Without faith, without God; or, An appeal to God concerning His own existence, with a preface by ...

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Preface

The object of the following work is to shew that, for our knowledge of all that concerns God, we are indebted solelj and exclusively to divine revelation ; and that every particular which God hath seen meet to reveal to us, stands equally and infallibly true to our consciences. What God hath condescended to become the witness to the truth of in our minds, can no more be confirmed, than it can be weakened, by any other species of evidence.

In aiming at the establishment of these principles, the scope of the author of Without Faith, TTithout God, differs essentially from that of ordinary writers on the subject of religion. According to them, there are religious notions which owe their origin to man himself; and even views which are derived from revelation, may nevertheless receive increase and confirmation from other quarters. Indeed, if those who have commonly undertaken to treat of this all-important topic are to be believed, nothing is better calculated to produce a liking to the doctrines of Christ Jesus, than demonstra-

IV PRBFACE.

tions ^priori that they must be, and it posteriori that they are, agreeable to the results of observation and rational enquiry. Hence, statements and views, contained in the Bible, which appear to them to be borne out by matter of fact, they profess to be themselves thoroughly convinced of, and shew themselves solicitous to bring under the notice of their followers. But in regard to points which have no other ImUb than divine testimony, they either preserve a total silence, or at the utmost speak doubtfully and hesitatingly. This, whenever divine testimony enters the conscience as such, Mr. Barclay shews cannot happen.

All that God hath declared, resting on one and the same authority, can only be believed by us in one and the same way. God being the only, and being also the infallible, witness to the truth of whatever He hath made known in His word, every part of it must be to us, if enlightened by .Him, equally and absolutely certain. We cannot be sure of one divine truth, while we reject, or are hesitating about, another. We cannot be receiving the facts of scripture, while we are dubious as to its reasonings. While we admit as true the transmission of sin and death to us from Adam, we cannot be rejecting, or in doubt about, our possession of righteousness and life everlasting in Christ Jesus. So far from this, the Holy Spirit testifying in our consciences equally and infallibly to the truth of all that is contained in the sacred record, whatever, through the medium of that record, is by him disclosed to us, is to us equally and infallibly certain.

This, indeed, must be. The Holy Spirit, speaking by the mouth of one of the apostles, has furnished us

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with an argument, in support of Mr. Barclay's leading principle, to subvert which sets all the boasted ingenuity of man completely at defiance. Ifvoe receive the finineas or testimony (}f man, the witness or testimony of God is greater. 1 John v. 9. That is, if mere human testimony, confessedly inferior to that of God as in every point of view it must be, is nevertheless frequently productive in our minds of a conviction which we shall in vain attempt to distinguish from absolute certainty, can divine testimony, when introduced into our minds as such, produce a conviction the strength o^ which shall be less? Nay, if in many cases we find it impossible to distinguish the effect of human testimony from absolute certainty^ must not divine testimony, as superior by its nature, beget ahsolute and infallible certainty itself f^-JMihoM^ I have never visited Mexico, I have no doubts concerning the existence of that country. And yet, what higher testimony than that of man constitutes the basis of my conviction in this particular case? When my heavenly Father, the faithful and true witness, sees meet to reveal it to me and my fellow believers, as the import and substance of his testimony, that he hath given to us eternal life, and that this life is in his Son, 1 John v. 1 1, is it possible that there should exist in our minds, believing this to be his testimony, a conviction of its truth inferior to that with which we believe in the existence of Mexico ?

The fact is, the following work of Mr. Barclay is a bold, masterly, and scriptural, assault on the principle of religious scepticism.

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-VI PREFACE.

Ordinary religion can boast of no higher source than education, custom, secular interest, human observations and reasonings, or at most a desire to satisfy the cravings of the natural conscience. In many cases, several, or perhaps all, of these causes may concur to its production. Man and the exercise of mere human faculties thus giving birth to it, a jprdbabiliti/ that they may be right, mingled with much uncertainty y is the highest point which those possessed of it can reach. For such persons to be absolutely certain of the correctness of their religious sentiments, is an utter impossibility: absolute and in/allible certainty in regard to divine things, being the result of divine testimony entering the conscience as such, and of this cause alone.

