So that, after all, the Bible is not the immediate word of God, except according to the German philosophy, and _in something between a literal and metaphorical sense_. Of all the cants that ever were canted in this canting world, this is the worst! The author goes on to add, that ‘it is among the miseries of the present age that it recognises no medium between _literal_ and _metaphorical_,’ and laments that ‘the mechanical understanding, in the blindness of its self-complacency, confounds SYMBOLS with ALLEGORIES.’—This is certainly a sad mistake, which he labours very learnedly to set right, ‘in a diagonal sidelong movement between truth and falsehood.’—We assure the reader that the passages which we have given above are given in the order in which they are strung together in the Sermon; and so he goes on for several pages, concluding his career where the Allies have concluded theirs, with the doctrine of Divine Right; which he does not however establish quite so successfully with the pen, as they have done with the sword. ‘Herein’ (says this profound writer) ‘the Bible differs from all the books of Greek philosophy, and in a two-fold manner. It doth not affirm a Divine Nature only, but a God; and not a God only, but the living God. _Hence in the Scriptures alone is the_ JUS DIVINUM _or direct Relation of the State and its Magistracy to the Supreme Being, taught as a vital and indispensable part of_ ALL MORAL AND ALL POLITICAL WISDOM, _even as the Jewish alone was a true theocracy!_’ Now it does appear to us, that as the reason why the _Jus Divinum_ was taught in the Jewish state was, that that alone was a true theocracy, this is so far from proving this doctrine to be a _part of all moral and all political wisdom_, that it proves just the contrary. This may perhaps be owing to our mechanical understanding. Wherever Mr. C. will shew us the theocracy, we will grant him the _Jus Divinum_. Where God really pulls down and sets up kings, the people need not do it. Under the true Jewish theocracy, the priests and prophets cashiered kings; but our lay-preacher will hardly take this office upon himself as a part of the _Jus Divinum_, without having any thing better to shew for it than his profound moral and political wisdom. Mr. Southey hints at something of the kind in verse, and we are not sure that Mr. Coleridge does not hint at it in prose. For after his extraordinary career and interminable circumnavigation through the heaven of heavens, after being wrapt in the wheels of Ezekiel, and sitting with the captives by the river of Chebar, he lights once more on English ground, and you think you have him.