Note 41 — AIDS TO REFLECTION IN THE FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF PRUDENCE, MORALITY, AND RELIGION. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Romans viii. 9.—Ed.
[42] Romans viii. 16.—Ed.
[43] Whatever is comprised in the Chain and Mechanism of Cause and Effect, of course necessitated, and having its necessity in some other thing, antecedent or concurrent—this is said to be Natural; and the Aggregate and System of all such things is Nature. It is, therefore, a contradiction in terms to include in this the Free-will, of which the verbal definition is—that which originates an act or state of Being. In this sense, therefore, which is the sense of St. Paul, and indeed of the New Testament throughout, Spiritual and Supernatural are synonymous.
[44] Romans viii. 26.—Ed.
[45] Some distant and faint similitude of this, that merely as a similitude may be innocently used to quiet the Fancy, provided it be not imposed on the understanding as an analogous fact or as identical in kind, is presented to us in the power of the Magnet to awaken and strengthen the magnetic power in a bar of Iron, and (in the instance of the compound Magnet) acting in and with the latter.
[46] Romans viii. 26.—Ed.
[47]
"The river windeth[48] at his own sweet will." Wordsworth's exquisite Sonnet on Westminster-bridge at Sun-rise.
But who does not see that here the poetic charm arises from the known and felt impropriety of the expression, in the technical sense of the word impropriety, among grammarians?
[48] The latest editions of Wordsworth have "glideth" for "windeth."—Ed.