Scepticism is thus, Mr. Barclay saw, far from being confined to the irreligious merely. Nay, that species of it which obtains among the religious classes of the community is, of the two, decidedly its more dangerous form. Under the pretence of upholding divine truth, this traitorous principle is doing all that it can to sap and undermine it. — ^To attack and oppose scepticism, especially when assuming the garb and language of piety, and thereby to put the ignorant and the unwary on their guard against it, was the grand object of the author in the composition of the following pages.

Admirably has he succeeded in demolishing what is commonly denominated natural religion. This is one of those idols which the apparently pious, and the openly profane, — which the Unitarian and the Calvinist, — curiously but consistently enough, have concurred in setting up. ^' God hath means of revealing himself to the conscience, over and above his written word," say

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they. ^^ Of these means he hath m every age availed himself. Heathens, therehy, have been brought to the knowledge of his character. Nay, were it not for the existence of those natural notices of himself wherewith he hath stored abundantly the mind of man, to what," triumphantly exclaim they, ** could he address, upon what could he fasten, an express revelation of himself?" To Mr. Barclay's inimitable method of dealing with this sophism, which is a virtual attack on the necessity, nature, and efficacy of revelation, I refer the reader. Nothing can be conceived more pointed, complete, and satisfactory, than his exposure of Clarke's cielebrated h priori demonstration. Even Lord Brougham's, contained in his recent work, is tame compared with it.*

But the great excellence of the following treatise, as well as of Mr. Barclay's other works, is its thorough refutation of that all-pervading, mind^harassing, sceptical principle, the eanstence of doubts and fears respectmg their future state in the breasts of be^ lievers, ^'One who credits the divine testimony concerning Christ Jesus may often be very uncertain, and consequently may be filled with much anxiety and many fearful forebodings, as to what shall be his own personal state and circumstances hereafter. Indeed, such fears, sO far from being injurious and therefore undesirable, are exceedingly salutary, as tending to promote watchfulness and humility; and fall to be ranked among the best evidences of his spiritual state which a child of God can possess." Such is the language of the most serious and popular of our religious

* See his Lordship's latA work on Nataral Theology. '

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hierarchy. Mr. Barclay, as the champion of divine truth, at once and boldly proclaims himself to be at issue with them. Every part of their statement he impugns, and cuts down with the sword of the Spirit To believe and to doubt are, he shews, states of mind as opposite as light and darkness. For a man to doubt respecting his state before God, when he has nothing but human testimony or human reasonings to rdy on, or when he is seeking for the grounds of a hope of eternal life in himself, is all very natural. And so tax from wishing to hear from the lips of any man, while in sncfa a state, the language of confidence and assured hope respecting futurity, Mr. Barclay deprecates his use of it with the utmost abhorrence. What our author says, and what he proves with irresistible force of evidence from scripture, is, that a man fvho daubiB concerning his state in the sight of CM, is not a Christian. Such a one is still in darkness. He has never yet had divine testimony carried home to his conscience by the Spirit as what it actually is; and, consequently, there does not exist in him that principle from which alone absolute and infallible certainty can flow. A believer, on the contrary, is light in the Lord. Having had the eyes of his understanding opened from above, to behold the truth of divine testimony in itself, that is, as it shines by its own glorious intrinsic evidence, he has had the righteousness of Christ reveal* ed to him as his own, and is enabled thereby to see himself saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. The import of divine revelation is now apprehended by him to be, not a command or series of commands urging him to do any thing in order to his being saved^ but a

