mine the ultimate end: by the
understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means
for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to
circumstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that
is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire
correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there
can be neither a first nor a last:--all that we can see, smell, taste,
touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of
our language, entitled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of
motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like
manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which
we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their
several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and
judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective
power, is the source and faculty of words;--and on this account the
understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by
Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense.
However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same
understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its
true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point,
because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding
and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness,
'materiam objectivam',) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the
comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural
mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phronaema sarkos],
as likewise [Greek: psychikae synesis], the intellectual power of the
living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the
spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of
the will and the reason;--and this spirit both the Christian and elder
Jewish Church named, 'sophia', or wisdom.

Ben-Ezra. Part I. c. v. p. 67.

Eusebius and St. Epiphanius name Cerinthusas the inventor of many
corruptions. That heresiarch being given up to the belly and the
palate, placed therein the happiness of man. And so taught his
disciples, that after the Resurrection, * * *. And what appeared most
important, each would be master of an entire seraglio, like a Sultan,
&c.

I find very great difficulty in credit