All that follows in B. is admirable, worthy of a divine of the Church of England, the National and the Christian, and indeed proves that Donne was at least possessed by the truth which I have always labored to enforce, namely, that faith is the 'apotheosis' of the reason in man, the complement of reason, the will in the form of the reason. As the basin-water to the fountain shaft, such is will to reason in faith. The whole will shapes itself in the image of God wherein it had been created, and shoots on high toward, and in the glories of, Heaven! Ib. D. If we could have been in Paradise, and seen God take a clod of red earth, and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body as should be fit to receive his breath, &c. A sort of pun on the Hebrew word 'Adam' or red earth, common in Donne's age, but unworthy of Donne, who was worthy to have seen deeper into the Scriptural sense of the 'ground,' the Hades, the multeity, the many 'absque numero el infra numerum', that which is below, as God is that which transcends, intellect. Ib. p. 179. B. We place in the School, for the most part, the infinite merit of Christ Jesus ... rather 'in pacto' than 'in persona', rather that this contract was thus made between the Father and the Son, than that whatsoever that person, thus consisting of God and Man, should do, should, only in respect of the person, be of an infinite value and extension to that purpose, &c. O, this is sad misty divinity! far too scholastical for the pulpit, far too vague and unphilosophic for the study. Ib. p. 180. A. 'Quis nisi infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum?' says St. Augustine. Where? [16] Pearson expressly asserts and proves that the clause was in none of the ancient creeds or confessions. And even now the sense of these words, 'He descended into hell', is in no Reformed Church determined as an article of faith. Ib. p. 182. D. 'Audacter dicam', says St. Hierome, 'cum omnia posset Deus, suscitare virginem post ruinam non potest.' One instance among hundreds of the wantonness of phrase and fancy in the Fathers. What did Jerome mean? 'quod Deus membranam hymenis luniformem reproducere nequit?' No; that were too absurd. What then?--that God cannot make what has been not to have been? Well then, why not say that, since that is all you can mean? Serm. XIX. Rev. xx. 6. p. 183. The exposition of the text in this sermon is a lively instance how much excellent good sense a wise man, like Donne, can bring forth on a passage which he does not understand. For to say that it may mean either X, or Y, or Z, is to confess he knows not what it means; but that if it be X. then, &c.; if Y. then, &c.; and lastly if it be Z. then, &c.; that is to say, that he understands X, Y, and Z; but does not understand the text itself. Ib. p. 185. B.