PREFACE. UC

proclamation to him that he is saved, in virtue of the complete salvation which the Lord himself hath wrought out. ''It is finished," is introduced into his conscience with divine power ; superseding at once, and for ever, all works acts and efforts of his own. The same word which reveals to him that he inherits death, as the wages of sin, by virtue of his connection with Adam — ^reveals to him likewise his inheritance of eternal life, as the gift of God to him, through Jesus Christ his Lord. Both statements, as resting upon the same infallible authority and as opened up to his mind by the same divine and irresistible evidence, he equally and certainly believes. All his previous scepticism, whether religious or irreligious, is henceforward at an end. God now to him is love. Not that God hath undergone any change; but that his own mind is changed, by its having been enlightened and enabled to behold God as what He is, ever hath been, and ever will be, God is love: and to him is manifested to be so in the light of the fact, of having sent his Son into the world ; that he, seeing that fact to be true, might live thereby. 1 John iv. 8. 9. In the believer's conscience there is now perfect peace, even the peace of God which passeth all natural understanding; and as this peace has been produced by the testimony of the Spirit revealing to him what God is, and as God ever continues the same and ever continues to reveal himself as the same, of course this peace remains in his conscience for ever. — ^As to doubting and fearing with respect to God's love to us personally, it is shewn by Mr. Barclay to be the result, not of humility, but of devilish pride: being neither more nor less than the creature presunung to set up its own wisdom in opposition to the wisdom of the Creator; and refusing to be comforted until, in express contradiction to what God hath declared, it shall have discovered in its own human righteousness, that which shall be able to satisfy the infinite demands of dimne law! In a word, it is the creature venturing to give the lie to the Creator, by going about to establish its own righteousness, in spite of God's affirmation that this is impossible, and that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that helieveth ! — ^How different from thi£f spurious humility, the humility of the gospel, as it is delineated by Mr. Barclay himself in one of his fervent and eminently spiritual hjrmns : —

'Tis not, humility, thy task, To weave a thin excuse,

And then for worthiness to ask.

That thou mayest grace abuse.

Thy office, O humility,

Is frankly to receive, What frankly cometh from on high,

And God the glory give. *

Our author's system, as developed in the following sheets and indeed in every one of his works, is thus, that all knowledge of God's character and ways is exclusively the result of that revelation which he hath been pleased to give concerning Himself, and which we find contained in the Holy Scriptures ; and that the necessary effect of this revelation being carried home to the conscience of any one by God himself is faith, or absolute and infiiUible certainty of the truth of what

• No. LXI. of the Spiritual Songs, edition, 1766.

PBIFACE. Xl

hath been made known. Can any theory of religion be imagined more agreeable to scripture, and to the experience of all upon the hearts of whom the truths of scripture have been inscribed by the finger of inspiration?

It will be obvious to those who have perused with care the preceding statements, and have thereby made themselves masters of Mr. Barclay's mode of argumentation, that every one who is taught from above must reject with abhorrence the ordinary practice of attempting to confirm the dictates of revelation by human diecoveries and reasonings. What to such a person are the pretended external evidences of Christianity? What to him are the geological theories of a Cuvier or a Buckland? — It may suit those whose religion has been taught by man, to crutch and confinh it by what man hath said. It may suit those who hold the persons of men in admiration beeatise of advant(»gey to shew deference to their authority even in cases where, from the nature of things, they are utterly incompetent to judge. This, however, will not be the procedure of him whose religion has emanated directly from God himself. Such an one knows that God neither does, nor can, receive testimony from man. John v. 34. The superior cannot be witnessed to by the inferior. A Christian, one I mean who is worthy of the name, so far from being ashamed of, glories in, the sneering remark of Hume,* that ^'our most Holy Beligion is founded, not on reason, but on faith;" knowing, that this arch-priest of infidelity, in so saying,

* In his Essay on Miracles.

