TES ON IRVING'S BEN-EZRA. [1] 1827.

Christ the WORD.
|
The Scriptures--The Spirit--The Church.
|
The Preacher.

Such seemeth to me to be the scheme of the Faith in Christ. The written
Word, the Spirit and the Church, are co-ordinate, the indispensable
conditions and the working causes of the perpetuity and continued
re-nascence and spiritual life of Christ still militant. The Eternal
Word, Christ from everlasting, is the 'prothesis' or identity;--the
Scriptures and the Church are the two poles, or the 'thesis' and
'antithesis'; the Preacher in direct line under the Spirit, but likewise
the point of junction of the written Word and the Church, being the
'synthesis'. And here is another proof of a principle elsewhere by me
asserted and exemplified, that divine truths are ever a 'tetractys', or
a triad equal to a 'tetractys': 4=1 or 3=4=1. But the entire scheme is a
pentad--God's hand in the world. [2]

It may be not amiss that I should leave a record in my own hand, how
far, in what sense, and under what conditions, I agree with my friend,
Edward Irving, respecting the second coming of the Son of Man.

I. How far? First, instead of the full and entire conviction, the
positive assurance, which Mr. Irving entertains, I--even in those points
in which my judgment most coincides with his,--profess only to regard
them as probable, and to vindicate them as nowise inconsistent with
orthodoxy. They may be believed, and they may be doubted, 'salva
Catholica fide'. Further, from these points I exclude all
prognostications of time and event; the mode, the persons, the places,
of the accomplishment; and I decisively protest against all parts of Mr.
Irving's and of Lacunza's scheme grounded on the books of Daniel or the
Apocalypse, interpreted as either of the two, Irving or Lacunza,
understands them. Again, I protest against all identification of the
coming with the Apocalyptic Millennium, which in my belief began under
Constantine.

II. In what sense? In this and no other, that the objects of the
Christian Redemption will be perfected on this earth;--that the kingdom
of God and his Word, the latter as the Son of Man, in which the divine
will shall 'be done on earth as it is in heaven', will 'come';--and that
the whole march of nature and history, from the first impregnation of
Chaos by the Spirit, converges toward this kingdom as the final