besides, the question is not so easily settled. Putting aside the
flippancy of the passage, it involves something very like a petitio
principii to ask offhand: "Does the man mean a living union of heart
to Christ, a spiritual fellowship or converse with the Father, when
he talks of the union of the believer with God--participation in the
Divine nature?" For first, what we want to know is, the meaning of
the words--what means "living"? what "union"? what "heart"? They are
terms common to the Mystic and to the popular religionist, only
differently interpreted; and in the meanings attributed to them lies
nothing less than the whole world-old dispute between Nominalist and
Realist not yet to be settled in two lines by two gentlemen over
their wine, much less ignored as a thing settled beyond all dispute
already. If by "l