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was, like Caiaphas of old, unintentionally giving utterance to a most valuable and blessed truth. With the theories of naturalists respecting the megatheria^ the ichthyosauri^ and the other extinct species of animals which are supposed to have existed in a long since by-gone period of the world, a believer may, if of a scientific turn of mind, occasionally amuse himself. But he will never be found exposing himself to the censures of infidels, or semi-infidels, by pretending to confirm the testimony of God by the shifting, inconsistent, and baseless, theories of man.*

A Christian is perfectly aware, that there can exist no contradiction between what God hath done^ and what God hath said. But he is well aware, also, that from the word of God alone is a sufficient and satisfactory explanation of what God hath done to be obtained. In looking at and judging from outward appearances, by his own natural faculties, he may commit mistakes ; for his at the utmost is a limited understanding, drawing its conclusions from necessarily imperfect premises. But in listening to what God hath declared concerning these appearances, he knows that the explanation which he receives and acquiesces, in is infallible. It is the judgment of one who is perfectly competent to pronounce respecting the subject, and whose veracity afibrds proof positive that whatever he says may be

* The remarks of a writer in the Quaxterlj Reriew, for April 1836, No. CXI, contained in a note to the article on Bnckland's Bridgewater Treatise, are weU worth considering by all who, in the folly of their minds, are attempting to jlrore or conoboiate the word of God by the discoyeries real or pretended of man. The note occurs at page 34

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relied on with implicit confidence. Hence the believer's constant preference of the declarations of the word of God, to the most brilliant theories of man. It is true, that the pride of human reason is not thereby gratified; nay, is assailed in its tenderest part, by the deposition of its idol from the sovereign authority wherewith her votaries would invest her: but if pride be wounded, safety is ensured. The testimony of the superior, being brought to bear upon the discoveries of the inferior, things appear as they really are, occupying their proper positions, and preserving their due relative importance ; and we are guided to the right conclusions by the light of heaven itself, instead of being liable to go astray continually by following after an iffniB/atuti$ of our own imaginations.

Thus Mr. Barclay's system is not, like other theories of religion with which we are conversant, partly gold, but chiefly clay. On the contrary, of his leading principles it may with truth be averred— and of the fundamental tenets of how few besides can this be said?—* that they are all gold.

Not the least curious and interesting circumstance connected with the following work, is the coincidence of many of its principles with those of the celebrated David Hum6. That is, the most decided and successful assailant of religious scepticism, is actually found fighting ride by side with the prince of modem sceptics ! How is this to be accounted for? Simply by the fact, that Barclay, taught from above, was enabled to discover in Hume an auxiliary — an unintentional one, t admit— of the Christian cause; and to turn a battery

of arguments, originally intended for its destruction,

b

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against its besotted or treacherous allies. Hume, the acuteness of whose intellect no one acquainted with and able to appretiate £is writings will venture to call in question, found no difficulty in making his way through the specious, but ffimsy, argumentation of his ordinary antagonists. The Blairs, the Campbells, the Robertsons, of his time, could never succeed in fettering with their green withes this Samson of infidelity. He laughed, and well he might, at -every attempt of theirs to prove the testimony of Gody hy the testimony of man. Some of them produced very ingenious works* — works which may well make the infidel stagger— but none of them produced any which could meet Hume's challenge. ''Shew me how you can demonstrate the truth oi superior testimony, by testimony which is confessedly inferior ^^^ was still his bold, and, in so far as they were concerned, his triumphant outcry. At last Barclay arose. Rather, let me say, was raised up. He encumbered not himself with the armour of his predecessors, but went forth against this defier of the armies of the living God, with the sling and stone of revelation only. Admitting to Hume what is true, that divine testimony can never be proved by that which is humany'^ and that human testimony consequently can

* Such as Dr. George Campbell's work on Mirades.

f Positivelyyls here meant: for it was admitted by Barclay, and it is admitted by the writer of this preface, that negatively the arguments of the infidel may be confuted, and he himself driven into a comer, by human statements and reasonings. But confutation is not conviction: and, therefore, the principle of infidelity, how oft soever Its objections may be refuted, is nevertheless, hydra-like, continually devising new ones, to give employment to

