to those ideas, they should
hardly have the least particle of our attention.

In comparing this with the preceding chapter I could not help
exclaiming; What an excellent book would this Jesuit have written, if
Daniel and the Apocalypse had not existed, or had been unknown to, or
rejected by, him!

You may divide Lacunza's points of belief into two parallel
columns;--the first would be found to contain much that is demanded by,
much that is consonant to, and nothing that is not compatible with,
reason, the harmony of Holy Writ, and the idea of Christian faith. The
second would consist of puerilities and anilities, some impossible, most
incredible; and all so silly, so sensual, as to befit a dreaming
Talmudist, not a Scriptural Christian. And this latter column would be
found grounded on Daniel and the Apocalypse!

[Footnote 1: The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. By Juan Josafat
Ben-Ezra, a converted Jew. Translated from the Spanish, with a
preliminary Discourse. By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. London, 1827.]

[Footnote 2: See 'supra', vol. iii. p. 93.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: P. 157, 4th edit.--Ed.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON NOBLE'S APPEAL. 1827. [1]

How natural it is to mistake the weakness of an adversary's arguments
for the strength of our own cause! This is especially applicable to Mr.
Noble's Appeal. Assuredly as far as Mr. Beaumont's Notes are concerned,
his victory is complete.

Sect. IV. p. 210.

The intellectual spirit is moving upon the chaos of minds, which
ignorance and necessity have thrown into collision and confusion; and
the result will be a new creation. "Nature" (to use the nervous
language of an-old writer,) "will be melted down and recoined; and all
will be bright and beautiful."

Alas! if this be possible now, or at any time henceforward, whence came
the dross? If nature be bullion that can be melted and thus purified by
the conjoint action of heat and elective attraction, I pray Mr. Noble to
tell me to what name or 'genus' he refers the dross? Will he tell me, to
the Devil? Whence came the Devil? And how was the pure bullion so
thoughtlessly made as to have an elective affinity for this Devil?

Sect. V. p. 286.

The next anecdote that I shall adduce is similar in its nature to the
last * * *. The relater is Dr. Stilling, Counsellor at the Court of
the Duke of Baden, in a work entitled 'Die Theorie der Geist