There ought to be, and with any man of taste there can be, no doubt that our version is the true one. That of Ambrose and Jerome is worthy of mere rhetoricians; a flat formal play of 'antithesis' instead of the weight and solemnity of the other. [11] According to the former the scales are even, in the latter the scale of Christ drops down at once, and the other flies to the beam like a feather weighed against a mass of gold. Append. Part. I. s. 4. p. 752. And again he saith, that every soul, immediately upon the departure hence, is in this appointed invisible place, having there either pain, or ease and refreshing; that there the rich man is in pain, and the poor in a comfortable estate. For, saith he, why should we not think, that the souls are tormented, or refreshed in this invisible place, appointed for them in expectation of the future judgment? This may be adduced as an instance, specially, of the evil consequences of introducing the 'idolon' of time as an 'ens reale' into spiritual doctrines, thus understanding literally what St. Paul had expressed by figure and adaptation. Hence the doctrine of a middle state, and hence Purgatory with all its abominations; and an instance, generally, of the incalculable possible importance of speculative errors on the happiness and virtue of man-kind. [Footnote 1: Folio 1628.--Ed.] [Footnote 2: The following letter was written on, and addressed with, the book to the Rev. Derwent Coleridge.--Ed.] [Footnote 3: 'P. L.' III. 487.--Ed.] [Footnote 4: i. 27. See 'Aids to Reflection'. 3d edit. p. 17. n.--Ed.] [Footnote 5: ... whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive or intuitive. 'P. L.' v. 426.--Ed.] [Footnote 6: The reader of the 'Aids to Reflection' will recognize in this note the rough original of the passages p. 313, &c. of the 3d edition of that work.--Ed.] [Footnote 7: See 'Table Talk', 2d edit. p. 283. Melancthon's words to Calvin are: 'Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affirmu etiam vestros magistratus juste fecisse, quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt.' 14th Oct. 1554.--Ed. [Footnote 8: "But to circle the earth, 'as the heavenly bodies do',' &c. 'So we may see that the opinion of Copernicus touching the rotation of the earth, which astronomy itself cannot correct, because it is not repugnant to any of the 'phænomena', yet 'natural history may correct'." 'Advancement of Learning', B. II.--Ed.] [Footnote 9: That Christ had a twofold being, natural and sacramental; that the Jews destroyed and sacrificed his natural being, and that Christian priests destroy and sacrifice in the Mass his sacramental being.--Ed.] [Footnote 10: 'Fides catholica', says Bellarmine, 'docet omnem virtutem esse bonam, omne vitium esse malum. Si autem erraret Papa præcipiendo vitia vel prohibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona et virtutes malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare.'