FRZFACS. XV

never conduct to faith; and yet proposing the eertainty of the truth of dmne testimony possessed by himself and his fellow believers as a matter of fact; he smote this Goliath right on the forehead. A fact, every philosopher, indeed every man of sense, knows, is at any time better than ten thousand negative reasonings. "In proclaiming to you our conviction of the existence and truth of divine testimony, and this as having beeif produced in our minds by its own intrinsic light and evidenee, we tell you a fact," said Barclay; " get over it as you best can. All that you are entitled to say, is, 'that yon yourself have never experienced any such conviction, and that consequently you are totally unable to conceive how it can take place,'— «nd we b^eve you. Nay, we go farther. We admire, as well your candour in making the admission which you do, as your acuteness in detecting the fallacy of all attempts to satisfy you by mere human reasonings.— But, at the same time, you must be aware, that the argument which you allege, the only argument, indeed, which you can allege, in opposition to our assertion, is really worth nothing. All that you can say, is, ^ that you have never had divine truth revealed to you.' What is this negaiice statement, and what are the negative reasonings founded upon it, when brought to bear against 9^ positive fact? — ^We proclaim to you, that we have been enlightened by divine testimony. And we proclaim to you farther, that, in the light of divine

its assailants. There is no way of slaying the monster, or, dropping the figure, there is nothing capable of carrying conyiction home to the mind potitively, except divine testimony.

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testimony itself, we have discovered the perfect consistency subsisting between it, and all that is correct in the observations and reasonings of man. In other words, in the light of the superior ^ we have been enabled to see and appretiate what is true in the. inferior. Now, what can you say to this?" — ^The only answer which Hume and his followers, aided and abetted by the majority of nominal Christians, have ever returned to Barclay, is a sneer — and a sneer has pftssed current with them for a conclusive argunaent.

It must be allowed, that our author does sometimes express himself, with regard to his religious opponents, in terms of severity, which, at first sight, appear to be uncalled for and unjustifiable. This was in part the , offspring of his keen, and, ardent temperament. A man like him is not to be tried by the standard of cool and calculating men, of the world. He had the soul of a seraph, and no wonder, therefore, if he glowed like one. I know no human being, indeed, in whom, judging from his writings, and from what I have learned of him otherwise, the

Thoughts that breathe, and words that hum,*

formed more decidedly the very staple of his mental constitution and ordinary converse. Feeling intensely, he expressed himself intensely. Can we be astonished to find such a man occasionally transgressing in language the bounds of conventional decorum ?

But Barclay needs not this apology. He spoke strongly of perverters of the gospel, because strong language was by the circumstances of the case required.

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His mind had too deep a sense ortbe value and importance of divine things, to allow him to measure his words, concerning those who under the garb and mask of religion were trifling with the eternal interests of their fellow men, by the tame and compromising rules of ordinary courtesy. A well known heathen poet, when defending his satirical treatment of certain base characters belonging to his time and country, claims a perfect right to speak of the vicious and profligate in the severest terms which their conduct might deserve, and the language in which he wrote might afford : —

And shall we deny to the Christian, who is exposing" tricks and subterfuges by which the salvation of men is endangered, a privilege which we willingly concede to him whose business it is to bring to light artifices of a much less perilous description ? — But the writer of TTithout Faith^ TTithout God, has far higher authority to plead, in vindication of himself, than that of Horace. When the meek and lowly Son of God was addressing the religious tricksters of his time, he hesitated not to say to them, Ye serpents^ ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell ! f Dealing with similar characters, and possessed of no small portion of his divine master's Spirit, shall we blaiAe our author for having occasionally had recourse to similar language?

C f

XVUl FBSPACS.

