April 1814.

Next to the inspired Scriptures—­yea, and as the vibration of that once struck hour remaining on the air, stands Leighton’s Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St. Peter.

Comment Vol.  I. p. 2.

 —­their redemption and salvation by Christ Jesus; that inheritance of
  immortality bought by his blood for them, and the evidence and
  stability of their right and title to it.

By the blood of Christ I mean this.  I contemplate the Christ,

1;—­As ‘Christus agens’, the Jehovah Christ, the Word: 

2;—­As ‘Christus patiens’, The God Incarnate.

In the former he is ’relative ad intellectum humanum, lux lucifica, sol intelligibilis:  relative ad existentiam humanam, anima animans, calor fovens’.  In the latter he is ’vita vivificans, principium spiritualis, id est, verae reproductionis in vitam veram’.  Now this principle, or ’vis vitae vitam vivificans’, considered in ’forma passiva, assimilationem patiens’, at the same time that it excites the soul to the vital act of assimilating—­this is the Blood of Christ, really present through faith to, and actually partaken by, the faithful.  Of this the body is the continual product, that is, a good life-the merits of Christ acting on the soul, redemptive.

Ib. pp. 13-15.

  Of their sanctification:  ‘elect unto obedience’, &c.

That the doctrines asserted in this and the two or three following pages cannot be denied or explained away, without removing (as the modern Unitarians), or (as the Arminians) unsettling and undermining, the foundations of the Faith, I am fully convinced; and equally so, that nothing is gained by the change, the very same logical consequences being deducible from the tenets of the Church Arminians;—­scarcely more so, indeed, from those which they still hold in common with Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer and the other Fathers of the Reformation in England, and which are therefore most unfairly entitled Calvinism—­than from those which they have attempted to substitute in their place.  Nay, the shock given to the moral sense by these consequences is, to my feelings, aggravated in the Arminian doctrine by the thin yet dishonest disguise.  Meantime the consequences appear to me, in point of logic, legitimately concluded from the terms of the premisses.  What shall we say then?  Where lies the fault?  In the original doctrines expressed in the premisses?  God forbid.  In the particular deductions, logically considered?  But these we have found legitimate.  Where then?  I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and according to such rules.  The rules are alien and inapplicable; the process presumptuous, yea, preposterous.  The error, [Greek:  to proton pseudos], lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all, in this instance.

First:—­because the terms from which the conclusion must be drawn-(’termini in majore praemissi, a quibus scientialiter et scientifice demonstrandum erat’) are accommodations and not scientific—­that is, proper and adequate, not ‘per idem’, but ’per quam maxime simile’, or rather ‘quam maxime dissimile’: