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theology (especially his own) is suffering for want of an extended observation.—But let all this be as it may: we ask no charity to our errors, and deprecate no censure of our follies. The book shall be our defence;—and if we shall live to think it a foolish treatise, there will be at least this comfort left us—that if it was not very deep, neither was it very long.

SECTION II.

DEMOCRATIC AND AUTOCRATIC THEOLOGY.

We distinguish theology democratic—theology growing from what is common and undisputed in the mind and life of man, from theology autocratic—the growth of singular minds, received of some by faith in a special divine illumination.


We dispute the revelations of no man's peculiar consciousness—a delicate topic; we but say, these were not revelations to us, but questionable hearsay, taken (if so) upon faith in his integrity. The experience of the abnormal individual is impertinent to the mass of men, whose experience is in a great measure common, each man's consciousness for the most part approving his fellow's. We deny not that in this normal mass there may be recipients of abnor-

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