[c] As if to guard against the abuse of the ' general rule ' laid down in the mis- taken sentences, in absence of the after-limitations inserted in B, he adds — ' Some men will be ready to deprave the labours of other men's, but, so good may be done, let all such ill-disposed persons be what they are, and what they will be, unless God turn their hearts. 'f I remark by the way —
[rf] That it is the more necessary to attend to the intimation by Sibbes of ' mis- taken sentences,'' inasmuch as Pickering's beautiful, but, unfortunately, inaccurate, reprint of the ' Soul's Conflict,' by a strange oversiglit, omits it. J
[e] It may be very safely left with every unprejudiced reader to decide whether it be not plain, from the above words of Sibbes, that some of his friends, Goodwin, or Nye, or Ash (to wliom he confided his MSS ), had called his attention to the ' sentences,' and received from hira the modifications and corrections inserted in B, and from B to H. and in all subsequent editions. The specific noting of certain ' mistaken sentences ' has no meaning otherwise. It must be kept in mind also,
* See page 127. line 11 from bottom, of our reprint In tlii.s volume. + Ihifl., line 10 from bnttom.
J 'The Bruised Reeil' and other pieces In the companion volume tag, has the same beauty of typography, but even more inaccuracies.
THE soul's conflict. 293
that the ' Soul's Conflict ' was posthumously published, having only been printed off while the author was on his death-bed. Again, I remark —
[/] That the mistake would be the more readily made, from the circumstance, that, in common with all the writings of Sibbes, he seems to have taken as the groundwork of the ' Soul's Conflict,' the brachy-graphic notes of others written down from his lips on delivery. These he simply revised.* Having in my library a volume of such 'notes,' I speak with the less hesitation.
[y] In the matter of editions, and the related ' charge ' of ' trick,' and ' falsifica- tion,' and ' corruption.' it is untrue that they [z.e., the Puritans] reprinted the book speedily, with the very same title-page that was before, without giving notice that it was a second edition. B, was not a ' reprint,' was not a ' new edition,' but simply A, with leaf 364-5 inserted, and 'victory ' in title-page, instead of ' victorie,' and C, the ' second edition,' does bear on its title page these words, ' The Secoad Edition,' and the date, not of 1630, as the bishop would have us believe, but of 1635. I have a copy in my library, and another will be found in, respectively. University Library, Cambridge, and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. I place below the verbatim et literatim et punctatim title-page.f
[K] It would be very idle to enter into a controversy as to the relative teaching of the sentences, as in A and B. Every dispassionate reader of both must admit that there is no change in the sentiment, but simply an expansion by way of explana- tion. In the original form, it was said, ' The laws under which we live
ought to be a rule unto us, so far as they reach ;' and it was only illustrating the ex- tent of the obligation of the rule to add in B, ' in some duties of the second table,' &c. Would Bishop Patrick really have us regard Sibbes as teaching that the ' rule' did extend beyond the ' second table,' while we read so unmistakably, in A and B alike, the qualification, ' Where it dashes not against God's law V Every one who knows the works of Sibbes, knows that in a venal and time-serving semi-popish period he held with all his might, that in matters of conscience, the law of God contained in the word of God was the supreme and only arbiter. It is worse than slander to maintain that he would have had men ' conform to the orders of our governors about the worship of God ' apart therefrom. The iitmost he says, and he says even that with the preliminary caution, ' though it be too naerow a bule to be good only [carefully italicised in A and B], so far as man's law guides unto,' is this . . . ' yet law . hath AN USE for the guiding of our actions that are under the same.'
This is sufliciently explicit, and conclusively meets that unquestioning submission to ' the powers that be,' which ofi'ered its inodorous incense at the shrine of James I., and his son Charles I. — that worshipping of ' the right divine of kings to govern wrong,' by which, in the indignant couplet of old Benjamin Bennet — ' The sov'reign's will becomes our — law, The church's will our — creed.'
[«] As to the ' blotting out' of the second sentence (first in order), animadverted upon by the bishop, it may be sufiicient to observe, that the omission of the words. ' in doubtful cases,' is explained and accounted for by the fuller statement, with example, thereafter given ; and equally is the deletion of the remainder accounted for, partly by its being a mere tautology in view of the after fuller statement, and partly that there was necessarily abridgment here to admit of corresponding enlarge- ment there, within the compass of the one leaf in B, as in A.