Some may be ready to allege in opposition to Mrl Barclay's system, — and this by them may be regarded as the weightiest of all arguments against it,—- that, if true, the number of believers of the gospel must be extremely small indeed. But a mere sprinkling. One here and another there. — ^And what, pray, though the charge should be admitted ? Is the conclusion imputed at variance with scripture ? — ^It militates, to be sure, against the principle upon which all religious establishments are founded; and it is scarcely reconcileable with the Quixotic expectations of those who anticipate, during the subsistence of this present world, a conversion of the whole, or at all events of a majority, of the human race, to the belief of the truth. But what if it shall be found to square exactly with the inspired record ? The highest of all authorities hath declared, that '^ strdt is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life; and few there he which find it.*** And elsewhere, he has addressed his disciples as *^a little fiock^** to whom it is their ^* Father's go^d pleasure to give the kingdom."t Are Mr. Barclay's antagonists prepared to call in question the truth of these statements?

A few remarks with regard to the history of the following work, and some points which unless adverted to and explained might create difficulty to the reader, will conclude this preface.

Mr. Barclay's Without Faith^ Without God^ seems to hav e been the result of several concurring causes. The ground- work of its leading doctrines was, I have reason

PRSFACS. ZIX

to think, laid during the time when he was prosecuting his studies at the university of St Andrew's. The prelections of the learned and persecuted professor Campbell,* and the controversy excited among the clergy of the church of Scotland by that gentleman's once famous but now almost forgotten treatises^t seem to have first suggested to the youthful mind of our author, the incompatibility of the claims of BeveloHan^ with those of what is commonly denominated MUurcU BeUgion^ or notws of God supposed to e/vist in the conscience independently of the divine word. What Campbell began, the dispute between Hervey, the author of the Meditations among the tornbs, and Bobert Sandeman, carried on. John Barclay had not quite finished his academical career when, in 1756 and 1757, the Dialogues of Theron and Aspasio of the former, and the Z^etters on these dialogues of the latter, made their appearance. To the astonishment of our author, some of the leading principles of NotwroL Religion^ which he had heard so ably confuted by his theological preceptor, were found by him to be assumed and proceeded on, as demonstrably truis, by both parties in this

* Not George Campbell, the translator of the gospels, who was principal of one of the Aberdeen Colleges ; bnt Archibald CampbeU, a man of equal, if not superior, acateness to his talented namesake.

f Such as, his Enquiry into the original of Moral Virtue ; Edinburgh, 1733 : Remarks on some books published by him, with his explications ; Edinburgh, 1735 : Farther explications, &c. ; Edinburgh, 1736: The necessity of Ileyelation^ or an enquiry into the extent of Human Powers, with respect to Matters of Religion, especially the Being of God, and the Immortality of the SouL London, 1739, OctaTo.

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new eontro versy. A more searching examination of the whole subject, on his part, was the result At last, to his God-taught mind stood out fully and gloriously those sweet, satisfying, and scripturally-consistent, views of divine truth, which he has developed in the following pages, as well as in his masterly treatise on ''The Assurance of Faith,"* — ^The first edition of his fFithaut Faithy Without God, appeared in 1769. He was then engaged in proclaiming the completeness of Chrisfe worky the perfect pea>ce which wherever beUeved in that work speaks to the conscience y and the allsuffi' dency of diuine revelationy in connection with the Established Church of Scotland, to the inhabitants of the parish of Fettercaim, near. Montrose. Views so decidedly scriptural as those which he had espoused, and zeal so great as that with which he supported them, were not likely to recommend him to lukewarm and time-serving churchmen. Accordingly, after enduring many annoyances from his ecclesiastical superiors, he was finally cast out of the communion of the Scottish Establishment, by a sentence of the General Assembly, pronounced in May, 177d.t His reward from men was thus an enrolment among the number of those illustrious awotrvvaywyoiyX who can look up to

* A third edition of this treatise appeared at Glasgow in 1825. f He was virtuaUyy although not formaUyy cast out His certificate had been refused by the Presbytery of Fordoun, whose decision had been confirmed by the Synod of Angus and Meams. The General Assembly, by ratifying the sentence of the inferior judicatories, rendered it impossible for him thenceforward to officiate in the pulpits of the Established Church. AU this usage he encountered on doctrinal grounds alone ; for his moral character was unimpeached and unimpeachable.