who lived at a later period; particularly to a famous Grecian Mystic, who, it is said, wrote under the protection of the venerable name of Dionysius, the Areopagite.*

This denomination appeared in the third century, increased in the fourth, and in the fifth gained ground in the eastern provinces. In the year 824 the supposed works of Diony sius kindled the flame of Mysticism in the western provinces. In the twelfth century they took the lead in their method of expounding the scriptures; in the thirteenth they were the most formidable antagonists of the schoolmen; towards the close of the fourteenth they resided and propagated their sentiments in almost every part of Europe; in the fifteenth and sixteenth many persons of distinguished merit embraced their tenets; and in the seventeenth the radical principle of Mysticism was adopted by the Behmenists, Bourignonists, Quietists, and Quakers.

The ancient Mystics were distinguished by their professing pure, sublime, and perfect devotion, with an entire disinterested love of God; and by their aspiring to a state of passive contemplation.

The first promoters of these sentiments have been supposed to proceed from the well known doctrine of the Platonic school, (which was adopted by Origen and his disciples) that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls; or in other words, that the faculty of reason, from which proceeds the health and vigour of the mind, was an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth human and divine. They denied that men could by. labour or study excite this celestial flame in their breasts; and therefore highly disapproved of the attempts of those who, by definitions, abstract theorems, and profound speculations, endeavoured to form distinct notions of truth, and discover its hidden nature: On the contrary, they maintained that silence, tranquillity, repose, and solitude, accompanied with such acts of mortification as might tend to extenuate and exhaust the body, were the means by which the hidden and internal word was excited to produce its latent virtues, and to instruct men in the knowledge of divine things; and accordingly reasoned, thus: "They

*The late President Stiles has left a manuscript, in which he endeavours to prove that the greater part of the works which bear the name of Dionysins were really written by Dionysus, the Areopagite, though they may have been interpolated and corrupted in some places by later writers,

*The world, according to this author, was, before the fall, a mixture of good and evil, because temporal nature is a creation out of the strife of evil against good, which the fallen angels had brought into their kingdom. Man, before the fall, was susceptible only of the good, and could not have any knowledge that evil existed.

"Nature (says Mr. Law) is the manifestation of the holy trinity in a triune life of fire, light, and spirit,"

that which can raise the light, life, and spirit of God, in our souls. Nothing can enter into the vegetable kingdom till it have the vegetable life in it, or be a member of the animal kingdom till it have the animal life. Thus all nature joins with the gospel in affirming that no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven till the heavenly life is born in him. Nothing can be our righteous

world: he became an earthly creature, subject to the dominion of this outward world, and stood only in the highest rank of animals. But the goodness of God would not leave man in this condition: redemption from it was immediately granted; and the bruiser of the serpent brought the life, light, and spirit of heaven, once more into the human nature, All men, in consequence of the redemp-ness or recovery but the divine tion of Christ, have in them the first spark, or seed, of the divine life, as a treasure hid in the centre of our souls, to bring forth, by degrees, a new birth of that life which was lost in paradise.* No son of Adam can be lost, only by turning away from the saviour within him. The only religion which can save us, must be

nature of Jesus Christ derived to our souls.

The arguments which are brought in defence of this system cannot easily be abridged in such a manner as to render them intelligible. Those who are partial to mystical writings are referred to the works of this ingenious author.† See Quietists,

of the city of Nazareth; but was afterwards restrained to a denomination in the first and second century, which blend

According to this author, Christ was made man to kindle in the fallen soul a birth of light and love. He always represents the Deity as a God of love, who from eternity to eternity can have no will towards his creatures but to communicate good. He asserts that there is no wrath standing be tween God and us, but that which is awakened in the dark fire of our own fallen nature; and that to quench this wrath, and not his own, God gave his only-begotten Son to be made man. As, according to Mr. Law's system, all men have in them the first spark, or seed, of divine life, he believed in a final restoration of all mankind after long periods of suffering and purification. See Law's Collection of Letters.

+ Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. vol. i. pp. 222, 223. Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, vol. iii. p. 217. Encyclopædia, vol. xii. p. 598. History of Religion, vol. iv., article Mystics. Law's Life, p. 1. Law's Appeal, pp. 4-139. Law's Spirit of Prayer, pp. 61--68. Law's Spirit of Love, p. 52. Law on Christian Regeneration, pp. 1--39.

ed Christianity and Judaism. together. They held that Christ was born of a virgin, and was also in a certain manner united to the divine nature. They refused to abandon the ceremonies prescribed by the law of Moses, but were far from attempting to impose the observance of these ceremonies upon the gentile christians. They rejected also all those additions that were made to the Mosaic institutions by the pharisees and doctors of the law.

*

This denomination, like the Ebionites, made use of a gospel, which was called indiscriminately "The Gospel of the Nazarites, or Hebrews."+ NECESSARIANS, an appellation which may be given to all who maintain that moral agents act from necessity. Some suppose this necessity to be mechanical, and others moral. Mechanical necessity follows Materialism moral necessity results from the presumption that there is a power existing distinct from matter. Doctor Priestley's scheme of mechanical, or philosophical necessity, has been delineated under the article Materialists, on account of its connexion with the doctrine of Materialism.

The following is a sketch of the sentiments of some of the most celebrated advocates for moral necessity.

Mr. Leibnitz, a celebrated German philosopher, who was born in the year 1646, is a distinguished writer on this subject. He attempted to give Calvinism a more pleasing and philosophical aspect. He considered the multiplicity of worlds which compose the universe as one system, or whole, whose greatest possible perfection is the ultimate end of creating goodness, and the sovereign purpose of governing wisdom.-As the Leibnians laid down this great end as the supreme object of God's universal dominion, and the scope to which all his dispensations were directed, they concluded that if this end were proposed, it must be accomplished: hence the doctrine of necessity, to fulfil the purposes of predestination, founded on wisdom and goodness; a necessity physical and mechanical in the motions of material and inanimate things; but a necessity moral and spiritual in the voluntary determinations of intelligent beings, in consequence of propellent motives

*In this respect, as well as in some others, this denomination differed from the Ebionites; for they received both the old and new testament.

+ This is supposed by some to be the gospel St. Paul refers to in Gal. i. 6. Mosheim, vol. i, p. 173. Broughton, vol. ii. p. 155,

*Augustine, Leibnitz, and a considerable number of modern philosophers, who maintain the doctrine of necessity, consider this necessity in moral actions as consistent with spontaniety and choice. According to them, constraint alone, and external force, destroy merit and imputation.