PROLEGOMENA. xlvii. 



the character of each of these remarkable per- 

 sonages ; and in order to avoid the error of 

 esteeming what is of humanity, or of despising 

 what is of God, in each of their highly diversified 

 characters, let hira try thera all by the example 

 of Jesus Christ, and then compare them all to 

 modern " Christianity." This is the true method 

 of using the histories of persons distinguished 

 by their practices from the rest of mankind, all 

 diversified in character and modes of perfection, 

 but all agreed in faith and in the spirit of per- 

 fection ; all falling short of the one absolute 

 perfection, b>it all excelling and abasing and 

 putting to shaine modern imperfection. In our 

 days there is a paradoxical mixture of God and 

 mammon, which the study of words would 

 detect. People like to think there is an after life, 

 but loathe to earn it. Those Avho enjoy the en- 

 couragement of mount Thabor, should take up 

 their cross and go up mount Calvary, or else 

 honestly declare they have chosen atheism, by 

 preference. What has occasioned this perversion 

 of language and general misnomer in modern 

 ethics, I know not, except it be the cold paralysing 

 hand of heresy, wliich was stretched over 

 Europe, when the beauty, harmony, and grandeur 

 of the Catholic religion was bartered for the ravings 

 of a debauched a})ostate reformer : but of this I am 

 convinced, notwithstanding all the stufFso vaunted 



